Psilocybin for therapeutic use is legal in the state of Oregon and I got to spend the graduation weekend with this lovely group of future psychedelic therapists.
We kicked these 4 mornings off with Vivation: a light-hearted blend of breathwork and meditation that specifically targets our resistance to an experience, already at the subtle levels.
Long before the highly energised states that intense breathing puts us in, we practice bringing awareness to the details of our feelings.
We do not breathe to ‘space out’ or to get to some certain ‘high’ state. We breathe to support feeling awareness.
We breathe to feel the parts of us that we unconsciously have numbed out over the years.
With the breath and the spotlight of our attention, we ‘tune in’ the strongest feeling that the body presents in any moment. We notice more and more of the subtle changes that are already occurring in the feeling, moment to moment.
Working at the subtle levels is one aspect of Vivation that enables us to heal little by little; to ‘tritrate’ our experience and stay within our ‘window of tolerance’.
Exploring the subtleties of our feelings lends gentleness, safety and even pleasure to the process of healing emotional trauma.
For me personally, it is an invaluable skill to have when navigating and integrating challenging experiences, substance-induced or not.
It is really exciting to share the practice with people in this ancient field of therapy that is now entering mainstream society.
