Pantheacon (15) - Birthing the Ecstatic

I want to ask, “Have you ever lain on the floor breathing regularly, contracting your abdomen in rhythm with your breathing, and pushing your hips upwards and downwards?”

But as soon as these words form, I snap at myself:  “Of course they have!  Or, at least some number of the women you’re talking to have!  They’re mothers—they’ve given birth!”

My last evening at Pantheacon, I attended a workshop entitled “Tantric Shamanism Breathwork Ceremony.”  The description spoke of attaining ecstasy through breathing, in the context of a circle. It spoke of lifting participants towards the divine.

I remember most of the workshop quite well—in a trance kind of way.  First we discussed what we were going to do.  Then we all lay on the floor, closed our eyes, and began to breathe regularly and systematically.  Gradually we began to move our hips up and down in rhythm with our breathing, vocalizing also as we did so.  This went on for quite a while—for most of the hour of the workshop, I believe.  It was ecstatic, in its way.  With my eyes closed, moving my hips up and down rhythmically and vocalizing freely—moans and gasps—at will, after a time I was in a definite ecstatic trance of some kind.  It’s hard to describe such experiences.  Of course I wasn’t taking notes during the exercise—and I didn’t take notes during the instruction at the beginning.  I was sitting on the floor, the room was crowded, I was trying to hear from where I sat towards the rear of the room.  But I remember the experience, I remember enjoying the experience (though sometimes wondering how long it would continue), and I remember thinking I had experienced something worthwhile—even if I wasn’t quite sure what precisely this experience was.