05/08/2026
Breath of Death, Breath of Birth
(Real Grof Breathwork Experience)
The breathing session began intensely — without any attempt to dissociate, without the familiar urge to “forget” to breathe. From the very first moments, the breath became deep, fierce, almost elemental. My nose kept clogging, yet my mouth never dried out; I did not want water. The body seemed to know exactly what it was doing. The waves of breath rose higher and higher, growing stronger with each cycle, and within ten or fifteen minutes, something broke open inside me.
At first came tears. Bitterness. The private grief of personal loss. Self-pity. But almost immediately, it all expanded into something infinitely larger — into the collective pain of humanity itself. Horrors of war began flashing before my inner vision: children running through smoke, dead cities, screams, ash. Waves of rage surged through me, followed by an almost animal hatred toward those responsible for such madness. I mourned the innocent victims — and with them, the whole of humankind. The world felt monstrous, and I felt myself to be part of that monstrosity.
And then I remembered the central teaching from Two Lives: one must live in joy.
But how?
How can one carry light while holding so much grief inside?
Was I even capable of transcending despair deeply enough to truly help others rather than drown alongside them?
My body, meanwhile, had entered a reality of its own.
Tremors rippled through me in waves; tiny convulsions moved beneath the skin like electric currents. The strongest sensation gathered low in my abdomen — dense, primal, scorching energy. My lower centers pulsed as though some ancient engine had awakened inside me. I tried to lift that force upward — toward the heart, toward the chest, toward the light — but it was as if I kept striking an invisible wall.
Nothing moved.
Then the color arrived.
At first it appeared as a faint glow beneath my closed eyelids. Slowly it deepened into something alive — a rich violet radiance, both neon-bright and impossibly soft, like amethyst fire. My entire inner space filled with it. The pulsing climbed into the space between my brows, and suddenly my third eye began throbbing with such force that it felt as though something inside me was trying to break through my skull.
I pressed against the mask, trying to calm the pressure, but it only intensified.
And then the visions began.
Like flashes from the twenty-fifth frame of a film reel, a strange image kept appearing for a fraction of a second at a time: an oval opening, resembling both a portal and a birth canal, surrounded by deep crimson light. Sometimes the opening narrowed almost completely shut, yet the living burgundy-red pulsation around it remained — uneven, breathing, organic, as though it belonged to another reality entirely.
Again and again I tried to unite the currents inside me: to bring the violet light downward, or raise the yellow fire from my solar plexus into the heart.
But something inside resisted.
So I began to cry once more.
Not politely. Not carefully. I wept without restraint and began to pray — not with words, but with my whole being. I asked for only one thing: that divine light illuminate the darkest corners of my soul.
And then the pain came.
Not localized pain — total pain. Every cell, every muscle, every bone ached as though I were being dismantled and remade simultaneously. It resembled the deep ache of a severe illness, but magnified beyond measure.
And suddenly, light poured down from above.
Not an image.
A presence.
A blinding white current descended through me like a pillar of living consciousness. And with it came something impossible: I stopped fighting the pain.
I accepted it.
I recognized it.
I embraced it.
Pain was no longer the enemy. It became the guide.
And in that very moment, something inside me opened.
Joy flooded in.
And then — impact.
Reality itself seemed to rupture.
I was hurled into another world.
Dark sky. Black mountain silhouettes. Smoldering earth covered in ash. A battlefield.
And there — I lay dying.
Or perhaps not “I,” and yet undeniably me.
I inhabited another body: the strong, broken body of a female warrior, mortally wounded. I could feel life leaving me with the final exhale. In the same instant, unbearable pain tore through my thigh.
My leg has been blown off, flashed through my mind — the last coherent thought I had.
I tried to shift my position, but the pain only intensified. Through the roaring breath and chaos, I asked for a facilitator. Maria was beside me almost immediately. She began working with my body, applying pressure exactly where I pointed. But the pain migrated upward, spreading through me.
Within moments I was twisting among the pillows, growling, fighting to break through some invisible barrier.
Time disappeared.
And then I heard the cry of a newborn child.
Pure. Piercing.
And with absolute astonishment, I realized it was my own voice.
My body arched violently; I turned over — and once again I seemed to be propelled into another dimension. There was only light. Blinding, unbearable light. And cold.
I curled into myself, trembling and soaked, overwhelmed by brilliance so intense it penetrated even through the mask. My body shook like that of an infant newly arrived into the world.
Slowly, the trembling subsided.
The breath softened.
And then, suddenly, I felt my lungs — completely open, vast, free.
I inhaled fully, and the air tasted impossibly beautiful.
Sweeter than water.
Cleaner than mountain wind.
Maria remained beside me until the trembling left my body completely. Then I turned onto my back and drifted into a state beyond sleep — a vast, luminous stillness resembling yogic rest after both death and birth at once.
I had died.
And I had been born again.
