From the author: The final chapter of the treatise, which is already in print. For purchasing questions, write to me in a personal message, call me... In holotropic immersion, as well as in sleep practice, the hand and kidneys are the most important control vessels. This applies, first of all, to novice “holonauts” (which is obvious). That is, both the practice of sleep and deep breathing - both of these processes begin in fear and hands, and both are controlled by the energy of fear or hand. More precisely, for a beginner breathing (holotropically), fear and sensations in the hands form the fabric of holotropic experience, which subsequently builds, in Grof’s term, the entire cartography of breathing. From this point of view, holotropic immersion is a powerful tool for dreaming and human development as a whole (of course, after mental practice of revision). Perhaps the last statement is worth revealing, using our approach to the fundamental vessels and three houses as an evidence base. Let's remember that in dream practice we consciously begin to work with later vessels, primarily with our hands. And then, through working with our hands, we seem to return to fear, or rather, to conscious work with fear. It’s almost the same in holotropic breathing... Only the work in a dream comes from the hands into fear, and holotropic immersion comes from fear into the hands. Indeed, in the holotrope, one might say, the hands cease to obey us, and therefore it is more difficult to work with them than in a dream (although it is possible, for example, in some cases, to force breathing into the hands while inhaling). In other words, already in the first experience of deep breathing, our hands “explode” with sensations, but this does not happen in a dream. What we could previously call metaphors like: “hands don’t hold”, “hands give up”, “hands don’t obey”, etc. suddenly becomes a material reality! And no matter how we mentally prepare for these experiences (and what can we say about people who did not know in advance what would happen on the breath), we are still not ready to accept such an experience, simply because in our cultural tradition it is not not designated. This gives rise to a kind of culture shock, or fear of losing bodily self-identity. Fear!.. In the holotrope, unlike in sleep, it is easier to work with fear directly. To be fair, I must make a small correction here: it was stated above that energetically strong women do not need to work through their hands in a dream. And it was also pointed out that a “pitfall” arises here: such dreamers get stuck in unnecessary mystifications, that is, in fact, in their archetypal fears. The picture of the holotropic experience for such women is the same, that is, they treat the holotropic process as a kind of dream - fear and mysticism come first for them. This fact rather confirms the general rule, rather than contradicts it: sleep and holotrope have similar stages in the development of energy vessels. So, breathing out your hands is, for the most part, breathing out fear. After all, tetany is accompanied by tension in the hands, which is, first of all, stagnant fear - icy, wet, sticky, inert, viscous... This state of the hands, and above all, the hands, reflects, in the words of a physiologist: oxygen debt, or in the words of a psychologist : debt to oneself, and from our point of view: fear, aggression and resentment in a wide variety of individual variations, but fear here comes first both quantitatively and qualitatively. And only further, during the subsequent experience of deep breathing, changes occur in the leading emotion , and in the late vessel. The arms (hands, especially) remain tense and sweaty, but become hot and active. That is, a struggle arises: in this case, against the background of fear, aggression and rage actively appear. It is also worth noting two cases here: for some holonauts, such a transition can occur within 5-10 minutes - that is, aggression appears on their façade, and fear is simply not visible, although there may be a much larger part of it; in other holonauts, fear can linger for several sessions, stretched out to several months - that is, for them, fear prevailsfear over all other emotions. In both cases, we try to avoid extremes - we do not allow ourselves to become fixated on either aggression or fear; in other words, we see neither too rhythmic and “expressive” breathing, nor too inert and “inhibited” breathing as undesirable. This process of mutual transitions from fear to aggression and resentment in all its guises imposes itself - inside self-pity, inside guilt, inside shame, inside jealousy, envy, etc. (I have listed complex emotions in which resentment is clearly present). Resentment itself as a fundamental emotion (that is, indivisible ), obviously also participates in this process from the very beginning, but we must remember that this is an even more subtle emotion, which means it is more implicit compared to fear and aggression. Resentment seems to hold fear and aggression together, which greatly influences the course of holotropic breathing, and in different people in different ways, due to the different proportions of these three heavy fundamental emotions. That is, if a person is active and aggressive in life, then this aggression will manifest itself quite quickly in the holotropic process; but if a person lives in fear, fear will hold back his breath for a long time. Nothing new happens on the holotrope! Holotropic immersion is a miniature but compressed, concentrated and sometimes grotesque version of life. Holotrope is living life for the purpose of purification, but not the appearance of some other people's experiences. Everything there is ours! By the way, Stanislav Grof has a statement that is similar in essence: any symptomatology during deep breathing is the beginning of recovery, but not the beginning of a disease... In our model of sequential catharsis during holotropic breathing, we strive to overcome the seeming chaos of the initial breathing experience precisely by sequentially passing through the bodily , emotional and mental experience. That is, we are talking about intensive transpersonal training for beginners with the so-called average level of neuroticism. This experience boils down, in essence, based on the above, to the sequential experience of the first two fundamental emotions - the heaviest and most obvious emotions - fundamental fear, and fundamental aggression. And I, as an instructor with more than 20 years of continuous (!) experience in conducting holotrope groups, claim that this is the most productive method, because chaos in the process, firstly, only seems so, and secondly, chaos can only generate chaos, then there is further elaboration of chaotic experience is too uncertain, often energetically unjustified and cannot be justified, as they say, by “the spontaneity of human nature.” In our terminology, spontaneity is not chaos; spontaneity comes from joy, chaos comes from fear. In our breathing model, we divide the chaos of the process into fear and aggression, fix the element of fear, and leave this aggression, as it were, “for later.” To do this, it is enough to breathe deeply with an emphasis on inhalation. And then strong physical sensations will appear (tension, inertia, cold, moisture), followed by fear (which expresses the element: cold, standing black water). Next you need to accept this fear, accept your hands in particular. To reach the level of acceptance means to take a significant step in the entire holotropic breathing, a step that is already at this stage called “breathing.” Although, this “breath” is conditionally entry-level; in this case, “breathe out” the fear, or “breathe out” the icy hands. With the acceptance of fear and phenomena in hand, holotropic immersion begins, where revision begins to appear against the background of deep breathing. (From this point of view, holotropic immersion and holotropic breathing are not the same thing). But this is no longer just a revision as a mental technique, but a holotropic revision, that is, a consistent revision with the body, emotions and mind. After all, all these bodily spasms are nothing more than a spontaneous revision of the body, in which the mind is not involved at first, but “wait” for its “time”. And “time” for the mind in this case is the so-called “forty-day” catharsis. But we strive toobvious emotions were not actively involved in the bodily “three-day” catharsis, especially aggression, because aggression, by definition, is the most active of the difficult emotions. So, we try not to rush, and, if possible, slow down the “nine-day” catharsis at the stage of the “three-day” catharsis. And yet, what happens during bodily catharsis with three heavy fundamental emotions? The relationship between the fundamental emotions of the holotropic process looks like this: acceptance (spleen emotion , a positive analogue of resentment) overcomes fear, then acceptance itself is overcome by productive aggression, which is sublimated into pure meditative melancholy (emotion of the lungs). These relationships are expressed in terms of the elements in Taoism: the earth absorbs water, but at the same time the earth is depleted by wood, and the tree is cut down by metal. It is important here not to rush aggression, otherwise the holotropic process becomes looped on it. Hysterical people (of whom more come to holotrope, as well as to any dynamic training, which is obvious due to the nature of hysteria) easily switch to dynamic active breathing, but their fear remains unprocessed, and therefore their breathing is actually shallow, but simply rhythmic with flashes of emotions, bodily sensations, pictures, fragments of thoughts, etc. But then such breathing cannot be called “holotropic”, but rather emotional, or better: “hysterical” breathing. Persistent fear can also “hold on” to the holotropic process, then deep breathing becomes slow, viscous, with constant withdrawals “into oneself”, etc. However, it is easier to work with fear (in terms of the mechanics of breathing and the defense mechanisms of a holonaut), although it is harder (due to the nature of fear itself). In short, on the first dives we slow down excessive activity, and “push away” lethargy and inertia. As a result, heavy fundamental emotions turn into light ones, the level of the holotropic process increases, immersion becomes truly holistic, holotropic, at all levels of a person. And then another, more advanced level of the concept of “breathing” enters - to reach the level of light emotions. In terms of fundamental emotions, this is similar to how a lucid dream becomes a dream of clarity. Which is what needed to be proven! But then let's move on. And then more detailed concepts are born: “breathing”, “immersion”, “breathing”, etc. In fact, right now our breathing becomes something more - immersion, both from the point of view of the process and from the point of view of results. Like the dream of clarity, the holotrope can also draw on the fundamental emotion of longing and the later vessel mouth. In the dream of clarity, speech gives birth to pure melancholy. In the holotrope it is also easier to go from an early vessel to a later one, that is, pure melancholy allows one to speak “cleanly”, in other words, this level of experience develops clear speech and a fresh face, both literally and figuratively. But the face itself, as it achieves “purity”, for example, as tension is relieved and spasms are worked through, evokes pure melancholy and peace. The feedback is obvious, as in the case of fear and hands. Moreover, let me remind you that in fact the mouth begins to manifest itself as strong sensations in the holotrope even at the level of fear and hands, that is, at the initial level, only sensations at the level of the mouth and face as a whole are secondary after the hands. So, we have achieved the pure emotion of the lungs in the holotrope . We have worked on at least our hands and face, “breathed”, as they say, both in the physical plane of tensions and spasms, and in the emotional plane of the relationship to these spasms and tensions, and on the mental plane of ontology, that is, the origin of these spasms and tensions. You can to say that we have “breathed out” completely. This took a lot of deep breathing sessions, as well as a lot of time (more precisely, the main time) outside of these sessions, time of elaboration and revision. As a result, we repeatedly went through the vertical of all three catharsis from bottom to top, and let me remind you that ideally there are nine such forty-day catharsis in a year! But it is worth noting that in reality, we do not have the proper magpie culture to make our catharsis go so smoothly. We have.