Back in my early thirties, I got into Rebirthing… initially as a way to help me quit smoking. There’s a bit of a story here. At its core, rebirthing is a circular breath technique, where you connect your inhale with your exhale, forming an unbroken loop = a circular breath. The ultimate goal is to reach your “first breath,” which is meant to help clear past trauma or birth trauma. For me, it became another way to journey deeper within…through the spirit of my breath which i still practice to this day.
I worked with a rebirthing practitioner for a while before being encouraged to start practicing on my own. One evening, i breathed in circles the whole night and truly felt like i reached my first breath. It was intensely profound experience i shall never forget it, and so, i finally wrote a poem, a wip…
breath tunnel
all night,
my breath of spirit found me
round and round, a liminal river running through
beyond the beyond, circles within circles, alpha
sometimes i drift away off to delta,
half-dream, half-driftwood
then woke again in theta… to an ebb-tide of inhale, exhale, in, out,
in, out, in, out…
each wave pulling me deeper / a rippling flutter begins
not on my skin, though in a starry shadow field encompassing
all around me, a dark stretches far into and down a pitch-black tunnel
undulating, fast and narrowing, walls alive with motion, rolling
pressing, guiding, opening then, a sudden rush / the
stark pull out of familiar fluid warm, mystery, into big hands
that seize my wee feet, squished, sudden weightlessness, swinging
upside down, flash of pain / my first words in this life, beta
“hey man! that hurts!” and here i am, slapped, reborn again,
hanging between worlds, chilly blind air, still breathing that river conscious
in, out, in, out, in…
still remembering… missing…
grieving… my mother’s safe, encircling
dark, watery womb…
—carol weaver © 2025 x (((💜)))