Holotropic breathing, neoshamanism, reiki, twisting "funnels" - until recently, this was considered heresy. Journalists Svetlana Kolchik and Anastasia Gosteva found out why esoteric practices have become new religions.
Imagine: the Shanti Maurice hotel-palace on the shores of the Indian Ocean, morning, sun, white sand … but two dozen top managers of a large corporation do not sunbathe on the beach, but in a cramped audience they write down every word at a lecture on reincarnation, the lecturer is a Vedanta teacher (one from philosophical schools in Hinduism) or any other fashionable guru of our time.
We thought that only our friends are interested in such things - they all practice something esoteric: integral yoga, reiki, Kabbalah (in its modern form), Tantric Buddhism. Fortunately, they have not reached the point of Scientology, still popular in Hollywood, but banned in many countries, but even legal practices quite fit the definition of the word "religion" - each of them has a picture of the universe, a moral code, a spiritual leader, rituals, dietary restrictions.
It has become fashionable to go to psychotherapists who cross between psychoanalysis and esotericism. The richest and most influential people on the planet choose the "Integral Approach" - a cocktail of several practices created personally for each, aimed at developing body, mind and spirit.
Four perfectly reasonable women described how esoteric practices became a part of their lives.
Marina Tarasevskaya, 32 years old, lawyer
I breathe deeper and deeper and with every inhalation and exhalation I plunge into a state unknown to me. Hands - especially in the elbows - strangely numb, knees too. The brain paints fantastic pictures: here I am, seven years old, and my father is swinging me on a swing in the country; here I am two years ago, sorting out the relationship with the ex; and here I am in a wedding dress (although I never had a wedding), I go to the altar in a Gothic temple …
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Then the numbness disappears, and I fly away - to that magical dimension where you don't need to dream, because all dreams have already come true, where you don't need to prove anything - neither to myself nor to others, where there is only love and joy. And when I return, I don’t recognize myself: there is an unusual lightness in my head, pleasant fatigue in my body, like after a walk in the forest, good sex or a massage. And it feels like the world is smiling at you and you no longer need to fight with anyone - everything is fine.
I will never forget my first lesson in rebirthing - my psychologist recommended to try this practice. Then for a long time I could not let go of one situation, I was offended by the man, and I was advised to “breathe” it. Rebirthing (from the English rebirthing - "rebirth" - this is "coherent" breathing, the deepest inhalation and immediately - the deepest exhalation. And so - at least an hour and a half. It is unsafe, so you need to breathe under the guidance of a specialist.
With this practice, you can let go of emotional blocks, heal mental trauma, including the very first one - generic. (By the way, it is precisely because of emotional blocks that many parts of the body become numb during practice. If, as in my case, limbs become numb, this is a symptom of a violation of your connection with the world: perhaps you give more than you take.) relive not only the moment of their birth, but also past lives, as well as episodes from the future. This did not happen to me, but after the first session of rebirthing mystical things began to happen in my life.
The man with whom I had been in love for many years, although we were just friends, suddenly woke up and began to actively look after me. Nothing has changed in my behavior - I let him go a long time ago (they say, a man must be released three times, and if he comes back later, this is your man). But he seemed to have been replaced: a month later this man proposed to me! It is possible that these events were provoked by rebirthing: this practice helps to "connect to the flow", and then your subconscious desires and true needs begin to be realized - a direct connection with the Bank of the Universe is established.
And although my cherished wish came true, I continue to go to the rebirthing. Thanks to him, I change: I feel my boundaries more clearly, I have become more open and straightforward. I learned how to constructively get rid of aggression. At rebirthing, images of those who once hurt you sweep in front of you, but you perceive them differently, not including the ego, but simply realizing their role in your life. Negative emotions go away. And other people begin to be attracted into your life, and those who are already in it behave differently.
Alena Krupnova, wife, mother of four children, 34 years old
I have always wanted to live not how it turns out and how circumstances develop, but how I dreamed. I wanted a close-knit family, and real closeness with my husband. But my parents got divorced, and I didn't have a normal family model. But the request for this was sincere. I began to move towards my dream, already being married, I learned to manage feminine energy in order to be realized in all the main feminine states - mother, lover, girl and mistress.
I began to regularly engage in breathing practices that activate the emotional and sexual centers (this is the fourth chakra, at the level of the heart, and the second - in the lower abdomen), meditate. Everyone around, starting with my husband, told me that I had changed a lot - I became warmer, softer, more feminine. I couldn't get pregnant for seven years, but here I easily, without complications, gave birth to three healthy girls one after another.
It seemed that I had everything I wanted, but at 32 I was covered by an internal crisis. I suddenly began to control my husband, began to feel that I had become a mother not only for our daughters, but also for him. And he, even though he did not openly admit it, first of all still needs a woman, not a mother. Then I realized that during that period of my life negative generic programs were activated (at about this age my parents separated) - and they are often so strong that one cannot change the stereotypes of thinking and behavior by practice alone. I was lucky: I ended up with a strong specialist in Hellinger's constellations.
It turned out that in my family, somewhere at the level of a great-grandmother (she had a very domineering tyrannical husband who took all the love and attention for himself, and nothing was left for the children), female energy was blocked and the flow of love, which should be passed on from generation to generation, stopped a generation. If this happens, disliked women with a predominance of male energies grow up in the family. They either do not develop relationships with men at all, or they attract weak men, or cannot get pregnant, or do not feel strong feelings for the child and for her husband, so the latter begins to look for love on the side.
When I realized all this and with the instructor and I made a new, healthier constellation, my behavior changed radically, immediately, without any effort. I no longer needed to "cultivate" femininity in myself - I just became feminine. Closeness with her husband - at the level of a man and a woman, not a mother and a son - has been restored.
But I did not quit my practice and work with a psychologist. We work with a psychotherapist according to the Alfred Adler system - we find out how children's attitudes affect us in everyday life. I also meditate regularly and also follow the lunar calendar. Each new moon I write down desires, intentions and goals for the next month. I believe that if you live consciously, dreams always come true.
Anastasia Gosteva, 36 years old, writer, journalist
Since childhood, I have always been interested in one single question - what will remain if parents and educators, genetics, education are subtracted from me? Will there be anything left? What's behind the mind? Later I learned that Zen masters asked their students exactly this question: what was your face like before the birth of your parents? I started practicing at 17, hoping to get rid of years of depression.
The drugs did not help, and I realized that either I would do something for myself, or no one would help me. The depression passed, I continued to try all kinds of techniques and practices in search of an answer to the main question - who am I? Meditation, holotropic breathing, trips to Indian ashrams, to Tibetan monasteries and to Mexican shamans, qigong, yoga, vipassana. During this search, I came across several times what can be called a miracle.
Once in India, Saint Sai Baba, in front of a dozen witnesses, materialized for me a gold chain and amrita (the nectar of the gods - according to the beliefs of the Hindus): rolling up his sleeve so that no one would convict him of fraud, with a circular motion of his hand he “got” all this out of thin air. He did this in response to my request to help get rid of the fear of death and become free.
Back in Moscow, I fell ill with typhoid fever. For three weeks, doctors could not make a diagnosis, they just poured in liters of antibiotics just in case, which did not work. On about the 21st day, when it became clear that it was typhoid and that chloramphenicol did not take it, I was told that earlier, when there were no antibiotics, people either developed immunity on days 25-26, or they died. And then I remembered that I have several spoons of Sai Baba's "materialized" amrita in a plastic Coca-Cola bottle.
I drank half of it, fell asleep, woke up - and saw that the amount of amrita increased. I drank it for a week, until all the tests began to show that I was healthy - its amount did not decrease. Friends came, looked at the bottle, took level measurements - we tried to track the moment when it appears. And that night, when I finally recovered, the amrita dried up, turned into dust at the bottom.
Of course, I got rid of the fear of death - I think it was for this that such a serious illness was sent to me along with the antidote. But now, 10 years later, I can say that all these miracles are just baits with which Genesis lures us. Many people think that spiritual practices are when we sit in the lotus position in the Himalayas. But the main miracle and true practice is to be totally here and now, in the present moment. Go beyond the mind, stop identifying with the body, emotions, thoughts. Experience what spiritual teachers call the Presence. Remember who you are and do simple everyday things. It was this practice that changed my life much more than all the miracles.
Much of what is happening to me now seemed impossible to me before. I quit my job, completed a two-year international systemic constellation program, and started teaching workshops that draw on my meditation experience. There are a lot of powerful energies of transformation in the world now.
It's like atomic energy - it can be peaceful, it can kill. If you are identified with the body, emotions, pain, these energies seem deadly. If you are ready to become something more, give up false ideas about yourself, if you are tired of suffering, they will become an invaluable gift.
Olga Danilina, consultant psychologist
I got into the first wave of interest in esotericism - the early 80s. I remember the shock of a techie - a student at the Moscow Aviation Institute, when in one of the closed bioenergy laboratories I participated in experiments with photographing the aura according to the method of physicist Semyon Kirlian and its changes through psycho-emotional impact.
More than twenty years have passed since then, people have changed a lot during this time. According to many scientists, the conducting properties of the medium also change qualitatively - changes occur on a galactic scale. Stars, planets and all living beings begin to more subtly and sharply feel the universal connection. In almost all my psychoanalytic sessions, I see that people are becoming more sensitive to information flows, to what Jung called "the collective unconscious."
Archetypal beings, prophecies, mystical insights come to my clients in dreams. In ordinary life, many people experience such a thickening of events (in psychoanalysis it is called "being in the flow") that in a matter of months, or even weeks, their life scenario changes dramatically. Many now complain that their "roof is going": we begin to feel everything so subtly that it is scary for the integrity of the psyche. I explain to them that telepathy, and clairvoyance, and, as if by magic, the fulfillment of some strong desires - this is our new reality, which will have to get used to.
More and more indigo children are born. I believe that adults also "indigo", it is just that the adult has a strong internal censor, blocking those information flows that the child is not yet constrained. Most of us semi-consciously already stand at the point of our personal "Transition". Just like on a treadmill: the speed increases and you - like it or not - you run faster! It doesn't matter what or who will be the catalyst - rebirthing, vegetarianism, yoga, fitness, your psychotherapist, confessor, change of environment, new man, new job … Everyone will have their own Guide.
Therefore, in the new year, I recommend everyone to be more attentive, aware, sighted - to events, people, dreams and signs. It is especially important to pay attention to dreams - these are the messages of our soul. And remember: everything that happens to us is never an accident.