Anna Maurer

Sylvester Walch instructed me in the first two years of my Gestalt-therapy training and I sensed, that he would be an important teacher for me. So shortly after I finished my studies, I signed up for a further training in holotropic breathwork for psychotherapists. At that time I didn’t have any clue what Transpersonal Psychotherapy or Holotropic Breathwork was all about, but I had much confidence in Sylvester and therefore engaged in the adventure to take on a new area of expertise.

My first breathing session turned out to be a very passionate experience, an inner fire, that unhinged my previous worldview completely. I discovered, that beneath a thin layer of reality, there was another dimension of reality, whose existence I would never have expected. I experienced myself in the midst of an african fertileness ritual, that I perceived with all my senses and body sensations and through that experience I felt a deep and complete connection with my existence. In my everyday consciousness I was only connected with a fraction of experiences and inner wisdom, that I carry inside of me.

During my training as a Gestalt Therapist I learned to develop confidence in my subjective experiences and therefore felt deeper and deeper connected with my own being. All this gave me the security and confidence to allow this direct experience to happen without bias – in some kind of phenomenological view – without classifying or categorising it. It was especially easy in this case, since I didn’t have any models at hand anyway.

This breathing experience was the departure to an intensive inner path, on which my personal experiences always were the focus. Experiences through which I intuitively grasped the beingness of things – only thereafter I began to search for literature, so I could integrate my experience, which then enabled a vivid understanding for me.

My insights from all of this I have summerised for me as follows: Only our own experiences are the foundation for our confidence. If certain ideas only convince our mind, we cannot trust. Insight we can only experience, understanding we can only find within us and experience directly with our whole being.

„What can come to the surface, when we go deeper, which experiences can occur?“

When we open ourselves a variety of experiences may occur, for example, for a long time suppressed emotions like sadness, anger, but also joy and vitality, scenes from our childhood as well as identifications with animals or nature may be experienced. It is also possible to come into contact with one’s inner guidance, to have divine experiences, or to see inner pictures and have inner visions.

Through Transpersonal Psychotherapy a safe space is created, so that all these experiences may be expressed, since experiences that exceed the individual sphere, may be so overwhelming when undergoing them, that one may avoid to talk about them. If one shares such experiences with others, the outside world may dismiss them as fantasy, as memories of stories and even as delusion. Whenever psychotherapists know about the reality of such experiences, one can establish a personal relationship with them. Compared to theoretical classifications the personal experience and the trust in the creative process of development always take priority – from all the diverse layers of the psyche, the experience with the most emotional power will come into consciousness. It then will be supported and guided, whether it matches any theoretical concepts or not.

I will now present a preliminary model of classification by Sylvester Walch (from the seminar script of the curriculum in October 1999) to have an overview of all the different kinds of experiences, that one may go through.

The biographical layer includes all the memories of our childhood and our later life. This is the layer, that conventional Psychotherapies deal with. In breathing sessions one does not only remember, but re-experiences details from all phases of life with the original emotions and body sensations as authentic, regressive experiences. Sometimes an approach to very early experiences opens up: the bodily birth process may be re-experienced, but also pre-natal experiences as far back as to the moment of conception.

Transbiographic experiences, are characterised by their connection with your life story. The conventional limits of time and space dissolve and in some kind of symbolic condensation one experiences deep rooted personality structures. We might see, which hang-up patterns in our present life may end up to be our doom again – one could also interpret them as experiences of potential past lives.

On the transpersonal level we come into contact with pictures and experiences, that C.G. Jung characterised as the archetypal, collective unconscious. Therein we find themes of mythological nature or from the common history of menkind, for example fertility rites, mourning rituals or mythological battles…
For their accomplishment in different cultures, the individual can tap into the collective reservoir, that means, that the archetype or all the gathered experiences of menkind are present at all times. Rupert Sheldrake believes, that we are all surrounded by “morphogenetic fields”, a common available memory of nature beyond the limits of time and space. According to him therein all the experiences of history of nature, menkind and culture are discarded and stored – like in a hologram that contains all the myths of menkind in a condensed form.

As Spiritual we classify in the Transpersonal Psychotherapy for example experiences of awakening, in which a spiritual process is set in motion. In this states an immeasureable quality of love may be experienced, that is not earmarked or goal-oriented, a deep feeling of connectedness with all beings, with nature, with the cosmos and it’s own inner center. Intensive feelings of joy, bliss, inner peace, gratitude and contentment may arrise. One may encounter higher beings or spiritual masters from various religious traditions and receive advice on ones personal path of development. The goal of a spiritual process would be to merge the individual soul with the universal soul, where it feels contained.

I would like to define the four levels by means of my own experiences:

During a breathing session, I went through the experience of my familyfate in a condensed form. Furthermore I experienced a transformation of the personal, that enabled me to make peace with my familyfate, because I came into contact with something inconceivable, so I could allow healing and reconciliation to take place.

First of all to the biographical level: I come out of a farmersfamily. My mother gave birth to six girls within six years, of which I am the oldest one, and only the seventh child turned out to be the long anticipated son, who died at the age of ten. After his death my mother had recurrent appearances of mother mary, that she would tell us children about secretly. Nobody else would have been able to understand her. She was a deeply religious woman, but she never got over this unfair stroke of fate.

In a breathing session, in which one reaches deeper levels of consciousness through accelerated breathing and music, I experienced, shortly after the death of my mother, my mothers fate in a symbolically condensed form:
I am a woman, that lives in a house by the sea and have a seven year old son. My heart is filled with the love for this child. It is so free and natural, I only want to care for him. Dressed up all in black I experience myself all of a sudden in the same house – something bad must have happened: I lost this child. In the same way that my body was just luck and joy before, it now is only pain and despair. I quarrel with god and there is a deep reproach towards this fate within me, I persist therein and only feel injustice and cruelty.

This part of my breathing experience one would decribe as transbiographical. These inner pictures and feelings do have a strong connection with my individual history. The limits of time and space dissolve however.

In the follow up the transbiographic level mingled with collective and mythological archetypes and changed into a transpersonal experience, because all of a sudden I am a mourning woman under the cross of Jesus – the individual pain merges with the collective pain. I recognise the pictures on the personal and on the collective level, because my personal sorrow joins in with the one of the mourning women around Jesus, is part of a bigger pain, that all beings share together. Thus the role of the sufferer and the unfair treated one by fate begins to change, since the personal involvement is not in the foreground anymore. Something within me gets rid of this black dressed woman, of her pain and from her suffering. Suddenly the realisation comes to me: to remain in the suffering as a tribute to a pitiless fate is an idea that anticipates any vital development.

Now I come into contact with the spiritual level. I see Jesus risen from the cross and enlightened. He speaks to me: “You are not crying for me, your tears are the tears of self-pity, free yourself finally from your suffering. The time of mourning is over.”

And then I am again the woman near the sea, that laments her son. I let go very consciously from the power of the pain, reconsiliate with my unfair fate and come to peace. I surrender to death. My body dies. The whole process is not frightening. I begin to dissolve into a bigger whole, that I am connected with naturally.

This part of my experience would be classified as a spiritual one. One can have an inner dialogue with masters from different religious traditions, to receive assignments and guidance for one’s personal life. The goal of a spiritual process of development would be to outweigh duality, to merge the individual soul into the universal soul, where it is comfortable and feels supported. These processes are about finding the connection to something all-embracing, that enables healing and reconsiliation to take place.

Stanislav Grof states, that through an experiential expansion of consciousness beyond the personal level, personal entaglement on a deeper level can be resolved. Beyond healing a deep cleansing, opening and grounding into the transpersonal space may happen. Conventional Psychotherapies do not use spiritual topics as part of the therapy, on the other hand spiritual paths often do not deal with the biographic limits. Transpersonal Psychotherapists build bridges to connect and to interweave these two dimensions. It is not the goal to leave the individuality and subjectivity behind in order to become someone different from what you are. One becomes more receptive for that, which goes beyond oneself and involves the spiritual dimension into the one’s work, takes responsibility for one’s own inner powers and therefore is then able to trustfully bring one’s own qualities, the only one and unique one through one’s actions into the world. If we embrace more and more, that which was given to us, then through the uniqueness of each one of us always something new comes into the world. The divine does not stand for only one certain way to be, but it is the diversity, it needs the entirety of the human nature.

This is true for us as therapists, as well as for our clients, because on one level there is an isolated I and you and on another level an interweaved-being. In a certain yoga tradition a Swami took the example of an icecube floating on the surface of the water. In this condition the icecube experiences itself as limited and separated, but as soon as it is heated up, it’s condition changes and it can merge again with the water.

The realisation of one’s place in the big whole eliminates the split between the everyday life and the holy – both of the levels are interweaved with each other – they become one.