Photos by Eliesa Johnson
Amy Kuretsky, LAc, co-owner of Constellation Acupuncture and Healing Arts, pictured with a patient
Okay, I’ll bite: I’m not the introspective type. I’m a run-faster, jump-higher, throw-farther kind, unfit to sit with my thoughts. My version of ambiance is the soothing buzz of a podcast or audiobook or Spotify playing in the background. I turn on the thermostat fan at my house to avoid stifling stillness. And besides, I’ve always self-rationalized: If I can find my chill by going for a jog or a walk or chasing my toddler around the house (physical movement is my love language), then why would I need to carve out time to just … sit? And be?
Signing up for a “breathwork” session sounded like some form of torture, which is exactly why I lined one up at Constellation Acupuncture and Healing Arts in Northeast. I was equal parts intrigued and skeptical and panicky to undergo 80 minutes of guided breathing exercises with a stranger. Breathing is a fundamental part of our existence, I reasoned, so why would I need to pay a professional to facilitate something I can just do on my own already? I assumed others would ponder the same thing.
Amy Kuretsky, LAc, co-owner of Constellation, appreciated my reservations, fully prepared to warm up my journalistic inclinations with facts and figures and informed insights before we dove in to experience, as described on the website, a type of active meditation that facilitates self-healing, connects you with your inner wisdom, and supports you in releasing what’s no longer serving you.
Kuretsky kicked off our time together by covering the importance of completing our body’s stress response cycle, inspired by the text in “Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle.” (We discovered we both read this book in early 2021.) The twin sisters who wrote it, Drs. Amelia and Emily Nagoski, talk about how our survival mechanism is activated whenever we encounter a perceived threat. And just like any other biological phenomenon, the stress response has a beginning, middle, and end. If we can push through all stages, we successfully complete the stress cycle, thus, staying healthier. (Not to be a fearmonger, but it’s been well documented that not completing the stress cycle slowly inches us all—particularly women—towards an earlier death.)
“Our sympathetic nervous system takes a toll when we’re not completing [the stress response cycle], and that’s why we’re in a constant state of activation, which leads to burnout. We’re elevated … all the time." Amy Kuretsky, LAc, Constellation Acupuncture
“Our sympathetic nervous system takes a toll when we’re not completing [the cycle], and that’s why we’re in a constant state of activation, which leads to burnout,” explains Kuretsky. “We’re elevated … all the time.” When we lay down to breathe, she says, we’re turning down the volume on our thinking brain and turning up the volume on our feelings or soul or spirit, getting connected to the deepest parts of us that usually go unheard. “Our thinking brain wants to keep us safe and is always the loudest, so breathwork is an opportunity to bring that down,” she says. “I trust that whatever comes up for myself during a session is something I haven’t been paying attention to that wants, that needs my attention.”
This all made sense to me, but our conversation transpired into a straight-up revelation when Kuretsky brought in the spiritual benefits. Breathwork biochemically induces things in the body, like increasing oxygen and carbon dioxide levels and clearing out stagnant energy, but it also brings us to, as she refers to it, a non-ordinary state of consciousness. “Like … having an acid trip or going under hypnosis?” I jokingly asked. She laughed, “...Well, yes. Kind of.”
A Crash Course in Psychedelics and Epigenetics
When psychedelics were first studied as mental health agents in the ‘50s and ‘60s, the benefits were clear and immediate for sufferers of anxiety, depression, and PTSD. However, by 1966, LSD and other hallucinogens were made illegal and classified as “Schedule 1” drugs, according to the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), meaning they had no “accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.” (This later led to President Nixon signing the Controlled Substances Act into law.) “Some psychiatrists here in the States and also in Europe started experimenting with the breath to reach that same state of altered consciousness [commonly found in hallucinogens],” says Kuretsky. Czech psychiatrist Dr. Stanislav Grof, together with his wife Dr. Christina Grof, pioneered holotropic breathing, a more intense form of meditation that uses accelerated breathing for the purpose of trauma healing.
“From a more energetic standpoint, the belly is the place where we hold stories about ourselves—generally shame—feelings of anxiousness or 'butterflies,' and our ancestral trauma."
Intergenerational trauma has far-reaching effects on our health and overall development into adulthood and beyond. This isn’t a novel concept—Native American cultures have been following the 7th Generation Principle since the 12th century (at least), based on an ancient philosophy that the decisions we make today should result in a sustainable world seven generations in the future. So how does this all tie back to breathwork? The practice of active breathing allows us to release the ancestral tethers—alongside our own repressed hang-ups—that we store and carry in our bodies.
“From a more energetic standpoint, the belly is the place where we hold stories about ourselves—generally shame—feelings of anxiousness or 'butterflies,' and our ancestral trauma,” says Kuretsky. “It’s where we possess our reproductive organs and when you think about it, we’re actually in our grandmothers. When a baby is born and it’s a female-sex baby, they have all of the eggs that they're ever going to have in their body already. So that’s you—in your mom, when she was a baby—in your grandmother.” This is the epigenetics way of thinking that we’re connected generations back and generations forward.
The Experience
Kuretsky directed me over to the table and gave me a play-by-play of the active breathing session: Breathe deeply into your belly, then up into your chest, and out your mouth. I’ve been in labor before so I’m going to totally nail this, I thought. Hee, hee, hoo. She says that this 3-step pattern—two steps as you inhale and one step exhale—brings all the feelings, emotions, stories of self, and ancestral traumas up into our heart space (the heart chakra), and washes them out with self compassion through the mouth. “Like taking an emotional scrub brush to a cast iron pan,” she says. This portion, the active breathing, takes around 20 to 30 minutes as the practitioner guides you through various clearing methods to help facilitate energy clearings. From there, you return to a normal breath rate while your body and mind begin the healing process.
As I approach the table, Kuretsky offers me a glass of water in case my mouth dries out (there is no breathing in through the nose—everything is done in and out of the mouth). She assures me that I am the one "driving the car” in our session and at any point, if things start to feel off or out of my control, we can immediately slow things down or take a pause altogether. “Where energy moves, emotions move,” she says. “That doesn’t mean you’re going to have a huge emotional experience. But you might! It’s important to acknowledge that whatever comes up is welcome here.” She adds that the most common physical sensations that take place are some tingling or tightness in the hands.
“When our hands get tight, there’s usually a sense of control that we’re not able to let go of. Or it can stem from some kind of protective qualities we’ve developed around vulnerability,” she says. “In Traditional Chinese medicine, the heart space is located in the palm of the hands; all of the energy from our chest organs move through here. And in breathwork, we’re opening up the heart space.”
I lay on the table and watched Kuretsky as she started playing music with beats that synced up with the active breath rate. “I made a playlist for you,” she says with a smile. Music is my first love—and you know I don’t do well with being enveloped in quietness!—so this broke the ice for me. From there, she guided me through the breathing exercises, encouraging me to make audible inhalation and exhalation sounds. I felt silly for a minute or two, but once I started to have a bodily reaction, I was so curious about what was taking place that I forgot Kuretsky was even there.
I immediately knew what she meant by how this practice turns down our thinking brain—after a good ten minutes of hee-hee-hoo-ing, I felt fully in tune with my body. I could feel my hands tingle, my thighs tighten. My body slowly filled up with warmth and then my throat tightened. I steeled myself for what I knew was going to be an ugly cry. But I didn’t feel any accompanying feelings of shame or embarrassment. It wasn’t a cry in the sad sense; it was a full on, whole body release. I was emptying out the things that take up a lot of heavy space in my consciousness—namely, unresolved wounds from my childhood and grief.
There were some other interesting, unexplainable things that occurred over that hour, but I’ll keep those details to myself. Kuretsky says the spectrum of experiences for those on the table run the gamut, from being sweet to wild to just straight-up cathartic. “I’ve been facilitating breathwork since 2017, I’ve done this hundreds of times, and every single experience [for myself] has been different,” said Kuretsky. “Sometimes I’m having conversations with my dead grandmother … but the session doesn’t have to be some big and profound thing.” Sometimes, it just helps us get unstuck from whatever is holding us back in our lives. To get the most of your session, it’s good to go in with an intention—much like a traditional meditation.
I left Constellation feeling lighter and freer, a slight skip in my step out to the parking lot. I was in awe of what I had just experienced, and the marked difference between how my insides felt now versus just a mere hour and a half ago. And all with my own breath! I slept well that night and the next morning my head, which I endearingly refer to as a "junk drawer," felt organized, situated, compartmentalized. Words and memories came back easier. My nerves weren't as frayed as they usually are. I'm not sure what the long-term effects of a breathwork session are (Kuretsky says repeat clients usually return several months later) but I have been more conscious of my breathing. And I was so excited about the revelations I experienced that I gifted a session to a dear friend for her birthday.
We can all afford to breathe a little easier these days, right?
Amy facilitates all breathwork sessions at Constellation. The cost for first-timers is $205 (90 minutes), follow-ups are $180 (75 minutes), and group sessions, where journaling is involved, are $50 (for 90 minutes). For more information, go to constellationacu.com or call 612.339.5088.
