Becoming a breathwork facilitator
According to most people’s idea of success. I have achieved quite a bit in my professional and personal life. I have been vice president at a startup delivering 6 products to market within a 2 year span. I completely stripped down my house and renovated it (having never done renovations before) It came to a point where I thought to myself:
” I have achieved what I set out to achieve here, I have proved to myself what I wanted to… at this point if I keep going I would just be chasing bigger numbers. I am ready for something new”
I really didn’t quite grasp what I was asking for.
Six month to a year after having had that thought, Élodie stepped into my life. Meeting Élodie quickly put me on a path of facilitating at https://www.ecstatictemple.ca/ .
I started exploring Tantra and getting more familiar with consent culture, trauma and the world of emotions. Attending the events really taught me how to listen to myself, consent culture, how to take care of myself in social spaces, how to make request, go towards others and deal with receiving a “no”. It’s when people who were at events I was attending as a participant started telling me:
“Thank you for holding space tonight.”
That I got really curious and I figured: If I am something naturally and unconsciously maybe I should learn to become a facilitator.
I would say that is really where my current path of personal growth started. I learned about holding space, containers, how to create a safe container and how to show up as a facilitator. It is in march 2021 that I attended my first ISTA Level 1. To say that this event changed my life is an understatement. It is during my first conscious connected breathwork (called Shamanic Breathwork), at this retreat, that I got the message:
“You must serve”
I am working in IT at the time. It is not very clear how I can serve. Where do I go from here? To say it became and obsession to find how I could serve is an understatement. I started reading everything I could get my hands on. I pieced together the synchronicities of my life and how a lot of events or symbols in my life had to do with breath. I breathe fire, I was without breath for 60 seconds at birth, I play wind instruments, I also happened to have an obsession with dragons as a kid, an animal known for it’s breath and I got the message to serve during a breathwork session. I decided I will learn to facilitate breathwork.
I signed up for a training and it got cancelled a week before it was due to start. I knew I couldn’t wait and set out to find another school. This is how 1 day before their training started I signed up with https://www.onebreathinstitute.com/ in Sept 2022 . They are a trauma-informed school. I also thought being in a training that had a more of a yin approach would be good for me. I completed my training as a trauma-informed breathwork facilitator in June 2023. I am currently enrolled in their practitioner training to deepen my expertise.
I have since also completed ISTA Level 2 and assisted twice at ISTA Level 1. That is a story for another post.