BREATHWORK: 👻Escape👻

DATE: Thursday, September 24th
TIME: 7:00–9:00 PM

"People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls."

~ Carl Jung

We all have somewhere we go when we do not want to be here, in presence. Behaviors and habits that keep us from feeling. For some, it is work. For others, relationships, food, substances, sex, scrolling, shopping, sleep, exercise, spirituality, achievement, fantasy, or constantly planning the next experience.

Escapism does not always look like running away. Sometimes it looks remarkably productive. It looks like ambition. Busyness. Self-improvement. Adventure. Helping everyone around you. Constantly searching for another teacher, another relationship, another experience, another breakthrough.

Anything can become an escape when we use it to avoid being where we actually are.

The deeper question is: What are you escaping from?

There are feelings we learned ,very early, that were easier to leave than to feel. Loneliness. Boredom. Shame. Emptiness. Grief. Anger. Fear. The uncomfortable silence that appears when there is nothing left to distract us.

So we reach. For stimulation. For another person. For something that changes how we feel. For anything that gives us a temporary distance from ourselves.

And for a moment, it works. The nervous system shifts. The discomfort quiets. The emptiness becomes occupied. We experience relief. But relief and freedom are not the same thing.

Eventually the distraction ends, the experience wears off, the person leaves, the accomplishment becomes ordinary, the phone goes quiet, and what we were trying not to feel is still waiting for us. The body knows this familiar cycle. It’s a restlessness beneath the skin. An inability to become still. A tightness in the chest or belly. The sensation that something needs to happen, even when nothing is actually wrong.

Breath becomes impatient, reaching for the next inhale before the previous breath has completely left. Our breath revealing how difficult it is to stay with ourselves.

This breathwork is an invitation to curiosly notice the places you disappear.

You may encounter the things you habitually reach for and, underneath them, the feelings those behaviors have been protecting you from. Notice what happens when there is nowhere else to go.

No distraction to reach for.

No story to disappear into.

No future moment promising that everything will finally feel different.

Just Breath.

Escapism is often less about wanting another experience and more about not wanting the experience we are already having.

Let the breath take you into those spaces.

Into the boredom.

Into the loneliness.

Into the discomfort.

Into the emptiness you keep trying to fill.

Stay long enough to discover what is actually there.

Because sometimes the place we have spent our entire lives trying to escape is the very place asking for our attention.

There is nothing wrong with wanting pleasure, adventure, connection, beauty, or transcendence.

The question is whether you are moving toward something you love, or running from something you are unwilling to feel.

Tonight, notice the difference.

Let breath interrupt the Escape.

Remain there, with your breath.

Perhaps freedom is not finally finding somewhere else to go.

Perhaps freedom is discovering you no longer need to leave yourself to be okay. 👻