Nov. 18, 2025

Rethinking Bipolar Disorder with Sean Blackwell

Rethinking Bipolar Disorder with Sean Blackwell

Send us a text Disclaimer: This is not to be taken as a therapy directive, but rather this is for learning and entertainment purposes only! Please consult with your physician and/or mental health care team to decide whether this approach is appropriate for you. Sensitive topics such as trauma and SA are discussed in this episode. What if the loudest story about bipolar disorder—the chemical imbalance—misses the point? We sit down with author and facilitator Sean Blackwell to peel back t...

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Season 2

Send us a text

Disclaimer: This is not to be taken as a therapy directive, but rather this is for learning and entertainment purposes only! Please consult with your physician and/or mental health care team to decide whether this approach is appropriate for you. 

Sensitive topics such as trauma and SA are discussed in this episode.

What if the loudest story about bipolar disorder—the chemical imbalance—misses the point? We sit down with author and facilitator Sean Blackwell to peel back that narrative and explore bipolar through a wider lens: trauma held in the body, spiritual emergency as a potential breakthrough, and why empathetic presence can do what power struggles never will.

Sean recounts his own 1996 crisis that looked like acute psychosis yet became a turning point that reshaped his life. From supporting his wife’s nieces through multiple episodes to building retreats rooted in holotropic-style breathwork, he shows how non-ordinary states can surface buried memories, emotions, and meaning. 

You’ll hear specific case studies, including a client whose years-long coccyx pain disappeared after a powerful somatic release and another who reclaimed traumatic memories months after retreat, finally aligning emotional truth with experience. 

If you’re curious about alternatives to one-size-fits-all approach,  this conversation offers a compassionate, grounded path: respect biology, honor the body, and allow meaning to emerge. For books, videos, training, and retreat details, visit https://www.bipolarawakenings.com/ If this perspective resonated, follow the show, share the episode with a friend, and leave a review to help others find it.

00:00 - Challenging Chemical Imbalance Myths

01:58 - Introducing Sean Blackwell’s Journey

03:35 - The 1996 Spiritual Emergency

05:49 - Hospitalization And Reframing Psychosis

09:19 - From Breakdown To Breakthrough

11:04 - Supporting Family Through Episodes

13:54 - Soteria-Inspired Care And Empathy

17:44 - Building A Mission And Community

19:54 - Holotropic Breathwork Foundations

23:19 - Kundalini, Somatics, And Trauma

26:49 - A Client’s Healing Case Study

29:59 - How Breathwork Sessions Unfold

33:54 - Trauma Links And Body Blockages

37:09 - Hard Truths And Deep Releases

40:59 - Retreat Structure And Integration

WEBVTT

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This whole idea of your mental disorders being caused by chemical imbalance, there's no science behind that.

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There's nothing.

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And all the tests will show that you're biologically normal.

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Your serotonin levels are normal.

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Your dopamine levels are completely within range.

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All the science shows that you're normal biologically.

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So then what's going on?

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Hello, everyone, and welcome to today's episode.

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When we think about the term bipolar disorder, we often think about the erratic mood swings, that people tend to have a perception about what that is, or you know, we tend to think about medications, we tend to look at that as we we know it as a depressive disorder.

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In the mental health world, especially, it is grouped under depressive disorders.

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And as we know it, most people who come to therapists who have bipolar disorder have a psychiatrist prescribe them medication to handle the mood swings.

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Today, we have a very special guest, Sean Blackwell, who is here to challenge our perceptions and any notions of bipolar disorder and instead reframe how we think about bipolar disorder so that we can look at it from a different lens and think about it differently to gain a better understanding not only for if perhaps any of us have bipolar dis, but for people whom we may know who may have bipolar disorder.

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So without further ado, let's please welcome here Sean.

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Thank you so much for being here, Sean.

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Hi, Songa.

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Thanks for having me.

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So, Sean, why bipolar disorder?

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What made you choose to go into that?

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Well, to a certain degree, it chose me.

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In 1996, so over 30 years ago, about 30 years ago, I had a experience in an intensive self-help seminar that during an meditation, I felt kind of an explosion of energy at my heart center.

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And I started intensive crying and I was feeling a lot of fear.

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It was part of this meditation to focus on our fears.

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And by the time that meditation was over, all my senses had sharpened.

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I could see detail in curtains that I couldn't see before.

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I had a sense of oneness with things.

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I had a feeling of like all-knowingness, like, well, not all-knowingness, but I finally knew things that I felt like I didn't know enough about before.

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There was a knowingness there.

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And after five days of being in that state, uh being very emotional with my family, bringing up issues from my childhood, was eventually eventually came to the conclusion that I had died.

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And I had died in a scuba diving accident that I had two months earlier.

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And that's what brought up the fear.

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Because when I was in that meditation, all of a sudden I was focused on fear, and then all of a sudden I saw my depth gauges in my hand.

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And I had lost my weight belt 90 feet below sea level.

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And there was one moment where I was just watching my depth gauges, wondering if I was going to die or not before I hit the surface.

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Because I had lost belt and my whole body was going up to the surface very quickly.

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But if you panic in that situation or you feel fear, you can die right away from an air embolism.

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I had been trained for my scuba train training to just relax.

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And so that's what I did, but I didn't know that it had traumatized me.

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And that trauma came up in this intensive self-help seminar, which led me to being thinking that I was dead.

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Now, from the very beginning, I felt like things had opened up for me.

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I had been in depression, in and out of depression for seven years, extremely frustrated with my career.

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And um what was your career?

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I was in advertising and it really wasn't going anywhere.

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You know, it was really stuck.

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And uh, so when I took the course, I felt this big opening.

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And so I felt like things were much better.

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And uh that was really the beginning.

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Well, because I was put to the psychiatric hospital.

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And there they were giving me a psychiatric diagnosis of perhaps bipolar or schizophrenia, or a one-time episode.

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But I always knew it was very good for me.

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And uh after that, my life got a lot better.

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I took a few months to integrate, but then when I went back to work, my salary tripled within three years.

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I went from$30,000 to$100,000 a year in Canadian dollars, you know.

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It was a big move.

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And uh, everything just got better.

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But I always knew it was a spiritual process that I was in, you know.

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I never had to go back to the psychiatric hospital, I never got medicated.

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It was just a big leap forward for me.

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And a year later, I discovered the work of Dr.

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Stan Groff, and he had coined what he termed a spiritual emergency.

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Now, for him, a spiritual emergency was a crisis that could be taken as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, but that it actually could be a breakthrough, like a really uh spiritual breakthrough for people could be very good.

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And so that's what happened to me.

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And I was like, oh, this is what happened to me.

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And I told my parents and I told them to read the book.

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Of course, they didn't.

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Anyways, so that went well and life went on.

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I eventually met a woman from Brazil, moved to Brazil, that's where I live now, and um, we were married.

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We recently divorced, but we were together 27 years and we're still friends.

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Um, 24 years actually.

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We're still friends.

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But then it was 10 years in Brazil that her nieces started to have episodes, and they were being diagnosed with bipolar and they were being given psychiatric medications, which I had medication when I was in the hospital, but never after that.

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And then I spent the next four months trying to figure out what was happening to them versus what happened to me.

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And that's when the whole journey started of exploring what I would call the spiritual dimension and healing potential of bipolar disorder.

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And that was 2007 when I started this work.

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So, when you were in the hospital, what medication did they give you?

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And what did you believe about when you were diagnosed with bipolar as a potential diagnosis for you?

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What did you feel like you could resonate with with that diagnosis?

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I couldn't resonate with anything, and I and I never did.

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I just thought this psychiatrists are making a big mistake, and I've got to get out of here.

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So I told them what they needed to hear, which was told them my name and that this is my family, and I think I had some sort of PTSD response to the scuba diving accident.

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I thought that would impress them.

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And I was very lucky, lucky, I was out in four days.

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I was out in four days.

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And so for me, I I never internalized the idea of a mental illness.

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And what broke my delusion of being dead was just the fact that two days later, when I finally woke up from the medications, and I don't know what they medicated me with.

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It was a forced injection.

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It felt like rape, it was horrible.

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And I thought, well, if I'm being, I thought I was being tested by God, but when they forcibly injected me, that kind of broke that delusion.

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I was like, well, God wouldn't be that mean, you know.

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And then I was still in the hospital two days later.

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I hadn't passed on to some other dimension.

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So I thought, well, I just I don't know what's going on, but I need to get out of here, you know.

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And so just the fact that I was in the hospital started to break down my delusions, you see.

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And so it wasn't that, it wasn't that bad for me.

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It was very like if you look at what happened, I mean, when the police arrested me, I was naked, I was down to my underwear in a five-star hotel ballroom, you know.

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That's where the course was taking place.

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And I was in the next room.

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I had taken everything off, I had peed on the carpet, I was waiting to be taken to heaven, you know.

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So I was having, from a psychiatric uh perspective, a quote, acute psychosis.

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There's no doubt.

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It was the acute psychosis that these days usually gets labeled as bipolar one, where you have mania going into psychosis.

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But back then, you could also get a schizophrenia label as well, you know.

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So that's what I did it.

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So I never internalized the diagnosis.

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It was never part of my reality.

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It only came because I thought like a spiritual experience and a mental illness were completely apart, you know, like far apart.

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And then even from my studies, I thought, well, these are completely different things.

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They just get confused.

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But then once I saw what happened to my wife's nieces, I was like, okay, what's going on here?

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And I realized that actually there's a big gray area.

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There's a big gray area between the breakdown and the breakthrough, you might say.

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When you got out of the hospital, you went on to go ahead and eventually write a book, Bipolar Awakenings.

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What have you learned throughout your journey in this awakening experience that you've had post-hospital?

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Well, the first book I wrote in 2011 was Am I Bipolar or Waking Up?

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And that's my story.

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That's where I tell the story of my family history, my hospitalization, my trip to Brazil, um, and starting to work with my nieces, okay, or my wife, my wife's nieces.

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That whole story I tell in Am I Bipolar or Waking Up?

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And uh that's basically what I've summarized for you right here in this first question of yours was that.

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And then working with my nieces, we actually had a lot of success.

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It was complicated, but the first niece who had these episodes episodes, when we brought her back to the psychiatrist, they had said that they had never seen someone bounce back so quickly from a period of psychosis as what we were able to do with her.

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But they still medicated her for apparently months.

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While I was studying the difference between what happened to her and what happened to me, I realized from the work of some pioneering psychologists in the 1970s and psychiatrists, that people like Artie Lang and Lauren Mosher, they felt that psychosis was an intended reorganization of the psyche.

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And back then they actually had clinics that the clinics would support people while in psychosis just by being empathetic without any medications.

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And they actually found that empathetic undergrads from university in San Francisco were more effective at dealing with people in psychosis than trained PhDs.

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And the reason was that when tensions struck, the PhDs would pull rank and say, Listen, I'm I'm the doctor here.

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You know, you need to listen to me.

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And that would break down the relationship.

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Whereas the empathetic undergrad would say, Hey man, you're scaring me.

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Do you think you could sit down?

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Let's let's relax, you know, had a more empathetic tone.

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And that made all the difference.

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So when I learned that it was better to have untrained, empathetic college undergrads working with people than PhDs while they're in psychosis, I was completely floored.

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I was just, I was just floored by that.

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And I realized that I could do this work.

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But the trick was that also what I was learning was that it got more difficult to support people as they had multiple episodes.

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But still, it was early in the game.

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So I thought, we'll take our niece off the meds and then I'll talk to her parents and we'll say, look, when she goes into psychosis, we'll support her the next time and see how it goes.

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But it wasn't her that went into psychosis, it was her sister.

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Her sister came back from Europe and the mix of triggers of coming back from Europe, having to go back to university, seeing her own sister in psychosis, she went into psychosis and she called us first.

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And my wife and I were able to support the second sister.

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So the younger one was Ileana, she was the first Anna, she was the first one.

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Second one was Ileana, and we supported her.

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She had three episodes one summer, and we supported her in two or two of the three.

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And she was able to go back to university unmedicated, finished with masters, finished, um, finished with an honors degree, went on to do her master's, was able to go seven years with no medications, and then it started to happen again.

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But just the fact that we were able to get her through these episodes meds-free, and then have her go back to university and continue to do a master's degree, told us that we were on the right track and that this work had real value in supporting people.

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And so the beginning of that work was the book I've got here, Bipolar Awakenings, which I published last year.

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And that book or this book really talks about where my work went from there because I started to work with people around the world doing private retreats for people using techniques based on the work of Dr.

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Stan Groff.

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And and there's a lot of learning that's gone on into the book.

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Oh, I just I was just curious to know then, too, even in this course of this work with breathing, the spiritual retreats, what was it like when it hit closer to home when you were dealing with watching your nieces go through psychosis and then them not being on medication?

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What was that experience for you?

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And can you kind of walk us through what your steps were in supporting her when she was in that, so that people can have a better understanding exactly as to, you know, just so you could just loan us what your journey was in that.

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The the general technique from the Ceteria method, and there are Coteria clinics around today, is that if you've got a person in their first episode or second episode of acute psychosis, which is basically a break with reality, they think they're dreaming to a certain degree.

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If you support them with empathy, that they will be able to work through this thing.

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So there's this concept of being with the person as opposed to doing something to them.

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So as long as you can bring them presence, even in their most extreme situations, bring them presence and keep them protected, then you're doing a great service for them.

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You're you're helping them process what's going on.

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If you try and manipulate them or stop them from screaming or being angry, that's going to go nowhere.

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You have to be able to be supportive in those that first week.

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And that was the technique I used.

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And to a certain degree, it was very emotional for me because it took me back to my experience 10 years earlier.

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An experience that could be so extremely beautiful, you know, does feel like uh a kind of an awakening, a samadhi, you know.

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And both my nieces had experiences like that.

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It looks on one level like a Buddha awakening, right?

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But then there is this other side that you you really need to take care of because they're not functioning, right?

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I was much more functional than they were, for sure, for sure.

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So yeah, it was very powerful for me.

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And to a certain degree, it sort of became my life mission.

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I was like, okay, so this is why this happened to me, because I was the last person that anyone would ever think would end up in the psychiatric hospital.

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I was the guy in school, I was like one of the most popular kids in the class, straight A student, I was good at sports, I won awards, I went to the top university, University of Toronto in Canada, did good grades there, started a career.

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There's nothing in my history that would indicate mental illness, you know.

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And so, and so it was confusing for me.

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Like, why did this happen to me?

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I just didn't fit the profile to a certain degree.

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And then when this came up and I was supporting them, it was like, okay, that's what that's what this is all about, and this became my mission.

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And I started to make a lot of videos on YouTube and quickly grew a following of 25,000 subscribers between 2007 and 2012.

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It just all kind of took off for me.

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You mentioned that one of the works you've done is breathing techniques.

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And you've written in in your bio about a patient you've treated that uh she used to have a lot of spine issues, but then when she started doing the work with you, a lot of the pain that she was carrying in her body had disappeared eventually.

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I researched I did a lot of work with people voluntarily and psychosis and things like that while they're in psychosis between 2007 and 2012.

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But it was always very chaotic.

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And my book talks about those stories.

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Some people calling us when they're in a non-ordinary state, my wife and I would run off and support them, and it often ended up not ideal.

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We would be able to help a little bit, but without family support, it just wasn't working.

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But then I realized that there's this technique that Stan Groff had for holotropic breath work, where you could breathe people into a non-ordinary state.

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And in that non-ordinary state, trauma would release.

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And the trauma was at the root of the disorder.

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So this whole idea of your mental disorders being caused by chemical imbalance, there's no science behind that.

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There's nothing.

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And all the tests will show that you're biologically normal, your serotonin levels are normal, your dopamine levels are completely within range.

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All the science shows that you're normal biologically.

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So then what's going on?

00:18:02.779 --> 00:18:09.100
Well, from the Graf perspective, we've got a bioenergetic system or a kundalini system.

00:18:09.180 --> 00:18:11.820
You could call it kundalini, could call it a chakra system.

00:18:11.980 --> 00:18:17.340
And these words, of course, come from India, and the knowledge of kundalini is from the mystic yogis of India, right?

00:18:17.420 --> 00:18:19.980
And in China or Asia, they call it qi.

00:18:20.460 --> 00:18:24.460
But you don't have any of that in uh psychiatry, right?

00:18:24.539 --> 00:18:25.980
It doesn't exist.

00:18:26.220 --> 00:18:37.500
But when I would talk to people online, I I realized that a lot of people were having somatic symptoms, which psychiatry would dismiss as psychosomatic systems, you know.

00:18:38.140 --> 00:18:45.019
Realize so psychiatry doesn't really see Qi or Kundalini as any part of our psyche or any part of our mind at all.

00:18:45.100 --> 00:18:46.539
It doesn't really exist.

00:18:46.620 --> 00:18:52.860
And and to be honest, from a scientific perspective, where the only things that exist are measurable, it doesn't exist.

00:18:53.019 --> 00:18:55.580
You cannot find this scientifically.

00:18:55.740 --> 00:18:58.700
It's a spiritual energy, you know, it's a little bit different.

00:18:58.779 --> 00:18:59.820
It's a spiritual energy.

00:18:59.980 --> 00:19:05.660
But the more I talked to people online and even working with my nieces, I saw there were somatic aspects to things.

00:19:05.820 --> 00:19:11.820
And Eliana, while she was on the sofa in our house, she started to accelerate her breathing.

00:19:11.900 --> 00:19:16.860
She started to, you know, really go into this sort of accelerated breathing because her heart accelerated.

00:19:17.019 --> 00:19:21.420
And when I saw that, I remembered the holotropic breath work from Stan Groff.

00:19:21.740 --> 00:19:23.740
And I thought, well, maybe there's a link here.

00:19:23.980 --> 00:19:33.580
Then I started to research more about holotropic breath work, and I thought, well, I think something can be done to help people heal their trauma with this technique.

00:19:33.980 --> 00:19:43.740
And basically, now it's contraindicated for people with bipolar disorder at this point, because the typical session is within a group in a limited time frame.

00:19:44.140 --> 00:19:52.860
But I thought, well, what if we gave people an unlimited session, an unlimited session and an unlimited time frame, like on a retreat for 10 days, for example?

00:19:53.019 --> 00:19:55.660
And so that's what I started to set out and do.

00:19:55.740 --> 00:20:04.140
I created a retreat program for people, private, where they got unlimited access to me, where we were together 24 hours a day.

00:20:04.299 --> 00:20:08.779
And when we did the breath work, they could start and stop whenever they wanted.

00:20:08.940 --> 00:20:10.620
And then I would facilitate for them.

00:20:10.779 --> 00:20:15.420
So eventually I got my training as a holotropic breathwork facilitator.

00:20:15.820 --> 00:20:24.779
But because the whole thing is uh formatted in a specific way, I call mine bipolar breath work because it gives me more flexibility and attention to people.

00:20:24.940 --> 00:20:33.100
And so doing that with people, we saw that we can start to activate their bioenergetic system and that that would lead to healing.

00:20:33.259 --> 00:20:36.700
And the the best example was my first client.

00:20:36.860 --> 00:20:39.019
Her name was Livia, she's from Romania.

00:20:39.100 --> 00:20:48.460
And she had told me on a call before I went to Romania and worked with her that she had pain in her coccyx that was so bad she had seen six doctors.

00:20:48.539 --> 00:20:51.500
And she had she had had a history of bipolar that was over 10 years.

00:20:51.580 --> 00:20:55.019
She'd been hospitalized many times, but she couldn't sleep on her back.

00:20:55.259 --> 00:20:56.380
She had to sleep on her side.

00:20:56.460 --> 00:20:58.620
She couldn't sit in a chair for more than 10 minutes.

00:20:59.340 --> 00:21:09.740
And in her fifth breath work session with me, she felt hot energy go right out of the coccyx, up the spine, into the shoulder blades, out through the hands.

00:21:09.900 --> 00:21:16.700
She had warm hands for the first time in her life, and the coccyx pain permanently disappeared, gone.

00:21:17.180 --> 00:21:22.460
And she said to me, she said, Sean, I've been to six doctors for this, and you made it disappear with five sessions of breath work.

00:21:22.860 --> 00:21:24.860
You know, some of them had recommended surgery.

00:21:25.180 --> 00:21:30.220
So, what exactly would be um an example of holotropic breath work?

00:21:30.299 --> 00:21:34.380
How would that work as opposed to other breathing techniques that are out there?

00:21:34.860 --> 00:21:35.180
Question.

00:21:35.500 --> 00:21:41.019
Well, what's really difficult to explain with breath, holotropic breath work is it's not a particular breathing technique.

00:21:41.259 --> 00:21:46.539
It's not pranayamo or a breath of fire, which you might find in in Hinduism or yoga.

00:21:46.779 --> 00:21:50.620
You're not doing a particular pattern of number of inhales or number of exhales.

00:21:50.779 --> 00:21:51.900
Wim Hof breathing.

00:21:52.060 --> 00:21:56.940
Belly, chest, head, hold, release, belly, chest, head, hold, release.

00:21:57.100 --> 00:21:59.980
You know, it's not that technique.

00:22:00.140 --> 00:22:02.060
What it is is more of a format.

00:22:02.299 --> 00:22:04.620
You need to have a very safe space.

00:22:04.860 --> 00:22:07.580
You need to have a trained facilitator.

00:22:08.060 --> 00:22:12.940
Then your client lays on a yoga mat in sweatpants or a mattress, okay?

00:22:13.180 --> 00:22:15.500
They're in sweatpants, they take off all their jewelry.

00:22:15.580 --> 00:22:17.580
Then we pay play powerful music.

00:22:17.740 --> 00:22:22.299
Then we encourage them to start to over-breathe in their own style.

00:22:22.460 --> 00:22:24.299
Okay, and we don't guide the breathing.

00:22:24.460 --> 00:22:26.460
If they want to breathe very gently, they can.

00:22:26.620 --> 00:22:28.140
If they want to be more aggressive, they can.

00:22:28.220 --> 00:22:30.380
If they want to use the nose or the mouth, it doesn't matter.

00:22:30.539 --> 00:22:31.900
They do it the way they want.

00:22:32.299 --> 00:22:35.019
They trust their own inner healer, we call it.

00:22:35.180 --> 00:22:35.500
Okay.

00:22:35.980 --> 00:22:47.660
And then what will happen within five to twenty minutes is that the inner healer will bring on conscious material that's buried in your chakra system or your kundalini system.

00:22:47.820 --> 00:22:52.299
It'll bring it to the surface, and you'll have memories and emotions come up most of the time.

00:22:52.460 --> 00:22:54.779
Sometimes no, but most of the time, yes.

00:22:55.259 --> 00:22:59.980
And then once you've got these emotions come up, you're supposed to work with them.

00:23:00.060 --> 00:23:02.779
You're supposed to move your body, you're supposed to vocalize.

00:23:03.019 --> 00:23:04.539
Sometimes the person's dancing.

00:23:04.779 --> 00:23:06.860
It's a very somatic therapy.

00:23:07.100 --> 00:23:10.700
And there you can unblock these traumatic blockages.

00:23:10.860 --> 00:23:20.140
And that can go right back into things, for example, like the birth process, where a facilitator will need to hold you in a particular way.

00:23:20.299 --> 00:23:31.660
Once you both realize that you're going into birth trauma, the facilitator needs to hold you in a particular way so that you can struggle out that birth canal from head to toe.

00:23:31.820 --> 00:23:39.820
So the facilitator will hang on to you as you get your head through his arms, through the shoulders, the waist, the hips, the legs, all the way out to the feet.

00:23:39.980 --> 00:23:43.900
And that's the trickiest part for the facilitator because you could you can be kicked.

00:23:44.060 --> 00:23:49.980
And so you need to keep an eye on those feet because they might come out at you in a particular way, and you've got to get your head out of the way, you know.

00:23:50.060 --> 00:23:52.460
So it's a very somatic therapy, right?

00:23:53.100 --> 00:24:04.779
And but particularly with this case of Livia, with the Kundalini energy clearly coming out of the coccyx, it was a very direct example of how this was linked to her bipolar disorder.

00:24:05.019 --> 00:24:07.900
And we did a retreat for her the next year as well.

00:24:08.060 --> 00:24:13.980
And then again, she was medication-free for five years, something that was impossible for her to do before we worked together.

00:24:14.220 --> 00:24:16.779
So it was a big success for being my first client.

00:24:17.019 --> 00:24:23.100
When you say that she had pain that was linked to her bipolar disorder, how are those two related?

00:24:23.420 --> 00:24:29.580
Well, the best I can see it is that there's trauma in your life that you haven't acknowledged.

00:24:29.820 --> 00:24:30.779
That's why it's trauma.

00:24:30.940 --> 00:24:37.420
Trauma isn't something bad that happens to you, it's an emotional dimension of your life that you have blocked from feeling because it was just too painful.

00:24:37.580 --> 00:24:43.900
But those blocked feelings, the trauma, get lodged in this kundalini system or this chakra system.

00:24:44.220 --> 00:24:46.140
And it could be anywhere in the body.

00:24:46.220 --> 00:24:51.100
It can be in the feet, it can be in the hands, but a lot of the times it's along this chakra line.

00:24:51.259 --> 00:24:54.860
And in the case of Livia, was in her coccyx, was really strong.

00:24:55.100 --> 00:25:03.259
And she also had a tumor in her throat that doctors didn't even want to touch with surgery because it was too risky.

00:25:03.340 --> 00:25:04.380
The area was too risky.

00:25:04.460 --> 00:25:05.660
It was a seven-inch tumor.

00:25:05.820 --> 00:25:08.860
And after we worked together, that tumor shrunk as well.

00:25:09.019 --> 00:25:09.340
Okay.

00:25:09.900 --> 00:25:13.580
So there can be blockages, you know, throughout the body.

00:25:13.740 --> 00:25:19.340
And then breath work unleashes these blockages a layer at a time.

00:25:19.580 --> 00:25:20.060
All right.

00:25:20.539 --> 00:25:27.019
And it does it not because of the breathing, it does it because of the healing intelligence, this healing field.

00:25:27.820 --> 00:25:29.340
Groff called it an inner healer.

00:25:29.420 --> 00:25:31.019
I'll call it inner healer for now.

00:25:31.340 --> 00:25:33.900
This inner healer starts to work through you.

00:25:34.060 --> 00:25:35.580
It's a divine intelligence.

00:25:35.740 --> 00:25:36.220
It's God.

00:25:36.460 --> 00:25:38.940
Could be angels, could be aliens, okay?

00:25:39.259 --> 00:25:41.100
But we could call it God.

00:25:41.259 --> 00:25:43.660
And this intelligence works through you.

00:25:43.820 --> 00:25:50.620
Um and and the trick is that you need to trust it, trust it as part of your intuition to a certain degree.

00:25:50.860 --> 00:25:54.380
If you can't trust it, you'll stay blocked, you'll stay locked up.

00:25:54.460 --> 00:26:01.259
And so when things get very scary for breathers, for example, you'll hear facilitators say one thing.

00:26:01.500 --> 00:26:04.220
Keep going, keep going, keep going.

00:26:04.860 --> 00:26:07.660
The only way out is through, you know?

00:26:07.900 --> 00:26:11.980
So if you're just on the mat and you're like, I can't listen, I can't deal with this, I can't deal with this.

00:26:12.060 --> 00:26:13.580
It's like, it's here.

00:26:13.980 --> 00:26:15.580
You have to deal with it.

00:26:15.900 --> 00:26:16.220
Go.

00:26:16.460 --> 00:26:17.180
I'm with you.

00:26:17.259 --> 00:26:18.380
I'm supportive.

00:26:18.700 --> 00:26:19.660
You can do it.

00:26:19.740 --> 00:26:20.060
You know?

00:26:20.220 --> 00:26:21.660
Oh, we'll come back to this later.

00:26:21.900 --> 00:26:26.700
Well, I mean, if someone really can't deal with it, yeah, you got to respect people's limits.

00:26:26.860 --> 00:26:29.420
But we really do encourage people to open up.

00:26:29.580 --> 00:26:30.620
Does that answer your question?

00:26:30.860 --> 00:26:35.019
It does, and it helps make help helps me understand.

00:26:35.100 --> 00:26:42.860
And I'm sure many of our listeners who are listening to this, I mean, as myself right now, we're fascinated by what we're hearing.

00:26:43.180 --> 00:26:49.500
So what would be, what would you say would be like some of the biggest revelations of people when they've had psychosis?

00:26:49.580 --> 00:26:55.740
Like, what were some of like the biggest revelations you've heard that people shared back to you?

00:26:56.060 --> 00:27:03.259
Well, one revelation that comes up is when people are traumatized, they can have blocked memories around certain situations.

00:27:03.500 --> 00:27:05.740
And the most common is sexual abuse.

00:27:05.980 --> 00:27:09.019
We don't remember what happened, but we suspect something that happened.

00:27:09.340 --> 00:27:14.060
When people go into mania, they feel the abuse has taken place.

00:27:14.299 --> 00:27:27.900
And it's very common for people in mania or in psychosis to start to point fingers and blame somebody for abusing them who may or may not have been the culprit.

00:27:28.140 --> 00:27:33.259
Because we often blame the person who's very close to us because they're there with us in the psychosis, you know.

00:27:33.500 --> 00:27:37.900
But it can often be another relative or a friend or a neighbor.

00:27:38.140 --> 00:27:46.060
And it's just that because your your mind's not there, but your bot, your your emotions are, then you start to point fingers in the wrong direction.

00:27:46.380 --> 00:27:48.539
But the truth is coming out.

00:27:48.779 --> 00:27:49.980
I was abused.

00:27:50.620 --> 00:27:54.220
But then when I go, oh, I was above I Sonia, you abused me.

00:27:54.380 --> 00:27:55.660
No, that's the mistake.

00:27:55.820 --> 00:27:56.779
And that can happen.

00:27:56.940 --> 00:27:59.259
But we often throw the baby out with the bathwater.

00:27:59.340 --> 00:28:00.779
We think, oh, see how crazy they are?

00:28:00.860 --> 00:28:01.980
She's saying that I abused her.

00:28:02.060 --> 00:28:04.779
I never abused her, but she was abused.

00:28:05.019 --> 00:28:06.860
See how complicated it can be?

00:28:07.180 --> 00:28:14.060
And also, I've had clients after retreats, memories start to unfold months later.

00:28:14.220 --> 00:28:16.060
I'll get a phone call three months later.

00:28:16.140 --> 00:28:18.060
Uh, this happened to me once with one client.

00:28:18.220 --> 00:28:23.660
All of a sudden, he remembered his uncle on top of him, you know, three months after our retreat together.

00:28:23.820 --> 00:28:26.940
You know, and this is another guy who was medicated for life.

00:28:27.019 --> 00:28:29.740
And to this day, as far as I know, he's unmedicated.

00:28:29.900 --> 00:28:33.660
Last time we talked, he was unmedicated, he put bipolar disorder behind him.

00:28:33.820 --> 00:28:39.259
But he had to confront a number of layers of trauma, and one of them was this abusive side, you know.

00:28:39.500 --> 00:28:42.460
So memories are coming back, feelings are coming back.

00:28:42.620 --> 00:28:48.380
And you can also, on the other side, get in touch with deeper feelings of belonging.

00:28:48.620 --> 00:29:03.019
Like you belong to this world, the world is a beautiful place, I'm here for a reason, a sense of mission, my life has value, and that could be a big shift from somebody who was like, I don't fit in this world, you know, this kind of thing.

00:29:03.259 --> 00:29:10.060
So people's insights can be very personal and very different, but those are just two examples of how they can come through.

00:29:10.299 --> 00:29:17.180
When people are going through their psychosis during the breathing exercise portion of the treatment.

00:29:17.420 --> 00:29:17.740
Okay.

00:29:17.980 --> 00:29:23.740
Now I know that you say that there's a facilitator in the room that will say, keep pushing, keep going through.

00:29:24.700 --> 00:29:27.740
Have people ever maybe I should clarify something first?

00:29:27.900 --> 00:29:31.180
On the retreats, I don't work with people while they're in acute psychosis.

00:29:31.340 --> 00:29:37.340
I work with them while they're grounded and they remain on their medications because they've often had multiple episodes.

00:29:37.500 --> 00:29:40.779
They've often had five or six episodes of bipolar.

00:29:40.940 --> 00:29:45.180
And so by the time I get to them, it's beyond being able to help them in psychosis.

00:29:45.420 --> 00:29:48.539
So we work from a grounded place, and that's where we start.

00:29:48.779 --> 00:29:50.299
And okay, so that's where you start.

00:29:50.380 --> 00:30:07.340
But at the moments where you have worked with people that were going through psychosis, in the moments that you have in you said that, you know, there are people who maybe like, oh my God, I can't take this anymore, you know, things of that sort in the breathing, the holographic breathing exercises.

00:30:08.060 --> 00:30:15.660
Have people ever during that time just yelled out loud what's happening as it was happening in real time?

00:30:15.820 --> 00:30:27.980
Have they ever ever said, oh my God, like get off me or you're hurting me, or something like that during the time that they're deep in it and that the trauma memory is coming up?

00:30:28.380 --> 00:30:29.259
I don't know.

00:30:29.420 --> 00:30:44.299
I can't I can't recall that happening with any of my clients in particular, but certain situations have come up where it's, for example, when you're working through sexual abuse, all right.

00:30:44.460 --> 00:30:47.259
And I haven't had a ton of experience with this, but I've had a little bit.

00:30:47.420 --> 00:30:49.019
And I think other types of abuse.

00:30:49.420 --> 00:30:49.820
As well.

00:30:49.980 --> 00:30:51.980
It can come off in layers.

00:30:52.220 --> 00:30:52.779
All right.

00:30:53.100 --> 00:30:59.019
So with one client I had, first they had to deal with the fact in the non-ordinary state.

00:30:59.100 --> 00:31:00.380
Now they're not in psychosis.

00:31:00.539 --> 00:31:05.420
They've been breathed themselves into a non-ordinary state, but it's not psychosis, okay?

00:31:05.660 --> 00:31:10.700
Once they've breached into that state, this particular client, she had an encounter with her father.

00:31:10.860 --> 00:31:17.420
And while I was holding her, because that's part of the work sometimes, is they want you to be there as a father figure or something.

00:31:17.580 --> 00:31:20.539
She started talking to me as if I were her father.

00:31:20.700 --> 00:31:21.980
She had this conversation.

00:31:22.140 --> 00:31:26.299
And this um the conversation was very meaningful to her.

00:31:26.460 --> 00:31:27.420
He had died.

00:31:27.580 --> 00:31:30.299
So it was as if she was talking to her father through me.

00:31:30.539 --> 00:31:34.620
Now, having that conversation was healing one layer of the trauma.

00:31:35.019 --> 00:31:48.620
But then later on, a few years later, she went to the place where he was actually physically touching her and reliving the feelings of being touched as a child by her father.

00:31:49.660 --> 00:31:52.380
And that was terrifying for her.

00:31:53.660 --> 00:31:54.620
That was terrifying.

00:31:54.779 --> 00:32:02.940
But because we had done a number of retreats together, she had the trust in the technique and the trust in me that she could go there.

00:32:03.180 --> 00:32:06.060
And that's where the most powerful healing happened at all.

00:32:06.220 --> 00:32:08.140
But it scared the living daylights out of her.

00:32:08.299 --> 00:32:09.100
It was terrifying.

00:32:09.259 --> 00:32:11.180
It took a lot of courage for her to go there.

00:32:11.420 --> 00:32:23.900
And I I had one other client who went through a similar kind of encounter with something extremely painful where it led to her, she was doing breathwork on her bed with me and her supporter.

00:32:24.140 --> 00:32:26.700
And she screamed so loud and she bounced off the bed.

00:32:26.779 --> 00:32:28.140
Like she just bounced right up.

00:32:28.220 --> 00:32:32.220
And it had to do with how they treated her in the psychiatric hospital.

00:32:32.460 --> 00:32:35.660
And I said to her, How did you have the courage to go there?

00:32:36.220 --> 00:32:41.740
And she said, Well, at one point I told myself, I either open up to this or I'm going to be a schizophrenic for the rest of my life.

00:32:41.900 --> 00:32:47.580
And she had been hospitalized 11 times and over a 20-year period and hasn't been hospitalized since.

00:32:47.740 --> 00:32:49.900
We needed true two retreats with her as well.

00:32:50.060 --> 00:32:54.060
But that was the first retreat, and it was just really powerful.

00:32:54.220 --> 00:33:06.060
And I'll be honest too, once I started working like with these really powerful moments, because I've just given you highlights of my first three clients, I didn't have any experience like doing this.

00:33:06.140 --> 00:33:09.740
You know, I had my experience working with people in psychosis.

00:33:09.980 --> 00:33:13.420
I had experience from the books that I had studied.

00:33:13.660 --> 00:33:18.460
So it had been a six-year process to finally get to the place where I was doing the retreats.

00:33:18.700 --> 00:33:31.820
But in terms of giving a bipolar or a variation on holotropic breath work to clients on a retreat in an intensive way, 2013, I just jumped in the cold end of the pool.

00:33:31.980 --> 00:33:35.820
You know, it was like it was jumping in, it was like jumping into ice water for me.

00:33:35.980 --> 00:33:55.500
But I was prepared and fortunately the healing field or the inner healer knew, knew my clients, knew I was there, knew my experience level, and gave me the kind of positive experience with both those three first clients that made me realize I was on the right track and I had to keep going despite any adversity.

00:33:55.980 --> 00:33:58.220
People go to the spiritual retreat.

00:33:58.460 --> 00:34:04.380
Now you say that you these people have been now in a more kind of calmer place.

00:34:04.539 --> 00:34:06.140
They're not right, they're grounded.

00:34:06.539 --> 00:34:11.500
In full, they're not a going active psychosis at that time when they come to the retreat.

00:34:11.739 --> 00:34:14.139
What do people gain out of the retreat?

00:34:14.219 --> 00:34:15.019
Like what goes on?

00:34:15.179 --> 00:34:18.299
What is the agenda in the role in those retreats?

00:34:18.619 --> 00:34:28.940
Well, we started out with a mix of therapies, you know, the typical things, meditation, maybe some art therapy, some exercise, and then breath work, the bipolar breath work.

00:34:29.179 --> 00:34:40.940
But then we just realized that all the healing was happening during the breath work, and that the breath work was so intense that there really wasn't much point in doing anything else afterwards.

00:34:41.099 --> 00:34:54.299
So we would do the breath work, and then whenever that stopped, then we would do a mandala drawing, which was kind of an art therapy to integrate the experience, and then we would share and talk about what happened.

00:34:54.539 --> 00:35:03.179
But then we would rest for the rest of the day most of the time and maybe get in a second session, but a lot of the times we would just be back at it the next morning, you know.

00:35:03.659 --> 00:35:12.539
So it was a lot of downtime because the processing was so intense that sometimes it would leave clients in bed the entire day.

00:35:13.099 --> 00:35:15.019
Just in bed the entire day after the work.

00:35:15.339 --> 00:35:20.779
I can only imagine because I know like how tiring it gets when you come out of an anxiety attack.

00:35:21.019 --> 00:35:27.259
So I can only imagine it must feel like these people may have ran a marathon by the time they finish the breath work.

00:35:27.579 --> 00:35:39.579
And you know, especially if things start to resurface or things should come up again or something, and just getting through and processing everything through sharing with others.

00:35:40.299 --> 00:35:50.859
Yeah, it's um it's deceptive, it's often deceptive in how it works because it's in some ways it's similar to psychedelic therapy.

00:35:51.019 --> 00:35:54.379
You're taking a psychedelic to open yourself up to your unconscious.

00:35:54.460 --> 00:35:57.339
The psychedelic is not doing the healing, it's just opening you up.

00:35:57.500 --> 00:36:02.139
The breath work in the same way is opening you up to what will surface, all right?

00:36:02.299 --> 00:36:04.059
But then I lost my train of thought.

00:36:04.379 --> 00:36:13.500
You were talking about like how it's the breathing just opens you up through the breath work to different experiences.

00:36:13.819 --> 00:36:21.339
Yeah, and so then once you once you open up to these different experiences and then you process them, you're just kind of wiped out.

00:36:21.500 --> 00:36:22.379
Like that's it.

00:36:22.539 --> 00:36:24.539
I think I had a better point to make.

00:36:24.859 --> 00:36:25.819
It'll come back.

00:36:25.980 --> 00:36:27.019
My apologies.

00:36:27.980 --> 00:36:29.019
No, no worries.

00:36:29.259 --> 00:36:36.619
So, what do you think about with, you know, because you know, there's other work that people are doing as well, such as EMDR, right?

00:36:36.779 --> 00:36:43.899
With the eye movement desensitization, where there are different techniques to also help people process their trauma.

00:36:44.139 --> 00:36:47.339
There's also hypnosis as well.

00:36:48.219 --> 00:36:48.859
Right.

00:36:49.659 --> 00:36:51.659
That people can use for trauma.

00:36:51.899 --> 00:36:57.739
So I'm just wondering, you know, like what do you think about those other methods as well?

00:36:57.899 --> 00:37:00.779
And like, have you ever explored those things as well?

00:37:01.099 --> 00:37:02.299
I've explored them a little bit.

00:37:02.539 --> 00:37:06.699
The MDR, I just don't think goes deep enough.

00:37:06.859 --> 00:37:16.379
An MDR therapy uh therapist criticized me once through a client and said that what I was doing was like taking a chainsaw out of the psyche.

00:37:16.539 --> 00:37:21.579
And I told the client, I said, Well, what he's doing is like taking dental floss to the psyche.

00:37:21.739 --> 00:37:27.419
You know, it's like if you've got bipolar disorder, you're just not gonna get, I just don't think you're gonna get that far with the MDR.

00:37:27.500 --> 00:37:30.699
Maybe it helps some people, maybe if you stay with it for years.

00:37:31.019 --> 00:37:35.500
But when people have hired me for these retreats, I got to hit the ground running.

00:37:35.579 --> 00:37:38.219
I've got 10 days to change these people's lives, you know.

00:37:38.379 --> 00:37:40.379
That's it's not gonna work with the MDR.

00:37:40.619 --> 00:37:50.619
Hypnosis, I'm even more skeptical of because for the most part, from what I understand of hypnosis, it's about putting ideas into you.

00:37:51.099 --> 00:37:53.019
It's not about releasing trauma.

00:37:53.179 --> 00:37:58.059
And if the roots are in the trauma, then I'm just masking it over with hypnosis.

00:37:58.139 --> 00:38:05.019
Now, I know not all hypnosis works like that, but to me, the key is releasing trauma.

00:38:05.339 --> 00:38:15.739
If you can release trauma with another means, and maybe EDMR is is the way to go, um, I think that trauma can be released, for example, through deep massage, right?

00:38:16.059 --> 00:38:35.339
That can help and can happen, but uh the holotropic breath work and my deviation of that or derivative of bipolar breath work is really the only therapy that I'm aware of that stays focused on that trauma and just trusting the healing field process.

00:38:35.500 --> 00:38:41.579
It's the only therapeutic approach on a somatic level where we don't manipulate the situation in any way.

00:38:41.739 --> 00:38:43.819
There's no guidance by us.

00:38:43.980 --> 00:38:46.539
We simply support what's already going on.

00:38:46.779 --> 00:38:52.219
And that's a big part of the training is training people not to manipulate what's happening.

00:38:52.379 --> 00:38:54.779
I'm not taking you back into your childhood.

00:38:55.019 --> 00:38:58.859
The healing field or the inner healer is taking you into your childhood.

00:38:59.019 --> 00:39:01.179
I'm not taking you back to that car accident.

00:39:01.339 --> 00:39:04.859
No, the healing field will do that in the in the right moment.

00:39:05.099 --> 00:39:06.059
Do you understand?

00:39:06.299 --> 00:39:11.899
And that's what's unique and special, I think, about holotropic breath work and the style that I do bipolar breath.

00:39:12.299 --> 00:39:18.139
So, where can people learn more about your retreats and your book?

00:39:18.460 --> 00:39:19.500
Or books, right?

00:39:20.219 --> 00:39:26.460
Okay, well, just again, my my book is Bipolar Awakenings, The Quest to Heal Bipolar Disorder.

00:39:26.619 --> 00:39:32.059
And it documents doing this, being involved in this work in eight for 18 years since 2007.

00:39:32.460 --> 00:39:42.779
And what you'll read about are sort of stories that are actually kind of like case studies of all the mistakes I've made along the way, everything I needed to learn, you know, along the way on my journey.

00:39:43.099 --> 00:39:46.139
My theoretical orientation is there too, right?

00:39:46.539 --> 00:39:56.460
And uh everything can be found, including access to my videos on YouTube, a training program, and distance work that we haven't had time to get into, but I think it's better left for another day.

00:39:56.539 --> 00:39:59.179
I I do some distance work or work at a distance with people.

00:39:59.419 --> 00:40:03.659
You can access everything from bipolarawakenings.com.

00:40:03.980 --> 00:40:06.379
Okay, bipolarawakenings.com.

00:40:06.539 --> 00:40:07.899
That's my website.

00:40:08.139 --> 00:40:09.899
Very proud of the work that's there.

00:40:09.980 --> 00:40:13.819
And I'm just here to try and bring about cultural change.

00:40:13.899 --> 00:40:16.299
That's why I've decided to start doing a lot of podcasts lately.

00:40:16.619 --> 00:40:17.980
And what about your retreats?

00:40:18.299 --> 00:40:18.619
Sure.

00:40:18.779 --> 00:40:22.379
You can contact me through the the Bipolar Awakenings.

00:40:24.379 --> 00:40:29.819
And is that the main way that people can also find you, or what are other ways people can find you?

00:40:30.219 --> 00:40:31.419
That's the best place.

00:40:31.659 --> 00:40:32.619
That's the best place.

00:40:32.779 --> 00:40:36.539
I know there's Facebook and there's Instagram, but I don't visit those places that often.

00:40:36.619 --> 00:40:38.139
I'd just rather people go to my website.

00:40:38.460 --> 00:40:39.500
Okay, great.

00:40:39.739 --> 00:40:42.859
Well, we thank you so much for your time for being here.

00:40:43.019 --> 00:40:48.539
Um, this was definitely very interesting to learn about and explore more into.

00:40:49.019 --> 00:40:54.859
So I want to thank you for sharing your knowledge and your perspective with us.

00:40:55.099 --> 00:41:03.819
And everyone, please go and check out bipolar awakenings.com and get a copy of Sean Blackwell's book.

00:41:04.539 --> 00:41:05.419
Thank you, Sonia.

00:41:05.579 --> 00:41:06.460
It's been a pleasure.

00:41:07.259 --> 00:41:08.379
Thank you very much.