The Denial Of Our Humanity Does Not Make It Go Away

My partner and I attended a breathwork facilitator training in September of 2024 at Pendle Hill in Pennsylvania.

We were lodging at the main house, where we also did the bulk of our training and all of our breathwork sessions. We had our dinner up the hill and across the road at the conference center.

We did five sessions total over a seven-day period. After our final breathwork session, in which my partner was the breather and I was the sitter, we walked with a bunch of participants up that hill to go eat dinner.

The hill felt very long and steep that evening. As we slowly trudged up it, I envisioned us being wounded soldiers returning from battle, marching our way home.

It was reminiscent of what I experienced as my partner breathed earlier that day. As I looked across the room, I heard the screams, the wailing, the crying of the participants. I also watched the facilitators rush to the aid of the breathers. As they provided body work, comfort, and compassion, I was transported to what it must have been like on the battlefields, in the triage of war.

I was in awe as the facilitators lovingly and heroically tended to those in need. I felt tears of joy to behold these healers sharing their tender hearts.

This theme would soon repeat itself in our next five-day facilitator training in Pawlet, VT.

As I lay down on my mat on October 12th, I was excited and exhilarated by the energy in the room. My partner and I had quickly become attached to the other participants, a few of whom had been with us in Pendle Hill.

I had quickly made my way around to each breather in the room, wishing them safe and successful journeys, letting them know I was anxious to hear of their travels.

I put on the purple face mask, which was lent to me, and settled in next to my partner whom I trusted to watch over me as I journey.

As the evocative music began to rise, I felt myself slipping into the inner workings of my mind. I was particularly focused on my stomach, with an awareness that I felt a need to puke. My body wanted to purge out the darkness.

I was rowing a boat. Row, Row, Row your boat to your death, to my death. I was a soldier and I was chained to the inside of the boat. I knew I had to keep rowing. I knew I was going to die. I had battle fatigue. I had what I could only think of as conscious violence fatigue.

I was aware that I was rowing the boat. I was also aware that my mind was trying to remember a concept from a book I had read on the airplane to Vermont. (This is called double bookkeeping — when we are consciously aware of being in two places at one time during the breathwork session.)

The book I was reading days earlier is called The Third Harmony, by Michael N. Nagler, and the concept from it that my mind was struggling to recall is referred to as “Moral Injury.” The book explains that we can make people go to war, to kill, etc., but it leaves them with a moral injury. (PITS)

“You can condition people to deny their humanity, but you cannot make it go away.”

That was a quote from The Third Harmony. I looked it up later that night.

Back on the boat, I was feeling this “moral injury.” I was made into a soldier and it made me feel desperate.

I thought about Israel, Palestine, Russia, the Ukraine, Ethiopia, Somalia, the Congo, and all the other countess atrocities in our world right now. I felt deep despair, death, void, and wondered how I could have a non-violent response.

I was reminded of this concept that we live on a polarity planet. That we can only have the light because of the dark. That we could only have peace, love and joy because of the battlefield and I was deeply, deeply saddened. I screamed my rage out as loud as I could. I heard others in the room screaming as well.

I realized that we must heal in community, in sacred protest. Sacred meaning non-violent, because to fight an atrocity with an atrocity creates magnified atrocities. That is what we have done, continue to do.

“Moral Injury. One who hurts another cannot but help hurt himself. That is the nature of injury.”

–Michael N. Nagler, The Third Harmony

PITS = perpetration-induced traumatic stress, coined by psychologist Rachel McNair.

I rowed that boat, knowing it was to my own detriment, my own death, and even worse my own moral injury.

My stomach was sick from moral fatigue, my own, and that of our collective consciousness. I held my belly and within it I knew I held the world.

I began to work on healing it. I rubbed it in a sweet circular motion, gently, kindly, compassionately. I began to feel the flow of air, of life, move through my stomach, to change it, and bring it back to love.

My hands were healing my belly and thus the world. As I was rubbing, I heard the other breathers screaming, wailing, and crying as they processed their own experiences. I was filled with compassion and love.

The room became filled with our ancestors, our collective ancestors, mine, and those of everyone else who was here. It was a crowded room as they milled among us.

I heard messages from them.My partner’s mother told me that I make a wonderful daughter-in-law. She told me that he was a good boy.
My sister thanked me once again for taking care of her children.

Another participant’s family told me to tell them hello. That they are loved.
They let me know that they were all here for all of us.

We had collective power. I felt peace. I slowly came back to the room and opened my eyes.

In this breathwork session, I received a message that I will not forget, one I already knew. 

Violence is never the answer. Violence begets violence, which then grows into more violence. There is another way. We can be that way.