r/KetamineStateYoga

My album Desire Path from my band Casts is out today. I wrote the album to guide my Spravato therapy with an upbeat entry point that dives into ambient and contemplative electronic songs. When writing it, I kept coming back to Reddit for opinions on what works for people. Everything flows into each other like one long song so there’s no abrupt transitions. I adjusted it so the cellos and clarinets come through to really feel the resonance during treatment. It’s been helpful for me and I hope it can play a part in your treatment, too.

For many years I’ve been somewhat interested in yoga and having a desire to get in tune with my body, but barely ever take conscious action to do it. A few times a year, I may take certain medicines which put my body in a relaxed state and I can’t help but stretch my body, but I never really, and still haven’t yet, went to others for yoga teachings.

I find my body in these states are communicating with myself, or more so I’m aware of a feedback loop that I can let my nervous system to perform, which I am assuming where the practice of yoga even came from and is practiced best doing. I would find myself, sometimes for hours, doing such light stretches and just staying in positions that are neutral to let my muscles relax. I found that in the right state of mind, I could listen to my body to where the tension is when stretching and somewhat consciously let myself let my body relax and find new ways to use those muscles.

I don’t want to go into too much detail now, but I’ve utilized ketamine before to do this, but I did this for the first time in a while and it was absolutely incredible. I ended up staying up all night unfortunately, but it was such an emotionally opening and archetypal and truth-feeling experience. With the way ketamine can you relax your nervous system, I could find myself letting go of any conscious effort or words in my head and let my nervous system take control, which I felt like was a friend, but also realizing it was me, which gave me an opportunity to express love to my inner being.

I have some issues on my left side of my body in my shoulder and hip and it was fascinating how much emotion and arcs of emotions/realizations were coupled with the different parts of my body as I was letting go. A realization I’ve had for a while, but one that seems to be popping up everywhere in life is letting the feeling of effortlessness guide anything and everything I do, especially physical. It feels like if I just focus on the somatic experience of effortlessness, especially in this practice, I find a safe feeling of connectedness in myself to trust my whole being to do what it needs to.

It feels like I’m tapping into potential deeper feedback loops that I can cultivate with different practices, especially singing and playing instruments, but in this case my whole body. I don’t know any real yoga poses or different kinds of sequences, but it truly feels like my body is just capable of figuring it out itself, if I trust myself and the part of me that I don’t control trusts the part of me that can take control.

This is just a very small bit of what I experienced, but it really felt like a big unlock in terms of guiding me to me.

I’m curious if anyone else has similar experience with this sort of somatic experiencing of yoga, especially in use with ketamine.