Liminal is my favourite word. It’s a simple sound that works well for its meaning, describing a space that is neither here nor there. I heard the word last week while lying on a mat at a breathwork event, listening to the introduction on a wintry weeknight.
I wasn’t the only one; there were around 16 other people on mats alongside me, paying quiet, rapt attention. But for most of the three-hour event, I felt entirely (and comfortably) alone.
The evening was warmish for November, but we snuggled up in the blankets and pillows we’d been advised to bring, sipping hot cacao as we settled in. As the soothing voice of the event leader took up a gentle rhythm against a backing track of deep breaths, we fell into our promised liminal spaces and stayed there, suspended in our own individual thoughts.
The organiser of these sessions, which usually take place in and around eastern Australia, is Arthur, eldest son of one of my most longstanding childhood friends. I was thrilled when she told me he was flying from Australia to London to present two workshops.
‘Great, I love breathwork,’ I told her, ‘I do it all the time, it helps me sleep.’
‘Well, this is a bit different,’ said the friend, ‘you’ll cry.’
‘I doubt it,’ I said, ‘I’m more likely to doze.’
I booked my ticket.

I first met Arthur when he flew to the UK as a baby for his christening. He probably doesn’t remember that. We next met a couple of years later in his Sydney back garden, and no doubt he also doesn’t remember how I broke up repeated football fights between him and his baby brother.
Arthur’s brother wasn’t just a cheeky football thief, but the root cause behind his decision to learn the art of breathwork and run workshops. That his brother is no longer with us has, and will probably always be, at the heart of much sadness for many people, but it has also left a legacy of brilliant work on Arthur’s part that I was so grateful to experience last week.
‘We’re off to the moon,’ Arthur told us, ‘you’ll all experience different things, but they’ll be amazing, as they were for me. Just remember, don’t stop breathing.’

I thought I knew breathwork. I do it all the time at home with an app, rarely getting through a session without passing out; it’s my number one cure for insomnia. But my experience at Arthur’s event was far from sleepy. I don’t feel like outlining the details, because for each of us it was different, but I can describe some of the frames that appeared in my mind as I rocketed up to the moon and back. And that’s very much how it felt, a ticker tape journey with many random visions and epiphanies. Trippy, perhaps, but go with it – I did.
Let’s start with colours. A person’s favourite colour could be one of the most boring topics in the universe. Not to me, not after last week. Mine, as it turns out, is not pink as I had always thought, but a deep, indigo blue, shaded with silver and edged with rose – a holographic splash.
You’re bored already, I can tell, but the point is my brain chose to show me these colours by zipping me back to a Christmas morning in the 1990s, where I clearly recall opening a much-wanted bottle of Karl Lagerfeld Sun Moon Stars. Does anyone remember that powdery, floral scent with its strong blend of pineapple and freesia? I had a sudden pang of memory about how much I loved the bottle as much as the aroma, and during the session I found myself gazing at the distinctive indigo container with its metallic stopper top, suspended in the night sky through which I was whizzing.
Why that memory over others? My rational brain points out the sky theme, with a silvery wink. My creative brain prefers to leave things wide open to the sun, moon and stars.

Some of the other thoughts from that night had firmer, more obvious groundings. Like the sudden, strong conviction in my work as a writer, which normally only happens after a tin of gin at my friend’s kitchen table during our weekly coven sessions. I also get it from a second coven, a tiny but delicious set of friends formed from my MA and based around the globe (raise your broomsticks, witches).
But this time, the courage came from deep within, a series of precise, dramatic literary visions with specific details about content, even covers. I had an urge to grab my phone and email my MA project supervisor immediately. Thankfully for him (and me), I was incapable of doing any of that.
For much of the rest of the session, I felt timeless and slightly odd, experiencing the predictable pins and needles and claw-hands that are side effects of the way breathwork re-oxygenates your body.
Most poignant side effect of the whole evening was a series of unsettling but wonderful meetings with those I have loved and lost: ’I’ve just spent the whole evening with dead people,’ I sobbed on the phone to Arthur’s mother, later that night.
I can’t explain it, although my kind brain reminds me of recent events that might call to mind lost beings. But my husband, a grounded, no-nonsense man, attempted it: ‘You relaxed enough to go to a liminal space where you could dig a little deeper, for a change.’
I’ll take that, just as I took the steady flow of tears dripping into my hair as I lay on the mat for two hours trying to keep my crying-breathing level and smooth. Hedgehog snuffles all around indicated I wasn’t the only one weeping under a blanket.

As we came back to consciousness, fairylights twinkled from the ceiling and rustles replaced deep breaths. A friend, rubbing her hands through her hair on a mat next to mine, summed it up: ‘I feel a bit weird,’ she said, ‘I wasn’t expecting any of that.’
At home that night, I thought I’d sleep like a baby, but my brain motored away into the small hours, unpicking the experience again and again, and the trippy state of mind persisted into the following day. And on it went, right through to the next night, to a bar in north London where kind friends listened patiently to my recounting of the experience. I’m eccentric as a rule, so to them it sounded par for the course, but part of me wished for photographic proof of what I’d seen. Two days later, as I write this, I’m starting to feel fine about not being able to relay any of it.

I’m always thrilled when a friend has a baby and even more thrilled when they go on to do incredible things. Arthur WM, we are all so proud of you, even (especially) those looking down from the moon.

If you live in or near London, there is still time to organise your own trip to the moon with Recovery Breath, scheduled for take-off in Kensington next Wednesday 3 December. If you’re Sydney-based, keep an eye on the website to experience a session or two. For everyone else, I recommend trying a similar event if you can: it’s quite a trip.