Redding, Ca – Primordial Breathwork™ Immersion Retreat

Primordial Breathwork™ Weekend Immersion

An Amazonian & Tibetan-Based Journey of Breath, Rhythm, Sound & Awareness

Beneath the accumulated layers of our histories, identities, defenses, and conditioning lies a remarkably simple innate capacity for presence, vitality, connection, and creative responsiveness to life.

The Primordial Breathwork™ Weekend Immersion is an ancestral transmission – an experiential journey into remembering the deepest luminous ground of being, which is not merely an idea, but an embodiment of breath, emotions, relationships, creativity, and direct experience.

Over our time together, we progressively deepen into Indigenous based Primordial Breathwork™, Daoist and Andean Qigong, meditation, creative and artistic expression, music, nature immersion, Individual Remembrance and Communal Integration practices. Each element supports a different dimension of the journey: breath opens; rhythm carries; awareness illuminates; movement embodies; creativity gives form to the indescribable; nature restores perspective; and community provides a larger field in which individual experience can be held.

The retreat is an ancestral invitation into a profound inquiry:

What are we capable of when we no longer regard ourselves as isolated individuals trying to manage life and become active participants within and clear channels of the entire Eco-system?

A Progressively Beneficial Journey

Each day entails Primordial Breathwork journeys coupled with integration progressively allowing more time and depth as participants become familiar with the practice and with the greater organism of the group.

The first encounters establish the foundations of Breath, Rhythm, Sound, and Awareness. As the immersion unfolds, the practice can move beyond deliberate breathing into a more spontaneous experience in which the familiar sense of “I am breathing” may soften into the experience of being breathed.

The journey can be deeply meditative and peaceful, intensely alive and revitalizing, emotionally evocative, playful, creatively inspiring, and at times potentially cathartic.

Participants may encounter memories, emotions, bodily sensations, imagery, spontaneous movement, laughter, tears, or aspects of themselves that ordinarily remain beneath conscious awareness. Difficult or shadow material may arise and be met from a wider field of presence. At other moments, participants may rediscover qualities associated with our more original, childlike nature; curiosity, vulnerability, spontaneity, playfulness, wonder, and creativity.

Experiences can also open into profound stillness, interconnectedness, joy, or expansive and blissful states of awareness. Some participants have described Primordial Breathwork as a kind of “sober psychedelic” journey – an unusual depth and fluidity of experience accessed through breath, rhythm, sound, awareness, and communal presence without the use of psychedelic substances.

None of these experiences are goals, and intensity is not a measure of depth. The practice is ultimately an invitation to become more intimate with oneself and whatever arises.

About Primordial Breathwork™

Primordial Breathwork is rooted in two living ancestral lineages: an Amazonian Indigenous breath tradition originating with the Yanomami people and a communal Tibetan Bön breath and rhythm practice received through direct transmission.

Through more than twenty-five years of apprenticeship, direct transmission, personal practice, and facilitation, Roman Hanis has integrated these complementary traditions into Primordial Breathwork, honoring the integrity and cultural context of each while revealing the profound resonances they share.

Unlike an individual breathing exercise performed alongside other people, Primordial Breathwork is fundamentally communal.

Guided by live drumming and synchronized breathing, participants gradually enter a shared rhythm. Breath becomes a meeting place between individual and collective experience.

This dimension reflects principles of reciprocity and interconnectedness that lie at the heart of many Indigenous cultures. Human beings are not understood in isolation from family, community, ancestors, land, and the greater ecology of life. Challenges that can feel overwhelming when experienced as “mine alone” may look very different when encountered within a wider field of relationship and awareness.

Primordial Breathwork gives participants an opportunity to explore this interconnectedness with their entire being rather than merely as a philosophical concept.

As synchronization deepens, the boundaries of individual effort can become less dominant. Breath, heartbeat, drum, sound, group, and environment begin participating in one unfolding experience. We may recognize ourselves not simply as organisms breathing within an ecosystem, but as expressions of an ecosystem that is itself alive and breathing.

This is one meaning of primordial within the practice: returning beneath the habitual organization of experience toward the source from which new possibilities, creativity, relationship, and responsiveness can emerge.

Remembrance & Creative Potential

The purpose of the immersion is therefore not catharsis for its own sake, nor the pursuit of extraordinary states.

Catharsis may happen, bliss may happen, grief may surface, profound meditation may arise or nothing dramatic may happen at all.

Each can become a doorway.

The deeper orientation is toward remembrance – rediscovering an innate capacity for presence and relationship that exists beneath the patterns through which we ordinarily define ourselves.

As those patterns become less rigid, energy previously bound within habitual emotional and psychological structures may become available for life again—as creativity, passion, clarity, playfulness, compassion, and renewed engagement with the world.

In this sense, Primordial Breathwork is not about becoming someone different. It is an evolutionary journey back to the source of one’s creative potential, a remembrance of oneself as the pure space of consciousness inseparable from love and filled with limitless possibilities.

Integration: Giving the Experience Roots

The spaces between the breathwork journeys are an essential part of the immersion.

We integrate through Qigong and embodied movement, meditation, silence, sharing circles, music, painting and other forms of creative expression, rest, nourishing food, and immersion in nature.

Creative expression is especially valuable when experiences arise that cannot immediately be translated into conceptual language. A color, movement, sound, image, or spontaneous gesture can sometimes give form to something before the analytical mind knows what it means.

Nature provides another dimension of integration. Rather than endlessly examining our experience from within the boundaries of the individual psyche, we return to relationship with earth, trees, water, sky, animals, and the wider ecology in which human experience has always belonged.

The intention is that insights do not remain exceptional experiences from a retreat, but gradually find expression in how we relate, create, work, love, listen, and participate in everyday life.

Ceremonial Cacao

Some Primordial Breathwork journeys may begin with an optional ceremonial cacao invocation, creating a transition from ordinary activity into intentional communal practice and supporting an atmosphere of receptivity and heart-centered presence.

Cacao is entirely optional and is not necessary for participating fully in the breathwork.

Food & Nourishment

All meals throughout the retreat are included and prepared with an emphasis on fresh, organic, natural ingredients. The food is intentionally simple, nourishing, and supportive of the breathwork and integration process.

Meals are primarily plant-based and shared communally, becoming another part of the retreat rhythm: practice, nourishment, rest, relationship, and return to practice.

Participants with allergies or specific dietary needs should let us know on the application form so we can determine what accommodations are possible.

Accommodation — Living Close to the Land

The retreat takes place on a beautiful wooded property in the Redding, Northern California area, allowing the three-day journey to unfold surrounded by nature rather than requiring participants to leave the retreat environment after each day’s practice.

Accommodation is intentionally simple and communal, supporting the immersive nature of the experience.

Indoor communal sleeping: Shared indoor sleeping areas are available. Participants bring their own sleeping mat/pad, sleeping bag or bedding, pillow, and personal necessities.

Outdoor camping: Participants who prefer to sleep outdoors may bring their own tent and camping equipment. Camping platforms are available for tents.

This is a retreat rather than a hotel experience. The simplicity of the accommodations is intentional: an opportunity to step temporarily outside habitual routines, live closer to the rhythms of nature, and allow the communal field created during the practices to continue through meals, rest, silence, and time on the land.

What to Bring

Bring comfortable, loose clothing suitable for breathwork and movement; layers for changing temperatures; a yoga or sleeping mat; blanket and pillow for breathwork sessions; reusable water bottle; journal; personal toiletries; and appropriate footwear for spending time outdoors.

For communal indoor sleeping, bring your own bedding or sleeping bag and sleeping pad. For camping, bring your own tent, sleeping bag, pad, and necessary camping equipment.

You are also welcome to bring art supplies or a musical instrument if creative expression through painting, drawing, music, or spontaneous collaboration feels meaningful to you during integration periods.

What’s Included

Your retreat contribution includes the complete three-day immersion: daily Primordial Breathwork™ journeys, Qigong and embodied practices, meditation, integration and sharing circles, creative expression, nature immersion, optional ceremonial cacao where offered, organic meals, and your selected communal accommodation or camping option.

More importantly, the retreat is structured so that these aren’t separate activities competing for time. They form one continuous process: breathwork opens something; silence allows it to settle; movement gives it embodiment; creativity gives it expression; nature places it within a larger ecology; community allows it to be witnessed; food grounds it; and rest prepares the organism to enter the next cycle.

Living Reciprocity

Your participation also extends beyond the retreat itself. Proceeds support Paititi Institute’s broader nonprofit ecosystem of Indigenous education, cultural preservation, ecological stewardship, and community initiatives in the Amazon and Andes, including the Yahua Ancestral School. Paititi is registered as a nonprofit organization in Peru and is fiscally sponsored in the United States by Empowerment WORKS, a registered 501(c)(3).

This is part of what we mean by Living Reciprocity: the practices we receive from living wisdom traditions become part of a circular relationship in which personal transformation contributes back toward the communities, cultures, and landscapes helping preserve that wisdom for future generations.

Terms & Refund Policy

• We accept a $150 deposit via credit card which is made during the online application process. If you are not accepted to join for the program, your payment will be fully refunded.
• Your remaining balance is to be submitted in cash (USD) on the first day of the program or via credit card anytime before the start of the retreat. Please note that there is a 3.9% merchant fee for all credit card transactions.
• All deposits are non-refundable with exceptions made when its Covid related. If cancelled due to Covid illness or travel restriction we will refund or transfer your deposit. If canceled for any other reason ahead of time we can transfer the deposit to a future program.
• The contribution is non-refundable and non-transferable once the program begins.
• We reserve the right to cancel this retreat if our minimum number of participants is not met 2 weeks prior to the start date. All payments will be fully refunded if the program is canceled.
• Additional terms are outlined in our “Terms, Conditions, Release Of Liability & Assumption Of Risk” document which each participants agrees to by submitting an application.