Everything Is a Conversation with God: Breathwork, Love, and Awakening with Dr. Colleen Quinn

In this deeply expansive and intimate conversation, Dr. Habib Boerger sits with psychologist, mystic breathwork practitioner, and author Dr. Colleen Quinn to explore the transformative power of breath, love, and spiritual awakening.

Colleen shares her extraordinary journey—from childhood spiritual sensitivity and profound trauma to two near-death experiences that reshaped her understanding of life, love, and the Divine. What emerges is a path rooted in direct experience where everything becomes a conversation with God.

Together, Habib and Colleen explore:

• Breathwork as a gateway to healing, presence, and mystical union 
• The idea of “love squeezes” — how pain and challenge become catalysts for growth 
• The integration of trauma through somatic and spiritual practices 
• The shared wisdom across mystical traditions pointing toward oneness 
• The difference between knowing spiritually and experiencing truth 
• How everyday moments can become portals to the sacred 

Colleen also offers a guided breathwork practice and shares insights from her book Essence Merging, including a powerful story of awakening into unity beyond the illusion of separation.

This episode is an invitation to soften, to listen, and to remember: love is not just a feeling—it is our deepest nature, our greatest teacher, and the legacy we are here to create.

Pause, breathe, and notice what within you is ready to come home.

Transcript

Beyond Names: Spirituality for Anyone and Everyone

YouTube Channel: Beyond Names with Dr. Habib Boerger

YouTube handle: @BeyondNamesPodcast

Episode: 45

Host: Dr. Habib Boerger

Conversation Partner: Dr. Colleen Quinn

Title: Everything Is a Conversation with God: Breathwork, Love, and Awakening with Dr. Colleen Quinn

Description: In this deeply expansive and intimate conversation, Dr. Habib Boerger sits with psychologist, mystic breathwork practitioner, and author Dr. Colleen Quinn to explore the transformative power of breath, love, and spiritual awakening.

Colleen shares her extraordinary journey—from childhood spiritual sensitivity and profound trauma to two near-death experiences that reshaped her understanding of life, love, and the Divine. What emerges is a path rooted in direct experience where everything becomes a conversation with God.

Together, Habib and Colleen explore:

• Breathwork as a gateway to healing, presence, and mystical union 
• The idea of “love squeezes” — how pain and challenge become catalysts for growth 
• The integration of trauma through somatic and spiritual practices 
• The shared wisdom across mystical traditions pointing toward oneness 
• The difference between knowing spiritually and experiencing truth 
• How everyday moments can become portals to the sacred 

Colleen also offers a guided breathwork practice and shares insights from her book Essence Merging, including a powerful story of awakening into unity beyond the illusion of separation.

This episode is an invitation to soften, to listen, and to remember: love is not just a feeling—it is our deepest nature, our greatest teacher, and the legacy we are here to create.

Pause, breathe, and notice what within you is ready to come home.

Transcript:

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Welcome to Beyond Names. I'm Dr. Habib. This is a space for spiritual seekers and soulful misfits, for the curious and the committed, for those grounded in a tradition, and for those who aren't sure what they believe.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Whether you call the Divine God, Yahweh, Allah, Elohim, Hashem, Great Spirit, Brahman, Higher Power, or you're still searching for language that fits, you are welcome here.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Together, we'll explore the intersection of spirituality and daily life, the wisdom of many traditions, and the ways we return to our true selves, to our source, to the light that each of us carry within.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: I'm so glad you're here. Let's begin with introduction of our conversation partner for this episode, Dr. Colleen Quinn.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Colleen Quinn is a psychologist, a mystic breathwork practitioner, and author.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: In her private practice spanning decades, Colleen uses somatic experiencing, internal family systems therapy, and breathwork to find and heal our body's stored traumas.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: In 2018, Colleen had her second near-death experience, which was the catalyst for her spiritual awakening.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Her profoundly intimate and raw transformation is chronicled in her book, Essence Merging.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: To learn more about Colleen and her work, please visit https://www.essencemerging.com/ or her YouTube Channel, EssenceMerging-ColleenQuinnPhD. 

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Dr. Colleen, thank you for being here. Welcome.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: Dr. Habib, I want to thank you for listing all of those beautiful names of God, and isn't it just so lovely that love answers to every single one of those names?

Dr. Colleen Quinn: We can have a personal relationship through any pass up the mountain. It's just lovely.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yeah, yes, that's why I am particularly a fan of the mystical paths and the mystical traditions, or excuse me, the mystical paths of the respective traditions, because of a commonality in the centrality of both love and unity, the idea of the oneness.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And I really feel that whether you're looking at Christian mysticism, or Jewish mysticism, or Islamic mysticism, and so on, that we're talking about the core sameness of love, and peace, and mercy and, and, and, and.…

Dr. Habīb Boerger: So, to begin our episode, and to begin introduction of yourself, just to give our listeners a sense of who you are, would you please share, obviously, to the extent that you're comfortable, your spiritual story?

Dr. Colleen Quinn: I would love to. 

Dr. Colleen Quinn: Ever since I was a very young child I knew that I was of God. I… my mother was bipolar, and we had quite a chaotic household. That was with my grandparents when I was 9, but then it was with my mother and her new husband, and it was quite chaotic. 

Dr. Colleen Quinn: But I would leave every Sunday to walk myself across a four-lane highway to sit in the church because I could feel the spirit, I could feel the love, I could feel the peace, and that's what I had been born into with my grandparents. I had a great foundation.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: And it's interesting, Habib, because I… at a young age, I realized that there is a direct connection between the ability for my heart to be love and have these kind of cosmic intuitions.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: So I was 12 when I stood on my front porch, and I said to my grandmother, who was like a mother to me, I said, you're going on this vacation, and you're going to die. I'm never going to see you again.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: I said this in front of my whole family.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: They said -- and she wasn't sick -- they said, oh, you're being dramatic.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: Well, that's exactly what happened. She went up there and died.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: So I knew that there was a lot more to life than the material.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: There's this energy bond, and love is the vessel that connects it, that brings it to life.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: However, I was young and immature, and I had a very patriarchal view of God for many years.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: For many years my prayers were a one-way diatribe of my requests of how things should go.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: Not a lot of listening,

Dr. Colleen Quinn: And, you know, I love that love never stops knocking on our hearts, ever. Like, I call them love squeezes. The squeezes get more and more intense, because love is trying to find that crack to find the way to come back in.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yeah.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: And so, yeah, my first near-death experience, I was in the tunnel with the light. And the light, there's a peace that, you know, words cannot describe, like, you are subsumed in the light. You are the light, you're part of it. 

Dr. Colleen Quinn: It's, it's radical, but the light conveyed to me, we would like you to go back, but it's your choice.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Hmm.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: And Habib, that was really powerful for me, because like, the human side of me was like, I… I could just beam right up!

Dr. Colleen Quinn: But when love is asking you, you're like, of course, of course I want to go love's way.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: And so, when I came back, even though, lots of injuries, I was in intensive care for 2 weeks, and, you know, the recovery took 9 months, but I was empowered, and I needed that.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: Because for many years, I hadn't fully been in life with both feet, because of the traumas that I had dealt with. So that was very powerful.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: Just fast-forwarding years later, when I was learning to be a breathworker, the breathwork, trainer said -- and she didn't know my history -- she said, wow, Colleen, you really must have surrounded yourself with a death energy to magnetize that event to you.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: And that sounds controversial, and I know it may feel controversial to a lot of your listeners, but it resonated with me, because I could see how everything, even the darkest moments, are of love, were our greatest becoming, and it was what I needed to fully come in and choose life and live into my power.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: And still, I have a patriarchal view of God.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yeah.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: So, years later, I can't remember, I was probably 18, 20 years after that, I got pneumonia that was a common form of pneumonia. You should recover in 3 weeks.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: 10 months later, I'm bleeding from my lungs, struggling to find breath.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: And the irony of that is not lost on me, because that was the catalyst for me to find breathwork.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: So, when the doctor called and said, we've tested you for every autoimmune disease and you have none of them, you will get well.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: Even though I was very, very sick, I did know I would get well, but I took stock in my life. Sure, I'd helped lots of people, but who had I really formed connections with? Who would come to my funeral? Where was the love that I created? Where was my love legacy?

Dr. Colleen Quinn: And I saw that I felt woefully short.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: And I fell on the ground, prostate, sobbing.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: Just let me be love in every moment, because I've realized that love really is the only legacy worth creating and I was living on gifted time.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: So, when I think, I believe, what I've seen in my own life and people I've worked with, when you utter a prayer at the very end of your strength, when you have no will left and you're totally surrendered, those are the prayers that are always immediately answered.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: And within 2 weeks, I was on the other side of the world at this embodiment retreat.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: It was a radical change to my marriage contract. I had never taken a vacation without my husband, and I'm like, hey, you know, I heard there's this embodiment retreat, and I'm supposed to meet the shaman, I think I should go.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: He's like, yes, go! Which was… it was radical! So, I bring my friend, and we go, and I… I learned breathwork, and that really is a means, there are more than one means, but that is a very reliable means to open up your soul and go in and start that conversation where you're doing the listening.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: And honestly, our souls are all fully formed, unique manifestations of the One, so it's a conversation with God.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: And so, everything has become a conversation with God since then.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Hmm.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: What a beautiful… what a beautiful sentence to end on, your spiritual story, that everything has become a conversation with God. 

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And I… I can't help but hear the many similarities between what you're saying and your way of interpreting your spirituality and expressing your spirituality, and my own path, even though, obviously, it is quite a different story, and yet those similarities are something that I find especially meaningful and inspiring.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And I love the idea that everything is a conversation with God.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And that's one of the things that I am constantly encouraging my own students, is to approach God with awareness of all that's happening with you, you know, with awareness of what's going on in your mind, and what's going on in your emotions, and what's going on in your body, and what's going on in your energetic heart, your energetic body, like, to take all of you to be in conversation with the Divine with that intention of the intimacy of the beloved with the Beloved.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And that, to me, is what the spiritual path is, so I love hearing how similar what you're saying and how you're describing your own journey, how that sounds quite the same.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Some things that I want to return to….

Dr. Habīb Boerger: I love and really appreciate how you talked about the darkest moments being the moments that are love squeezes, I believe you said. Love squeezes, like, the… it's… It's not necessarily comfortable.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: No, no, no. You know what's interesting, Habib, is we all enter this domain coming through the birth canal.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: Those love squeezes are the beginning of our becoming. Nobody gets through this life unscathed. 

Dr. Colleen Quinn: And I'm a big believer in the energy of our words and our thoughts. So we can call it pain, we could call it distress, we could call it challenge, and we could call it love squeezes.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: That all of those are going to bring a different energy to the experience.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: And the truth is, the potential for growth only ever happens from an uncomfortable place.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: We don't change what's working, so when we can change our relationship with those experiences, pain becomes our greatest teacher. It is a welcomed friend that is our greatest teacher.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: I… as someone who has dealt with chronic pain since I was a teenager, I love that perspective.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Because even if you've been walking with an issue for years as part… for decades as part of your spiritual journey, there are still times where, like, we don't… we don't ever lose our humanity. We're still human.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: So we… we still experience the human emotions. So I think it's true that no matter how much work you've done, you still have the emotional experience that is associated with discomfort, that is associated with distress and is associated with pain. 

Dr. Habīb Boerger: So I love that reframing of…this is a love squeeze.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And I have a teacher in Islam -- I don't know how familiar you are with Islam -- but the Quran, every chapter save one of the Quran begins with the phrase, in the name of God, the most merciful, the most compassionate.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Or it's sometimes translated as the most merciful, the bestower of mercy, the giver of mercy. And the word for mercy and the word for Lord share the same roots as the word for womb.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: Mmm.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: So, the image of God in Islam is the image of this all-pervasive love and mercy that contains all of creation.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: So all of the severity, all of the majesty, all of what we experience, whether it's gentleness and beauty, or whether it's harshness, whether it's light or whether it's dark, it's all encompassed in this loving mercy.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: So, again, hearing the commonality, you know, it's a choice.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Like, do we listen for the commonality, or do we listen to what's different? And I'm choosing to carry forward the love squeeze as the language that I think will help all of us, yeah.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: Beautiful. You know, I want to build off of what you said, too, Habib, because too often, well just from a psychological perspective, many of us are very chaotic in our thinking, or very rigid in our thinking.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: Those are both polar opposites of what is in the middle, which is a flexible mindset, and in spirituality, we call it non-dual truth.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: And you talked about some of these non-dual truths, the darkness and the light, but the whole encompasses all of them.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: And so these seemingly opposites are both true at the same time. We are fully human, and we are fully divine.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: There is… the darkness needs the light to reflect off of, and the light needs the darkness to show its effulgence. 

Dr. Colleen Quinn: So, we could go on and on, but the more that we can encompass the wholeness of the picture, and the real importance for this lesson is how do we practically balance fully feeling our feelings, because if we don't feel them at all, it's spiritual bypassing, and you're pushing them into your subconscious, they're going to come out sideways.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: So how do you balance fully feeling them and then choosing consciously to keep a high frequency.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: And I think that trips people up.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: My practical advice for people is you have to feel your feelings, but you don't have to do it in the room with everybody else. They don't all have to feel your feelings, only you have to feel them.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: And so that's when you want to go in and do an inward journey, to allow these wounded children to come up and tell you what they're afraid or sad about. They have wisdom for you.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: And for you to befriend and love them. Love is the only healer, so you have to go into these parts that were rejected so long ago and love them.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: You need to give them their due. There have been times when I've been in my meditation room banging my fist on the couch.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: And I stay until… until the energy moves, and I can be in full remembrance of myself as love. And then when I walk out that door, I can choose to be in the higher frequency.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: So… I… I mentioned before we started recording that I'm very interested in spiritual practice.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: I definitely have a focus professionally, and in my education, and in my teaching, a focus on spiritual practice. 

Dr. Habīb Boerger: So, do you have any particular spiritual practices that are what you find helpful to taking your emotional… you mentioned the experience in the… but taking what you're experiencing physically and emotionally and mentally, and honoring it in a way that brings you to, I believe you used the term a higher energy or a higher vibration?

Dr. Habīb Boerger: What's your… do you have a go-to practice that you use for that?

Dr. Colleen Quinn: I do, so I believe there are very similar benefits to meditation, breathwork, and even psychedelics.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: They all physiologically do a very similar thing in our brains. They shut down our, what we call our default mode network, that's a construct that's on the functional MRIs that maps directly onto Freud's construct of the ego.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: We now know it exists in the brain. It's in our high brain and our front brain, and it's all self-referential, it looks for the shortcuts, it gets us sleepwalking through life. 

Dr. Colleen Quinn: That quiets down all three of those methods. But they're different in that meditation is, like, the radical practice of presence. 

Dr. Colleen Quinn: So if you're in the mind, you know, the diatribe of the ego running through your head, that'll be the longest 5 minutes of your life.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: It's not where I recommend that people start. Psychedelics is great, but if you don't have a guide, and you're not familiar with the art of surrender, it can be traumatic.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: Because it's going to thrust you into your soul , like, no holds barred. 

Dr. Colleen Quinn: But breathwork, I believe, is the middle path.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: Breathwork shuts down that ego, and as you get deeper in your breath, it's a slow circulate, slow circular breathing, so it's starting out, calming your nervous system, getting you into parasympathetic.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: It's a delta brainwave pattern, which is very restorative, but as you get deeper in, your energy body starts to loosen from your physical body. Your brain goes into gamma, where it's completely lit up, and that's where you get the same visuals, auditory downloads, sensory experiences that you would with psychedelics.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: But the difference is, with breathwork your soul goes at your ego's pace of readiness, so it's not going to give you a descent trip until you're ready.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: Usually, for a long time, they're ascent trips where you're just one with the energy, and it's, like, mind-blowing bliss.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: Physiologically, what's happening, the Hindus call it Kundalini, I don't know if you've heard that term.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Sure.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: Yeah, well, physiologically, what that is, is there's crystals in your cerebrospinal fluid, and they shoot up to the ventricles on either side of your pineal gland.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: In massaging the pineal gland, DMT gets released that's laid dormant in our pineal glands.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: That's the very same chemical that makes certain mushrooms magic. It's what makes psychedelics psychedelic. It's in our bodies. 

Dr. Colleen Quinn: Well, when that DMT is released, it's coming into our cells, increasing our interstitial fluid, so that we can amplify at a higher frequency. 

Dr. Colleen Quinn: So there's a crystal clear example of how a physical practice is actually altering our energy field. We can amplify at a higher level.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: And it's amazing, because we're feeling bliss, and what I think is really happening, when we feel bliss, we call it love, but what it really is, is union.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: When our energy body comes loose from our physical form, it magnetizes back to the whole.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: We all, I believe, have a cellular remembrance of ourselves before the Big Bang, when we were all connected as one unique manifestations of the whole. And it's…

Dr. Colleen Quinn: All of our hearts are really looking for the union. That's what this… we call it love, but it's really union, it's harmony.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: And your cellular body becomes more coherent, more harmonic as you do this. 

Dr. Colleen Quinn: What's fascinating about it is when you're on a descent trip, because I know that's where you originally asked, you're hovering over your body and you're looking down at the thing that was too overwhelming at the time.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: But you're looking down through the eyes of love. So you're in the place of the witness.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: But you are fully feeling what seems so overwhelming. So that monster that was so scary, you can walk up to and start to begin to touch. 

Dr. Colleen Quinn: And what I see routinely happen is that the story we wrapped around the experience, that wasn't fair, I was a victim, God was wrong, whatever that story was, the coin gets flipped. 

Dr. Colleen Quinn: Universally. I see it in myself, in other people.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: And the story becomes I wasn't alone. God was with me all the time. I felt it in that experience, and I needed that to become who I am today.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: So, it… and it becomes an irrefutable knowing, because you experienced it. 

Dr. Colleen Quinn: There's a Hebrew saying that says, what's truer than truth? 

Dr. Colleen Quinn: Have you heard it? It's experience.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yeah.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: When you experience it, and it's so real, so sensate, it's irrefutable. 

Dr. Colleen Quinn: So that's why I love breathwork, because it allows our souls to go into those dark places that we pushed away into our subconscious, that were coming out sideways, and we get to see them and know them and finally love them, and that's how they become integrated.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: You don't ever fully let go of that energy, but it changes.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: It's like changing our software system. Our nervous system is the software system of our body. It's like a system upgrade, so it changes the way we relate to that energy, and it becomes pharma, and it doesn't hurt us.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yeah. 

Dr. Habīb Boerger: It's… it's funny that the… that saying that you mentioned, that experience is… is what's truer than truth, and in Sufism, we… we would… instead of using the word experience, we would use the word tasting.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: What’s the word?

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Taste… tasting…

Dr. Colleen Quinn: Oh, I love it!

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Right, right. So the emphasis is on, you know, you think you know, but you don't actually know until you have tasted.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: Beautiful!

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yeah, and… and it's interesting that you said that… that you talked specifically about the union, because in our spiritual practices, across traditions, I do believe that what we think of as spiritual ecstasy, or as ecstatic experiences, or some individuals call them mystical experiences, that those are instances that we… we use the terms love, but we also use the terms unity, are as you… as you said, union… harmony, and then I'll also add oneness. 

Dr. Habīb Boerger: But there's that. It's a… a tasting, an experience of the ego -- I don't know if dissolving, but the ego not being present.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: Right. Absolutely.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: There's… you lose the sense of self. There's no… there's no you, and there's no other. There's just the experience, that third thing. 

Dr. Colleen Quinn: That is essence merging at its core. When there's no you, there's no other, it's just this co-creation. That's what we're yearning for, and we can have it, whether we're emptying our dishwasher, whether we're in breathwork, whether we're walking in the woods, we can have it at any moment.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: But I will say that from my experience, the gateway in is conscious breath.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: Only when I'm in my conscious breath, and breath is the only function in our bodies that can be done involuntarily, unconsciously, or voluntarily.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: I don’t think that's random.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: Habib, I don't think it's random at all. When we choose to breathe consciously, what you were talking about before, full-on in your body, your heart, your mind, your soul, I call that immediacy.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: That is the gateway to open up, to enliven all of those functions, so that we're fully in immediacy in this eternal now.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: And it's… it's… it's powerful. I… it was revealed to me in a breathwork journey that when we breathe in voluntarily, we're getting that air to nourish our physical forms.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: When we breathe consciously, we're breathing in that etheric energy along with the air, so we're nourishing our subtle bodies along with our physical forms. 

Dr. Colleen Quinn: And there's that awareness of that, of that essence running through all life.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: And since you're a doctor of religions, I want to say that it's not random that Jesus breathed the Holy Spirit into his disciples.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: And the Hebrew word for kiss, neshiká, means to breathe together.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Hmm, hmm, interesting.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: All of the ancient cultures knew it.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: I… I was just talking with, a previous guest conversation partner for the show, who was talking about her re-imagining and renewing her relationship with Islam and Islamic spiritual practices, and her realization that embedded into the practices are breathwork, but she didn't know it until she, in some degrees, had not necessarily stepped out of the religion, but had stepped specifically into studying breathwork, and specifically studying somatic experience, and then she was like, oh, when we're doing Quran recitation, we are doing breathwork.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And it's for me, in my Sufi order, we do a lot of chanting.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And there's a particular practice where we really stretch out the chant in terms of we elongate the syllables of the chant. 

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And it's such a beautiful example of breathwork and of bringing together mind, body, heart, soul.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: So, given that breathwork is central to your spiritual journey and your spiritual practice, is it too much to ask if, you know, you could give us a little sample of, of breathwork in the moment? Is that...?

Dr. Colleen Quinn: I would love to! So, would you like to be the one that I guide?

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Sure. But, you know, through me, you're guiding all of the listeners.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: I'd love to. So, I invite you to close your eyes if you would feel more comfortable. This is going to be a breath that is in through the nose and out through the nose.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: And you're going to be moving energy as you do this breathing. So, with your first breath, I want you to imagine red blood life force of your red chakra.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: You're going to be breathing that right from the base of your spine through your belly, expanding your rib cages out, up, up, up through your throat, up until you can get that breath through your pineal gland.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: And then with no gap between the inhale and the exhale, you're just going to let it fall out. There's no push. When we push, we can get tetany in our hands, it can be quite uncomfortable, so we're just letting it fall out.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: And it's like we're standing in our spinal column as we do this. So when that breath gets to the bottom, no gap, again, breathing in from the base of the spine up, up, up, that red vapor, drawing it up to your pineal gland.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: No gaps in letting it fall out.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: Now, as you continue this practice, I'm going to say a few more things.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: This is called a chakra calibration breathing.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: We tend to dirty our kitchens every day when we're rushed or stressed, and when we're… any moment we're not in our breath, and so these chakras need… they're mini brains in our spinal cord, and they need to be calibrated.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: And so, starting with red, which is our life force, our safety in this world, after we balance red, then we would move to orange. Orange is our passion.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: What makes us passionate, our aliveness, our devotion. And so we would breathe orange juice right into our groin area, up, up, up to that pineal gland.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: And then let it fall out.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: And after we've spent some time with orange, we would move to yellow, right where our umbilical cord is.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: And we would be pulling in the yellow of the sun.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: And we would be tapping into the frequencies of creation, tenacity, willpower, and we would be pulling that yellow from our umbilical cord up, up, up, up, to our pineal glands, and with no depths.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: Letting it fall out.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: After we've calibrated yellow, we would move to green our heart center.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: We would be bringing green emerald diamonds right into our heart center.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: Pulling that up, up, up to our pineal gland, and letting it fall out.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: All the while, visualizing each chakra below it, balancing, orbiting in harmony.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: After we've spent some time in green, we would envision blue, crystalline pools coming into our throat.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: Word energy is the most powerful energy to bring into form. What we think and what we say becomes our reality. Like God said, He spoke into creation that the world was born.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: So, word energy is powerful energy, breathing in that blue into our throat, up to our pineal glands.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: And letting it fall all the way out.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: Finally, we're going to go into our third eye, and we're going to see a light coming through the darkness of indigo, directly into our pineal glands.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: That… bringing that full breath up our spinal cord.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: And letting it fall out.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: We're losing ourself in the act.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: We're not counting, we're not in our heads, we're just totally in our breath and in our energy.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: And lastly, we're going to breathe from the top of our heads the violet into our crowns.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: This is our true nature. This is our God-like nature, our innocence, our precociousness, our awe, our wonder. And we're going to breathe those energies into our crowns.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: Full breath.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: No gaps.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: And let it fall out.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: And then we could always do the 8th chakra, which is that cocoon that surrounds us all. 

Dr. Colleen Quinn: It is that permeable energy that comes off of our body and merges with the essence of all of life.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: And we're going to breathe into that cocoon.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: Filling it with light and let it fall out.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: And when you're ready, you can acclimate, feel your feet on the floor, acclimate yourself to your surroundings, and open your eyes.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: How was that?

Dr. Habīb Boerger: It was, of course, a little different than what I'm used to in terms of my own, typical practices, and, you know, years ago, I went through training to become, as a yoga teacher, a certified Hatha yoga teacher.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And… I loved at the time… I had just begun studying Sufism at that time.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And I loved reading the commonalities in the Bhagavad Gita, and these concepts that I was finding in both Sufism and in the Bhagavad Gita, and going, oh, I would never have thought that these two paths that are so different would have so many commonalities.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And in this practice that you just led, I was thinking, oh, well, in my tradition, we don't use the word chakras, but we do acknowledge the subtle energy centers.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: You know, we don't necessarily talk about them as much per se, but there is awareness of them, and then I suppose, depending on where you land in terms of you know, every tradition has a spectrum, with some people falling on a more conservative side, and some people falling on a more mystical side, you know, that spectrum of exoteric versus esoteric.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And so, yeah, working with the subtle energy centers is part of the system, and I just love the, the idea of, of opening to be sustained by I will say light, or love, or energy in every way.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: It's such a delicious gift.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: And when you feel that bliss, I ask, like, why wouldn't we run back to start every day? I honestly… I have to start my day with breathwork or meditation.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yeah. 

Dr. Colleen Quinn: Because each night when we sleep, I believe our energy bodies loosen from our physical forms, and we're floating around them in a space, and I think it's an act of mercy.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: Honestly, because this is pretty rigorous here, but there's a moment, an awakening, where I'm back in the physical form, and it's like, suck, oh, okay, I'm here again, right? 

Dr. Colleen Quinn: And I need to clean the kitchen, I need to remember who I really am, and I… I mean, life is easier when I get in touch with my bliss.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: I can spill it out everywhere, so why wouldn't we?

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yeah.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And I love also that it's cross-tradition.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And I think of Father Gregory Boyle, I don't know if you're familiar with him, but he's the, the founder of Home… Home… Homeboy Industries.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: Oh, I have heard of him, yes.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yeah, and one of the things… what he talks about is, like, how do you maintain that connection to the sacred in every moment? You know, you're going to forget. Part of being human is forgetting, so your only hope is to bring your breath, to make your breath part of your practice, and I loved it.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: You know, it doesn't matter whether you're spiritual but not religious, or whether you're a practicing Christian, or a practicing Muslim, or, you know, that you can bring that breathwork and make breathwork central to your spiritual practice.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And in my tradition, we do… I hope you find this interesting that I'm sharing this.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: I love it!

Dr. Habīb Boerger: In my Sufi order, there… there's the phrase, la ilaha illallah, which is Arabic for saying there is no God, little g, except God, except the one God.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Or there's no reality but the Ultimate Reality, or, you know, it's this idea of saying that all of the appearance of multiplicity serves the purpose of realizing the oneness, realization of the oneness.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And so, a breath practice is to say, on the exhale, la ilaha.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And it's the visualization is allowing everything that's other than the divine, that's other than the holy, the sacred, to leave.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And the inhale is illallah, which is only the divine, only the love, only the light. 

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And so, that's my favorite… That's my favorite breath practice, because it, as you said, whether you're doing dishes, you know, or streaming your favorite show, or about to go to sleep, it's just something that you can carry with you in every moment.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: And return to in any moment.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yes, and because we forget, because we are humans, pick it up, and you remember, oh, I've forgotten, and come back to it. 

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And you can do that across traditions, like, you know, a Christian could do it with an Aramaic term that Jesus used for God, like, alaha, or, depending on your pronunciation, elaha. Like, there's so… there's so many different ways that you… it's adaptable, and I… I love that.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And I want to acknowledge, I'm looking at the time, I want to acknowledge that part of your desire to be on the podcast was to talk about your book.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: Yes.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: So, my understanding is that you have a book that is about your own spiritual experience, and your own spiritual awakening, and your own spiritual journey, that in it you tell, about that process that you mentioned earlier of your near-death experiences, that you talk about what you might expect when one engages on such a journey and gives oneself over to it completely.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: So I invite you to tell us anything more that you'd like us to know about your book, and also to invite you to read an excerpt from it, if you like.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: Oh, wow, thank you, Habib. 

Dr. Colleen Quinn: Yeah, I think, I'd like to say that the term essence merging came to me in breathwork, and it really is this concept that we can lose our sense of self and emerge with the entire moment, and that's where all the wholeness and all the bliss and the awe and wonder is.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: So we should all meet there in every moment. And I do think that as the ego loosens its grip on our reality, the ego gets very scared, and so as we go through this spiritual journey, it can seem very disorienting or maddening at times, and so I'm hoping that this book would serve as a primer for people who are newer to this journey, because it's quite radical.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: It's really radical from the life of the mind, which I remember well.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: And my story, is interwoven in this very unconventional love story of my breathwork partner. I've been married for 46 years to who I call the guru of love. My husband's pretty amazing.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: And I, you know, imagine sitting across from someone, sharing breath every other week for years, having these soul-to-soul connections. 

Dr. Colleen Quinn: He knows me on a soul level better than anyone, and I know him, and it became apparent that he's my twin frame, which is a concept going back to the ancient Greece of postulating that we were all formed in pairs, in union, in a moment of pure delight by God, and that we were separated, and as part of our human journey, but more and more coming to, to know the incarnation, because we're in this period of Great Awakening, and so we need higher energy in this realm.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: But to navigate that kind of love in the midst of a marriage is… is… it's a different type of love, and to have that support of my husband, who… when he heard… I was like, how am I going to mention this twin flame thing to my husband?

Dr. Colleen Quinn: I'm like, well, Spirit will give me the opening, and it came up.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: Oh, why are you interested in these twin flames? And, you know, I felt that clench, but I proceeded with excitement. I'm like, oh, here's my opportunity.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: I mean, I told them the concept, he goes, oh, is it me?

Dr. Colleen Quinn: And I said, oh, that life were so easy, and he goes, I have a lot of friends, Habib, guys and women, and he goes, oh, it's Finn, isn't it?

Dr. Colleen Quinn: And I said, yeah. And he goes, well, look, your heart is too big for just one, and I'm so glad that he can hold your heart in this deep emotional way that is sometimes hard for me.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: Well, that's a pretty radical love, right?

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yeah.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: And so, to navigate how love begets love, and how we… we do a disservice to any relationship if we put all of the demands for our growth and our becoming and our needs and desires on one person.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: It's a disservice to any relationship and to ourselves, frankly.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: So it's really an exploration of how love does beget love, it only multiplies, if we let it. So, so that's interwoven in the story.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Hmm. Yeah.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: So, I appreciate your saying that there are different types of love.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And that, as we journey, that we, we realize that there's a… there are… that part of the journey is having things in their appropriate place.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Right? 

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And acknowledging the appropriate place for things, and as you say, it's, it's not realistic in some ways that, to put everything in the same, in the same place, for lack of a better word. 

Dr. Habīb Boerger: I'm not… I'm not wording it very well, but, yes, I know that specifically in a, in a marriage, that there is something that's very holy and very sacred, at that doesn't mean that you can put all of your expectations and all of your diff… different types of love in the same receptacle.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: Exactly!

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's not, it's not fair, for one thing, yeah.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: For sure. Yeah.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yeah.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: So, do you want to read us a little excerpt from it?

Dr. Colleen Quinn: Sure, do we have time?

Dr. Habīb Boerger: As you like.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: I would love to!

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Okay.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: So this excerpt is when I was at the embodiment retreat, and it was towards the end of the retreat, and the only thing you need to know is that I… the day before, I had an experience where I felt really left out. I didn't really realize what was fully going on. 

Dr. Colleen Quinn: I realized later that I was booted back from a very cosmic trip, and I… I thought, well, I'm not going to get back to that unity again. But I… as our egos do, I said, oh no, I felt left out of this human group.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Hmm.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: Our egos like to make up those stories to protect us at what they think we can't handle. So that's all you need to know.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: And the shaman's name is Apenimon.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: [reading from Essence Merging] 

So Apenimon announced that we could stay in the pavilion and breathe, but he was going to walk down to the ocean. Anyone who wanted to join could, and most did. An unseasonable cold front with more heavy rain moved in. During my immediacy practice, I had lost all sense of time and never stopped to pick up warmer clothes. However, after my struggle with feelings of not belonging, I immediately hopped up. Crystals quickly formed in my hair, my teeth chattered, my body shook. As we walked, I realized I had not put my flip-flop on. Despite the gravel rocks digging into my bare foot, I would not be deterred from the group. My reactivity was commensurate with my willingness. Focusing on my breath, I found that I could overcome my body. The sting evaporated. We walked about a third of a mile to the beach, following Apenimon like little chicks would their mother, until he stopped to gaze out at the vast night sky meeting the deep ocean. I began enjoying the tranquility of the rain forming a diamond curtain before my eyes. After a time, Apenimon turned to silently walked back. I took about 5 steps to follow but then felt an energy behind me. Turning, someone was still there, in the dark of the storm, deep in cosmic trance. Having just felt the prick of being left out, I returned. I saw that it was Ali. At that time, he carried a deep resistance to the word God, or anything relating to a Supreme Being. This came from a mismatch with his religious family that he felt to be oppressive in their beliefs. Like most of us, his problems with his parents were transferred upon God and life in general. I could relate. Filled with compassion, I was drawn toward Ali. Frozen hair, one surgical boot, and one bare foot on this stormy beach. Ali was far off in another realm. I was amazed that he could get there, standing up in the pounding rain. I put my hand on his back to support him and connect to where his spirit was. I just gazed out at the sea, not trying to change state. After a while, I felt the blood drain from my hand. My body's revolt was countered by a singular intention. Nothing was or ever would be more important than sharing all that this moment had for us. Once I set that objective, that I could stand on that beach for the rest of my life if called to, the experience transformed. My hand felt supported. No longer was any effort required to keep my hand elevated. That experience taught me that intention is a catalyst energy. The very same action performed with two radically different intentions will produce radically different results. Ali's breath set the metronome, which lured me in. At first, my eyes saw a violet energy field about 50 feet high, emanating off the tops of the ring of trees. It vibrated as the trees moved. Oh, no. Then suddenly, the sky opened. Beyond our cloudy atmosphere, where no stars were visible, I saw another galaxy, and even another beyond that. Three galaxies stacked up on different axes, packed with stars. I saw the beams of light that each star radiates. Stars were talking to one another through their light vibrations. Mesmerized, I saw the great cloud which holds all of the water of life. I saw each human, animal, plant, rock, and creation as a drop of water. Each drop falls from the source, having unique, yet intermingled experiences that make up the collective experience in this realm. The dance played out before me. It reminded me of the work of Snowflake Bentley. His photographic images of snowflakes show that each drop of water's journey is unique. The snowflake becomes more intricate and artistic by the experiences of its journey. Wind, barometric pressure, velocity, temperature changes, solar radiation, humidity, all distresses. Painful experiences are what created the exquisite fullness as a unique masterpiece of art right before splat. It reached the ground of Mother Earth. Only to be offered up again to the great cloud. Adversity alchemized to beauty, and so it goes with holy evolution. This is a true hero's journey. I saw that across time, each vibrational drop, which is our current life, carries with it all the karma of prior lives, along with our unfettered connection to the whole. I saw the historical evolution of our planet. Souls are becoming aware of their interconnectivity, becoming conscious of both ancestral karma and past life experiences. Just then, Ali began to come back to this realm. He looked at me with the eyes of a boy in wonderment. A bright light shone all around him. As one, we embraced. Nothing was said, yet everything was reverenced and honored. A guide, Evan, came looking for us. My glance let Evan know that all was more than fine. Ali and I walked arm-in-arm back to the cenote in silence. Once there, I saw everyone differently. It was as if the veil of delusion had dropped. I was in awe, literally. There was no separate self. It was trippy that this could have eluded me for so long. I saw everyone as me, as spirit. My consciousness hopped from speaker to speaker, fully embodying what was observed. Perspectives like here and there evaporated. I could flip back and forth, feeling the uniqueness, oneness, and vibrations in all experience. All was for our becoming. Everyone and everything became precious. My most complete, radical, awakened realization offered a perceptual shift downloaded directly into my being. I found I could never unknow the knowing. Though I have gotten reactionary and rejected the knowing for a bit, the way back has been easier because my experience is irrefutable. There are a thousand reasons why I could have turned around on that beach. My intention that evening was purely for the sake of another. That's a holy love. And wow, was it blessed.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Thank you.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: I love the… that your intention manifested in this realization that there's no… that you are no separate self.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: It might not be exactly how you worded it, but something quite close to that.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yeah.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: Absolutely.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yeah, and in my Sufi order, we often say that the, that all pain comes from the illusion of separation.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: Mmm.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yeah.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: So, wouldn’t the world be a different place if we were able to hold on to the truth of not being separate selves, if we were able to hold onto the truth of union in our hearts and souls? 

Dr. Colleen Quinn: Well, two ancient cultures and astrology all predict this time in our human history. It started at the winter solstice of 2019, which is right when COVID was coming into China, and they predicted it would take 50 to 55 years. And at the end, that we're all connected will be common knowledge, if not, that we're all one. And that feminine energy, not females, but feminine energy of good for the whole, the benevolent compassion for the whole, would lead.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: And I know that the patriarchy is not going to go down without a fight. We see those love squeezes now, but it's lovely to think that there's a preview to the end of the story, and that we could… I didn't think I would be alive to see this love revolution, so I'm very grateful to be here.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Hmm.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Well, thank you for sharing that rather hopeful vision of a love revolution.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And thank you for sharing a bit about your spiritual journey and your experience with spirituality. And thank you to all listeners for joining us on Beyond Names.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Before we go, if you would just pause briefly, one breath, to reflect for a moment on what stays with you from this conversation.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: May something you heard today help you reconnect with the light in your own heart. May you grow in compassion, clarity, and courage. May you find your way again and again, back home to yourself, back home to the divine, however you name it.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: If today's conversation spoke to you, please like, share, and comment on this episode, and please, excuse me, follow and subscribe to Beyond Names.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Again, for information on Colleen, https://www.essencemerging.com/. To make an appointment with me, visit https://www.habibboerger.com/. 

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Until next time, may you be light, may you consciously participate in growing your light, and may you share your light.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Peace be with you.

Dr. Colleen Quinn: Beautiful.