Let go, just let go

Integrated Breathwork. The rebirthing breath. The instructions are easy enough:
Lie on your back with a blanket over you. Open your mouth and breath with a willful inhale, breathing into your chest. The exhale should be as relaxed as possible, just let the air flow out of you. Repeat for 60 minutes.
This was perhaps the most powerful experience of my life, and certainly if you don't include experiences facilitated by drugs. Tetany is the cramping of your hands, feet, even mouth sometimes. It can be caused by exhaling too forcefully. The first 30 minutes of the practice I had tetany in my hands, forearms, feet, mouth and face. It was so overpowering I feel comfortable calling it the most painful thing I have ever endured (at least in my memory). I kept breathing and was on the verge of panic, fear, chaos, I don't know which. I was sweating so hard I had to toss the blanket off of me. Shobhan or maybe Sudhir used a dozen tissues to mop the sweat from my face. I didn't think I could hold on any longer, then something happened.
I saw the pain, I noted it, felt the sensation of it and how my mind reacted to it. Then I let it go. Not like watching something blow off in the wind. And it was beyond accepting. At one moment my arms and hands were in excrutiating pain. The next moment the pain was still there, but it wasn't mine. It couldn't be attributed to any part of me and it certainly did not define me. I allowed the existence of the sensation and became entirely detached from it. The word semadhi came into my mind as clear as day. Upon some reading, I really don't think this was that, but it was absolutely a break through on my path.
To have this sensation that I simply did not need to own is a remarkable feeling. I opened my mouth as much as I could at the time and let out a laugh. It was a beautiful feeling, subtle and elegant but as clear as can be. During meditation there is some degree of this, recognizing sensations and thoughts and just physical and mental activity. No need to feel guilty or nervous or awkward. Just sit in it, maybe allow it to be a new object of concentration. But so far all of these have come with a real I/me/mine complex. The itch is on my leg, that was my thought. This was something else. This was simply allowing the sensation to be without it causing discomfort.
I spoke with Shobhan about it later in the day. He said I was clearly stuck on something in that first half hour. Some coincidence that when my body needed to work something through, it was a physical, dibilitating pain. Me who have my entire life loathed my body. I hated to look at it, blamed it for a lot of my suffering and certainly didn't treat it well. Only now, living in Yogaland am I giving it the kind of love and respect that it deserves.
The rest of the experience was good as well. Lots of overwhelming compassion, some slips into a dreamy state. There are things to learn here I am sure. But I know the significance of this experience is going to be that letting go. I don't need to hark on it, contemplate it, meditate on it. Of course I will. But the lesson is in the doing, in the experience. The subtlety of the experience cannot be properly verbalized, at least not by me. But I had the experience. I was there. I let go.