After the breathing session, breathers are encouraged to do a “mandala” (Mandala is a Sanskrit word meaning literally “circle” or “completion”) as part of their integration process. Breathers go to a room where there are art supplies such as pastels, magic markers and watercolors, as well as large drawing pads. On the sheets of paper are light pencil drawings of circles about the size of a dinner plate. These barely visible circles are there to help the breathers focus on their experience and express it in a concise way. However, they may completely ignore the circle and stretch their drawings to the very edges of the page if they desire.
The instructions for the breathers are to sit down, meditate on their experience, and then find a way of expressing what happened to them during the session. The mandalas are later used in the sharing group as a visual (“right brain”) complement to the verbal accounts of the participants describing their experiences in the breathwork sessions. There are no specific guidelines for mandala drawings. Some people prefer formless color combinations capturing the general atmosphere or emotional tone of their sessions, others construct geometrical mandalas or make figurative drawings and paintings.