What Is An Ego Death And How Can It Help You Transcend?

Wellness practices come in all shapes, sizes and potencies and an online wellness consultant can explore various options for tailored, holistic steps to help you reach where you want to be in your life, your mind and your soul.

Holistic yoga practices can be particularly powerful for some people, and any type of practice that serves to separate the mental self from the physical body can lead to a dissolution of the self as you previously recognised it.

This is often known as “ego death” and whilst not everyone experiences it and everyone who does tends to experience it quite profoundly differently, it is a phenomenon recognised not only in holistic yoga but also in psychology and psychiatry, the latter of which is typically induced through psychedelic medication.

An ego death, or psychic death as Karl Jung described it, is a reset deep within yourself, breaking down and dissolving your state of being and all of the foundations that shape your subjective sense of identity before building back up again.

During that period, there is a strong connection between yourself and the universe, free from the bounds and barriers that keep us all separated, and exactly how positive or negative this experience will be for you will depend largely on how prepared you are and the circumstances for ego death.

Carefully managed by a yoga or meditation practitioner, it can be a truly enlightening and uplifting experience, one that allows you to reset yourself and find perspective in the world, even seeing a side of yourself and your reality that you could never find within your conscious self.

Being liberated from your fears and anxieties about your sense of self can be delightfully freeing and help you start again without the fears of the past acting like a mental drag.

However, ego death is not always something consciously entered into. A study in 2021 found that people who have faced near-death experiences have felt the same ego dissolution, as have people who take certain kinds of medication.

The results in these cases can still be positive but many of the characteristic elements of ego death, such as the loss of a sense of individuality, an altered perspective on time and space, vividly seeing dreamline images and a powerful enforced reflection of the self outside the self can be disorientating, scary and even overwhelming.

This is why more powerful meditative practices are best done with the supervision of an expert or coach who knows what you are likely to expect and can provide a safe, calming and relaxing environment to ensure that the experience is as positive as possible.

A lot of wellness is about mindset, whether that is shifting a mindset or coming into certain sessions with the right mindset for it, and this is particularly important when it comes to ego death.

An ego-dissolution experience always leaves a mark on the people who feel it, and it is being increasingly studied as a potential way to help with conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety and addiction, alongside conventional therapeutic treatments.