Stanislav Grof - Holotropic Breathwork: A New Approach to Self-Exploration and Therapy

HOLOTROPICBREATHWORK A New Approach to Self-Exploration and Therapy STANISLAV GROF & CHRISTINA GROF Foreword by Jack Kornfield excelsior editions State University of New York Press Albany, New York CONTENTS FOREWORD ix

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xix 1. Sigmund Freud and the dawn of depth psychology 2- Humanistic psychology and experiential therapies 3. The advent of psychedelic therapy 4. Abraham Maslow, Anthony Sutich, and the birth of transpersonal psychology 1. Holotropic states of consciousness 2. Dimensions of the human psyche 3.

The nature, function, and architecture of emotional and psychosomatic disorders 4. Effective therapeutic mechanisms 5. Strategy of psychotherapy and self-exploration 6. The role of spirituality in human life 7. The nature of reality; Psyche, cosmos, and consciousness

1. The healing power of breath 2.

The therapeutic potential of music 3. The use of releasing bodywork 4. Supportive and nourishing physical contact 5. Mandala drawing: The expressive power of art CONTENTS

1. Use of Holotropic Breathwork in individual sessions and groups 2. Setting and interpersonal support system 3.

Theoretical preparation of participants 4. Screening for physical and emotional contraindications 5. Practical instructions for breathwork sessions 6. Preparation for the session and the relaxation exercise 7. Conducting Holotropic Breathwork sessions 8. The spectrum of holotropic experiences 9- The role of the facilitators 10.

Mandala drawing and the processing groups

1. Creating conditions for optimal integration 2. Easing the transition to everyday life 3. Conducting follow-up interviews 4. Using various methods complementing Holotropic Breathwork 1, Encounter with the military junta in Buenos Aires 2. Competing with the exhibition of Doberman pinschers 3.

Culture-bound challenges for Holotropic Breathwork facilitators 4. Technological ordeals in Holotropic Breathwork sessions 5, The pisspot, oinking piglets, and smoldering Kleenexes 6. Supreme ordeal Down Under 7. Conducting Holotropic Breathwork in adversarial settings

1. Healing of emotional and psychosomatic disorders 2. Favorable effect on physical diseases 3.

Effect on personality, worldview, life strategy, and hierarchy of values 129 4. Potential for healing of cultural wounds and historical Conflict resolution

1. Intensification of conventional therapeutic mechanisms 2. Dynamic shifts in the psyche's governing systems CONTENTS 3. The therapeutic potential of the death-rebirth process 4 The therapeutic mechanisms on the transpersonal level 5. Healing as a movement toward wholeness 1.

Biochemical and physiological changes 2. Holotropic Breathwork and the hyperventilation syndrome" 3. Psychodynamics of psychosomatic disorders

1. Training of Holotropic Breathwork facilitators 2. Holotropic Breathwork and the academic community 3. Benefits of the holotropic perspective 4.

Holotropic states of consciousness and the current global crisis APPENDIX 1 Special Situations and Interventions in Holotropic Breathwork Sessions 1. The experience of choking and of pressure on the chest 2. Experience of muscular tensions and spasms 3. Problems related to blockages in the genital area, sex, and nudity 4 Overactive, erratic, and aggressive behavior 5. Working with demonic energy 6. Excessive self-control and inability to let go 7.

Working with nausea and the tendency to vomit 8. Standing and dancing in the sessions 9. Reliving the memory of biological birth APPENDIX I Holotropic Breathwork and Other Breathing Techniques BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX ABOUT GROF TRANSPERSONAL TRAINING FOREWORD You hold in your hands a visionary book, one that offers a new understanding of healing, mental health, and human potential, along with powerful techniques to bring about these transformations. Developing such an integrated understanding, which combines science, experience, and spirit is critical for the twenty-first century. The prevailing materialistic culture has created a divided world where the sacred is relegated to churches and temples, the body to the gym, mental health to pills from the pharmacy. Economic growth is pursued as if it had nothing to do with the environment and ignorance, racism, and warfare continue to separate people and nations.

These divisions and the great suffering they produce result from a restricted and limited human consciousness. Through decades of their work, Christina and Stan have developed a psychology that reintegrates the fractured consciousness of the world. They offer a psychology of the future, one that expands our human possibility and reconnects us with one another and the cosmos. In forging this new paradigm, they exemplify the courageous and prophetic spirit of pioneers and join a handful of remarkable figures who have helped the field of psychology grow in revolutionary new ways. This book is foremost a detailed guide to the experience and practice of Holotropic Breathwork, but it is more than that. It outlines the radical vision of this new psychology.

To begin with, it includes one of the widest possible maps of the human psyche I have ever encountered. Within it the full breadth of human experience is valued and integrated. Just the knowledge of this map, presented in the beginning of their workshops by Stan and Christina, has a beneficial effect on those present. It includes, validates, and integrates such a wide range of experience that healing takes place in the hearts of some who simply hear this map. The holotropic map of human experience is not just theoretical, it is born out of extensive clinical and experimental experience. To witness a FOREWORD x large group practicing Holotropic Breathwork is to see a remarkable range of experiences, with practitioners reliving any stage of their own history or entering the realms of archetypes, of animals, of birth and death.

Being present at a group breathwork session is like entering into Dantes Divine Comedy, with the realms of Paradiso, Purgatorio, and Inferno all on display as breathers go through the profound process of breathing, healing, and awakening. In Holotropic Breathwork the field of mental health and therapy is expanded. Most of the medical modes of Western psychology have been limited to the study of pathology. While new understandings of psychopathology are discovered in this work, the Grofs offer a comprehensive vision of mental Health and of human growth potential that extends the range of psychology to dimensions of the perinatal, the transpersonal, the transcultural, and mystical. Their work organically incorporates the indigenous wisdom of shamanism and the natural world, the cultural and historical basis of consciousness, and the far-reaching breadth of modern physics and systems theory. In it, the personal and the universal are equally valued, the physical and the biographical, the cultural, evolutionary, and spiritual dimensions of our humanity are included.

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