About Holotropic Breathwork™

Events that occur in our personal history, in the circumstances of our birth, or in transpersonal realms can create constrictions that impede our flow of creative energy. These constrictions may keep us from attaining the personal wholeness, community feeling, and intelligence of spirit that brings fullness and satisfaction to life. Consequently we may experience difficulty with our interpersonal relationships and lack a sense of life's purpose. We may also feel stress, anxiety, or physical discomforts conventional medicine cannot relieve.

By encouraging understanding that talking and thinking ordinarily cannot uncover, Holotropic Breathwork offers a powerful way to resolve these problems. It helps overcome such feelings as stuck, trapped, blocked, or burdened that keep us from achieving our full potential.

"Holotropic" means literally "turning toward wholeness." Holotropic Breathwork uses a combination of intense breathing, evocative music, work with the body, expressive drawing, and group sharing to promote the self-healing that brings wholeness. In our deep experience each of us knows the sources of our problems better than any expert. This workshop provides a safe setting to explore the depths of the self and experience catharsis through profound physical and emotional release. The setting, the group, and the experience of the facilitators assure support and protection for resolving any difficulties participants encounter during their inner journeys.

Stanislav Grof, M.D., and his wife Christina created Holotropic Breathwork at Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. They drew from his ground-breaking psychedelic research in Prague, Czechoslovakia, and at Johns Hopkins University, as Chief of Reaserch at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center. They also used material gleaned from Eastern disciplines, including Yoga, from practices of indigenous peoples, from depth psychology, and from intense experiential psychotherapies. The Grofs have refined Holotropic Breathwork over the course of more than forty thousand participant sessions.