This seven-day training retreat explores the basic elements of Breathwork workshops: group process, intensified breathing, evocative music, focused bodywork, expressive art, and integration and closure. We will explore the history of depth psychology and its culmination in Transpersonal Psychology as a crucial backdrop. The format includes three Breathwork sessions, supplemented with lectures, discussion, group sharing and processing. The training concludes with hosting a public weekend breathwork workshop.
Lecture, discussion topics, and references are available here: Syllabus: Overview of Dreamshadow Transpersonal Breathwork
The schedule for the seven-day training is available here: Daily Schedule: Overview of Dreamshadow Transpersonal Breathwork.
Instructions for participants:
Introductory Talk – Theoretical Points
Cartography and dimensions of the psyche.
The nature and architecture of emotional and psychosomatic disorders.
Therapeutic mechanisms and the process of healing.
The strategy of psychotherapy and self-exploration.
The role of spirituality (distinct from religion) in human life.
The diverse nature of reality.
Introduction to Holotropic Breathwork (PDF Format).
Introduction to Holotropic Breathwork (PowerPoint Format).
Introductory Talk – Practical Points (Technique/Mechanics)
Technique Summary
Antonio Damasio
“This is Descartes’ error: the abyssal separation between body and mind, between the sizable, dimensioned, mechanically operated, infinitely divisible body stuff, on the one hand, and the unsizable, undimensioned, un-pushpullable, nondivisible mind stuff; the suggestion that reasoning, and moral judgment, and the suffering that comes from physical pain or emotional upheaval might exist separately from the body.”
Integration, Music
Expressive drawing
Archetypes
The varieties of non-ordinary experience
Integration of extraordinary experience into ongoing living
Reading:
Grof, Holotropic Breathwork, chapter 5
Grof, Psychology of the Future, chapters 6, 7, 8, and 9.
Jung, Mandala Symbolism, from Volume 9i Collected Works
Music
Characterization for use in Breathwork sessions
Some elementary musical concepts
Sound systems
Breathwork Music Suggestions
Reading:
Grof, Holotropic Breathwork, pp. 32-37
Grof, Psychology of the Future, pp.186-194
Closing considerations
Ongoing nature of the process
Go easy, revisit mandalas (see story about Lenny’s mandala)
Facilitator transparency, availability
Feedback/comments