Holotropic breathing according to Stanislav Grof. Holotropic Breathwork - A Revolutionary Method C

Stanislav Grof, without exaggeration, is called a living classic, Freud of the 21st century.

He still personally conducts trainings around the world (recently passed such a training in Moscow - "The adventure of discovering oneself") and teaches at the California Institute of Integral Studies. He looks much younger than his 78 years. During sessions of "holotropic breathing" Grof was "born" again more than four thousand times. This is the number of sessions that the pioneering psychiatrist has conducted in his more than 45 years of practice. Thousands of times returned to the mind of a newborn - maybe that's why he looks so young?

Grof has written more than ten scientific and educational books, created a successfully functioning International Transpersonal Organization, trained more than one hundred thousand certified teachers ... Millions of people around the world have attended his trainings. The holder of the highest scientific degrees and prestigious awards, Grof is, in addition, a very wealthy person. It would seem that you can already "retire" and rest on your laurels! But no.

One of Grof's books is called "The Frantic Search for Oneself" (1990): this is what he realizes in his own example - "eternal fight" with a shadow, the search for perfection. According to Grof, the "frantic search for oneself" is a problem facing only spiritually fragmented individuals, and then only until a cure. In the course of practice, it turns into another task facing mentally healthy people - the super-task of expanding consciousness, spiritual evolution.

As Grof points out from his own "journeys" into the unconscious (or, more accurately, "superconscious") and from his observation of thousands of "journeys" taken by his patients, there are three ways to go beyond this limit: taking LSD (which is an illegal drug), the method of holotropic breathing proposed by Grof and the psycho-spiritual crisis, or "spiritual exacerbation". What these three situations have in common, as Grof writes in the preface to The Call of the Jaguar (2001), is that they cause unusual states of consciousness, including the subspecies of them that he calls "holotropic", that is, beyond, in difference from ordinary experience, which he calls "hylotropic", that is, earthly. The term "holotropic" is derived from the Greek roots holos, meaning "whole," and trepein, meaning "to move in a direction." Together they mean "to move towards wholeness".

Grof notes in "The Call of the Jaguar" that in psychedelic therapy (now banned, but legal in Grof's younger years), such states were caused by the use of psychoactive drugs, including LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, tryptamine, amphetamine derivatives (DMT, ecstasy and etc.). In the method of holotropic breathing, developed by Grof and his wife Christina in 1975, a combination of the so-called connected breathing is used to change consciousness (when there is no pause between inhalation and exhalation, exhalation and inhalation) and music that introduces into a state of trance (often ethnic, tribal : African drums, Tibetan pipes, etc.); sometimes additional work with the body is applied. In the case of "spiritual exacerbations," holotropic states occur spontaneously, Grof notes, and their causes are usually unknown. Thus, the third method is uncontrolled, the first is illegal: only holotropic breathing remains.

Grof conducted his research for more than forty-five years. He began with experiments with LSD. After the discovery of the psychotropic properties of the drug in 1943, it was assumed for some time that it causes symptoms similar to schizophrenia (and therefore was recommended for use by psychotherapists), but this hypothesis was subsequently refuted. After the prohibition of this drug in the United States in the late 1960s, Grof began to use the method of special holotropic breathing in his research, in which he actively used the experience gained during experiments with psychoactive drugs (including precautions).

Perhaps the prototype of the specific breathing used in the holotropic method was the rapid breathing of Grof's patients under LSD - in the case when the problem that emerged from the depths of the subconscious could not be immediately worked out, integrated into a healthy psyche. Such breathing helped them to remain in an expanded state of consciousness and discharge the psychological material that manifested itself in the form of unpleasant symptoms. So the "bad trip" turned into a method of psychotherapy.

Research in the field of psychedelic therapy and personal experience holotropic breathwork allowed Grof to discover that behind the "last frontier" of human consciousness - the consciousness of the embryo - there is no blank wall (as a materialist might assume, based on the assumption that human life is limited to the interval between conception and death). Behind this "wall", as Grof found out, there is also life, more precisely, many forms of life. There lie "superhuman" worlds, where time and space, the limitations of brain memory and the current human birth in general cease to be limiting factors. Namely, they cease to restrain what always lives inside us and conducts its "frantic search" both before and after our physical death. In some philosophical and religious systems this "something" is called "soul", "consciousness", "true Self".

But even this, empirical, accessible to everyone proof of the existence of "life after death", is the most surprising in Grof's experiments. The main thing, from the height of spiritual, superhuman consciousness, it becomes obvious: the boundaries of the human and those psychological barriers that cause various pathological effects that prevent a person from becoming himself, and then go further, rise above himself - these boundaries are not created by a whim of fate and are fueled by no one - by an evil will, but by the person himself - more precisely, by his false, limited self-identification.

That is, it turns out that we ourselves do our best to keep our “doors of perception” locked, preventing true health, prosperity and freedom from entering them. A person spends very significant forces on maintaining his mental barriers, much more than he can afford! And these forces can be used much more rationally and profitably. For example, these forces, with which a person keeps his "doors of perception" shut, could help him in his journey through these doors, and therefore allow him to become a happy and spiritually developed person. And even more than that - to step further, beyond the boundaries of the human, which we, it turns out, have established for ourselves.

In fact, Grof for his long life created a whole new direction of not just psychoanalysis, but a total super-humanistic psycho-correction, which can be useful to everyone. From the point of view of Stanislav Grof, it would not hurt us all to "treat" according to his method - after all, it must be admitted that even the most healthy people are far from the ideals that spiritually developed personalities, teachers of mankind, enlightened mystics demonstrate in terms of the level of consciousness. And he is not a mystic, he just sets the bar higher, much higher than is usually done in psychotherapy.

He draws our attention to the tragic gap between what mankind aspired to and the post-humanistic, mechanistic society that it has now arrived at. Grof, himself a professional physician, doctor of medicine, a psychiatrist with fifty years of experience, who grew up in the school of traditional psychoanalysis, notes that modern science sins with one-sidedness, bordering on blindness. traditional medicine stubbornly turns a blind eye to the fact that the problem of a person's mental health is organically connected with the problem of his spiritual development, even more than that, she actually opposes these processes. Everything that goes beyond the traditional worldview, limited by very narrow limits, receives the label of "abnormality". In one of his interviews, Grof notes: " From the point of view of modern medicine, it turns out that if we discard the rituals, leaving only specific behavior and unusual states of consciousness, then any religion and spirituality in general is a pure pathology, a form of mental disorder. Buddhist meditation, from the point of view of a psychiatrist, is catatonic, Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa was a schizophrenic, St. John the Baptist was a degenerate, and Gautama Buddha - since he was still, so to speak, capable of adequate behavior - at least stood on the verge of insanity ..."

One of the problems of modern medicine, according to Grof, is that it tends to consider any altered states of consciousness that occur under certain circumstances in completely healthy people as pathological manifestations or even one of the symptoms of schizophrenia. In fact, medicine is now powerless to distinguish a prophetic vision (examples of which are offered to us by the scriptures of different peoples of the world: the Bible, the Koran, the Torah, the Bhagavad Gita, etc.) from a painful schizophrenic delirium, a drug trance from a religious trance. Where, then, to draw the boundary of "normal"? And the question that follows from here is: where do we draw the border of the “real”, what is the reality in which we live in general? And who are we really, what can and what can not the so-called "man"?

Grof began his medical career with traditional psychoanalysis according to Freud, but soon, in the course of his practice, he realized the one-sidedness of the traditional approach: after all, a Freudian is forced to reduce everything to sexual desire, libido, supposedly the main driving force of a person. But the most important thing that did not suit Grof was that the method of verbal-oriented "speaking" on a leather couch in itself, although it leads, if successful, to making an accurate diagnosis and identifying the event that caused the pathology, is not always effective for actually ridding the patient of oppression. this event and the actual pathological symptoms. Gradually, he came to understand that not just a formal recollection, but a direct re-experiencing of these key events - including the most traumatic event in the life of any person - his own birth - is much better able to help both in curing the disease and expanding consciousness. .

It should be noted right away that modern medicine does not confirm the fact that a person can remember his own birth, and even more so intrauterine experience. In fact, on the contrary, there is evidence that the human brain is not able to remember anything that happened to the body up to two years. However, the experience of Grof and millions of people who use holotropic breathwork suggests otherwise. To understand "how deep the rabbit hole" that Grof pointed out, it must be noted that people's experiences in holotropic breathing sessions are not limited to perinatal (experienced at the time of birth) or even prenatal (embryonic, intrauterine) experiences. It includes extremely vivid and unusual experiences, experiences that, before the invention of this technique, were available only to advanced mystics and saints of various denominations. In particular, this is the activation of the chakras, experiences of past incarnations, foresight, clairvoyance and clairaudience, identification with other persons, with animals, plants, objects and even all creations at once (Mother Nature), the entire planet Earth, moreover, experiences of meetings with superhuman and spiritual, divine, as well as beings from other universes…

Unlike prenatal and perinatal memories, which in a number of cases were actually confirmed, it is not possible to refute or confirm such experiences. Just as, say, it is impossible to find out whether the Catholic saint, the founder of the Jesuit order, Ignatius de Loyola, in his meditations really comprehended the torments of Christ on the cross! Science, as mentioned above, in such cases simply cannot fix the fundamental difference between "true" and "false".

As one of the researchers (and followers) of Grof, Vladimir Maikov, notes in his article "The World of Stanislav Grof", the same law of the uncertainty relation, which the outstanding German physicist W. Heisenberg discovered in the quantum world, is applicable to the world of psychology, the world of human souls: the more precisely we try to determine the coordinates of an event, the more uncertain becomes our knowledge of what actually happened.

Moreover, physics has now come to understand that at the most microscopic level it is impossible to conduct research without making changes in the properties of the material. If, for example, an ingot of gold can be measured as much as one likes without prejudice to the "subject", then, say, one quark of gold will inevitably undergo significant changes. In addition, microscopic particles, the constituent parts of matter, are more of a process, a wave, than a material particle ... The same is with in-depth studies of the human psyche - with a sufficiently deep immersion in this issue, a person, as it were, ceases to be a person, but appears as a kind of evolution of consciousness , taken in a certain approximation, and only in this approximation is he a man.

For example, someone begins to practice holotropic breathing in order to get rid of psychological trauma or to overcome a life crisis. Finally, he sees and with more than available in ordinary life clearly experiences, say, his own birth, that is, as if born again. Having survived and integrated (dissolved) this trauma, he goes deeper and deeper, revealing other — perinatal — traumas. Experiences, integrates and them. The possibilities of "remembering" in this particular body are, as it were, exhausted; psychological trauma, it would seem, too. But then strange things begin to happen: a person plunges into experiences outside the body, outside this life, experiences other incarnations, experiences of a planetary, non-human consciousness, and finally, the experience of the birth of the Universe, then ... An infinity of perspective opens up to him - which actually existed always and everywhere. In fact, everything that made him human disappears, V. Maikov concludes, noting the paradox: often, Grof’s patients experienced complete mental healing only after experiencing precisely these “beyond”, out-of-body and extraterrestrial experiences ...

In general, it turns out that the whole focus is on what we identify ourselves with.

The fact remains that hundreds of thousands of people have found healing for their mental illnesses and emotional problems during Holotropic Breathwork sessions. And Stan Grof - perhaps the greatest "psychonaut" of the planet - does not slow down the pace of his research and psychotherapeutic work, which, in fact, is a "frantic search" for the superhuman: the eternal search for the Divine. As Heisenberg liked to say, "P An atheist takes the first sip from a glass of science, but God waits at the bottom of the glass". Because the truth is somewhere out there, at the bottom of the rabbit hole.

Holotropic Breathwork- This is a special breathing technique used in psychotherapy to realize the experiences repressed into the subconscious. The very technique of holotropic breathing consists in intense rapid breathing, which results in hyperventilation of the lungs. Hyperventilation, in turn, leads to constriction of cerebral vessels, shutdown of the cerebral cortex and inclusion of the subcortex into active work.

Holotropic Breathwork in Psychotherapy

Holotrope was invented by psychotherapists Stanislav and Christina Grof as a replacement for psychotropic drugs used in psychotherapeutic sessions to release experiences repressed from consciousness. Stanislav Grof noticed that under the influence of psychoactive drugs, when heavy emotions that were not previously realized rise to the surface of consciousness, a person begins to breathe more often and deeper. Further studies have shown that such breathing itself leads to the same effect as the use of drugs. Therefore, after the prohibition of psychoactive substances, Stanislav and Christina Grof replaced them with the practice of holotropic breathing.

In itself, rapid breathing, turning off the protective mechanisms of the psyche, allows us to see and discharge the psychological material that our mental defense hides from us in our everyday state.

Holotropic Breathwork Technique

Holotropic Breathwork is faster and deeper breathing. The usual instruction does not include clear parameters for frequency and depth, but suggests finding your own individual approach in the process of practice. To a greater extent, the technique is an immersion in one's experiences and an analysis of the experience gained. Also great importance has music that serves to stimulate the desired state of consciousness in the practitioner.

In total, there are four components of the holotropic breathing technique.

1) Deep rapid and rhythmic breathing through the mouth with no pause between inhalation and exhalation

2) Musical accompaniment to stimulate the process

3) Dive into deep experiences emerging from the subconscious

4) Analysis and expression of the experience gained in the form of drawings or other creative process

Holotropic breathing is performed in pairs: a practitioner (holonaut) and a sitter. The sitter is there to monitor the situation, to guide the practitioner, to help release muscle cramps, and for safety. Usually two sessions are performed in one day, first one breathes, the second insures, and then they change.

A holonaut is a person who practices holotropic breathing.

Let's take a closer look at the execution technique:

So, remember the three main characteristics of breathing:

• breathing only through the mouth
• rhythmic
• deep
• frequent
• chest breathing only
• quick sharp inhalation and relaxed exhalation

The session itself looks like this:

• Lie on your back, spread your arms and legs freely as you like
• Turn on music specially selected for the session (there are ready-made collections on the Internet)
• Close your eyes and do not open them during the session
• Breathe as described above for a few minutes.
• Focus on breathing technique and body sensations
• Do not be distracted by thoughts and images, keep your attention on your breath and body
• If you experience cramps or severe tension, try to relieve tension and relax with the help of images.
• The effectiveness of the session depends on how well you can relax.
• After completing the breathing practice, you need to lie down relaxed for at least 30 minutes.

How to do holotropic breathing yourself at home

• Set aside time around 1.5 - 2 hours, make sure that nothing distracts you during the session
• Ventilate the room for the session, find a space so that you can lie freely on your back with your arms and legs outstretched
• Play preselected music for the session
• Use a holotropic session to resolve a specific psychological problem, decide which problem you want to solve
• Use the breathing technique described above to enter an altered state of consciousness.

How long does it take for Holotropic Breathwork to work?

It usually takes about 20 minutes to breathe in order to enter the desired state. For the next 20 minutes, we continue to breathe, experiencing everything that pops up in consciousness, then 20 minutes is the peak of the session and the release of mental problems, then we rest and try to become aware of the experience.

Practicing Holotropic Breathwork

What is Holotropic Breathwork for? The result of practice should be the manifestation of blocks. They can manifest as bodily clamps that need to be relaxed. This is where the sitter can help by lightly pressing and massaging the area of ​​the bodily block. Blocks can also come out in the form of pictures in the mind, thoughts and emotions. Forgotten events from life, fears or other sensations may come up in memory. Your task is simply to experience the entire stream of consciousness, and after the session, express it in a free form using drawing, modeling from plasticine or any other creativity.

How often should Holotropic Breathwork be practiced? It is recommended that you practice Holotropic Breathwork by following your own feelings of need. The answer to this question will be very individual for each person.

Stanislav Grof, Christina Grof

Holotropic Breathwork: new approach towards self-exploration and therapy

HOLOTROPIC BREATHWORK

A NEW APPROACH TO THERAPY AND SELF-EXPLORATion

© 2010, Stanislav and Christina Grof.

Publishers thank Alexandra Koposova, whose financial aid and friendly support made this book possible

Translation from English Alexandra Kiseleva

Scientific edition Ph.D. n. Vladimir Maykov

Jack Kornfield. Foreword

You hold in your hands a prophetic book offering new insights into healing, mental health, and human potential along with powerful techniques to achieve these goals. The development of this kind of comprehensive understanding that combines science, experience and spirit is crucial for the twenty-first century.

The dominant materialistic culture has created a divided world where the sacred is the province of churches and temples, the body is the province of gyms, and mental health is the province of pharmacy pills. Economic growth is seen as an end in itself, having nothing to do with the environment and ignorance; racism and wars continue to divide peoples and countries. These divisions and the enormous suffering they generate come from the narrow and limited human consciousness.

Through decades of work, Stan and Christina have created a psychology that restores the fragmented consciousness of the world. They offer a future psychology that expands our human capabilities and reconnects us with each other and with the cosmos. In forging this new paradigm, they exemplify the courageous and prophetic spirit of the pioneers and are among the few people who helped revolutionize the field of psychology.

This book is primarily detailed guide on the experience and practice of Holotropic Breathwork, but is far from limited to this. She describes a radical vision of this new psychology. To begin with, it includes one of the widest possible maps of the human psyche that I have ever seen. The very knowledge of this card, which Stan and Christina present at the beginning of their seminars, has a beneficial effect on those present. It includes, confirms, and integrates such a wide range of experiences that there is healing in the hearts of some who simply become acquainted with it.

The holotropic map of human experience is not only theoretical, it is born from a wide clinical and experimental experience. To observe a large group of Holotropic Breathwork practitioners is to see an amazing range of experiences in which the breathers relive any stage of their own history or enter the realms of archetypes, animals, birth and death. Being present in a group breathwork session is like stepping into Dante's Divine Comedy, where one can see the realms of Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell as the breathers go through a deep process of breathing, healing, and awakening.

Holotropic Breathwork expands the field of mental health and therapy. Most medical models of Western psychology have been limited to the study of pathology. Opening in their work a new understanding of psychopathology, the Grofs offer a comprehensive vision of mental health and the potential of human development, expanding the range of psychology to the perinatal, transpersonal, transcultural and mystical dimensions. Their work organically incorporates the natural 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. It values ​​the personal and the universal equally, including the physical and biographical, cultural, evolutionary and spiritual dimensions of our human nature.

The ideas behind Holotropic Breathwork also radically redefine the role of the healer, who goes from being a "healer-specialist", a doctor who knows better how to treat an ignorant patient, to a "healer-midwife". In this role, the healer guards, facilitates and supports the patient's own deep and natural healing process. With this new approach, it is not the therapist, psychiatrist or healer who is considered wise, but the human psyche, the wisdom of which the healer maintains and leads to flowering.

As evidenced by the cases described here, Holotropic Breathwork has an amazing therapeutic effect. From the unfolding of this powerful process, healing of illness, anxiety, depression and conflict, alleviation and healing of trauma and abuse, reunion with family and community, unfolding of compassion, forgiveness, courage and love, return of purpose, finding our lost soul and the highest insights of spiritual understanding are spontaneously born. .

While prophetic, this book also serves as a practical guide for breathers, sitters, and facilitators. Using practical examples, Stan and Christina offer instructions for Holotropic Breathwork - how to introduce the practice, how to care for and protect participants, how to deal with unexpected difficulties, and how to integrate these experiences into daily life. They speak clearly of the importance of release and healing through complementary bodywork practice and detail the roles of music, art and storytelling that are essential to breathwork.

I have been fortunate to learn from and work with Stan and Christina for thirty-five years. During his training as Buddhist monk in Burma, Thailand and India, I was first introduced to powerful breathing practices and visionary realms of consciousness. I was glad to find in the work of the Grofs an effective analogue of these practices in the Western world. I have always cherished my involvement in the development of Holotropic Breathwork from its early stages to its current form, and have developed a deep respect for the international community of practitioners that has grown out of it.

In Holotropic Breathwork, Stan and Christina have combined scientific and intellectual understanding, masculine and feminine, ancient and post-modern wisdom and made their work and curriculum available on all continents. I believe that in time their achievements will be considered a major contribution to psychology and to the healing of the world.

Jack Kornfield

Spirit Rock Meditation Center

Where to begin? Over the years, as we have developed, practiced, and taught Holotropic Breathwork and presented our work around the world, we have received invaluable emotional, physical, and financial support from many friends, colleagues, and participants in our programs. We would need another volume to mention them all by name; here we express our sincere and humble gratitude to all these people.

However, there are a few individuals whose contribution to our work has been so essential and vital that they deserve special mention. Cathy Altman and Lori Saltzman provided the necessary organizational management and gentle leadership in the formation and launch of our training program. They offered us their support and practical assistance when we entered new territories, and for this we are eternally grateful to them.

We are deeply indebted to Tav and Cary Sparks, our close friends and collaborators, who have played key roles in organizing and running many of our conferences, workshops and trainings over the years. Both Cary and Tav became certified breathwork facilitators in 1988 in our very first training program. In the years that followed, they were very active in Grof's Transpersonal Training (TTT) program - Tev as co-facilitator of many of the workshops and training modules, and Carey as leader and administrator of most of these activities.

Holotropic Breathwork is the most powerful and effective breathing technique used in modern psychology and psychotherapy, among which well-known techniques are rebirthing, waving and free breathing techniques. Holotropic Breathwork was developed in the 1970s by Stanislav Grof, an American psychologist born in Czechoslovakia, and his wife Kristina, as a legal alternative to psychedelic therapy. Holotropic breathing is the only breathing technique for which a serious psychological theoretical base has been developed. This is due to the fact that S. Grof, in contrast to the founders of rebirthing L. Orr and vending D. Leonard, is a professional in the field of medicine and psychology.

A Brief History of Holotropic Breathwork.

Stanislav Grof, being a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, began to conduct research activities with LSD in the mid-1950s. Quite quickly, he was convinced of the great psychotherapeutic effect of psychedelic sessions. Continuing his research, Grof was faced with the need to revise the Freudian model of the psyche in which he was brought up, and build a new cartography of consciousness to describe the effects that occur during psychedelic sessions. Having created such a model, he described it in his numerous works. When experiments with psychoactive substances were closed, Grof began to look for a technique similar in therapeutic effect. And in 1975, together with Christina Grof, he discovered and registered a breathing technique, which he called "holotropic breathing." Since 1975, this technique has gained more and more popularity among psychotherapists and people interested in personal growth and spiritual development.

In 1973, Dr. Grof was invited to the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, where he lived until 1987, doing writing, giving lectures, seminars, including seminars to which he invited interesting specialists from various scientific and spiritual directions. While working at Esalen, Stanislav and Christina Grof developed the holotropic breathing technique. Against the backdrop of a political ban on the use of psychoactive substances (PS) for psychotherapeutic purposes, Stanislav and Christina Grof used intensive breathing in their work. The prototype of the breathing technique of S. and K. Grof was the breathing methods that existed in various spiritual and psychological practices, as well as breathing similar to that observed in patients during a psychedelic session if the problem was not worked out to the end and the patients began to breathe spontaneously and intensively. Such breathing was necessary in order to continue to remain in an altered (expanded) state of consciousness and to refine (discharge) the psychological material that had risen from the unconscious and reacted in the form of symptoms.

Once, while working in Esalen, Grof pulled his back and was unable to conduct the process as usual. Then Stanislav came up with the idea to split the group into pairs and hold not one, but two breathing sessions and let the participants of the seminar help each other. During the first session, one person breathes (holonaut), and the second one helps him (sitter, nurse, assistant), during the second they change places. This practice proved to be the most effective.

History reference

Holotropic breathing was officially authorized and registered by the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation in 1993 as one of the 28 methods of psychotherapy.

The theoretical basis of holotropic breathing is transpersonal psychology.

The main elements of holotropic breathing are:

• deeper and faster connected breathing than in the normal state;
• stimulating music;
• assistance to the holonaut in releasing energy through specific methods of working with the body.

These elements are complemented by creative self-expression of the individual, such as mandala drawing, free dancing, clay modeling, therapeutic sandbox play.

The best thing about holotropic breathing is probably in the book Frantic Search for Self by Stanislav and Christina Grof:

“The last shadows of our doubts were completely dispelled in the mid-seventies, when we developed a method of deep empirical self-exploration and therapy, which we now call Holotropic Breathwork, and began to use it systematically in our seminars.

Holotropic breathing combines such simple means as accelerated breathing, music and specially selected sounds, as well as certain types of body work, is capable of generating the whole range of experiences that we usually observe during psychedelic sessions. In Holotropic Breathwork, these experiences tend to be milder and the person is more able to control them, but they are essentially the same in content as those that occur during psychedelic sessions, although they are obtained without the help of any no matter the chemicals. The main catalyst here is not a powerful and mysterious psychoactive substance, but the most natural and fundamental physiological process imaginable - breathing.

Holotropic breathing is more intense, that is, frequent and deep, than usual. Usually no other specific instructions are given before or during the session, such as the speed, mode, or nature of breathing, for example. The experience is entirely internal, authentic and mostly non-verbal with minimal interference during active breathing. Exceptions are throat spasms, problems of loss of self-control, strong pain or fear preventing the continuation of the holotropic breathing session, as well as a direct request from the breather (holonaut) for intervention.

Effects of intense breathing

Altered (or holotropic) states of consciousness that occur during holotropic breathing have an extremely powerful healing (therapeutic) and transformative effect. Holotropic sessions in many cases bring to the surface difficult emotions and all sorts of unpleasant physical sensations. Their full manifestation makes it possible to free oneself from their disturbing influence. General rule Holotropic work is that the person gets rid of the problem by openly meeting it face to face and working through it. It is a process of clearing and releasing old traumas, which opens the way for very pleasant or even ecstatic and transcendent experiences and sensations.

Contraindications

In other cases, a person can take part in holotropic breathing sessions. However, if you have any doubts, consult the seminar leader and his assistants.

The roles of the sitter and the holonaut

Before starting the holotropic breathwork process, the participants are divided into pairs. During the breathing session, one person is a sitter (from the English sitter, nurse, assistant), the other is a holonaut (breathing).

Sitter tasks

The sitter plays the role of a person who assists his partner in the process of holotropic breathing.

Sitters during a holotropic breathwork session should be responsible and unobtrusive, which ensures efficiency, safety of the environment, respect for the natural unfolding of the experience, and provides assistance in all necessary situations. This can be physical support, help to go to the toilet, give a napkin, etc. It is important for sitters to remain focused, accepting the full range of the breather's possible emotions and behaviors. Holotropic Breathwork does not use any kind of intervention that comes from intellectual analysis or is based on a priori theoretical constructs.

Ensure the safety of your holonaut

For the sitter, at the time of the session of holotropic breathing, the holonaut is the most significant person.

If the holonaut begins to move intensively, the sitter's task is to protect his holonaut from physical damage. (For example, if your holonaut starts hitting the floor with his hand - put a blanket or pillow on it) If a neighboring holonaut can hit yours - you, like a sitter, become a wall enclosing your holonaut. Etc.

Provide Authentic Manifestation for Your Holonaut

The sitter's task is to create conditions under which nothing will disturb the flow of his holonaut's experiences. In particular, this means that the sitter should NOT UNDER ANY circumstances interfere with the process of the holonaut, unless he asks him to do so. Also, the sitter should not stare around and it is not recommended to talk, because. speaking can bring the breather out of the trance process.

Help the holonaut relieve tensions that arise during a session of holotropic breathing

Such assistance is provided ONLY AT THE REQUEST of the breather. Unless the holonaut asks for help, the sitter MUST NOT interfere.

Assistance in relieving physical stress is carried out either by providing static physical activity on tense muscles (this is given detailed instructions during training), or by kneading tense areas of the body. The latter method is not recommended because it: firstly, does not allow spasmodic areas to be discharged; secondly, the sitter "does the job FOR THE HOLONAUT".

Remind the holonaut to breathe

Sometimes a holonaut forgets about the need for intensive breathing at the active initial stage of the process. In this case, the sitter's task is to subtly remind you to breathe. Usually, to do this, the sitter begins to breathe in rhythm over the ear of the holonaut. It is IMPOSSIBLE to remind about breathing with words - you will destroy the experiences of the holonaut.

In the event that the holonaut wants to go to the toilet, the sitter's task is to accompany the holonaut there and back.

In case the sitter himself needs to go to the toilet, he should ask the neighboring sitters or one of the assistants of the presenter to look after his holonaut.

The sitter can dance around the holonaut or do something else. The only thing: the sitter is STRICTLY forbidden to breathe intensively himself - otherwise, instead of the sitter and the holonaut, TWO HOLONAUTS may appear.

It is forbidden to bring your own process into the process of a holonaut

A negative example given by S. Grof. Sitter (a woman), decided that her holonaut needed motherly love and, with tears in her eyes, hugged him while breathing. And her holonaut was worried at that time that he was a Viking fighting enemies. As a result, the flow of experiences of the holonaut was destroyed.

Holonaut tasks

The holonaut (breather) is the main protagonist of an exciting action called holotropic breathing. There is only one task for a holonaut - to enter an altered state of consciousness with the help of breathing and then to manifest oneself authentically (to be oneself).

What does it mean to "be yourself"? This means that if your body wants to move - move, if you want to cry - cry, if you want to laugh - laugh, if you want to sing obscene songs - sing obscene songs. If your breakfast asks to go outside - well, let it go out (this is not your problem - but the problem of the training leader). The task of the sitter is to ensure the freedom of your manifestations.

Breathing is a metaphor for energy exchange with the world and a metaphor for life: INHALE (receiving energy from the world) - PAUSE - EXHAUST (giving back) - PAUSE. During holotropic breathing, you can breathe as you like, that is, without pauses and with pauses, nose or mouth, chest and stomach. There is only one requirement for breathing, and that is authenticity. Breathing through your nose or your mouth, with or without an accent, doesn't matter. It's important to be authentic.

How deeper man breathes, the more powerful experiences go, the faster - the faster they change. How exactly to breathe is determined by the holonaut himself during breathing, and the rhythm, speed, frequency and depth can be changed at your discretion. If you breathe slowly and shallowly, then, most likely, there will be no intense experiences. A metaphor for holotropic work: how you work is what you get. Unlike rebirthing, the facilitator will not, at his own discretion, "support" you in the process of breathing.

It is difficult to breathe intensively for the first 10-15 minutes. Then the breather enters an altered state of consciousness (ASC) and it becomes easier to breathe intensively. After about an hour and a half, the holonaut stops breathing intensively and breathing returns to normal. You are unlikely to be able to force yourself to breathe intensively in 1.5-2 hours. There is an exception: schizophrenics, when entering intensive, can breathe for up to 5 hours.

During holotropic breathing, the holonaut can control the dynamics of breathing. In addition, the holonaut can always stop intense breathing - after about 5 minutes, the alkaline balance of the blood will return to normal and the person will become completely “normal”.

Sitter and Holonaut Memo

1. The Need for Focused Bodywork

Enough time must be allowed for a holotropic breathwork session. Traditionally, the process takes from one and a half to three hours. Approximately during this time, the process comes to its natural end, but in exceptional cases it can continue for several hours. At the end of the session and sometimes during the breathing process, the facilitator or siter provides support and offers body work in the event that all emotional and physical tensions activated during the session have not been resolved through breathing. The basic principle of this work is to, depending on what happens to the breather, create a situation that will exacerbate existing symptoms. While the energy and awareness are being held in the area of ​​tension and discomfort, the person should be encouraged to express himself fully in the discharge of symptoms, whatever form this may take. This body work during holotropic breathwork sessions is an essential part of the holotropic approach and plays an important role in the completion and integration of experiences.

After the holotropic breathwork session, both the sitter and the holonaut go to draw mandalas. Drawing is a creative display of your experiences. In addition, after a while, the holonaut speaks out his experiences.

3. Discussion

The group discussion takes place on the same day after a long break. During the discussion, the facilitator does not give any interpretations of the material based on any theoretical systems, including Holotropic Breathwork. It is better to ask the holonaut to further work through and clarify through reflection his insights received in the session of holotropic breathing. During the discussion, mythological and anthropological references in line with Jungian psychology can be useful, and mandalas can also be useful. There may be references to the personal experiences of presenters or other people.

Holotropic breathing, unlike vayveyshn, CANNOT be practiced on your own, and even more so at home and alone (there is no sitter, there is no intense music).

Musical support of holotropic breathing

The choice of music supports characteristic stages that reflect the most general features of the unfolding of a holotropic experience. Music for holotropic breathwork serves as a catalyst for experiences and has requirements for intensity and format. Music and/or other forms of acoustic stimulation - drumming, tambourines, natural sounds, etc. is an integral part of the holotropic process. At the beginning of the holotropic breathwork process, it is motivating and stimulating, then it becomes more and more dramatic and dynamic, and then it expresses a breakthrough. After the climax, the music gradually becomes more and more calm and at the end - peaceful, flowing, flowing and meditative. The development of the process described above is statistically average and should be changed depending on the group dynamics.

Approximate structure of musical accompaniment of a holotropic session breathing

Generalized material on Holotropic Breathwork

Holotropic Breathwork is one of the most effective breathing techniques developed for psychotherapy. Holotropic breathing, created as a legal replacement for psychoactive substances after their official ban, allows you to achieve a similar effect as from taking psychedelic drugs - that is, an altered consciousness. The experience of the plots of the unconscious (often unpleasant) leads to the activation of the "internal healer", that is, the self-healing power hidden inside the body.

The results that the holotropic breathing technique allows you to achieve are impressive - this is getting rid of stress, deep fears, old psychological traumas that, being unconscious, negatively affect your life. Holotropic breathing is a universal path to the fastest personal, spiritual growth.

History of the development of holotropic breathwork

In the mid-twentieth century, Stanislav Grof, a promising psychiatrist-clinician, led a project aimed at studying therapeutic effect psychotropic substances on people suffering from mental disorders. Observing patients in a state of altered consciousness, Grof comes to the conclusion that the Freudian concepts of human psychology, although they can be used, still do not give a general idea of ​​a person. Continuing his research, Stanislav Grof described 4 areas of the psyche:

• Sensory barrier
• Individual unconscious
• Region of birth
• Transpersonal level

Entering a state of altered consciousness, Grof's patients invariably encountered all four areas of the psyche, which, ultimately, led to the living of overwhelming plots, self-knowledge and getting rid of the disorder.

Also in the course of the research, the scientist noticed that patients, in an effort to continue the weakening effect of LSD, began to breathe deeply and often to fully work out the emerging plot, thus not allowing themselves to leave the state of altered consciousness. It was this observation that later prompted the creation of holotropic breathing - a technique by which altered states are achieved not under the influence of chemicals, but under the influence of the natural process- breathing.

Soon Grof patented the invented technique and in 1993 the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation registered holotropic breathing as a method of psychotherapy.

How does a Holotropic Breathwork session work?

Holotropic breathing sessions are based on three essential elements:

• deep and rapid breathing (holotropic breathing)
• motivating music
• specific techniques of working with the body to help the holonaut in releasing energy

Before the start of the training, all participants are divided into pairs and get a deeper understanding of holotropic breathing. In a pair, one participant is a sitter - an assistant, and the second is a holonaut, that is, practicing holotropic breathing. After the first session, the participants switch roles.

The combination of music and deep, fast breathing allows you to achieve all the emotional states and experiences that are achieved when taking psychotropic substances.

The exit from the altered state of consciousness occurs automatically one and a half hours after the start, since the person is unable to continue to maintain the required rate of breathing.

Holotropic breathing is only as effective as actively (deeply and frequently) the holonaut breathes. During the session, the sitter does everything to help his holonaut, while not interfering in the process, unless the holonaut directly asks for it. Before the start of the session, the sitters are explained the rules of conduct.

Holotropic Breathwork is a path to self-knowledge and personal development.

Trainings "Holotropic Breathwork" are carried out in accordance with the format developed by Stanislav and Christina Grof, and meet the standards of the international program Grof Transpersonal Training (GTT).

Seminars and trainings on Holotropic Breathwork are conducted by Svetlana Doroganich:

– certified leader of holotropic breathing of the international program Grof Transpersonal Training, experience in teaching the HD method since 1999.

Holotropic Breathwork - effective method personal growth and self-transformation. The method is specifically designed to harness the unique healing potential and exploration possibilities of non-ordinary states of consciousness.

Holotropic breathing is effective when working:

• with relationship problems
• with stress
• neurotic states
• bad habits and addictions
• psychosomatic and emotional disorders
• and is also used to find non-standard solutions and creative breakthroughs.

The basic philosophical premise of holotropic breathwork is that the average person in our culture lives and acts at a level far below their potential. This impoverishment is due to the fact that a person identifies himself with only one of the aspects of his being, with physical body or ego. Such false identification leads to an inauthentic, unhealthy, and accomplishmentless way of life, and also causes emotional and psychosomatic disorders of a psychological nature.

Holotropic breathing promotes the activation of the unconscious to such an extent that it leads to non-ordinary states of consciousness. This principle is relatively new in Western psychology, although it has been used for centuries and even millennia in the shamanic and healing practices of many peoples, in the rituals of various ecstatic sects, in the ancient mysteries of death and rebirth. In this kind of work, it often becomes clear already in the first session that the roots of psychopathology extend much further than the events early childhood and go beyond the individual unconscious.

S. Grof notes that empirical psychotherapeutic work reveals, beyond the traditional biographical roots of symptoms, deep connections with non-biographical areas of the soul, such as elements of encountering the depths of death and birth, characteristics perinatal level and a wide range of transpersonal factors. Grof argues that narrow "biographical" ideas about experiential therapy techniques can only be a straitjacket that gets in the way, that truly effective work cannot be limited to working through biographical problems, that the mentality concepts used in holotropic breathing must be extended beyond the biographical levels, beyond the individual unconscious, must include the perinatal and transpersonal levels.

Ken Wilber and many others are well known in the world of science, all of these people developed their own, in fact revolutionary methods of psychotherapy, and sometimes whole new directions in psychology, and each of them, in one way or another, contributed to the development of a new direction.

And yet it is with the name of the Czech scientist Stanislav Grof that transpersonal psychology (TP) is most often associated. The reason for this is probably that, standing at the very beginning, it was he who showed the greatest consistency in promoting the very ideas and insights of the 60s of the 20th century, which formed the basis of the new direction. Of course, TP is neither a separate method nor a direction, but rather a combination of a variety of psychotherapeutic methods generated by new, and in fact revolutionary for psychology, ideas about human consciousness. The direction itself is united only by the similarity of some basic principles, which are based on the idea of ​​the reality of transpersonal (transpersonal) experiences, as well as their unconditional therapeutic value.

Brief biography of Stanislav Grof.

Grof was born in Prague in 1931. While still studying at the Prague Medical College, Stanislav worked as an assistant to Professor Georg Roubicek, who was known for his experiments with psychedelic substances and the study of their effects on the human mind. So the young scientist gets the opportunity to participate in many experiments related to this topic. In addition, it was then that his own acquaintance with the new drug LSD took place and that very psychedelic experience came, which, as Grof himself later said, changed all his ideas about consciousness.

In 1956, after graduating from Charles University, Grof received a higher education (doctoral degree) and began his own practice as a psychiatrist, and at the same time continued his earlier experiments with psychedelics. The next twenty years of life pass under the sign of research into the effects of LSD-25 on humans, as well as the development of appropriate psychological practices.

In 1967, for political reasons, Stanislav Grof received asylum in the United States, where he continued his work.
Until 1973, when psychedelics were banned, Grof conducted literally thousands of sessions with LSD, during which he studied its effects on the minds of both clients and his own. In 1973, Grof moved to Big Sur (California) and remained there until 1987.

In 1975-1976, Stanislav, together with his wife Christina Grof, developed new method, which was intended to replace the banned LSD, and whose effect on consciousness turns out to be similar, is the so-called holotropic breathing, based on hyperventilation of the lungs due to very rapid breathing.

This method turns out to be very effective and is beginning to be widely used by Grof in psychotherapy. In the period from 1987 to 1994, sessions are held literally for tens of thousands of people, and the technique itself forms the basis of holotropic psychotherapy, which over the years has proved its effectiveness as a therapeutic method.

Now Stanislav Grof continues to live and work in America. Over the years of his work, he has written hundreds of articles and many books that are considered classics of TP, and his method of holotropic breathing is widely used in the world as an element of psychotherapy.

The mind map of Stanislav Grof.

In the course of consciousness research, psychologists often use the method of self-observation as the only one that involves direct observation of the processes occurring in our mind. The combination of the method of self-observation (introspection) and the study of the behavioral characteristics of patients served as a true source of basic psychological theories describing the structure of consciousness. This applies to most theories of personality and methods of psychotherapy based on them. This fully applies to such psychological areas as psychoanalysis, analytical psychology, psychosynthesis, to the ideas of the humanistic direction and, of course, to transpersonal psychology.

Naturally, such a method caused and still causes serious complaints from scientists who do not consider the method of introspection to be fully scientific, as opposed to empirical observations. Undoubtedly, these claims are completely justified, because introspection, like the study of the minds of other people in terms of their evidence, provides us with very subjective data. For this reason, for more than a hundred years, many popular psychological trends have been under fire of criticism and exist in the scientific world, to one degree or another, "on bird's rights."

From the point of view of this approach, the only direction that fully claims to be scientific was behaviorism, which involved the study of not consciousness itself, but behavior, that is, external and objectively observable events. However, it is also a reality that a direct study of consciousness, its features and patterns of its work is fully possible only by methods that are dubious from the point of view of a scientific approach. This is precisely what underlies the reasons why these areas are still allowed into the scientific world and are considered officially recognized.

Nevertheless, despite the fact that from this point of view, psychoanalysis, popular and accepted in the scientific world, is quite equal in legitimacy to any other areas of psychology, in the psychological environment there is a critical attitude towards many newly emerging psychological theories and methods, and transpersonal ideas have always been leaders in terms of critical attitude towards them. This attitude was due to several factors.

Attitude to transpersonal psychology in the scientific world.

Firstly, transpersonal psychology often claims that the result of the study of consciousness is not only consciousness itself, as such, which is quite understandable and logical, but also events occurring in the real, physical world, namely, events of the past, present and even future. which the individual could not directly observe, for example, those occurring at other times and with other people, events occurring with the individual himself, but at the stage of prenatal development, a person’s foresight of the future, a vision of what is happening at the present moment, but beyond the limits of human sensory perception and etc.

Secondly, the conclusions that were made in the process of evaluating the experience of an individual and related to the motives driving his behavior lay partly outside the concept of understanding a person exclusively as a biological being, concerned only with survival and enjoyment.

This led to the fact that among the alleged motives of human behavior, such as the desire for self-actualization, compassion, altruistic behavior, transformations, the higher self, etc. arose.
These were the motives that were explained by transpersonal psychologists as outside personal, and moreover, as immanently inherent in any person.

Thirdly, from such a position, very exotic from a scientific point of view, personality theories naturally followed, as well as methods of psychological work, often lying in the field more religious than psychological. Naturally, the well-known fact of the use of psychoactive substances, subsequently banned in most countries and branded as an obvious evil, also made a contribution.

Under such conditions, the very fact of the relatively wide recognition of Stanislav Grof's methods seems incredible.

As a result of a long study of unusual states of consciousness arising from the use of psychedelics, and subsequently as a result of meditative work, Stanislav Grof had the idea that it was necessary to take into account aspects of the personality that were not taken into account at all in traditional psychology, since they did not exist and could not exist in principle.

For example, in psychoanalysis, it was taken into account, and moreover, considered extremely important, the personal history of the individual, in particular those events that, by virtue of different reasons were considered key and therefore have a strong influence on further patterns of human behavior.

This aspect of personality development can be called "biographical". From the point of view of traditional campaigns, the biographical stage began with a “clean slate”, that is, the history of the child began from the moment of his birth, and until that moment only hereditary signs had an influence. In other words, before Grof, the period of development of the child until the moment of birth was not taken into account at all, due to the fact that, as it was believed, the brain of the child during this period was not sufficiently formed in order to keep in memory such events as the moment of birth, and even more so the intrauterine period.

However, as a result of numerous and systematic studies of altered states of consciousness, Stanislav Grof came to the conclusion that many people experienced sensations and experiences that could only be explained by experiencing various stages of not only birth, but also being in the prenatal state.

Thus, the map of the individual's consciousness was expanded by another period, which was called "perinatal".
According to Grof's ideas, this period consisted of four stages of intrauterine development, he called them basic perinatal matrices. And these matrices, in the future, determined many features of the child's behavior and his growth.

Four perinatal matrices by Stanislav Grof.

The first matrix covers the period from conception to the moment of the first labor pains. This time is characterized by feelings of a completely serene and ecstatic state of peace, happiness, unity with the outside world.

The second matrix is ​​characterized by a period of contractions, when a calm and serene state is sharply disturbed, the uterus contracts, squeezing the fetus, but has not yet opened. This period carries a state of hopelessness and hopelessness, and real hell sets in for the fetus, the situation has radically changed from blissful serenity to sharply uncomfortable and at the same time having no way out.

The third matrix is ​​the time of birth. This period is characterized by the opening of the cervix and the beginning of movement through the birth canal. The current situation is twofold, on the one hand, there is hope for liberation from the trap, and on the other hand, rapid changes mean the unknown and the fear and horror that comes from it. The general motto of the third matrix is ​​the struggle for survival, when powerful affective experiences mobilize all the reserves of the psyche that have been hidden so far.

The fourth perinatal matrix is ​​the moment of birth, when the fetus comes out and the umbilical cord connecting it with the past is cut.

The previous life ended in a new state, symbolically this means death and a new birth. The emerging baby feels liberation and the subsequent ecstatic unity with the mother - a source of new pleasure, food. Therefore, the experience of the fourth matrix is ​​accompanied by feelings of open space, freedom, flight, love.

So, if we assume that Grof's idea has the right to exist, then it obviously follows that the circumstances of the perinatal period should have at least no less influence on the subsequent development of the personality and the formation of behavior patterns than later development, the features of which are so important in psychoanalysis. It turned out that the perinatal period is nothing but the source of the very first experience of the interaction of the individual with the world, and the circumstances of this interaction could be very dramatic.

For these reasons, Grof considered the prenatal period especially important, and the deep experience of its stages in the adult state carried the deepest psychotherapeutic effect.

The role of the perinatal period in personality development.

Grof believed that the experience of intrauterine development, as well as the birth itself, is in the unconscious of a person and has a huge impact on his psychological condition and behavior patterns. In addition, he assumed that the four basic perinatal matrices are a kind of link between the human consciousness and the deep unconscious. As we mentioned earlier, the circumstances under which the intrauterine development of the fetus took place could be very different, both favorable and not very good. According to Grof, during these periods, the formation of the inclinations of certain inclinations and traits of the future character of a person took place.

For example, during the period of the first matrix, if the pregnancy was unwanted, the mother used alcohol or drugs, was in a state of stress or depression, then these factors were obviously negative and affected the subsequent psychological state of the individual, such a person was also prone to similar conditions in the future and was much less psychologically stable than the individual whose first perinatal period took place in a favorable environment.

During the course of the second perinatal period, conditions were developed for perseverance, patience, the ability to effectively mobilize for survival, resistance to life's inconveniences and difficulties. Therefore, in the case when this period was too short (premature birth), these qualities were not developed enough or not developed at all. In the opposite case, when this period was too long, a tendency to a victim complex, a passive life position, dependence on other people and a lack of independence developed.

In the third perinatal period, during the period of the struggle for birth, the prerequisites for an active life position, for achieving goals, courage, and determination took place. During this period, as in the previous one, developmental disorders mean either a delay in time or an excessive delay in the process. If the birth occurs too quickly, then the ability to fight and achieve the goal is not developed, in the opposite case, the person acquires a tendency to constantly confront the outside world and often finds good reasons for this. Since it is this matrix that is directly related to the process of survival, it was this matrix, according to Grof, that was later responsible for aggression, a tendency to cruelty and suppression of other people.

For these reasons, Grof considered childbirth an extremely important period, largely determining the further development of the individual. From this came his recommendations - to the extent possible, make them safe, light and comfortable. He considered extremely important factors an unconditionally positive attitude towards the mother during pregnancy on the part of other people and especially the future father, whose presence during childbirth was considered highly desirable. An exceptionally important factor was the good psychological state of the mother, both directly during childbirth and during pregnancy. In fact, it was Grof who had a great influence on the views of the then society on pregnancy and childbirth.