Holonaut (breathing) memo:

Wear comfortable, loose clothing and remove anything that is constricting or likely to injure you (belts, bras, jewelry, etc.). If you wear contact lenses, also remove them before your session.

Find a holotropic breathwork session partner and enter into a contract with them that includes the following items:
How to remind you to breathe;
What kind of physical contact is most acceptable for you;
What kind of support do you need from a partner;
What are the features of your manifestation in the session;
Agree on non-verbal communication cues:
How will you tell your partner to stop reminding you to breathe if the reminder interferes with your experience;
How do you tell your partner that you want something.

If you're breathing today, eat very lightly or don't eat at all. In this case, breathing is easier.

Visit the toilet before the session. If you want to go to the toilet while you're breathing, don't be shy. Better to do this than be distracted by a full bladder.

If you have doubts about choosing a partner, ask yourself if this is the best option in this situation, do you feel safe with this person?

Do not leave the room in the middle of a session. Make an internal commitment to attend the entire workshop (including all breathing sessions and group process discussions) in order to have a holistic, unfragmented experience and support each other.

Breathe more deeply and often for an hour. Breathing is the most important catalyst for non-ordinary states of consciousness. Keep your eyes closed to focus on inner experiences.

Remain in the supine pose, the open pose. The desire to lean on one's hands, sit down or stand up can be a way of controlling the experience or a way of escaping from it. If you have completed it, try to return to the starting position as soon as you are ready for it.

Avoid talking, respect the experiences of other participants. Conversations bring people out of an unusual state, because they are associated with ordinary consciousness.

Remain silent while drawing mandalas and (preferably) throughout the day. It helps to be in a meditative mood.

Ask for help if you feel severe blockages, pain, or tension in your body and continuing to breathe does not provide relief. This can be done at any time during the session.

Know that you are always in control. If you want to stop working with you, say the word “STOP” and any exposure will immediately stop.

If you find yourself too caught up in your thoughts, bring your attention to your body and focus on your breath or music. If you find yourself analyzing music, allow its vibrations to enter your body and focus on your breath.

If you have strong emotion(e.g. anger, annoyance, etc.) and the emotion seems to be caused by events in the audience (e.g. you don't like music or something), shift your attention to yourself and to the sensations in your body. Rather than being distracted by the outside and engaging in endless emotional projections, it is better to get in touch with the energies you are experiencing, express them, and release them.

Do not program experiences, let what arises be a spontaneous act, unexpected for yourself - a free dance of the body, energy and thought.

Be the perfect actor: being completely in the role, in the experience, at the same time be above every role, beyond all experience.

You decide when to end your breath. As a rule, the session comes to its natural end within 1.5-2.5 hours. The music continues until everyone is done, so there is no need to wait for it to finish.

You should not start a new session at the end of a session. The job at this point is not to discover all the new problems, but to complete any material that comes up and needs to be integrated.

Before you leave the hall, call the host to check if everything is in order. This check is necessary to see if the breathers need further work and whether they feel the complete completion of the experience.

Try drawing a mandala even if you think you can't draw. The point here is not in the quality of the drawing itself, but in the ability to use drawing as a means of integration and self-understanding.

You are free to talk about your experience only what you see fit. As you do this, don't analyze, but abide in the energies of the process itself. Refrain from analyzing and evaluating someone else's experience or mandala.

Sleep is a continuation of the integration of manifest experiences. Be attentive to his messages. In the following days, find time for drawing, contemplation, journaling, and dream work.

Memo of the sitter (sitting) - accompanying:

Come to the hall in advance so that you can prepare the place without haste, concentrate and calm down. The time indicated in the schedule is the time of the beginning of the breath itself. Make a contract with the breather, discuss his wishes and preferences. Minimize talking while breathing, as this can interfere with the breathers being in their process.

Focus on the breather with all your attention, sitting next to his head, and do not be distracted by what is happening in the hall. Don't delve into your own process. Breathers need the undivided presence and attention of those sitting and can be very sensitive to the lack of this attention.

Stay with the breather in the same space of experience, attend to this space, but do not invade it. If the breather is calm, it is easier for you to feel it while remaining equally calm. If the breather is active, sometimes his condition is better felt, with a slight movement in the same rhythm.

Guard the space of experience of the breather. Protect your ward from the activity of other breathers or any other interfering and risky activities that occur.

Resist the temptation to apply your knowledge from the experience of various spiritual traditions to help the breathers. Examples of such assistance would be a REIKI session, "aura clearing" or the use of crystals.

Don't leave the breathers alone. If you need to go to the toilet, call one of the presenters for this time.

Be considerate of anyone vulnerable spot on the breather's body and inform the facilitator, if they are working with your breather, of the presence of such areas.

Help the breather if he asks for something. If the breather needs to go to the toilet, walk him to the toilet door and back. Help him dry off with a towel, bring a glass of water. Be ready to provide any support.

If you have questions about what is happening, raise your hand to call the facilitator.

Make sure your breather is checked by the leader before leaving the room after the process is over.

…Have a nice trip…!-)

Stanislav Grof, Christina Grof

Holotropic Breathwork: A New Approach to 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 help and friendly support made this book possible

Translation from English Alexandra Kiseleva

Scientific edition Ph.D. n. Vladimir Maykov

Jack Kornfield. Foreword

You are holding a prophetic book offering a new understanding of healing, mental health and human capabilities 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 responsibility of churches and temples, the body is the responsibility gyms, and mental health - to the competence of pills from a pharmacy. Economic growth is seen as an end in itself, having nothing to do with environment and ignorance; racism and wars continue to divide peoples and countries. These divisions, and the immense suffering they generate, spring from a 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 a detailed guide to the experience and practice of Holotropic Breathwork, but goes far beyond that. 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 experiences is not only theoretical, it is born from a wide clinical and experimental experience. Observe large group practitioners of Holotropic Breathwork means to see an amazing range of experiences in which breathers relive any stages own history or enter into the realms of archetypes, animals, birth and death. Being present at a group breathwork session is like stepping into a Divine Comedy» Dante, where the realms of Heaven, Purgatory and Hell can be seen 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. She in equally values ​​the personal and the universal, 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 disease, anxiety, depression and conflict, alleviation and healing of trauma and abuse, reconnection with family and society, unfolding of compassion, forgiveness, courage and love, return of purpose, finding our lost soul and the highest insights of spiritual understanding.

Being prophetic, this book also serves 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 everyday 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 my training as a Buddhist monk in Burma, Thailand and India, I first came into contact with powerful breathing practices and visionary spheres 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 come to deeply respect the the international community practitioners.

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 many years that we have developed, practiced and taught Holotropic Breathwork and presented our work in various countries 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. Kathy Altman and Lori Saltzman provided the necessary organizational management and gentle guidance in the formation and operation 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 been playing all these years key role in organizing and running many of our conferences, workshops and trainings. Both Carey and Tav became certified breathwork facilitators in 1988 in our very first training program. In subsequent years, they were very active in the Grof Transpersonal Training (TTT) program - Tev as co-host in many practical seminars and training modules, with Carey as the leader and administrator of most of these activities.

More than four decades of research into altered states of consciousness have made me convinced that the only means by which the supporters of traditional materialistic science manage to hold their ground is constant and continuous censorship, as well as distorted and misinterpreted all the information received during holotropic states.

I am absolutely sure that it is impossible to use such a strategy indefinitely. The results that transpersonal psychology has been able to obtain not only do not confirm the basic assumptions of materialistic monism, but often completely contradict them. In addition, the number of facts obtained during the study of altered states of consciousness is increasing every day.

Today, a simple statement that the basic principles of transpersonal psychology cannot be reconciled with the worldview of traditional science is no longer enough. Now, in order to hide the challenge created by the results that have been obtained in the study of altered states of consciousness, they will need not only to be taken into account, but also reasonably reconciled with the foundations of the materialistic paradigm. I really doubt that conservative critics will succeed in this task.

Stanislav Grof

Biographical sketch

Stanislav Grof born July 1, 1931 in Prague, Czech Republic. During his studies as a psychologist at the Prague Medical School, Grof worked as an assistant with Dr. Georg Roubicek, who at the time was experimenting with psychedelic drugs, studying their effects on humans. Thus, even in his youth, Stanislav had the opportunity to attend many LSD sessions, in which not only psychotherapists participated, but also other interesting and creative personalities of the Czech Republic.

In 1956, after graduation, Grof received a higher medical education and a Ph.D., after which he began an independent practice as a psychiatrist-clinician, and also began his own research on psychedelics. He had his first experience of being under the influence of LSD in 1956 during a session directed by Roubicek. The session was also attended by Stanislav's brother Paul, who at that time was still a medical student.

“During the session, I experienced strong sensations that changed my entire subsequent life. I was exposed to a combination of LSD and intense strobe light. During this experience, I completely lost touch with my body, with Prague and with the whole planet. I had the feeling that my consciousness was freed from any boundaries. After such an experience, it became obvious to me that the theory that consciousness in some magical way arises as a result of neurophysiological processes in human brain that I was taught at university is simply wrong. I realized that consciousness is something more fundamental and more similar to how it is described by the great spiritual traditions of the East. The result of this session for me was huge interest to these unusual states of consciousness.”

True courage does not lie in courageous actions oriented towards obtaining results in outside world but in an effort to go through the difficult experience of meeting with oneself. Until a person finds his true essence, all kinds of aspirations to make one's life meaningful through activities in the outside world and the desire to external purposes in the end will inevitably prove futile and priceless.

S. Grof devoted the next twenty years of his life to legal work with psychedelic drugs: in 1954-1967. in Czechoslovakia, and after, from 1967 to 1974 in the United States of America.

From 1960 to 1967 he directed the study of LSD-25 at the Prague Institute for Psychiatric Research. During the same period, he devotes a lot of time to the study of psychoanalysis, and also participates in projects of an innovative nature.

In 1967, after receiving a scholarship from the Foundation for the Encouragement of Psychiatry, the young scientist had the opportunity to go abroad for a two-year internship at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore (USA). However, in 1968, during the "Prague Revolution", the Czechoslovak government put forward a demand for the immediate return of Grof to his homeland with all the results obtained. Clearly realizing that in the future his work in Czechoslovakia would become impossible, he asked for political asylum in America, where he remained.

In 1968, Grof took the position of assistant professor of psychiatry at the same university where he trained, and also became the head of the psychedelic drug research program at the Maryland Center for Psychiatric Research, which continued until 1973 - until the very moment when psychedelics were banned. During this entire period of time, Grof personally spent about two and a half thousand LSD sessions, and also had with him the protocols of more than one thousand sessions under the guidance of his colleagues.

In 1973, Stanislav Grof, by invitation, moved to Big Sur, California, to the Esalen Institute, where he lives and continues to work until 1987.

In 1975, Joseph Campbell, who specializes in mythology, introduced Grof to a woman named Christina. This acquaintance was the beginning of their personal and professional relationship.

Between 1975 and 1976, in light of the fact that psychedelics were banned, Stanislav and Christina Grof jointly developed a method for experiencing altered states of consciousness without the use of LSD and other drugs, called holotropic breathwork. In the same year, they begin to conduct seminars using the method they have developed. From 1987 to 1994 Stanislav and Kristina held sessions of holotropic breathing for more than 25 thousand people.

Over time, Holotropic Breathwork provided the basis for holotropic therapy, with which Grof, combining professorial work, conducts training courses for practicing transpersonal psychologists and sessions of holotropic therapy, and also organizes seminars and lectures, traveling around the globe.

Together with Abraham Maslow, the founder of humanistic psychology, S. Grof is at the origins of the emergence of transpersonal psychology and is now condemned to be recognized as one of the main figures in this direction. Along with this, Grof is the founder and head of the International Transpersonal Association.

In 2007 for the work done in the field of study deep levels of the human psyche, which lasted for 50 years, for a significant contribution to the development of modern psychological science, S. Grof was awarded the Havel Foundation Prize “Foresight-97”. This fund exists to help innovative projects, not currently widely publicized, but having great value for the future of all mankind.

For the entire period scientific activity Stanislav Grof, more than one hundred and forty of his articles were published in professional psychological journals, a large number of books were published (“Revolution of Consciousness”, “The Greatest Journey”, “Space Game”, “Frantic Search for Self”, etc.), some of which were written jointly with his wife and translated into sixteen languages.

Advanced Mapping of Consciousness

AT modern psychology there is the concept of a “psychic map” of a person, which is limited to his postnatal biography (starting from the moment of birth) and the Freudian individual unconscious (what was forgotten, rejected, suppressed), which is also derived from postnatal biography. The newborn child is perceived by psychologists as "blank slate", tabula rasa. Neither the fact of his birth nor what preceded the birth is taken into account.

However, in the process of working with holotropic states of consciousness, Stanislav Grof discovered that people's experiences do not fit into the narrow field that Freud defined. During holotropic breathwork sessions, people began to move to other areas, the first of which was the birth area. Further, the subjects, among whom was Grof himself, gained experience of staying in the area that is today called “transpersonal“ . These states of consciousness are called transpersonal, special or holotropic. In them, a person goes beyond the boundaries of his physical shell, ego and mind and clearly sees and realizes that he is something more. In addition, people get the experience of unity with various animals, superintelligent cosmic beings, planetary as well as universal consciousness.

Studies of altered states of consciousness led me to the conclusion that the human psyche in its widest range is commensurate with the fullness of all being and is completely identical to the universal creative principle. In light of this, I see spirituality as an important and integral component in the life of every person, since it reflects not only the most important dimension of the human psyche, but also the structure of the entire universe.

“At the very beginning of our work with psychedelic drugs, we believed that by acting on the brain, they simply initiate experimental psychosis. However, based on the results of studies that lasted about 2 years, I came to a completely different conclusion, namely: psychedelics are a kind of catalyst that does not create certain experiences, but transfers the human psyche to a higher level. energy level, as a result of which the processes that usually occur in the depths of the unconscious are on the surface and become available for awareness. I saw LSD as a kind of tool that allows us to look at the deeper dynamics of the psyche.”

“Modern psychiatry takes into account only information from the biography of people after their birth, as well as the individual unconscious according to Freud, but while working with psychedelic drugs, we found that the subjects do not remain within the unconscious. The first thing that happens to a person in an altered state of consciousness is, as a rule, a return to the period of his own birth, that is, the experience of childbirth is experienced, and then the process goes into the sphere of the collective unconscious, which Jung described.

As a result of the data obtained, Stanislav Grof came to understand the need to compile a new, immeasurably larger map of human consciousness. In explaining these unusual states of consciousness, he developed a concept called advanced mapping of consciousness which includes the following levels:

• Biographical, which contains memories after the moment of birth.
• Perinatal associated with the experiences of birth and death.
• Transpersonal, which refers to experiences of altered states of consciousness.

The expanded cartography of consciousness developed by Grof contains not only the main cartographies of Western psychology, but also takes into account almost all known spiritual traditions of the East. Its versatility lies in the fact that, regardless of the chosen path in the direction spiritual development, a person, one way or another, has to deal with the solution of the same tasks of mastering certain energy levels. Grof's "Energy Anthropology" speaks of a direct connection between a person's level of awareness and the level of energy available to him, which, in particular, is necessary to work out the blocks and obstacles that stand in the way of his development.

Basic perinatal matrices

Until recently, there was an opinion that the child does not notice anything that happens to him during his birth. It was believed that the neonatal cortex was not mature enough to store the memory of its own birth. However, this concept is in conflict with the data that Stanislav Grof managed to obtain as a result of his research. In altered states, conscious people got the opportunity to relive all the stages of their birth, remembering them and passing through them. These results were proof that already in the womb, before the birth process, the fetus is endowed with the strongest sensitivity.

As a result of numerous experiments, Stanislav Grof came to the conclusion that the birth process can be divided into 4 stages, which he called basic perinatal matrices (BPM). . Matrix- this is a prototype, the initial template, according to which all objects and events are further built (in this case human life). And under perinatal period understand everything that characterizes the time from the conception of a child to his birth (from lat. peri- "about" and natalis- "what is related to birth").

• First matrix . The time spent in the womb from the moment of conception to the first contractions. For a child, it is characterized by a serene intrauterine life, calm development, a sense of peace, joy and serenity. The fetus experiences a symbiotic, oceanic oneness with the mother.
• Second matrix - the uterus contracts, squeezing the fetus, but the cervix is ​​​​still not open. In the peaceful and safe environment of the child, sudden changes begin. For a fairly long period, the fetus is stuck in a shrinking uterus, from which there is no way out, he finds himself in a hopeless, hopeless situation, while experiencing the strongest pressure: physical and emotional. These are experiences of hopelessness, the fate of the victim, hell.
• Third matrix - the cervix opens and the struggle for birth begins, in fact - the struggle for survival. The child with effort begins to move through the birth canal. This process is symbolically reminiscent of the light at the end of the tunnel - suddenly there is an opportunity for liberation and the current situation can be resolved. This stage contains strong emotional experiences, feelings of aggression and anxiety, sexual energies, as well as a stage of intense struggle.
• Fourth matrix - a child comes into this world and the umbilical cord is cut. Metaphorical analogy with dying and rebirth. The baby feels liberated and experiences a new union with the mother during breastfeeding. This matrix includes the period from the moment of birth and continues for several days after birth. This is a period of freedom and love.

Why are these matrices so important and why does Grof pay so much attention to them? Because in the future, all information about the process of a person’s birth is stored in his unconscious and throughout his life has a huge impact on his psychological and state of mind. In addition, the basic perinatal matrices are a kind of windows connecting a person with more deep layers unconscious.

Yes, healthy first perinatal matrix indicates that a person knows how to relax, rest, enjoy life, accept love and be happy under any circumstances. In the event that it has been violated, for example, by an unwanted pregnancy, the use of alcohol and nicotine, the possibility of a miscarriage or abortion, a person does not know how to relax, enjoy life, and if the parents considered the possibility of an abortion, he develops a fear of death.

In the second matrix perseverance, patience and the ability to survive are developed. The child learns to endure, wait and endure life's inconveniences. There are two violations of this matrix - if it is absent (premature birth, caesarean section) and if it is excessive. In the first case, a person lacks patience, it is difficult for him to take long-term events that require perseverance, he has difficulty going through unpleasant situations, it is very problematic for him to complete the work he has begun. In this case, he strives to resolve difficulties as quickly as possible, and if something went wrong, abandon what he started. In the case when the second matrix was excessive, a person experiences the role of the Victim in life - he attracts situations in which he is pressed, in which outsiders put pressure on him. An excessive second matrix implies a delay in labor and its stimulation, and therefore a person has a program “until someone pushes me, I’m not going to do anything on my own.”

In the third perinatal matrix are being worked out active force: “I will fight and cope” - the ability to achieve the goal, determination and courage. Here, either the lack of this matrix or its redundancy also act as violations. In the case of rapid births and caesarean sections, people are no longer able to fight, they have to be constantly pushed. And vice versa, the excess of this matrix turns a person's whole life into a continuous battle, into a battlefield. He always finds reasons for it. In addition, Grof believes that there is a very deep connection between the 3rd perinatal matrix and the psychology of revolution, the psychology of war, the psychology of genocide. The third matrix is ​​a gigantic store of violent impulses.

Therefore, Stanislav Grof finds it necessary to devote as much as possible to the process of childbirth. more attention. In order to avoid the negative and traumatic consequences of the perinatal period, he recommends making the birth process as safe, comfortable and easy as possible. He sees the solution in natural childbirth, in good preparation for them, as well as in the presence of the father during childbirth.

Holotropic Breathwork- the most powerful and effective of those used in modern psychology and psychotherapy breathing techniques among which well-known techniques are rebirthing, waving and free breathing techniques. Holotropic Breathwork was developed in the 70s by Stanislav Grof, 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 basis. 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.

Stanislav Grof, MD, is a physician and scientist who has spent more than forty years researching non-ordinary states of consciousness and spiritual growth. He is one of the founders of the International Transpersonal Association (ITA) for many years he was its permanent president. He also acted as an organizer and coordinator international conferences in the USA, India, Australia, Czechoslovakia and Brazil. Stanislav Grof is Professor in the Department of Psychology at the California Institute for Integral Studies, where he teaches in two departments: Psychology and Intercultural Studies. In addition, S. Grof regularly conducted training seminars for professionals on transpersonal psychology and holotropic breathing (Grof's transpersonal trainings), and also gave lectures and seminars around the world. Stanislav Grof is the author and co-author of more than 100 articles and 30 books. His texts invariably attract the attention of both professionals and all those who are interested in self-exploration and spiritual growth. Grof's books and articles have been translated into twelve languages.

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 turned out 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 Breathwork combines such simple means as accelerated breathing, music and specially selected sounds, as well as certain types body work, is capable of generating the full 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 as you can imagine - breathing.

Before the first breathing experience, participants in the Holotropic Breathwork training receive an in-depth theoretical training, which includes the main types of phenomena that occur in sessions of holotropic breathing. These include sensory barrier experiences, biographical, perinatal, and transpersonal experiences. Technical instructions are also given for both the experiencers and the sitters. In addition, physical and emotional contraindications are discussed. If they concern one of the participants, then these people receive recommendations from specialists.

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 with loss of self-control, severe pain or fear preventing the continuation of a holotropic breathing session, and 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 transcendental experiences and sensations.

Contraindications

State	Reason for contraindications
Cardiovascular problems or high blood pressure	The experience can be physical or emotional stress
Pregnancy	Reviving the experience of one's own birth may work as a trigger for uterine contractions
Epilepsy	There is a danger that emotional or physical stress can serve as a trigger for a seizure
Glaucoma	Reviving the birth experience or other stressful experience can increase intraocular pressure
Recent surgeries, fractures	Intensive movements can affect recent injuries
Manic-depressive psychosis, paranoid psychosis	A state of non-ordinary consciousness can trigger a manic episode; paranoid projections make it difficult to integrate internal psychological material

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. colloquial speech 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 (detailed instructions are given on this during the 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 on an active initial stage 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.

If 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 (female), decided that her holonaut needed mother's love and with tears in her eyes she embraced him as she breathed. 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.

The deeper a person 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 bodywork when all emotional and emotional issues have not been resolved through breathing. physical stress activated during the session. The basic principle of this work is to, depending on what happens to the breather, create a situation that will exacerbate existing symptoms. While 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 bodywork during holotropic breathwork sessions is an essential part of the holotropic approach and plays 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

Music selection supports characteristic stages, reflecting the most common features unfolding the 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

Hours/minutes	Music types
	Light stimulating, helping breathing
	Even more stimulating
	Drum or ethnic rhythmic (play until the rhythmic movement in the room subsides)
	Dramatic (play until the drama subsides)
	Cardiac (openness, warmth, flight music)
01:30 - until the end	Contemplative (calm, but still quite intense music that can serve as a basis for continuing work)

Generalized material on Holotropic Breathwork

Holotropic Breathwork is one of the most effective breathing techniques developed for psychotherapy. Holotropic Breathwork Designed as a Legal Replacement psychoactive substances after their official ban, allows you to achieve a similar effect, as well 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 the therapeutic effects of 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 general idea about a human. 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 everything emotional states and experiences 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" is carried out in accordance with the format developed by Stanislav and Christina Grof, and meets the standards 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 explained by the fact that a person identifies himself with only one of the aspects of his being, with the 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 extra-biographical areas of the soul, such as elements of encountering the depths of death and birth, characteristics of the perinatal level and a wide range transpersonal factors. Grof argues that narrow "biographical" views regarding techniques empirical therapy can only be an interfering straitjacket, which is truly effective work cannot be limited to working through biographical issues, that the concepts of the psyche used in holotropic breathwork must be extended beyond the biographical level, beyond the individual unconscious, must include the perinatal and transpersonal levels.

Ecology of health: Stanislav Grof is called without exaggeration a living classic, Freud of the 21st century. He still personally conducts trainings around the world 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.

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

He still personally conducts trainings around the world 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?

About Holotropic Breathwork

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 man. 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 Gorf, the "frantic search for oneself" is a problem only faced by 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 observations 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".

Common to these three situations, 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 contrast to ordinary experience, which he calls "hylotropic", that is, terrestrial.

The term "holotropic" is derived from the Greek roots holos, meaning "whole," and trepein, meaning "to move in a direction." Together they mean "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 Holotropic Breathwork method developed by Grof and his wife Kristina in 1975, to change consciousness, a combination of the so-called bound breathing is used(when there is no pause between inhalation and exhalation, exhalation and inhalation) and music that puts you in 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 arise spontaneously, notes Grof, 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 over 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 of holotropic breathing allowed Grof to discover that behind the "last frontier" of human consciousness - the consciousness of the embryo - there is no blank wall(as the materialist might suppose, on the assumption that human life limited by 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 stop holding back 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 - with all our might - 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, during his long life, Grof created a whole new direction, not just psychoanalysis, but total superhumanistic psycho-correction, which can be useful to everyone.

From the point of view of Stanislov Groff, it would not hurt us all to “treat” according to his method- after all, it must be admitted that even the most healthy people in terms of the level of consciousness are far from the ideals that they demonstrate spiritually developed personalities, teachers of humanity, enlightened mystics. 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, being 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, it 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 rituals, leaving only specific behavior and unusual states of consciousness, then any religion and spirituality in general is 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 perfectly 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 to 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 Freudian psychoanalysis, but soon, in the course of his practice, he realized the one-sidedness of the traditional approach: after all, the Freudian is forced to reduce everything to sexual desire, libido, supposedly the main driving force of man.

But the most important thing that did not suit Grof was the method of word-oriented "speaking" on a leather couch itself, although it leads, if successful, to an accurate diagnosis and identification of the event that caused the pathology, it 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 - much better able to help both in the cure of the disease, and the expansion of 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 in the highest degree vivid and unusual experiences, experiences that, before the invention of this technique, were available only to advanced mystics and saints of various faiths.

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 that 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, a bar 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 with in-depth studies of the human psyche- with a sufficiently deep immersion in this question, 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 overcome 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 planetary, non-human consciousness, finally, the experience of the birth of the Universe, then ...

He opens up an infinity of perspective - 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, "The atheist takes the first sip from the glass of science, but God waits at the bottom of the glass." After all, the truth is somewhere out there, at the bottom of the rabbit hole.