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FAQ

• What is Holotropic Breathwork?

  Holotropic Breathwork® is a powerful technique that was developed by Stan and Cristina Grof and used for self-exploration and personal development in a safe and supportive setting. It is practiced in a small group workshop format and relies on our innate inner wisdom and its capacity to move the psyche toward positive transformation and wholeness. The name Holotropic means literally “moving toward wholeness” (from the Greek “holos”=whole and “trepein”=moving in the direction of something).

• What is the Workshop group format?

  We start with an Introduction talk about Holotropic Breathwork and the history of its development. After each member of the group including facilitators introduce themselves, practical details about breathwork are discussed. After a short break, the first breathing session begins and usually continues for 2-3 hours. Afterward, participants are invited to create mandalas, journals or to use provided materials for soul collage. After a break for lunch, participants exchange their roles as breathers and sitters for a second breathing session. Finally, the group is gathered in a circle to share their experiences. People have an opportunity to talk about as much of their experience as they wish with the rest of the group.  Important integration information is provided at the end of the Sharing Circle.

• What is a Breathwork session like?

  A session begins with each person lying on a comfortable mat with eyes closed or covered, which helps direct attention inward. A brief guided relaxation exercise follows. Once relaxed, people are instructed to breathe “faster and deeper than usual”, using “circular” – breath (connecting inhalation and exhalation).  A specifically combined playlist of evocative music simultaneously encourages and supports the breathing process. In a breathwork session, each person is attended by a partner (sitter), who looks after simple needs by providing water, tissues, blankets, etc. Most importantly, however, the partner gives focused attention to their breather. In a subsequent session breather and sitter exchange roles.

• What kinds of experience do people have in Breathwork sessions?

  People may experience enhanced feelings, enriched imagery, or other non-ordinary experience. Experience can open to past life events, birth experiences, and even places that transcend personal experience. People can vividly re-experience events from their life history that lie below waking consciousness. They may relive birth experiences from birth, connect with experiences of people who lived in the past. They may enter archetypal and transcendent realms. Each person’s experience is unique and maybe absolutely different from one session to another.

• Is Holotropic Breathwork psychotherapy?

  Breathwork is deeply experiential and may involve intense and energetic emotional release.  It does not substitute for psychotherapy but can significantly deepen and enhance psychotherapy as well as other healing and personal growth efforts.

• Is Holotropic Breathwork Psychedelic?

  We do not use any drugs or other substances in our workshops but have an extensive experience in integrational support after different psychedelic explorations. Breathwork can occasionally engender experiences that are identical to the most profound psychedelic experiences, but experiences in weekend workshops usually do not approach such intensity. However, a group setting, often immediately fosters feelings of connection to the community and to its support, because it avails the fact that human beings evolved as members of tribes. 

  A major feature of the breathwork we offer is the use of bodywork. Historically, psychedelic sessions have not used bodywork, but the bodywork is a very practical way of overcoming the mind/body split. Leaving the body out of self-exploration gives an opportunity only to deal with trauma intellectually, even though the trauma may have a strong physical component as well as a psychological one.