Therapeutic Potential of Holotropic Breathwork

 

Christina and I have developed and practiced holotropic breathwork outside of the professional setting - in our monthlong seminars and shorter workshops at the Esalen Institute, in various breathwork workshops in many other parts of the world, and in our training program for facilitators. I have not had the opportunity to test the therapeutic efficacy of this method in the same way I had been able to do in the past when I conducted psychedelic therapy. The psychedelic research at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center involved controlled clinical studies with psychological testing and a systematic, professionally conducted follow-up.

 

However, the therapeutic results of holotropic breathwork have often been so dramatic and meaningfully connected with specific experiences in the sessions that I have no doubt holotropic breathwork is a viable form of therapy and self-exploration. We have seen over the years numerous instances when participants in the workshops and the training were able to break out of depression that had lasted several years, overcome various phobias, free themselves from consuming irrational feelings, and radically improve their self-confidence and self-esteem. We have also witnessed on many occasions disappearance of severe psychosomatic pains, including migraine headaches, and radical and lasting improvements or even complete clearing of psychogenic asthma. On many occasions, participants in the training or workshops favorably compared their progress in several holotropic sessions to years of verbal therapy.

 

When we talk about evaluating the efficacy of powerful forms of experiential psychotherapy, such as work with psychedelics or holotropic breathwork, it is important to emphasize certain fundamental differences between these approaches and verbal forms of therapy. Verbal psychotherapy often extends over a period of years and major exciting breakthroughs are rare exceptions rather than commonplace events. When changes of symptoms occur, it happens on a broad time scale and it is difficult to prove their causal connection with specific events in therapy or the therapeutic process in general. By comparison, in a psychedelic or holotropic session, powerful changes can occur in the course of a few hours and they can be convincingly linked to a specific experience.

 

The changes observed in holotropic therapy are not limited to conditions traditionally considered emotional or psychosomatic. In many cases, holotropic breathwork sessions led to dramatic improvement of physical conditions that in medical handbooks are described as organic diseases. Among them was clearing of chronic infections (sinusitis, pharyngitis, bronchitis, and cystitis) after bioenergetic unblocking opened blood circulation in the corresponding areas. Unexplained to this day remains solidification of bones in a woman with osteoporosis that occurred in the course of holotropic training.

 

We have also seen restitution of full peripheral circulation in twelve people suffering from Raynaud's disease, a disorder that involves coldness of hands and feet accompanied by dystrophic changes of the skin. In several instances, holotropic breathwork led to striking improvement of arthritis. In all these cases, the critical factor conducive to healing seemed to be release of excessive bioenergetic blockage in the afflicted parts of the body followed by vasodilation. The most astonishing observation in this category was a dramatic remission of advanced symptoms of Takayasu arteritis, a disease of unknown etiology, characterized by progressive occlusion of arteries in the upper part of the body. It is a condition that is usually considered progressive, incurable, and potentially lethal.

 

There are many instances, when the therapeutic potential of holotropic breathwork was confirmed in clinical studies conducted by practitioners who had been trained by us and independently use this method in their work. A significant number of clinical studies was also conducted by psychiatrists and psychologists in Russia who have not participated in our training for facilitators. Some of the studies in both of these categories are listed in a special section of the bibliography of this paper.

 

On many occasions, we have also had the opportunity to receive informal feedback from people years after their emotional, psychosomatic, and physical symptoms had improved or disappeared after holotropic sessions in our training or in our workshops. This has shown us that the improvements achieved in holotropic sessions are often lasting. I hope that the efficacy of this interesting and promising method of self-exploration and therapy will be in the future confirmed by well-designed extensive clinical research.

 

Physiological Mechanisms Involved In Holotropic Breathwork

 

In view of the powerful effect holotropic breathwork has on consciousness, it is interesting to consider the physiological and biochemical mechanisms that might be involved. Many people believe that when we breathe faster, we simply bring more oxygen into the body and the brain. But the situation is actually much more complicated. It is true that faster breathing brings more air and thus oxygen into the lungs, but it also eliminates carbon dioxide (CO₂) and causes vasoconstriction in certain parts of the body.

 

Since CO₂ is acidic, reducing its content in blood increases the alkalinity of the blood (so called pH) and in an alkaline setting relatively less oxygen is being transferred to the tissues. This in turn triggers a homeostatic mechanism that works in the opposite direction: the kidneys excrete urine that is more alkaline to compensate for this change. The brain is also one of the areas in the body that can respond to faster breathing by vasoconstriction. Since the degree of gas exchange does not depend only on the rate of breathing, but also on its depth, the situation is quite complex and it is not easy to assess the overall situation in an individual case without a battery of specific laboratory examinations.

 

However, if we take all the above physiological mechanisms into consideration, the situation of people during holotropic breathwork very likely resembles that in high mountains, where there is less oxygen and the CO₂ level is decreased by compensatory faster breathing. The cerebral cortex, being the youngest part of the brain from an evolutionary point of view, is generally more sensitive to a variety of influences (such as alcohol and anoxia) than the older parts of the brain. This situation would thus cause inhibition of the cortical functions and intensified activity in the archaic parts of the brain, making the unconscious processes more available.

 

It is interesting that many individuals, and entire cultures, who lived in extreme altitudes, were known for their advanced spirituality. We can think in this context of the yogis in the Himalayas, the Tibetan Buddhists in the Quinzang high plateau, and the Incas in the Peruvian Andes. It is tempting to attribute it to the fact that, in an atmosphere with a lower content of oxygen, they had easy access to transpersonal experiences. However, an extended stay in high elevations leads to physiological adaptations, for example, hyperproduction of red blood cells in the spleen. The acute situation during holotropic breathwork might, therefore, not be directly comparable to an extended stay in high mountains.

 

In any case, there is a long way from the description of the physiological changes in the brain to the extremely rich array of phenomena induced by holotropic breathwork, such as authentic experiential identification with animals, archetypal visions, or past life memories. This situation is similar to the problem of the psychological effects of LSD. The fact that both of these methods can induce transpersonal experiences in which there is access to accurate new information about the universe through extrasensory channels, makes it difficult to accept that such experiences are stored in the brain.

 

Aldous Huxley, after having experienced psychedelic states, came to the conclusion that our brain cannot possibly be the source of the rich and fantastic array of phenomena that he had experienced. He suggested that it is more likely that the brain functions like a reducing valve that shields us from an infinitely larger cosmic input. The concepts, such as “memory without a material substrate” (von Foerster 1965), Sheldrake’s “morphogenetic fields” (Sheldrake 1981), and Laszlo’s “psi field” or “akashic field” (Laszlo 1993) bring important support for Huxley’s idea and make it increasingly plausible.

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In conclusion, I would like to compare psychotherapy using holotropic states of consciousness, in general, and holotropic breathwork, in particular, with talking therapies. Verbal methods of psychotherapy attempt to get to the roots of emotional and psychosomatic problems indirectly by helping the clients to remember relevant forgotten and repressed events from their life or reconstruct them indirectly by analysis of dreams, symptoms, or distortions of the therapeutic relationship (transference).

 

Most of verbal psychotherapies also use a model of the psyche, which is limited to postnatal biography and to the Freudian individual unconscious. They also employ techniques that cannot reach the perinatal and transpersonal domains of the psyche and thus the deeper roots of the disorders they are trying to heal. The limitations of verbal therapies are particularly obvious in relation to memories of traumatic events that have a strong physical component, such as difficult birth, episodes of near-drowning, and injuries or diseases. Traumas of this kind cannot be worked through and resolved by talking about them; they have to be relived and the emotions and blocked physical energies attached to them have to be fully expressed.

 

Other advantages of holotropic breathwork are of economic nature; they are related to the ratio between the number of participants in breathwork groups and the number of facilitators. It was estimated that a classical psychoanalyst was able treat about eighty patients in his or her entire lifetime. In spite of all the changes psychotherapy has undergone since Freud’s times, the ratio between the number of clients needing treatment and the number of professional therapists required for this task continues to be very unfavorable.

 

By comparison, holotropic breathwork utilizes the healing potential of group members, who alternate in the roles of breathers and “sitters.” Participants do not have any special training to be good sitters. A typical group requires one trained facilitator per eight to ten group participants. Although it might be objected that traditional group psychotherapy has a similar or even better therapist/client ratio, it is important to take into consideration that in breathwork groups each participant has a personal experience focused specifically on his or her problems. Sitters also repeatedly report what a profound experience it was for them to assist others and how much they had learned from it.

 

We have observed that a significant number of people, who have attended holotropic breathwork sessions, tend to become very interested in the process and decide to enroll in the training for facilitators. The number of people from different countries of the world who have participated in our training and have become certified as facilitators has recently exceeded one thousand. This “chain reaction” effect of holotropic breathwork is a very hopeful sign for the future.

 

In addition, many people who had experienced verbal psychotherapy before they came to holotropic breathwork often compared favorably the results of a small number of breathwork sessions with what they achieved in years of talking therapy. I hope that in the near future these impressions will be confirmed by well-designed controlled clinical studies.

 

LITERATURE:

 

Browne, I. 1990. Psychological Trauma, or Unexperienced Experience. Re-Vision Journal 12(4):21-34,

 

Foerster, H. von. 1965. Memory without a Record. In: The Anatomy of Memory (D.P.Kimble, ed.). Palo Alto: Science and Behavior Books.

 

Freud,S. and Breuer, J. 1936. Studies in Hysteria, New York: Nervous and Mental Diseases.

 

Frost, S. B. 2001. Soul Collage. Santa Cruz, CA: Hanford Mead Publishers.

 

Goldman, D. 1952. “The Effect of Rhythmic Auditory Stimulation on the Human Electroencephalogram.” EEG and Clinical Neurophysiology.

 

Grof, S. 2001. Psychology of the Future: Lessons from Modern Consciousness Research. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

 

Grof, S. 2006. The Ultimate Journey: Consciousness and the Mystery of Death, MAPS, Sarasota, FL.

 

Grof, S. 2007. “Psychology of the Future: Lessons from Modern Consciousness Research.” In: Nove perspektivy v psychiatrii, psychologii, a psychoterapii. Prague:

 

Huxley, A. 1959. The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, Great Britain: Penguin Books.

 

Jilek, W. J. 1974. Salish Indian Mental Health and Culture Change: Psychohygienic and Therapeutic Aspects of the Guardian Spirit Ceremoniel. Toronto and Montreal: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston of Canada.

 

Jilek, W. 1982. Altered States of Consciousness in North American Indian Ceremonials. Ethos 10:326-343.

 

Jung, C.G. 1959 a. The Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious. Collective Works, Vol.9.1., Bollingen Series 20., Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

 

Jung, C.G. 1959 b. Mandala Symbolism. Translated by R.F.C. Hull. Bollingen Series/Princeton,

 

Kalff, D. and Kalff, M. 2004. Sandplay: A Psychotherapeutic Approach to the Psyche. Cloverdale, CA: Temenos Press.

 

Katz, R. 1976. The Painful Ecstasy of Healing. Psychology Today, December.

 

Kellogg, J. 1977. “The Use of the Mandala in Psychological Evaluation and Treatment.” Amer.Journal of Art Therapy 16:123.

 

Kellogg, J. 1978. Mandala: The Path of Beauty. Baltimore: Mandala Assessment and Research Institute.

 

Laszlo, E. 1993. The Creative Cosmos. Edinburgh: Floris Books.

 

Laszlo, E. 2004. Science and the Akashic Field: An Integral Theory of Everything. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions

 

Lee, R.B. and DeVore, I. (eds) 1976.Kalahari Hunter-Gatherers: Studies of the!Kung San and Their Neighbors. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

 

Martin, J.. 1965. LSD Analysis. Lecture and film presented at the Second International Conference on the Use of LSD in Psychotherapy held at South Oaks Hospital, May 8-12, Amityville, New York. Paper published in: H. A. Abramson (ed,) The Use of LSD in Psychotherapy and Alcoholism. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill. Pp. 223-238.

 

McCririck, P. 1966. “The Importance of Fusion in Therapy and Maturation.”

 

Moreno, J. L. 1948. Psychodrama and Group Psychotherapy. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 49 (6):902-903.

 

Neher, A, 1961. “Auditory Driving Observed with Scalp Electrodes in Normal Subjects. Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology 13:449-451.

 

Neher, A. 1962. A physiological Explanation of Unusual Behavior Involving Drums. Human Biology 14:151-160.

 

Perls, F. S, 1973. Gestalt Approach and Eyewitness to Therapy. Palo Alto, CA: Science and Behavior Books.

 

Ramacharaka (William Walker Atkinson). 1903. The Science of Breath. L. N.Fowler and Company, Ltd.

 

Reich, W. 1949. Character Analysis. New York: Noonday Press.

 

Reich, W. 1961. The Function of the Orgasm:Sex-Economic Problems of Biological Energy. New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux.

 

Shapiro, F. 2001. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing: Basic Principles, Protocols, and Procedures. New York: Guilford Press.

 

Sheldrake, R. 1981. A New Science of Life: The Hypothesis of Formative Causation. Los Angeles, CA: J. P. Tarcher.

 

Bibliography of the Studies of Holotropic Breathwork:

This is a part I am still working on – some information in the references is still missing; I will send it soon.

 

Understanding and Treatment of Psychospiritual Crises

(“Spiritual Emergencies”)

Stanislav Grof, M.D.

One of the most important implications of the research of holotropic states is the realization that many of the conditions, which are currently diagnosed as psychotic and indiscriminately treated by suppressive medication, are actually difficult stages of a radical personality transformation and of spiritual opening. If they are correctly understood and supported, these psychospiritual crises can result in emotional and psychosomatic healing, remarkable psychological transformation, and consciousness evolution (Grof and Grof 1989, 1990).

 

Episodes of this nature can be found in the life stories of shamans, founders of the great religions of the world, famous spiritual teachers, mystics, and saints. Mystical literature of the world describes these crises as important signposts of the spiritual path and confirms their healing and transformative potential. Mainstream psychiatrists do not differentiate psychospiritual crises, or even episodes of uncomplicated mystical experiences, from serious mental diseases, because of their narrow conceptual framework.

 

Academic psychiatry, being a subdiscipline of medicine, has a strong preference for biological interpretations, and uses a model of the psyche limited to postnatal biography and the Freudian individual unconscious. These are serious obstacles in understanding the nature and content of mystical states and the ability to distinguish them from manifestations of mental disease.

 

The term “spiritual emergency” (psychospiritual crisis), which my wife Christina and I coined for these states alludes to their positive potential. In English, this term is a play on words reflecting the similarity between the word “emergency” (a suddenly appearing acute crisis) and “emergence” (surfacing or rising). It thus suggests both a problem and opportunity to rise to a higher level of psychological functioning and spiritual awareness. We often refer in this context to the Chinese pictogram for crisis that illustrates the basic idea of spiritual emergency. This ideogram is composed of two images, one of which means danger and the other opportunity.

 

Among the benefits that can result from psychospiritual crises that receive expert support and are allowed to run their natural course are improved psychosomatic health, increased zest for life, a more rewarding life strategy, and an expanded worldview that includes the spiritual dimension. Successful completion and integration of such episodes also involves a substantial reduction of aggression, increase of racial, political, and religious tolerance, ecological awareness, and deep changes in the hierarchy of values and existential priorities. It is not an exaggeration to say that successful completion and integration of psychospiritual crisis can move the individual to a higher level of consciousness evolution.

 

In recent decades, we have seen rapidly growing interest in spiritual matters that leads to extensive experimentation with ancient, aboriginal, and modern “technologies of the sacred,” consciousness-expanding techniques that can mediate spiritual opening. Among them are various shamanic methods, Eastern meditative practices, use of psychedelic substances, effective experiential psychotherapies, and laboratory methods developed by experimental psychiatry. According to public polls, the number of Americans who have had spiritual experiences significantly increased in the second half of the twentieth century and continues to grow. It seems that this has been accompanied by a parallel increase of psychospiritual crises.

 

More and more people seem to realize that genuine spirituality based on profound personal experience is a vitally important dimension of life. In view of the escalating global crisis brought about by the materialistic orientation of Western technological civilization, it has become obvious that we are paying a great price for having rejected spirituality. We have banned from our life a force that nourishes, empowers, and gives meaning to human existence.

 

On the individual level, the toll for the loss of spirituality is an impoverished, alienated, and unfulfilling way of life and an increase of emotional and psychosomatic disorders. On the collective level, the absence of spiritual values leads to strategies of existence that threaten the survival of life on our planet, such as plundering of nonrenewable resources, polluting the natural environment, disturbing ecological balance, and using violence as a principal means of international problem-solving.

 

It is, therefore, in the interest of all of us to find ways of bringing spirituality back into our individual and collective life. This would have to include not only theoretical recognition of spirituality as a vital aspect of existence, but also encouragement and social sanctioning of activities that mediate experiential access to spiritual dimensions of reality. And an important part of this effort would have to be development of an appropriate support system for people undergoing crises of spiritual opening, which would make it possible to utilize the positive potential of these states.

 

In 1980, Christina founded the Spiritual Emergency Network (SEN), an organization that connects individuals undergoing psychospiritual crises with professionals, who are able and willing to provide assistance based on the new understanding of these states. Filial branches of SEN now exist in many countries of the world.