Holotropic Breathwork™

Holotropic Breathwork is a powerful way of deeply opening to innate healing wisdom in our mind, body, and spirit. Drawing on ancient healing and spiritual practices, Holotropic Breathwork uses the breath and evocative music to enter into a non-ordinary state of consciousness in a safe setting, to facilitate deep self-exploration, healing, and spiritual opening. This process brings about transformation at all levels of self.  

The process involved is simple, yet powerful and insightful. This highly experiental work is usually done in group settings, although individual sessions(couples) are also possible. In the standard group setting, people work in pairs and alternate in the roles of experiencer and sitter. (You don’t need to come with a partner.) Thus, there are two Breathwork sessions in the course of a one-day workshop. The sitter's role is to act as witness and to assist the breather as needed, but not to interfere in the process. The facilitators also honor and allow the breather's inner healing intelligence to guide the process, assisting only as needed. Focused release work is also used as needed within the session, to allow release of blocks in the body or to facilitate the ongoing process. Other important components of Holotropic Breathwork are mandala drawing and group sharing, to help integrate and complete the Breathwork process.

We all have events which occur in our personal history-in the circumstances of our birth, physically traumatic or emotional events, which can create constrictions that impede the flow of our creative energy. These constrictions may keep us from attaining the personal wholeness, community feeling, and intelligence of spirit that brings fullness and satisfaction to life. Consequently, we may experience difficulty in our lives--with our interpersonal relationships and lack a sense of life’s purpose. We may also feel stress, anxiety, or physical discomforts that conventional medicine cannot relieve.  Holotropic Breathwork offers a powerful way to resolve these problems. It helps us achieve our full potential by helping us to overcome feelings that we are stuck, trapped, blocked, or burdened.


CONTRAINDICATIONS for Holotropic Breathwork include: heart problems, high blood pressure, severe mental illness, recent surgery or fractures, acute infectious illness, epilepsy, glaucoma, pregnancy. If you are unsure if this work is contraindicated for you, please contact Dr. Tom to discuss your concerns.

Holotropic Breathwork™ was developed by Stanislav Grof, MD and his wife Christina Grof in the 1970s and combines insights from ancient spiritual practices, modern consciousness research, and depth psychology. Dr. Grof knew from his ground-breaking scientific research conducted in Prague and later at Johns Hopkins University, as the Chief of Psychiatric Research at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center in Baltimore, Maryland, that transformation can occur in non-ordinary states of consciousness. For this reason, he developed a safe and effective way of using one’s own breath to induce these states.