Full Certification Program in Transpersonal Psychology and Grof® Breathwork

This module explains the contribution of Stanislav Grof, qualified as

"The most significant in the recent history of depth psychology, and indeed the most important advance in this complete field, since Freud and Jung"

Richard Tarnas PhD.

Dr. Grof's 60 years of research have opened up a new understanding of the unconscious and its dynamics, psychopathologies, and the origins of psychogenic symptoms, allowing for new insights into the healing processes and therapeutic application of expanded states of consciousness.

Dr. Stanislav Grof has been one of the earliest and most renowned pioneers of these realms, through his decades of legal and scientific research into the therapeutic use of psychedelics and his groundbreaking understanding of non-ordinary states, based on experiential forms of psychotherapy and his extensive studies of art, shamanism, and mythology.

From Stan's work, a new "cartography" of the human psyche has emerged, which adds to the biographical unconscious the relevance of gestation and birth experiences, introducing us to the transpersonal realms commonly explored by shamans and healers. Stan's research led him to co-found Transpersonal Psychology.

By exploring these realms, you will gain a deeper appreciation for your capacity for growth, a broader vision for your own life, and an expanded toolbox for clearing old traumas from your body and mind.

This perspective frees you from your limiting feelings and ideas about who you are and what you think you are capable of being and achieving.

Some topics to be addressed in Grofian Transpersonal Psychology & Psychopathology

The expanded Cartography of the Human Psyche

You will have a unique opportunity to explore this revolutionary paradigm and its implications for your own therapeutic process and your work with others. We will explore the imprints left by life, birth, and gestation, and even the transpersonal collective unconscious. By opening yourself to the deepest dimensions of your psyche, you will discover a new world of understanding, from seeing how your body holds energy linked to physical trauma, to appreciating how your birth experience provides a "template" for how you navigate your difficulties, to opening yourself to profound transpersonal guidance for your daily life.

Systems of Condensed Experience (COEX)

You'll understand how these constellations of multidimensional memories from different moments in life and beyond work. You'll learn how they color and modify our everyday perceptions and experiences.

Psychopathology

You will gain a novel and practical understanding of emotional problems and effective forms of therapy, allowing you to develop a deep trust in the body's self-healing intelligence, unleashed through holotropic processes.

In holotropic states, the intensification of tension and the resulting relaxation tends to spread from one part of the body to another in a way that varies from person to person. The amount of muscular tension and associated intense emotions tends to decrease over the course of the sessions.

Holotropic Breathwork alters the body's chemistry in such a way that blocked physical and emotional energies associated with various traumatic memories are released and made available for peripheral processing and discharge. This allows the previously repressed content of these memories to surface into consciousness and be integrated. This is a healing process that we aim to encourage and support, not a pathological process that must be repressed, as is typically the case in conventional medicine.

This module teaches bodywork in transpersonal therapy with expanded states of consciousness, the psychodynamic understandings that guide it, and the precise way it is used in Holotropic Therapy, applying different techniques when necessary.

In holotropic states, the process takes us from the psyche to the somatic, and also allows us to effectively work through unresolved bodily situations and achieve a more complete and grounded emotional integration. Effective bodywork ensures optimal closure of the holotropic experience.

Some topics to be addressed in The Holotropic Body Work Module

Practice

Through an interactive, hands-on approach, participants will learn and apply various interventions and specific techniques that have proven to be highly useful over time. This will allow you to acquire practical and effective tools to help breathers achieve better session closure when necessary.

Insight

The body and mind represent an indivisible unity. The somatic dimension is a fundamental aspect of Holotropic Therapy. You will learn how the profound psychodynamic insights of Grofian Transpersonal Psychology and modern consciousness research inform and guide the use of specific liberatory bodywork.

Method

Through classes, live demonstrations, and experiential practices, you will understand the concepts behind bodywork and recognize when and how to use it in an ethical, informed, and responsible manner.

Western science has been dominated by monistic materialism, which leaves no room for any kind of spirituality. Modern psychiatry has no category resembling "spiritual experience" or

"mystical experience"; all such experiences are viewed as manifestations of serious mental illness or "psychosis." This is an unfortunate error caused by a superficial and inadequate model of the psyche used by academic psychiatry. This model fails to recognize the perinatal and transpersonal domains as legitimate dimensions of the human psyche, and views experiences originating there as products of an unknown pathological process. Modern consciousness research has demonstrated that, properly understood and supported, spontaneous episodes of Holotropic states can be healing, transformative, and evolutionary. They serve as an invaluable source of paradigm-shattering information about consciousness, the human psyche, and even the nature of reality. Stan and his late wife, Christina, coined the term "Spiritual Emergency" for episodes of Holotropic states of consciousness that are so intense that they interfere with the ability to function adequately in everyday life. They describe the triggers for these episodes; characteristics that differentiate them from psychotic episodes; their most important forms; and ways to support them that amplify their therapeutic and transformative potential. Proper management of these episodes benefits not only the individuals involved, but also society as a whole, since the successful completion and integration of spiritual emergencies typically leads to a new worldview, hierarchy of values, and life strategy that would increase humanity's chances of survival. "In modern societies spiritual values have been widely ignored and replaced by materialistic considerations. It is now increasingly clear that the yearning for transcendence and the need for internal development are fundamental and normal aspects of human nature "Stanislav Grof

Some topics to be addressed in the Spiritual Emergencies Module

Emergence and Emergence of Spirituality

You'll discover a broad view of the essence of the spiritual awakening process, in light of clinical research. It examines the different types, their differential diagnosis versus psychosis, initial interactions, and what to do specifically to appropriately support someone in this situation, thus promoting a positive resolution.

Psychospiritual Crises

Understanding the relevant topic of psychospiritual crises will give you a new perspective on complex and recurring problems such as alcoholism and drug addiction, allowing you to gain a deeper understanding and a novel practical approach to supporting those who experience them.

Therapeutic Potential

You will discover that an important subcategory of non-ordinary states, currently misdiagnosed as psychosis, are actually crises of spiritual breakthrough that possess great transformative and therapeutic potential.

Categories

You will understand the most important types of Spiritual Emergencies, their histories and their characteristic phenomenology.

Relevance

You will understand how the proper treatment of these crises can have very positive individual and collective implications.

"Our psyche is established according to the structure of the universe, and what happens in the macrocosm similarly occurs in the infinitesimal and most subjective extensions of the psyche."C. Gustav Jung

You will discover how archetypal astrology is founded on the principle that planetary archetypes have a fundamental, cosmic basis that influences human existence. Each planet corresponds to an archetypal dimension of consciousness—a particular pattern that moves reality in a specific direction.

You will have a unique opportunity to explore this new paradigm and its implications.

One of the most fascinating discoveries of modern consciousness research is that Archetypal Astrology can provide a dynamic meta-framework that allows us to contextualize and better understand psychological crises and spiritual emergencies, and even to schedule the most optimal times for holotropic sessions.

This perspective invites us to reflect on how planetary cycles can mirror our personal and collective growth. By learning to interpret these cosmic influences, we can find a map that guides us on the journey of self-discovery and transformation.

Moreover, the study of archetypal astrology allows us to see the deep connection between the individual and the universe, revealing how cosmic forces can manifest in our personalities, behaviors, dreams, and aspirations. This understanding can lead us to a greater level of self awareness.

Some topics that will be addressed in Archetypal Psychology

Archetypal Dynamics

You will understand the archetypal dynamics of human experience and non-ordinary states of consciousness. We will recount the clinical effort to find a reliable way to predict the nature and outcome of psychedelic sessions and how it resulted in an unexpected discovery, in which both the synchronicity and character of psychedelic states, as well as other non-ordinary states of consciousness, are consistently found to correlate with specific planetary alignments in relation to the individual's natal chart.

Psychology and Astrology

You will learn how the discovery of condensed experience systems (COEX) and basic perinatal matrices (BPM) form a conceptual bridge between psychology and archetypal astrology.

Archetypal Symbolism of the BPMs

We will discuss the archetypal symbolism of the Basic Perinatal Matrices (BPM), the experiential patterns associated with the reliving of the four stages of labor, and their connections to anatomy, birth physiology, and archetypal dynamics.

Transits

We will explore how astrology enables a better understanding of one's own life: its cycles, its ups and downs, its crises and breakthroughs, its periods of great change and transformation, through the study of planetary transits.

"Carefully selected music serves important functions in holotropic states of consciousness. It mobilizes emotions associated with repressed memories, brings them to the surface, and facilitates their expression. It helps open the door to the unconscious, intensifies and deepens the healing process, and provides a meaningful context for the experience. The continuous flow of music creates a guiding wave that helps the individual move through difficult impasses, overcome psychological defenses, surrender, and let go."Stanislav Grof

In Holotropic Breathwork, the consciousness-enhancing effect of breathing is enhanced through the use of evocative music.

Many pre-industrial cultures have developed percussion rhythms that in experiments carried out in Western laboratories have demonstrable effects on the electrical activity of the brain.

The archives of cultural anthropologists contain numerous examples of extraordinarily powerful trance-inducing methods that combine music, percussion, human voices, and body movement.

Like breathwork, instrumental music and other forms of sound technology—droning percussion, vibrations, and chanting—have been used for centuries, even millennia, as primary tools in shamanic practice, healing rituals, and rites of passage in many parts of the world.

Some topics to be addressed in Music

Structure

You will learn and understand how to apply the structure of music in its various phases, which facilitates and uniquely characterizes Holotropic Breathwork. This will give you the opportunity to begin creating your own music set for your future Holotropic therapy sessions.

Theory

You will learn the theory that underpins the application of music in holotropic therapy, with detailed explanations and examples about the structure of each of the sections, so that you can improve your listening and musical sensitivity.

History

You will understand the transcultural use of music and the various sound technologies to induce and sustain holotropic states used over time.

Sound

You will know the technical requirements necessary to assemble a sound equipment with the optimal power and high fidelity for this work.

In Holotropic Breathwork, the guiding principle is the breather's inner healing intelligence, and the facilitator's role is to support the spontaneously unfolding process. The ability to trust the psyche's self-healing potential and to abstain from judgment of any kind is one of the most important requirements for productive and successful work with Holotropic states of consciousness Stanislav Grof Holotropic therapy offers significant practical and economic advantages. It allows us to reach the roots of emotional and psychosomatic problems at levels unavailable through verbal therapy.

These states accelerate and deepen access to unconscious material. This makes it possible to work through and process the physical traumas that underlie various emotional and psychosomatic disorders, which usually allows for profound healing of symptoms at the causal level.

This module provides a broad overview of the Holotropic Breathwork (Grof® Breathwork) process, explains the facilitator's role, and covers all key topics related to this powerful form of self-exploration and psychotherapy.

Working with the exquisite therapeutic power of holotropic states requires a defined and precise set-up. In Holotropic Therapy, we have a widely proven one, derived from Stan Grof's many decades of clinical research.

Some topics to be addressed in The Facilitator Adventure

Introductory Talk

You'll learn how to give a comprehensive theoretical introduction, preparing and informing participants about everything they need to know so that the holotropic experience is powerful, effective, and safe.

Medical Forms

Learn how crucial is the implementation of the medical forms and the utter importance of screening all contraindications in a skillful and informed manner. This will avoid many potential physical and emotional problems, keeping you and your client out of trouble and making your work safe, useful, and rewarding.

Relaxation

You will learn an effective model for relaxing before starting the experience.

Mandalas

You will understand the historical development of mandalas, their use in different cultures and in psychology, and how they are an important part of the integration of the holotropic process.

Sharing

You will learn the keys to group integration work in sharing sessions and the unique role of the facilitator.

The significance of LSD psychotherapy insights, experiential therapeutic approaches, selfexploration, and various forms of spiritual practices transcend the narrow conceptual limitations of psychiatry, psychology, and psychotherapy.

"We seem to be in a race against time unprecedented in human history. What is at stake is, no less, the future of life on the planet. If we continue to maintain old strategies, which are clearly self-destructive, the survival of human life will be unlikely. However, if an inner transformation occurs in a sufficient number of people, we may reach a level of evolution of consciousness that does justice to the name we have given our species: 'Homo sapiens.'"Stanislav Grof

The significance of LSD psychotherapy insights, experiential therapeutic approaches, selfexploration, and various forms of spiritual practices transcend the narrow conceptual limitations of psychiatry, psychology, and psychotherapy.

Many of the new discoveries relate to phenomena of fundamental importance, potentially relevant to the future of the human race and life on the planet. They offer a new understanding of the forces that influence history, contribute to the dynamics of sociopolitical movements, and contribute to the creative achievements of the human spirit in art, philosophy, and science.

Since time immemorial, violence and aggression have been among the most important forces driving history. Due to technological progress and exponential population growth in the 20th century, they have become a threat to the survival of life on the planet. It has become imperative to gain a deeper understanding of the roots of these forces in the human psyche and find ways to reduce their impact on the world.

This material helps us understand many obscure chapters in the history of religion, facilitating a clear distinction between authentic mysticism or true spirituality, on the one hand, and the mainstream religions and established churches, on the other.

Some topics that will be addressed in Roots of Violence and Human Ambition

Politics, Advertising, and Symbolism

Through this module, you will connect the dots between the striking similarities in the symbolism of posters and propaganda for wars, revolutions, and other types of sociopolitical crises and the visions that accompany the reliving of birth, death, and rebirth experiences. These observations strongly suggest that the perinatal and transpersonal levels of the unconscious are the source of malignant violence and insatiable ambition in the human psyche.

Self-Healing

Explores the potential of Holotropic states to alleviate the influence of dangerous forces on the human psyche, which are largely responsible for the current global crisis and threaten planetary survival.

New Understandings

You will explore observations from research into Holotropic states of consciousness that offer new insights into unquenchable ambition and extreme forms of violence and social pathology, such as wars, bloody revolutions, terrorism, suicide bombers, concentration camps, and genocide.

Ecology

We will discuss various current understandings and concrete practices to minimize our planetary damage, fostering a conscious and loving relationship with our environment and all its riches.