IN GROFIAN TRANSPERSONAL PSYCHOLOGY AND HOLOTROPIC THERAPY
Table of contents
Advanced Psychonautics:
Maximum Benefits with minimum risk
In order to work safely and successfully with psychedelic psychotherapy, an extraordinary depth psychology is required, one that is capable of understanding the vast cartography of the human psyche, holotropic states of consciousness, and to clearly distinguish psychopathology and spirituality (“spiritual emergence/emergency”). This includes the therapeutic application of newly discovered mechanisms for inner exploration, self-integration and healing.
Stanislav Grof, M.D., Ph.D., clinical psychiatry, accompanied since 1954 over 4,000 individual psychedelic therapy sessions and since 1974 over 50,000 participants in breathwork sessions in groups, mostly large ones. His extraordinary theoretical and practical experience served as a basis for a new discipline, Transpersonal psychology, integrating science and psychology. Emerging from the extraordinary and unique perspective of psychedelic and holotropic states of consciousness, it vastly expanded the conceptual framework and traditional therapeutic methods of psychology.
Stan´s psychology is unique, both in terms of theory and innovative therapy. It has been compared in relevance to that of Sigmund Freud, being probably the most important contribution to psychology since Carl Gustav Jung.
"If I am the father of LSD, Stan Grof is the godfather; nobody has contributed as much as Stan for the development of my problem child."
Albert Hofmann Tuit
Grofian Transpersonal Psychology allows us to understand with great lucidity and detail the profound territories of the human unconscious and complex psychodynamics of psychedelic and holotropic states. It makes possible safe therapeutic work in holotropic states of consciousness in their maximum fullness and power minimizing potential risks. This vision and method are applicable to Grof® Breathwork (holotropic breathwork) and to Psychedelic therapy with various psychedelic compounds such as MDMA, Psilocybin, LSD-25 and 5-MEO-DMT.
Emerging from groundbreaking psychiatric psychedelic clinical research carried out in Europe and USA, Stan´s modern consciousness research covers and integrates decades of psychedelic research and clinical experience. It offers all that is necessary to accompany in an informed and coherent way the different dimensions of the holotropic process.
It carefully considers the whole procedure from the screening of the main contraindications, to a comprehensive theoretical preparation of the subject, and to the establishment of the ideal context (set and setting) that is required.
It also covers all the crucial ethical and practical aspects, as well as the ideal music and therapeutic interventions. The method allows for a better, deeper and clearer resolution and grounding of the psychedelic experience. This is done when necessary by specific Bodywork interventions, effectively releasing psychological, emotional, and somatic tensions that may have been unresolved during the course of the session.
This is very important to minimize any potential problems after the session. Alternatives and practical methods to integrate, ground and deepen the therapeutic process in between psychedelic sessions will also be covered.
The application of holotropic states to psychotherapy and deep self-exploration opens unique opportunities for both the understanding and the method of contemporary psychology as well as an experiential access to legitimate personal spirituality.
HOLOTROPIC
The term holotropic literally means «Moving towards wholeness».
These states have a great healing, transformative, heuristic and even evolutionary potential.
This program designed, expanded and updated by Stan and Brigitte Grof in 2020, relies on the vast experience accumulated by one of the most important psychiatrists in history and leading researcher and pioneer of psychedelics in therapeutic clinical practice. This form of therapeutic work in holotropic states has been safely applied to tens of thousands of people for over 45 years with extraordinary results. An important part of the course consists of pre-recorded classes with Stanislav Grof, M.D., Ph.D. These will be complemented with readings, classes, Q & A sessions, study groups, personal work, Role Playing and extensive personal experiences with Grof® Breathwork and extraordinary states of consciousness, both as client and as therapist.
Your deep personal process of self-exploration and healing, along with accompanying many others in holotropic states, will deepen and enrich your personal and therapeutic path in a unique way and will be of paramount importance when accompanying clients, providing deep trust grounded in real, personal experience.
In more than 20 books and 160 scientific articles that support this approach, Stanislav Grof, M.D., Ph.D. recontextualizes emotional symptoms and psychopathologies from rigorous scientific research with psychedelics. It offers a remarkable therapeutic method and a process that enhances the natural holotropic movement towards transpersonal development, as well as considering their social and ecological implications.
We will also address the crucial and practical effective and informed support for people going through the emergence of their spirituality and particularly for working with powerful psychospiritual crises (spiritual emergencies).
Towards a Psychology of the Future: An Overview
The online modules last 5 weeks and one day.
Once a week the platform will open that week’s class, which consists of videos, reading material, review questions and optional in-depth material. You can see all this material at the time and day that best suits you.
For 6 Mondays, at 8:00 p.m. (CET Time Zone) an online / on direct meeting will be held, to discuss and deepen the material reviewed that week. The sessions will last two hours, the first hour to ask questions to the teachers, and the second to carry out experiential exercises and work on the person of the therapist.
They have a duration of 7 days and 6 nights. Each module includes classes, exercises to work the person of the therapist, two holotropic sessions in the role of sitter, and two holotropic sessions to live the experience. Sessions will be with Grof® Breathwork and «holotropic» experiences.
Each intensive experiential module is carefully preceded by preparation sessions and is followed by sessions of integration.
Accommodation, food and work materials are included in the value of the program.
During the three years of training, between the modules, there will be study groups and online group activities to delve into different content.
We will have time to share talks, courses and Q&A with world experts, and practical activities for sharing and integration.
They will also allow us to have continuous work and group cohesion.
Deep and systematic personal experiences in inner exploration and therapy with holotropic states. The use of different psychedelic compounds in an optimal clinical setting is crucial in the training of experienced therapists, and for the unfolding of the student’s inner experiences and personal growth process. You will alternate in the role as co-therapist with trainers and client in different instances, so you can really learn and understand the power and complexity of psychedelics.
The experiential intensives have a duration of 6 days and 5 nights. Each participant will be assigned to a group: A, B, C or D. (The assignment of the participants to the groups will be made once the training begins)
Participants will have an individual «holotropic» psychotherapy experience and will direct an individual session in a therapeutic context. There will also be various integration activities.
Each intensive experiential module is carefully preceded by preparation sessions and is followed by sessions of integration.
Accommodation, food, and work materials are included in the value of the program.
In these meetings with the trainers, you will have the possibility of accompanying, deepening, and sharing your process, of reviewing theoretical and practical issues and get help and guidance in working with your music sets. You will also have the opportunity to work as a co-therapist preparing, accompany and integrating holotropic sessions.
During the three years, a total of 20 consultations will be carried out with the therapists. These can be done in person or online.
Five individually to have accompaniment in the formation process, nine in pairs to prepare the experiential sessions, and six in small groups for integration of experiences.
Each year participants will experience two sessions in a workshop context, of Grof® Breathwork or Holotropic Breathwork with certified facilitators, in the place of the world of their choice.
*These Grof® Breathwork sessions are not included in the price of the program.
In this module we will put into actual practice all that has been learned. We will review important aspects of the work and you will have different opportunities for integrating and sharing the profound process experienced throughout the program.
DESCRIPTION AND THEMS BY MODULES : ONLINE
I. Grofian Transpersonal Psychology & Psychopathology
This module explains the contribution of Stanislav Grof, rated 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"
By exploring these realms, you’ll gain a deeper appreciation of your ability to grow, a clearer view of your own life, and an expanded toolbox to cleanse old traumas from your mind and body.
This perspective frees you from limiting ideas about who you are and what you think you are capable of being and achieving.
Dr. Grof’s over 60 years of research have enabled a new way of understanding the unconscious and its dynamics, psychopathologies and the origins of psychogenic symptoms, allowing new understandings about healing processes and the concrete 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 on the therapeutic use of psychedelics and his innovative understanding of non-ordinary states, based on experiential forms of psychotherapy and his exhaustive studies of Art, Shamanism and Myths.
From Stan’s work has emerged a new expanded «cartography» of the human psyche, which adds to the personal unconscious the relevance of the experience of gestation and birth and also introduces us to the transpersonal unconscious. This groundbreaking clinical research has led to a new practical understanding of psychopathology and psychotherapy. Stan’s research led him to co-found the discipline of Transpersonal Psychology, which builds from individual psychology to include more advanced states of consciousness – as well as exciting new areas to the deep recesses of the psyche that makes exploration and self-exploration an “Adventure of Self-Discovery.»
Some topics to be addressed in this module
The expanded Cartography of the Human Psyche
Systems of Condensed Experience (COEX)
Psychopathology
II. The Adventure of the Holotropic Psychedelic Therapist
You will understand as a Holotropic Therapist, the art and science of bringing all the necessary elements of the process together in order to give the best possible preparation, context and integration of the Psychedelic and Holotropic experience.
Grofian Holotropic therapy has substantial advantages, both practical and economical. It allows for direct access to the roots of emotional and psychosomatic problems in ways that are impossible in verbal therapy.
By deepening and accelerating the access to unconscious and superconscious material, it becomes possible to process and elaborate physical and emotional traumas that underlie different emotional problems and psychosomatic symptoms. It also allows enough depth to access the transforming power of true spiritual experiences firsthand.
We will focus on all relevant aspects of the preparation and the integration of the psychedelic and holotropic experience.
Some topics to be addressed in this module
Set & Setting
Medical Forms
Ethics and Caring
Informative talk
Main constitutive elements of Holotropic therapy
Preparation sessions
Crucial practical aspects
Period in between sessions, integration and deepening therapy
III. Spiritual Emergence & Emergency: Understanding and Treatment of Psychospiritual Crisis
"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 Tuit
Proper management of these episodes benefits not only the individuals involved but also society as a whole, as the successful completion and integration of spiritual emergencies typically leads to an expanded worldview, a new hierarchy of values, and intelligent life strategies that would increase humanity’s chances of survival.
Western science has been dominated by monistic materialism, which has no room for any spirituality. Modern psychiatry does not have a category that refers to «spiritual experience» or «mystical experience»; all these experiences are seen as manifestations of serious mental illness or «psychosis.» This is an unfortunate mistake caused by a superficial and inadequate model of the psyche used by academic psychiatry. This model does not recognize perinatal and transpersonal domains as legitimate dimensions of the human psyche and sees experiences with its origin there as products of an unknown pathological process.
Modern research of consciousness has shown that, correctly understood and supported, spontaneous episodes of holotropic states can be healing, transformative and even evolutionary, and they may serve as an invaluable source of information. This understanding challenges the current paradigm about consciousness, the human psyche, and even the nature of reality.
Stan and Christina Grof in the 80´s coined the term «Spiritual Emergency» which refers to episodes of holotropic states of consciousness that are so intense that they interfere with the ability to function properly in everyday life. They describe the triggers of these episodes; characteristics that set them apart from psychotic episodes; the most important types and very practical ways to support them that amplify their therapeutic and transformative potential.
Some topics to be addressed in this module
Emergence of spirituality
Relevance
Categories
Psychospiritual Crisis & treatment
Therapeutic potential
DESCRIPTION AND THEMS BY MODULES : RESIDENTIAL
** Each module includes four holotropic experiential sessions. Two in the caregiver role and two in the experiencer role.
I. Psychedelic Therapy: State of the Art
We will review, analyze and give examples of the multiple complex situations that may occur at this depth of inner exploration. We will understand the various critical factors to be considered and that could determine the outcome of a particular session.
In this module we will deepen into how to establish the ideal Set and Setting for Holotropic psychedelic psychotherapy, based on extensive clinical research, transpersonal psychology and psychotherapy and its exquisite understanding of holotropic and psychedelic psychodynamics.
We will look at what would be the ideal ways of preventing and handling different problems and impasses when they occur. In this way you will be as prepared as possible to face the mystery of inner transformation in holotropic states.
Some topics to be addressed in this module
Advanced understandings and interventions
Psychological aspects involved
Critical situations
Personality Factors
Main psychedelics
II. Holotropic Body Work
The effective use of body work is a particular feature of Grof® Breathwork & Grofian® Psychedelic Therapy, and it ensures an optimal closure of the holotropic experience. This usually saves the client from any undesired residual problems after the psychedelic experience.
The process of intensifying tensions and consequent relaxation tends to move from one part of the body to another in a way that varies from person to person in holotropic states. The number of muscle tensions and intense emotions associated with them decreases with the number of sessions.
Psychedelics and Grof® Breathwork changes the body’s chemistry in such a way that blocked physical and emotional energies associated with different traumatic memories are released and put at our disposal to be processed and discharged peripherally. This allows the previously repressed content of such memories to emerge into consciousness and thus can be integrated. It is a healing process that we want to encourage and support, and not a pathological process that must be suppressed, as it is normally done in conventional medicine.
In holotropic states the process usually takes us from the psyche to the body. It may facilitate the resolution of unresolved somatic and emotionals problems. By working effectively with them, in a brief time, we may reach a fuller and more grounded integration.
This module includes the practice of body work in transpersonal therapy with expanded states of consciousness, the psychodynamic understandings that guides it and the precise way it is used in Holotropic Therapy applying different techniques, when indicated.
Some topics to be addressed in this module
Practice
Vision
Method
III. Music
The archives of cultural anthropologists contain numerous examples of trance-inducing methods of extraordinary power, combining music, percussion, human voices and body movement. We will review and contrast the ideal music and timings to accompany Grof® Psychedelic Therapy
In Holotropic Breathwork and in psychedelic therapy, the expanding effect of consciousness is enhanced by the use of evocative music.
Instrumental music and other forms of sound technology – monotonous percussion, vibrations and singing – have been used over the centuries, or even millennia, as primary tools in shamanic practice, healing rituals and rites of passage in many parts of the world. Independently, many pre-industrial cultures have developed percussion rhythms that in experiments conducted in Western laboratories have demonstrative effects on the electrical activity of the brain.
Some topics to be addressed in this module
History
Sound
Structure
Theory
Certification Module
In this module we will review, practice and integrate the learning achieved during the training.
This module is for those who have completed our training program in Transpersonal Psychology, and Grofian Psychedelic Therapy, and allows them to obtain International Certification as Psychedelic Therapist by the GROF® LEGACY TRAINING.
Note: The use and practice of psychedelic Therapy will always be regulated by the particular laws in different countries.
Faculty
Stanislav Grof is a psychiatrist with more than sixty years of experience in research of holotropic states of consciousness, a large and important subgroup of non-ordinary states that have healing, transformative, heuristic, and evolutionary potential. In the past, he was Principal Investigator in a psychedelic research program at the Psychiatric Research Institute in Prague, Czechoslovakia, Chief of Psychiatric Research at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and Scholar-in-Residence at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, CA.
Currently, he is Professor of Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) in San Francisco, CA, conducts professional training programs in holotropic breathwork and transpersonal psychology, and gives lectures and seminars worldwide. He is one of the founders and chief theoreticians of transpersonal psychology and the founding president of the International Transpersonal Association (ITA). In 2007, he was granted the prestigious Award >Vision 97< from the Václav and Dagmar Havel Foundation in Prague and in 2010 the Thomas R. Verny Award from the Association for Pre- and Perinatal Psychology and Health (APPPAH) for his pivotal contributions to this field. In 2004 he received an honorary Ph.D. degree from the World Buddhist University in Bangkok, later one from the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology ( ITP) and in 2018 another one for Psychedelic Therapy and Healing Arts from the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) in San Francisco, California.
Among his publications are over 150 articles in professional journals and the books Beyond the Brain; LSD Psychotherapy; The Cosmic Game; Psychology of the Future; The Ultimate Journey; When the Impossible Happens; Healing Our Deepest Wounds; Modern Consciousness Research and the Understanding of Art; The Stormy Search for the Self; Spiritual Emergency; and Holotropic Breathwork (the last three with Christina Grof). He was also invited as consultant for special effects in the Metro Goldwyn Meyer science fiction movie Brainstorm and 20th Century Fox science fiction movie Millenium.
Since April 2016, Stan has been happily married to Brigitte Grof. They live together in Germany and California and travel the inner and outer worlds in tandem, conducting seminars, trainings and Holotropic Breathwork / Grof® Breathwork workshops worldwide.
In August 2019 his life´s work encyclopedia “The Way of the Psychonaut” got published and the documentary film about his life and work got released “ The Way of the Psychonaut- Stan Grof and the journey of consciousness”.
In May 2020 he launched together with his wife Brigitte their new training in working with Holotropic States of Consciousness, the international Grof® Legacy Training.
www.stangrof.com
Javier Charme is a Teacher and Director of Formación Transpersonal Grof in South America since 2009. He is a Clinical Psychologist with a Transpersonal Orientation, in private practice. He has worked as a Holotropic Breathwork facilitator since 1999. He was licensed in Psychology at Universidad Santo Tomas in Chile and later did his Master in East-West Psychology at the California Institute for Integral Studies, USA. He has facilitated thousands of participants in over 400 Holotropic Breathwork groupal sessions around the world. He has training in different Eastern traditions, including Yoga, Advaita Vedanta and Buddhism and has explored Holotropic states for over 32 years. As a serious psychonaut, he has experienced hundreds of psychedelic sessions with high doses with different compounds. He is one of the most experienced facilitators and expert in holotropic states and was allowed by Stanislav Grof to train Psychedelic therapists.
Javier has participated in the training of hundreds of transpersonal therapist and psychologist in several post degrees in South America. For a decade he taught several courses on Transpersonal Psychology and Psychotherapy at Universidad Del Pacífico, Chile. He is an international speaker on themes related to Psychology, holotropic states and Transpersonal Psychology, and has speaked and organized transpersonal conferences, lead trainings and workshops in Chile, USA, Europe, Argentina, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Mexico and Ecuador.
Clinical Psychologist in private practice and a Grof ® Breathwork Facilitator and teacher.
Co-Director and Coordinator for Formación Transpersonal Grof® and Grof® Legacy Training for Latin America.
Magister in Psychology of Physical activity and Sports, Universidad Central ChiIe & Universidad Islas Baleares Spain.
University Professor, Universidad Autónoma and Universidad Tecnológica Metropolitana, Chile in the Subjects of Clinical Humanistic and Transpersonal Psychology, Psychological Theories (systemic, humanistic and transpersonal), Professional Abilities, and meditation. She has been a practitioner of meditation with different teachers for many years. She has lecture on different Programs on Mental training for sports, sports psychology and mindfulness for athletes. Relator at the program “Reducción de estrés con Mindfulness y Cognitivo Conductual integrado (MCCI) and Teacher at different programs related to mindfulness and psychology.
Paula has explored in depth psychedelic therapy with different compounds and has facilitated many sessions in holotropic states. She leads regular Eastern and Western meditation practices in Chile, being Co-director of the Drikung Kagyu Center of Vajrayana buddhism. She developed a mindfulness program for sportsmen.
Paula has organized several International Congresses on Transpersonal Psychology and Psychotherapy and modules on Transpersonal Psychology in South America.
Viktoria Luchetti was trained and certified as a Holotropic Breathwork Facilitator by Dr. Stan Grof and his then wife Christina in 1988. Since then, she has led training seminars and workshops in North and South America, and in Europe, now with over 30 years experience. Since 2007, she has co-directed the Holotropic Breathwork Trainings in Chile, Argentina, Colombia and Peru.
Viktoria is also a certified Waldorf Pedagogic teacher, having been trained in Kassel, Germany. She has worked pedagogically and therapeutically with children for over 20 years. In Chile she co-founded and co-directed a Waldorf School that at present has over 100 students, from Kindergarten thru 8th grade.
She trained with famed Dance and Movement teacher Anna Halprin in California, learning her “Life- Art Process”. She also learned “Authentic Movement” and has integrated both of these practices in her current work.
She had the opportunity to work for 3 years in a Hospice, accompanying dying people throughout their transition.
For over 20 years, she has worked with both children and adults, using “Sandplay Therapy”, as developed by Dora Kalff.
In addition, Viktoria was trained at the “Upledger Institute” in Craneo-Sacral and Soma-Emotional Therapy. She has been involved in this work for over 15 years.
Recently, she studied and practiced “Family Constellations” with Albrecht Mahr in his year-long workshop.
Her many years of varied and complementary fields of study allow her to bring an ample and profound knowledge and experience to her current work.
Jay Dufrechou is one of the co-directors of Grof Legacy Project USA and works with the international team of educators and trainers appointed by Stan and Brigitte Grof. He holds a PhD in transpersonal psychology from the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology (now Sofia University) and has taught as an adjunct professor at ITP since 2002, often supervising research theses, frequently involving the work of Stanislav Grof. His bachelor’s degree was in English (emphasis in Creative Writing) from Stanford University and a law degree from the University of California at Berkeley. His interest in transpersonal work began for Jay in the mid-90s with spiritual emergency experiences that opened up the healing and transformative power of contact with spiritual intelligence. He discovered holotropic breathing in the mid-90s, followed by work with a wide range of psychedelics, as a powerful means of harnessing and expanding these healing potentials. Jay is a certified Grof® Breathwork facilitator and has facilitated in the US, Canada, UK, India and China. He is the author of Moving through Grief: Reconnecting with Nature, which explores experiences of grief, crying, and other deep emotions that many people feel through intimate contact with nature in our time of ecological challenges. With Ryan Westrum, he co-authored The Psychedelics Integration Handbook, designed as a companion for people seriously exploring psychedelics for healing and personal growth. Jay has designed and taught courses on psychedelics for Sofia University and the Pacifica Graduate Institute. He is particularly interested in helping facilitators find their balance and presence when sitting down for others who have powerful experiences.
Psychologist trained at the Continental University and currently practicing as a transpersonal therapist. He is a Holotropic Breathwork facilitator formed by Stanislav Grof, Javier Charme and Viktoria Luchetti. He has also been trained in Gestalt therapy at the Gestalt Center of Peru and in the SAT program of Claudio Naranjo. At the same time he has completed several courses related to Mindfulness and meditation in therapeutic context.
Jean Paul has more than 12 years doing personal work with master plants. He has done different «diets» and dives with the Shipibo-Conibo ethnic group and deepened his work with ayahuasca. Later he has also worked with the Cactus of Wachuma (San Pedro), the bufo alvarius and the Willka (anadenanthera colubrina); being the latter medicine the one that is currently used in spaces of therapy and self-exploration, with a design that integrates psychology, transpersonal psychotherapy and ancestral knowledge. At the same time, he uses accompaniment, psychotherapy and personal development with microdoses of psilocybin.
He is also a promoter of Transpersonal Psychology and Psychotherapy in Peru through the Grof legacy training in Peru, the Transpersonal Association of Peru and the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology Holquimia, having organized and participated as a speaker in various trainings, courses, workshops, congresses and international seminars.
He also studied music at the Peruvian University of Applied Sciences in the specialty of musical composition, having explored the autochthonous music of Peru from both the coast, mountains and jungle and music originating from different regions of the planet. Music therapy is integrated into his psychotherapeutic work as a fundamental tool.
Director of the Mood Disorders Centre of Ottawa
Following his graduation in medicine, Paul Grof took his psychiatric training and became specialized in psychiatry in 1962. He worked as a research psychiatrist in the Psychiatric Research Institute in Prague, and as a fellow in psychoendocrinology of affective disorders in West Germany. In the fall of 1968 Dr. Grof was recruited as research psychiatrist and faculty member at McMaster University, Canada.
Between 1974 and 1977 he helped develop and run Affective disorder Clinics at the Sunnybrook Medical Center at the University of Toronto, and several other Canadian universities. Dr. Grof spent 1977 and 1978 as a Visiting Scientist at the National Institute of Mental Health in Washington, initially in a clinical neuropharmacology branch with Dennis Murphy and later in the psychobiology branch with Fred Goodwin.
In l982 Dr. Grof became Director of Research and Education at the Hamilton Psychiatric Hospital, a teaching hospital of McMaster University where he expanded research activities in psychobiology, and established a psychopharmacology research and training center. 1985 -2000 he was active as Expert of the World Health Organization, Mental Health section and chaired both an Expert committee and a Working Group on psychotropic drugs. From 1988 to 1993 Dr. Grof was Clinical Director of the Royal Ottawa Hospital and subsequently directed their clinical and research activities in mood disorders.
He is currently Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto and directs Mood Disorders Center of Ottawa. He has published over 400 articles and three books, and received several national and international research awards.
Renn studied with Stanislav Grof and Richard Tarnas at the Esalen Institute in California beginning in 1980 and certified as a Holotropic Breathwork facilitator in 1989. He offers workshops in British Columbia and abroad, as well as archetypal astrology consultations with clients around the world.
Renn’s first book, Pathways to Wholeness, about astrology and psychedelic experiences, was published in 2014, followed by The Archetypal Universe in 2018, which focuses on dreams, and Oh, Goddess in 2020 about relationships. His nine-month online course in Archetypal and Holotropic Astrology has received enthusiastic reviews. Renn has a B.A. in English and Religious Studies and worked part time as a health care worker with physically, mentally, and emotionally challenged adults for over thirty years. He lives in Victoria, B.C., Canada.
Journal Publications: “An Essential Map for the Inner Frontier,” Review of Stan Grof’s Way of the Psychonaut,” Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 2019. “Modern Consciousness Research and the Understanding of Art: Including the Visionary World of HR Giger,” Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 2016. “HR Giger and the Zeitgeist of the Twentieth Century,” Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 2014.
I am a licensed psychologist and retired professor from the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology. My work for the past 40 years on spiritual crises led to proposing the DSM IV and DSM 5 diagnostic category Religious or Spiritual Problem which has increased awareness of spiritual issues in clinical practice.
Currently my work focuses on spiritual competency which includes being able to recognize and work with spiritual crises but also includes being able to work with clients’ spiritual strengths. I have co-authored 3 articles on spiritual competency in APA journals and serve on an APA Task Force to develop guidelines for spiritual competency. Spiritual competency includes the skills to conduct spiritual assessments, use mindfulness, forgiveness, self-compassion and other spiritually-based practices in clinical practice. I recently founded the Spiritual Competency Academy that offers online courses on these topics.
Spiritual Competency Academy https://spiritualcompetencyacademy.com
Courses https://spiritual-competency-academy.thinkific.com/collections
Emma has been a pioneer in body-mind-spirit wellness for 50 years. She has written 7 books and co-produced two documentary films on topics related to health and healing. She has been a teacher in experiential learning for adults since 1985.
Prior to graduate school, Emma trained with some of the best bio-energetic and neo-Reichian therapists in the San Francisco Bay area, e.g. Stan Keleman, Anne Dreyfuss, Nadine Scott, Phil Cucuruto, Ed Jackson, MD, William Emerson, PhD and others. Her advanced training in breathwork, bodywork and energy work became central in her understanding of how to support personal growth and wellness. Her facilitation of group breathwork in the 1980s was sponsored by her graduate school to benefit the community.
From 1985-1992 Emma also dedicated herself to writing about and forwarding spiritual development. She volunteered at the Spiritual Emergence Network (SEN) for 7 years, editing their journal and newsletter, and coordinating two invited conferences at Esalen Institute for them. Stan & Christina Grof, founders of SEN, attended along with other psychologists, spiritual teachers, individuals with life experience, and the psychic, Anne Armstrong. Emma’s PhD dissertation on “How to Support Someone in Spiritual Emergency” was inspired by these gatherings. Stanislav Grof, MD’s pioneering work continues to be a profound source of inspiration for her.
By 1988 Emma was licensed as a Marriage, Family, and Child Therapist, had her PhD in Transpersonal Psychology, and specialized in private practice around issues of Spiritual Emergency. She continues to coach individuals online from all continents in the world as well as consulting with organizations regarding identifying and managing spiritual emergency.
From 1990-2001 Emma taught 9-day experiential courses in personal development. From 2001-2012 she traveled widely in her field research and focused on Spiritist Community Centers and Spiritist Psychiatric Hospitals in Brazil because they provide an effective, 120 year old model of integrative healthcare for all economic levels, cooperating with requirements for government funding as needed for inpatient care. The Brazilian Spiritists are very successful in recognizing and managing spiritual emergency–having developed their protocols for more than 100 years.
Ted Esser, Ph.D. has been the Director of the Spiritual Emergence Network (founded by Stan and Christina Grof in 1980) for over fifteen years. He has had training and experience with several spiritual traditions, with expertise in the areas of lucid dreaming, kundalini, nonduality, altered states of consciousness, and other things transpersonal.
He has held Core Faculty and Adjunct Professor positions teaching graduate-level Consciousness Studies and Transpersonal Philosophy, Theory, and Research Methods courses at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology (now Sofia University) and Consciousness & Dream Studies courses at John F. Kennedy University.
His dissertation, Lucid Dreaming, Kundalini, the Divine, and Nonduality: A Transpersonal Narrative Study examines its subject from a transdisciplinary framework, including transpersonal psychology, consciousness studies, religious studies, and dream studies. He is a contributing author in Lucid Dreaming: New Perspectives on Consciousness in Sleep to published by Prager. Previously, he worked in public and educational television for 7 years, producing the Midnight Theatre series for KCTS 9 in Seattle, WA.
He holds BA & BFA degrees in Communications (New Media) & Photography (Video Art) from the University of Washington, and an MA in Philosophy & Religion (Philosophy, Cosmology & Consciousness program ) and a PhD from the East/West Psychology program (Consciousness Studies track) from the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. He has five children and lives in San Diego County, CA with his partner where he conducts his spiritual counseling practice globally.
Invited Speakers
Brigitte Grof is a Dipl. Psychologist, licensed psychotherapist, and artist with over 30 years of experience in Holotropic Breathwork and Holotropic States of Consciousness. In 1986 she was trained at the Esalen Institute in California and got certified in the first training groups in USA and Switzerland. From the beginning of the Grof Transpersonal Training (GTT), she has been teaching training modules in USA, France, and in Germany (with Dr. Sylvester Walch) and was leading a 3-year Holotropic Breathwork training group with Dr. Ingo Jahrsetz. Since 2004 she developed and has been teaching her own method of individual therapy combining breathing and bodywork based on holotropic principles. Currently she works in her private practice in Wiesbaden, Germany, and offers Holotropic Breathwork workshops and retreats.
Neil Hanon, MD, FRCPC, is a psychiatrist in Kelowna, British Columbia and is Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of British Columbia (UBC). He is the Year 3 Director (the clinical year) of the Southern Medical Program of UBC in Kelowna. Dr. Hanon has been teaching medical students, Psychiatry residents, and Family Practise residents clinically and didactically since 1996. Dr. Hanon also does inpatient work at Kelowna General Hospital, and outpatient work at Outreach Urban Health (an Interior Health operated, primary care clinic where he works with homeless, street entrenched people often struggling with addictions and other mental health challenges), and at his private practise. In 2018 he was awarded the Clinical Faculty Award for excellence in clinical teaching by the Faculty of Medicine at UBC.
Dr. Hanon has a research interest in legally sanctioned trials with ketamine, MDMA, and psilocybin for the treatment of complicated grief, treatment resistant depression, and severe addictions. Dr. Hanon got involved in Holotropic Breathwork first as a participant to help with his grief after the death of his 17 year old son, then continued on to become certified as a Holotropic Breathwork facilitator in 2015. Dr. Hanon was fortunate to have Dr. Ralph Metzner as his teacher and mentor from 2015 until Ralph’s death in 2019. Dr. Hanon was one of the Founding members of Relief For Grief which has transformed into Jamaica Grief Retreats, a non profit organization that takes grieving parents to Jamaica for healing ceremonies with legal psilocybin mushrooms. Since 2015 Dr. Hanon has been facilitating Holotropic Breathwork groups.
Charles Grob, MD, is Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics at the UCLA School of Medicine and the Director of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. His longstanding interest in the history of psychiatric research with hallucinogens has generated an impressive history of conference presentations and publications in leading medical and psychiatric journals. Dr. Grob received the first FDA approval to carry out human research with 3,4- methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) in the early 1990s. He has collaborated with Drs. Dennis McKenna and Jace Callaway on the Hoasca Project: research that explored the biochemical, physiological, and psychological impacts of long-term ayahuasca use in Brazil. From 2004 to 2008, Dr. Grob conducted an FDA-approved study examining the effects of psilocybin in advanced-stage cancer patients with severe anxiety. Results from this trial were published in the Archives of General Psychiatry in 2011. Dr. Grob, along with his colleague Dr. Alicia Danforth, recently concluded a pilot study of an MDMA treatment model for autistic adults with social anxiety. He is a founding board member of the Heffter Research Institute. Dr. Grob is the editor of Hallucinogens: A Reader, and the co-editor with Dr. Roger Walsh of Higher Wisdom: Eminent Elders Explore the Continuing Impact of Psychedelics and is working as Editor on a new book on contemporary views of psychedelic research.
Michael Mithoefer, M.D., is a psychiatrist living in Asheville, NC, with a research office in Charleston, SC. In 2000, he began collaborating with MAPS on the first U.S. Phase 2 clinical trial of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy. He and his wife Annie have since conducted two of the six MAPS-sponsored Phase 2 clinical trials testing MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for PTSD, as well a study providing MDMA-assisted sessions for therapists who have completed the MAPS-sponsored MDMA Therapy Training Program, and a pilot study treating couples with MDMA-assisted psychotherapy combined with Cognitive-Behavioral Conjoint Therapy. He is now Senior Medical Director for Medical Affairs, Training and Supervision at MAPS Public Benefit Corporation (MAPS PBC). He is a Grof-certified Holotropic Breathwork Facilitator, is trained in EMDR and Internal Family Systems Therapy, and has nearly 30 years of experience treating trauma patients. Before going into psychiatry in 1991, he practiced emergency medicine for ten years, served as medical director of the Charleston County and Georgetown County Emergency Departments, and has held clinical faculty positions at the Medical University of South Carolina. He has been board-certified in Psychiatry, Emergency Medicine, and Internal Medicine.
Annie Mithoefer, B.S.N., is a Registered Nurse living in Asheville NC, where she is now focused primarily on training and supervising therapists conducting MAPS-sponsored clinical trials, as well as continuing to conduct some MAPS research sessions in Charleston, SC. Between 2004 and 2018, she and her husband, Michael Mithoefer, M.D., completed two of the six MAPS-sponsored Phase II clinical trials testing MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for PTSD, as well a study providing MDMA-assisted sessions for therapists who have completed the MAPS Therapist Training, and a pilot study treating couples with MDMA-assisted psychotherapy combined with Cognitive Behavioral Conjoint Therapy. Annie is a Grof-certified Holotropic Breathwork Practitioner, is trained in Hakomi Therapy, and has 25 years experience working with trauma patients, with an emphasis on experiential approaches to psychotherapy.
Christopher Timmermann (PhD) earned his bachelor’s degree in Psychology in Santiago de Chile and a master’s degree in Cognitive Neuroscience from the University of Bologna in Italy.
He is currently a post-doc at Imperial College London at the Centre for Psychedelic Research, where he leads the DMT Research Group, specializing in the potent psychedelics N,N-DMT and 5-MeO-DMT and their effects on the human brain and consciousness.
His empirical and theoretical work focuses on the neuroscience, psychiatry, psychology, pharmacology, beliefs, and ethics of psychedelics, their relationship to consciousness, and their applications in mental health.
His work has been covered in BBC, CBC, Wired, The Times, New Scientist, and he is a columnist for Psychology Today
Richard Tarnas is the founding director of the graduate program in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, where he currently teaches. Born in 1950 in Geneva, Switzerland, of American parents, he grew up in Michigan, where he received a classical Jesuit education. In 1968 he entered Harvard, where he studied Western intellectual and cultural history and depth psychology, graduating with an A.B. cum laude in 1972. For ten years he lived and worked at Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, studying with Stanislav Grof, Joseph Campbell, Gregory Bateson, Huston Smith, and James Hillman, later serving as Esalen’s director of programs and education. He received his Ph.D. from Saybrook Institute in 1976 with a dissertation on LSD psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, and spiritual transformation. From 1980 to 1990, he wrote The Passion of the Western Mind, a narrative history of Western thought from the ancient Greek to the postmodern which became a best seller and continues to be a widely used text in universities throughout the world. In 2006, he published Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View, which received the Book of the Year Prize from the Scientific and Medical Network in the UK. Formerly president of the International Transpersonal Association, he is on the Board of Governors of the C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco. In addition to his teaching at CIIS, he has been a frequent lecturer at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara, and gives many public lectures and seminars in the U.S. and abroad
Practical Information
Starting Date: October 28, 2024
Length: 3 years
Place: Spain – Catalonia
Format: Hybrid Online and Residential Format
Who Can Apply? : The training is designed for advanced professionals working in related therapeutic areas such as: licensed mental health clinicians, certified Psychologist, Psychiatrist, Physician, Health Professional, or Therapist with extensive experience.
Ubiquity University: We are part of a global network of Grof® Legacy Trainings, with our program also affiliated with Ubiquity University. In collaboration with Grof Studies Graduate Programs, Ubiquity is pleased to offer new graduate opportunities in Grof Studies. You can complete your coursework through Grof Studies Graduate Programs and then finalize your master’s thesis or doctoral dissertation with Ubiquity to earn MA or PhD credentials.
What first generation students are saying
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