EP 173: Psychedelics, Holotropic Breathwork, and the Grof Legacy | Stan Grof, MD + Brigitte Grof, PhD

Welcome to Radical Responsibility, the podcast dedicated to ridding the world of blame and shame, where we explore the issues you care about from a unique perspective. 100% ownership for each and every circumstance we face in life, day in and day out.

Hi. Welcome to the Radical Responsibility podcast. This is your host, Fleet Maul, and I'm thrilled today to share with you a conversation that I was privileged to have with Stan Grof, Dr. Dr. Stan Grof, and his wife and colleague, Brigitte Grof, PhD. So Stan Grof is the original researcher in the psychedelics which are enjoying now a renaissance in many forms, especially with the emergence of the psychedelic assisted therapy, psychedelic medicine movement, where there's very compelling research demonstrating how psychedelic assisted therapy, the combination of psychedelic experiences with, with ketamine, with, with psilocybin, with mdma, with, with melscalin, with, with other psychedelic substances and plant medicines combined with psychotherapy is having incredible impacts, positive healing impacts on very difficult to treat chronic deep depression, addictions, PTSD and, and so forth, anxiety disorders and more. And Stan Groff really began this research way back in at least the six, maybe even the 1950s. Hi, welcome to the Radical Responsibility podcast. This is your host, Fleet Maul, and I'm thrilled today to share with you a conversation that I was privileged to have with Stan Grof, Dr. Stan Grof, and his wife and colleague, Brigitte Grof, PhD. So Dan Grof is the original researcher in the psychedelics which are enjoying now a renaissance in many forms, especially with the emergence of the psychedelic assisted therapy, psychedelic medicine movement, where there's very compelling research demonstrating how psychedelic assisted therapy, the combination of psychedelic experiences with, with ketamine, with, with psilocybin, with mdma, with, with melscalin, with, with other psychedelic substances and plant medicines combined with psychotherapy is having incredible impacts, positive healing impacts on very difficult to treat chronic deep depression addictions, PTSD and so forth, anxiety disorders and more. And Stan Groff really began this research way back in at least the 60s, maybe even the 1950s, certainly the 60s. And then at the point when psychedelic drugs were made illegal and put on Schedule 1 in the United States and in many places around the world, made illegal. He developed spontaneously, and we'll hear about it in the interview.

Form of breath work called holotropic breath work, which took people into the same kind of expanded states of consciousness experiences that he had been able to do with psychedelics and thus able to continue his work on helping people heal trauma and transform through these expanded states of consciousness. So this is just a fascinating interview with really the pioneer of psychedelic assisted psychotherapy. So give it a listen.

We are so excited to be here today with Dr. Stan and Brigitte Grof and welcome to both of you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

My name is Fleet Mall. I'm your co host for this session and I've been looking forward to this interview for quite a while. So I'm sure neither of you really needed introduction, but nonetheless I'm going to share a bit of your background with our audience and then we'll get started with the conversation. Stanislav Grof, MD is a psychiatrist with more than 60 years of experience in research of non ordinary states of consciousness. In the past he was Chief of Psychiatric Research at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center, Assistant professor of Psychiatry at the John Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland and Scholar in Residence at the Esalent Institute in Big Sur, California. Currently he is professor of Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies and in San Francisco. And in August 2019 his LifeWork encyclopedia, the Way of the Psychonaut got published and the documentary film about his life work got released. The Way of the Psychonaut Stan Grof and the Journey of Consciousness. His website is stan grof.com Regrettograph is a psychologist, licensed psychotherapist and artist with 35 years of experience in holotropic breath work. She got certified in in the first Grof training groups in the USA and Switzerland. She has led breathwork workshops and taught training modules in the USA and in Germany. Currently she holds she works in her private practice in Wiesbaden, Germany and leads workshops and retreats since April 2016. Stan and Brigitte Grof are happily married, live in Germany and conduct seminars, trainings and holotropic breathwork workshops worldwide. In May 2020 they launched Together their new training in work with holotropic states of consciousness known as the International Grof legacy training. In 2022, Brigitte received an honorary PhD from Ubiquiti University of Consciousness in Consciousness. I'm sorry for her lifelong work in consciousness and art and for co creating the International Grof Legacy Train together with her husband Stanislav Grof. Her website is brigittegrof.com so again welcome to both of you.

Thank you.

Thank you very much. Okay, so these days I have to start by saying that five years ago I have been stark.

Stroke and.

I.

Have not been picked by extremities but it hit my center speech center.

So maybe I will need a little help with Brigitte as we are talking.

Great. Thank you for explaining that for us Dan and we really appreciate you being here and I know between you and Brigitte, we're going to be able to learn a lot about your life and your work. So again, I'm just so pleased and honored to welcome you to our Psycho Consistent Therapy Global Summit. This is our second annual summit. Dr. Grof, you are one of the pioneering researchers in psychedelics and their therapeutic applications, conducting several thousand therapy sessions involving lsd. I wonder if you could share a bit about the era of your research in Czechoslovakia and later in the United States at the Maryland Psychiatric Research center prior to the Controlled substances Act of 1970, which placed LSD and other substances, other psychedelic medicines, on Schedule 1, effectively ending legitimate clinical research for that time. So I wonder if you could share a little bit about that earlier era of research into psychedelic medicines.

Yes, I started with LSD actually before I was in medicine. It was in four years of medicine when we drove from centers we got lsd.

And my preceptor Robicheck.

Was very interested in working with lsd, but he just didn't have the time for six or eight hours with patients. But we had a lot of gophers and so I started actually working with LSD just by watching other people and writing about it.

At that time, unlike what happened in Harvard, we were not allowed to use with students. And so I didn't have my own experience with LSD until I graduated.

So I'm curious if you could compare.

What you learned back then. What was the state of the research back then in the 1950s and 1960s compared to what's going on now?

We have very interesting situation because, you know, this was in a communist country.

But at the same time we had no, we had no problem with.

Lsd. We were talking about this as material, material principle.

And it was very easy to work.

In the hospital, you know, because there were no limitation how many people we can keep patients and so on. So.

I should start it at the beginning. We started with.

Laboratory. You know, this was.

Near Prague and we were doing a lot of sessions.

With patients.

And the physics was laboratory. We were not really dealing with the experiences that people, people had. So we were getting.

Urine and blood and eeg. Basically I haven't only at a certain time in the period between the sessions of studying the laboratory, you know, I had the moment to hear what people said and was experiencing the experiences and even that fact that this was very, very short period, I became something very interesting for me and that was the fact that each patient has a very different experiences. You know, these were people with the same dosages, the same setting and so on. And at the same time some had very interesting experiences.

And then also the fact if the patients or ourselves.

Repeated, repeated, repeated these experiences each session was very different. For example, if we have LSD one day and would have it next two weeks, we've got completely, completely different.

Same substance, same person, but different experience.

So at that time I realized, you know, we were not doing.

Pharmacology pharmacology. You know, there was something fantastic that was happening that it activated somehow inside of the psyche on it, on a deep psyche. Another way we started working with, with psyche not. Not with chemistry. And so I became not interested anymore with chemistry and return it to, to these patients. And started initially medium dosages.

Maybe 150 to 200 and.

Been a number of these experiences. So I get a sense of how these LSD was differing in different levels. One of my patients talked despite being.

Peeling the onion and working with.

Switzerland.

Like peeling the onion.

One level the other and was getting then on each levels, you know, people have similar kind of experiences actually. And I.

Started talking about the.

COEX system system of condenser condense experiences. And as I could continued, you know, one after another. I move beyond what we normally consider to be postnatal experiences. And.

Freud, Freud was talking about the fact that the newborn is.

You know, it's nothing nothing beyond and at the same time suddenly start something new happening. Initially experiences that were very, very typical.

With lot of anxiety, sometimes choking.

And even Heman put it there that they might be going dying, dying.

You know, listen, this is not experience anymore. This is, this is real that you're dying. This is have to bring ambulance, you know, bring it. And when I got.

Somehow accepted with it, you know, and also had the experience myself, we realized that we are actually reliving the birth experience. I started talking about.

Perinatal matrix matrices. Four of them. You know, the first time before the beginning of birth. The second one when birth continues but at the same time there's no way out out. And the third one was when the.

So it was open, the circuit open and, and then the format is just breaking and, and getting outside of the. Outside of the experience.

Well, it's very interesting that your interest shifted from the pharmacology to the psyche. It would seem today in the research there's a lot of interest in both. There's some of the interest in the neurobiological impacts of these medicines and maybe that somehow a molecule could be created that to create some of the beneficial neuro neurobiological effects without the Psychedelic experience. And, and so. And yet others are much more interested in the psychedelic experience. And, and yet it seems like that whatever the connection is between the neurobiology and the pharmacology and what we call mind and consciousness or the psyche, that still seems to be a pretty mysterious area in the realm of science.

Well, I've, you know, experiences these matrices and then sooner or later it moved into experiences which were very different. I started talking them transpersonal experiences and then actually really two, which was called transpersonal psychology.

So those were experiences where we have everything that was happening in, in material.

As an object. We experience it, for example, you know, becoming another person.

Experience with animals, experiences even with, with.

And so on.

And even, even.

Physical, physical experiences. And then another level was developing with mystical experiences and experiences that were.

Goddess goddamn goddesses, you know, live in hell and so on.

And then all the way to archetypes.

So then I experienced this very extended kind of.

Like cartography of the psyche. Yeah.

You know, I mean the, the point is that this is a powerful spiritual death and rebirth process. And I don't, I don't think that that without the experience things can transformative and healing. I mean.

So I experienced already like 50 years ago, already experienced this form in the, in the psyche, you know, very, very expanded from. From what we have now or had had we now. And I still have now more or less.

So I believe still the.

Needing effective with, with psychedelics. You really need that whole.

Experiences.

Yeah, I mean it's not aspirin. Right.

Well, I completely agree actually. Personally, I think the real magic in psychiatric medicine is in the transformative spiritual experiences and the mystical experiences and so forth. There may be some benefit in these medicines without the psychiatric experience may be able to increase neuroplasticity and help with depression in some ways. I think that research is still going on. But it seems like the real magic that has created such interest in these medicines, both in traditional plant medicine and currently in modern psychiatric assisted therapy, really has to do with the potential of these profound transformative experiences. And so when you moved to Esalen, that really was the beginning as well of where you founded your holotropic breath work. But it was also really the beginnings of the transpersonal psychology movement. With Abraham Maslov and you, Anthony Such and others, began this whole movement of really opening up the psychological exploration of these transpersonal states. I wonder if you could say a little bit about that era at Esalen.

Yeah. What's happening? That at a certain point I was leaving from Baltimore, you know, from making us Psychedelics. And I wanted to take a month, you know to work and publish some of the books. And.

I met in New York, I met Michael Murphy from, from sln, whom I knew at time I met once in him earlier and he says then what are you doing? And I said, you know, I'm taking.

A year off to write.

And.

I got some offers, you know, from, from.

It is to write some books. And he said well then why don't you go to, to Essal And Essaln is a great place to live. You know, we'll give you the house there and you can work with other people.

And we trade. You trade, you know, you work at Esseln and, and you can work on your, your books.

And so I came there and.

I had sessions with people who were coming to, to SLN seminars seminars and talking about, you know, what I experienced in Prague and what I experienced in Baltimore and the ideas I had about having a larger larger psyche.

And you know, patients were kind of interested. But then I say again, you know, it's, it's great to meet all these fantastic experiences, but we would like to really experience something. Don't you stash stash that? And I said, you know, I don't think.

Echelon people would like that, you know. And then I had to start thinking about what I could do that people would have actually experienced things. And then I remember about two situations when, when I was working in, in a patient who were.

Coming out of the session and feel really miserable fellow really angry, you review furious and screaming and, and.

I came in and said, you know, I feel this pain, you know in my, in my shoulder and the shoulder. Could you put some pressure? I think I would get somehow feel after. But and so I started doing it and says more, more, more. At a certain point I couldn't couldn't do it anymore in my, my.

Murky, you know. And at a certain. We started. We started really screaming and coughing and shaking and so on and within maybe 20 minutes and he felt in a greatest great place. That is when we were very.

Relaxed relaxed, very relaxed relaxed and in a great place. And then.

About two weeks there was another.

Female female again coming down from the, from the session and feeling really very bad this time. Very, very, very nauseated pains in the, in the belly. And I came to her, you know, said what's happening? Where is it? And So I, I Dr. You would sort of peek a little in the place where it was happening. And then suddenly came this amazing for second time vomitivity, vomiting, you know, to Missing me, barely missing my. My face. And then we had to let her sort of vomit a couple of times. And again, you know, within a very short time. Wonderful. And so I realized that we can do something. You know, before when we were working with patients, sometimes the results were great. Like what happened with Albert Hoffman, you know, at the time when he had very difficult experience in the middle. But at the same time he was in fantastic, fantastic place. And so this way some people really ended up in a very great place with lsd. But in some others we opened up something new and it didn't finish in that time. And here with these two patients, I realized that we can actually do something.

And so at the time when people were coming down and we feel not comfortable, I would say, you know, where do we have a problem? And then accentuate the place and express what is happening. And I started doing it one after another.

But that's how you discovered the body work. But how did you get the idea for the breath work?

So then I found again, for some reason.

Females had a couple of these experiences. And in the middle of it started breathing very, very fast.

Like this. And then told me, you know, this was amazing what the breathing was happening. You know, I was already going out of the experience, but this bring me like I was in the middle session. So I realized that the breathing suddenly can take the unconscious from the depths of the unconscious, you know.

And so then we started doing it in. In Esalen.

Individually with people. They were in a circle and we let them breathing and using some music which we were doing in Baltimore, always with psychedelics. And somebody was very close to the. What we call the process and started. And then we interrupt the situation and started working with the. With the principle that I described before with the. With the body.

And.

This happened sometimes that it started. Trigger other people just for having these spontaneous experiences. And sometimes we had three of the people.

Christina.

Christina was working with the other person.

Several people were in the circle and they were just waiting until one of us was finished. And then something very important happened that we had a session planning.

46, 46 people. And at this point we already talk, you know, that we. Offering people breathing, breathing. And I was working on our garden, which we had by the. By the ocean. And I was lifting soon and turn off this.

Your back went off? Yeah, the back was off.

You couldn't work to the point overnight. You know, I just. I just couldn't move. It was. I get to get that into the. And I said, my God, how would. How am I going to you know, work with these people. But, but because when you are, when you are working, you start moving you, you know, and I could, I could touch. And so we're thinking about it and then we said, you know, why don't we just talk with each other? The people talk with each other. Let's make pairs and we just sort of go around and that they pair.

Up and one is a sitter and one is the breather. That's how that setting was created and.

And play the music, you know, the.

Next day the other way around. And people liked it so much.

It was so great for, for people. Not only now, everybody had some experiences at the time, but the people who were sitting said how great it was for them to be there for, you know, two hours or so with another person engaged in another, in another process, you know, and that they say I really would like to learn how to do it. Would you train them? And so that was the beginning of the, of the breathwork experience.

It's fascinating to see how it all just evolves organically. I actually didn't know myself the origins of holotropic breath work. I speculated maybe you do on some other breath work traditions or the yogic sciences, but this just actually spontaneously arose in your clinical work and your workshops. That's fascinating.

It was a psyche was teaching it, you know, and this is what we do now. We just, we just work with the healing, healing intelligence of psyche. You know, we have now a lot of different schools and each to be doing something else. It's psychology and it's usually not graded, you know, but if you just allow to having this, this experience from the psyche, then it seems to the ideal, ideal way of resolving the situation. Maybe I should cite where it started. It started with Freud with dreams, you know, because he talked the fact that we are in the psyche, we have very difficult experiences, traumatic experiences. And when the dream comes, when the sleep comes, the dream started going. The experiences start going up, coming up. And so he talks that actually the dream is a kind of a helping the. Helping the.

Helping the unconscious unconscious to come up.

And.

And then the next stage was with, with Jung where Freud was working, you know, from the past of, of.

The dream, dreams of the past.

One situation. For example, he was in a train and somebody going with him and remember that he had a dream 20 years ago and Freud sit down and interpret. And Jung said this is not how to do so when, when patients came, he asked them to, to lie on that couch and then continue back the dream so they see the dream as.

It is.

Just had to continue the dream.

And what he said, and this was the beginning of this intelligent society said that as he was, as the patients were doing it, that somehow there were areas on the surface which were, they were very strong memories and at the same time close to the surface and they started emerging.

And so then when we went into it, we started attaining the breath work. Not just waiting for the dream it's happening, but we would give, we would give the.

The breathing. And then what is happening now, bringing the psychedelics into it now what happens? Because what, what is emerging is a very strong.

Material that's very close to the surface. It's also something that becomes, in everyday life becomes a symptom because it's a problem, you know, so automatically start immediately started taking out the symptoms. The most things, they are difficult. So this is, this is the, the intelligent, you know, of the, of the.

Healing of the psyche. I think this is a really important point of Stan's work that often people talk about intentions and I mean, of course you have an intention when you go to the breathwork workshop or to do psychedelics. You want to know something about yourself or want some healing, transformation or spiritual experience. But a general intention of course, otherwise you wouldn't do it. But in our work we don't have a plan because.

It doesn't make sense to say I want to work on my mother or boss or whatever problems I have. Because this comes from our head. And what is so amazing about this process that if the psyche gets activated, we access another knowledge or wisdom in us which is not coming from the head.

It's a great idea that's necessary.

Just be open, just be open and trust the inner healing intelligence to unfold and go with whatever comes up up is so much more creative and so much more wise than, than our head could, can, can tell. You know, we're just, I mean the head is good for certain things but not for everything. So, so this is really learning to trust, to trust the, the, this, this energy in us to, to, you know, and heal us, you know, that's also very, very creative. I mean you couldn't imagine before the session what would happen.

Usually we usually have a group, group of people and then when people look at what we were doing, they had the feeling that we have like a list of some kind of a list of techniques, you know, and what's actually really happening is this one principle that we look what is already happening and try to accentuate it in some way. But of course there are Some, some way where you can, certain ways you can approach best. So sometimes we do things repeatedly, but it's the same principle that we want to see what the psyche is happening and accentuated.

You know, it's actually, it's very, very empowering for the, for the people who do the process that, that we are not the experts. I mean, of course we know how to handle things, but, but we are actually following what, what comes from within and from the person. And so that brings the people really close to themselves instead of, you know, listening to some expert. It doesn't mean that it's easy. I mean, to, to be a good sitter in psychedelics or in breathwork, you need a lot of experience. But it's, it's really the idea of service of, to this, to this higher, higher energy. It's a bit also if people are familiar with the idea of Kundalini, the, the, the inner divine energy that is trying to. Coming up and transforming. Transforming people. And so, so it's, it's similar to this.

Well, it's fascinating and it really somewhat shifts direction of. In terms of the role of a healer, a therapist, a clinician, and that you discovered this inner healing intelligence and learned to trust it. And you really discovered this clinically, experientially, and it seems almost have a Rogerian quality as well as you're really, you're just following, you're trusting that patient or the client or the participant's psyche to do the work and you're just holding the space for it in a skillful way. It's really quite amazing. Yes.

It's actually the, the patients, you know, discovered it and beyond it. It was the psyche. So.

Yeah, you know, so why the term holotropic? How did you end up deciding on that term for the breathwork? Holotropic breathwork. I know you talk about holotropic consciousness.

Yeah, the holotropic means.

Moving towards wholeness.

I mean, it's very much like in a.

Sun.

Sun.

Yes. Yeah, yeah. So people would say, why do we move to wholeness? We are already whole, but we have to remember or to realize, you know, it was, it was. Stan didn't like the word altered. Altered consciousness because I mean, you, you alter your dog. Right. In English. Wasn't that something?

Yeah, he originally was altered states of consciousness.

So I think there's something like altering your dog. I, I heard. Anyway, so he didn't like it. So he was creating that term of moving towards wholeness, kind of holistic.

Yeah, I see one of the Problems. I think Charles Tate coined the term altered states, but the one being blind drunk is an altered state of consciousness, but it's not transformative. So.

Right.

Another term that's being used is expanded states of consciousness. We recently did a whole summit on expanded states of consciousness. Access through psychedelics, breath work, meditation, all kinds of means. And so your work both with psychedelics and with the holotropic breath work has been very much about exploring expanded states of consciousness and their potential for healing, for healing traumas, attachment wounds, but also for creating new possibilities of kind of psychological evolution, spiritual evolution. So I wonder if you could talk a bit about what you've discovered about what is your understanding of, of expanded states of consciousness, what's actually happening there, and what is it about that that not only heals, but can give us such a more profound perspective on life that can really lead to spiritual evolution in a sense.

I want to, I want to share something before we go to that question because, you know, of course I talk with Stan a lot and what has really struck me quite a bit is the, that he said actually the, the fact that he had the psychedelic research at some point was, you know, very discouraging. But on the review, the creation of the holotropic breath work, or grof breath work as we call it now as well, has. Has shown something very important to people that, that these states or these insights and the transformation does not come from the medicines, doesn't come from psychedelics necessarily. It's something that's in the psyche that can be also done by. By res. Thing like deeper breathing, or it can even happen spontaneously in this, what we call spiritual emergence or spiritual emergency. So it's actually something that belongs to the psyche of the person and, and it can be easily attributed to something like a psychedelic medicine, you know, but eventually, again, it's. It's the psyche that's doing that.

Well, just to follow up on that quickly because, you know, traditionally science, if considering mind, considered it to be at best an epiphenomenon of the brain. And today, drawing both on Eastern perspectives and more open views of Western science.

People are talking about, it's more like the brain is simply.

Interpreting consciousness or the brain is a vehicle through which consciousness flows. And, and, and if anything, the brain restricts consciousness to something that we can work with in this kind of relative reality. So, so from that, from that perspective, perhaps psychedelics do something pharmacology, pharmacologically, in the brain that just in the same way the breath work does, that then allows Us to tap into the psyche to consciousness in these expanded ways. Is that that sound?

Yeah, yeah. Well, this is already way back. Huxley talk about, you know, when he started having mescaline and an lsd. He initially thought that the substances somehow activate the psyche and this bring from the, from the conscious, you know, into the circuit and then realized something very different. He said that actually he sees that the brain is like a. Like a tank valves, like a valve. You see that there's some much more is happening in. In the universe and that the, the brain is actually wealth that's, that's limited.

It could be like the brain is like a rain. The radio and that, you know, you can, you can hear the stations, but they're, they're, they're not in the, in the machine, not in the box. They are in the air.

They're everywhere like that. The person is not in the box. Yes, no.

So that actually when, when you're in a non ordinary state you get more of it, more of it from the, from the universe.

You get more channels.

And I think this is very good idea.

Yeah, yeah, very interesting. So when we, when talking about expanded states, you know a lot of things move us into constricted states spear and, and all kinds of things trigger us into constriction and self protection. So an expanded state could be anything from just opening, just movement towards opening empathy, compassion, relationship. All that could be an expanded state. But then there are the expanded states that seem to really go outside of our normal waking experience where we're really in different realms of consciousness.

You know, out of the body experiences, experiences of. Of different sort of realms and entities. People connecting with spiritual guides. There's all of that. That is kind of the very out there, let's say quality of expanded states. I wonder if you can speak to that. And what you've seen is both the healing and sort of transformative value of that or how people, how that's part of our, our human journey of evolving further.

Yeah, I should get into the holotropic experience, you know to say what are they? You know.

It'S a. It's a large group of non ordinary states that have the healing potential and transformative experience that have I been in evolutionary. And then, then you can, you can sort of bring absolutely new experience out of it. So for example to give examples of it would be. One would be shamanism.

The next one would be like state of consciousness.

Rights of passage.

And then this number, a number of death rebirth experiences also. And then many this religions sort of have Certain principles that can, that can create mystical experiences. You know, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Christian of course, and, and Islam.

So they are also significantly healing, healing and transformative experiences.

And also I was just thinking these days of Ralph Metzner. He's saying something at the end of our way of the psychonaut film. There are some people saying some words and he says spirituality is not an add on in life. It is the core.

This is the core, you know. And so I think eventually we can, we can connect ourselves with you know, the spiritual secrets of the world and which are, which are the, the core of all religions, of all spirituality. And I mean people get automatically the insight that everything's connected and, and as they were all one basically. And the ecological, you know, awareness about the earth and, and you know, so on. I mean it's getting more and more into the secret of life as much that is possible by being alive.

When you get to breath work to, to the.

Experiences, in experiences with psychedelics and breath work.

No the bpm, you know, the perinatal level that a certain point there is no sectors material status and beyond it no material substrate. What is beyond what, what's happening is just consciousness. You know, there's no material behind it.

So we talk about it in, in that book is, is once you get to the, to the birth at that point you lose any kind of connection substrate consciousness and it's just pure, pure consciousness creating, creating images.

Yeah, yeah.

I wonder if you could say something about the value of that. With, with many of these transpersonal experiences of, of.

Expanded states of consciousness, there can be a dissolution of the limited self. And one of the things that, I mean there is a certain perspective and for many spiritual traditions the sort of limited self is what keeps us in a state of suffering and in a state of, you know, we kind of a fear and survival based faith. Because myself is this small thing and there's this whole world out there. And so it's either for me or against me. And, and sort of the human neurosis is grounded in that very limited sense of self. And then also in terms of what often keeps us stuck in, in habitual patterns that are not serving us is that sense of identity. Well, that's who I am. That's just the way I am. Like who would I be if I wasn't, didn't have my neurosis and my things right. And so it seems like with holotropic breath work or the groff breath work, these psychedelics experiences, other other shamanic experiences, transpersonal experiences, people can have at least a momentary experience where they're free of that limited self. And that does seem to create new possibilities for people.

I think what's amazing, you know, when we use repeatedly under proper circumstances of course when we use either breath work or psychedelics.

Principles.

Then people develop in the same kind of form of view.

They start you know, without being being guided in any way develop a certain worldview. Worldview, you know.

For example.

They have ultimately the connection to the.

To.

The Earth, you know that.

We depend on. On.

Water, you know, clean water.

Clean, clean.

And also earth, you know. This is the essential for us because without it we cannot live. And so it means it's a tremendous positive feeling you know for this ecology seeing that we actually in the same place like spaceship Earth. Yeah.

That we basically should be.

Part of the whole world. You know, not.

A meritant or Cheshire Germans Germans, you know, we are part of the citizens, global citizens also. The people develop a certain kind of spirituality which is university which is. Which is very different from. From organized organisms, you know. But we seem in. In different if religious system we find at the end the mystical, for example, you know mystical Christian is Sufis, the mystical core of this in which then then people sort of indeed with each other. They don't fight with each other the way the. The merchants, the religions are fighting. So this is amazing that these kinds of things emergently came out of.

The.

Inside when people do repeatedly do non ordinary states of consciousness. But we don't, we don't sort of talk about it, you know, we don't, we don't teach people anything. They just.

Well, one of the reasons people haven't talked about it over the millennia in some religious traditions mystics could be called heretics for speaking about their experiences in the modern era. Your work around what are what you call spiritual emergencies, which is almost the other side of the coin from spiritual emergence. Your work with your late wife Christina Groffer on there. I wonder if you could talk a bit about that. Because very often people were having spontaneous transpersonal experiences but then the, the medical field considered them to be having schizophrenic experiences or psychotic experiences. And that was medic them as a result and suppressing these experiences. So I wonder if you could talk about a bit about that. Work around spiritual misdiagnosed spiritual emergence diagnosed as psychiatric illness. How what was happening then and how our understanding is shifting and how that might shift mental health care altogether.

You know, Christina had the first experience of that and I learned quite a bit about it. I just guided her, you know, for, for, for this.

Now what is happening in these.

Experiences has something to do with the fact that we have very limited place of the, of the psyche. And so what is outside, we don't, we don't accept, we see it as being pathological, you see. So the fact that we just don't have a large enough psyche. And what of the psyche? The model of the model, you know.

Large enough in, in current psychiatry.

But if you added some of the things that I was talking about, the breath, the experiences, perinatal and transpersonal, transpersonal experiences, the, the.

Spiritual experiences, if we sort of include them, they are normal phenomena in, in the psyche. They are not pathology. See. And so actually if you, if you don't try to suppress those experiences but actually bring them out, you can experience very much transformative, you know.

Wonderful, wonderful transformation.

But it has to be still. I mean it's not, not every, not everybody who has some transpersonal experiences has spiritual emergency. There's also all kinds of mixed things happening. I mean it's like, you know, if somebody, if somebody has an experience of being Jesus, that's fine, but if they start running around and thinking they are the only, they are the real Jesus and everybody else is not, then, then you can tell there is a little, there is a problem, you know, I mean, if, if you have a spiritual experience, you would, you would understand the spiritual nature of, of everybody, you know.

So, so, so we were root of a lot of forms of these. For example, the, the.

Or shamanic experiences, experiences of past life, past life experiences or something that Perry, Jim Perry was doing. Some of the, some of the most profound non ordinary experiences that people would most likely be called as psychosis, you know.

Which.

Were experiences where the persons had the experience of being in the, in the third of the. Of the world. Very, very powerful, powerful experiences.

You know, it's very interesting because to develop a larger model of the psyche, of consciousness and dissolve the boundaries of what we consider pathological and so forth. But then people still have to function. I don't know if you're familiar with the city yoga tradition or the stories of Nitin under Muktananda, but Muktananda in his biography went through stages where they basically left him in an isolated hut and he went through these kriyas where he went through all kinds of animal forms. I mean really what would be called very psychotic experiences. But it was part of his transformation, part of his journey. But if that had happened at another setting in the west, he probably would have been sent to a Psychiatric hospital and medicated. There is a certain amount of risk there. And people do have to be able to come back and function in society. I mean, unless they're living in a very unique society at a time when they could allow people to and be taken care of while they were kind of not very functional. But for most of us in the west, we have to somehow come back to a level of functionality. So that speaks to the need of integration. And I'm wondering if you talk to that part of your work in the graph work of the importance of integration and how people integrate these transpersonal experiences and bring them back into their life in ways that, that allow them to actually maybe even function better than before.

Fortunately, most people are together and have to do something to expand their consciousness. You know, that's, that's kind of helpful because you can say I sign up for a seminar or whatever or for a psychedelic session. And so normally the, the psyche has, has a, you know, an impulse to reintegrate itself. So that's, that's, that's the easier way. I mean, if some like the spiritual emergency people would just be spontaneously be overwhelmed, like drive a car and suddenly be in a past life scene, you know, that's not very, very good, very, very easy to handle. And so ideally one thing is that there would be more places where people who have that experience, spontaneously or ongoing basis, could go and just go through it without being, you know, being.

Held down from medication or so on. That would need a lot of knowledge and expertise to, to, to sit with people. So that's one thing that we hope that the knowledge gets out more in, into these fields.

And the other thing is what, what Stan mentioned is what we are really believe very much.

The focused body work we're teaching is really helping to integrate the experience for that day or for that, for that session. Because nothing helps as much as that if it's properly done. I mean, people would really have to learn that. Like in our graph legacy training, we teach that. And it also has to be completely ethical. Of course that's very, very, very important. But as Stan was describing, you know, you can, you can easily resolve somebody with a big discomfort or physical, emotional discomfort within 15 minutes or so and they feel fine. That's, that's our main, main means of integration to, to try to finish the session like that, or if somebody even feels a couple of days later, doesn't feel integrated to, to still offer that kind of thing, another session just without anything, just with this kind of focused body work, because the body knows you know, the body knows if something's not, not integrated. So that's our main point. The other point is of course that people should have a lot of time after a session, breath work or, or psychedelics have the next day off, be at best in nature and so journal their experiences. Draw a mandala or paint something or you know, really take it slowly and. Or speak with, with somebody who understands what they've been through. So this is really the self care is very, very important. Not just jump up and run in the business same evening or next day. Just really the landing is as important as the traveling.

You know, we work many, many people who came with spiritual emergency and able to work it through. And particularly in a situation where we sometimes had actually two weeks. You know.

We need a little large time for this to. It's not easy to do it, you know, for come from, from, from one day.

But if we had the possibility of the largest exchange in many people could complete and result the spiritual emergency. But also at a certain point we had. This pocket.

Was happening for a while. That was a place that I was just describing. I actually did an internship there and we were. There was a woman, she had a, you know, so called psychotic episode. And we just sit with her in 3, 3 shifts, 38 hour shifts around the clock and just let it play out itself until it was closing by itself. It really worked.

The pocket trench was wonderful place in the north of San Francisco, you know, when she was doing it. And. And that actually for people can come there and be spiritual emergency. And we were also coming there for our training and so we combine it once in a while here and there. So those ideas that there was. There was a possibility that people don't have to have experiences and leave. You know, they can stay there for a while.

Yeah, but unfortunately this doesn't exist much in the world yet. But usually, I mean that we have worked with so many people. Usually they come back together with a good body work and they integrate well, it's normally not a problem.

Well, what you were pointing there there really speaks to a necessary shift in our medical field, psychiatric field. How we take care of people, support people. The idea of being able to provide round the clock sitting with somebody and sitting someone through an experience like that to let it complete. You know, in a psychiatric hospital it's more like give them some meds and check on them every four or five hours while they're alone in a hospital room. And it's a completely different model.

The sitting with people continually and creating those kind of Things part of the problem there is expense and efficiency and a lot of our medical treatment model has all developed or evolved around efficiency. Right. As opposed to what's really client or patient centered. So we're kind of nearing the end of our time here, but I'm wondering if I'd like you to speak. The transpersonal psychology movement was very influential in psychology and yet it feels like it had a flowering but didn't really.

Impact the mainstream as much as it could have at the time. I remember I used to read the journal Transferential Psychology cover to cover every time it came out and it was very much influential. My own work in my own field. But in terms of the mainstream, I'm wondering if what's happening now with this psychedelic assisted therapy field might create a possibility of really beginning to transform psychiatry as a field and effective mainstream medicine and having integrative medicine approaches really become more the norm in your feeling. And, and I'm also maybe part of that question is just how, how it feels for you just to witness to, to be at that Denver conference we were both at recently where 12000 people were there and everything you can think about about the science and psychedelics was there and happening. But to see the emergence of this and what, what you see is maybe the future for, for medicine and psychiatry and healing based on what's occurring now. And yeah, maybe a little bit of a complex question, but I hope you understand what, what I meant.

Yes, well, we, we have 240 people breath work there. Breath work, you know and this was not very unusual because those four periods when, when there was forbidden to do with psychedelics. This is where we were all these all over the world we were using breath work and much larger frequently. You know, like in Prague, you know, like 350 people and in San Rosa also, and largest was in Moscow was the 46.

People, you know, for 460.

With a lot of facilitators and so on.

But what was, what was new was the fact that so many people get excited for, for the psychedelics, you know. Then thanks for, for.

Rick Dublin, you know, who basically was able to. To find out that psychedelics are really extremely useful.

But I think it's, it's really important that the people who work with psychedelics know Stan's model of the psy. It's all described in the way of the psychonaut books. Those are two books and one is one book in two volumes. And I really absolutely recommend that people read this because that they see what can happen in the psyche but you can encounter these are powerful experiences, powerful death rebirth process. And it's really good to have to have, you know, like this encyclopedia where you can see where things can go at least. And, and we are happy that we have our new training, the growth legacy training. And it's really also bringing the work to universities and to psychiatrists and that's important that the psychiatrists also learn this kind of model of the psyche and they get open to it. And very happily we have now in this autumn is the first graph studies.

At University of Ubiquiti University. So this is the really first academic university that's offering a Stan's theory for Master and PhD program that's an international university online where people from all countries can come and we hope this is the beginning of this being taught at universities. I mean it's just as you said that recently, sometimes it's a little bit behind the science. Just found out that babies can experience pain. I mean that's not very promising. I mean they're far away from knowing that you can relive your birth and that is not only reliving your birth. This is a spiritual opening. You know, the perinatal level is the interface between the personal and the, and the transpersonal spiritual level of the psyche. And this should be known.

And there are and have been really wonderful schools in transpersonal psychology and it.

Has to go more to more universities, has to be more common, common sense. These, these knowledges together with the psychedelic renaissance.

So I know with the GROF legacy training you're continuing to train people to facilitate the GROF breath work. Are you also going to be training people to facilitate psychedelic assisted therapy?

Yes, we already have a psychedelic training in Canada and in Spain and in, in Scandina are coming up. And so first of all the graph breath work, the training in, in this graph breath work is the. You sit for people and you have your own experiences and you learn the body with the focused body work and stance theories and so on. So this is the best, the best preparation for psychedelic sitting. So the, the psychedelic sitting would be just adding the, the difference working with the different substances. But people are get so familiar and so, so easy with.

So because it's really not enough to learn about the theory of psychedelics, you have to have experiences with these things. We think that's really, really important that training has this practical aspect that people can deal with what's coming up.

Actually when we started the growth legacy training, this is not just for breath work, but it's for breath work and.

It'S for holotropic states of consciousness.

And because basic principles are the same. And so where people will be psychedelics will be available. You know, they would be working not just breath work but also in. In psych psychedelics.

And so you can find it on the Internet graph legacytraining.com and I think we have some more information. Some more information.

So I assume this is already happening. But then our clinicians beginning to integrate the breath work, the graph breath work and psychiatric assisted psychotherapy together and working with CL and patients.

Yes, yes, yes, that goes very well together. And first of all, as a. As a teaching how to sit with people. And also it can be used, you know, sometimes as a. As a preparation for psychedelics for, for people and also maybe as an integration if they after the psychedelic session, if they do a breathwork session a couple of days later or so to integrate the session that, that also can. Can work very well.

Wow.

You know, when we have together with this.

This legacy, you know, breath work and psychedelics.

Basically our principles are the same but what we would have to add to it which.

Adding to something with the specific substances, you know, I have LSD psychotherapy, but we need something similar also for the other subst. They have in spite of the basic principles are the same. They also need differences in some sense. MDMA or Ketamine or lsd.

There need to be some differences, you know.

Well, thank you so much for being part of our summit, Stan and Brigitte, both of you. And to thank you profoundly for your incredible contributions to this field. And it's so wonderful to see your work kind of unfolding in a new way and starting to gain acceptance in. In the world of academia and psychiatry. And it. It portends a new future for. For the world of healing and medicine and psychiatry. So thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you Sarah. Sorry much. Bye bye bye bye bye bye.

Hello, it is Ryan. And I was on a flight the other day playing one of my favorite social spin slot games on chumbacasino.com I looked over the person sitting next to me and you know what they were doing? They were also playing Chumba Casino. Everybody's loving having fun with it. Chumba Casino is home to hundreds of casino style games that you can play for free anytime, anywhere. So sign up now@chumbacasino.com to claim your free welcome bonus. That's chumbacasino.com and live the Chumba Life.

Sponsored by Chumba Casino.

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY VGW GROUP VOID we're prohibited by law 21 + terms and conditions apply.