by Stanislav Grof, January 2020
- GROF® Breathwork representing the Grof ® Legacy is based on the unfolding of the inner healing intelligence in the participants; the trainers will teach the facilitators to support that process without imposing their own ideas of healing on people.
- Breathwork sessions will ideally be open ended in order to allow the natural completion of the process of the breather.
- Music supporting holotropic breathwork work should remain as natural, spiritual, and native as possible; heavy electronic or techno music should be avoided.
- Ideally the music should continue as long as there are people in process in the room; beautiful meditative music at the end of the session is an important part of the healing process that should not be cut off.
- Bodywork should support the natural unfolding of the inner healing energy, mainly at the end of a session (but also during the session if necessary).
- Talking during the breathwork sessions should be avoided except for exchanging necessary information regarding the process and bodywork.
- The bodywork at the end of the session should be continued until the breather feels as completed as possible for this session.
- The format and style of the breathwork sessions as developed by Stan and Christina Grof should be maintained (there is no new school, no online breathwork).
- Sharing after sessions shall provide enough time for each breather to talk about their experiences as much as possible. The workshop facilitators and the participants can ask supportive questions helping to deepen the experience. But eventually the breather owns the truth about his experience.
- Outside of the breathwork sessions and sharing of the experiences, the work can be combined with various forms of self-exploration for deepening the integration. These components of a workshop or program should be named separately; for instance, painting, dancing, sand-play, Gestalt therapy, family constellation, astrology etc. If such additional experiences are part of a workshop or program, it remains important not to impose interpretations on other people’s experiences. It is important to leave the authority about the truth of the experience with the breather.