Breathing their way to an altered state
The instructions were simple: Lying on cots while wearing eyeshades, participants were directed to take deep belly breaths without pause to the beat of fast-paced music booming from loudspeakers.
The exercise, they were told, had the potential to induce an altered state of consciousness so profound that breathers sometimes describe it as reliving the terrifying moment of their birth. Past participants claim to have caught glimpses of past lives.
A few minutes into the session, which lasted nearly three hours, several participants began to weep. Some shook their limbs wildly, looking possessed. An outsider walking in would have been startled by the scene.
But the dozens of attendees at the recent breathwork workshop in Studies, the first program her “thinking brain really San Francisco were far of its kind at a university. turned off.” As the music from hippies or cult initiates. Since Phelps, a psychologist, slowed toward the end, a They were health started the training mesmerizing image crystallized care professionals completing program in 2015, the in her mind: Hurd the final step of a quest to resurrect psychedelic saw herself lying on a nest certificate program in psychedelic medicine has made of sticks, surrounded by therapy. major leaps. her children, at the moment
The vigorous modality, Several universities of her death. known as holotropic have opened psychedelicresearch Far from being alarming, breathwork, is offered at centers. The federal the vision filled her the end of an eight-month government has begun with wonder and made her training to provide a lawful to fund psychedelic feel as if she had grasped taste of the therapeutic studies. Voters in Oregon something ineffable about potential and pitfalls of altered and Colorado have death. “I don’t need to states of conscious- approved measures to le- worry about what’s on ness. galize the therapeutic use the other side,” she said,
Dr. J.J. Pursell, a naturopathic of psychedelics. And researchers describing the insight. “It doctor from are optimistic could be as simple as, I’m Oregon, was among the that the Food and Drug just returning to the dirt trainees who walked into Administration could approve and becoming soil, and the early October session the clinical use of that’s OK.” skeptical that a couple of MDMA, the drug known Dr. Bayla Travis, a psychologist hours of intense breathing as ecstasy, as early as this in Oakland, was could induce anything year. drawn to the training because close to a psychedelic trip. This nascent era comes she has come to conclude But she was stunned. with formidable challenges. that chronic pain —
“The depth of what I Decades of prohibition her specialty — is often experienced was so similar have made it difficult a physical manifestation to psilocybin,” Pursell to rigorously study of repressed emotional marveled, referring to the the limitations and perils trauma. psychoactive compound in of these compounds, In the future, she hopes magic mushrooms. “It was which for some people to help patients confront trippy.” can be more destabilizing difficult memories and than healing. Psychedelic emotions with the aid of therapy often straddles psychedelics. medicine and spirituality, Travis said she had embarked raising thorny questions on the breathwork of who should get to session with low expectations guide these experiences because a previous and what sort of credentials workshop she had participated ought to be required. in had been unremarkable. And the vulnerable state She was in a they induce has enabled cheerful mood when the predatory behavior from recent training began, she guides and even licensed recalled. But within minutes, psychotherapists. Travis was overcome
The training program by a wave of heavy emotions at the Center for Psychedelic that made her cry Therapies and Research, and shake as she tapped which has enrolled into what she described as more than 1,200 students a “deep, deep sorrow that since 2016, was created wasn’t particularly about with the aim of establishing anything.” best practices and ethical After cycling through guidelines as psychedelics periods of sadness and move from the underground bliss, Travis had a powerful to mainstream vision as the session medicine. Since its founding, was winding down. several other similar She saw herself being carried training programs have by an adult. The image emerged. was deeply soothing.
They have all wrestled “I think it means I get with a basic quandary: to be comforted,” Travis How do you teach a form said. The many tears she of therapy that remains shed felt a bit mysterious, largely illegal? she added.
“It was like, Oh, this is under the surface and maybe I’ve been walking around with this not having had an opportunity to give it expression.”
SAN FRANCISCO >> is for astronomy,” he wrote in “LSD Psychotherapy,” a book published in 1980.
By then, the war on drugs had stifled the field, prompting Grof to develop a new breath-based modality that borrowed from ancient Indian and shamanic practices. Holotropic breathwork — a term that blends Greek words that mean moving toward wholeness — became a means to induce altered states of consciousness without drugs.
The effects of holotropic breathwork on the brain and mood have not been widely studied. But in a study published last year, European researchers found that the modality affected brain activity and mood in ways “that are associated with a better mental condition.”
In an interview, Grof, 92, said that he had discovered, much to his surprise, that breathwork sessions could be as powerful as psychedelic trips. Altered states, whether breath- or drug-induced, he said, often allow people to unravel the root causes of their suffering quickly, making them more effective than conventional treatments like antidepressants.
According to Grof, current therapies seek to suppress patients’ symptoms and make sense of problems rationally through psychotherapy. But, he added, “some of the most important problems cannot be resolved verbally.”
In the twilight of his career, Grof speaks ebulliently about the resurgence of psychedelic-assisted therapy. But seizing their potential will require administering them with strong safeguards, he said.
“Right now, so many people want to take psychedelics,” he said. “And few people have the training” to guide these experiences, he added. Experts say holotropic breathwork should be done under the supervision of trained facilitators. withdrawn for years, Berg said. She struggled to reconcile the mind-bending and heart-opening experiences she had on psychedelics with the grim reality of her clinical work.
“It was kind of like bouncing between hell and heaven,” said Berg, a recent graduate of the California Institute of Integral Studies training.
In 2016, Berg attended a holotropic breathwork workshop, which she said made her realize that she had the capacity to heal herself relying less on medicine. That set in motion a personal and professional transformation for Berg, who became trained to facilitate holotropic breathwork sessions and helped in the October session.
Since then, Berg has watched with guarded optimism as psychedelics have become increasingly accessible and coveted. As things stand, there are far more people seeking out these treatments than practitioners who are skilled and experienced in guiding them.
“It’s not a panacea,” she said. “It’s not going to turn you, necessarily, into an enlightened person.”