HOW KATY CURED HER DEPRESSION
KATY PERRY’S life was “saved” by a “hippy-dippy” California retreat — where followers pummel pillows with a bat!
The pregnant “Teenage Dream” singer, 35, attended the Hoffman Institute with fiancé Orlando Bloom after struggling with depression — and claimed in an interview its “intensive re-wiring of your neural pathways” helped her ditch “negative habits.” At the weeklong retreat, participants are urged to “take down” their “monster dark side,” and smack pillows with a “Wiffle bat” as part of the “cathartic release” process.
The institute was founded by the late Bob Hoffman, a former tailor who had no formal training in psychology, psychiatry or psychotherapy. It also recommends chopping wood and ripping up a phone directory to beat away negative energy.
Katy said the retreat helped her “let go of anything that was holding me back from being my ultimate self.”
She added: “It saved my life … [and] set me up for the idea of motherhood.”
Other celebs who swear by the Hoffman Process include Gwyneth Paltrow and Sienna Miller, who called it “terrifying but extraordinary.” One person who started the course at the urging of a famous pal but dropped out told The National ENQUIRER: “I was told it had helped [my friend] with cocaine and pills, but it ended up being a weird retreat. There was no TV, you’re not allowed to read, no cellphones. We were hitting pillows and channeling our inner chi.
“It turned into excessive psychotherapy. It was creepy and uncomfortable — and I was like, ‘I’m outta here!’”