Breath, Music, and the Inner Healer

Grof® Breathwork is a method of self-exploration that uses accelerated breathing, evocative music, and a carefully held group container to access what Stanislav Grof called holotropic states of consciousness. The word holotropic means "moving toward wholeness," and the practice is grounded in the idea that the psyche, when given the right conditions, knows how to heal itself.

The body lies on a mat. The music begins. The breath deepens and quickens. Across several hours, in a space held by trained facilitators, the practice opens a doorway to layers of experience that ordinary waking consciousness rarely reaches. What arrives is not predicted, prescribed, or steered. The breather meets what is ready to be met.

Then, slowly, the music softens and the breath returns to ordinary rhythm. A second person, the sitter, has been quietly attending throughout. Integration begins.

Stanislav Grof, M.D., Ph.D. was born in Prague in 1931 and trained as a psychiatrist at Charles University. In the 1950s and 60s he led pioneering clinical research with LSD at the Psychiatric Research Institute in Prague, and later as Chief of Psychiatric Research at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center, where he worked with terminally ill cancer patients. Over those years he came to understand the human psyche as far vaster than mainstream Western psychology had imagined.

Christina Grof was born in 1941 in Virginia and raised in Hawaii. She studied at Sarah Lawrence College with Joseph Campbell and Muriel Rukeyser, and brought to the work a depth of lived experience in non-ordinary states, contemplative practice, and the recovery process. In 1980 she founded the Spiritual Emergence Network, an organization for people whose spiritual openings had been misread as pathology by conventional psychiatry.

When clinical LSD research was halted in the early 1970s, Stan and Christina turned to an older question: could the same depths be reached without any substance at all? Working together at Esalen Institute in Big Sur from 1975 onward, they developed the breath practice as a complete, non-pharmacological method. By the time Christina died in 2014, they had trained generations of facilitators across six continents.

A typical workshop is held over a single long day or across a weekend, in a quiet space prepared for the work. Participants are paired. In each session, one person breathes while the other sits.

Then, the next day, you switch roles. Sitting is itself profound work. Many practitioners describe the sitter role as where their deepest learning has happened.

People come to this work for as many reasons as there are people. Some are working with grief, trauma, or stuck patterns that ordinary therapy has not been able to fully reach. Some are preparing for, or integrating from, other non-ordinary state experiences. Some are drawn to the practice as a spiritual path. Some simply feel called and trust that the calling itself is enough.

The work is profound and it is also serious. Because of the depth of what can arise, it is not appropriate for everyone. Conditions including pregnancy, recent surgery, severe cardiovascular disease, severe asthma, epilepsy, glaucoma, retinal detachment, certain psychiatric conditions, or active acute crisis are contraindications. Please be honest on the workshop intake form. We are here to do this work safely, or to help you find a better-suited path.

Parham Farsi is a Grof® Breathwork Apprentice Facilitator, ordained Minister, and Integration Coach. He came to this work first as a breather, through years of his own practice, and now serves as part of facilitation teams holding workshops in the Bay Area and beyond.

His role in the room is to hold space, to attend with care, and to trust the inner healer of each person on the mat. The work is not his to direct. It belongs to the breather, and to whatever wisdom is already moving in them.