Grof, who is still considered a thought leader in spiritual psychology, has since taught this method of breathwork to hundreds of facilitators (a list of practitioners who are Grof-certified to teach the method can be found here), and it’s now a popular technique for safely exploring the subconscious. As alluded to earlier, it requires participants to get really comfortable: The technique is typically performed lying down with the eyes covered. Music plays the entire time, and while facilitators are present, they don’t speak much and instead let the music guide the experience. Each breather is also accompanied by a spotter, who sits next to them the whole time and can provide a hand if the breather needs a drink of water or to be led to the bathroom. “Having another person there gives you the safety to go to different places [in the mind],” Erica Matluck, N.D., N.P., a naturopathic doctor and a facilitator of my own holotropic-inspired experience, explains. (Since Matluck is not a Grof-certified practitioner, the session was not a totally authentic Holotropic Breathwork® session, but it incorporated some elements of the technique.) In a traditional session, after one breather finishes, they color in a mandala before trading places with their spotter. There are typically multiple breather-spotter pairs in the room at once. After everyone has a chance to breathe, the group gathers to share thoughts and reflections. So while you can technically try this breathing technique out on your own, it won’t give you the true experience. Though I’ve always known the breath to be powerful, I went into my holotropic-inspired session having a hard time believing that simply taking deep breaths could do much of anything. But then, just a few minutes into the practice, my mind went to a place that is difficult to describe (like Matluck said, it can be a hard thing to put words to). I suppose it felt like dreaming while awake. Over the course of the two-hour session, I never felt out of control; just the opposite actually. I felt more in tune with my body than I had in a really long time. At one point I started dancing to the music. At another point I settled into a deep stretch. Each movement took on new depth and exaggeration, which actually started to freak me out. Realizing how much I could shift with my breath made me think back to childhood when I would suffer from panic attacks. There were a few dicey moments there, but I was able to work through them by reaching out for my spotters hand and continuing on with the breath, maintaining trust that the feeling would pass. It did, and at the end of the experience, I was rewarded with visualizations of some of my closest friends and family. All in all, my session was a lesson in freedom and autonomy, and the reward that can come on the other side of a wound. This tracks with what I’ve heard that other people feel during their respective journeys. In the largest study done on the effects of this breathing method (conducted on a group of 11,200 psychiatric inpatients in Saint Anthony’s Medical Center in St. Louis, Missouri, over a 12-year span), 82% of those polled reported feeling transported to another place or time, while 16% reported revisiting prior life experiences. Only 2% said that they didn’t feel anything during the session. Another study out of Denmark1 in 2015 found that after 20 participants found that they all reported positive changes in self-awareness after a session. Another 1996 report concluded that the technique could improve “death anxiety and self-esteem” compared to verbal psychotherapy. “Part of what you’re doing when you move into a breathwork like this is you’re letting the intelligence of your body, of your psyche, of your whole holistic self guide a process—which is very different from most of the ways we heal in our culture,” says Matluck. Her advice for anyone considering trying a new breathwork practice out for themselves? “Be open to the mystery. Be open to going into uncomfortable places, and know that every sensation, every feeling, every emotion, everything is going to pass. It’s an opportunity. Trust it.” While the breathwork routine itself won’t cause the body harm, though, some of the images it evokes might be painful and difficult to process. Since the experience may bring you face-to-face with old traumas or wound patterns, it’s important to trust your facilitator and the other people in your group and feel as if you will be supported from them after the experience ends. “Particularly for people with mental health issues,” Matluck adds, “it’s probably a good idea to have done some work with a therapist before you go into a state like this.” “I think there are some people who have a really potent experience and don’t feel drawn to do it again, and that’s fine,” Matluck says of any mind-expanding breathwork practice. “But I think there’s definitely therapeutic value in doing it multiple times or deepening your practice with it. The more comfortable you become in that altered state of consciousness, the more you learn to work with it.” Emma received her B.A. in Environmental Science & Policy with a specialty in environmental communications from Duke University. In addition to penning over 1,000 mbg articles on topics from the water crisis in California to the rise of urban beekeeping, her work has appeared on Grist, Bloomberg News, Bustle, and Forbes. She’s spoken about the intersection of self-care and sustainability on podcasts and live events alongside environmental thought leaders like Marci Zaroff, Gay Browne, and Summer Rayne Oakes.
