In encyclopedias on psychology, the name of Stanislav Grof is the third, after Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, among the largest innovators of the science of the mysteries of the human soul. Grof's revolutionary discoveries, still ignored by mainstream medicine, inspired the iconic filmmakers of the Wachowski brothers to create the Matrix trilogy. The world famous scientist gave an exclusive interview to Pravda.Ru.
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Dear Stanislav, let me thank you that in the year of your 75th birthday you found time for such a serious and large-scale conversation with us. Even Carl Jung argued that the baby's psyche is not a "tabula rasa". On the basis of many years of clinical research, you have come to the conclusion that our unconscious contains perinatal (i.e. prenatal) and transpersonal areas. But why does mainstream medicine ignore these discoveries?
Modern research in the field of consciousness has brought a lot of evidence that the models of the human psyche that dominate today in official psychology and psychiatry are superficial and inadequate. Based on years of psychedelic research data, I had to create an extremely expanded model of the psyche by adding two large areas - perinatal and transpersonal.
The perinatal area refers to memories of intrauterine life and biological birth. This area is composed of four basic perinatal matrices, corresponding to the four stages of labor, from blissful rest in the womb to birth. The transpersonal sphere contains the experience of identification with other people, other biological species, episodes from the life of our ancestors, both humans and animals, as well as the historical collective unconscious, as Jung interpreted it.
My cartography of the psyche bears great resemblance to Jung's views, except for a fundamental thing. I was surprised and disappointed that Jung vehemently denied that biological birth had any psychological significance, that it was a major trauma. Even shortly before his death, in an interview, Jung denied any possibility of such a significance.
ATTENTION:
This post is NOT a call to drug use, as well as this entire blog is NOT a call for widespread immersion in trance states, opening the third eye, contact with aliens and dancing naked with a tambourine around the fire.
Each reader has the right to take out of the information transmitted for thought as much as his personal comfort zone and its framework will allow. If the issues raised abruptly take you outside this cherished zone and / or awaken righteous anger in you, it is recommended.
( cm. ).
Persons with extensive experience of psychedelics (any) usually find it more difficult to keep the focus of attention both in the normal state of consciousness and in the meditative state. Sometimes the nervous system can be burned out to a complete lack of sensitivity to energies and the perception of subtle plans, the antennas are reconfigured to perceive illusory realities, the connection with the VY is blocked, on a gray haze is formed, sometimes condensing to a black oil-like substance (strong emotions of anger, grief, hatred, etc. can have the same effect). Depending on natural defenses, breakdowns in the aura can have extremely deplorable results and attract entities according to the principle of similarity (hence the difficulties with depressive states and addiction).
However, as has already been said many times, there is no single rule for all, there is only an average cut, usually in different ways.
Stanislav Grof
PSYCHOLOGY OF THE FUTURE
Lessons from modern consciousness research
PSYCHOLOGY OF THE FUTURE
Lessons from ModernConsciousness Research
State University of New York Press
Translated from English by Stanislav Ofertas
Scientific editor Vladimir Maikov
Publishing House of the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology
Publishing house of K. Kravchuk
AST Publishing House
To my wife Christine
With great love and deep appreciation
for your contribution to ideas,
expressed in this book
Editor's Foreword
Among the peaks of modern knowledge about man there are obvious, if I may say so, "eight-thousanders". So in the language of climbers they call the peaks that approach in height to eight thousand meters or exceed them. One of these peaks is Stanislav Grof, who, along with Freud and Jung, can be called a great innovator and master of modern psychology and psychotherapy.
I was fortunate enough to meet Grof in 1989 when he came to Moscow for the third time to give a three-day seminar on Holotropic Breathwork and Transpersonal Psychology. Prior to that, my first correspondence meeting with Grof took place in 1980, when I got acquainted with a "samizdat" book "Areas of the human unconscious", which then I was destined to publish and officially. The man who later became for many years, until his death, my close friend, Vitaly Nikolaevich Mikheikin, one of the ascetics of "samizdat" and underground psychology, presented me with a manuscript of his translation of this book, after which I, like many, after reading of labor Grof walked as if dazed. It seemed to me that Grof had found the ends of many elusive mysteries of human existence and the mysteries of space, tied together the threads of the worlds of science and the worlds of existential and mysterious.
Grof really groped for something extremely important: each person can have experiences of extraordinary intensity and richness, each is a bunch of myths, stories, legends, he is that "Aleph point" of Borges, where everything converges in one, where is the beginning and end of everything, where everyone can free himself and there is a path of liberation, based on modern data. I then realized that Grof's four perinatal matrices, described in his cartography of the psyche, are some kind of guardians on the path to freedom.
We are born, and because of birth pangs we are destined for a human destiny. Those of us who manage to turn back time and find a second birth, which in a way inherits the first, dispel the spell cast by human birth, this life, this upbringing, these traumas, are freed from what made us closed, frozen, detached from the world. All this can dissipate, and before them will appear another world, familiar from childhood memories, heroic stories - the world of freedom and illumination, the world of enlightenment, joy, happiness and exploration.
Grof fascinated us with the possibility of freedom and awakening. And we began to study everything that was associated with transpersonal psychology, of which he became one of the most prominent founders. He began his medical career in 1956 as a psychiatrist, a classical psychoanalyst, who believed that psychedelic substances, used in psychiatry under controlled conditions, could significantly speed up the process of psychoanalysis. However, the unprecedented richness and range of experiences during LSD psychotherapy sessions soon convinced him of the theoretical limitations of the Freudian model of the psyche and the underlying mechanistic worldview. The new cartography of the psyche resulting from these studies consists of three areas: 1) (Freudian) personal and biographical unconscious; 2) transpersonal (transpersonal) unconscious (which includes Jung's narrower ideas about the archetypal or collective unconscious); 3) the perinatal (perinatal) unconscious, which is a bridge between the personal and transpersonal unconscious and filled with symbolism and specific experiences of death and rebirth. This area of \u200b\u200bthe unconscious carries the greatest potential for transformation.
In his latest works, Grof constantly emphasizes that the perinatal is not limited to intrauterine life and the process of childbirth, but forms an all-encompassing structure of psychospiritual transformation, valid for all stages of the development of consciousness. The tremendous clinical experience of Grof himself and his students, as well as the recorded experience of world spiritual traditions, indicate that regression to the perinatal level is often a necessary condition for access to the transpersonal. Grof himself assisted during psychedelic psychotherapy sessions, and there were about four thousand of them, and tens of thousands of people in many countries of the world and on different continents have passed through his seminars on holotropic breathing.
Let us briefly summarize the results of Grof's research, consistently presented in the chapters of this book.
Grof experimentally showed the possibility for any person to have experiences of extraordinary intensity and saturation, which, as a rule, is characteristic of extreme situations of human life associated with experiences of ecstasy, catastrophe, death, and spiritual transformation. Unusual states of consciousness were widely practiced in all traditional cultures and accompanied any significant change in the individual and society. Among these states stand out holotropic, or holistic, states of consciousness (from holos - "whole" and trepein - "to move to ..."), which have a particularly powerful therapeutic and renewing potential. They are defined in relation to the usual, or chylotropic, states (hile - "earth"). European Cartesian science is based on the experience of chylotropic states, the emerging scientific paradigm is based on the experience of holotropic states.
The expanded cartography of the psychic, developed by Grof, incorporates not only most of the cartographs of Western psychology, but also corresponds to almost all known oriental, including mystical, cartographs. The universality of Grof's cartography lies in the fact that regardless of which path of spiritual and philosophical development a person follows, he inevitably has to solve the same problems in terms of mastering a certain level of energy. In Grof's “energetic anthropology”, the degree of awareness is directly related to the level of available energy and the degree of elaboration of the blocks on the way of its development as a familiar level.
Grof Stanislav - Psychology of the future. Lessons from modern consciousness research - read the book online for free
Annotation
Stanislav Grof is widely recognized as the founder and theorist of transpersonal psychology, and his pioneering research into non-ordinary states of consciousness is an important contribution to understanding the nature of consciousness and healing.
In this final book, Grof offered readers an unprecedented amount of data, experiences and facts about unusual states of consciousness, collected by him in the course of almost half a century of research.
Stanislav Grof
PSYCHOLOGY OF THE FUTURE
Lessons from modern consciousness research
PSYCHOLOGY OF THE FUTURE
Lessons from ModernConsciousness Research
State University of New York Press
Translated from English by Stanislav Ofertas
Scientific editor Vladimir Maikov
Publishing House of the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology
Publishing house of K. Kravchuk
AST Publishing House
To my wife Christine
With great love and deep appreciation
for your contribution to ideas,
expressed in this book
Editor's Foreword
Among the peaks of modern knowledge about man there are obvious, if I may say so, "eight-thousanders". So in the language of climbers they call the peaks that approach in height to eight thousand meters or exceed them. One of these peaks is Stanislav Grof, who, along with Freud and Jung, can be called a great innovator and master of modern psychology and psychotherapy.
I was fortunate enough to meet Grof in 1989 when he came to Moscow for the third time to give a three-day seminar on Holotropic Breathwork and Transpersonal Psychology. Prior to that, my first correspondence meeting with Grof took place in 1980, when I got acquainted with a "samizdat" book "Areas of the human unconscious", which then I was destined to publish and officially. The man who later became for many years, until his death, my close friend, Vitaly Nikolaevich Mikheikin, one of the ascetics of "samizdat" and underground psychology, presented me with a manuscript of his translation of this book, after which I, like many, after reading of labor Grof walked as if dazed. It seemed to me that Grof had found the ends of many elusive mysteries of human existence and the mysteries of space, tied together the threads of the worlds of science and the worlds of existential and mysterious.
Grof really groped for something extremely important: each person can have experiences of extraordinary intensity and richness, each is a bunch of myths, stories, legends, he is that "Aleph point" of Borges, where everything converges in one, where is the beginning and end of everything, where everyone can free himself and there is a path of liberation, based on modern data. I then realized that Grof's four perinatal matrices, described in his cartography of the psyche, are some kind of guardians on the path to freedom.
Transpersonal psychology considers a person as a spiritual cosmic being, inextricably linked with the entire Universe, Cosmos, humanity, with the ability to access the global informational space field. Through the individual unconscious psyche, a person is connected with the unconscious psyche of other persons, with the collective unconscious of humanity, with cosmic information, the "world mind".
The original founders of transpersonal (transpersonal) tendencies were C.G. Jung, R. Assagioli, A. Maslow. Their ideas about the collective unconscious, about the "higher self", about the unconscious mutual influence of people on each other, about the role of "peak experiences" (on the verge of life and death) in personality development served as the basis for the formation of transpersonal psychology.
Experimental research by Stanislav Grofa(p. 1931) confirm the correctness of C.G. Jung's concept of the inseparable connection of human consciousness with the unconscious phenomena of the personal and collective unconscious, with archetypes, the possibility of a person's access to the global information field of collective unconscious and cosmic consciousness in transpersonal experiences.
In the course of experimental research carried out for 30 years, S. Grof found that when a person from the level of consciousness using special methods (such as meditation, rebirthing, holotropic breathing) begins to penetrate into the area of \u200b\u200bhis unconscious psyche, he goes through several levels:
- 1. Touch threshold. When passing the sensory threshold, a person experiences unusual sensations: a variety of physical and pain sensations in the body (physical barrier), unaddressed, previously often suppressed emotions (a person wants to cry or laugh without any specific reason - emotional barrier), actualization of visual and sound images (colored spots, geometric shapes, any landscapes can flicker in the field of vision behind closed eyelids, various sounds are heard - shaped barrier).
- 2. Individual personal unconscious (biographical level). Any events or circumstances in a person's life from the moment of birth to the present moment, which have a high emotional significance of experiences, are really experienced anew. Memories from biography do not appear separately, but form the so-called condensed experience systems, which are a dynamic combination of memories from different periods of a person's life, united by a strong emotional charge of the same quality, intense bodily sensations of the same type.
- 3. The level of birth and death (perinatal matrices). Grof called the next level of the unconscious psyche perinatal (information about the features of intrauterine development and childbirth, about being on the verge of life and death is stored here). Perinatal matrices - these are the deep structures of the unconscious psyche, which contain information about the experiences and sensations of the body from the moment of conception to the completion of birth. Under normal conditions, they are not recognized by a person, although they can significantly affect his health, psyche, behavior and life.
With further immersion in the unconscious psyche, a person can go beyond the limits of his individual psyche, into the transpersonal area.
4. The transpersonal area reveals the connection of a person with the Cosmos, with the collective unconscious, with the world information field, when a person's consciousness goes beyond the usual limits and overcomes the limitations of time and space. Transpersonal experiences are interpreted by those who have experienced them as a return to historical times and an exploration of their biological and spiritual past, when a person experiences memories from the life of their ancestors, from their incarnations. An individual can go beyond the boundaries of purely human experience and tap into what looks like the consciousness of animals, plants, or even inanimate objects and processes.
An important category of transpersonal experience will be a variety of phenomena. extrasensory perception, for example, the experience of existence outside the body, telepathy, prediction of the future, clairvoyance, movement in time and space, the experience of encounters with the souls of the dead or with superhuman spirit entities. Sometimes transpersonal experiences include events from the micro- and macrocosm; from areas unattainable directly by human senses, or from periods that historically preceded the emergence of the solar system, the Earth, living organisms. These experiences clearly indicate that in some inexplicable way, each of us has information about the entire Universe, about everything that exists, everyone has potential empirical access to all its parts.
A person simultaneously acts as a material object and a vast field of consciousness. People can become aware of themselves through two different modes of experience.
* The first modus can be called chylotropic consciousness (from the Greek. hyle - matter). It implies knowledge of oneself as a material physical being with clear boundaries and a limited sensory range. Experiences of this mode systematically support the following basic assumptions: matter is material; two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time; past events are irretrievably lost; future events are empirically unavailable; it is impossible to be in two or more places at the same time.
* Another empirical mode can be called holotropic consciousness (from the Greek.holos - whole). Such a consciousness is inherent in few people who have experience of "peak" and transpersonal experiences. This modus implies a field of consciousness without definite boundaries, which has unlimited experiential access to various aspects of reality without the use of the senses. Experiences in the holotropic mode are systematically supported by the opposite assumptions from those in the chylotropic mode: the materiality and continuity of matter is an illusion; time and space are highly arbitrary - one and the same space can be simultaneously occupied by many objects; past and future can be empirically transferred to the present moment; you can have the experience of being in several places at once.
Human nature reflects a fundamental duality between the experience of a separate existence as a material object and the experience of unlimited existence as an undifferentiated field of consciousness, i.e. both chylotropic and holotropic modes are natural to humans.
This approach has its origins in mysticism, neo-Platonism and Eastern religions. Maslow predicted the emergence of "transpersonal, transhuman" psychology, focused on "space, and not on human needs. Transpersonal psychology is one of the areas of modern psychology, which began to take shape as an independent field of research in the late 60s in the United States. The founders of this direction were made well-known psychologists, psychotherapists and thinkers: S. Grof, A. Watts, E. Sutich, M. Murphy, S. Krippner and etc. Transpersonal psychology has deep roots in the history of culture and religion, in the world's spiritual practices, which are scientifically grounded in classical and modern psychology. The leaders of modern transpersonal psychology are S. Grof, K. Wilber, C. Tart, A. Mindell, S. Krippner and others, each of which develops its own direction of research, methods and school.
The term " transpersonal psychology"has Latin and Greek roots. The Greek word" psychology "consists of two words -" psyche ", which means soul, spirit, breath and" logos ", ie a word, reasoning. It turns out that the primary meaning of the word" psychology " the following: “word of the soul” or “word of spirit.” The word “transpersonal” comes from the Latin “trans” and “persona”, that is, “through”, “through” and “mask.” Thus, originally “transpersonal psychology "implies" the word of the soul through and beyond the mask".
Transpersonal psychology studies the ultimate abilities and capabilities of a person, it studies consciousness in a wide range of its manifestations: a plurality of states of consciousness, spiritual crisis, near-death experiences, the development of intuition, creativity, higher states of consciousness, personal resources, para-psychological phenomena. It relies on a holistic vision of a person in the perspective of his spiritual growth, classical and non-classical philosophical anthropology, world spiritual traditions, including shamanism, as well as a variety of ways of self-knowledge and psychotherapy, such as meditation, holotropic breathing, body-oriented psychotherapy, art therapy, work with dreams, active imagination, self-hypnosis, etc.
Stanislav Grof became a psychiatrist and psychedelic researcher in the mid-50s. In 1954 he received his Doctor of Medicine degree and began independent research work. From 1954 to 1973 he was involved in legal research on psychedelics. In 1974, his wife, Christina Grof, took a rebirthing class with L. Orr to complement the experience of accessing transpersonal pericions through deeper and faster breathing.
This man personifies for me an amazing world of the soul, which is as amazing and fantastic as the worlds that famous science fiction writers open to us - Robert Zelazny, Robert Sheckley, Clifford Simak, etc. Grof opened for modern scientific psychology a world of extraordinary, not fully mastered and explored opportunities for the development of psychotherapy, psychotechnics, psychological culture and individual search. Grof groped for something extremely important - the opportunity to experience experiences of extraordinary intensity and saturation, which is typical for some extraordinary moments: ecstasy, moments of disaster.
Personal concept in transpersonal psychology developed by Graf in the process of experiment, the study is numerous, a group of phenomena of human consciousness that arise in sessions of psychedelic therapy under the influence of psychedelics (LSD, etc.). The latter provoke the appearance of altered states of consciousness (extraordinary, other than conscious and unconscious), against the background of which the phenomena of transpersonal experiences develop, defined by the author as experiences that include the expansion or spread of consciousness beyond the ordinary boundaries of the Ego and beyond the limitations of time and / or space ... In some cases, the subject experiences a weakening of his usual Ego-limitations, his consciousness and self-consciousness expands and embraces other individuals and elements of the external. the world; or the subject continues to experience his own. identity, but in a different form, time and space, or in a different context. It happens that the subject experiences a complete loss of his property. identity and is fully identified with the consciousness of another being or entity. A fairly broad category of transpersonal experiences includes phenomena when the subject's consciousness embraces elements that are usually not associated with his ego identity and are not typical of the three-dimensional world.
Transpersonal experiences fall into two broad groups: " expansion of experiences within the framework of objective reality"and" expansion of experiences beyond objective reality"The former include a temporary expansion of consciousness (experiences of the embryo and fetus, the experience of ancestors, collective and racial experience, evolutionary experience, the experience of past incarnations, foresight, clairvoyance," time travel "); spatial expansion of consciousness (going beyond the Ego in interpersonal relationships and the experience of dual unity, identification with other personalities, group identification and group consciousness, identification with animals, plants, unity with everything in the world, planetary and extraplanetary consciousness, "spatial travel", telepathy); spatial narrowing of consciousness to the level of organ consciousness , tissues, cells. Expansion of experiences beyond the limits of "objective reality" include spiritual and mediumistic experience, experience of encounters with superhuman spiritual entities, inhabitants of other universes, archetypal and mythical experiences, consciousness of the Universal Mind, Supercosmic and Metacosmic Emptiness, etc.
Experiences in altered states of consciousness and observations related to them cannot be explained within the conceptual framework of academic psychology. Therefore, S. Grof introduced a broader cartography of the psyche, which, as it seemed to him, is more consistent with the work in holotropic processes. This map, adding to the biographical level, also includes the perinatal (perinatal) area associated with the trauma of biological birth and the transpersonal (transpersonal) ) the area that is responsible for such phenomena as occurring identifications with other people, animals, plants, etc. The latter area is also the source of the manifestation of hereditary, ethnic, phylogenetic memory, as well as visions of archetypal creatures and mythological kingdoms.
The term " perinatal»Is a complex word of Greek-Latin origin; the prefix peri- literally means "around" or "close," and natalis translates to "related to childbirth." This term defines events that immediately precede, are associated with, or immediately follow biological birth.
As a result of his research, S. Grof, discovering something new in understanding the biographical and memory-related level of the psyche, introduced the concept “ condensed experience systems"- RMS.
COEX systems are composed of emotionally charged memories from different periods of life that are similar to each other in the quality of the feeling or physical sensation they share. Each COEX system has a basic theme that runs through all its layers and represents a common denominator. Then it turns out that the layers of the individual psyche contain variations of this basic theme that took place in different periods of the individual's life. The unconscious of an individual may contain several COEX systems. The number and nature of the underlying topics varies greatly from person to person.
S. Grof believes that there is a certain interaction of driving forces between the COEX system and the outside world. External events of our life can trigger the corresponding COEX systems in a special way, and vice versa, the existing COEX systems force us to feel and behave in such a way that we reproduce their basic themes in our current life.
S. Grof also introduced the concept of four functional complexes of the deep unconscious as basic, perinatal matrices(BPM)
First BPMassociated with intrauterine existence before the onset of labor. The experimental world of this period can be referred to as the "amniotic fluid". The embryo has no awareness of boundaries and does not distinguish between internal and external. All of this is reflected in the nature of the experiences associated with the reproduction of the prenatal memory. In moments of undisturbed embryonic existence, we usually experience breadth, will, spaces that have no boundaries or limits, we identify with galaxies or with the entire cosmos. Positive intrauterine experiences can also be linked to archetypal visions of Mother Nature - safe, beautiful, and unconditionally nourishing, like the “good womb”.
When we reproduce in our memory episodes of intrauterine disorders, memories of the "evil womb", we have a feeling of a dark, ominous threat that we are being poisoned with something. The whole world threatens to destroy us and interfere with our comfortable existence.
Second BMPresurrects in memory the beginning of biological birth. At the already fully developed first stage of biological birth, uterine contractions periodically squeeze the fetus, but the cervix is \u200b\u200bstill not open. Each contraction causes compression of the uterine arteries, and the fetus is threatened by a lack of oxygen. The recollection of this stage of birth is usually accompanied by images of people, animals and even mythical creatures in a state of suffering and hopelessness, similar to the position of a fetus clamped in the pincers of the birth canal. We experience identification with prisoners in a dungeon, victims of the Inquisition, inhabitants of concentration camps. Our suffering of trapped animals or reaches archetypal dimensions. Being under the influence of this matrix, we are stricken with selective blindness and are unable to see anything positive in our life and in human existence in general.
Third BMPit is the experience of the passage of the process of pushing the fetus through the birth canal after the opening of the cervix and the descent of the head into the small pelvis. At this stage, the contractions of the uterus continue, but the cervix is \u200b\u200bopen and now allows for the gradual pushing of the fetus through the birth canal. This causes severe mechanical compression, pain, and often a high degree of oxygen deprivation and suffocation. The natural accompaniment of such a very constrained and life-threatening state is the experience of intense anxiety. BPM 3 is an extremely complex and vivid example of experience. In addition to truly realistic reproduction in memory of different stages of the struggle during the passage of the birth canal, it includes the widest variety of types of imagery drawn from history, nature and archetypal spheres. Of all this, the most significant are the atmosphere of titanic struggle, aggressive and sadomasochistic scenes, experiences of perverted sexual relations, demonic plots, animal hobbies and encounters with fire. Most of these aspects of BPM 3 can be meaningfully related to some anatomical, physiological, or biochemical characteristics of the corresponding stage of birth.
Fourth Perinatal Matrix BPM 4the experience of death and rebirth) is related to the third clinical stage of labor - the final expulsion of the fetus from the birth canal and cutting the umbilical cord. When we experience this matrix, we complete the previous difficult process of pushing through the birth canal, achieve an explosive release and are born. This can often be accompanied by detailed and truthful memories of special aspects of this stage of birth.
The resurrection of the memory of biological birth is experienced not only as a simple mechanical replay of the original biological event, but also as spiritual and mental death and rebirth. To understand this, you need to imagine that what is happening in this process includes some important additional elements. Due to the fact that the child in the process of birth is completely limited and does not have any way to express extreme feelings and respond to the strong physical sensations caused, the memory of this event remains psychologically not assimilated and not worked out.
According to S. Grof's theory, our attitude towards ourselves and our attitudes towards the world in the postpartum period bear in themselves reminders of the vulnerability, helplessness and weakness that we experienced at birth. We went through this physiological process without being emotionally involved in it. We died as a living in water and were born as a blowing creature.
The transpersonal approach in the treatment of drug addiction and alcoholism as types of spiritual crisis, psychotherapy of neuroses and psychosis, in the psychological recovery of society is acquiring particular relevance.
The basic method of transpersonal psychology is holotropic breathing... If translated into Russian, then holos is a whole, tropos is a direction, an aspiration. Those. striving for integrity. This is a very interesting method, and the attitude towards it among psychologists is ambiguous. Holotropic Breathwork is one of the most effective techniques that uses deep altered states of consciousness for therapeutic or research purposes. In the process of holotropic breathing, a person can experience strong bodily sensations and emotional experiences. In the first breathing sessions, experiences are often associated with solving the most pressing problems and states perceived by a person as traumatic. This is indeed one of the most effective methods for transforming a person's inner world, and those who do not want to disturb "their skeletons in the closet" intuitively avoid this method and spread ridiculous speculations that cause fear and distrust in other people
The typical result of a good holotropic session is deep emotional relief and physical relaxation; Many people reported feeling more relaxed than ever before, continuing to breathe intensively throughout the session is thus extremely powerful and effective in reducing stress and leading to emotional and psychosomatic health. Spontaneous episodes of intense breathing in psychiatric patients can be considered as attempts to self-medicate the body. This understanding can be found in the literature on spiritual issues. In siddha yoga and kundalini yoga, intentional intense breathing (bhastrika) is used as one of the meditative techniques, and episodes of rapid breathing, called kriya, often occur spontaneously as one of the manifestations of Shakti, or activated kundalini energy. These observations indicate that spontaneous episodes of rapid breathing occurring in psychiatric patients should be supported rather than suppressed by any means.
In holotropic therapy, in addition to intense breathing, special music is used to induce unusual states of consciousness. As well as controlled breathing, music and other forms of sound technology have been used for millennia as powerful means of altering consciousness. From time immemorial, monotonous chanting and drumming have been used by shamans in various parts of the world. Many non-Western cultures independently have developed rhythmic patterns that, in recent laboratory experiments, have shown the ability to significantly affect the physiological activity of the brain, which is reflected in changes in the EEG. Against this background, it is precisely those psychotraumatic people who manifest themselves. moments of an individual's life that were stored in the depths of the unconscious and were the cause of personal disharmony. In the process of transpersonal experiences, there is an actualization of the traumatic event and, as it were, the elimination of it.
Internal experiences in unusual states of consciousness can create feelings of peace and completeness at a deep level. Working with non-ordinary states of consciousness uses techniques and catalysts to mobilize the inner healing energy in such a way that the inner wisdom of the body chooses the experience that is relevant to the individual at a given time.
The difference between most psychotechniques based on verbal work and work in unusual states of consciousness under supervision is that traditional psychology expects the psychologist to structure and analyze the client's experiences according to some theory. Healing may even be expected from the therapist, while healing in unusual states of consciousness occurs within the client and is encouraged rather than directed by the facilitator.
In general, the concept of transpersonal psychology presented new opportunities for studying the individual and collective unconscious, described levels of mental life unknown in traditional psychology, including the phenomena of archetypal knowledge, experiences from the prehistory of a person's life, its prenatal period of development and psychodrama of birth.