NOTE: This is an excerpt from the full 90-minute DVD.

What is the origin of individual behavior and personality? Stanislav Grof proposes that individuals have systems of condensed experience (COEX systems) which become anchored to aspects of the birth trauma. In Part I of this program, he describes four different basic stages of the birth process and shows how they relate to attitudes developed later in life.

In Part 2 of the full DVD he discusses the development of his “holotropic” approach to therapy as an outgrowth of his early work with psychedelic drugs. Simple breathing exercises enable individuals to achieve an altered state which can lead to self-healing of emotional blocks. The unconscious, according to Grof, cannot be limited to the merely personal and biographical aspects of self, but can be seen from a transpersonal perspective as being identified with all of creation.

Stanislav Grof is author of LSD Psychotherapy, Beyond the Brain, and The Adventure of Self-Discovery and co-author of The Human Encounter with Death. A former professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University, he has been scholar in residence for fourteen years at the Esalen Institute. With his wife, ChristinaGrof, he has developed a psychotherapeutic approach known as Holotropic Therapy.

Published on August 21, 2010