Stanislav Grof
Dr. Stanislav Grof is and extraordinary scientist, paradigm breaking psychiatrist and a humble human being. Throughout his reach and over half-century long professional work his primary interest has been and still is in research of transformative and healing potentials of non-ordinary states of consciousness.
Based on decades of observations of his clients’ experiences in non-ordinary states of consciousness and his scientific research he created a ground breaking extended cartography of the psyche. In this new cartography, he is expanding the biographical level including Freudian individual unconscious with two additional levels: perinatal, related to intra uterine experiences and trauma of birth, and transpersonal including the ancestral, racial, collective, phylogenetic, karmic, and archetypal matrices.
Born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, he took an important part of the laboratory research of psychedelics in the 60’s and 70’s first in his home country and later in the United States. At the Maryland Psychiatric Research Centre he headed for several years the last surviving official research project of psychedelic therapy in the USA. He developed theory and practice of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy.
Together with his wife Christina he developed Holotropic Breathwork™ when he was Scholar-in-Residence at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California from 1973 till 1987. Holotropic Breathwork™ is a powerful non-substance form of self-exploration and psychotherapy that they have used in more than 3000 workshops and in professional training in North and South America, Europe, Australia, and Asia.
Their reach experience and knowledge about the method is being transmitted through Grof Transpersonal Training, an extensive training program for Holotropic Breathwork™ facilitators that has certified over 1000 practitioners in various parts of the world.
Jointly with Abraham Maslow, Anthony Sutich, Sonya Margulies and Jim Fadiman he is one of the founders and chief theoreticians of transpersonal psychology, a discipline that explores the full spectrum of human experience and attempts to integrate spirituality and new paradigm science.