Back in the Day with Stanislav Grof

The psychedelic pioneer and father of Holotropic Breathwork® tells us about the early days at Esalen, discovering his life’s work, and how building a garden in a patch of poison oak led to the practice’s supportive system of “breathers” and “sitters.”

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I was involved in the last surviving psychedelic research program at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center. It was 1972 [and it had become] more and more difficult to get grant money. I had a lot of material already from Prague, so I decided to take a year off and write a couple of books. LSD was making headlines. Everybody was interested in it. I got a contract with Viking Press within a very short time.

I went to a party in New York City, and Michael Murphy was there. He asked, “What are you doing these days?”

“Well, actually,” I said, “I’m taking a sabbatical. I'm going to write a book.”

“Why don't you come to Esalen? We’ll give you some accommodations and you can do some workshops,” he said. “Esalen is a beautiful place to write a book.”

So I came to Esalen in 1973. This house on Buck Creek was available.  I had a beautiful house on the ocean and this incredible deal with Esalen, trading the room and board for workshops.

I had actually come to Esalen for the first time back in 1965. Michael and I really hit it off. He was at that time very interested in Eastern Europe and what was happening, both in Russia but also the other Eastern European countries. We drove up and down the coast, and we had great discussions. Then two years later, in 1967, I began at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center and I was taking quite a few weekends to do workshops at Esalen. I was just talking about the LSD research that I had done in Prague and the kind of image of the psyche that emerged out of it.

It just was theoretical talk back then, nothing experiential. Initially, people were not very happy. They said, “Well, it's great to hear about these fantastic experiences, but can’t we do something? Do you have a little stash on the side?”

I said, “I don't have the license here for that, and I don't think Esalen would be very happy.” But I started thinking, What could we do experientially? Then I remembered that in some of the sessions, the early LSD sessions when the drug was wearing off but my patients felt unfinished, when it was not a good closure of the experience, a couple of them asked me to do some physical intervention. 

For example, one of those clients was coming down from the session and felt really mad, really angry, and he had pain in his shoulder. And he said, “I feel if I could get through this pain, I would feel better. Could you put some pressure there?” So I put some pressure, but he said, “Not enough! More!” My own shoulder felt like it was breaking, but it still was not enough. Finally, he started screaming and growling and coughing and shaking. He went on like this for a while, maybe twenty minutes — and then he kind of relaxed and was in a great place. 

The next time, a female patient was coming down and experiencing terrible nausea. She said, “I have really bad feelings here,” and pointed to her stomach, so I poked her a little with my hand. Her projectile vomiting missed me by a few inches, but soon she felt great. I saw that we can do things to get better integration of psychedelic sessions.

I started doing [integration] routinely. In several patients, this bodywork triggered fast breathing, kind of what's called psychotic breathing. They told me that the faster breathing took them back into the session. The drug had already worn off, but fast breathing suddenly brought them back, almost like they were in the middle of the session again. So I saw that faster breathing can somehow bring material out of the unconscious to consciousness.

We started playing with this breathing and we brought the music, which we also had been using in psychedelic sessions. We actually had a music therapist who would sit down with the patients and ask about their tastes and interests. The general idea was to bring in music that would support where people were. If it was very clear that they were angry, we would bring some drumming and intense music. If they were coming to some closure, we would use some timeless, floating, meditative ragas.

We began guiding people through these breathwork sessions. Sometimes, we ended up with three people in process. My wife, Christina, would work with one person; I would work with the other, and then some people in the group would take care of the third person. Then, something amazing happened. We had this Buck Creek house with probably a quarter of an acre or more covered in poison oak, and we wanted a garden for growing veggies there. I was working on it quite a bit, creating terraces and lifting a beam. I threw off my back to the point that I was in terrible pain. We had a group of 46 people coming here from Australia, and we had promised them the breathwork.

I said, “What are we going to do? I can't come close to somebody and do bodywork.”

After a while, we said, “Well, why don't we pair them up and just tell them what to do and supervise it?” And so the session was such a success that we never did it differently after. Not only did most of the people in the group have pretty significant experiences, but the sitters told us how much they got out of it — what a privilege it was to be there with another person in such an intimate process. This was a whole other new form of holotropic breathwork that we continue until today. 

We ended up staying here for fourteen years as faculty-in-residence. At the university I came from, they invited the academic stars of the time, mostly creators of a new antidepressant or some tranquilizer. It was boring compared to what was happening here. This was really the cutting edge. At Esalen,I had this really privileged position where I could decide the topic of the month-long program and the people to spend time with and learn from.

Everybody wanted to come to Esalen. Dick Price was an incredible, incredible support. He was the visionary here at the time. Anything that was an innovation, anything exciting, he wanted here at Esalen. People were very, very excited to come. The guest faculty was unbelievable. There was Joseph Campbell, Houston Smith, Fritjof Capra, Rupert Sheldrake, yogis, shamans, Tibetan teachers, and so on. Quite an amazing lineup. I don't think any university has that kind of a faculty.

Gregory Bateson, the anthropologist, was here. He was diagnosed with cancer, a tumor the size of a grapefruit sitting on his vena cava. They gave him four weeks to live. Michael said, “Gregory, if you're dying, why don't you come to Esalen? Esalen is a great place to die.” So he came and everybody who had any sort of healing ambitions descended on him — everyone from acupuncturists to Filipino psychic healers and so on. He lived for two and a half years.

This was the most interesting time of my life. I would not be where I am now professionally without all those connections and the input from those people. It was an amazing gift for me.