Stanislav Grof read holotropic breathing online. After breathing techniques, problems return.

Holotropic Breathwork- the most effective of the three breathing techniques used in modern psychology and psychotherapy (the "big four" - holotropic breathing, viving, rebirthing, Free Breathing).

Holotropic Breathwork was developed in the 70s by Stanislav Grof, an American psychologist born in Czechoslovakia, and his wife Christina, as a legal alternative to psychedelic therapy.

Stanislav Grof, MD, is a physician and scientist who has devoted more than forty years to researching unusual states of consciousness and spiritual growth. He was born in Prague on July 1, 1931. In 1956 he received a medical degree from the Medical School of Charles University in Prague and a doctorate from the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. From 1956 to 1967 S. Grof was a practicing psychiatrist-clinician. During the same period, he actively studies the basics of psychoanalysis and takes part in innovative research projects. In 1959, he received the Küfner Prize, the national Czechoslovakian award given annually for the most outstanding contribution to the field of psychiatry. Since 1961, he has led research on the use of LSD and other psychedelics for treatment. mental disorders... In 1967, as a Fellow of the Foundation for the Encouragement of Psychiatric Research (USA), he received the opportunity to undertake a two-year internship at Johns Hopkins University. Then he continued his research activities at the Maryland Center for Psychiatric Research. From 1973 to 1987 S. Grof lives and works at the Esalen Institute (Big Sur, California, USA). During this period, together with his wife Christina, he develops the technique of holotropic breathing - a unique method of psychotherapy, self-knowledge and personal growth. Stanislav Grof is one of the founders of the International Transpersonal Association (ITA), for a long time he was its president. He also acted as organizer and coordinator of international conferences in the USA, India, Australia, Czechoslovakia and Brazil. Currently, S. Grof is a professor in the Department of Psychology at the California Institute for Integral Research, where he teaches at two departments: Psychology and Intercultural Studies. In addition, he conducts training seminars for professionals. Grof Transpersonal Training("Grof's Transpersonal Trainings"), and also gives lectures and seminars around the world. Stanislav Grof is the author and co-author of over one hundred articles and sixteen books. His texts invariably attract the attention of both professionals and all those who are interested in self-exploration and spiritual growth. Stanislav Grof's books and articles have been translated into twelve languages, including German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Russian, Czech, Polish, Chinese and Japanese. Stanislav Grof began his medical career as a classical psychoanalyst who believed that psychedelic substances used in psychiatry under controlled conditions could significantly speed up the psychoanalysis process. 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 that emerged as a result of these studies consists of three areas: 1) (Freud's) personal and biographical unconscious; 2) the transpersonal unconscious (which also includes Jung's narrower ideas about the archetypal or collective unconscious); 3) the 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 ​​the unconscious carries the greatest transformative potential. In his latest works, Stanislav Grof constantly emphasizes that the perinatal is not limited to intrauterine life and the process of childbirth, but forms a more 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, indicates that regression to the perinatal level is often necessary condition to access transpersonal. Grof himself has assisted in about four thousand sessions of psychedelic psychotherapy and tens of thousands of people in all countries of the world and all nationalities have passed through his seminars on Holotropic Breathwork.

The story of the creation of Holotropic Breathwork is amazing. Even before the prohibition of psychoactive substances in the USA (and then around the world), it was noticed that at the end of the psychotherapeutic psychedelic session, if the problem was not worked out to the end, the patients began to breathe intensively in order to continue to remain in an altered state of consciousness and to finalize that psychological material that rose from the unconscious.

After the ban on the use of psychotomimetics for psychotherapeutic purposes, Stanislav and Christina Grof began to use intense breathing in their work. At first, the group of patients was breathing intensively, and S. Grof was the instructor leading the process and helping the participants. But one "fine" day he pulled his back and was unable to help breathers. Then he had the idea to split the group into pairs and conduct not one, but two breathing sessions: during the first session, one person breathes (holonaut), and the second helps him (sitter, nurse, assistant), during the second they change places. The result exceeded all expectations. The experiences of the participants in the process turned out to be much more intense, and the psychotherapeutic effect of the sessions was stronger.

Holotropic breathing was officially approved and registered by the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation in 1993 as one of 28 methods of psychotherapy.

Basic concepts of Holotropic Breathwork

The theoretical basis of Holotropic Breathwork - transpersonal psychology... The main elements of Holotropic Breathwork are:

• deeper and faster connected breathing than normal
• stimulating music
• helping the holonaut to release energy through specific bodywork techniques

These elements are complemented by creative personal expression such as mandala painting, free dancing, clay sculpting, and therapeutic sandbox play.

The best thing about Holotropic Breathwork is probably described in the book by Stanislav and Christina Grof "The Furious Search for Oneself":

In the mid-seventies, Stanislav and Christina Grof developed a method of deep empirical self-exploration and therapy, which we now call holotropic breathing, and began to use it systematically in seminars.

Holotropic Breathwork combines such means as rapid breathing, music and specially selected sounds, as well as certain types of bodily work, is able to generate the full range of experiences that are usually observed during psychedelic sessions. In holotropic breathing, these experiences, as a rule, are softer, and the person is more able to control them, but in their content, they, in essence, do not differ from those that arise during psychedelic sessions, although they were obtained without the help of any whatsoever chemicals. The main catalyst here is not a powerful and mysterious psychoactive substance, but the most natural and fundamental physiological process imaginable - breathing.

Theoretical provisions
Stanislav and Christina Grof

A broad understanding of the human psyche that includes the biographical, perinatal and transpersonal domains. Phenomena related to all these areas are considered as natural and normal components of the psychological process, they are accepted and supported in their entirety.
Understanding that unusual states of consciousness caused by holotropic breathing, as well as similar states that arise spontaneously, mobilize the internal healing powers of the psyche and the body.
As this process unfolds, the “inner healer” exhibits therapeutic wisdom that transcends knowledge that can be inferred from the cognitive understanding of the individual practitioner or any particular school of psychotherapy or bodily work.

A hands-on approach

The main elements holotropic breathing are: deeper and faster breathing, stimulating music and help in the release of energy through specific techniques of working with the body. This is complemented by creative expressions such as mandala drawing and experience discussion. Holotropic Breathwork can be carried out both one-on-one and in a group situation, where the participants change places: either in the role of breathing (holonauts), or in the role of sitting (sitters).
Before the first experience holotropic breathing Participants receive in-depth theoretical training covering the main types of phenomena that arise in Holotropic Breathwork sessions (biographical, perinatal and transpersonal), as well as technical instructions for both breathers and seated. In addition, physical and emotional contraindications are discussed, and if they concern any of the participants, these people receive specialist recommendations.
Holotropic Breathwork is more frequent and deeper than usual; as a rule, no other specific instructions are given before the session or during the session, such as the speed, manner or nature of breathing. The experience is wholly internal and mostly non-verbal with minimal disruption during active breathing. Exceptions are throat cramps, problems with loss of self-control, severe pain or fear preventing the session from continuing, and direct requests from the breather for help.
Music (or other forms of acoustic stimulation - drums, tambourines, natural sounds, etc.) is an integral part of the process holotropic breathing... As a rule, the choice of music supports characteristic stages that reflect the most common features unfolding holotropic experience: at the beginning it is inspiring and stimulating, then it becomes more and more dramatic and dynamic, and then expresses a breakthrough. After the climax, the music gradually becomes more and more calm and in the end - peaceful, fluid, meditative. Since the development of the process described above is a statistical average, it should be changed if the dynamics of group energy proceeds differently.
Sitters during the session holotropic breathing should be responsible and unobtrusive, taking care of effective breathing, safety of the environment, respecting the natural unfolding of the experience and providing help in all necessary situations (physical support, help if you need to go to the toilet, serve a napkin or a glass of water, etc.) it is important to remain focused, accepting the full range of possible emotions and behaviors of the breather. Holotropic Breathwork does not use any type of intervention based on intellectual analysis or based on a priori theoretical constructs.
It is very important to have sufficient time for the session. It usually takes two to three hours. During this time, the process, as a rule, comes to its natural end, but in exceptional cases it can last for several hours. At the end of the session holotropic breathing the presenter offers work with the body, in the case when all emotional and physical tensions activated during the session have not been resolved through breathing. The basic principle of this work is to understand what is happening to the breather and create a situation that will exacerbate the existing symptoms. At a time when energy and awareness are held in the area of ​​tension and discomfort, you need to encourage the person to full self-expression, whatever form it takes. This body work is an essential part of the holotropic approach and plays an important role in the completion and integration of experiences.
Facilitators holotropic breathing should be aware that when they use a technique that induces unusual states of consciousness in a client, there is the possibility of unusually intense projections, including regressive craving for nourishment, sexual contact, or spiritual connection. These projections are often focused on the facilitator. In these cases, the facilitator should be sensitive to imbalances in the client's roles and take care to help clients who have these experiences. Facilitators agree to practice holotropic breathing ethically.
The group discussion takes place the same day after the break. During the discussion, the presenter does not give any interpretations of the material based on any theoretical systems, including the system holotropic breathing... It is better to ask the holonaut to continue to work through and clarify their experiences, returning to their insights received in the session. During the discussion, mythological and anthropological references in the mainstream of Jungian psychology can be useful, and mandalas can also be useful. On occasion, links to personal experiences of the presenters or other people are possible.
There are many approaches that complement holotropic breathing... However, whatever you use, it should be clearly understood that this is not part of holotropic breathing... And if the practice of conducting a breathing session is significantly different from what is described above, for such a practice not necessary use the title " holotropic breathing". We ask replace this with another term not related to our names.(

MEMORIES OF SITTER AND HOLONAUT

Sitter Memo (Seated)

Make a contract with the breather, discuss his wishes and preferences.

Keep talking while breathing to a minimum, as this can interfere with the breathing process.

Focus all your attention on the breather, sitting next to his head, and do not be distracted by what is happening in the hall. Don't go deep into your own process. Breathers need the undivided presence and attention of those who are seated and can be very sensitive to lack of this attention.

Stay with the breather in the same space of experience, listen to this space, but do not invade it. If the breather is calm, it is easier for you to feel them, while remaining calm. If the breather is active, sometimes his state is felt better, with light movement in the same rhythm.

Protect the breathing space of the breather. Protect your charge from the activity of other breathers or any other interference and risky behavior that may arise.

Resist the temptation to apply your knowledge from a variety of spiritual traditions to help breathers. Examples of such help would be "cleansing the aura" or using crystals.

Don't leave the breathers alone. If you need to use the toilet, call one of the facilitators for this time.

Be alert to any weak spot on the breather's body and inform the facilitator, if he is working with your breather, of the presence of such areas.

Help the breather if he asks for something. If the breather needs to go to the toilet, walk him to the toilet door and back. Help him dry off with a towel, bring a glass of water. Be prepared to provide any kind of support.

If you have questions about what is happening, raise your hand to call the facilitator.

Make sure your breather is checked by the facilitator before leaving the room after the process is over.

Ask to leave food for you and the breather if he is still in the process by the time lunch (dinner) begins.

Tidy up your breathing room after you lead the breather to the mandala drawing room.

Holonaut (breathing) memo

Come to the gym early in order to prepare a place without haste, to concentrate and calm down. The time indicated in the schedule is the time when the breath itself begins.

Wear comfortable, loose-fitting clothing and remove anything that is embarrassing or likely to injure you (belts, bras, jewelry, etc.). If you wear contact lenses, also remove them before the session.

If you breathe today, then eat very lightly or not eat at all. In this case, it is easier to breathe.

Visit the toilet before the session. If you want to use the toilet while breathing, don't hesitate. Better to do this than to be distracted by a full bladder.

If you have doubts about choosing a partner, ask yourself if this is the best option in this situation, do you feel safe with this person?

Don't leave the room in the middle of a session. Make an inner commitment to attend the entire workshop (including all breathing sessions and group discussions of the process) in order to have a holistic, unfragmented experience and to be supportive to each other.

Breathe deeply and often for an hour. Breathing is the most important catalyst for unusual states of consciousness. Keep your eyes closed to focus on your inner experiences.

Stay in a supine position - an open position. The urge to lean on your hands, sit down or stand up can be a way of controlling or escaping the experience. If you have done it, try to return to the starting position as soon as you are ready to do so.

Sign a contract with a partner that includes the following points:

How to remind you of breathing;

What method of body contact is most acceptable to you;

What kind of support you need from a partner;

What are the features of your manifestation in the session;

Agree on non-verbal signals:

How do you tell your partner to stop reminding you of breathing if the reminder interferes with your experience;

How do you communicate to your partner that you want something.

Avoid talking, respect the concerns of other participants. Conversations bring people out of the unusual state, because they are associated with everyday consciousness.

Remain silent while drawing mandalas and (preferably) throughout the day. It helps to be in a meditative mood.

Ask for help if you feel severe blockages, pain or tension in your body and continuing to breathe does not provide relief. This can be done at any time during the session.

Know that you are always in control. If you want to stop working with you, say the word "STOP", and any impact will be stopped immediately.

If you find yourself getting too caught up in your thoughts, turn your attention to your body and focus on your breathing or music. If you find yourself analyzing music, allow its vibrations to penetrate your body and focus on your breathing.

If you have a strong emotion (for example, anger, irritation, etc.) and the cause of this emotion seems to be events in the hall (for example, you do not like music or something else), shift your attention to yourself and the sensations in your body. Instead of being distracted by something external and engaging in endless emotional projections, it is better to get in touch with the energies you are experiencing, express them and free yourself from them.

Do not program experiences, let what arises be a spontaneous act, unexpected for yourself - a free dance of body, energy and thought.

Be the perfect actor: being completely in the role, in the experience, at the same time, be above every role, outside of all experience.

You decide when to stop breathing. As a rule, the session comes to its natural end within 1.5-2.5 hours. The music continues until everyone is done, so there is no need to wait for it to finish.

You should not start a new session at the end of the session. The work at this point is not to discover new problems, but to complete any material that has surfaced and needs integration.

Before leaving the hall, call the host to check if everything is in order. This test is necessary to determine if breathers need further work and whether they feel the full completeness of the experience.

Try drawing a mandala even if you think you can't draw. The point here is not in the quality of the drawing itself, but in the ability to use drawing as a means of integration and self-comprehension.

You are free to share your experience only what you see fit. In doing this, do not engage in analysis, but abide in the energies of the process itself. Refrain from analyzing and evaluating someone's experience or mandala.

Sleep is a continuation of the integration of manifested experiences. Be attentive to his messages. In the following days, take time to draw, contemplate, keep a journal, and work with dreams.

Summary of Holotropic Breathwork

Holotropic Breathwork is one of the most effective breathing techniques developed for psychotherapy. Holotropic breathing, created as a legal substitute for psychoactive substances after their official ban, allows you to achieve a similar effect as from taking psychedelic drugs - that is, altered consciousness. Experiencing the stories of the unconscious (often unpleasant) leads to the activation of an “internal healer,” that is, a self-healing force hidden inside the body.
The results that the Holotropic Breathwork technique can achieve are impressive - it is getting rid of stress, deep fears, ancient psychological traumas, which, being unconscious, negatively affect your life. Holotropic Breathwork is a universal path to speedy personal and spiritual growth.

History of Holotropic Breathwork Development

In the middle of the twentieth century, Stanislav Grof, a promising psychiatrist-clinician, led a project aimed at studying the therapeutic effects of psychotropic substances on people suffering from mental disorders. Observing patients in a state of altered consciousness, Grof comes to the conclusion that the Freudian concepts of human psychology, although they can be used, still do not give general view about a human. Continuing his research, Stanislav Grof described 4 areas of the psyche:

• Sensory barrier
• Individual unconscious
• Birth area
• Transpersonal level

Entering a state of altered consciousness, Grof's patients invariably faced all four areas of the psyche, which, ultimately, led to living prevailing plots, self-knowledge and getting rid of the disorder.
Also during the research, the scientist noticed that patients, trying to continue the weakening effect of LSD, to fully work out the emerging plot, began to breathe deeply and often, thus not allowing themselves to get out of the state of altered consciousness. It was this observation that later prompted the creation of holotropic breathing - a technique by which altered states are achieved not under the influence of chemicals, but under the influence of the most natural process - respiration.
Soon Grof patented the invented technique and in 1993 the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation registered holotropic breathing as a method of psychotherapy.

How is a Holotropic Breathwork session going?

Holotropic Breathwork sessions are based on three essential elements:

• Deep and fast breathing (holotropic breathing)
• Inspirational music
• Specific Bodywork Techniques to Help the Holonaut Release Energy

Before the start of the training, all participants are divided into pairs and get a deeper understanding of Holotropic Breathwork. In a pair, one participant is a sitter - an assistant, and the second is a holonaut, that is, a practitioner of holotropic breathing. After the first session, the participants switch roles.
The combination of music and deep, fast breathing allows you to achieve all the emotional states and experiences achieved when taking psychotropic substances.
The exit from the altered state of consciousness occurs automatically after an hour and a half after the beginning, since the person is unable to continue to maintain the required rate of breathing.
Holotropic breathing is as effective as actively (deeply and often) the holonaut breathes. During the session, the sitter does everything to help his holonaut, while not interfering with the process, unless the holonaut directly requests it. Before the start of the session, the rules of behavior are explained to the sitters.
Holotropic Breathwork is the path to self-knowledge and personal development.

Ken Wilber and many others are well known in the world of science, all these people have developed their own, in fact, revolutionary methods of psychotherapy, and sometimes whole new directions in psychology, and each of them, in one way or another, contributed to the development of a new direction.

Yet it is with the name of the Czech scientist Stanislav Grof that transpersonal psychology (TP) is most often associated. The reason for this is probably that, standing at the very origins, it was he who showed the greatest consistency in promoting the very ideas and insights of the 60s of the 20th century, which formed the basis of the new direction. Of course, TP is neither a separate method, nor a direction, it is rather a combination of a variety of psychotherapeutic techniques generated by new, and essentially revolutionary for psychology, ideas about human consciousness. The very same direction unites only the similarity of some basic principles, which are based on the idea of ​​the reality of transpersonal (transpersonal) experiences, as well as their unconditional therapeutic value.

Brief biography of Stanislav Grof.

Grof was born in Prague in 1931. While studying at the Prague Medical College, Stanislav worked as an assistant to Professor Georg Roubicek, who was known for his experiments with psychedelic substances and the study of their effect on human consciousness. So a young scientist gets the opportunity to participate in many experiments related to this topic. In addition, it was then that his own acquaintance with the new drug LSD occurs and that very psychedelic experience comes, which, as Grof himself later said, changed all his ideas about consciousness.

In 1956, after graduating from Charles University, Grof received higher education(Doctor's degree) and begins his own practice as a psychiatrist, and at the same time continues his earlier experiments with psychedelics. The next twenty years of life pass under the banner of research into the effects of LSD-25 on humans, as well as the development of appropriate psychological practices.

In 1967 by political reasons Stanislav Grof receives asylum in the United States, where he continues his work.
Until 1973, when psychedelics were banned, Grof conducted literally thousands of LSD sessions during which he studied its effects on the minds of both clients and his own. In 1973 Grof moved to Big Sur (California) and remained there until 1987.

In 1975-1976, Stanislav, together with his wife Christina Grof, developed a new method that was intended to replace the forbidden LSD, and the effect of which on consciousness is similar - this is the so-called holotropic breathing, based on hyperventilation of the lungs due to very rapid breathing.

This method turns out to be very effective and begins to be widely used by Grof in psychotherapy. In the period from 1987 to 1994, sessions are held literally for tens of thousands of people, and the technique itself forms the basis of holotropic psychotherapy, which over the years has proven its effectiveness as a therapeutic method.

Now Stanislav Grof continues to live and work in America. Over the years of his work, he has written hundreds of articles and many books that are considered classics of TP, and his method of Holotropic Breathwork is widely used in the world as an element of psychotherapy.

Stanislav Grof's mind map.

In the course of research into consciousness, psychologists often use the method of self-observation, as the only one involving direct observation of the processes taking place in our mind. The combination of the method of self-observation (introspection) and the study of the behavioral characteristics of patients served as a true source of basic psychological theories describing the structure of consciousness. This applies to most theories of personality and methods of psychotherapy based on them. This fully applies to such psychological directions as psychoanalysis, analytical psychology, psychosynthesis to the ideas of the humanistic direction and, of course, to transpersonal psychology.

Naturally, this method has caused and to this day causes serious complaints from scientists who do not consider the method of introspection fully scientific, as opposed to empirical observations. Undoubtedly, these claims are completely justified, because introspection, like the study of the consciousness of other people from the point of view of their evidence, provides us with very subjective data. For this reason, for more than a hundred years, many popular psychological trends have been under fire and exist in the scientific world to one degree or another "on the basis of a bird's rights."

From the point of view of such an approach, the only direction fully claiming to be scientific was behaviorism, which assumed the study not of consciousness itself, but of behavior, that is, external and objectively observed events. However, it is also a reality that the direct study of consciousness, its features and patterns of its work is fully possible only by dubious methods from the point of view of the scientific approach. This is precisely what underlies the reasons why these areas are nevertheless admitted into the scientific world and are considered officially recognized.

Nevertheless, despite the fact that from this point of view, psychoanalysis, popular and accepted in the scientific world, is quite equal in legitimacy to any other areas of psychology, in the psychological environment there is a critical attitude towards many newly emerging psychological theories and methods, and transpersonal ideas have always been leaders in terms of critical attitudes towards them. This attitude was driven by several factors.

Attitude towards transpersonal psychology in the scientific world.

First, transpersonal psychology often claims that the result of the study of consciousness is not only consciousness itself, as such, which is quite understandable and logical, but also events occurring in the real, physical world, namely, events of the past, present and even the future. , which the individual could not observe directly, for example, events occurring at other times and with other people, events occurring with the individual himself, but at the stage of intrauterine development, a person's foresight of the future, a vision of what is happening at the present moment, but outside the sensory perception of a person and etc.

Secondly, the conclusions that were made in the process of assessing the experience of an individual and related to the motives driving his behavior were partly outside the concept of understanding a person solely as a biological being, concerned only with survival and getting pleasure.

This led to the fact that among the alleged motives of human behavior such as the desire for self-actualization, compassion, altruistic behavior, transformations, the higher self, etc.
These were motives that were explained by transpersonal psychologists as outside personal, and moreover, as immanently inherent in any personality.

Thirdly, from such a position naturally followed very exotic from a scientific point of view, personality theories, as well as methods of psychological work, which often lie in the field of more religious than psychological. Naturally, he made his contribution to everyone known fact the use of psychoactive substances, subsequently banned in most countries and branded as an obvious evil.

In such circumstances, the very fact of relatively wide acceptance of Stanislav Grof's methods seems incredible.

As a result of a long study of unusual states of consciousness arising as a result of taking psychedelics, and subsequently as a result of meditative work, Stanislav Grof has the idea of ​​the need to take into account aspects of personality that were not taken into account at all in traditional psychology, since they did not exist and could not exist in principle.

For example, in psychoanalysis, the personal history of the individual was taken into account, and moreover, considered extremely important, especially those events that, for various reasons, were considered key and therefore have a strong influence on further models of human behavior.

This aspect of personality development can be called "biographical". From the point of view of traditional campaigns, the biographical stage began with a "blank slate", that is, the history of the child began from the moment of his birth, and until that moment, only hereditary traits had an impact. In other words, before Grof, the period of development of the child until the moment of birth was not taken into account at all due to the fact that, as it was believed, the brain of the child during this period was not sufficiently formed in order to retain in memory such events as the moment of birth and even more so the prenatal period.

However, as a result of numerous and systematic studies of altered states of consciousness, Stanislav Grof came to the conclusion that many people experienced sensations and experiences that could only be explained by the experience of various stages of not only birth, but also being in an intrauterine state.

Thus, the map of the individual's consciousness was expanded by one more period, which was called "perinatal".
According to Grof, this period consisted of four stages of intrauterine development, he called them the basic perinatal matrices. And these matrices, in the future, determined many features of the child's behavior and growth.

Stanislav Grof's four perinatal matrices.

The first matrix covers the period from conception to the moment of the first labor pains. This time is characterized by sensations of a completely serene and ecstatic state of peace, happiness, unity with the surrounding world.

The second matrix is ​​characterized by a period of contractions, when the calm and serene state is sharply disturbed, the uterus contracts, squeezing the fetus, but does not open yet. This period carries a state of hopelessness and hopelessness, and for the fetus, real hell sets in, the situation has radically changed from blissful serenity to sharply uncomfortable and at the same time having no way out.

The third matrix is ​​the time of birth. This period is characterized by the opening of the cervix and the beginning of movement along the birth canal. The current situation is twofold, on the one hand, there is hope for release from the trap, and on the other hand, rapid changes mean the unknown and the fear and horror that comes from it. The general motto of the third matrix is ​​the struggle for survival, when powerful affective experiences mobilize all the hidden reserves of the psyche.

The fourth perinatal matrix is ​​the moment of birth when the fetus comes out and the umbilical cord connecting it to the past is cut.

The previous life ended with a new state, which symbolically means death and new birth. The emerging baby feels liberation and subsequent ecstatic union with the mother - the source of new pleasure, food. Therefore, the experience of the fourth matrix is ​​accompanied by feelings open space, freedom, flight, love.

So, if we assume that Grof's idea has a right to exist, then it obviously follows that the circumstances of the perinatal period should have at least no less influence on the subsequent development of the personality and the formation of behavioral models than later development, the features of which are of such great importance in psychoanalysis. It turned out that the perinatal period is nothing more than a source of the very first experience of an individual's interaction with the world, and the circumstances of this interaction could be very dramatic.

For these reasons, Grof considered the prenatal period to be especially important, and the deep experience of its stages in adulthood carried the deepest psychotherapeutic effect.

The role of the perinatal period in personality development.

Grof believed that the experience of intrauterine development, like the birth itself, is in the unconscious of a person and has a huge impact on his psychological state and behavior patterns. In addition, he suggested that the four basic perinatal matrices are a kind of connecting link between human consciousness and the deep unconscious. As we mentioned earlier, the circumstances under which the intrauterine development of the fetus took place could be very different, both favorable and not very. According to Grof, during these periods, the inclinations of certain inclinations and traits of a person's future character were formed.

For example, during the period of the first matrix, if the pregnancy was unwanted, the mother used alcohol or drugs, was in a state of stress or depression, then these factors were obviously negative and reflected in the subsequent psychological state of the personality, such a person was also susceptible to similar conditions in the future and was where less psychologically stable than the individual whose first perinatal period took place in a favorable environment.

During the course of the second perinatal period, conditions were developed for perseverance, patience, the ability to effectively mobilize for survival, and resilience to life's inconveniences and difficulties. Therefore, in the case when this period was too short (premature birth), these qualities were not developed enough or were not developed at all. In the opposite case, when this period was too prolonged, a tendency towards a victim complex, a passive life position, dependence on other people and a lack of independence was developed.

In the third perinatal period, during the period of the struggle for birth, the preconditions for an active life position, for achieving goals, courage, and determination were developed. During this period, as in the previous one, developmental disorders mean either a delay in time, or an excessive delay in the process. If childbirth occurs too quickly, then the ability to fight and achieve the goal is not developed, in the opposite case, a person acquires a tendency to constant confrontation with the world around him and often finds good reasons for this. Since it is this matrix that is directly related to the process of survival, then it was she, according to Grof, who was subsequently responsible for aggression, a tendency to cruelty and suppression of other people.

For these reasons, Grof considered childbirth to be an extremely important period in many respects determining further development personality. From here came his recommendations - to the extent possible to make them safe, light and comfortable. He considered the unconditionally positive attitude towards the mother during pregnancy on the part of other people and especially the future father, whose presence during childbirth was considered very desirable, to be extremely important factors. An extremely important factor was the good psychological state of the mother, both directly during childbirth and during pregnancy. In fact, it was Grof who had a great influence on the views of the then society on pregnancy and childbirth.

For the first time, they started talking about holotropic breathing as one of the methods of psychotherapy thanks to the research of Stanislav Gross. Initially, holotrope was used for people with mental illness, replacing the use of psychotropic drugs with this type of therapy.

Today holotropic breathing is one of the leading methods of psychotherapeutic practice; it is practiced in connection with a wide range of various problems - from depression, excess weight, to overcoming serious stressful situations.

What Holotropic Breathwork gives

Holotropic breathing is a method in which, through the use of a special breathing technique, the lungs are hyperventilated. When the lungs are saturated with oxygen, vasoconstriction occurs, as a result of which the work of the brain is hampered and interrupted, but at the same time the subcortex of the brain and the subconscious, respectively, begin to work actively.

In simple terms, holotropic breathing is one of the ways that allows you to experience such a deep experience that is not realized at the level of the brain, and which a person does not fully understand, and therefore to some extent is in his captivity.

Thanks to this method, it is possible in a fairly short time to live through serious problems and repressed emotions, and having felt and experienced them in the session, get rid of them forever.

Holotropic Breathwork Technique

Most often, the practice of holotropic breathing is suggested to be practiced not once, but in whole courses, since the use of such a psychotherapeutic method involves obtaining the final result of treatment not immediately, but strictly individually. From 1 to 2 hours are given daily for holotropic, and the whole cycle of classes is up to 2 weeks.

A lot of psychological techniques are built on pumping oxygen with the help of a certain rhythmic breathing - this is pranoyama, and meditation, and some yoga asanas, but one of the most intense, but unsafe practices, of course, the technique of holotropic breathing.

On the one hand, saturation of the body with oxygen increases the body's endurance, increases creativity and sensitivity, but on the other hand, there are times when a person gets to a not very competent specialist, or does at home, not fully familiarizing himself with the information, which leads to serious psychological problems, because on the holotrope there is a deep study of the subconscious. In addition, the technique is often used in many religious sects and esoteric practices, so before signing up for a Holotropic Breathwork course at any center, you should get reliable information about the center's specialists, try to get feedback from those who have already taken this course.

As for age restrictions, due to the simplicity of the technique itself, it can be used even by children from 14 years old, but only according to medical indications. So, the holotrope technique is easy to master, it can be represented by the following algorithm:

• Sitting on the floor, relaxing your body to the maximum, you should breathe as slowly and deeply as possible, focusing on the cycle of inhalation and exhalation. You can close your eyes, but if there is a slight dizziness, do not be afraid of him. The first breathing phase can last from 10 to 20 minutes.
• At the second stage of the practice, breathing gradually becomes more intense and even deeper; special music will help regulate the transitions from one stage to another. This stage can last from 40 to 60 minutes.
• The last stage of the holotropic is associated with the transition to a slow breathing rate with a gradual transition to normal, everyday breathing.

It should be noted that quite often during the practice of holotrope, absolutely unplanned moments occur, such as hysteria, exacerbation of fears, chaotic uncontrollable movements and even holding the breath. For this reason, psychotherapists recommend practicing holotrope only in pairs, with the obligatory control of the practitioner by a guide who helps him go through all the problematic moments that arise during the lesson.

The final stage of practice is art-therapeutic drawing, or modeling, which allows you to bring the problem out of the inner space.

It is often proposed to draw a mandala - a special circular image that includes diverse elements, and only then, in an individual conversation with a psychotherapist, a discussion of the problem and a scenario for its further development takes place.

Those who decide to experience the practice of Holotropic Breathwork on themselves should understand that first it is necessary to prepare for this as fully as possible theoretically.

For example, it is worth remembering that you need to prepare yourself for classes. The correct approach would be when a person chooses comfortable clothing that does not hinder movement and prepares the necessary place, freeing him of objects that can lead to injury during the practice. You should also remove any jewelry, for those with poor eyesight - glasses and lenses. It is advisable not to eat anything 4 hours before the Holotropic practice, otherwise, intense breathing can cause nausea and even vomiting.

It is quite possible to master the Holotropic Breathwork method on your own. However, for a person who does not have experience in this practice, it will not be easy to plunge into the subconscious and relive any old problems with the help of the body. The effectiveness of the Holotropic Breathwork technique for the holonaut depends entirely on the guide (sitter). An experienced sitter knows that there is a certain code: any touching of the face, chest, throat and genitals is prohibited, because this can distort the session, thereby exacerbating problems. The guide has the maximum right - to hold the holonaut by the hand, and also to make sure that when uncontrollable behavior occurs, the person does not get hurt.

Holotropic Breathwork at Home

A person who has studied well the Holotropic Breathwork method is unlikely to want to conduct classes at home. In addition, an experienced psychologist, if you resort to his help, of course, will forbid you to practice at home. But, knowing the love of many people for risk, psychologists have made some recommendations for those who decided to try out the Holotropic Breathwork technique. So, in order for the session to take place at home, you must:

• It is imperative to find a person who will simply be in the same room with you, and in the event of a situation atypical for a holotropic, he will be able to help. Accordingly, this person should be fully trained and instructed.
• The place in the room chosen for the session must be safe.
• When practicing for the first few times, it is better to try not to use deep immersion, you can also shorten the training time a little.
• It is strictly forbidden to work independently with the help of Holotropic Breathwork practice with severe, deep-seated problems. Home practice can only be aimed at relieving stress, relaxing, releasing negative emotions that have arisen during the day.

What kind of music is needed

The music accompanying the practice plays an important role in the Holotropic Breathwork session. Of course, the music needs a certain and special one. In general, there are special musical selections on the Internet, built depending on the stages of the holotropic session. If classes are held in specialized places, then, as a rule, a specialist has in his arsenal everything he needs, including music collections for practice.

In general, it is worthwhile to understand that music in Holotropic sessions acts as a presenter, it is to it that, as a result, breath is tied. Considering this feature, we can say that ethnic sacred music will be one of the best musical compositions. These can be mantras, meditation music, African drums, or didgeridoo. The fact is that folk music is a kind of key to our subconsciousness and a connection to that primitive that still exists in each of us. The combination of music and breathing in one rhythm helps you to achieve the necessary immersion into the depths of your own subconscious much faster.

Accordingly, popular music with a text understandable for the holonaut, jazz or any other modern music is completely unsuitable for practice, as well as classical music.

Holotropic breathing harm or benefit

As with any method of therapy, the practice of holotropic breathing, along with a positive effect on the human body, can also be harmful. The benefits of Holotropic Breathwork are manifested in the fact that:

• Holotrope is one of the safest ways to solve psychological problems.
• The practice of Holotropic Breathwork works with problems at a deep level, so after going through the session, you can once and for all get rid of those painful memories that are deeply embedded in the subconscious.
• Through the practice of holotrope, you can find the root cause of the problem and get rid of it forever.
• If you need to get rid of bad habits and addiction to alcohol, smoking or drugs, then a holotrope can help in this.
• After completing the Holotropic Breathwork sessions, the symptoms of chronic fatigue will disappear and the disappeared harmony and peace will return.

However, with such a positive effect on the psychological, mental and physical health of a person, there are opponents of the method of holotropic breathing, who claim that this practice can cause irreparable harm to the body. Among the highlights harmful effects can be denoted:

• A sharp and abundant saturation of the body with carbon dioxide due to rhythmic breathing causes vasoconstriction and the death of the nerve endings of the brain, a symptom of this condition is the dizziness that appears after practice.
• Self-study of holotrope can lead to cerebral edema, because life essentially depends on the correct implementation of the main stages of the holotropic.

Considering the pros and cons of practicing holotrope, it should be understood that the main harm that this method can cause is associated with ignorance and unwillingness to fully understand the activities that you are going to practice. Therefore, for an unprepared holonaut, practicing this technique is dangerous.

What else is holotropic breathing used for?

The Holotropic Breathwork technique allows you to solve such problems as:

• severe, recurring periodically depressive conditions;
• overweight;
• postpartum depression, trauma and other problems that arise in women during gestation and childbirth;
• prolonged stressful situations;
• panic attacks and fears caused by any events;
• insomnia and getting rid of negative thoughts.

Medical contraindications for use

Before you start practicing holotrope, you should definitely familiarize yourself with the contraindications that exist for this psychotechnique. This is especially important for those who are trying to master the breathing technique on their own, since in this case all responsibility for the state of their health rests only on themselves. The severe consequences of Holotropic practice can affect people with the following health problems:

• violations concerning nervous system;
• epileptic seizures (congenital and acquired);
• high eye pressure;
• diseases of the bones and the musculoskeletal system;
• heart disease;
• bronchial asthma;
• exacerbation of chronic diseases.

In addition, holotropic practice is prohibited during pregnancy and lactation. If in the first case, due to rapid breathing, problems with bearing a fetus and a high risk of miscarriage may occur, then during breastfeeding, due to the peculiarities of the technique, milk may disappear.

Holotropic Breathwork for Depression

Depression is the most common mental illness in the world today. People of different sexes and different ages are trying to cope with its symptoms - from 14 to 65 years. Often get rid of this psychological problem try with the help of drugs, however, with such treatment, depressive behavior is rather suppressed and restrained, while holotropic breathing, with the right approach, will help to forget about depression forever or at least for a long time.

At holotropic sessions, people suffering from depression can not only use this technique to enter the unconscious and separated areas of memories, "breathe" them and express them in the body, release them, but also during this practice, the volitional component of the personality is actualized (this is greatly influenced by music). In depressive syndrome, this very volitional component of the personality is suppressed and cannot be determined.

During the practice, the holonaut can become aware of those negative attitudes that he has and go against the needs of the individual, and awareness and acceptance is the first step to recovery.

Holotropic Breathwork for Weight Loss

Surprisingly, one of the main problems of women - overweight (and resulting depression) will also help to cope with holotropic breathing. In India there is a saying - “You live the way you breathe” and there is in this the basis of life that allows a person to be healthy both physically and psychologically. The mistake of many women is that they mainly inhale and exhale air through the nose; with this type of breathing, oxygen does not enter the body enough. Correct breathing is deep belly breathing, thanks to which oxygen saturates the cells of our body and burns fat at the same time. In addition, breathing normalizes metabolism and helps to remove toxins from the body. For this reason, it is recommended to practice holotrope for all those who have been struggling with obesity for a long time and unsuccessfully.

And finally, due to the fact that the practice of holotropic breathing has become quite popular in Russia, and it is used more often not in medical institutions, many people get the impression that holotrope is a dangerous, hardly clandestinely conducted technique, extremely dangerous for people. Of course, this is not so, firstly, the practice of holotrope has been officially allowed in our country since 1993, and secondly, if you prepare correctly for it, taking into account the contraindications, then thanks to the holotrope it will be possible to get rid of long-tormented problems.

THE CHALLENGE OF THE NEWTON UNIVERSE

It is ... not about that collection of solid, immovable objects located in space, but about the life that is lived on the stage it creates; and, therefore, reality is not the external scene itself, but the life that is lived on it. Reality is things as they are.

Wallace Stevens

BREAKTHROUGH TO NEW DIMENSIONS OF CONSCIOUSNESS

There is one spectacle more majestic than the sea - this is the sky;

there is one spectacle more majestic than the sky - this is the depths of the soul.

Victor Hugo, "Fantine", Le miserables

V Over the past three decades, modern science has presented us with new problems and new discoveries that make us think that human capabilities far exceed even the most daring of our previous ideas. In response to these problems and discoveries, researchers of various directions and disciplines jointly open before us a completely new picture of human existence, and, in particular, of nature. human consciousness.

Just as the discovery of Copernicus that the Earth is not the center of the Universe, turned the world upside down, the latest discoveries of researchers around the world make us think more seriously about what we are physically, mentally and spiritually. We are witnessing the emergence of a new understanding of the psyche and, along with it, an amazing worldview, combining the latest achievements at the forefront of science with the wisdom of ancient human communities. As a result of all the new successes, we have to revise literally all of our ideas, just as it happened in response to the discoveries of Copernicus almost five hundred years ago.

The Universe as a Machine: Newton and Western Science

The main thing that distinguishes the powerful shift in thinking that has occurred during the twentieth century is a complete revision of understanding physical world... Before the emergence of Einstein's theory of relativity and quantum physics, we were firmly convinced that the universe is composed of dense matter. We thought that atoms formed the basis of the material universe, and we considered them continuous and indestructible. These atoms existed in three-dimensional space, and their movements obeyed certain immutable laws; accordingly, matter has evolved in an orderly fashion, moving from the past, through the present, to the future. From this reliable deterministic point of view, we viewed the universe as a gigantic machine, and we were confident that the day would come when we would discover all the laws governing this machine, and thus we could accurately recreate everything that happened in the past, and predict everything that will happen in the future. As soon as these laws are discovered, we will gain power over the entire surrounding world. Some even dreamed that someday we would be able to create life by mixing the appropriate chemicals in a test tube.

In this model of the universe, developed by Newtonian science, life, consciousness, humans, and the creative mind were considered by-products that accidentally evolved from an incomprehensible accumulation of matter. And no matter how complex and amazing we may be, we humans, nevertheless, were considered, in essence, as material objects - nothing more than highly developed animals or thinking biological machines. Our boundaries were determined by the surface of the skin, and consciousness was seen as nothing more than a product of a thinking organ called the brain. Everything that we thought, felt and knew was based on the information that we received through our senses. According to the logic of this materialistic model, human consciousness, intellect, ethics, art, religion and science itself were viewed as by-products of material processes taking place in the brain.

Of course, the opinion that consciousness and all its manifestations take their origin in the brain was not completely groundless. Numerous clinical and experimental observations indicate a close relationship between consciousness and certain neurophysiological and pathological conditions, such as infections, trauma, intoxication, tumors and cerebral hemorrhages. It is clear that all this is usually accompanied by noticeable changes in consciousness. In the case of brain tumors, impairment of function (loss of speech, motor coordination, etc.) can help pinpoint where the brain is damaged.

Such observations leave no shadow of doubt that our mental functions are associated with biological processes in the brain. However, this does not necessarily mean that consciousness is born in the brain. This conclusion, drawn by Western science, is not a scientific fact, but a metaphysical assumption, and, of course, another interpretation of the same data can be offered. Let's use an analogy: a good TV technician, looking at the specific distortions of the picture or sound on the TV, can tell exactly what is wrong with it, and which parts need to be replaced in order for it to work well again. No one would see evidence in this that the television itself is responsible for the programs we see when we turn it on. However, it is precisely this kind of argument that mechanistic science offers as "proof" that consciousness is produced by the brain.

Traditional science is of the opinion that organic matter and life arose from the chemical soup of the pristine ocean solely as a result of the random interactions of atoms and molecules. Likewise, it is argued that matter was transformed into living cells, and cells into complex multicellular organisms with a central nervous system, only through chance and "natural selection." And along with these explanations, one of the most important metaphysical tenets of the Western worldview for some reason became the assumption that consciousness is a by-product of the material process taking place in the brain.

As modern science discovers deep connections between the creative mind and all levels of reality, this simplistic view of the universe becomes increasingly unacceptable. In one successful comparison, the likelihood that human consciousness and our infinitely complex universe could arise as a result of random interactions of inert matter is as if a hurricane sweeping over a landfill accidentally assembled a Boeing 747.

Until now, Newtonian science has been responsible for the formation of a very limited understanding of human beings and their potentialities. For more than two centuries, the Newtonian point of view has dictated the criteria for what is acceptable and unacceptable perception of reality. According to them, a "normally functioning" person is one who is able to accurately reflect the objective external world described by Newtonian science. According to this view, our mental functions are limited to perceiving information through our senses, storing it in our "mental databanks," and then perhaps shuffling sensory data to create something new. Any significant deviation from this perception of "objective reality" - and in reality, accepted reality, or what most people believe to be true, would have to be rejected as a product of an overly active imagination or mental breakdown.

Contemporary studies of consciousness indicate an urgent need for a decisive revision and expansion of such a limited view of the nature and dimensions of the human psyche. The main task of this book is to analyze these new observations and the resulting radically different outlook on our life. It is important to note that although these new discoveries are not compatible with traditional Newtonian science, they are fully consistent with the revolutionary achievements of modern psychology and others. scientific disciplines... This new understanding is fundamentally transforming the Newtonian worldview, which we once took for granted to such an extent. An exciting new vision of the cosmos and human nature is emerging with far-reaching implications for our lives, both individually and collectively.

Consciousness and the cosmos: science discovers intelligence in nature

With the development of research into the ultra-small and super-large - the subatomic spheres of the microcosm and the astrophysical spheres of the macrocosm - modern physicists soon realized that some of the basic Newtonian principles have serious limitations and disadvantages. In the middle of the twentieth century, it became clear that atoms, which Newtonian physicists once considered the indestructible elementary bricks of the material world, in fact, consist of even smaller elementary particles - protons, neutrons and electrons. Later, research discovered literally hundreds of subatomic particles.

The newly discovered subatomic particles displayed strange behavior that challenged Newtonian principles. In some experiments they behaved like material particles, while in others they seemed to have wave properties. This phenomenon has become known as the "quantum wave paradox". At the subatomic level, our old definitions of matter were replaced by statistical probabilities describing its "tendency to exist", and, eventually, the old definitions of matter completely disappeared in the so-called "dynamic vacuum". This study of the microcosm soon discovered the fact that the Universe, which in everyday life seems to us to consist of dense, separate objects, is in fact a complex network of events and interrelationships. In this new context, consciousness not only passively reflects the objective material world - it plays an active role in creating reality itself.

In scientific research in the astrophysical realm, equally startling revelations are found. For example, in Einstein's theory of relativity, space is not three-dimensional, time is not linear, and they do not exist as separate entities, but are combined into a four-dimensional continuum called "space-time". With this view of the universe, what we once perceived as the boundaries between objects and the differences between matter and empty space are now being replaced by something new. Instead of a collection of separate objects and empty spaces between them, the entire Universe is seen as one continuous field of variable density. In modern physics, matter becomes equivalent and interchangeable with energy. In the light of this new worldview, consciousness is seen as an integral part of the universal tissue and, of course, is not limited to the activity of our brain. As British astronomer James Jeans said about sixty years ago, the universe of modern physics is much more like a great thought than a giant supermachine.

So, now we have the Universe, which is not a cluster of Newtonian objects, but an infinitely complex system of oscillatory phenomena. These oscillatory systems have properties and capabilities that Newtonian science never dreamed of. One of the most interesting properties of this kind can be described by analogy with the phenomenon of holography.

Holography and hidden order

Holography is a photographic process in which laser coherent light of the same wavelength is used to create three-dimensional images in space. A hologram, which can be compared to a photographic slide from which we project an image, is a recording of the interference pattern of two halves of a laser beam. After the light beam is divided by means of a semitransparent mirror, one half of it (called the reference beam) is directed to the emulsion layer of the photographic plate, and the other half (called the working beam) hits the plate, having previously been reflected from the photographed object. The information from these two beams, required to reproduce a three-dimensional image, is "folded" in the hologram in such a way that it is distributed over all its regions. As a result, when a hologram is illuminated with a laser, a full 3D image can be "unfolded" from any part of it. You can cut a hologram into many pieces, and all the same, each part will be able to reproduce the whole image.

This discovery of the principles of holography has become an important part of the scientific worldview. For example, David Bohm, a prominent theoretical physicist and former collaborator of Einstein, was inspired by holography to create a model of the universe that can explain many of the paradoxes of quantum physics. He suggested that the world perceived by us through the senses and the nervous system, with or without scientific instruments, is only a tiny fragment of reality. Bohm calls everything we perceive as "unfolded" or "explicit order." These perceptions arose in special forms from a much larger matrix, which he called a "collapsed" or "hidden" order. In other words, what we perceive as reality is like a projection of a holographic image. The large matrix from which this image is projected can be compared to a hologram. However, Bohm's picture of a hidden order (similar to a hologram) describes a level of reality that is inaccessible to our senses or for direct scientific research.

In his book "Wholeness and Implicate Order" ("Integrity and hidden order") Bohm devotes two chapters to the relationship between consciousness and matter as seen by modern physics. He describes reality as an indestructible, coherent whole, involved in an endless process of change called refrigeration. According to this point of view, all stable structures in the universe are nothing more than abstractions. We can make any effort to describe objects, entities or events, but ultimately we must recognize that they all come from an undefined and unknowable whole. In this world, where everything is in a constantly moving stream, using nouns to describe what is happening can only confuse us.

According to Bohm, the theory of holography illustrates his idea that energy, light and matter are composed of interference patterns that carry information about all other waves of light, energy and matter with which they directly or indirectly come into contact. Thus, each particle of energy and matter represents a microcosm that has rolled up into itself a whole. Life can no longer be understood in terms of inanimate matter. Both matter and life are abstractions extracted from cold-motion as an indivisible whole, but they can never be separated from this whole. Likewise, both matter and consciousness are aspects of the same indivisible whole.

Bohm reminds us that even the processes of abstraction, through which we create our illusions of separation from the whole, are themselves expressions of cold movement. Ultimately, we come to understand that any perception and cognition, including scientific work is not at all an objective recreation of reality, but rather a creative activity that can be compared to artistic expression. We cannot measure true reality; in fact, the very essence of reality is in its immeasurability 1.

The holographic model offers revolutionary opportunities for a new understanding of the relationship between parts and whole. No longer limited by the limits of the logic of traditional thought, the part ceases to be just a piece of the whole, but under certain circumstances it reflects and contains the whole. We, as individual human beings, are by no means isolated and insignificant Newtonian entities; rather, each of us, being an aggregate field of cold movement, is also a microcosm that reflects and contains a macrocosm. If so, then everyone is potentially able to have direct and immediate experiential access to literally every aspect of the universe, and our abilities extend far beyond our senses.

Indeed, there are many interesting parallels between David Bohm's work in physics and Karl Pribram's work in the physiology of higher nervous activity. After decades of intense research and experimentation, this renowned neurophysiologist concluded that only holographic principles could explain mysterious and paradoxical observations about brain function. Pribram's revolutionary brain model and Bohm's theory of cold movement have far-reaching implications for our understanding of human consciousness, which we have just begun to translate to the level of personality.

In search of a hidden order

Nature is full of spirit

full of the Divine,

so no snowflake can escape

the hands of the Creator.

Henry David Thoreau

Revelations Concerning the Limitations of Newtonian Science and urgent need broader worldview, appeared in almost all branches of knowledge. For example, Gregory Bateson, one of the most original theorists of our time, challenged conventional wisdom by demonstrating that all boundaries in the world are illusory, and that mental activities that we usually attribute exclusively to humans are found in nature everywhere, including animals, plants and even inorganic systems. In his highly creative synthesis of cybernetics, information theory and systems theory, anthropology, psychology and other fields of science, he showed that mind and nature are an indivisible unity.

British biologist Rupert Sheldrake has sharply criticized traditional science, offering to look at the problem from another angle. He drew attention to the fact that in its single-minded search for "energetic causality" Western science has neglected the problem of form in nature. He pointed out that the study of matter alone is no more able to explain why there is order, form and meaning in nature than an examination of the building materials of a cathedral, castle or residential building can explain the specific forms of these architectural structures. Sheldrake suggested that forms in nature are governed by what he called "morphogenic fields" that modern science is unable to detect or measure. This would mean that all scientific research of the past completely neglected measurement, which is absolutely necessary for understanding the nature of reality 2.

The common point of all these and other new theories, offering alternatives to Newtonian thinking, is that they view consciousness and creative mind not as derivatives of matter - more precisely, neurophysiological processes in the brain - but as important initial attributes of everything. The study of consciousness, once considered only a poor relative of the natural sciences, is rapidly becoming the focus of science.

A revolution in consciousness and a new scientific worldview

Our ordinary waking consciousness, or rational consciousness, as we call it, is just one special type of consciousness, while everywhere next to it, separated from it by the thinnest of partitions, lie potential forms of a completely different consciousness ... No explanation of the universe in the whole its completeness cannot be final if it leaves aside these other forms of consciousness.

William james

Modern depth psychology and the study of consciousness owe much to the Swiss psychiatrist C.G. Jung. Throughout his life devoted to systematic clinical work, Jung showed that Freud's model of the human psyche is too narrow and limited. He has collected convincing evidence that we need to look much beyond personal biography and the individual unconscious in order to at least begin to comprehend the true nature of the psyche.

One of Jung's most famous achievements was the concept of the "collective unconscious" - a huge repository of information about the history and culture of mankind, available to each of us in the depths of our own psyche. In addition, Jung identified fundamental dynamic patterns, or primordial organizing principles, at work both in the collective unconscious and throughout the universe. He called them "archetypes" and described their impact on individuals and on human society as a whole.

Of particular interest is Jung's study of the phenomenon of synchronicity, which we will consider in more detail later. He found that psychological events at the individual level, such as dreams or visions, often form patterns of meaningful overlap with various aspects of accepted reality that cannot be explained in terms of cause and effect. This suggests that the world of the psyche and the material world are not at all two separate entities, and that they are closely intertwined with each other. Thus, Jung's ideas challenge not only psychology, but also Newtonian ideas about reality and Western philosophy of science. They show that consciousness and matter are in constant interaction, ordering and shaping each other. This is the kind of interaction that the poet William Butler Yeats must have in mind when he speaks of events in which "it is impossible to distinguish a dancer from a dance."

Around the same time that we were starting to make important breakthroughs in physics, the discovery of LSD and subsequent research on psychedelics opened up new revolutionary directions in the study of human consciousness. In the fifties and sixties, interest in Eastern philosophical teachings and practices, shamanism, mysticism, empirical psychotherapy and other in-depth studies of the human psyche increased sharply. The study of death and the dying process has provided some extremely interesting data on the connection between consciousness and the brain. In addition to this, there has been a resurgence of interest in parapsychology, especially in the study of extrasensory perception (ESP). New data on the human psyche were also received by laboratories, which experimented with such modern methods of altering consciousness as sensory isolation and biofeedback.

Common to all of these studies was their focus on non-ordinary states of consciousness, an area that had been neglected in the past not only by mainstream science, but by Western culture as a whole. By highlighting rationality and logic, we have always valued the day-to-day sane state of mind, relegating all other states to the realm of useless pathology.

In this regard, we occupy a very unique position in the history of mankind. In all ancient and pre-industrial cultures, unusual states of consciousness were given special importance: they were valued as powerful tool communication with sacred realities, with nature and people, and used to identify diseases and healing. In addition, altered states were considered an important source of artistic inspiration and a gateway to intuition and psychic perception. All other cultures have invested a lot of time and energy in developing various methods of altering consciousness, and have regularly used them in a variety of ritual contexts.

Michael Harner, a renowned anthropologist who also received shamanic initiation in South America, noted that from a cross-cultural point of view, the traditional Western understanding of the human psyche suffers from important flaws. It ethnocentrically in the sense that Western scientists consider their approach to reality and psychological phenomena to be the best and "proven without a shadow of doubt", at the same time, declaring the views of other cultures as inferior, naive and primitive. Second, the traditional scientific approach is, in addition, "cognitive-centric" - as Harner calls it, meaning that it takes into account only the observations and experiences mediated by the five senses in the ordinary state of consciousness 3.

The main purpose of this book is to describe and explore the radical changes in the understanding of consciousness, the human psyche and the nature of reality itself, which become necessary when we, like all cultures before us, take into account the evidence of unusual conditions. It does not really matter here whether these states are caused by the practice of meditation, a session of empirical psychotherapy, a spontaneous psychospiritual crisis, a near-death experience, or the use of a psychedelic substance. Although these methods and the experiences they cause may differ in some specific features, they all represent paths to deep areas of the human psyche, not explored by traditional psychology. Recognizing this fact, thanatologist Kenneth Ring proposed a generic term for them Omega Experiences.

And because we are interested here in studying the most general implications of modern consciousness research for our understanding of ourselves and the universe, I use examples from a wide variety of situations in this book. Some of them are taken from sessions of holotropic breathing or psychedelic therapy, others from shamanic rituals, experiences of hypnotic regression, near-death states or spontaneous episodes of psychospiritual crisis. What they all have in common is that they challenge traditional thinking decisively and offer a whole new perspective on reality and our being.

The Journey Begins: Opening the Gates Beyond Ordinary Reality

Many different paths lead to a new understanding of consciousness. My own journey began in Prague, the capital of Czechoslovakia, in the late 1940s, shortly after I graduated from high school. At that time, a friend gave me to read "Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis" Sigmund Freud. I was deeply impressed by Freud's shrewd mind and his ability to decipher the hazy language of the subconscious. Just a few days after reading the book, I made the decision to go to medical school, which was a prerequisite for becoming a psychoanalyst.

During my medical school years, I joined a small psychoanalytic team led by three analysts from the International Psychoanalytic Association, and in my spare time worked in the Department of Psychiatry at Charles University School of Medicine. Later, I also underwent a psychoanalysis training course with the former president of the Czechoslovak Psychoanalytic Association.

The more I became acquainted with psychoanalysis, the more I became disillusioned with it. All the writings I have read of Freud and his followers have offered seemingly compelling explanations for mental life. But all this turned out to be impossible to translate into clinical work. I couldn’t understand why this brilliant conceptual framework didn’t produce the same impressive clinical results. In medical school, I was taught that if you just understand what the problem is, I can find some effective way to solve it or, in the case of an incurable disease, clearly see the reasons for the limitations of my therapy. However, I was now being asked to believe that even with a full intellectual understanding of the psychopathology we are working with, we could do relatively little with it — even over a very long time.

Around the same time I was struggling with this dilemma, a package arrived at the faculty where I worked from the Swiss pharmaceutical laboratory Sandoz in Basel. It contained samples of an experimental substance called LSD-25, which was said to have remarkable psychoactive properties. Sandoz provided this substance to research psychiatrists different countries to study its effects and possible use in psychiatry. In 1956, I became one of the first guinea pigs to test this drug.

My first LSD session radically changed my personal and professional life. I had an amazing encounter with my own unconscious, and this experience immediately overshadowed all my previous interest in Freudian psychoanalysis. A fantastic spectacle of colorful visions, both abstract and geometric, and filled with symbolic meaning, opened up to me. I felt an influx of emotions of such a force, which I never dreamed of.

My first experience with LSD-25 involved special tests carried out by a faculty member who studied the effects of flashes of light on the brain. Before taking the psychedelic, I agreed to be illuminated with flashes of light of various frequencies, while simultaneously registering the biocurrents of my brain using an electroencephalograph.

At this stage of the experiment, I was struck by the radiance, which seemed to me comparable to the light at the epicenter of an atomic explosion or, perhaps, to the supernatural light described in the Eastern sacred texts that appears at the moment of death. This burst of light threw me out of my body. I lost all awareness of the experimenter, the laboratory, and everything related to my student life in Prague. My consciousness seemed to suddenly expand to cosmic proportions.

I found myself in the middle of a cosmic drama that I had never imagined before, even in my wildest fantasies. I experienced the Big Bang, swept through the black and white holes of the Universe, and my consciousness became something like exploding supernovae, pulsars, quasars and other cosmic objects.

I had no doubt that what I was experiencing was very close to the experience of "cosmic consciousness", which I had read about from the great mystics of the world. Although psychiatric manuals defined such conditions as manifestations of serious pathology, I knew that this experience was not the result of psychosis caused by the use of a psychoactive substance, but a glimpse of a world beyond ordinary reality.

Even in the brightest and most convincing depths of this experience, I saw the irony and paradox of the situation. The divine appeared before me and took over my life in a modern laboratory during a serious scientific experiment conducted in a communist country with a substance obtained by a chemist of the twentieth century.

I came out of this experience deeply agitated. At that time I did not believe, as I do now, that the potential ability for mystical experience is from birth given to all people. I attributed everything I had experienced to the psychoactive drug itself. But I had not a shadow of a doubt that this substance could serve as a "royal road to the unconscious." I was convinced that this drug could heal the gap between the theoretical brilliance of psychoanalysis and its helplessness as a therapeutic tool. It seemed to me that psychoanalysis using LSD could deepen, intensify and accelerate the therapeutic process.

In the following years, starting with my first assignment to the Institute for Psychiatric Research in Prague, I had the opportunity to study the effects of LSD on patients with various emotional disorders, as well as psychiatrists and psychotherapists, artists, scientists and philosophers who expressed a serious interest in this kind of experience. ... These studies have led to a deeper understanding of the human psyche, as well as opportunities for enhancing creativity and facilitating problem solving.

In the early days of this research, I found that my worldview was undermined by daily encounters with experiences that could not be explained in terms of my previous belief system. Under the relentless onslaught of indisputable evidence, my understanding of the world gradually changed from atheistic to mystical. What was first revealed to me in the experience of cosmic consciousness, was fully confirmed as a result of the daily painstaking study of research data.

In the sessions of LSD psychotherapy, we found a very peculiar pattern. At low to moderate doses, subjects' experience was usually limited to reliving episodes from infancy and childhood. However, when the dose was increased or the session was repeated, each patient sooner or later moved far beyond the areas described by Freud. Many of the experiences we have been told were remarkably similar to those described in the ancient spiritual texts of the Eastern tradition. I found this particularly interesting, since many of those who have recounted such experiences had no prior knowledge of Eastern spiritual philosophers, and I certainly did not expect such unusual experiential realms to become available in this way.

My patients experienced psychological death and rebirth, feelings of oneness with all of humanity, nature and space. They talked about visions of deities and demons from cultures other than the one to which they belonged, or about visits to mythological realms. Some talked about the experiences of the events from " past life», The historical reliability of which was later confirmed. During the deepest immersion sessions, experiences were associated with people, places and things that patients had never before come into contact with through their physical senses. That is, they never read about them, did not see their images and did not hear anything about them, but now they experienced them as if all this was happening in the present.

This exploration was the source of an endless series of surprises. Since I was studying Comparative Religion, I had intellectual knowledge of some of the experiences people were describing. However, I was completely unaware that ancient spiritual systems with amazing accuracy describe the various levels and types of experiences that occur in non-ordinary states of consciousness. I was amazed at their emotional strength, authenticity, and their potential to change the way people view their lives. Quite frankly, there have been times when I felt deep anxiety and fear when faced with facts for which I had no rational explanation, and which undermined my belief system and my scientific worldview.

Then, when I got better acquainted with these experiences, it became clear to me that everything that I witnessed was a normal and natural manifestation of the deep spheres of the human psyche. When this process went beyond the bounds of biographical material from infancy and childhood, and the deeper layers of the human psyche with all their inherent mystical overtones began to open in experiences, the therapeutic results surpassed anything I had ever seen before. Symptoms that did not respond to other treatments for months or even years often disappeared after experiences such as psychological death and rebirth, feelings of cosmic oneness, archetypal visions, and sequences of events that patients described as past life memories.

At the forefront

Over thirty years of systematic study of the human mind has led me to conclusions that many traditional psychiatrists and psychologists would consider implausible, if not completely incredible. Now I firmly believe that consciousness is more than an accidental by-product of the neurophysiological and biochemical processes taking place in the human brain. I consider the consciousness and psyche of a person to be the expression and reflection of the cosmic mind that permeates the entire universe and all that exists. We are not just highly evolved animals with biological computers embedded in our skulls; we are also boundless fields of consciousness that transcend time, space, matter and linear causality.

As a result of observing literally thousands of people experiencing unusual states of consciousness, I am now convinced that our individual consciousness directly connects us not only with the environment and with various periods of our past, but also with events that are far beyond the perception of our physical senses, leaving in other historical eras, into nature and into space. I can no longer deny the evidence that we are able to relive the emotions and physical sensations we experienced as we passed through the birth canal, and that we can relive episodes dating back to the embryonic period in the mother's womb. In unusual states of consciousness, our psyche can reproduce these situations vividly and in detail.

From time to time we manage to go to the distant past and observe events from the lives of our human and animal ancestors, as well as events occurring with people of other historical epochs and cultures, with which we have no genetic connection at all. Through our consciousness, we can transcend time and space, cross the boundaries separating us from various animal species, experience the processes taking place in the plant kingdom and in the inorganic world, and even explore mythological and other realities that we did not know existed before. It may turn out that this kind of experience will deeply affect our philosophy and worldview. It is very likely that we will find it increasingly difficult to adhere to the belief system prevailing in industrial cultures, as well as the philosophical premises of traditional Western science.

Starting this research as a convinced materialist and atheist, I was soon forced to admit the fact that the spiritual dimension plays a decisive role in the human psyche and in the universal scheme of being. I am sure that the awareness and purposeful development of this dimension is a necessary and desirable part of our being; it may even become a decisive factor in our survival on this planet.

An important lesson I have learned from the study of unusual states of consciousness is the understanding that many of the conditions that mainstream psychiatry considers strange and pathological are, in fact, natural manifestations of the underlying driving forces of the human psyche. In many cases, the penetration of these elements into consciousness can be an attempt by the body to free itself from the imprints of past traumas and limitations that hinder it, an attempt to heal and achieve more harmonious functioning.

Most importantly, consciousness research over the past three decades has convinced me that our current scientific models of the human psyche are unable to explain many new facts and scientific observations. They play the role of a conceptual straitjacket and render many of our theoretical and practical efforts ineffective and, in many cases, even worsening the situation. Openness to new data challenging traditional beliefs and dogmas has always been important feature all the best in science and the driving force behind progress. A real scientist does not confuse theory with reality and does not try to dictate what nature should be. It’s not up to us to decide what the human psyche can and cannot do in order to match our artfully invented preconceived ideas. If we want to understand at all how we can best cooperate with the psyche, we must allow it to reveal its true nature to us.

It is quite clear to me that we need a new psychology that is more consistent with modern studies of consciousness and complements the image of the cosmos, which is beginning to take shape in us, thanks to the latest achievements of the natural sciences. In order to explore new frontiers of consciousness, it is necessary to go beyond the traditional verbal methods of collecting relevant psychological data. Many experiences that arise in the far reaches of the psyche, for example, mystical states, do not lend themselves to verbal description. Throughout the ages, spiritual traditions have called them "ineffable." Therefore, it is clear that approaches should be used that allow people to access deeper levels of the psyche without being forced to depend on language. One of the reasons for this strategy is that much of what we experience in the innermost recesses of our mind is events that happened before we learned to speak - in the womb, during the process of birth, in early infancy - or non-verbal by their very nature. ... All this implies the need to develop completely new projects, research tools and methodologies to elucidate the deepest nature of the human psyche and the nature of reality.

The information contained in this book is based on many thousands of unusual experiences of various types. Most of these experiences are related to holotropic and psychedelic sessions that I have conducted and observed in the USA and Czechoslovakia, as well as during my travels; others happened during sessions conducted by my colleagues who shared their observations with me. In addition, I have worked with people in psychospiritual crisis and over the years have personally experienced many unusual states of consciousness in experiential psychotherapy, in psychedelic sessions, during shamanic rituals and meditation. During the month-long seminars my wife Christina and I taught at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, there was an extremely rich exchange of experience with anthropologists, parapsychologists, thanatologists, mediums, shamans and spiritual teachers, many of whom are now our close friends. They have been of great help to me in making sense of my discoveries in a broad interdisciplinary and intercultural context.

The main empirical approach that I now use to induce unusual states of consciousness and gain access to the unconscious and superconscious psyche is the Holotropic Breathwork method, which I have developed with Christina over the past fifteen years. This seemingly simple process, combining breathing, evocative music and other types of sounds, bodywork and artistic expression, has tremendous potential in opening a way to explore the entire spectrum. inner peace... We are currently running a comprehensive training program and have already trained hundreds of practitioners who are now organizing workshops in various countries. Therefore, readers who are seriously interested in the perspectives described in this book should have no difficulty in finding opportunities to experience them first hand in a safe environment and under expert guidance.

I have collected my material from over twenty thousand Holotropic Breathwork sessions with people from various countries and industries, as well as four thousand psychedelic sessions that I conducted in the early stages of my research. A systematic study of unusual states has shown me beyond doubt that the traditional understanding of the human personality, limited to post-birth biography and the Freudian individual unconscious, is extremely narrow and superficial. To explain all the unusual new observations, it becomes necessary to create a significantly expanded model of the human psyche and develop a new way of thinking about mental health and illness.

In the chapters that follow, I will describe the cartography of the human psyche that has resulted from my study of non-ordinary states of consciousness and has proven to be very useful in my daily work. In this cartography, I have mapped out paths through the various types and levels of experiences that become available in certain states of consciousness and seem to represent normal forms of psyche expression. In addition to the traditional biographical level, containing material related to our infancy, childhood and later life, this map of the internal space includes two additional important areas: 1) the perinatal level of the psyche, which, in accordance with its name, refers to our experiences connected with the trauma of biological birth, and 2) a transpersonal level that goes far beyond the usual limitations of our body and ego. This level represents a direct connection between the individual psyche, Jung's collective unconscious and the universe as a whole.

When, at the beginning of my research, I first began to understand these areas, it seemed to me that thanks to the discovery of a revolutionary instrument - LSD, I was creating a new map of the psyche. As this work continued, it became abundantly clear to me that the emerging map was not new at all. I realized that rediscover ancient knowledge about human consciousness that has existed for centuries or even millennia. I began to see important analogies with shamanism, with the great spiritual and philosophical teachings of the East, such as various systems yoga and various schools of Buddhism and Taoism, with the mystical traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam and with many other esoteric traditions of all ages.

These parallels between my research and ancient traditions have provided compelling contemporary confirmation of the timeless wisdom that philosopher and writer Aldous Huxley has called "perennial philosophy." I realized that Western science, which, in its childish arrogance, rejected and ridiculed ancient knowledge, must now reconsider its immature judgments in the light of these new discoveries. Hopefully, the old / new cartography described in this book will prove to be a useful guide for those who decide to travel to the far reaches of the human psyche and explore the boundaries of consciousness. And while each inner journey is unique and different in its own way, they all also share important similarities and some milestones in common. As you enter new and potentially daunting territory, it is helpful and comforting to know that many other people have already crossed before you.

Revealing the secrets of infancy and childhood

The realm of the psyche that usually appears first in experiential therapy is the memory level, or biographical level, where we find memories from our infancy and childhood. In modern depth psychology, it is generally accepted that our current emotional life is largely shaped by events that relate to the "formative" years, that is, to that period of life when we did not yet know how to clearly express our thoughts and feelings. The quality of maternal care that we received, the dynamics of family relationships, traumatic experiences and experiences associated with feeding related to that time play an important role in shaping our personality.

Biographical spheres are usually the most accessible part of the psyche and, of course, the part that we are most familiar with. However, not all important events from our early life can be recovered through ordinary remembering. It may be easy to remember happy times, but the traumas that underlie our fears and self-doubts tend to elude us. They plunge into a deep region of the psyche, called the "individual unconscious", and are hidden from us by the process that Sigmund Freud called "repression." Freud's pioneering work showed that through the systematic analysis of dreams, fantasies, neurotic symptoms, slips, everyday actions and other aspects of our life, one can gain access to the unconscious and free ourselves from repressed emotional material.

Freud and his followers probed the unconscious mind through "free association." Most of us are familiar with this method. We are asked to say whatever comes to mind, letting words, images and memories flow freely, and in no way censoring them. This method, like other purely verbal approaches, has proven to be a relatively weak research tool. Then, in the middle of the twentieth century, a new discipline called "humanistic psychology" emerged, which developed a variety of therapies that utilize "bodywork" and encourage the full expression of emotions in a safe therapeutic environment. These "empirical" approaches have increased the effectiveness of the study of biographical material. However, like earlier verbal methods, they were applied to ordinary states of consciousness.

The therapeutic uses of the unusual conditions that we explore in this book shed new light on biographical material. This work with unusual states of consciousness not only confirms much of what is already known through traditional psychotherapy, but also opens the way to limitless new possibilities, providing us with completely revolutionary information about the nature of our life. In psychoanalysis and related approaches, it can take months, if not years, to reach the repressed deep memories of infancy and childhood. In working with unusual conditions, for example, using the Holotropic Breathwork method, significant biographical material from the very first years of our lives often begins to surface during the first few sessions. People not only gain access to the memories of their childhood and infancy, but often establish a living connection with their birth and stay in the womb, and even begin to delve into the realm of experience beyond these states.

There is an added advantage in this job. Instead of simply recalling early events in your life or recreating them from bits and pieces of dreams and memories, you can literally relive those events in unusual states of consciousness. It is possible to be a two month old infant, or even younger, and once again experience all the sensory, emotional and physical qualities as we first knew them. We experience our body as the body of a baby and perceive the environment in a primitive and childishly naive way. We see all this with extraordinary vividness and clarity. There is good reason to believe that these experiences even reach the cellular level.

During experiential Holotropic Breathwork sessions, it is amazing to see how deep people can go by reliving the earliest experiences of their lives. It is not uncommon to see their appearance and behavior change according to the age they are experiencing. People who return to infancy in their experiences tend to exhibit facial expressions, postures, gestures, and behavior that are typical of young children. In the experience of early infancy, this includes salivation and automatic sucking movements. Even more remarkable, these individuals typically exhibit age-appropriate neurological reflexes. They may respond with a sucking reflex to lightly touching the lips and exhibit other so-called axial reflexes that characterize common neurological responses in infants.

One of the most striking discoveries was the manifestation in people who regressed to the states of early childhood, a positive Babinsky sign. To induce this reflex, which is part of the pediatric neurological test, the sole of the feet is touched with a sharp object. In infants, the toes open like a fan in response to this stimulus, while in older children they fold inward. The same adults who, during their infancy regression, reacted to this test by fanning out their toes, reacted in the usual way when experiencing periods dating back to later childhood. And, as expected, these same people, having returned to their normal state of consciousness, demonstrated the normal Babinsky reflex.

There is another significant difference between the study of the psyche in ordinary and unusual states of consciousness. In unusual conditions, the selection of the most suitable and emotionally charged material from the subconscious of a person occurs automatically. As if some kind of "inner radar" scans the psyche and body, looking for the most important moments and making them available to the conscious mind. This is extremely valuable for both the therapist and the patient, since it eliminates the need to decide what is important from the material emerging from the unconscious and what is not. These decisions tend to be biased because they are often influenced by our personal belief systems and membership in one of the many disagreeing schools of psychotherapy.

This radar function, discovered in unusual states of consciousness, has opened up aspects of the biographical realm that previously eluded us in the study of human consciousness. One of these discoveries concerns the impact of early physical trauma on emotional development. We have found that the radar system brings to the surface not only memories of emotional trauma, but also of events that threaten the survival or integrity of the physical body. The release of emotions and tension patterns that have so far been stored in the body as a result of such early trauma has proven to be one of the most immediate and valuable benefits of this work. Breathing problems such as diphtheria, whooping cough, pneumonia, or the threat of drowning played a particularly important role.

Traditional psychiatry believes that such physical trauma can be one of the causes of organic brain damage, but it does not recognize their huge impact on the emotional level. People who empirically revive memories of serious physical trauma become fully aware of the scars these events have left on their psyche. They are also aware of how much these traumas contribute to their current psychosomatic problems such as asthma, migraines, depression, phobias, or even sadomasochistic tendencies. In turn, reliving and working through these early traumas often has a therapeutic effect, bringing temporary or permanent relief from symptoms and a sense of well-being that the person could not have dreamed of before.

Condensed Experience Systems (COEX) - Keys to Our Destiny

Another important result of our research was the discovery that the memory of experienced emotional and physical events is retained in the psyche not in the form of isolated pieces, but in the form of complex constellations, which I call COEX systems ("systems of condensed experience"). Each COEX system consists of emotionally charged memories from different periods of our lives; all of them have in common that they are associated with the same emotional quality or physical sensation. Each COEX system can have many layers, each of which has its own central theme, feelings and emotional qualities. It is very often possible to identify these individual layers according to different periods of a person's life.

Any of the COEX systems has a theme characteristic of it. For example, a single COEX constellation may contain all the main memories of events associated with insult, humiliation and shame. The common denominator of another COEX system may be the horror of experiencing claustrophobia, suffocation, and feelings associated with oppressive and limiting circumstances. Another very common motive for COEX systems is rejection and emotional isolation, which makes us distrustful of other people. Of particular importance are systems that include life-threatening experiences or memories of times when our physical well-being was clearly compromised.

It would seem easy to conclude that COEX systems always contain painful material. However, they can, just as well, contain constellations of positive experiences: feelings of serene peace, bliss or ecstasy, which also contributed to the formation of our psyche.

In the earliest stages of my research, I believed that COEX systems govern mainly that aspect of the psyche known as the individual unconscious. At that time, I was still guided in my work by what I had learned when I was a student - that the psyche is completely determined by our upbringing, that is, by the biographical material that is stored in our minds. As my experience of non-ordinary states grew, becoming richer and wider, I began to realize that COEX systems were rooted much deeper than I could have imagined.

It appears that each COEX constellation is superimposed on and anchored to a specific aspect of the birth experience. As we will discover in subsequent chapters of this book, birth experiences, so rich and complex in terms of physical sensation and emotion, contain basic themes for every COEX system imaginable. In addition to these perinatal components, typical COEX systems may have even deeper roots. They can go into the prenatal period of life and even further into the sphere of such transpersonal phenomena as past life experiences, archetypes of the collective unconscious and identification with other forms of life and universal processes. My experience of researching COEX systems convinced me that they serve to organize not only the individual unconscious, as it seemed to me at first, but also the entire human psyche.

COEX systems affect any area of ​​our emotional life. They can influence how we perceive ourselves, other people and the world... They represent the driving forces that underlie our emotional and psychosomatic symptoms and set the stage for our difficulties in relation to ourselves and others. There is constant interaction between the COEX system of the inner world of a person and the events of the outer world. External events can activate the corresponding COEX systems within us. And vice versa, COEX systems help us in the formation of the perception of the world, and, based on this perception, we act in such a way that we cause situations in the external world that reflect the patterns that are stored in our COEX systems. In other words, our inner perceptions can be something like complex scenarios through which we recreate the central themes of our own COEX systems in the external world.

The role of condensed experience systems in our lives can be best illustrated by the example of one person whom I will call Peter. Before undergoing psychedelic therapy, this thirty-seven-year-old teacher was periodically and unsuccessfully treated in our psychiatry department in Prague. His experiences, dating back to a very dark period in world history, were dramatic, vivid and bizarre. For this reason, the reader may find this example unpleasant. However, Peter's story is very valuable in the context of our discussion, because it quite clearly reveals the dynamics of COEX systems and how we can emotionally free ourselves from those systems that cause us pain and suffering.

Before the beginning of the empirical sessions, Peter was almost unable to cope with the responsibilities of everyday life. He was obsessed with finding a man of a certain appearance, preferably dressed in black. He wanted to get to know this man and tell him about his cherished desire to be locked in a dark basement and undergo physical and mental torture. Often, unable to concentrate on anything else, he wandered aimlessly around the city, visiting parks, public toilets, bars and train stations in search of the "right man."

On several occasions he was able to persuade or bribe "suitable" men to fulfill his wishes. Because of Peter's special gift to find people with sadistic inclinations, he was almost killed twice, severely beaten several times and once robbed to the skin. Whenever he succeeded in achieving the desired experiences, he was extremely frightened and sincerely did not want the torment to which he was subjected. Peter suffered from suicidal depression, sexual impotence and recurrent epileptic seizures.

When we looked through his personal history, I found that all of his problems began during forced labor in Germany during the Second World War. As a citizen of a Nazi-occupied territory, he was forced into virtually slave labor, forcing him to do very dangerous work. During this period of Peter's life, two SS officers forced him to participate in their homosexual games at gunpoint. When the war ended and Peter was finally released, he found himself continuing to seek homosexual relationships, acting in a "passive" role. Over time, this began to include fetishism associated with black clothing, and, in the end, resulted in the finished scenario of the obsession already described.

Trying to cope with his problem, Peter went through fifteen consecutive sessions of psychedelic therapy. In the course of treatment, an important COEX system emerged, which allowed us, in the end, to achieve success. In the most superficial layers of this COEX system, we, as might be expected, found Peter's more recent traumatic experiences with his sadistic partners.

In a deeper layer of the same COEX system, Peter's memories of the Third Reich were contained. In his experiential sessions, he relived the horrific ordeals that the SS officers were subjected to and could begin to resolve the many complex feelings that surrounded these events. In addition, he relived other traumatic memories of the war and the entire depressing atmosphere of those dark years. He had visions of pompous military parades and Nazi gatherings, swastika banners, ominous emblems in the form of a giant eagle, horrors of concentration camps and much more.

Following these revelations, Peter entered an even deeper layer of the same COEX system, where he began to relive scenes from his childhood. He was often severely punished by his parents, especially his alcoholic father, who, when drunk, flew into a rage and often flogged Peter with a large leather belt. His mother often punished him by locking him for several hours in a dark basement without food or water. Peter could not remember that she wore anything other than black dresses. Then he recognized the pattern of his obsession - he seemed to yearn to receive all the elements of punishment that his parents were subjected to.

Peter continued his empirical study of his main COEX systems. He relived the trauma of his own birth. Vivid memories of that time - again centered on biological cruelty - opened up to him as a foundational pattern or model for all those elements of sadistic experience that seemed to predominate in his later life. His attention was clearly focused on the dark confined spaces, the confinement and confinement of his body, and the extreme physical and emotional torment he experienced.

Once Peter experienced the trauma of birth, he began to feel free from his obsessions, as if having finally established the main source of this particular COEX system, he could begin to dismantle it. Eventually, he was able to completely get rid of his difficult symptoms and live a normal life again.

Although the discovery of the psychological significance of physical trauma added important new dimensions to the biographical realm of the psyche, this work was still in a field well known and recognized in traditional psychology and psychiatry. However, my own research into unusual states of consciousness, as well as the research of other scientists, has taken us into vast new territories of the psyche that Western science and traditional psychology have just begun to explore. An unbiased systematic study of these areas could have far-reaching consequences not only for psychiatry and the study of human consciousness, but also for the philosophy of science and the entire Western culture 4.

Journey Inward: The Farther Territories of Consciousness

When dealing with experiences in non-ordinary states of consciousness, the time people spend exploring early childhood varies greatly. However, if they continue to work in unusual states, then sooner or later they leave the arena of personal history following birth and move to completely new territories. And although these territories have not yet been recognized by Western academic psychiatry, it can by no means be said that they are not known to mankind. On the contrary, they have been systematically researched and highly valued in ancient and pre-industrial cultures since unoccupied times.

Moving beyond the biographical events of early childhood, we enter the realm of the biological birth experience. As we enter this new territory, we begin to experience emotions and physical sensations of extraordinary power, which often surpass everything that we are used to considering possible for a person. Here we are confronted with emotions of two polar opposite types - with a strange intertwining of birth and death, as if the two aspects of human experience were somehow one. Along with a sense of life-threatening limitation comes the determination to fight for liberation and survival.

Since most people identify this experience with the trauma of biological birth, I attribute it to the perinatal (perinatal) psyche. This term is a Greek-Latin word made up of the prefix peri-, which means "close" or "near", and the root word natalis, which translates as "related to childbirth." Word perinatal it is usually used in medicine to describe biological processes that occur shortly before, during and immediately after birth. However, since conventional medicine denies that the child has the ability to memorize the experiences associated with birth, this term is not used in traditional psychiatry. The use of the term "perinatal" in relation to consciousness reflects my own discoveries and is completely new.

Research in unusual states of consciousness has allowed us to obtain irrefutable evidence of what we store in our psyche, often at a deep cellular level, the memories of perinatal experiences. People who had no intellectual knowledge of their birth could recall with amazing accuracy facts about their birth, such as forceps use, gluteal delivery, and the earliest reactions of a mother to a newborn. Such details have been objectively corroborated over and over again by hospital records or by adults present at the birth.

Perinatal experiences include primitive emotions and sensations such as anxiety, biological rage, physical pain, and suffocation, usually associated with the birth process. In addition, people who have a birth experience usually make the appropriate movements, exactly replicating the position of the limbs and the rotation of the body, the mechanics of certain kinds. This can be observed even in those who have never studied the process of birth or observed it in their adult life. In addition, bruises, swelling, and other vascular changes could suddenly appear on the skin in places where forceps were applied, where the wall of the birth canal pressed on the head, or where the umbilical cord twisted around the neck. All of these details could be verified with detailed birth records or credible personal testimonies.

These early perinatal experiences are not limited to the birth process. Deep perinatal memories can open the way into what Jung called the collective unconscious. Resurrecting in our memory the agony of passing through the birth canal, we can identify with the same events that people from other times and other cultures experienced, or even with the birth process experienced by animals or mythological characters. In addition, we may feel a deep connection with everyone who has been abused, imprisoned, tortured or otherwise abused. It is as if our own connection with the universal experience of the embryo struggling to be born unites us almost mystically with all beings who are or have ever been in similar circumstances.

Perinatal phenomena form four distinct experiential patterns that I call the Basic Perinatal Matrices (BPMs). Each of the four matrices is closely related to one of the four successive periods of biological birth. At each of these stages, the child experiences experiences characterized by specific emotions and physical sensations, and each stage appears to be associated with specific symbolic images. They are strictly individual psychospiritual programs that govern how we experience our lives. They can be reflected in individual and social psychopathology or in religion, art, philosophy, politics, and other spheres of life. And, of course, we can access these psychospiritual programs through unusual states of consciousness, which allows us to see the driving forces of our lives much more clearly.

The first of the matrices, BPM I, which may be called the “amniotic universe,” refers to our experience in the womb before labor begins. The second matrix, BPM II, or “cosmic absorption and no exit,” refers to the experience of the moment when contractions have already begun, but the cervix has not yet opened. The third matrix, BPM III, “the struggle between death and rebirth,” reflects the experience of passing through the birth canal. The fourth and final matrix, BPM IV, which we will call “death and rebirth,” refers to our experience of the moment we actually leave our mother's body. Each perinatal matrix has its own characteristic biological, psychological, archetypal and spiritual aspects.

In the next four chapters, we will explore the perinatal matrices in the order they naturally unfold during birth. Each chapter begins with a personal description of the experiences that are characteristic of this matrix; then there is a discussion of the biological basis of such an experience, how it is translated in our psyche into the language of specific symbols, and how these symbols affect our life.

It should probably be noted that in empirical self-exploration we do not necessarily experience each of the matrices in their natural order. On the contrary, perinatal material is selected by our internal radar, which makes the procedure for accessing this material strictly individual for each person. However, for the sake of simplicity, it is useful to consider them in the order they are described in the next four chapters.