REVOLUTIONARY ASPECTS
There are other important revolutionary aspects
of this treatment and consciousness expansion modality. The first
stems from the fact of its radical effectiveness. As mentioned above,
it is not uncommon for the benefit of years of analytical work to be acquired
in a session or two lasting only hours.
Also, since the carrier of the process is the
music, a great deal of individual attention is not required. People
can be treated in groups, which, although for practical purposes are usually
kept between 10 and 30, have sometimes, with a sufficient number of assistants,
extended into the hundreds.
A typical hour with a psychiatrist or psychologist
costs between eighty and 150 dollars, and such treatments are usually required
on a weekly basis for a time period lasting very often into the years.
Consider that, for an amount of money which is about the same or only slightly
higher than the cost of one such hour, a person can participate in an entire
weekend intensive with much greater therapeutic potential and which may
need to be repeated only monthly, one more time, or not at all.
In addition, I am excited by a development
wherein clients are taking it into their own hands and, in at least one
instance of which I am aware, are conducting their own intensives for themselves
at absolutely no cost to anyone.
This is made possible by the fact that the
therapeutic aspects of the modality — specifically the breathing and the
music — release natural healing mechanisms and processes that are built
in to our psyche. Once these processes are accessed, a facilitator's
role is to a great extent extraneous and may even, as mentioned above,
be counter-productive.
Thus, this technique combines an effectiveness
much greater than mere verbal "education" (which is essentially trying
to "inform" people and to persuade them into acting like good little politically
correct boys and girls) with minimal requisite professional involvement.
The upshot is a huge reduction in the time and money required for individuals
to make significant leaps in consciousness evolution. If it is true,
as many of us feel, that only a massive raising of consciousness — a quantum
leap in consciousness evolution of our species — will save us from global
disaster, it may be just such a technique combining maximal effectiveness
and cost-effective applicability to the masses that will be required.
Another revolutionary aspect of this phenomenon
is its "alternative" character. Although many of the currently certified
couple hundred facilitators are credentialed mental health professionals
of one sort or other, the fact that this technique is not legally considered
"psychotherapy" means that all do not have to be. This is an interestingly
ironic way in which holotropic has taken advantage of its exclusion from
mainstream psychiatry; ironic because it is, in my opinion, one of the
two or three most powerful and effective psychotherapeutic tools available
today.
Luckily, it is also much more than that and
can partake of the benefits of being classified an "educational," philosophical,
spiritual, or growth technique or modality. Not being just for "sick"
people, facilitators can be trained in it and can provide it without fear
of legal repercussions concerning improper licensing or credentials.
The implications are that, as long as the law remains the same, holotropic
breathwork is an avenue of service available for those well-intentioned
souls who would wish to bypass the mainstream's traditional training route
with its accompanying brainwashing, coercion into ineffective and system
maintaining techniques, financial hardships, and time requirements.
The Grofs run their own ongoing intensive training
program producing alternative healers; now four hundred plus and growing.1
It represents an independent alternative "psychiatric" and healing system
that, along with the Spiritual Emergence Network, can be accessed by those
who would wish to break free from the autocratic brave new world of the
dominant culture into the alternative system which, for Earth's sake, must
be born.
HOPEFUL PROSPECTS
What can be hoped from all of this? Of great
importance is the fact that people becoming more strongly and more confidently
themselves are not going to be as easily manipulated by the moneyed powers
in the political sense. Such individuals will also be more resistant
to commercial, cultural, and peer pressure to engage in actions or to build
lifestyles that are at odds with clearly and deeply felt human and individual
values. Essentially I am saying that the masses of people in "civilized"
societies are prisoners of their pain and are sleep-walking through life
. . . and that in holotropic we have a powerful tool for waking people
up.
But there is another hope . . . subtler and
harder to explain but perhaps even more revolutionary in the long run.
I have pointed out that holotropic brings with it an alternative "psychiatric"
system and its greater choice and greater chance of freedom from psychiatric
and cultural oppression. I have noted the increase of awareness,
individualism, and connection to human values with their concomitant increase
in political assertiveness that follows from holotropic experiences.
And what follows also from them is an increase of freedom from the misery
and oppressiveness of our cultural conditioning, which makes possible healthier
alternatives. But more importantly than all, in holotropic there
exists the hope for a solution to our global threat in its facilitation
of a radical and comprehensive shift in our very attitude to ourselves,
our neighbors, to nature, and to the entire world in which we find ourselves.
We have long suspected that something of this
radical nature needs to happen if our planet is to survive. What
I am suggesting is that, in my opinion, Grof has traced our collective
problem to its deepest biographical roots, providing both an understanding
and,
more importantly, a hope for fundamentally changing and eradicating it.
The key lies in his discovery that the vast majority of us live our lives
out of depressive and aggressive feelings rooted in a traumatic birth experience
which is unique to our species and which, like so many other things, is
exacerbated in its damaging effects by a modern technological culture.
Further, the solution is suggested in the fact that healing this birth
trauma opens one up to a prior template, a more fundamental one, in which
the individual faces the world from a perspective of interdependence, nurturance,
cooperation, and lovingness — all of which have huge political and environmental
implications.
As Grof (1988) wrote,
The experience with the mother during
fetal or early post-natal existence is equivalent on the adult level to
the individual's relationship with all of humanity and with the entire
world. The former represents a prototypical model and experiential
template for the latter. The type and quality of the perinatal matrix
that influences the individual's psyche has, therefore, a profound influence,
not only on his or her inner subjective experiences, but also on his or
her attitude and approach to other people, to nature, and to existence
in general. (p. 262)
The point is that we were born struggling and
fighting; we needed to in order to survive; and we were met with resistance
and aggression from the very beginning. Without ever realizing it,
we carry that earliest impression with us for our entire lifetime, building
on it, selectively perceiving the aspects of reality that will reinforce
it, and never questioning that it may not actually be true. We see
our relationships in this me-versus-them way, we fight ourselves, we fight
and mistrust our spouse, our friends, our community. At the extreme,
the moneyed interests can gather this aggression into war. This template
kills us.
Freud saw this as human nature, as mentioned
above. What we have found out, and what Grof proves and asserts to
us, is that this is neither our inevitable state nor our natural one.
He is proving that our very human nature — at its earliest inceptions,
that is, before birth — is in fact cooperative and interdependent with
nature and the whole of humanity. No doubt this positive human state
is covered over by traumatic and hurtful birth and socialization experiences
which are conducive to the negativity we so often observe . . . but it
can be retrieved! Unfortunately, this retrieval requires feeling
it, experiencing our way back to it, not just talking about it,
thinking about it, willing or wanting or even making affirmations about
it in order to really bring about this fundamental shift back to our basic
nature. But when we do,
This reduces considerably the irrational
drive to pursue complicated schemes in the false hope of achieving satisfaction.
In this state of mind, it becomes clear that the ultimate measure of one's
living standard is the quality of one's life experience and not the quantity
of achievements or material possessions.
The above changes are accompanied by the spontaneous
emergence of deep ecological consciousness and awareness. . . . The
new values and attitudes reflect the symbiotic experience of the fetus
with the mother during prenatal existence and during nursing. Synergistic,
mutually nourishing, and complementary aspects of this situation tend to
replace automatically the competitive and exploitative emphasis of the
old value system. The concept of human existence as a life-and-death
struggle for survival in a world governed by the law of the jungle gives
way to a new image of life as a manifestation of a cosmic dance or a divine
play.
The level of aggression decreases considerably
and the sense of connection and fundamental unity with the world leads
to sexual, political, national, cultural, and racial tolerance. In
the new context, differences are not threatening any more. They are
seen as interesting and desirable variations of the one undivided cosmic
web. This new vision of the world often leads to "voluntary simplicity"
in Duane Elgin's sense . . . that is now seen as an expression of profound
wisdom. It also becomes obvious that the only hope for a political,
social, and economic solution of the current global crisis can come from
a transpersonal perspective that transcends the hopeless us-versus-them
psychology. . . . (Grof, 1988, pp. 262-263)
Such is our potential, such is our basic human
nature, such is our pressing global need.
I hope it is clear now how effective and how
potentially revolutionary this technique is. However, it remains
to be seen if this technique will be used in any degree approaching the
extent of its potential. People still have to choose this path of
empowerment over the traditional one, which is one wherein they can remain
dependent and helpless. Some people, it seems, are just so beaten
down and brainwashed that they could never make the initial effort required
to begin the process. The system has instilled too much fear in them
for it to be possible for them to think of alternatives, let alone
to risk "going against the stream" in actually choosing them.
Then there is the problem that many people,
even if they do make an empowering effort, tend to find it much easier
struggling to change the reflections of themselves that they see in the
world than to take a good look inside. They refuse to acknowledge
that the imperfections they see are contained also inside of them and must
fundamentally be addressed there as well as on the outside. It is
as if there is an insecurity that causes one to be afraid to acknowledge
that one also has "problems," has psychological work to do and issues to
deal with.
Fortunately, this kind of "activist machismo"
is more prevalent in the past than currently. Indeed, what I have
observed in very recent years is a tendency for the inner and outer ways
to begin acknowledging each other's importance. From my roots in
the therapeutic communities I have heard outcries and affirmations of the
need to bring what we know and our energies into the society at large and
into direct action at altering the societal machinery accordingly.
And what I am picking up from my roots in the activist communities is a
greater and greater awareness of the need to balance outer with inner work
and to trace the roots of injustice deeply into oneself and to eradicate
it there. This represents a coming together, a merging of two movements,
two swellings of truth upon the planet. The combined force for real
and revolutionary change can only be stronger because of it.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN NOTE
1. A list of certified
holotropic breathwork practitioners nationwide can be had from: Grof Transpersonal
Training, 20 Sunnyside Ave. #A-314, Mill Valley CA 94941. [return
to text]
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN REFERENCE
Grof, Stanislav. (1988). The Adventure of Self-Discovery:
Dimensions of Consciousness and New Perspectives in Psychotherapy and Inner
Exploration. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.