We want to share with you the second Open Letter to the LGBTQ+ and World Community that Stan has written in response to concerns shared with us about his writings about same-gender attraction. We are grateful that this issue has been brought to our attention. Stan deeply regrets not having corrected aspects of his writings about LGBTQ+ experience much earlier.
Discussion of this issue began with a “Consensus Statement Condemning Psychedelic Conversion Therapy and Suggestions for Addressing Ongoing Harms Against LGBTQIA+ People in Psychedelic Research and Therapy.” Stan’s first Open Letter was in response to discussions following this statement. Links to Stan's first Open Letter, and the Open Letter Reply to Dr. Stan Grof written by Alex Belser, PhD; Andrea Ens, PhD; Bill Brennan, PhD; Dee Dee Goldpaugh, LCSW; and Jeffrey Guss, MD, can be found in the letter below.
This response is the final contribution Stan will make to this discussion, after that we trust that people who know Stan and his work personally will raise their voices on this issue.
Much love,
Stan and Brigitte Grof
Celebrating the Groundbreaking Life’s Work of Stanislav Grof, MD, Pioneer in Psychedelic Research and Transpersonal Psychology
Created in honor of his 90th birthday, this book celebrates the profound life’s work of Stanislav Grof, MD, pioneer in psychedelic research and transpersonal psychology.
Featuring an extended interview between Stan and his wife, Brigitte, the book explores in depth the full arc of his research in his own words as well as the history of LSD. He discusses his early
experiments with LSD in Czechoslovakia and the USA during the 1950s and ’60s and the cartography of the psyche that resulted. He describes his clients’ and his own experiences and the psychedelic approach he pioneered. He explains the four perinatal matrices, illustrated with the impressive paintings he made during high-dose LSD sessions. He discusses the creation of holotropic breathwork as a way to reach expanded states of consciousness without the use of drugs. He describes how he started work with LSD believing it was simply pharmacology and then went on to discover the perinatal, transpersonal, and archetypal levels of the psyche through his lifelong research. The book also features testimonies from a number of luminaries in the psychedelic, psychological, scientific, and spiritual communities, including Jack Kornfield, Rupert Sheldrake, Ervin Laszlo, Richard Tarnas, Rick Doblin, Roger Walsh, David Steindl-Rast, Fritjof Capra, and Cathy Coleman.
Complete with captivating photos of Stan Grof with Albert Hofmann, Swiss painter H. R. Giger, Fritz Perls, Sasha Shulgin, as well as all of the book’s contributors, this special book presents an impressive overview of Stan Grof’s groundbreaking work and honors his importance as a psychedelic elder.
Author Bio: Brigitte Grof, PhD, is a psychologist, psychotherapist, artist, and the wife of Stanislav Grof. She first met Grof in 1986 in Germany and then in a Grof month-long holotropic breathwork seminar at the Esalen Institute, which led her to participate in a three- year training with him in Switzerland. Since 1989 she has facilitated holotropic breathwork workshops and trainings. She lives with her husband Stan in Wiesbaden, Germany. https://brigittegrof.com/
Dear friends, we are very excited to share with you the launch of the worlds first course in Grof studies at Ubiquity University!
Ubiquity is an accredited international University teaching online courses and you can get a master or PhD degree with them.
Please spread the news and we hope that Stans dream comes true to have his work taught and spread at universities worldwide.
Dear friends,
We are very excited to announce the start of our Grof® Legacy Psychedelic Therapy training in Canada! This is our second training after recently starting the first one in Spain. Participants will study with our very skillful and experienced teachers. They will learn the important theoretical background necessary, as well as the practical aspects of working with holotropic states of consciousness. Participants will experience sessions in Grof® Breathwork both as breathers and as sitters, learn the appropriate use of bodywork and music for psychedelic sessions and will also have the opportunity to have legal experiences with various psychedelic substances. By achieving certification in Grof® Psychedelic Therapy the trainee will have become a skillful therapist and sitter for psychedelic experiences.
Much love
Stan and Brigitte
Announcement for the Canadian Grof® Legacy psychedelic sitter training 2022
Welcome to the launch of Grof® Legacy Training Canada, the Canadian part of Grof® Legacy International. Our first course offering begins June 1, 2022 with The Way of the Psychonaut Part A. There is still space available. We look forward to meeting and working with you! We are excited to have Stan and Brigitte Grof in attendance for the first Zoom call of the course, June 5, 2022. Register now for this great training opportunity...our store is open at https://program.grof-legacy-training.ca
https://youtu.be/0Kg-YMlyJQ4
On Saturday January 22, 2022 we had an amazing symposium with many wonderful friends celebrating the Festschrift Psyche Unbound in honor of my 90th birthday. We are very grateful to Synergetic Press, City Lights Bookstore , MAPS and everyone contributing to this successful event. You can watch the symposium on Youtube now, here are the links.
Session One:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpv8F5hahvc
Session Two:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gR_5NB1C8ic
Session Three:
www.thewayofthepsychonaut.com
Stan and Brigitte
Dear Friends, we had a wonderful book and film launch "The Way of the Psychonaut” volumes I and II in San Francisco with 750 people attending and it was a very loving atmosphere. We are very grateful to Rick Doblin and MAPS and to Susan Hess Logeais the filmmaker! The books are very beautiful and the film is great too. The books are available by MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies) in Santa Cruz, CO, and Amazon and the film will be seen in October 2020 and then the books will be translated in many foreign languages.
Much love Stan and Brigitte
We just finished our five day Holotropic Breathwork at the Esalen Institute, California, together with our dear friend and colleague Diane Haug and our amazing team (Stacia Butterfield, Mireya Alejo, Jay Dufrechou from USA and Javier Charme and Pula Guzman from Chile). We had a wonderful week and the participants had great experiences with a lot of love around us. We definitely felt the magic and the spirit of the land at Esalen.
Another highlight of our visit was when we and our team walked down memory lane to the Big House (now called Michael Murphy house), place where Holotropic Breathwork was created and born in 1974. Christina and I conducted 31 monthlong seminars where we invited star faculty of transpersonal and spiritual teachers. In these seminars the participants had eight breathwork sessions as breathers and sitters per month.
I lived at Esalen fourteen years and Brigitte came to Esalen in 1986 for 1 year, participated in two monthlong seminars and stayed as a work-scholar, getting training in Holotropic Breathwork in many of our seminars before there even existed an official training. It was a very special event for us bringing back the Holotropic Breathwork to its cradle and also for both of us coming back to Esalen together.
Stan and Brigitte Grof
Holotropic States of Consciousness:
Technologies of the Sacred (Video on Demand)
A 4-part pre-recorded video series with Stanislav Grof
This series of Teleseminars was recorded in 2017
cost $99
In this 4-part video series, renowned clinical psychiatrist Stanislav Grof takes us through an exploration of what changes need to be made in the field of modern psychotherapy when we study non-ordinary states of consciousness. Through more than sixty years of research and study into nonordinary states, Grof has acquired a wealth of wisdom in what he has coined holotropic states. Grof explains that in our ordinary state of consciousness, we use just a fraction of our potential; when we tap into these holotropic states, our realm of possibility expands exponentially. Grof details how and when these holotropic states are accessed, the types of experiences that people have when accessing these states, the striking similarity of these experiences to those described in the great spiritual traditions, and how to work with these states to achieve a new level of healing and transformation.
This module discusses the six areas that require substantial and far-reaching change of our understanding of consciousness and the human psyche in health and disease:
- The Nature of Consciousness and Its Relationship to Matter
- New Cartography of the Human Psyche
- Architecture of Emotional and Psychosomatic Disorders
- Effective Therapeutic Mechanisms
- Strategy of Psychotherapy and Self Exploration
- The Role of Spirituality in Human Life
Module 2: Spiritual Emergency (1 hour, 17 minutes)
Module 3: Understanding Violence and Greed (1 hour, 29 minutes)
Module 4: Cosmic Game (1 hour, 37 minutes)
New publication announcement
Stanislav Grof announces a new publication The Way of the Psychonaut:Encyclopedia for Inner Journeys in two volumes, to celebrate on the anniversary of Albert Hoffmann's 75th discovery of LSD-25. Published by MAPS, Santa Cruz., CA.
List of Contents:
VOLUME I.
1. The History of Psychonautics: Ancient, Aboriginal, and Modern Technologies of the Sacred ……………………………..1
2. Revision and Re-Enchantment of Psychology: Legacy from Half Century of Consciousness Research ………….…….51
3. Maps of the Psyche in Depth Psychology: Toward An Integration of Approaches …………………………….…………163
4. Architecture of Emotional and Psychosomatic Disorders ……………………………………………………………..…… 217
5. Spiritual Emergency: Understanding and Treatment of Transpersonal Crises …………………………………….….….306
6. Holotropic Breathwork: New Perspectives in Self - Exploration and Therapy ………………………………….………356
The Way of the Psychonaut:
Encyclopedia for Inner Journeys
VOLUME II.
7. Self-Exploration and Therapy with Psychedelic: Importance of the Set and Setting ……………………………………...2
8. Synchronicity: Jung’s Acausal Connecting Princip ………………………………………………………………………….42
9. Holotropic States of Consciousness and the Understanding of Art ………..………………………………………….….…88
10. The Promethean Impulse: Higher Creativity ……………………………………………………………………………...…126
.
11. The Archetypes: Guiding Principles of the Psyche and the Cosmos …………………………………….….…….…...….174
12. Roots of Human Violence and Greed: Consciousness Research and Human Survival ………………..……….…..….219
13. Psyche and Thanatos: Transpersonal Dimensions of Death and Dying ……………………………………….……….…270
14. The Cosmic Game: Exploration of Farther Reaches of Consciousness ……………………..…………….…….…….….342
Appendix: Psyche and Cosmos: Archetypal Astrology as “Rosetta Stone” for Consciousness Research
Changing of the Gods filming
Rick Tarnas and Stan Grof
Changing of the Gods filming in Big Sur, September 2015
Dear Friends,
I am very excited about a new documentary film being made now called Changing of the Gods. It is about our dramatic time of planetary change, the need for a radical shift of world view, and the extraordinary insight that archetypal astrology and a transpersonal perspective provide for understanding the events of our time. The wonderful John Cleese is the professional counsel and support, and it is based on Rick Tarnas’ book Cosmos and Psyche. Rick and I began the research that led to this book and film some forty years ago at Esalen Institute. We did a week of intensive filming in beautiful Big Sur.
The movie is being produced by the co-founder of Bioneers Kenny Ausubel, and directed by the amazing Louie Schwartzberg (whose films have the power to produce a non-ordinary state of consciousness just by viewing them).You can learn more about it all and how you can help make this film happen at the changingofthegods.com website. I think this film may reach a wide audience and have a significant impact.
Stan Grof
Some two more pictures:
