Holotropic Breathwork is grounded in the work of psychiatrist Stanislav Grof, whose research spans over six decades and draws from psychiatry, psychology, philosophy and spiritual traditions. While influenced by thinkers such as Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, Grof’s approach extends beyond traditional models of the mind.

At its core is Transpersonal Psychology, a development beyond earlier schools like Behaviourism and Psychoanalysis. Emerging from Humanistic Psychology (associated with figures like Abraham Maslow), this field recognises not only psychological development, but also the human drive toward meaning, self-realisation, and experiences that transcend the individual self. Holotropic Breathwork can be understood as a practical method within this framework, integrating insights from Western psychology with elements of Eastern spiritual traditions and experiential practices.

A central contribution of Grof’s work is his “extended cartography of the psyche” - a model developed through extensive clinical research, including psychedelic-assisted therapy. This map expands the understanding of the human mind beyond conventional boundaries and includes three primary domains:

Biographical — experiences from our lived life, from birth to the present. These may surface as memories, or more often as bodily or emotional processes that carry the imprint of past events.

Perinatal — experiences connected to birth and time in the womb. Grof wrote extensively on how experiences related to the birth process itself can be encoded in the psyche, often following distinct patterns that may later influence how we relate in the world as adults. These experiences, though sometimes dramatic, are often the site of profound healing.

Transpersonal — experiences that extend beyond the personal self, including intergenerational, collective, or ancestral material. These reach into dimensions of experience that conventional therapy rarely touches.

Modern research in fields such as trauma studies, epigenetics and prenatal psychology increasingly confirms that many of our experiences - personal as well as transgenerational - can be deeply imprinted in body and psyche. Holotropic Breathwork offers a unique way to access and integrate these layers of experience.

COEX systems

Grof developed the concept of systems of condensed experience - COEX systems - to describe how the psyche organises traumatic and emotionally charged material. A COEX system is a cluster of memories and experiences from different periods of life, that share a common emotional theme: shame, abandonment, constriction, fear, or grief, for example. These systems shape how we see ourselves, how we relate to others, and how we move through the world - often without our awareness.

What makes COEX systems particularly significant is that they can operate across all three domains - biographical, perinatal, and transpersonal - meaning that a single emotional theme may have roots that extend far deeper than personal memory alone.

This helps explain why we sometimes react to present situations with an intensity that seems disproportionate - because we are not responding only to what is happening now, but to the accumulated weight of everything that resonates with it from the past. The reaction feels urgent because, somewhere beneath awareness, it is.

In a Holotropic session, these condensed patterns can surface vividly - as memory, sensation, or emotion. Working through them in a safe, supported environment allows their charge to release, gradually reducing their power to shape behaviour and perception from the shadows.

Further reading

What’s outlined here is only a brief introduction to a much wider body of work.

The theoretical framework developed by Stanislav Grof reflects more than six decades of research and draws from psychiatry, depth psychology, consciousness studies, anthropology and spiritual traditions from around the world.

For those who wish to explore further, a range of books, talks, and resources are available that go into much greater depth: