Article from the Santa Barbara Independent

by John P. Luca

From Stanislav Grof's Psychology of the Future. 'Painting reflecting an experience from a Holotropic Breathwork session, which involved breaking out of the state of encapsulation and isolation, transcending the veils that separate us from our divine nature, an connecting with the cosmos."

  There are hand-written "Do Not Disturb" signs in Spanish and English tacked to the front door.  Though it is mid-morning, the living room and much of the house are as dark as dusk, a few shafts of sunlight sneaking around the edges of the black plastic sheets that cover the windows.  I am a "sitter," sitting comfortably on a pillow beside my "breather," Tobias (I'll call him that), who lies face up on a mattress, bandanna covering his eyes.  Three more breathers, eyes covered, rest on mattresses arrayed in a row across the living-room floor.  A sitter watches over each breather.

Maria Marotti, in a soft, accented voice, guides the breathers through a full body relaxation exercise.  Her husband, Jack Ceder, a tall, thin man, slightly stooped, checks the sound system.  Breathers and sitters know what to expect.  We're either old hands at Holotropic Breathwork, or we've attended last night's introductory lecture.

"Breathe deeply and rapidly for the three-quarters of an hour," Maria says, "I wish you a wonderful and meaningful journey."

Jack turns on the stereo, and for the next three hours a tidal wave of Indian, Middle-eastern, African, Tibetan, and Native American music surges through the room.

A breather to my left, a silver-haired woman, begins to moan and then cries first with what appears to be sadness and later with what is clearly joy.  Another woman, still lying on her mattress, dances fluidly and beautifully for half an hour. Except for his rising and, falling chest, my breather, Tobias, lies still.

Jack Ceder and Maria Marotti have trained with Stanislav Grof, a psychiatrist who pioneered the use of LSD-yes, that's right, acid--back in 1956 to induce altered states of awareness.  Grof's clinical experiences with LSD, both as a subject and a researcher, changed his life profoundly.  Later, Grof and his wife Christina developed Holotropic Breathwork as a means of inducing non- ordinary states of awareness, a technique with roots in Buddhist "fire breathing, "Inuit throat music, Kalahari Bushman trance dancing, the dance of the whirling dervishes, and the Lakota Sioux Sun dance.

Maria is a petite woman with reddish- brown hair. A former UCSB lecturer and tenured professor at the University of Rome, Maria has authored a book on Mark Twain and co-authored three other books on American and Italian literature.

Maria's husband of 23 years, Jack Ceder, is the quieter of the two.  With his short gray beard and deep-set eyes, Jack looks more like a retired man of the sea than a retired UCSB professor of mathematics.

Maria recounts her first experience with breath work back in 1996: "I was breathing and " wall of music started, I said, 'O my God, 0 my God, this is terrifying' After five minutes the terror ended because I saw that nothing terrible happened.  Then the feelings started to come.  And I knew this was it.  The ultimate therapy."

In, 1994 Jack Ceder started suffering from heart fibrillations, every few months experiencing severe attacks that left him incapacitated for 10 hours at a time.  For several years he took lanoxin daily, which lessened, but did not eliminate, his symptoms, After his first few breathwork sessions Jack realized his physical symptoms were telling him to do something different with his life.  He threw away his medication, started studying Holotropic Breathwork, and hasn't had a problem with heart fibrillations since.

Holotropic, a term Grof coined in 1992, means " directed toward or moving in the direction of wholeness.  It seems that in non-ordinary states of awareness the usual defense mechanisms of the mind, defenses that often hold old emotional patterns and wounds frozen in place, are somewhat inactivated, and a deeper wisdom or, healing energy is allowed to direct the mind to new and healthier states.

Be forewarned, Holotropic Breathwork is not for the pregnant, the mentally ill (except when facilitated by a psychiatrist or, licensed therapist), the recently operated-on, or the really faint of heart.  At one of Grof's workshops I attended in Palo Alto, 60 breathers worked at the same time, each with a sitter close by, while Grof and staff roamed the room offering assistance when necessary.  At its peak, I couldn't decide whether I was sitting in Dante's Inferno, or in an insane asylum.  The emotional release of so many people was unnerving.  But with the guidance of facilitators, people like Jack Ceder can work through emotional, physical, and even spiritual problems that have sometimes plagued them for years.

"Being a man in a scientific culture", says Jack, a former research mathematician, "it's been a hard struggle for me to open up to these experiences, but there's some deep part of me that wants to do this."

When lunch is finished, I exchanged places with Tobias.  A bandanna covers my eyes, and my head rests comfortably on my pillow.  After Maria's guided relaxation exercise I begin to alter my breathing.  The music begins, a wall of driving African drumming. I imagine a circle of women doing a chicken dance around a fire, their bare feet raising dust from the dry earth. I continue to breathe deeply and rapidly.

I Now, I am in Cuba running shirtless through sunny fields of cane.  Then the music turns to shamanic jungle-spirit sounds of the didgeridoo, sound intended to drive the breath and the mind, and like some Kalahari Bushman or Sufi dancer my body breathes the music, at times dropping into an autonomic mode, finding whirling patterns and rhythms of breathing that feed a mental and physical fire I am not consciously controlling.  My mind begins to wobble.  My experience disconnects from my body and I lose consciousness of the room.

In his book, Psychology of the Future, Grof writes that in holotropic states, "our field of consciousness is invaded by contents from other dimensions of existence.... The emotions associated with holotropic states cover a very broad spectrum that typically extends far beyond the limits of our everyday experience --- feelings of ecstatic rapture, heavenly bliss, and 'peace that passeth all understanding' to episodes of abysmal terror, murderous anger, utter despair, consuming guilt, and other forms of unimaginable emotional suffering"

This stuff, to put it mildly, can expose you to the wild side of the far side.  "But you don't get more than you ran handle," Jack Ceder says. "It seems to be that inner healer.  People aren't pushed too far."

Many would say the experiences during non-ordinary states are delusional and possibly pathological.  Others like Grof, who has worked with more than 30,000 persons experiencing non-ordinary states over the last 45 years, would say these states are what mystics, shamans, saints, and others have told about throughout history, and that ultimately these states are a pathway into a deeply sacred realm where the divisions between self and not-self begin to dissolve, where the personal consciousness meets the collective consciousness of humanity and ultimately touches the source of all consciousness --- the God-consciousness.

Maria Marotti says, 'before I started Holotropic Breathwork, though raised a Catholic, I was an agnostic.  Now, I see the manifestation of the Divine as very present in my life.  I forget at times, but every day it comes back to me.  I see it not only in my life, but in the lives of others as well.'

Of course, it's easy to summarily discount all of this if you wish. On the other hand, like Jack Ceder and Maria Marotti, there is always the possibility of taking a chance and experiencing something new.

For more information on Holotropic Breathwork,
call Jack Ceder or Maria Marotti
at 966-9250.