Stanislav Grof

Stanislav Grof (born 1931) was a pioneer researcher into the effects of LSD on the mind. He constructed a theoretical framework for pre- and perinatal psychology in which LSD experiences were mapped on to the early foetal and neonatal experiences. With the legal suppression of the use of LSD in the late 60s he went on to discover that many of these states of mind could be explored without drugs by using breathing techniques in a supportive environment. He continues his work today under the name Holotropic Breathwork.

Born 1931 in Prague, Czechoslovakia he received an M.D. from Charles University, Prague in 1956. He completed his Ph.D. in Medicine at the Czechoslovakian Academy of Sciences in 1965. He also trained as a Freudian psychoanalyst.

In 1967, he was invited as Clinical and Research Fellow to Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, in the USA and went on to become chief of psychiatric research at the Maryland Psychiatric Center. In 1973, Dr. Grof was invited to the Esalen Institute, Big Sur, California, and lived there until 1987 as Scholar-in-Residence developing his ideas.

He was the founding president of the