Christina Grof: The Spiritual Side Of Human Nature
Christina Grof was the founder of the Spiritual Emergence Network and one of the primary creators and inspirers of holotropic breathing. She was also a brilliant psychotherapist, president of Transpersonnel training and vice-president of the International Transpersonal Association (ITA).
Grof has written many books. Even today, many only know her because she was the wife of North American psychiatrist Stan Grof. He was one of the great masters and pioneers of transpersonal psychology.
However, Dr. Grof’s work would not be what it is today without his wife Christina. Before her death in 2014, Christina Grof worked for over 30 years in the field of transpersonal psychology. She has spent much of her time teaching and lecturing around the world. Today, we consider her as a figure who has developed one of the most avant-garde therapeutic techniques available. She also coined the term spiritual emergence with her husband.
Christina Grof’s story
Christina Grof generously shared her story, her experiences and the difficulties she encountered due to her many altered states of consciousness that occurred spontaneously. Very young, she became interested in the practice of yoga and began to have strange psychic and physiological experiences. They were the symptom of a spiritual “awakening”. This is how she will name these experiences a little later. It is true that during this period all the symptoms indicated some kind of psychosis. She herself thought she was going mad.
Her doctors treated her for a while with morphine and chlorpromazine to try and ease the symptoms, but it only made matters worse. Christina was subsequently introduced by one of her teachers, the anthropologist Joseph Campbell, to an innovative therapist, Stan Grof. She ended up marrying him soon after. Following her transpersonal or spiritual emergence crisis, Christina and her husband created the Esalen Institute, the Spiritual Emergency Network (SEN).
The SEN Spiritual Emergence Network
This organization has helped people in psycho-spiritual crisis for several decades. It was founded so that these people could receive specialized help without falling under the psychiatric stigma. Christina and Stanislav there developed alternative treatments to treat mystical seeking, attachment and addiction. They also worked together on holotropic breathing. It is a therapy that they developed from the breathing techniques that Christina had learned from Eastern traditions. Their goal was to substitute the psychedelics that Stan Grof was experimenting with to achieve altered states of consciousness in his patients.
They then created the International Transpersonal Association (ITA). After that, they also developed a comprehensive treatment program for alcoholism and addictions that combined the Twelve Steps Program and transpersonal psychology. Around this time, Christina Grof wrote several books on addiction and its relation to spiritual research.
Among his books, we find: The Thirst for Wholeness: Attachment, Addiction y Spiritual Path, the autobiographical memoirs The Eggshell Landing: Love, Death and Forgiveness in Hawai. She also writes three others with her husband: Spiritual emergence: when personal transformation drifts into crisis; In Search of Self and Holotropic Breathing: A New Approach to Self-Exploration and Therapy.
Transpersonal psychology
Christina Grof was one of the pioneers in transpersonal psychology. This type of psychology focuses on emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual aspects of human nature. She and her husband explored fields of the human being that traditional Western psychology has always ignored. Their work on spiritual emergencies is unique.
Christina Grof dared to work and bet on people who saw the emergence of a different type of consciousness. Without it, they would have been misdiagnosed and would probably have ended up in mental asylums.
Christina Grof would unfortunately have gone unnoticed without her husband’s shadow, even though they have always worked together and even if the most important contributions of their therapy come from her. Christina’s work and life is an inspiration to millions of people. So we can say that she was one of those people who left this world leaving it in a better state than it was when they were born. She is a courageous therapist whose work and legacy are still of tremendous value today.
Our thoughts Integral psychology is a perspective focused on the development of a healthy individuality that seeks well-being through growth.
