It’s All About the Holotropics!

NEWS | TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 8 | BY FUSION STAFF WRITER, RUDOLFO CARRILLO

Healing trauma, integrating with and supporting the community, learning to love oneself as a human—these are all aspirations that point to a long and happy life here on planet Earth. According to certified Holotropic Breathwork facilitator Laura Io Berg, those goals can begin to see resolution through an engagement with a process she calls a Journey to the Inner Healer, which involves exploring the healing potential of non-ordinary states of consciousness, a practice that she engages in using Holotropic Breathwork.

Berg and co-facilitator Lincoln Scott will be presenting their findings and offering a weekend of investigation, integration, and healing at FUSION from Friday, September 25 through Sunday, September 27.

Berg’s story and the work she does as a healer that employs Czechoslovakian psychiatrist Stan Groff’s methodologies—updated for now with Berg’s own inimitable life and clinical experience (she’s a former psychiatric nurse with thirty years of experience caring other humans)—is notable and deserves our attention as readers, FUSION community members, and humans who are all on one sort of healing path or another.

Holotropic Breathwork is a therapeutic technique combining rapid, controlled breathing with evocative music to induce non-ordinary states of consciousness for self-exploration and healing. The practice aims to access a deeper "inner healer" to process past traumas, reduce stress, and promote emotional release.

In order to better understand this potentially healthful process, I sat down with Berg to find out more.

Rudolfo Carrillo: Laura, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and the work that you’ve done and continue to do?

I am a semi-retired psychiatric clinical nurse specialist. I worked in psychiatry for thirty years with the VA, and I retired from there. As well, I was a psychedelic research nurse in the mid-1990s at UNM, involved with the Rick Strassman [psychedelic] studies. I’m currently working as a part-time staff member with some of the clinical studies at UNM. So, holotropic breathwork kind of lands somewhere in the middle of that.

Well, that’s fascinating. So, there’s a real relationship and a foundation in your own way of thinking about psychiatry and breathwork, que no?

You know, holotropic breathwork is a non-ordinary way of healing. In the time before Western culture, in the time before pills and medications, we sought non-ordinary healing measures in our tribes, you know, in our circles, in our communities. Sometimes that non-ordinary healing might have been through drumming; it has involved going into retreat or meditating. From my perspective, the holotropic perspective, I really recognize—and this is also research-based—but I recognize that a non-ordinary experience can be a very profound way to have a deep, non- linear moment where things can shift in the body or in the psyche. And then healing takes place.  Healing can take place!

I’ve read that holotropic breathing techniques essentially induce a controlled sort of hyperventilation—shifting blood oxygen/carbon dioxide levels—which can be intense! So it’s not suitable for everyone, especially humans with cardiovascular problems…and you all require a health screening before participating…What can you tell me about those health and safety aspects of the program?

It’s not a technique that clicks for everyone, but holotropic breathing techniques and our program were developed to be a reliable, very safe, very deep and wide modality used to create a non-ordinary or extraordinary experience that brings people into a different paradigm, a different somatic experience, a different energetic experience, a new and different perspective. Participants may have a symbolic experience, a meaningful experience that can range from biographical to transpersonal, to experiences of the elements or nature. It’s just a different way of really being present and really being embodied. I think the breathwork really helps people come into their body, reconnect with their body, go a little deeper.

And it’s a three-day experience! What’s that like?

So we work in pairs; we always work in a group. For example, this weekend [is limited to 16] participants, which means [eight] pairs of people working at a time, and we have [two] facilitators coming in, [one] from out of state [Lincoln Scott] and myself from here in Albuquerque. People are coached to go inward, and we have a music track that is constructed to be the arc of the journey, so people can kind of find a foundation as they’re in the process, something to link into for the rhythm of their breathing, for the rhythm of the experience. It’s a three-hour arc of music for each session. Then, in our tradition, the breathwork session is followed by the opportunity to make a mandala; we also have an art component after the breathwork sessions.

How does the experience feel?

The 16 [participants divided into eight pairs] begin on Friday in the evening, and it seems like a course, like a class, like a master class. It is, you know… You can really go a lot deeper, a lot further, and I think the extended time that we take really creates an extra level of acceptance, trust, and safety in the group. It becomes an experience where people really get to hear each other's voices and what their journey is. We’re just really trying to engender that trust. We don’t create your journey; we don’t get all wrapped up in your journey. Your journey is for you; we want for you to feel very connected and very safe.

What are your guests and participants like?

You know, it tends to be a pretty courageous bunch of people; people who are really kind of curious about the mystery of life, or the magic of life, or if there is magic in life! People willing to lay down and discover what they find inside themselves. It’s a deep-dive weekend. Holotropic breathwork is really a way of accessing this alternative to healing that maybe people living their everyday lives just don’t see. They need to stop and take a look at what that is and what’s available in our community that might help them move toward healing.

Journey to the Inner Healer: Holotropic Breathwork®
Friday, September 25, from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Saturday, September 26, from 8:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.
Sunday, September 27, from 9 a.m. to noon

FUSION
700 1st Street Northwest
Albuquerque, NM, 87102

***Holotropic Breathwork and its place in training Psychedelic therapists were highlighted in a January 11, 2024, New York Times article, “Breathing Their Way to an Altered State,” in which Laura Io Berg shares her own healing path through psychedelic and breathwork.