stanislav Grof, M.D.

Stanislav Grof is one of the founders of the field of transpersonal psychology and a researcher into the use of non-ordinary states of consciousness for purposes of exploring, healing, and obtaining growth and insights into the human psyche. 

Grof is known for his early studies of LSD and is one of the founders of the field of psychedelic therapy. Grof has articulated a theoretical framework for prenatal and perinatal psychology and transpersonal psychology in which LSD trips and other powerfully emotional experiences are mapped onto a person's early fetal and neonatal experiences. Grof developed a practice through which many states of mind could be explored without drugs by using a breathing technique known as "Holotropic Breathwork".

His understanding and protocol of holding space in a non-interventive manner has been adopted by most of the clinical practitioners using psychedelics in the world today, including MAPS, USONA, and in the Johns Hopkins Research Studies.

Grof received his M.D. from Charles University in Prague in 1957 and then completed his Ph.D. in medicine at the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in 1965, training as a Freudian psychoanalyst at this time. He was the Chief of Psychiatric Research for the Spring Grove Experiment at the Research Unit of Spring Grove State Hospital (later part of the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center. In 1973 he was invited to the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, and lived there until 1987 as a scholar-in-residence.

As founding president of the International Transpersonal Association (founded in 1977), he went on to become distinguished adjunct faculty member of the Department of Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness at the California Institute of Integral Studies. 

He is the author of over 150 articles and 20 books. He has conducted over 5,000 LSD sessions and thousands of holotropic breathwork sessions.