Holotropic Breathing/Breathwork Workshop Music

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Music for Holotropic Breathwork

A six-day workshop called Making Holotropic Breathwork Music Sets is offered by Grof Transpersonal Training and is labeled as a “work of art” (GTT). Anyone interested may enroll in this course, which is also a prerequisite for those pursuing the Facilitator Certification Training.

In the Holotropic Breathwork Workshop, music is utilized to help participants delve deeper into the transformative experience that their inner healer is guiding them to have rather than to steer them in one direction or another. The music set must last between two and three hours for the encounter to qualify as a “Holotropic Breathwork” session and deliver the desired effects.

In a nutshell, the first hour of a holotropic breathwork music set features music with a driving, rhythmic pace and is intended to promote bodily release and encourage prolonged deep breathing. This can encompass musical genres including some sorts of electronic music and tribal drumming. Artists like Ganga Giri, Lost at Last, Brent Lewis, Juno Reactor, Babatunde Olatunji, Byron Metcalf, James Asher, and Afro Celt Sound System are examples of those who are occasionally employed in this area.

Azam Ali, Hans Zimmer, Thomas Newman, Howard Shore, and James Newton Howard are some of the composers whose emotionally evocative soundtrack music can be found in the second hour of the Holotropic Breathwork Music Set. More recently, bands that create music for movie trailers like Two Steps From Hell, Audiomachine, and The Immediate have also been used.

In order to help the listener integrate the experience, the third hour of the Holotropic Breathwork Music Set typically includes some religious chant from performers like Deva Premal, Jai Uttal, and Lama Gyurme. The last song frequently contains natural sounds to aid participants in coming to terms with their journey and re-establishing their connection to the real world.

It takes a lot of work to put the music set together, and there are precise rules to follow so that it complements the Holotropic Breathwork procedure. Several of the rules are: 1) There must be no gaps between songs, and all tracks must be “DJ mixed” (software for this purpose is readily accessible online for less than $75); 2) There may be voices, but no English, French, Italian, or Spanish words may be included in any of the recordings. The tracks should flow as smoothly as possible from one to the other energetically so that there is not a dramatic shift in beats per minute or in volume from one track to the next. Language that a participant understands accesses the left hemisphere, “thinking,” part of the brain and tends to pull him or her out of the Holotropic Breathwork process. Because of this, it occasionally happens while putting together a set that certain tracks sound excellent independently but not so much when combined.

Although the track lists from Holotropic Breathwork Music Sets are typically provided during workshops for the practice, copyright regulations prevent the sale of the actual CDs that make up the music sets.