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As I had already known the holotropic breathwork that is a technique developed by Stan and Christina Grof and having myself been submitted regularly to it I was going through very deep personal transformation and besides that I was also taking part of a Grof Personal Training.

So after 1997 I started to develop a closer contact with Stan Grof having with him not only frequent conversation, but also learning more about how to live my internal self discovery process. I became one of his facilitators that worked with him in many occasions. I also did the coordination of many of his works being able to listen to him, exchange ideas, walk around with him and also have fun together. So I sense that I am able to express a little bit of my feelings, of what I learned from him, the ideas we exchanged and also all the knowledge I keep still learning from this humble, loyal, brave, loving, perceptive inquirer and an observer with a very good sense of humor.

Those who start to keep pace with him based on more than 40 years of research on nonordinary state of consciousness are going to initiate the safest journey of self-discovering I am aware of. All his work lays upon practical experience which means that it must be lived to be processed, elaborated and comprehended but the most important thing is that his work is structured and developed in special set and setting according to ethical agreements followed by the professional teams trained by him.

So what is this special set and setting? The set is how we arrange the environment to be used by the client. This environment is prepared in a very careful way as for the client to feel secure, confident and capable of devoting himself to his or hers personal inner process. The setting is the contest offered to the client which means and environment where the professionals working at it create an atmosphere of respect where the participants are encouraged with a great amount of support to live their inner experiences without judgment or criticism.

The phase called integration is vital and essential to the holotropic breathwork therapy which can be done with the help of art therapy, self-expressive drawings (mandalas), Dora Kalff's sandplay, dance, sculpture, oral and writing description of the experience and others. It would be worthless to live experiences of expansion of consciousness if the participants were not able to integrate them and meaning of them to their actual life.

After all this years of clinical research with over 4000 registered cases of clients treated with LSD (most of them in lab controlled conditions) and over 20000 sessions of holotropic breathwork leaded with thousands of people around all continents of this planet *, Stan Grof has been publishing the results of his modern consciousness research in his 16 books, translated to many languages. They raised deep and serious implications to Psychiatry, Psychology and Psychotherapy identifying in a comprehensive and systematic way the areas that demand a profound revision of those theories suggesting the direction and the nature of necessary changes. This revision of basic ideas on consciousness and human psyche suggested by Stan Grof would implement new approaches in our way of thinking including different categories such as: the nature of human psyche, the dimensions of consciousness, the nature and architecture of emotional and psychosomatic disorders, the effective therapeutic mechanisms, strategies of psychotherapy and self exploration and the role of spirituality in human life as well as the nature of reality - psyche, cosmos and consciousness.

All Grof's work and his participation along with a great number of scientists in introducing a new paradigm which comes to complement the newtonian-cartesian paradigm can be partly found in some of the books of Fritjof Capra like "The Turning Point" and "Uncommon Wisdom - Conversations with Remarkable People". Grof is mentioned and respected by scientists of different fields of knowledge for the depth and scope of action of his ideas. The continuous exclusion and censorship on the dissemination of the results of the modern consciousness research with holotropic states has become the way used by some self-called "scientific" places to keep the monistic and materialistic philosophy in a very "scientificist" process so avoiding to produce true science.

Only when each of us human being is able to follow the path to self-discovery in a very secure and appropriate way as Stan proposes in his theory and practice through an internal evolutionary potential, transform and self-healing - only them one can be really sure to understand and perceive the profound meaning of what we really are. Is there a better contribution that anyone may be given to humanity than to indicate and to give all the necessary tools for people to know themselves, to self-transform, to evolve adequately according to moral and ethical principles?

The true knowledge comes from no ordinary state of consciousness levels and Stan's research allows as to reach an internal development and as well as external for those who pursue it with seriousness and in a systematic way carried on by methods that come from humanistic and transpersonal psychology. A deep spiritual and emotional transformation must be necessary through a process of death, rebirth and reintegration of the Ego where the attachment, ignorance and desire are worked out.

At last, we are all in our individual and collective process part of a larger unity permeated by an evolutionary consciousness almost like a cell were the borders of the Universe are arbitraries and each of us is identical with the whole web of existence where we are incapable of doing anything to nature without provoking at the same time something to ourselves as a natural consequence. This consciousness may bring us to a spiritual opening and collectively in the right direction as to allow the survival of our specie.

Through the work I have been developing within myself, in the clinical set as well as in the task of certifying professionals of different fields of knowledge I perceive the importance not only of Grof's written works and the range of his research, but also through the example of his life as a scientist, teacher, friend and human being.

July 1st 2003.

Congratulations Stan for your 72 years of age very well lived and for being a BENEFACTOR OF HUMANITY.

Health, love and peace!

* Data from 1988, "The Adventure of Self-Discovery", by Stanislav Grof, SUNY Press.