This autumn, after a year's delay, the international training in transpersonal psychotherapy called Grof® Legacy Training - Holos started at the Holos Centre in Opava. As the name suggests, the training mainly covers the legacy of Stanislav and Brigitte Grof in the field of transpersonal psychology. They commissioned individual teachers in different countries to create it, resulting in several trainings around the world that are based on this legacy of over 60 years of Stanislav Grof's research on consciousness, but each is also unique due to the personal contributions of the individual teachers and respects the cultural, political and social differences in different countries around the world.
One of the teachers who has been commissioned to lead the Grof® Legacy Training is Milan Hrabánek, who together with his team has created the complex psychotherapeutic training Grof® Legacy Training - Holos and it was launched in autumn 2021. The training in Czech and English is led together with Milan Hrabánek by excellent lecturers from the Czech Republic and the world. The whole training takes place in the premises of the International Transpersonal Centre Holos in Opava-Vlaštovičky, Czech Republic.
The training has important Czech and foreign partners. It is under the auspices of the Dagmar and Václav Havel Foundation VIZE97, which in the past has awarded Stanislav Grof's work with an award of the same name. The American Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) and the Faculty of Regional Development and International Studies of Mendel University in Brno are also partners of the training.
The lecturing team is composed of both Czech and international experts. Among the Czech ones is Jitka Vodňanská, a prominent Czech psychotherapist, who acts as a supervisor of the training. Others are psychotherapist Jan Benda, psychologist Zlata Hálová or anthropologist Miroslav Horák. Among the foreign lecturers, besides Stanislav and Brigitte Grof, the training is enriched by Rick Doblin (USA), Richard Tarnas (USA) and Bernadette Blin (France). The expert guarantor of the training is psychiatrist Paul Grof (Canada).
The training started in two groups - training runs, each group has 24 trainees. The first group is international and runs with simultaneous Czech-English interpretation. In this group there are participants from the USA, Israel, Germany, Poland, Ireland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. The second group is Czech-Slovak. In total, 48 future transpersonal therapists are in training.
Strict rules are set to ensure maximum safety during the COVID-19 pandemic. All participants and all staff must show proof of a negative PCR test performed prior to arrival at each module, including vaccinated persons. This method has proven to be successful in providing a safe environment for the training modules.
Trainees meet for week-long training modules, which include both theory and self-experience, and will also meet for weekend supervision modules at a later stage, for a minimum of three years, which is the duration of the first stage of the training. After completing the first stage of training, they will have the opportunity to perform the Grof® Breathwork technique in self-development seminars, and will have the competence to accompany people at the end of life, to guide people with difficult psychedelic experiences or in psychospiritual crisis. They will, however, be able to continue their studies in the second stage of training, which lasts another two years and together thus constitutes five years of comprehensive psychotherapeutic training. This, if all the requirements are met, will entitle graduates to carry out psychotherapy independently in the direction of transpersonal psychology.
The launch of the training is an important step towards the expansion of work with holotropic states of consciousness in psychotherapeutic practice in the Czech Republic. As the Canadian psychiatrist Paul Grof stated at one of the modules during his selection lecture, for many psychiatric diseases, treatment with holotropic states of consciousness is the only possible way to cure the client. Grof® Legacy Training - Holos will thus bring a new level of mental health care, and not only in the Czech Republic.