This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Christina Grof, together with her husband Stanislav Grof, co-developed Holotropic Breathwork at the Esalen Institute in the mid-1970s, a documented joint origin distinct from a technique developed by one partner alone and only later attributed to both. That development drew in part on her own intense, unassisted non-ordinary experience during childbirth, a documented personal source distinct from a technique built solely from clinical observation of other people's experiences.
She later described that childbirth experience as a spontaneous non-ordinary state of the same kind the breathwork technique was designed to induce, a documented equivalence distinct from a personal episode treated as unrelated to the method she went on to help create. Holotropic Breathwork was designed to induce that kind of state more safely and with support, a documented aim distinct from a method meant only to study such states rather than to occasion them deliberately.
That the technique Christina Grof helped originate at Esalen in the mid-1970s was built in part on her own unassisted non-ordinary experience during childbirth, redesigned to bring on a comparable state more safely and with support, marks Holotropic Breathwork's origin as a documented case where a founder's own unplanned experience became the template for a method meant to make that same kind of state available on purpose.