Music and the Holotropic
by Matt Deneen, Drops & Buds Music Editor, Certified Dreamshadow® Transpersonal Breathwork Facilitator-in-Training
Through time and across many cultures, music has served as a conduit for shamans and healers facilitating rituals and guiding individuals through inner voyages. An important part of ritual and ceremony, music helped the community intensify relationships, process emotions, transition to adulthood through rites of passage, and deepen meaning and purpose in their lives. Shamans and spiritual leaders in indigenous cultures have long recognized music’s power not only to induce exceptional states but also to shift people’s perspectives and connect them to transpersonal dimensions of existence. In modern society, music is used in trance and ecstatic dances, as well as in personal growth journeys across the many genres of music available at the push of a button.
As related to holotropic breathwork, music emerges as a guiding force, weaving through and connecting the intricate landscapes of the mind, body and heart, where the journey into the depths of yourself can evoke profoundly transformative and even transpersonal experiences. It invokes all sorts of emotions, triggers, memories, somatic sensations, dreams and invites movement. Drawing from ancient traditions and contemporary insights, the integration of music into the practice of holotropic breathwork helps enhance the potential for extraordinary experiences. Indeed, breathers seem to ‘ride’ the music, making this part of the journey especially important and evocative.
Breathwork facilitators harness the transformative power of music to evoke exceptional experience. This intensity supports breathers to find their way home deeply within themselves. The combination of this dynamic music, the safe container of the group, and magnified breathing facilitate a potent alchemy that intensifies the present moment. This intensification is what can evoke an exceptional experience deeply from within—a given to human existence and a condition by which we can better understand our own personal relationship with the cosmos..
“Music listened to in altered [exceptional] states of consciousness can bring out things in you that nothing or no one has ever elicited. Many describe the experience as full of insight; others find a healing force; some let the music take them to unexplored provinces of the psyche; while for others it provides a heightened awareness of their ordinary world.”
–“Music and Your Mind: Listening with a New Consciousness” by Helen L. Bonny and Louis M. Savary, 1973.
Music Phases in a session and types of pieces
A concise yet comprehensive summary has been crafted and distilled by Lenny Gibson, PhD, through his experiential and theoretical knowledge collected and honed over his 30 years of work with Dreamshadow. Many of the following concepts and ideas are fully set forth in his paper titled, “Breathwork Music Suggestions” (revised 11 Nov 2021).
The session begins with activating music, and it progresses by gradually increasing in intensity. The culmination of the session happens roughly at the halfway point (Conversion, which is at the hour and half mark or so), at which time the intensity begins to gradually decrease. It is helpful to think of the trajectory of a session in terms of four phases:
- Activation: 40 min
- Crisis: 40 min
- Conversion: 40 min
- Resolution: 60 min
In addition, Jace Langone, PsyD and Dreamshadow Executive Director, suggests that it is useful to have Meditative Music after the Resolution phase, for approximately 60 minutes, to support breathers who are still processing.
Activation
This phase begins with a 5–10-minute warm up song, which then moves to up-tempo music and a driving rhythm to help the breather to activate an exceptional state of consciousness. Good examples of this include African tribal music and other music that utilize the drums as the foundation. It is fast-paced music, with or without vocals which helps the breather activate a holotropic state that may bring physical movement or vocalizations. This phase is shorter than the others given the high energy it evokes from the breather, typically lasting 30-40 minutes, depending on the length of the warm-up song.
Example 1:
Artist: Garmarna
Album: Gods Musicians 2023 Remastered
Song: Min Man/My Husband
Length: 4:20
Example 2:
Artist: Niyaz
Album: Fourth Light
Song: Aurat (Woman)
Length: 4:16
Crisis
Crisis is the second stage of a breathwork playlist. Characterized by more percussive music that builds on discordant themes, often doing so with differing levels of minor chords, this phase can also include indigenous and shamanic music familiar to ancestral group healing and communal process. This phase lasts about 40 minutes.
Example 1:
Artist: Ahouach Argane, Berber Music of Morocco
Album: Tree of the Flying Goats
Song: Setti Fatma
Length: 8:00
Example 2:
Artist: Jean Paul Jarre
Album: Rendez-Vous
Song: Second Rendez-Vous
Length: 10:50
Conversion
This phase is characterized by dramatic, breakthrough music. During this sequence, the breather may spend more time in an inactive physical state and have deep inner explorations and experiences—tied to their own biographical experiences and memories or within the transpersonal realms. The music is slower and more calming, with or without vocals. This phase lasts for roughly 40 minutes.
Example 1:
Artist: Ennio Morricone
Album: The Ennio Morricone Anthology: A Fistful of Film Music
Song: The Untouchables
Length: 3:13
Example 2:
Artist: Escala
Album: Escala
Song: Palladio
Length: 3:55
Resolution
This phase is designed to help breathers resolve any difficult material that may have arisen during the session. There is a slight distinction between Resolution and Conversion phases, with Resolution being calmer and slower. This phase promotes a sense of peace that the participants can rest in, creating a transition of decreasing intensity that allows temporal or hylotropic awareness to succeed a holotropic scope of experience. Jace Langone, PsyD, characterizes this phase as evincing two 30-minute vibes: (1) heart opening, sacred grief & (2) heart opening, meditative sanctuary. Movie soundtracks and solo piano are good examples of this type of music. This phase lasts for roughly 60 minutes.
Example 1:
Artist: Peter Kater, R. Carlos Nakai
Album: How the West Was Lost
Song: Flight Song
Length: 3:40
Example 2:
Artist: Shine
Album: Bond
Song: Big Love Adagio
Length: 4:58
Sample Playlist of all the songs listed above that provides an abbreviated arc of a Dreamshadow Transpersonal Breathwork session:
Things to think about when creating your own playlist:
- Take your time and be thoughtful in selecting the music. Choose pieces that are intense, evocative, and musically first-rate.
- Avoid the conventional.
- World music is ideal. Avoid languages breathers might recognize, as it might bring up pre-existing emotions and associations.
- For the early part of the breathwork session choose music that has a steady rhythm.
- From the first song up to the last section of Resolution, connect the songs so there are no gaps between songs. During Resolution, when getting closer to the end of the session, a gap between songs is a gentle prompt to the participants that the session is ending. Always crossfade until very late in the session. Gaps interrupt emotional progress. They leave participants hanging and waiting.
- Cover a wide range of genres.
- Do not try to direct the breather’s experience; create a program that provides opportunity for each participant to find a personal emotional trajectory.
- Aim to create a “wall of sound” with songs that have a sonic fullness that can absorb participants’ vocalizations and other extraneous sounds.
- Choose music from a variety of cultures.
- Jazz can be tricky to use, because it often elicits rhythmic dance too strongly.
- Movie scores may yield useful pieces, but current ones may be too familiar.
- Avoid pop, elevator, and music generally used for background.
- Short pieces work well in the beginning phases, while longer pieces work better in the final two phases, when pieces 10 or 15 minutes long may be useful. A mix of lengths tends to work best in the Activation through Conversion phase.
- Sequence cuts so that there is some sense of continuity between them. Most importantly, avoid abrupt or jarring transitions within a phase.
Resources for Further Study:
Aldridge, David, and Jörg Fachner. Music Therapy and Addictions. Jessica Kingsley, 2006.
“Atlantis Institute for Consciousness and Music.” Atlantis, atlantisicm.com/. Accessed 23 July 2024.
Bonny, Helen L., and Louis M. Savary. Music and Your Mind: Listening with a New Consciousness. Barcelona Publishers, 2005.
Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. New World Library, 2020.
Gibson, Lenny. “Breathwork Music Suggestions.” Revised November 11, 2021
Grof, Stanislav, and Christina Grof. Holotropic Breathwork: A New Approach to Self-Exploration and Therapy. State University of New York Press, 2023.
Harner, Michael J. The Way of the Shaman. Harper & Row, 1990.
Lett, Steven. “How Music Therapists Helped Build Psychedelic Therapy.” Chacruna, 16 Feb. 2021, chacruna.net/how-music-therapists-helped-build-psychedelic-therapy.
