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You folks seem upbeat and sincere, so it pains me to tell you this, but having looked into your site I believe you're being irresponsible (that's the nicest way

You folks seem upbeat and sincere, so it pains me to tell you this, but having looked into your site I believe you're being irresponsible (that's the nicest way I can say it.) Yours is not the first crew to do this. It's got a bit of a long history here in the SF Bay Area, going back at least to Leonard Orr in the 1970's, who believed he was on the trail of physical immortality.[1] I was looking up Grof's "Holotropic" breathing, but WP now just redirects to "Breathwork" which actually lists the big names, including W. Reich and Orr: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breathwork https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breathwork (It's written by skeptics with the usual obvious BS: E.g. > Derived from various spiritual and pre-scientific traditions from around the world, it was pioneered in the West by Wilhelm Reich. Reich didn't derive anything from any "spiritual and pre-scientific traditions". He was a scientific genius, one of Freud's contemporaries before he was driven out of Vienna for saying folks would be less uptight if they had healthier sex lives. His discoveries around what he called "Character Armor" have yet to be appreciated in mainstream psychology. He is one of the few Western researchers to independently discover "Chi" energy. He did some amazing research and then went insane, died in prison, and had his papers burned by the FDA. True story.) Anyway, y'all are just "selling air": teaching folks to hyperventilate, to pop music, in their own homes, where they are on their own if any adverse effect occur, and then you use that as a convincer to get people to give you $40/mo. I have to side with the skeptics here: you don't know what you're doing, the breathing techniques you appear to be teaching can have adverse side effects, you're misrepresenting it as some sort of intro meditation for beginners (the very people who need MORE individual time and attention from their Guru) which it is not, and you are putting yourselves in the position of Guru without taking on the responsibility or having the qualifications (by your own admission.) This is all bad, and you should probably stop. [1] He used to say, "Physical immortality: the only cause you can't die for!" and "I made my first million dollars selling air." For more about Orr and his "Rebirthing" breathwork see: => https://ibfbreathwork.org/7715/ https://ibfbreathwork.org/7715/ "Tribute to Leonard Orr"

aliabramovitz 6y ago
Thank you so much for the honest feedback. There has been some great research around the nervous system health benefits of the kind of breathing we do (the 3 part breath) in this book:https://www.mrjamesnestor.com/breath https://www.mrjamesnestor.com/breath -- check out the section he calls "breathing plus" - essentially what it does is stimulate the vagus nerve which allows us to more actively control our autonomic nervous system. We also use other breath techniques like boxed breathing and breathing with longer exhales than inhales which calms the nervous system: https://www.healthline.com/health/box-breathing#tips-for-beginners https://www.healthline.com/health/box-breathing#tips-for-beg... https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-athletes-way/201905/longer-exhalations-are-easy-way-hack-your-vagus-nerve https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-athletes-way/201... You are completely right that we must take incredibly seriously the space we are holding for our community when we engage in this practice. All of our teachers are trained by professionals, including trauma informed training from professionals at UCSF. We always make sure the customer is empowered to stay in a zone that feels comfortable to them. Additionally, when we breathe in this way we are doing similar things to the body as we do with cardio exercise, so it's generally totally safe and the physical sensations of the breath subside when you stop the pattern. Of course we are not doctors so we recommend, in the same way that any gym or physical exercise solution does, that you should consult your doctor before engaging in cardio vascular work.
- carapace 6y ago
  First, thank you very much for taking my criticism so well. I did my best not to be harsh but I know I could have done better. I'm sorry. Second, I'm gratified to learn that you're not teaching the more potent forms of breathwork. That makes me walk back a lot of what I said above. I apologize for jumping to that conclusion from a superficial reading of your page and what you said above. > All of our teachers are trained by professionals, including trauma informed training from professionals at UCSF. We always make sure the customer is empowered to stay in a zone that feels comfortable to them. Additionally, when we breathe in this way we are doing similar things to the body as we do with cardio exercise, so it's generally totally safe and the physical sensations of the breath subside when you stop the pattern. Of course we are not doctors so we recommend, in the same way that any gym or physical exercise solution does, that you should consult your doctor before engaging in cardio vascular work. Ah, well, shut my mouth. :) As you say, that doesn't sound any worse than e.g. those indoor climbing gyms, eh? (Why not put the grippy things on a big cylinder suspended over a ball pit and slowly rotate the cylinder? Much safer and more fun than climbing up and down, no?) Still, there's a little bit of the "blind leading the blind" if you're teaching homemade techniques without a depth of experience (as in decades of experience.) There are good reasons why Guru and Lineage figure large in the structure of traditional methods of transmission, beyond just the economic obligations. (One invisible problem in the West is that we have almost no modern tradition to fit this sort of knowledge into our society. I.e. Venkataraman Iyer would have died homeless on the street somewhere if he had lived in the USA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramana_Maharshi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramana_Maharshi ) To put it in concrete terms, are you going to know what to do if one of your students has some sort of abreaction[1] with your methods, as mild as they may be? I've seen a lot of weird stuff go down out there in the wild, among the bush psychologists and street shamans, and while it mostly turns out okay, I've had friends become shattered shambling homeless madmen. Good luck and God bless. :) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abreaction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abreaction > a psychoanalytical term for reliving an experience to purge it of its emotional excesses—a type of catharsis. Sometimes it is a method of becoming conscious of repressed traumatic events.
dang 6y ago
Come now, I love that you know about all this stuff and as someone who used to order Esalen catalogs as a teenager, I share your fascination with it—but this is an extreme stretch. These guys aren't doing orgone therapy, rebirthings, or (heaven help us) immortality. Also, it's a category error to conflate Wilhelm Reich, Leonard Orr, and Stan Grof. Those are three completely different figures. Totally agree about the fascination of Reich, though—he is unsummarizable.
- aliabramovitz 6y ago
  appreciate your comments! (not that we mind the above discourse) - but you are totally right that we are doing VERY different things from the intense breathwork (e.g. rebirthings, Gof, etc) you noted. A big reason we created Chorus was because those forms of breathwork were too intense for us, and certainly too intense to do more than, say every 3 months. So Chorus is a much more approachable and dialed down practice that you can do to unlock a daily mindfulness habit.
- carapace 6y ago
  > Come now, I love that you know about all this stuff and as someone who used to order Esalen catalogs as a teenager, I share your fascination with it—but this is an extreme stretch. These guys aren't doing orgone therapy, rebirthings, or (heaven help us) immortality. Yeah, I think I overreacted. I've had friends who lost their minds doing weird things in irresponsible ways and I think I pattern-matched badly here. > it's a category error to conflate Wilhelm Reich, Leonard Orr, and Stan Grof. I agree! I hope it didn't sound like I was doing that. I think the Wikipedia article does that, and it's ...um, not as accurate as it should be, to say it nicely. FWIW, it seems to me that Reich must have injured himself somehow when he tried using his "orgone" device on a radioactive sample. Before that he was a scientific genius, and then, almost from that moment, he seems to descend into madness, fighting with UFOs and the FDA.
  - dang 6y ago
    I can't resist going further offtopic! Apologies to the thread. > Before that he was a scientific genius, and then, almost from that moment, he seems to descend into madness I'm not sure. With Reich, everyone picks the point at which they get off the train—almost no one is willing to ride all the way to the end with him. But people pick different points at which to bail. For some it is when he broke with Freud around the libido theory (no one cares about that any more but it was a big deal at the time). For some it is when he went into radical politics. For some it is his advocacy for adolescent sexuality—there his views (though still radical) no longer seem nearly as extreme as they used to—but it is society that changed, not Reich. For a long time that was by far the biggest black mark against him in public. For some, it is when he broke the taboo against touch in psychotherapy. That one's hard to appreciate now because in retrospect, it was a breakthrough, leading to all the somatic therapies that came later, including the trauma work that is currently fashionable. For most people nowadays, the breaking point with Reich is when he claims to discover orgone energy—that's what splits him off from the current mainstream. In this view, Reich is a genius when he invents body-oriented psychotherapy and analyzes the psychology of fascism, but goes mad when he starts doing laboratory science and making grandiose claims in biology and physics. Then there are some who stick with Reich through that, but when he starts manipulating weather with his cloudbuster (dramatized by Kate Bush! [1]), that's too much—that's when he becomes a nut. A few stick with him even past that, but when he starts going on about UFOs, they're out. There are even a few diehards who can handle Reich all the way through the UFOs but feel like he loses it when defending himself at trial. It's like a customer retention funnel! My point is that "He was ok up to $X but went crazy at $Y" has always been the template of responses to Reich. How we fill in $X and $Y probably says more about us than it does about him. I hadn't heard the radiation theory before, though—that's an interesting one. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pllRW9wETzw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pllRW9wETzw - with Donald Sutherland playing Reich!
mwetzler 6y ago
Criticism has its place, and some of your concerns may be helpful, but "you don't know what you're doing" and "this is all bad" are simply rude judgments. I don't see the point in accusing the team of "selling air". Would you accuse a trainer of "selling movement" or a coach of "selling words"?? Breath is a fundamental component of the human experience that affects our mood, health, and everyday experience. Learning how your breath affects your experience is valuable just like any other physical activity (yoga, running, meditation, exercise). There is also a spiritual component to introspective practices like meditation which can be quite valuable. For some people, it's definitely worth paying for these things. If you're only comfortable with gurus doing this work, what would a guru need to be "qualified"?
- carapace 6y ago
  As Gurdjieff said, "there are many delicate parts in there, which cannot be gotten from any repair shop". To be qualified as a Guru you should know how not to break your students, and how to fix them if they break or come to you already broken, to the extent that that is possible. To teach people how to ignite themselves without a fire extinguisher handy is not wise?

aliabramovitz 6y ago

Thank you so much for the honest feedback. There has been some great research around the nervous system health benefits of the kind of breathing we do (the 3 part breath) in this book:https://www.mrjamesnestor.com/breath https://www.mrjamesnestor.com/breath -- check out the section he calls "breathing plus" - essentially what it does is stimulate the vagus nerve which allows us to more actively control our autonomic nervous system. We also use other breath techniques like boxed breathing and breathing with longer exhales than inhales which calms the nervous system: https://www.healthline.com/health/box-breathing#tips-for-beginners https://www.healthline.com/health/box-breathing#tips-for-beg... https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-athletes-way/201905/longer-exhalations-are-easy-way-hack-your-vagus-nerve https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-athletes-way/201... You are completely right that we must take incredibly seriously the space we are holding for our community when we engage in this practice. All of our teachers are trained by professionals, including trauma informed training from professionals at UCSF. We always make sure the customer is empowered to stay in a zone that feels comfortable to them. Additionally, when we breathe in this way we are doing similar things to the body as we do with cardio exercise, so it's generally totally safe and the physical sensations of the breath subside when you stop the pattern. Of course we are not doctors so we recommend, in the same way that any gym or physical exercise solution does, that you should consult your doctor before engaging in cardio vascular work.

carapace 6y ago
First, thank you very much for taking my criticism so well. I did my best not to be harsh but I know I could have done better. I'm sorry. Second, I'm gratified to learn that you're not teaching the more potent forms of breathwork. That makes me walk back a lot of what I said above. I apologize for jumping to that conclusion from a superficial reading of your page and what you said above. > All of our teachers are trained by professionals, including trauma informed training from professionals at UCSF. We always make sure the customer is empowered to stay in a zone that feels comfortable to them. Additionally, when we breathe in this way we are doing similar things to the body as we do with cardio exercise, so it's generally totally safe and the physical sensations of the breath subside when you stop the pattern. Of course we are not doctors so we recommend, in the same way that any gym or physical exercise solution does, that you should consult your doctor before engaging in cardio vascular work. Ah, well, shut my mouth. :) As you say, that doesn't sound any worse than e.g. those indoor climbing gyms, eh? (Why not put the grippy things on a big cylinder suspended over a ball pit and slowly rotate the cylinder? Much safer and more fun than climbing up and down, no?) Still, there's a little bit of the "blind leading the blind" if you're teaching homemade techniques without a depth of experience (as in decades of experience.) There are good reasons why Guru and Lineage figure large in the structure of traditional methods of transmission, beyond just the economic obligations. (One invisible problem in the West is that we have almost no modern tradition to fit this sort of knowledge into our society. I.e. Venkataraman Iyer would have died homeless on the street somewhere if he had lived in the USA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramana_Maharshi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramana_Maharshi ) To put it in concrete terms, are you going to know what to do if one of your students has some sort of abreaction[1] with your methods, as mild as they may be? I've seen a lot of weird stuff go down out there in the wild, among the bush psychologists and street shamans, and while it mostly turns out okay, I've had friends become shattered shambling homeless madmen. Good luck and God bless. :) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abreaction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abreaction > a psychoanalytical term for reliving an experience to purge it of its emotional excesses—a type of catharsis. Sometimes it is a method of becoming conscious of repressed traumatic events.

dang 6y ago

Come now, I love that you know about all this stuff and as someone who used to order Esalen catalogs as a teenager, I share your fascination with it—but this is an extreme stretch. These guys aren't doing orgone therapy, rebirthings, or (heaven help us) immortality. Also, it's a category error to conflate Wilhelm Reich, Leonard Orr, and Stan Grof. Those are three completely different figures. Totally agree about the fascination of Reich, though—he is unsummarizable.

aliabramovitz 6y ago
appreciate your comments! (not that we mind the above discourse) - but you are totally right that we are doing VERY different things from the intense breathwork (e.g. rebirthings, Gof, etc) you noted. A big reason we created Chorus was because those forms of breathwork were too intense for us, and certainly too intense to do more than, say every 3 months. So Chorus is a much more approachable and dialed down practice that you can do to unlock a daily mindfulness habit.
carapace 6y ago
> Come now, I love that you know about all this stuff and as someone who used to order Esalen catalogs as a teenager, I share your fascination with it—but this is an extreme stretch. These guys aren't doing orgone therapy, rebirthings, or (heaven help us) immortality. Yeah, I think I overreacted. I've had friends who lost their minds doing weird things in irresponsible ways and I think I pattern-matched badly here. > it's a category error to conflate Wilhelm Reich, Leonard Orr, and Stan Grof. I agree! I hope it didn't sound like I was doing that. I think the Wikipedia article does that, and it's ...um, not as accurate as it should be, to say it nicely. FWIW, it seems to me that Reich must have injured himself somehow when he tried using his "orgone" device on a radioactive sample. Before that he was a scientific genius, and then, almost from that moment, he seems to descend into madness, fighting with UFOs and the FDA.
- dang 6y ago
  I can't resist going further offtopic! Apologies to the thread. > Before that he was a scientific genius, and then, almost from that moment, he seems to descend into madness I'm not sure. With Reich, everyone picks the point at which they get off the train—almost no one is willing to ride all the way to the end with him. But people pick different points at which to bail. For some it is when he broke with Freud around the libido theory (no one cares about that any more but it was a big deal at the time). For some it is when he went into radical politics. For some it is his advocacy for adolescent sexuality—there his views (though still radical) no longer seem nearly as extreme as they used to—but it is society that changed, not Reich. For a long time that was by far the biggest black mark against him in public. For some, it is when he broke the taboo against touch in psychotherapy. That one's hard to appreciate now because in retrospect, it was a breakthrough, leading to all the somatic therapies that came later, including the trauma work that is currently fashionable. For most people nowadays, the breaking point with Reich is when he claims to discover orgone energy—that's what splits him off from the current mainstream. In this view, Reich is a genius when he invents body-oriented psychotherapy and analyzes the psychology of fascism, but goes mad when he starts doing laboratory science and making grandiose claims in biology and physics. Then there are some who stick with Reich through that, but when he starts manipulating weather with his cloudbuster (dramatized by Kate Bush! [1]), that's too much—that's when he becomes a nut. A few stick with him even past that, but when he starts going on about UFOs, they're out. There are even a few diehards who can handle Reich all the way through the UFOs but feel like he loses it when defending himself at trial. It's like a customer retention funnel! My point is that "He was ok up to $X but went crazy at $Y" has always been the template of responses to Reich. How we fill in $X and $Y probably says more about us than it does about him. I hadn't heard the radiation theory before, though—that's an interesting one. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pllRW9wETzw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pllRW9wETzw - with Donald Sutherland playing Reich!

mwetzler 6y ago

Criticism has its place, and some of your concerns may be helpful, but "you don't know what you're doing" and "this is all bad" are simply rude judgments. I don't see the point in accusing the team of "selling air". Would you accuse a trainer of "selling movement" or a coach of "selling words"?? Breath is a fundamental component of the human experience that affects our mood, health, and everyday experience. Learning how your breath affects your experience is valuable just like any other physical activity (yoga, running, meditation, exercise). There is also a spiritual component to introspective practices like meditation which can be quite valuable. For some people, it's definitely worth paying for these things. If you're only comfortable with gurus doing this work, what would a guru need to be "qualified"?

carapace 6y ago
As Gurdjieff said, "there are many delicate parts in there, which cannot be gotten from any repair shop". To be qualified as a Guru you should know how not to break your students, and how to fix them if they break or come to you already broken, to the extent that that is possible. To teach people how to ignite themselves without a fire extinguisher handy is not wise?