Immerse yourself in the transformative power of Grof® Breathwork on the flanks of Hualālai volcano.
Our work will be held not only by the breathwork space itself, but also in the power of the ʻāina. This Spring retreat will offer four breathwork experiences, two as a breather and two as a sitter, as well as time to arrive early or stay late, should your travel plans allow, to explore the sun-kissed Kona Coast.
What is Grof® Breathwork?
Grof® Breathwork represents the authentic lineage of holotropic breathwork, authorized by Stan and Brigitte Grof. Born at California’s legendary Esalen Institute in 1974, this powerful modality uses three elegantly simple tools to unlock profound states of awareness: accelerated breathing, evocative music, and focused bodywork.
By activating the unconscious and mobilizing blocked energies, holotropic breathwork creates access to the full spectrum of human experience—from unresolved biographical material and emotional wounds to perinatal memories, death-rebirth sequences, and transpersonal realms that touch the mythological and archetypal.
“Consciousness does not just passively reflect the objective material world, it plays an active role in creating reality itself.”
- Stan Grof
Meet the Team
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GROF® ApprenticeTyler Barrell
Tyler Barrell is a Santa Barbara–based facilitator-in-training devoted to embodied and contemplative practice. He is completing Grof® Breathwork certification and pursuing a Master’s in Clinical Psychology, grounded in yoga, mindfulness, and somatic practice. With experience in management, leadership, and systems-building, Tyler brings curiosity, humility, and steadiness, exploring how breath, courage, and presence can foster personal and collective healing. An avid tennis player, trail runner, and surfer, he and his wife navigate life and learn alongside their three teenagers.
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GROF® ApprenticeElle Luna
BioElle Luna is a designer, painter, and writer — most well known for her 2015 book The Crossroads of Should and Must, translated into over a dozen languages. She previously worked as a designer at IDEO on apps and websites, including MIT, Medium, Mailbox, and Uber, and facilitated the global project #The100DayProject. Her work explores how creativity and conscious breathing can guide us toward our own innate wisdom and wholeness.
“[Stan] developed, with his wife Christina, holotropic breathwork, which allows people to go to … very profound open states using breath. And it mirrored things that I’d learned in monastery in Burma… [Stan and I] worked together, retreats all around the world, and we’d be in a room with 200 or 300 people… Half of the people, 150 lying on their backs on a nice mat and then a sitter next to them. And then the music would start with the instructions, very simple instructions, breathe as deep and fast and hard as you can and keep it going until liftoff, till you go wherever you go… And they were encouraged to go through it and let it all out…And you’d go like, “What is this?” The result of it is that… if you trust the body and psyche and heart and mind to open and you give it the opportunity… and someone’s with you, so you’re not alone, it wants to open and whatever’s unfinished wants to come out… it becomes the doorway to the realms of profound awakening, freedom, and understanding—beautiful things.”
- Jack Kornfield, on the Tim Ferriss podcast
