AHBI Advisory Board

Chris Bache is an award-winning professor, Director of Transformative Learning at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, and author of Lifecycles and Dark Night, Early Dawn in which he explores the interplay of deep inner work and collective social transformation. As humanity enters the dark night of our collective soul, the magnitude of the crisis confronting us and the fractal dynamics of consciousness seem to be opening new possibilities for leveraging social change through work in deep states of consciousness.

Christina Grof is an author, teacher, artist, psychotherapist, founder of the Spiritual Emergence Network, and co-creator of Holotropic Breathwork. She is past-president of Grof Transpersonal Training, vice-president emeritus of the International Transpersonal Association (ITA), and an advisor to the board of the Spiritual Emergence Network. For almost thirty years, she has been active in the field of Transpersonal Psychology, which includes the spiritual aspects of human nature, as well as the emotional, mental, physical, and social aspects, as essential to a full understanding of the whole person. She received an honorary Ph.D from Wisdon University in June of 2008. An interview with Christina about this honor, about her personal story, and about her co-development of Holotropic Breathwork is available in the August 2008 issue of the Inner Door that you can find in our Beta version Inner Door Archive,. An article about Christina's astrological birth chart is in development and will be posted here when it is completed.

Stanislav Grof, MD, PhD is a psychiatrist with over forty years experience of research into non-ordinary states of consciousness (induced by psychedelic substances and various non-drug techniques) and one of the founders and chief theoreticians of transpersonal psychology.

His web site is at www.stanislavgrof.com.

He is the founder of the International Transpersonal Association (ITA) and its past and current president. In this role, he has organized large international conferences in the United States, the former Czechoslovakia, India, Australia, and Brazil. At present, he lives in Mill Valley, California, conducting training seminars for professionals in Holotropic Breathwork and transpersonal psychology and writing books. He is also Professor of Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) in San Francisco and at the Pacifica Graduate School in Santa Barbara and gives lectures and seminars worldwide. In 1993, he received an Honorary Award from the Association for Transpersonal Psychology (ATP) for major contributions to and development of the field of transpersonal psychology given at the occasion of the 25th Anniversary Convocation held at Asilomar, California. In 2007 Stan was awarded the prestigious Vision 97 award from the Dagmar and Vaclav Havel Foundation for his pioneering work on the frontiers of human consciousness.

He has published over 140 articles in professional journals, as well as 17 books which have been translated into German, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Russian, Czech, Polish, Bulgarian, Greek, Turkish, Japanese, and Chinese.

Kylea Taylor, M.S., M.F.T. was one of the three initial incorporators of AHBI and has served on AHBI's Board's Executive Committee from that time on. She was Editor of its newsletter, The Inner Door, from 1991 until her retirement from day-to-day involvement in AHBI at the end of 2006. She also worked on all of AHBI's past conferences and spearheaded the project to complete AHBI's website renovation. She is the author of The Breathwork Experience (published also in Italian and Spanish) and The Ethics of Caring(Hilfe fur die Helfer in German), The Holotropic Breathwork Workshop Manual, and she is the editor of the recently published AHBI anthology, Exploring Holotropic Breathwork. Taylor started studying with Stan Grof in 1984 and has been a staff trainer for the Grof Transpersonal Training, Mill Valley, CA since 1993. For 11 years she did monthly public Holotropic Breathwork workshops in Santa Cruz, CA, where she has a private therapy and consulting practice. Kylea is a California licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (MFC# 34901) in private practice in Santa Cruz, CA.

Jack Kornfield trained as a Buddhist monk in the monasteries of Thailand, India, and Burma. He is one of the key teachers to introduce Buddhist mindfulness practice to the West. He is a founding teacher of the Insight Meditation Society and Spirit Rock Center and has taught meditation internationally since 1974. For many years he has led periodic week-long "Insight and Opening" retreats combining Buddhist mediation practices and Holotropic Breathwork with Stan Grof. He holds a PhD in clinical psychology, and is a husband and father. His books include A Path with Heart; Buddha’s Little Instruction Book; Teachings of the Buddha; Seeking the Heart of Wisdom; Living Dharma; A Still Forest Pool; Stories of the Spirit, Stories of the Heart; After the Ecstasy, the Laundry; and The Art of Forgiveness, Lovingkindness and Peace.

Richard Tarnas, a professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies, founded the graduate program in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness. He is the author of The Passion of the Western Mind, a bestseller and widely used text in universities, and Cosmos and Psyche, which recently won the Book of the Year Prize from the Scientific and Medical Network in England. We are living at the end of an era. The old structures of the world are cracking apart, the moment of creative chaos is upon us, and the drama of our time has become a great question: What new principles, what new structures will emerge to shape our future? Everything is at stake, from the deep ecology of our planetary biosphere to the deep ecology of the human spirit. Richard Tarnas illuminates this challenging moment in our history and provides a larger context for both understanding and action.