I'm in the process of finishing a course through Music for Breathwork on how to construct music sets for Holotropic Breathwork, drawing on close to thirty years of practice with this work and formal training through Grof Transpersonal Training since the mid-2000s. It's aimed at facilitators, so it's not something I'll be publishing here in full. But writing it forced me to put into words something I've mostly just done on instinct for two decades, and it's changed how I think about a few things I do as a therapist too.

The course is about music. But underneath that, it's really about understanding the impact of music on the nervous system, what happens when the music is activating and what happens when it is less so. This is similar to the practices I use in the therapy room, just without the soundtrack.

Music as a regulation tool, not a mood setter

People who haven't sat in a Holotropic Breathwork session often assume the music is there for atmosphere. It isn't. A well-built set does the work that a facilitator's voice can't do alone: it paces a person's physiology. Tempo, density, and dynamics all interact directly with breath, arousal, and how safe a nervous system feels in a given moment.

That's not a metaphor I've borrowed from psychotherapy to make breathwork sound more legitimate. It's the actual mechanism. Rhythmic, predictable sound helps regulate an activated nervous system in a way that's well documented outside of breathwork entirely, in trauma therapy, in early attachment research, in basic physiology. The craft in building a set is in choosing when predictability serves the moment and when a break in the pattern is what actually helps someone move through something stuck. When to shift from music that activates to music that affects to music that resolves and music that releases.

Why this matters for therapy, not just breathwork

I bring the same attention to pacing into individual sessions at Wild Heart Psychotherapy, particularly when working with people processing trauma, grief, or material that surfaces through non-ordinary states, whether that's from a breathwork session, a psychedelic experience, or just a body that's holding more than the conscious mind has caught up with. Importantly this is lead by the same mechanism that leads the process in breathwork - the breather's / client's inner healign mechanism.

A session that moves too fast can overwhelm. One that stays too flat can leave someone circling the same material without ever landing anywhere. Knowing how to shift pace, when to slow down and let something settle, when to let a client sit in discomfort a little longer before offering relief. While we don't create the music for a holotropic Breathwork set on the fly the same principle applies when creating the set.

Why I still run Holotropic Breathwork alongside therapy

This is part of why I've kept facilitating Holotropic Breathwork workshops in Melbourne since 2013 rather than treating it as separate from clinical work. The two inform each other constantly. Breathwork gives me direct, repeated exposure to how people move through intensity without language, which is a harder thing to observe in a fifty-minute talk therapy session. 

If you're curious about the technical side of what goes into building these sets, the Music for Breathwork course goes live in the second half of 2026 and is aimed at facilitators and trainees, including those coming through Grof Transpersonal Training and Grof Legacy Training pathways. I will be spinning off other non-Holotropic breathwork and expanded state practices as well - so watch this space.

If you're looking for support with what breathwork, psychedelic experience, or other non-ordinary states have surfaced for you, that's the work I do one-on-one at Wild Heart Psychotherapy in Brunswick and Lorne. You can read more about breathwork-informed therapy at Wild Heart or get in touch to book a session.