Dr Ivor Browne- Holotropic Breathwork, St Brendan's hospital, Dublin 1989

RIP to the great irish psychiatrist Dr Ivor Browne.
Ivor Browne was a pioneer of LSD psychedelic-assisted therapy in San Francisco and London in the 1950s.
He also pioneered the therapeutic use of ketamine and holotropic breathwork in the 1980s in Dublin when he was the Chief Psychiatrist at the Eastern Health Board. Dr. Ivor Browne was a maverick and, I would say, a truly great man, in many ways a man before his time.
I had the privilege of getting to know him personally when when he was running a regular meditation group every Tuesday in Dublin City near where I lived. Even though he was in his late 80s or early 90s at the time, his wisdom, compassion and wicked humour radiated when in his presence.
In his book “Ivor Browne, the Psychiatrist: Music and Madness,” he speaks of the concept of trauma stored in the body as ‘the frozen present,’ which involves unprocessed emotions. This concept received very little attention from the psychiatric profession at the time. However, his work paved the way for the later work of Dr. Gabor Mate, Dr Peter Levine and Dr. Bessel Van der Kolk on trauma. In the 1980s, recognising the importance of his work Dr. Stan Grof came to Dublin to collaborate with Dr. Ivor Browne.
In Ireland, we often do not celebrate our own. Today we celebrate Dr Ivor Browne as as truly great man.
Here is a link to a paper he cowrote in 1960 on the therapeutic use of LSD, with Dr Joshua Bierer, the pioneer of social psychiatry in the UK. lnkd.in/epSxTvgK
#ivorbrowne #holotropicbreathwork