Here's the definitive "best press" article on the Nano. 

Looking at the recent changes on Integral Wiki, I saw that someone had entered information, and an essay, on Stanislave Grof and Holotropic BreathWork.

What's funny is all this week, mulling what I am going to write for the Integral Spirituality review, I was thinking a lot about Stan Grof and the perspective he works from. 

I had a class with him, a long time ago, and had read a couple of his books, in particular 'Beyond the Brain'.

At any rate, here's a quick hits take on Grof's research, theory, and practice:

Grof noticed that an individual’s issues are grouped along certain themes. There are common patterns linking one’s emotional issues, physical problems, birth dynamics, and profound universal spiritual questions. Grof calls these threads or chains "systems of condensed experience", or COEX’s for short.
...
Most spectacularly, in Holotropic Breathwork, we can have experiences that touch on several levels of the spectrum at once, or even embrace the entire spectrum. It is common for individuals to have a profound spiritual realization at the same time as a major physical release. In this simultaneous experience, we also become aware that all levels of Being are deeply interwoven.

What always has struck me as different between the Grof conception - based on quite a number of in-session evaluations - and the Wilber conception, was how the "birth material" - images of being born, of fighting to leave the womb - think of this as a person's 1st imprint - was DEEPLY RELATED to the experience of the divine.  In uncovering the "birth material", this also uncovers some of the deepest spiritual truths.

(I hope I am remembering this right - feel free to notify me with a correction if I am not).

From a graphic perspective then, from one view, it can make sense to trace "evolution" on a circle - with experiences of birth, death, and the highest spiritual truths, occupying the same space in terms of human experience.

This is slightly different than Wilber, who posits a type of "Ladder" or "structures of a house" view, where the PRE-normal consciousness experiences, demonstrated by the Piaget stages, are very different than the POST-normal consciousness stages, demonstrated by spiritual truths and experience.

This is one reason why Grof has said that Wilber's model "doesn't mesh with the data", as the interpenetration of regression experience, with then the subsequent healing, doesn't fit will into a house or ladder view.

In my naivete, I have thought both sets of data might fit into a "spiral" view - whereby birth material and profound spiritual material, on the X axis, would be connected - would have "circled back", but on the Y axis, be at a different place in consciousness.

But I'm sure that is pure and silly navel gazing. 

Any other information on the meshing of these two out there?

While we wait for a review about Apple's new IPOD Nano
from Coolmel, I've gone ahead and read a couple of other reviews, so I'll link them here:

Playlist Magazine

Unoffical Apple Weblog

If anyone sees another very informative review, let me know.