Vicky Nicholson has accompanied people into the deep territory of their own psyche for more than twenty years. She directs Grof Transpersonal Training in Australia, leads retreats in Tasmania and holds workshops across the country.
Vicky lives and works on the lands of the muwinina and palawa peoples of lutruwita / Tasmania, and gathers people on Aboriginal land wherever she travels. She acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of Country, their enduring wisdom and culture, and pays her respects to Elders past and present.
“I am particularly moved and filled with gratitude to be allowed to be a witness to people's deep journey work as they venture into their soul, as I myself have been witnessed and supported by others on my own journey.”Vicky Nicholson, Circle of Advisors, Grof Transpersonal Training
Vicky's life has been shaped by two passions that turned out to be one: Holotropic Breathwork and education.
She has worked on staff at Grof Transpersonal Training (GTT) modules since 2005, in Australia and the United States, and now coordinates and directs the Australian training program. She sits on GTT's Circle of Advisors, leads five-day modules in Tasmania and the US, and in 2023 oversaw the inaugural Australian certification of Holotropic Breathwork facilitators.
Alongside the breathwork, Vicky is an educator in Tasmania who has worked alongside Aboriginal people to support teachers and students, with a particular commitment to improving outcomes for Aboriginal children. Her doctoral research, Questions of knowing and pedagogic relationship, examined the relationship between effective teaching and how we come to know ourselves. It is the same question she brings to the breathwork room.
What interests her most is living the holotropic paradigm, Stan Grof's idea of the psyche moving towards wholeness, as a daily practice in ordinary life: in classrooms, in community and in the quiet work of sitting with another person.
Weekend and one-day workshops in Hobart, Sydney, Melbourne and the Adelaide Hills, and five-day residential retreats in the Tasmanian highlands.
Director of GTT Australia. Teaches the Grof training curriculum, from Holotropic music and group work to COEX systems and spiritual emergency.
PhD in pedagogy. Decades in Tasmanian education, working with Aboriginal communities on what it means to teach, and to know, well.
Holotropic means “moving towards wholeness”, from the Greek holos and trepein. The practice was developed by Dr Stanislav Grof and Christina Grof as a way of reaching non-ordinary states of consciousness without substances, using only the breath, music and the body's own wisdom.
In a session you lie down, close your eyes and breathe a little deeper and faster than usual while an evocative music set carries you through a three-part arc. What arises is not directed by the facilitator. The holotropic model trusts an inner healer: the psyche's own capacity to bring forward whatever is ready to be met, whether memory, emotion, body sensation, image or something beyond the personal.
You always work in pairs. For one session you are the breather; for the next you are the sitter, present and attentive for your partner. Afterwards the work moves into integration: a mandala or artwork, a journal, a sharing circle. Preparation, session and integration are each treated as essential.
Sustained, connected breath that gently loosens the usual boundaries of awareness.
A carefully built set that opens, deepens and resolves, drawn from traditions across the world.
Where the body asks for it, supportive bodywork helps complete what the session has opened.
Art, journaling and the closing circle turn an experience into something that can be lived.
Vicky's double-breathwork weekends follow a rhythm refined over hundreds of groups. No prior experience is needed, and the workshops are open to anyone ready to do deep personal work.
Each person breathes twice and sits twice across the weekend. The days are long and full, running from about half past eight in the morning until early evening, and the group holds a shared sacred space for the duration.
Meet the group, hear a recap of the practice, and work out breathing partners.
Half the room breathes, half sits. Then art and journaling to begin integration.
Bring your own. Tea, coffee, fruit and snacks are provided through the day.
Partners swap roles. Mandala drawing follows.
An opportunity to share what moved in the session, with no obligation to speak.
The pattern repeats, often reaching deeper on the second day, and closes with a final circle.
Places are limited in every group. Email Vicky to receive the registration paperwork.
A double, non-residential weekend with Vicky Nicholson and Lila Pesa. Four sessions: two as breather, two as sitter, with integration art and sharing circles each day.
Event details ↗Two days of Holotropic Breathwork in the Hills: deeper and accelerated breathing, evocative music, release work and integration, in a retreat setting.
Event details ↗A GTT module with Cary Sparks, Vicky Nicholson and staff. Two breathwork sessions as breather and two as sitter, with art, music, SoulCollage® and integration. Open to anyone; counts towards certification.
Event details ↗Regular Hobart weekends are announced through Vicky's mailing list. Ask to be added.
Vicky is the head of training for Grof Transpersonal Training in Australia. If you are drawn to the work, she is the person to talk to.
Certification follows the international GTT pathway: a sequence of six-day modules, documented breathwork hours, apprenticeship and a certification intensive. The Australian modules are held in Tasmania, at venues such as Poatina Village and Tarraleah, and the first cohort was certified on home soil in October 2023.
Modules are open events. Many people attend for their own journey with no intention of facilitating, and every module welcomes first-time breathers.
Attend a weekend workshop. Two-day workshops count towards the required breathwork hours outside of modules.
Themes have included The Power Within, Music and Transcendence, Spiritual Emergency, Jung and Alchemy, and The Expanded Self.
Staff in workshops alongside certified facilitators, learning group work, music sets and focused release work from the inside.
Complete the intensive and join a worldwide community of practitioners trained in the Grof lineage.
From a community hall under kunanyi to the ski valleys of New Mexico, Vicky has carried the work wherever people were ready for it.
Joins the staff of Grof Transpersonal Training modules in Australia and the United States.
Hosts Tav Sparks in Tasmania for The Power Within, the foundational practice module.
Leads Music and Transcendence at Taos Ski Valley, and a six-day intensive on the holotropic paradigm in the heart of Tasmania.
Keeps the Hobart community breathing through the pandemic with quarterly weekends at Fern Tree, and runs the in-person sessions that completed GTT's virtual modules.
Celtic Shamanism and The Power Within modules in Tasmania; Hobart double weekends; the inaugural Australian certification in October 2023.
Spiritual Emergency training in Sydney; Music and Transcendence at Poatina; workshops in Sydney, Melbourne and the Adelaide Hills.
Sydney in November; Riverdell in January; The Expanded Self with Cary Sparks at Tarraleah in May.
Vicky offers individual consultations for people preparing for their first workshop, integrating a powerful experience, or navigating an unexpected opening that has become hard to hold. Understanding spiritual emergency is one of the lasting contributions of the holotropic perspective, and she teaches it within the GTT curriculum.
Enquire about a consultationNo. Weekend workshops and modules are open to anyone interested in deep personal work. You will be partnered with care, and the opening circle covers everything you need.
Holotropic Breathwork is intense and some conditions, including cardiovascular problems, pregnancy, recent surgery and certain psychiatric histories, require a conversation first. Every participant completes a medical form and Vicky is happy to talk through any concerns before you register.
No. Two-day workshops are not training events, though they count towards the breathwork hours required for certification. Training happens through the GTT module pathway.
To be fully present for the breather: to keep them safe, meet simple needs, and otherwise let the process unfold. Many people find sitting as moving as breathing.
For workshop registration, training enquiries or a consultation, email is best. Vicky replies personally.