Katy Perry says a week-long, $5,350 hippie healing retreat – which involved smashing pillows with a baseball bat and ripping up phone books – changed her life.
And others too Hoffman Institute Participants in California are spending thousands of dollars to “live more consciously” and break bad patterns by cutting out cell phones, alcohol, sex and exercise, and they told The Washington Post it has worked for them.
Perry, 39, said undergoing the seven-day Hoffman Process helped her battle depression after her split from Orlando Bloom in 2017. The couple rekindled a year later and got engaged in 2019.
“It was a really hard year, and then at the end of the year after the breakup, I finally went to Hoffman and got my gear and we started speaking the same language, and it changed my life,” she said on Call Her Daddy. Podcast host Alex CooperBloom also revealed that she attended a Petaluma retreat at the start of their relationship.
“It saved my life. Without it I would be dead. Without that process, and without meditation, I wouldn't be on this earth,” she said in the interview, describing the process as “an intensive rewiring of neural pathways” that helped her purge “bad habits”.
The “Woman's World” singer, as well as other celebrities such as Gwyneth Paltrow, Sienna Miller, Oliver Hudson and Hoda Kotb, credit the method, which involves techniques such as chopping wood as a way to work through trauma, with helping them achieve a deeper connection with their true selves.
The Hoffman Process was founded in 1967 by Bob Hoffman, a New York-born men's tailor with no formal training in psychology, psychiatry, or psychotherapy.
Hoffman's teachings begin with love and delve into the emotional history of his clients' parents and how they unconsciously acquired negative traits as a result, what he calls “negative love.”
This understanding is aimed at generating forgiveness and compassion for clients’ parents and loved ones through sessions that include cathartic training. “Quit negative behavior”.
“It starts with noticing and expressing certain patterns. The idea is that these patterns live energetically in our bodies and that physically saying 'no' to them or getting rid of them or letting the energy out can be helpful,” Dave Cashen, 46, a leadership coach from Sun Valley, Idaho, who attended the retreat last May, told The Post.
Before the retreat, participants are required to connect with a series of counselors and complete an “emotional audit,” designed to uncover behavioral patterns and bad habits that trigger anxiety and “impostor syndrome.”
Participants, who go through a grueling 12-hour registration process, must also disclose childhood trauma and past relationships with parents or guardians that have limited their potential.
Participants and celebrities have to join in along with regular guests and then go through exercises like guided meditation, journal writing and physical activity to eradicate negative feelings about self-worth.
Perry isn't the only star to claim the Hoffman Process has had a major impact on her: Miller called it “scary but wonderful,” and Hudson, 47, said it helped her release and resolve feelings of neglect and abandonment she felt as a child with actress Goldie Hawn.
“It was an incredibly enlightening week. Interestingly, the person I found most traumatizing was my mother. She was my primary caregiver and I was always with her, so I felt vulnerable when she was away for work or had a new boyfriend that I didn't really like.” “I was like, 'I'm not a racist,'” Hudson said on the “Sibling Revelry” podcast. In March.
“The forgiveness and compassion you feel for them at the end of this process is incredible, because you realize they're just repeating the awful things they went through with their parents.”
Still, not everyone is ready to jump in. Justin Bieber famously walked out of a retreat in 2019, telling Vogue magazine, “I'm not gonna dive anymore.” The process is ready.
Cashen recounted to The Washington Post how he literally stomped away intrusive thoughts like “I'm not good enough” and “I'm too sensitive” when he attended a retreat in May 2023. He called it a “mind-opening experience,” but confessed that he found some of the more physical workshops “awkward” at first.
“I'm taking my pillow and my baseball bat and I'm saying a strong 'no' to some patterns of behavior. [you’re trying to break]”… It's like you're physically saying, 'No more!' It's super awkward at first. I've found that 'fake it till you make it' works for me,” he said.
“I didn't feel much anger,” he said.[But] One thing I committed to was trusting the process. After enough time crying out and dealing with my emotions, I went from feeling like I was exercising for the sake of exercising to feeling like, 'Wow, this is a really powerful release.'”
Emily, 34, who lives in Los Angeles and works in public relations, and who declined to give her last name to The Washington Post to protect her privacy, attended the Hoffman Institute after her breakup in 2022. Through the program, she said she learned she had a pattern of being “overly self-critical and having low self-esteem.”
“Before that week, I had two patterns: Blame outsiders, and then identify which parent I inherited that mindset from and why they inherited that mindset from their parent as a child. A lot of this is generational. It's crazy,” she said of the revelation that helped her embrace a new mindset.
She said letting go of her cell phone and its buzzing notifications of breaking news and emails has helped her live a calmer life.
“We all joked that the world would end and we wouldn't have any idea. The Queen died when I was there and I didn't find out until a few days later. By the end of the week, none of us wanted our phones back. The internet, social media and all the noise we consume out of the palm of our hands every day felt overwhelming and insignificant.
“It truly changed my life,” she said.
But some East Coast residents less familiar with California's holistic healing industry have a hard time quitting spending $5,000 or more to chop firewood and scream their feelings.
“Why waste $5,350 on a 'trendy' therapy when you can actually de-stress in the woods in your own backyard?” Megan P., 37, of Hoboken, New Jersey, told The Washington Post. “Why waste $5,350 on a 'trendy' therapy when you can de-stress in the woods in your own backyard?”
“A week won't do it. Sounds like a real hippie ploy.”
