Non-Ordinary Conversations · Episode 2
John Ablett: The Art of Integration
Dec 6, 2025 - 51 minutes
Guest
John Ablett
John Ablett is a registered social worker and certified holotropic breathwork practitioner. Originally trained as a graphic designer, he worked in a preschool playgroup and as a computer programmer before starting a second career in mental health work. For over 10 years now, he has worked in very ordinary states of consciousness with unhoused people, helping them to live independently.
John's account of integrating his own psychospiritual crisis as a young man, in which he travelled as a barefoot guru, is published in the collection Breaking Open: Finding a Way Through Spiritual Emergency (Aeon Books, 2020). He co-facilitates a regular peer support group for the Spiritual Crisis Network.
John is undertaking training to become an art psychotherapist as a way of supporting others to visually express and integrate deep experiences, and has contributed a chapter on using mandalas for holotropic integration to the edited volume Psychedelics and Psychotherapy: The Healing Potential of Expanded States (Inner Traditions, 2021).
You can see more of John’s work on his website: holotropicmandalas.com
Show notes
In this conversation
In this conversation, John Ablett shares his transformative journey from experiencing a spiritual emergency at age 21 to becoming certified in Holotropic Breathwork, and how mandalas have become central to his ongoing integration process. He explains how his art serves as a spiritual practice, offering a way to process, embody, and make meaning of experiences in holotropic states of consciousness.
John shares several of his mandalas and speaks to the evolving nature of meaning through his art. This conversation highlights the transformative power that artistic expression can play in integration, healing, and self-discovery.
Highlights
- John's spiritual emergency at age 21
- His path to becoming certified in Holotropic Breathwork
- How mandalas became central to his integration process
- Art as a spiritual practice
- John shares several of his mandalas
- How the meaning of an image keeps evolving
“Integration is a process, not an event.”John Ablett
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