Katy Perry credits a $5,350 week-long hippie healing retreat with changing her life through methods like hitting a pillow with a baseball bat and tearing up phone books.
Others who have attended the Hoffman Institute in California, where participants spend thousands of dollars to give up their phones, alcohol, sex and exercise in order to “live more consciously” and break bad behaviors, tell the Post it has helped them, too.
Perry, 39, says following the seven-day Hoffman Process helped her combat depression after her split from Orlando Bloom in 2017. The duo reunited a year later and got engaged in 2019.
“I had a really tough year, and I finally went to Hoffman toward the end of the year that we were separated, and then I had the tools and I spoke the same language, and it changed my life,” she told “Call Her Daddy” podcast host Alex Cooper, revealing that Bloom had also attended the Petaluma retreat when they first started dating.
“It saved my life. Without it, I would be dead. I wouldn’t be on this planet without this process — and meditation,” she said in the interview, describing the process as an “intensive rewiring of your neural pathways” that helped her purge her “negative habits.”
The “Woman’s World” singer — and celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow, Sienna Miller, Oliver Hudson, Hoda Kotb and others — credit the method, which also involves techniques like chopping wood as a way to overcome trauma, with helping them connect more deeply with their authentic selves.
The Hoffman Process was created in 1967 by Bob Hoffman, a New York-born men’s tailor with no formal training in psychology, psychiatry, or psychotherapy.
Hoffman’s teachings focus on love, delving into the emotional history of a client’s parents and how they unconsciously adopted negative traits that he calls “negative love.”
Understanding aims to engender forgiveness and compassion toward the client’s parents or loved ones, fostered by sessions involving cathartic exercises to “break negative behaviors.”
“It starts with awareness of certain patterns and then expression — the idea that these patterns live energetically in our bodies and that it can be helpful to physically say ‘no’ to them, to remove them or to move the energy out,” Dave Kashen, 46, a leadership coach based in Sun Valley, Idaho, who attended the retreat last May, told the Post.
Before the retreat, participants must connect with a series of counselors to complete an “emotional audit,” designed to uncover behavioral patterns and vices that trigger anxiety and “imposter syndrome.”
Participants undergoing the rigorous 12-hour registration process must also uncover childhood trauma and past relationships with parents and guardians that limited their full potential.
Participants and celebrities – who are expected to participate alongside regular guests – then undergo exercises such as guided meditation and journaling, combined with physical activities to eliminate negative feelings of self-worth.
Perry isn’t the only star to say the Hoffman process had a profound impact on her. Miller called the process “terrifying but extraordinary.” And Hudson, 47, said it helped him unlock and resolve feelings of neglect and abandonment he felt as the child of actress Goldie Hawn.
“It’s been an incredible week of awakening. My mom is the one who traumatized me the most, oddly enough, because she was my primary caregiver and I was with her all the time, so I felt unprotected sometimes when she was working and away or when she had new boyfriends that I didn’t really like,” Hudson said on her “Sibling Revelry” podcast in March.
“The forgiveness and compassion you feel for them at the end of this process is incredible, because then you realize they’re just repeating the shit they went through with their parents.”
Still, not everyone is ready to take the plunge. Justin Bieber came out of retirement, telling Vogue in 2019 that he wasn’t prepared for the process.
Kashen recalled to the Post literally banishing intrusive thoughts like “I’m not good enough” and “I’m too sensitive” when he attended the retreat in May 2023. He called it a “heart-opening experience,” but admitted he initially felt “awkward” about participating in some of the more physical workshops.
“You have a pillow and a bat and you want to forcefully say ‘no’ to certain patterns of behavior (that you’re trying to break). You physically say ‘never again!’ It’s very awkward at first. I found that what worked for me was ‘fake it till you make it,'” he said.
“I didn’t feel a lot of anger,” he said. “(But) one of my commitments was to trust the process. After a while of screaming and dealing with my emotions, I went from feeling like I was doing the exercise for fun to feeling like, ‘Wow, this is a really powerful release.’”
Emily, 34, who lives in Los Angeles and works in public relations, chose to attend the Hoffman Institute program in 2022 after a breakup. She learned through the program that she tends to be “overly critical of myself and have low self-esteem,” she said.
“Up until this week, I had two patterns that I blamed on others. Then I identified the parent who gave me that mindset and why that parent adopted it as a child, from their parents. A lot of this stuff is generational, it’s crazy,” she said of the revelation that helped her adopt a new mindset.
She said putting her phone down and hearing news alerts and emails helped her refocus.
“We all joked that the world might end and we would have no idea. The Queen died while I was there and I didn’t find out until a few days later. By the end of the week, no one would even pick up their phone. The internet, social media and all the noise we consume every day from the palm of our hands seemed overwhelming and insignificant.
“It completely changed my life,” she said.
However, some East Coasters, less familiar with California’s holistic healing industry, can’t afford to spend more than $5,000 to chop wood and scream their feelings.
Megan P, 37, of Hoboken, New Jersey, told the Post: “Why should I waste $5,350 on releasing trauma to be ‘trendy’ when I can release trauma in the woods of my own backyard doing yard work in my cabin?” Megan told the Post.
“One week won’t be enough. This looks like a real hippie gimmick.”
New York Post
