Katy Perry credits a week-long, $5,350 hippie healing retreat with changing her life, through which she employed methods such as beating a pillow with a baseball bat and ripping up a phone book.
and other people who've been there Hoffman Institute in California — where participants spend thousands to give up their phones, alcohol, sex and exercise so they can “live more consciously” and break patterns of bad behavior — tell The Post that it helped them, too.
Perry, 39, says the seven-day Hoffman Process helped her fight depression following her breakup with Orlando Bloom in 2017. The two reunited a year later and got engaged in 2019.
“I had a really hard year, and I finally moved to Hoffman at the end of the year that we broke up, and then I got the tools and I spoke the language, and it changed my life,” she told “Call Her Daddy.” Podcast host Alex CooperWhich suggests that Bloom also attended the retreat in Petaluma when they first started dating.
“It saved my life. Without it I would be dead. I wouldn't be on this planet without it — and without meditation,” she said in the interview, describing the process as an “intense rewiring of your neural pathways” that helped her get rid of “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, for helping them overcome trauma and form a deeper connection with their true self.
The Hoffman Process was established in 1967 by New York-born Bob Hoffman, a tailor who had no formal training in psychology, psychiatry, or psychotherapy.
Hoffman's teachings are inspired by love, exploring the emotional history of the client's parents and how they unconsciously adopted negative qualities, resulting in what he termed “negative love”.
This understanding is intended to generate forgiveness and compassion toward the client's parents or loved ones, which is fostered through sessions involving catharsis exercises. 'Break the negative behavior',
“It starts with awareness of certain patterns, then manifestation — the idea that these patterns live energetically in our bodies and that physically saying ‘no’ to them or removing them or moving the energy out can be helpful,” Sun Valley, Idaho-based leadership coach Dave Cashen, 46, who attended the retreat last May, told The Post.
Prior to the retreat, participants will consult with a number of counsellors to undertake an 'emotional audit', aimed at uncovering behavioural patterns and vices that can lead to anxiety and 'imposter syndrome'.
Participants who undergo a rigorous 12-hour enrollment process will also need to uncover childhood trauma and past relationships with parents and caregivers that were limiting their full potential.
The attendees and celebrities — who are to participate alongside average guests — then undergo exercises such as guided meditation and journaling, as well as physical activities to overcome negative feelings of self-worth.
Perry isn't the only star to claim the Hoffman procedure had a profound effect on her. Miller described the process as “terrifying but extraordinary.” And Hudson, 47, said it helped her overcome and resolve feelings of neglect and abandonment she felt as a child of actress Goldie Hawn.
“It's been an incredible week of enlightenment. My mom was the one I was most traumatized about, interestingly she was my primary caregiver and I was with her all the time, so I felt insecure at times when she was at work or out or had new boyfriends that I didn't like,” Hudson said on her podcast “Sibling Revelry” in March.
“The forgiveness and compassion you feel for them at the end of this process is incredible because then you realize they are just repeating what they did to their parents.”
Still, not everyone is ready to dive in. Justin Bieber exited the retreat in 2019, telling Vogue that he wasn’t Be prepared for the process.
Cashen told the Post that she literally crushed intrusive thoughts like “I’m no good” and “I’m too sensitive” from within herself when she attended the retreat in May 2023. She called it a “heart-opening experience,” but confessed she initially felt “awkward” at some of the more physical workshops.
“You have a pillow and a bat and you want to powerfully say ‘no’ to certain behavior patterns [you’re trying to break]He said, “You're physically saying 'No more!' It feels very strange at first. I found what worked for me was 'Keep pretending until you become it'.”
“I didn't get very angry,” he said.[But] One of my commitments was to trust the process. After enough time of screaming and dealing with the emotions that I was doing exercise for the sake of exercise, I realized, 'Wow this is a really powerful release.'”
Emily, 34, a Los Angeles resident who works in public relations — who declined to give her last name to The Post for privacy reasons — enrolled in the Hoffman Institute in 2022 after a breakup. She said she learned through the program that she had patterns of being “overly self-critical and having low self-worth.”
“Up until that week I had two patterns that I outwardly blamed others for. Then I recognized which parent I adopted that mindset from and why that parent adopted that mindset from their parents during their childhood. A lot of these things are generational, it's crazy,” she said of the revelation that helped her adopt a new mindset.
He said giving up his phone and the news alerts and emails it brings helped him feel more stable.
“We all used to joke that the world could end and we wouldn’t have a clue – the Queen died while I was there and I found out several days later. When the week ended, no one wanted to get their phone back – the internet, social media and all the noise we hear from the palm of our hands every day felt overwhelming and trivial.
“It has completely changed my life,” he said.
However, some East Coasters, less familiar with California's holistic healing industry, don't mind spending upwards of $5,000 to chop wood and scream about their feelings.
“Why would I waste $5,350 to be ‘on trend’ when I can release trauma in the woods of my backyard by doing yard work at my cabin?” Megan P., 37, of Hoboken, New Jersey, told The Post.
“One week won't do – it really sounds like a hippie gimmick to me.”
