Training

PT386 – Vital Psychedelic Conversations

February 2, 2023
Featuring: Kylea Taylor, M.S., LMFT & Shabina Hale

In this episode, David once again interviews a teacher and student from Vital, speaking with Grof-certified Holotropic Breathwork® practitioner, author, and developer of InnerEthics®: Kylea Taylor: M.S., LMFT; and therapist and Lead Consultant of psychological therapists at NEU: Shabina Hale. 

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In this episode, David once again interviews a teacher and student from Vital, speaking with Grof-certified Holotropic Breathwork® practitioner, author, and developer of InnerEthics®: Kylea Taylor: M.S., LMFT; and therapist and Lead Consultant of psychological therapists at NEU: Shabina Hale. 

This Vital Psychedelic Conversation is largely centered around ethics: how practitioners and facilitators define ethics; how InnerEthics® is involved; power dynamics; accountability; how the energy in a session is transferable and can bring up shadow elements for both parties; the need to be honest about one’s own scope of competence; the need for facilitators to have more experience both as a sitter and experiencer; and the very simple but most vital aspect of facilitation: considering how any decision made will affect the person on the psychedelic.    

They also discuss having a code of ethics inspired by Indigenous culture and decades of underground use; how the psychedelic experience is affected by the ways it’s treated by its surrounding culture; how the practitioner becomes a protector; defining what is normal in a psychedelic experience (can you?); informed consent and the importance of explaining how roles will change throughout the process; and what the world would be like if everyone followed the same set of ethics.

Have you seen our commercial for Vital yet? We’re pretty thrilled with how it came out.

 

Notable Quotes

“We’re doing psychedelics in a different culture and a different community. I come from an Asian community that is often more tight knit and more tribal in its way of being, and mental health is seen differently within that community, care for elders is seen differently in that community. And so immediately, you’ve got these different rules and different structures that happen. And psychedelics obviously have come from some of those communities, but we don’t have the same communities anymore. We’re in the West. People will take them [and] they don’t go back to communities. They’re on their own. And that’s really isolating. …How do you keep people safe in some form of community when they go back into a society which is much more individualistic?” -Shabina

“I think it helps to just consider it all normal and not abnormal, because it’s only abnormal in the context of our society and our culture. What happened to Indigenous people in their psychedelic experiences was held; whatever it was was held by the culture, so it was not abnormal. It was normal in the extraordinary state of consciousness, and they assumed that it was healing and worked with it.” -Kylea

“You can see things that may not make sense on the outside, but to that person, on the inside, they really do make sense. And they make sense of it in a way that is far more profound than you could ever interpret or analyze or try and take apart.” -Shabina

“I think if people really find out what is theirs to do and do it, that is so satisfying that all these other things that cause problems for other people disappear.” -Kylea

Links

Kyleataylor.com

Innerethics.com

Holotropic.com

Brainspotting.com

Psychedelics Today: PT290 – Kylea Taylor, M.S., LMFT – Vital Psychedelic Conversations

The Ethics of Caring: Finding Right Relationship With Clients for Profound Transformative Work in Our Professional Healing Relationships, by Kylea Taylor

Neupractice.com

Greencamp.com: Honoring the Legends: Stephen Gaskin and The Farm

Maps.org: MAPS MDMA-Assisted Therapy Code of Ethics

Kylea Taylor 2

In this Episode

Kylea Taylor, M.S., LMFT

Kylea Taylor, M.S., LMFT developed and teaches InnerEthics®, a self-reflective, self-compassionate approach to ethical relationship with clients that she is now teaching in psychedelic psychotherapy trainings. Kylea started studying with Stanislav Grof, M.D. and Christina Grof in 1984 and was certified by them as a Holotropic Breathwork® practitioner in 1990. She worked with Stan Grof and Tav Sparks as a Senior Trainer in the Grof Transpersonal Training throughout the 1990s, and worked for nine years in a residential substance abuse recovery program. She is the author of The Ethics of Caring: Finding Right Relationship with Clients, The Breathwork Experience, Considering Holotropic Breathwork®, and is the editor of Exploring Holotropic Breathwork®.

Shabina Hale

Shabina Hale

Shabina is the Lead Consultant of psychological therapists at NEU. She has over two decades of experience as an individual and sex and relationship therapist. Shabina’s practice expands beyond traditional cognitive or talk therapies. Often, she helps people who have a desire for deeper change beyond the confines of talk therapy. Her work focuses on the brain, body, and nervous system’s innate abilities to heal and change, integrating the latest cutting-edge therapeutic developments, such as Sensorimotor technique, Internal Family Systems and Brainspotting. Shabina approaches each client with warmth, compassion and insight. She is passionate about the intersections of the psyche, consciousness, emotions, eros, and our relationships and attachments with others and ourselves. She is a lifelong researcher and committed reader, continually updating her knowledge and techniques. Neu is founded on her principles of applying evidence-led practices to the development of wellness and relationships. She also always aims to approach therapeutic situations from many angles. Shabina is a keen but amateur weaver, a gardener, a tea drinker and a collector of wellness gadgets. She lives in a forest with her family and a menagerie of four-legged furry friends who sometimes make an appearance in therapy sessions.

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