Eminent podcaster and educator Joe Moore sketches out the world’s psychedelic roadmap, from medical to personal and beyond.
For the past decade, few people in the psychedelic space have had as many conversations about as many topics, trends, issues, and problems as the cofounder and CEO of Psychedelics Today, with its eponymous podcast and educational program, Vital. This evening, the Breckenridge resident peers into his proverbial crystal ball to tell us the future of our favorite medicines.
Joe and Kyle open with reflections from their first r/psychonaut AMA, then pivot to why they’re building Navigators—our off-social community with book/film clubs, early ad-free episodes, mentorship, and an expanding education library. The core discussion explores touch and bodywork in breathwork and psychedelic contexts: why defaulting to “no touch” and moving slowly matters; informed consent; reading nonverbals; and keeping client agency central. They unpack trauma-informed concepts like the window of tolerance, polyvagal‐adjacent ideas (and critiques), and the ethics of avoiding re-traumatization or facilitator-driven interventions (“WAIT: Why am I Talking/Treating/Touching?”). The duo emphasize that bodywork requires specialized training and careful framing—supportive, not performative.
Plus: updates on upcoming offerings—Advanced Shadow Work with Dr. Ido Cohen (starts Oct 20), music for sessions, digital security for practitioners, spiritual emergence, somatics/trauma, and inner-work integration. Join Navigators to learn in community and help shape future conversations.
Joe Moore (00:00:21):
Hi everybody. Joe here. Hope you’re doing great. Kyle, how are you today? Pretty
Kyle Buller (00:00:28):
Good, Joe. And you just wrapped up a [00:00:30] little a MA on Reddit, didn’t you?
Joe Moore (00:00:32):
Yeah, first ever. Reddit a MA. It was really fun. It was Reddit, the head, like half million people in it or so, which is great. Rau, yeah, maybe a little under half million. I don’t really remember the number, but it was cool. It was active. People had me on my toes. It was lovely. It’s
Kyle Buller (00:00:48):
That a lot since, and having to type everything out within an hour.
Joe Moore (00:00:52):
Oh yeah. And I’m trying to be quick and I’m trying to not be too careful and I’m just like, oh, okay. [00:01:00] Some spicy things came out. Clearly. People that don’t like me or my thinking came to the table, but that’s fine. I like that kind of stuff, especially when it’s in an open, fair place for discussion. Yeah, yeah. Cool. So today, oh, actually before we get into our topics, which are going to be like body work, breath work, touch and psychedelic sessions and more, let’s talk about navigators. So you and I just decided we wanted to open up our community [00:01:30] and have a few different paid tiers in there to support the show, support us, and keep us doing this important work. You can find more@psychedelicstoday.com slash navigators, but can you talk a little bit about why it’s important that we’re going this way and starting on online community?
Kyle Buller (00:01:46):
Yeah, I think you have mentioned, I think in the Instagram how community is important and things that we’ve seen over the years is around a lot of people’s eyeballs are on the platforms, all the social media platforms. And then it’s like the algorithms [00:02:00] and something that we faced a couple months ago back in the early summer, and this kind of happened across the board and psychedelics, A lot of people’s accounts were getting shut down, especially through meta. And if our accounts get shut down, we have no way of communicating unless we’re doing newsletters and stuff like that. So we really wanted to try to make a little bit of a pivot away from some of the, just being so social media dominant and start to create more of a platform where we can get [00:02:30] together. We’ll have book clubs, as you mentioned. There’s different tiers. So there’s book clubs. We’ll probably do some film clubs, releases of the podcast early ad free. Also some tiers include all of our education. So if you’re really wanting to dive into some of the education and you could pick that tier. And then some of the highest tier also comes with a lot of mentor one-on-one calls with us as well, and networking and events and stuff [00:03:00] like that. So we really want to just get people together and have conversations and to deepen the community here. But yeah, if you want to add anything as well,
Joe Moore (00:03:09):
Some of the lines, we’re using humanity or people need community, not algorithms. We’re getting so worked over by algorithms right now and I think over the last few months we’ve noticed it even more. And now with the Americanization of TikTok, I’m not following [00:03:30] super closely, but I understand that American interests are now going to control that as opposed to Chinese interests, which is very interesting and is going to have some crazy results. So how do we take more control, have more agency in what we consume for media, and it’s getting away from these big obnoxious platforms that have no accountability other than the shareholders
Kyle Buller (00:03:54):
Or Facebook still shut down. It’s still suspended and we don’t have access to that anymore unfortunately. So [00:04:00] I think that was a big wake up call for us of working in a taboo field where you can easily go against their vague community guidelines and their AI moderation. It’s just zapping account. So we want to create a space where we can just continue to cultivate community and relationship there.
Joe Moore (00:04:20):
You might get a kick out of this. I wrote an article on my substack a while ago called Not Your Keys, not Your Content and Play on the Crypto Line. And the idea is that at any moment, one [00:04:30] of these tech oligarchs can just shut you down. It doesn’t even need to be an oligarch. It could be some mid-level manager or a faceless algorithm
Joe Moore (00:04:38):
That
Joe Moore (00:04:38):
Is just the amount of drugs I see advertised on meta properties for how poorly they’ve treated us who have working on safety and community here. It’s just bonkers, like Iboga gummies and it’s super crazy and not great. And [00:05:00] people don’t buy drugs from social media, please, that’s psychedelics today, 1 0 1. Do not buy drugs on social media. Please,
Kyle Buller (00:05:08):
Please, please. I, I’ve been getting all these advertisements for mushroom grow kits and all these weird mushroom bars on TikTok. I’m like, how are they getting away with selling this stuff on here? When that goes against their community guidelines, it just makes no sense. And then yeah, you put out a video on harm reduction education and safety and it’s flagged and your account gets strikes and stuff like that.
Joe Moore (00:05:30):
[00:05:30] Yeah, here’s how you can ruin your social media, try to help people and help ’em be safe. So anyway, we’re having a lot of trouble with social media. We don’t think that social media is going to be the future for psychedelics. It’s going to be smaller, more private communities. So come join ours if you want to get more time with us, more FaceTime with us, maybe even input on guests we have on the show or questions we ask guests. Yeah, we’re going to have all sorts of stuff there, so please [00:06:00] check it out. The book lists for the book club is going to be really fun. We’ve been working on that a little bit. Kyle and I are working on a couple screenings for films that we can then have film clubs about. It’s going to be a really, really rich community in time, and it already is. We’ve got well over a thousand people I think, already in the platform, which is lovely. Not all of whom are members. So if you want to become a member, people who are already in circle, please do that. We would love that and really appreciate it. [00:06:30] Yeah, maybe that’s it for now. We can circle back to it near the end. Yeah,
Kyle Buller (00:06:33):
Definitely.
Joe Moore (00:06:34):
Cool. So there’s a few interesting threads we want to chat about today. So I want to primarily focus on trauma informed care and body work. There’s a lot of conversation, and this is a little tangential, and then
Kyle Buller (00:06:57):
We just lost you, Joe, your microphone went off, I think. [00:07:00] Let me double check my settings, but I don’t hear you. There you go. Oh, test, test. Yeah, there you go. The joins of going
Joe Moore (00:07:15):
Live with Tech Hiccups. The idea I’m learning is don’t touch your audio interface while you’re live. I was poking at my levels to make sure it wasn’t too hot. So at [00:07:30] the Psychedelics and Pain Association, we’ve talked a lot about how important touch and body work is in relation to treating pain conditions with psychedelics. We actually worked with a lot of people to try to get touch included in the Colorado regulated access program around the NMHA, the Natural Medicines Health Act, and were unsuccessful because regulators weren’t yet comfortable with it. It wasn’t that the data wasn’t there, [00:08:00] it’s just like this feels like something that’s too far for us to touch and psychedelics. It feels scary, so we shouldn’t do it in the pain space. At the very least, it’s quite clear that touch is important. Is
Kyle Buller (00:08:13):
There some data around that?
Joe Moore (00:08:17):
Yeah, I don’t have it offhand. We’d want to bring court in to talk about that. And guys, listeners, sorry, if you want to check out that, just listen to a bunch of episodes that we’ve done with Court Wing in the past. And there’s [00:08:30] a lot of conversations around touch and why it’s important and it’s different kinds of input and it’s different kinds of care in the pain space at least. And then this is touch. I think it’s been really important in our work with breathwork, with Holbrook Breath work, it’s been something that we’ve experienced a lot in Holter breath and we’ve yet to include that kind of stuff in Vital, but it’s something that we think about and [00:09:00] it’s like when is it safe and how is it going to be safe in the future? There’s a lot of questions, so it’s kind of like rewind the tape. So I started seeing people get body work before I ever received body work, and I was like, oh, that’s interesting. That seems to really change things and amplify things. And I was like, I want that because I’m just looking for a really big experience in my early days of breath work. And that looked like one avenue. What was [00:09:30] your exposure when you started seeing body work and breathwork sessions?
Kyle Buller (00:09:35):
Yeah, I kind of jumped in and I was a little hesitant about it. I was always a little hesitant around touch. And I think the first session I had, I had touch, but it also, I wasn’t super, I guess feeling it. I didn’t feel like it was super helpful that first round. But as I started to go back more and I think there was some [00:10:00] of that resistance because I’m like, is this beneficial? But as I started to go deeper into breathwork, I’ve noticed how important it can be for some folks. And I think we always like to say it’s totally optional. People don’t need to engage in the work. But I’ve had a lot of experiences once I started becoming more comfortable with it, that it was really profound to help me resolve things that may have felt stuck in my body. It helped me to deepen [00:10:30] my experience to just go deeper into it. And something I always like to say too is that people can do their own self touch and it’s a totally optional thing in breathwork.
Joe Moore (00:10:55):
Okay, there’s a few things. So if we want [00:11:00] to go into history at a certain point it was clear and it was obvious, and it was like a universal truth that infants didn’t remember harms, babies didn’t remember anything that happened to them. The theory was that the nerves weren’t myelinated enough, there wasn’t enough fatty membrane for nerve signal to really transmit skillfully, and then therefore anesthesia wasn’t required. There was no concern given to the experience [00:11:30] of the person being born. And that came later. And now it’s pretty clear that the experience of birth does matter to people. And the experience of neonatal surgeries or chemotherapies or things, it does matter. The baby remembers and what’s the title of the book? The Body Keeps the score there. That’s like an original insult. And sometimes we’re regressing into these situations where body work can be helpful and is [00:12:00] a really primal input, primal sensory input in terms of maybe evolution of the nervous system that works on us in really deep ways. And we have that classic kind of psychology experiment where they were raising very rudely for that matter, the monkeys and not allowing them access to the mother. And there’s just the terrycloth all and how much that impacted the psychology of the primates. Yeah, breeds crazy amounts of anxiety. So touch matters, touch is [00:12:30] a certain kind of connection that does matter and the body remembers. So there’s these kind of insults and then there’s these kind of omissions.
(00:12:39):
And then bodywork seems to help in a lot of those cases. And I think we’re seeing it in the old school LSD psychotherapy literature. We’re seeing it sometimes at maps, clinical trials. I don’t think most people are trained in how to do body work as part of the clinical trials, so we don’t really see it discussed a lot. [00:13:00] But in hochberg, one of the five main pillars. How do you like to understand what is body work in ho breath work? And Kyle and I are not certified in ho breath work. Kyle is certified in dream shadow transpersonal breath work. I am not certified in anything certified podcaster
Kyle Buller (00:13:22):
Soon, hopefully
Joe Moore (00:13:24):
Soon.
Kyle Buller (00:13:25):
I don’t know. My theories around it have changed a bit over the years. [00:13:30] I think digging into some of my own experiences, thinking about it from more of a trauma-informed somatic perspective, I think when we’re taught that technique, it’s really about the amplification of one’s own inner process and the expression of it, which can be important. Some people sometimes really want that deep catharsis that comes with the bodywork and getting whatever is out of the system. [00:14:00] Sometimes it has nothing to do with that. Sometimes there’s been so many times in sessions where somebody’s like, my hands are still buzzing, right? I still feel like a little bit tingling sensations and just helping support somebody in that process. And they might say, I feel like my hands just really want to push against something. So it’s just being able to allow a little bit of resistance.
(00:14:23):
It could be the facilitator’s hand against, and that person is just pushing against, it could [00:14:30] grab a pillow. You could have other things that somebody could push against, but sometimes that energy just is kind of stuck in the system and wants to move. And there’s been lots of times where there’s nothing emotional there. There’s nothing cathartic. But afterwards people are like, oh, that really helped that tingling sensation, and it really helped just move some of that stuff out of my body. Other times it can be trapped up with the trauma. We talk about these concepts of errors of commission [00:15:00] and errors of omission, errors of omission, things that maybe we didn’t receive. So that form of body work and touch could be something simple as holding somebody’s hand if it feels appropriate and safe and if somebody’s asking for that. And then, yeah, the errors of, what did I say? Errors of commission or things that have happened to us. So maybe it’s an old injury. Sometimes when I’m in breath work, I get a lot of [00:15:30] interesting sensations from where I had my accident, and sometimes that stuff comes up and sometimes I want to work with that feeling in the body. And I think about it also from that stuff is also stored in the fascia and
Joe Moore (00:15:47):
Start
Kyle Buller (00:15:47):
Tapping into these states. Maybe we become more aware of it. And I’ve noticed this a lot through doing physical therapy on a lot of this stuff and how much emotion is still stuck there. [00:16:00] I’ve had dry needling done on the scar tissue and stuff, and just huge amounts of catharsis could come from that. And that’s, I guess I always say typical if you’re going for a physical therapy session and trying to get some sort of physical manipulation. Some people I think are a little bit more in tune with that emotional state, but I realize that stuff is still kind of in me at times and how important it can be to facilitate that. [00:16:30] I had a physical therapist just do some gentle, I don’t know what she was doing, what the technique was, but it was just gentle stuff on the fascia. And I was all of a sudden I felt like I was back in the hospital and dealing with some really deep content from that incident.
(00:16:49):
And I always just find it so fascinating that, and it was the most subtle thing. I could barely feel her hand, but it was just enough to activate something emotionally within me [00:17:00] and allow that kind of catharsis to happen. And it also helped to deepen my perspective on it. It was like, oh, maybe I didn’t get something I was looking for during that time, or maybe I haven’t fully processed that experience and this allowed me to process it in a way. And so I think that’s where it can be important for folks that want to do that type of stuff. And I always like to say, I think it’s really important to give enough [00:17:30] informed consent and the ability to say, no, this stuff is totally optional for folks, but I think it can also help to deepen one’s experience if they’re interested in exploring that. Let’s
Joe Moore (00:17:43):
Talk about how slow this process is. Default is to not do body work
(00:17:49):
In a lot of cases. Totally. I would very much prefer not to touch people, especially deep in the session. So the first indication [00:18:00] generally is that they open their eyes and look around and we go talk to them for a while. And that’s a really slow conversation, long slow conversation to say, oh, what’s going on? What’s happening in your body? How are your hands? What’s going on emotionally? And where are those emotions? And then we’re like, maybe you want to go back in and breathe more. And you’re having quite lucid conversations. It’s not like you’re jumping in, [00:18:30] especially with no conversation whatsoever. Right.
Kyle Buller (00:18:32):
No, not at all. Yeah.
Joe Moore (00:18:34):
Why do you think it’s important to go really slow with these conversations?
Kyle Buller (00:18:38):
Well, it’s developing that safety and trust in the relationship. And also, again, this is, I always try to preface it too, is this isn’t something that we’re trying to do to you in the sense of when we think about body work in the sense of massage or physical therapy, there’s a physical manipulation that’s trying to do something [00:19:00] to the system. There’s a knot in my neck and I need to physically maybe do whatever that is, but I approach it as this is supposed to be a supportive process for what you’re going through. And we’re really just trying to create that container to support your process. And so it is really important to take it slow and see if that is what the person actually wants to do and make sure that they’re back and aware they’re [00:19:30] consenting to it appropriately and making sure that it’s not forceful.
(00:19:35):
It’s like, Hey, we need to do body work on you. This is coming up. It’s like, no, does that person want to explore that? And if they don’t, that’s totally fine. So I always see it as how do we support somebody’s process? And I guess an example could be somebody’s coming out and they’re feeling, again, we’ll just use that example of buzzing in the hands and taking it slow, figuring out what’s going on for [00:20:00] the person, making sure they’re back, they’re lucid and saying, does your experience need anything right now? Do you want to go into anything? Where are you feeling it in their body? And sometimes people know, they’re like, my hands really just want to push against something. Can you help me just do that? And so it’s creating that container for people to explore their own experience. And I approach it as more of a supportive [00:20:30] process and not something that we necessarily need to do in terms of here’s the framework, here’s this. It’s like, what is the person really wanting in this time?
Joe Moore (00:20:45):
And the idea that it needs to be super dramatic is just not a real thing. The idea that it needs to be really painful is not a real thing. If someone was nonverbal, I wouldn’t touch them at all. [00:21:00] Yeah, it’s got to be part of a conversation.
Kyle Buller (00:21:05):
And also looking at body language too. So even if people are talking and something feels like a little off, you’re thinking about how close are you to somebody? Are you giving them enough space? Do they feel like you are trying to do something? It’s like, do you need to back off? So you also really need to be aware of a lot of the nonverbals too, and thinking about [00:21:30] space and how that might be influencing somebody’s experience and all that. So it’s not also just that verbal consent. We got to also look at body language. Sometimes people do come out of experiences and they have a hard time verbalizing, and you can also see that in psychedelics. People just can’t verbalize anything. And that’s where you have to proceed with a lot of caution. And also check in with, yeah, what’s going on right [00:22:00] now? If somebody kind of going in a bit of a freeze state and that’s a sign, maybe we back off, or they are a little bit more hypervigilant and tense. They’re trying to get out of a situation. So you really have to be really mindful and paying attention to everything that’s going on in that situation.
(00:22:27):
And I think as you mentioned too, taking [00:22:30] the option that to not do body work, I always think, how do we actually not do this stuff at times, really allowing the person to want to do that and to express that. But yeah, most of the time it’s really giving that person the agency to want to explore that.
Joe Moore (00:22:53):
And this is us explaining our experience, facilitating breath work sessions, and this is us not, [00:23:00] this is kind of as far as we go, even talking about it in vital. We don’t advise people do body work ever, especially people in our world because that requires a lot of specialized training. It requires all sorts of ethical conversations, agreements, and the legal situation isn’t such that Touch is really safe to do from the provider aspect. [00:23:30] So how does one feel safe doing it? I don’t have the answer. I do think it’s really important. I do know there’s body workers, massage therapists, physical therapists looking at it, but how do you address it in vital?
Kyle Buller (00:23:49):
We don’t really talk about it too much. I mean, when we do talk about it, we talk more about the ethical violations that have happened with touch and to really tell people to [00:24:00] proceed with caution and to not do it if you don’t have any sort of specific training in it. And just really acknowledging how vulnerable people are in certain states. And we always talk about this weight acronym. I don’t know who talk about it first, but why am I talking, why am I treating, why am I touching? There’s probably some other teas that you could throw in there as well. But it really comes back to like, yeah, why [00:24:30] do I want to do this thing right now? And for a lot of people, they might want to do it because it might feel helpful, right? Oh, I want to be a helpful facilitator right now and do this thing.
(00:24:42):
Or I’m getting this intuition that so-and-so might need this. And we always say, wait, who is this actually for? Is this for you or is this for the person? And I think a lot of people will just kind of act on some of those [00:25:00] intuitions, those downloads, or just kind of thinking about, I’m bored and I need to be helpful, right? No, pull back and wait and really take that in. Who is this actually for? Is this for you or is this for the person? Is the person asking for this or is this something that you’re trying to impose on somebody? So I mean, we really talk about it more from that ethical perspective of violations and misconduct that [00:25:30] have happened. And we don’t really encourage people or train people to do any of that stuff, right? It’s very tricky and nuanced and people should receive if they are going to do stuff like that to receive pretty in depth training with it.
Joe Moore (00:25:47):
Absolutely. Yeah. So I want to go back to, you did a really good job not tap dancing, but explaining the energetics around [00:26:00] what’s going on for the experiencer, the person who’s breathing or in the drug experience. And there’s a lot of things that can happen. That’s one of the things about psychedelics. Anything can be happening or even breath work, anything possible. And some people see this kind of world in black and white. Is it the case that when we’re kind of doing these interventions [00:26:30] body work, I think this is a pretty clear no. But are we using touch to amplify sensations of trauma? Is that a hard stop? That’s what we’re doing.
Kyle Buller (00:26:44):
I
Joe Moore (00:26:44):
Think it’s more complicated
Kyle Buller (00:26:45):
Than that. I think it’s more complicated than that. I think there’s times probably some people take that approach and really think about this is the whole purpose of it is to amplify one’s experience. Again, over the years, I’ve been really kind of [00:27:00] just doing a lot of thinking about this framework and this theory, and I’ve taken I think more of a backseat approach to it over the years, incorporating a little bit more trauma-informed stuff. I really think about somebody that had an impact on me was reading some of Peter Levine’s work, and he mentioned how some of the primal energies that came out of Lin Retraumatized people. And I remember sitting with that going, no, that’s not true. And I really [00:27:30] had to sit with it and think about some of my own experiences and think about when were those experiences a little too much for my nervous system to handle?
(00:27:40):
And I’m like, yeah, wow. I did have those experiences and I’m actually spent months or years doing integration work around that trauma that got activated. And so it’s healing from the trauma that got activated from something that I thought was really healing. So I think I’ve [00:28:00] taken a bit of a different approach over the years in thinking that this stuff can be really subtle. We don’t need to have big catharsis. We can just be with the experience without needing this whole big thing. Because yeah, I always think about somebody’s window of tolerance. Is it outside their window of tolerance? Should they be pushing that? And sometimes the answer is no. Big catharsis isn’t always the answer. I think we need to take a very titrated approach at times with folks.
Joe Moore (00:28:29):
Can [00:28:30] you describe window of tolerance a little bit?
Kyle Buller (00:28:32):
Yeah. The window of tolerance is describes when the nervous system is entering into hyper arousal or hypo arousal. And so the window of tolerance is that medium. You kind of want to be in that place where you can hold it and not get too into the shut freeze state or too into the fight or flight response. So it’s not going too into that sympathetic drive or going into the other [00:29:00] shutdown drive. You want to stay within that window where you can hold one’s experience. And so I think with psychedelics and breath work, it can really amplify a lot of stuff within us. And maybe this idea that we always need to go big. I always think about Terrence McKenna. It’s like five dried grams in silent darkness. And there’s, I think that narrative that we always need to be chasing the mystical experience and having [00:29:30] really deep catharsis.
(00:29:32):
And I speak about this in the early years, I was like, if I was not dying on psychedelics, I wasn’t doing it. I always needed to have that death experience. And over the years, I realized my nervous system actually couldn’t tolerate that. I probably should have been taking it much slower. But you live and you learn. And I think that’s been a big learning process is that we can have some of [00:30:00] these smaller experiences where we’re not having this big catharsis and ego dissolution. We’re staying within that window where we can really tolerate what’s going on. And so yeah, I think I’ve been doing a lot of thinking around this over the years and maybe also challenging that narrative a bit that we really need big amplification and catharsis to heal,
Joe Moore (00:30:24):
Right? Yeah, I think you’re spot on there on all this, and [00:30:30] we can really put, and that’s kind of the psych not thing, right? We’re like, oh, cool, let’s go really big. But that’s not necessarily the thing that’s helpful. It might be interesting or exciting, but it’s not necessarily the helpful thing. And you see a lot of enthusiasm in younger folks just going really hard, me included. And then where I’m like, oh, maybe a quarter hit. It’s okay. Maybe I don’t need 10 or 20 or whatever. [00:31:00] When I hear about mushroom dosing these days, I’m just like, good god people, your default is seven grams. Good god.
Kyle Buller (00:31:08):
Well, it’s
Joe Moore (00:31:09):
Not even a meaningful thing anymore.
Kyle Buller (00:31:11):
And I also think it’s part of the research too, because a lot of the research also focuses at high dose mystical experiences. When you look at some of the PSY
Joe Moore (00:31:19):
Three and a half gram equivalent, not seven, that was one of the questions on the AMA earlier. It was like, is mystical experience required for a therapeutic result? And short answer, no, [00:31:30] but it’s helpful, can be helpful. I think it’s a good touchstone. And with theona stuff with anesthesia, I think it’s clear that we get decent clinical results even if we’re not aware of those mystical things.
Kyle Buller (00:31:42):
That’s really fascinating
Joe Moore (00:31:45):
Because multisystem, we’re hitting a lot of systems with psychedelics. It’s not just conscious awareness.
Kyle Buller (00:31:53):
That’s
Joe Moore (00:31:53):
A major part of it. We’re hitting so many other things.
Kyle Buller (00:31:56):
You’re getting all the activation of the receptors and the brain [00:32:00] and the gut probably as well, and how is that impacting you, even though you’re not aware of it, right?
Joe Moore (00:32:08):
Yeah. Yeah, I love that. And I think people need to get a little bit more sophisticated about their understanding of what psychedelics are actually doing. And there’s a lot of different levels at which we need to look at this. So the brain systems map thing, kind of like how go Delin [00:32:30] and Robin Carhartt, Harris and others look at it, and then there’s kind of the more kind of holistic look like what is the actual experience of the person and the transpersonal psychology aspects. I can tell you for sure Robin, these models that folks are working on in these big labs are not able to account for a lot of the experiences.
(00:32:58):
Lenny’s analogy, like, oh, this is where [00:33:00] you can see it right here. This is where he’s seeing the cat in his memory. Yeah, that’s not happening. So there, let’s go back to this. I remember there being some narratives in the maps world around MDMA psychotherapy, and I’ve done none of the training done. Plenty of reading, talked to plenty of people who’ve done the training, but the idea that it comes back often is under the [00:33:30] influence of MDMA, there’s a lot less fear. They talk about downregulation of blood flow and amygdala, which amygdala is far more complicated than that alone. And the idea that you can actually confront and reprocess these experiences as a more calm nervous system to hopefully process them to hopefully get to the other side of them while not having an outrageously strong fear response. Is that largely in line with your understanding of [00:34:00] the MAPS framework around MDMA?
Kyle Buller (00:34:02):
That’s essentially kind of the theory around it. So yeah, decreased blood flow to the amygdala, they suggest the left part of the amygdala, which is the fear part, fear processing part of the brain. And so when somebody is then activated through a memory, a feeling, typically the limbic system and amygdala would start firing and we would go into that fight or flight or freeze shutdown response. But under the influence of MDMA, maybe [00:34:30] we’re not responding to that as strongly. It’s allowing people to revisit these experiences without that heightened state. But I’d also be curious to really hear, sure, there’s people that do get really activated during these experiences, a really bad MDMA trip and things are emerging, and it’s not necessarily all [00:35:00] people are happy and processing, but, and then there was also something interesting, I think I remember reading years ago also about the therapeutic relationship.
(00:35:10):
And so for those that do have a pretty significant trauma history, may have had to be in a hypervigilant state growing up, those folks will tend to read body language and facial expressions a little bit differently. So even if, yeah, I’m looking at you, Joe, and I noticed you twitch your eye, I could be like, oh, [00:35:30] Joe hates me right now. He’s thinking something I might need to get out of here. But also under the influence, it actually dulled that response and it allowed for more connection, which is interesting. So if you bring in a little bit of the polyvagal theory, it’s bringing that relationship to the forefront, having that trust and calm in there, and that also is part of the healing. And so [00:36:00] yeah, pretty interesting stuff. I don’t know how much research was actually in there. I don’t know if it was mostly kind of a theory or an actual, they did research on it.
Joe Moore (00:36:11):
It seems solid to me, and it seems to track with my understanding of things, but it’s not like maps is saying, what’s your scariest moment? Go there immediately and re-experience it. That’s hopefully something that can unfold more naturally. Hopefully
Kyle Buller (00:36:30):
[00:36:30] You need to take it slow. We really need to take it slow. And I think that’s something I’ve just been learning over the years where it’s like when you’re dealing with a lot of trauma, you also need to take it slow. I’m always reminded because, and I share this story often when I’m teaching this near death experience, I’ve talked about it for those that have listened, you’ve probably heard me talk about it or constantly bring it up. And it was during an ayahuasca experience that I had that I was able to tap into a certain part of that narrative [00:37:00] that allowed me to go deeper into the narrative. And I was only really able to do that because I was kind of paying attention to how my body was responding and really trying to do my own self-regulation there so I could go a little bit deeper in there.
(00:37:16):
And I got to this insight that I was terrified. What I’m working with is fear that I’m never actually going to see my friends or family ever again. And usually when I tell that story, I talk about the bliss and the love and [00:37:30] the transcendence that’s unfolding. And it took me over, I think at that point, 16 or 17 years to tap into, I was afraid. Such a small insight in some regard. It’s like, well, no shit. I think anybody would be afraid. But it was the feeling of fear in my body was too activating to me. I would then go into this fight or flight or freeze response. I would get caught up in these really dark narratives [00:38:00] and I couldn’t ever go there. It just was too much for my body to handle. And so I tried to distract myself, and it was like during this time I was like, wow, I was afraid.
(00:38:14):
And so that reminds me, it’s like this stuff takes time. That took me over 16 years to just come to that realization. And it’s like after all the work I was doing up before that, you figured I would tap into it in [00:38:30] some way, but it’s like sometimes this stuff is just too much to hold in the nervous system. So then that also comes back to the window of tolerance. It’s like when I would start getting into this narrative or this experience, I would always play that game of I need to get up, I need to leave. I need to do things to distract me. I need to get out of here. I don’t feel safe type of response. But I think all that work leading up helped me to stick with the experience and to [00:39:00] go into that. But again, it takes a lot of time to feel safe in the nervous system, to feel safe in relationship, to feel safe in your environment.
(00:39:10):
And I think that is the biggest part of this work. It’s like, how do you cultivate safety? That’s really tough, especially when you’ve dealt with trauma. I think somebody said it to me the best. It’s like, how can I trust myself or feel safe when the universe has always shit on me or bad things [00:39:30] have always happened. And so to then try to find that safety in your nervous system, that’s going to be really, really hard. And it’s actually more activating to feel safe. So when we think about, this came from Beth Rothchild. She wrote a book, the Body remembers, I think that’s what it’s called, volume two. But she talked about how for some folks closing your eyes and inviting people to close their eyes to do meditation can [00:40:00] actually be really, really activating. If you grew up in a hypervigilant environment or you had a career that you needed to be really hypervigilant, closing your eyes and feeling safe actually was threatening. Thinking about those maybe in doing jobs like being police or first responders or the military to feel calm and safe in an environment where you actually need to be on guard, or maybe you grew up in a house where there’s just a lot of chaos [00:40:30] and you always needed to be hypervigilant to actually feel that calmness and that safety is actually going to trigger your nervous system even more. And so that takes a really long time to start to work with. I think.
Joe Moore (00:40:46):
Yeah, I’ve seen it. I’ve seen people respond to it in community and in sessions and in all sorts of things. It’s wild. And sometimes people just want to bolt. It’s challenging. It’s
Kyle Buller (00:40:59):
A very natural response.
Joe Moore (00:41:00):
[00:41:00] One of my favorite stories, and you and I use this a lot, is this. It’s a Viking story.
(00:41:16):
So there’s this classic breathwork case that we chat about, and this one sitter was sitting for a breather. The instruction is very clear that you’re not supposed to know or interpret what you think [00:41:30] is happening for somebody. But the sitter got really kind of triggered and said, oh, this person wants to be cared for. They’re having a really hard time. So kind of bundled them up and started taking care of them as if they really needed to be taken care of a baby or something. But the person was really having the inner experience of being a viking, dying on the battlefield or something along those lines, like a brutal death. And the juxtaposition of those two scenarios was such that [00:42:00] it really was not helpful in accentuating that person’s experience and really distracting for their process. We never really talk about if that was harmful. I think it’s harmful in that it was a really special opportunity that that person had that the sitter influenced in an unhelpful way. And it was because of them kind of thinking, I know what’s happening here
Joe Moore (00:42:24):
And
Joe Moore (00:42:24):
I know what I need to do. How do you like to think about that? Anything in addition.
Kyle Buller (00:42:30):
[00:42:30] Again, it comes back to that weight acronym. Why am I doing something right now? Am I doing it for myself or am I doing it for this person? And in that example, was it actually for that person? And again, we don’t know all the details there. It’s a story, but I think that’s also where frameworks, you brought up the birth stuff a little bit earlier on and [00:43:00] tying body work to the birth process, which can be important for some folks. But I think in this example, it’s like here’s somebody that is kind of maybe following that framework and going, oh, I need to help them rebirth themselves. And so again, I’m speculating. I have no idea what was going on through this person’s head, but hearing it, this is my analysis and what I think about opinion, it’s like, okay, here’s this framework. They’re going through a birth process, they’re [00:43:30] curling up like a fetus, so lemme go in there and help and assist that person, which I don’t think you should do. I think if somebody’s asking for that, if they want you to help them support that, great. But you should never just intervene like that without somebody’s consent and permission.
Joe Moore (00:43:55):
Yeah, I think we covered, so there are scenarios in which people can make mistakes and [00:44:00] it’s not great. Generally, they’re not all the way catastrophic. I’ve not seen anything catastrophic in breath work really ever. And I’ve been around it for over 20 years now. So I think the technique is pretty great. I think to your point earlier, the technique could iterate based on what we know from polyvagal theory and trauma-informed care now. And some people treat it like an orthodoxy. [00:44:30] Some people treat it like a living tradition. I prefer living traditions because everything is changing all the time, and we have to take the latest of science into account and polyvagal stuff is pretty clear. I think it’s still designated a theory. Are there people who are really against polyvagal theory? I heard one hint at it recently, but I wasn’t sure.
Kyle Buller (00:44:52):
There’s definitely some critique that it’s not like, I don’t know all the critiques off my head. I have some slides on [00:45:00] it when I present and give a little bit of disclaimer around that. But yeah, just maybe it’s not super hard science. The polyvagal system’s way more complex, and this is just an oversimplified version of what could be going on in the systems. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for pointing that out. Yeah, totally. Well, I’m curious too, maybe to hear your perspective a little bit. I know maybe I’ve kind of brought in a bunch more of that trauma stuff than maybe [00:45:30] what we were taught and that type of framework. And has that changed your perspective at all on things? Totally, totally.
Joe Moore (00:45:39):
And the idea for me, how it’s kind of changed for me is some people want the adventure of self-discovery, right? And then other people want, how do I feel a little bit better? I can’t handle life right now. It hurts so bad to wake up every day and get through my day. And so those are two very different categories and [00:46:00] not everybody should get these treatments. And I think how it’s kind of shifted how I think about psychedelic care or drug assisted psychotherapies is like MDMA might be the first line in these things for the first bunch of sessions, or could even be ketamine shorter.
Joe Moore (00:46:19):
And
Joe Moore (00:46:19):
Then we have other people looking at even shorter acting drugs. And I’m like, that’s really interesting too. How do we give people agency enough back so that they can feel safe to work on [00:46:30] repairing circuits, repairing traumas, whatever it is, or processing traumas and agency is a big deal. And me being Mr. Doctors saying, you need these drugs and you don’t have a choice. The clinical frame often is just very immediately destroying agency. And that’s really a challenging thing to solve.
Joe Moore (00:46:52):
People
Joe Moore (00:46:53):
Don’t necessarily want to accommodate for that, but they need to, how we do clinical care, [00:47:00] we need to really examine to make sure we’re not adding more trauma into people. And that’s a really fucking challenging thing. So that’s me evolving from where I was before where I’m like, go to the doctor, they give you fucking whatever, and hopefully you’re better. And that’s the story. And then they’ve failed me so many times, so I’m a little challenged with it too. So maybe it’s not them as individuals, as them as a [00:47:30] practice and a licensed profession that they have to follow the certain rules to get to. Yeah, go ahead.
Kyle Buller (00:47:37):
Well, I think what you’re saying about the agency is just so important. And I think when we think about some traumas that’s also maybe at the core of it, our agency was taken away. And so really helping people to cultivate that sense of agency, creating that space where somebody feels that and feels safe, I think is the most important thing.
Joe Moore (00:48:00):
[00:48:00] And a lot of people think that body work in sessions or this trauma-informed care thing isn’t really a living tradition and a living kind of thing that’s evolving. It is. It’s not the case that somebody just, it’s really bad care If somebody just jumps on somebody and starts pressing at them and doing all sorts of shit without it being conversation and process and all that training, that’s bad. That’s not good. And then what is good is a slower process and a relational process. [00:48:30] And even if that person isn’t traumatized in any way, they had a really kind of charmed life. It’s still a no-no, it’s an extra no-no for the people with deep trauma and heavy wounds.
(00:48:50):
So my point is there’s a certain level of self sorting that we really should hopefully see. And then there’s a level of screening that we should work on to [00:49:00] say, breath work isn’t for you. You really should go do a bunch of psychotherapy or something. You should work on these things. And then that’s also traumatic though, to kick them out automatically. That sucks. That’s another exclusionary thing. So maybe the move is a conversation to just say, Hey, you can be in the room, maybe just breathe really lightly and we’ll have it be kind of a private arrangement where [00:49:30] you’re going to have special treatment that allows you to still be in the room and participate in a way so you can have a little bit of agency and you’re not just excluded because you’re sick or wounded. Does that make sense? Yeah,
Kyle Buller (00:49:42):
Totally. I mean, I’ve definitely had those conversations with folks that have signed up and then they kind of get a little anxious and tell me a little bit more of their life story. And I’m like, if you want to back out now, that’s totally fine. You don’t need to participate in this. And then I [00:50:00] always say, you could treat it as a meditation if you want to do that. And sometimes people do do that, and they have really profound experiences. And I say, don’t focus on the intensified breathing. Just maybe lay down and listen to some music and do some more regulation that way. And sometimes people really enjoy that, right? And instead of needing to have this really big cathartic thing, maybe this is an opportunity for them to feel a little bit of calmness and kind of go on a little bit of a musical [00:50:30] journey instead. But yeah,
(00:50:34):
And I just think about, you said something that made me think about an experience I had. The importance of even having your handheld, I remember it was during academy training and again, reliving this near death experience, and it’s just really a lot for my nervous system to process at times. And I was so thankful I reached my hand out and my sitter held my hand, and I needed that. And [00:51:00] to say, that shouldn’t happen, saying, no, you shouldn’t do that at all. That was actually really grounding, and I really needed that during that time. I’m like, oh, thank God that person was there just to hold my hand for five, 10 minutes. And that can be really, really important for some folks,
Joe Moore (00:51:21):
Right? Yeah. I’m trying to think of where to send people. We’ve never trained people in body work or to do [00:51:30] body work, but I think places that they can go, and I wish there was more accessible workshops on this, but the Grof transpersonal training has some body work modules. The dream shadow group has some bodywork modules, but you’d have to be in their program to really take those and kind of committed to the training. Then there’s GR legacy training, which would do some, I think taking some of these other kind of trainings, I think somatic experiencing as an example [00:52:00] of something that maybe people take that training to become more somatically literate. Is there much bodywork in somatic experiencing? I don’t really know offhand.
Kyle Buller (00:52:09):
Not that I’m aware of. No.
Joe Moore (00:52:12):
It’s kind of like moving an awareness and being with the parts inside and whatnot.
Kyle Buller (00:52:18):
There was one training that somebody runs, I can’t remember her name, but it’s like a somatic psychedelic touch training. Oh, is it the
Joe Moore (00:52:29):
Unwind [00:52:30] Oakland with
Kyle Buller (00:52:31):
Sues? No, but they are Bay Area based. It’s like relational touch maybe. I’m sorry for who? Yeah, we can put it in the show notes. They presented with us one time, and I’m spacing on their name.
Joe Moore (00:52:47):
And it’s hard for us to validate what trainings are amazing and what are not. We know we know stuff that are whole trip breath work adjacent. We don’t really have enough data to suggest [00:53:00] other trainings on this. And I would say it’s really new. So if you’re going to do this stuff, you got to be wildly careful
(00:53:08):
Because any harm to somebody can come back and give the psychedelic movement a black eye. And we want to be as in integrity as possible so that legalization keeps rolling out and that people keep getting help because when there’s harms, it actually [00:53:30] slows people getting access. Think about cardiac surgery, like 20 cardiac surgeries of a certain kind, start failing. Then all of a sudden people are going to stop getting cardiac surgeries of that kind. And so it’s like those people that needed it didn’t get the help and may have died. And I think we’re in such a crisis around mental health that we really need to take it really seriously. Everything we do with drugs and everything we do with psychedelics [00:54:00] and breath work for that matter, we have a lot of responsibility.
Kyle Buller (00:54:06):
And I think a lot of learning to do too. We are still really early. There’s a lot of learning to do. And I think we also need to continue to question certain practices and techniques, and to your point, is it harming somebody? And to be really truthful about that, me having to sit with that Peter Levine thing, I was so [00:54:30] triggered by it, but I’m like, no, were there times where it is maybe a little too much, which helped me to evolve my thinking around it and being like, yeah, maybe I don’t need to do this really big thing and blow my system out. What if I took a different approach here and found safety in my nervous system first before just I’m just going to jump into the deep end and blow it out. So yeah, I think we have to take, do our own self-inquiry too, and think about those times where it’s like, yeah, [00:55:00] did we cause harm doing a certain practice, or did I mess up here? And I think that’s really important for us to just constantly hold and think about and reflect on.
Joe Moore (00:55:13):
Yeah, exactly. This is a new field. The science of psychology is young. Nevermind the science of psychedelics in psychology and psychotherapies and psychiatry. This is a major innovation in a field that’s already quite [00:55:30] relatively well developed, maybe is a way to put it. But yeah, early days I think is the best way to put it here. And just because your shaman does it doesn’t mean you should do it. And just because you feel like you have the mood of shamanism going doesn’t mean that you should do that and really question it. Find accountability partners. There’s so much here in terms of improving safety. So [00:56:00] yeah, just be safe out there. I’m really encouraged that we can have these conversations more openly now because touch used to be the thing we can’t talk about. And now you can, I feel
Kyle Buller (00:56:11):
Like it’s still touchy subject, but I think we need to talk about it because people are doing, and if we’re not having conversations about it, then I think that’s where harm continues to happen. So if there’s that fear of even discussing it and people are doing it, I think that just continues. But we need to just have [00:56:30] ethical and real conversations about it.
Joe Moore (00:56:36):
So what kind of stuff did we miss? Anything here? I think it was relatively complete on this topic, I think so anything major?
Kyle Buller (00:56:48):
Yeah, I think just talking really about the safety, the agency, that concept of this should be more of a supportive practice than a doing practice for folks. And again, [00:57:00] just think about that acronym, wait, why am I talking? Why am I treating? Why am I touching? And is this really for you or is it for the person? And if it’s for you, bring that in and sit with that a little bit more. Is it because I’m bored? Am I feeling anxious? Do I feel like I’m not being enough right now? And really sit with that.
Joe Moore (00:57:25):
Yeah. Cool. Well, I think that’s good for [00:57:30] right now. So let’s chat a little bit about how people might be able to follow us and what we’ve got coming up. So October 20, you’ve got a class coming up with Dr. Ito Coen. Can you talk about that one a little bit?
Kyle Buller (00:57:42):
Yeah, it’s called Advanced Shadow Work and Psychic Integration. It seems to be perfect as it’s floating down there on the screen. Yeah, so advanced shadow work, this is a class that Dr. Ito co and I have been teaching for the past. I think this will be our third cohort. We run it every [00:58:00] year during the fall. And really to talk about how psychedelics can bring the shadow up. What is the shadow? What’s the golden shadow? How can we work with these experiences within ourself and with clients that we might be working with? So yeah, if you’re interested in digging into the shadow, learning about how to work with it, we do try to make it very experiential also with journaling prompts and activities. So we’re actually engaging in that work. That will kick off on [00:58:30] October 20th. That’s a Monday happening on Monday mornings, I think at nine Pacific. It’s 12 Eastern. And yeah, we would love to have you, I know we’re kind of getting close to our seats filling up there, so if you’re interested in diving in, join us. Yeah, we usually run this live only once a year around the fall. Kind of go with the seasons.
Joe Moore (00:58:55):
Great. And then what else do we have coming up? We’re going to be putting out [00:59:00] a number of new classes. I think we’ve got a music one. I’m going to be putting out a digital security one. I’ve taught a few times that’s going to be really good. So music and psychedelic sessions, digital security for the psychedelic set. It’s really important these days that we really stay on top of privacy. What other stuff do you have in development?
Kyle Buller (00:59:21):
We have a spiritual emergence course, a somatic and trauma course, and then also a course on inner work [00:59:30] for psychedelic integration. Those are going to be probably a mix of live and prerecorded.
Joe Moore (00:59:37):
And then those are things hopefully that we’re going to have available for navigators.
(00:59:44):
So if you join navigators, one of the cool things we’re trying to develop is a library of courses because we know it’s intimidating to jump in and spend a few hundred bucks or more like thousands of dollars some times for classes. And how do you know that you want to do that kind of thing? It’s [01:00:00] very complicated, and we’re going to make that more accessible for everybody by adding courses into that subscription based program at navigators. So psychedelic state.com/navigators, it’s going to be as many courses as we can throw at you in there. I just love the idea of having a huge library of courses for people because more people with more education makes this scene better. I agree.
Kyle Buller (01:00:23):
I agree.
Joe Moore (01:00:24):
Yeah, especially in community, if you have other peers you’re learning with, that’s just [01:00:30] so amazing. And I think it’s really important that people just keep, there’s no end to what you can learn here. When I kind of made the decision to go all in on psychedelics today with you, Kyle, I remember saying, there’s enough here for me to commit the rest of my life. No problem to learning.
Kyle Buller (01:00:50):
It’s endless. And
Joe Moore (01:00:51):
Not being bored,
Kyle Buller (01:00:52):
Never,
Joe Moore (01:00:52):
Ever going to be bored might get annoyed, but that’s mostly about personalities. But the idea that you could really [01:01:00] ever have it figured out, it’s bonkers. It’s not a thing. And there’s so many angles to look at, everything from pharmacology to culture to history, to the different drugs, it it’s wild. So in community with lots of education, we can develop a lot of new interesting things together, and we just really want to support a good, healthy, holistic culture around psychedelics. And that’s what we’ve been up to for years, and that’s what we want to do even more with navigators. So [01:01:30] please, folks, check us out, support us psychedelics today.com/navigators, and we would love your support. Any other kind of cool stuff you want to mention about the navigators program?
Kyle Buller (01:01:41):
No. Yeah, we’re excited to finally kick this off and excited to get to know everybody that’s signing up. And to your point, just about the education library, just really trying to build that out. And yeah, hopefully it makes it a little bit more accessible than buying some of those courses at a bigger price. It’s that subscription [01:02:00] and being able to learn in community. We’ll host open office hours times to get together and chat about all the stuff. So yeah, really, really hoping to see all there. And yeah, I just want to give Peggy a shout out on LinkedIn there. She’s dropping some really great stuff in there and doing a presentation on touch and something that she just mentioned in McQueen’s training, this concept of 78% on self and 70% on client. So again, yeah, it’s like that [01:02:30] wait thing. And thanks for all your support there, Peggy.
Joe Moore (01:02:33):
And Peggy just said some nice things about our integration workbook and trip journals, and you find those@psychedelicsay.com or on Amazon. Those are, I forget how well they sell on Amazon. It’s doing really great over there. So thank you everybody who buys those in print over there and wish we weren’t supporting Amazon, but we do what we can do. Yeah. Well, thank you, Kyle. This has been lovely. Thank you all for tuning in out there. [01:03:00] Yeah. Hopefully we get to do more soon.
Kyle Buller (01:03:05):
All right. Take care. Bye.
Joe here. I LOVED Trip Sitting. While I didn’t agree with EVERYTHING in here (maybe only 99%), I agree that this is an essential book for the quiver of people in this space.
A simple, wise and engaging read. NEVER confusing. Great tool to refresh yourself on your orientation and a good intro book to help people who are about to explore these spaces.
Join us for this book club in The Navigators.
Trip Sitting is your essential guide to supporting safe, meaningful psychedelic journeys. Informed by cutting-edge science and extensive real-world experience, this book offers practical insights into the skills, techniques, and mindset that every effective trip sitter needs.
From preparing the space and setting the tone, to navigating the journey and supporting successful integration, Trip Sitting takes a holistic approach to care. With a strong foundation in ethics and practical experience this guide will help you hold space with clarity, confidence, and compassion, maximising the benefits and minimising the risks when exploring these magical medicines.
Whether you’re already working with psychedelics or preparing to hold space for yourself or others, Trip Sitting is a valuable resource. With a focus primarily on one-to-one sessions, its principles and practices can be adapted to a variety of contexts, from small group settings to personal journeys. This book is equally useful for those seeking a safe and effective psychedelic experience, offering clear guidance on what good practice looks like and how to recognize a trustworthy setting.
Foreword by Julie Holland, MD
https://psychedelicpress.co.uk/products/trip-sitting
Join us for the first Navigators book club. We’ll be reading Built to Burn. This book club is for The Navigators! This book is available in print, digital and audio editions.
Built to Burn: Tales of the Desert Carnies of Burning Man By Tony “Coyote” Perez
BUILT TO BURN tells the story of how Tony, a San Francisco blues musician, became Coyote, builder of Burning Man’s legendary city in the desert, and how he came to lead a ragtag band of circus runaways, freaks and geeks that would become its Department of Public Works. In 1996, Tony was making a decent living as a musician, but his creative juices had run one night onstage, he realized he’d just played an entire sax solo while thinking about his laundry. So when a wild-at-heart friend invites him to something called “Burning Man,” he grabs his backpack and hops in the car, unaware that the experience ahead will not only turn him inside out, but alter the course of his life. An essential Burning Man origin story, BUILT TO BURN chronicles the wild uncertainty and creative chaos of the early days in the desert, when the event’s future was under constant threat and the organizers were making everything up as they went along. It’s a tale of struggle and survival, of friends made and friends lost, as Coyote and his misfit crew battle raging storms, crazed livestock, angry townsfolk and each other, locking horns with the real-life cowboys, Indians, outlaws and outcasts of Nevada’s high desert frontier.
Told with wry humor and a bit of cowboy philosophy, BUILT TO BURN invites the reader to experience Burning Man as it was before it got civilized, when it was as wild and untamed as anything out of the Old West.
You can find the book here.
Identical twins, writers, and culture-shapers TK Wonder and Cipriana Quann join Joe and Anne for a frank, generous conversation about identity, resilience, and the long arc of healing. Cipriana recounts launching Urban Bush Babes in 2011 to center women of color in beauty and fashion—work that led to a Vogue “day-in-the-life” feature and collaborations with couture houses. TK shares the parallel path of her music career (opening for artists from Sting and Nas to Erykah Badu and Queens of the Stone Age) and the sisters’ ongoing writing, public speaking, and mental-health advocacy.
They reflect on the fashion industry’s policing of natural hair, how those daily microaggressions erode self-worth, and why legal protections like the CROWN Act matter. The heart of the episode is their survival story: a decade of abuse by their father, endured separately yet witnessed together. Seeing one another live through it—“a physical manifestation of survival,” as they put it—kept them alive. As adults, daily check-ins remain their core practice.
Psychedelics entered their lives years later. With careful set and setting, education, and professional support, psychedelic sessions—especially ibogaine—helped surface grief, release shame, and reframe entrenched coping strategies. Cipriana’s first extended session unlocked tears she’d been forced to suppress as a child; TK Wonder describes a transformative ibogaine experience that catalyzed a decisive shift away from refined sugar and ultra-processed foods toward sustained movement, earlier mornings, and mindful nourishment. Both emphasize that psychedelics are not “magic pills” in isolation: integration, therapy, community, and lifestyle design make insights durable.
The conversation also tackles safety and access. The sisters stress working with experienced facilitators and medical oversight, naming that these modalities aren’t for everyone. They call for more affordability and BIPOC representation in a field that can still feel exclusionary, while holding a wide tent vision—everyone deserves the chance to heal. They note how narratives are changing (from early-2000s panic to mainstream book-club conversations), and how stories alongside science move culture and policy.
New
If you’re exploring this work: educate deeply, choose qualified support, prioritize integration, and remember—your past is a chapter, not your whole story.
Start with the patterns many wounded healers know well: Parentified at home, helpers at work; old burdens resurface. We overfunction, detach, control, or rescue to manage our insecurities and the weight of responsibility. Beneath it sits guilt and shame of not reaching our patients in the ways we would like. Further down, our own original pains are hidden behind the role of a helper.
This upcoming two-part online training puts those themes on screen. A series of long, evocative video clips from an unfiltered MDMA-assisted therapy case of a wounded healer showcase a range of clinical phenomena and therapeutic attitudes and techniques in MDMA-assisted therapy. They also trigger self-reflection, sharpen interoceptive tracking, and bring you closer to your own patterns and preferences as a therapist.
Ready to deepen your skills and support cutting-edge research? Sign up for the two-part live training now!
Prior cohorts rated the format 4.84/5 across more than 260 reviews. It includes some basic learning on how to prepare, navigate, facilitate, and integrate MDMA-catalyzed states. What sets it apart is the wealth of authentic clinical footage and therapist-centered inquiry into wounded-healer dynamics. Importantly, by enrolling in this training, you also help fund the development of a pioneering protocol for Empathogen-Assisted Therapist Development (EATD).
EATD integrates MDMA-assisted therapy within a structured personal and professional development (PPD) framework. The protocol enrolls psychotherapists whose work involvement profiles indicate distress, disengagement, or overactivation. Over five months, participants complete three individual MDMA sessions nested in group-based preparation, dosing support, and integration. The design is intentional: it braids learning across personal and professional domains, fosters continuous reflection to ensure transfer into moment-to-moment clinical behavior, and ensures standardized safety and ethics. This is method-independent therapist development—aimed at the therapist variables most predictive of patients’ process and outcome.
Mental health disorders impose high existential and financial costs. Solutions require better implementation of existing, evidence-based treatments, the development of new treatments, and the cultivation of more effective therapists. EATD touches all three dimensions, focusing primarily on the latter: By providing therapists firsthand experience with MDMA-AT in a group setting, this project addresses key challenges related to the optimal development and implementation of MDMA-AT as an emergent treatment. This includes providing therapists with a self-experience training module in a scalable group format, potentially enhancing both the quality and accessibility of safe and ethical care. However, its primary innovation and focus lie in integrating MDMA-AT within a broader personal and professional development (PPD) framework for method-independent therapist development. As such, this project pioneers a new frontier in therapist training, Empathogen-Assisted Therapist Development (EATD).
Pioneering deeper ways to assist therapists in developing their intrapersonal and interpersonal capacities is important, as the center of gravity in the psychotherapy research field has shifted from “Which method works best?” to “Which therapist is in the room?” Evidence-based relationships instead of evidence-based methods, since research clearly shows that therapist effects outsize method effects. Yet training systems still underweight therapists’ personal growth.
Converging evidence from early pioneers, retrospective reports, preclinical studies, modern experimental research, and a range of clinical trials points to the potential for MDMA to act as a catalyst for trust, introspection, psychotherapeutic processing, new learning, and ultimately for a deeper connection with oneself and others (Stocker & Liechti, 2024). Psychedelics are often viewed as nonspecific amplifiers that deepen access to unconscious material, enabling study of the psychological currents shaping experience and behavior in ways few tools match. Precisely because psychotherapy demands high levels of self-awareness and integration to navigate intense affect and complex relational dynamics, psychedelics may be uniquely suited to support therapists’ own self-exploration and healing.
This training advances EATD on two fronts. First, it provides funding for further protocol development. Second, it provides a demonstration: the workshop operationalizes the EATD principle with a concrete wounded-healer case presented with clinical granularity.
You will see how fear attenuation and oxytocin-mediated safety enable direct contact with unresolved, embodied feelings. How protective compulsions are recognized rather than rationalized. The documented downstream effects seem practical: a rapid drop in previously unconscious anxiety and defensive overfunctioning in sessions; less exhaustion; more receptivity, exact presence; cleaner timing; and renewed embodiment of Rogers’ core conditions—authenticity, empathy, and unconditional positive regard. The endpoint is not an exalted experience. It is a more relaxed and authentic presence with fewer unseen drivers, more trust in the client’s healing forces, and greater enjoyment.
The format of this training matters. Real footage compresses learning cycles. Role-plays rarely reproduce the somatic signature of actual therapy. Participant reports from earlier cohorts converge on the view that this training indeed was a profound, both personal and professional experience. The high ratings reflect a combination of evocative material and analytic clarity. The outcome is both inspiration and usable learning.
The presenter, Ivar W. Goksøyr, is a clinical psychologist and founder of Psykologvirke. Within MDMA-assisted therapy, he has participated as a client, therapist, assistant trainer, researcher, and educator, including roles in the world’s first MDMA/depression trial. He integrates empathogen work with psychotherapy process science and ongoing ketamine-assisted therapy implementation at his clinic. This training is independent of MAPS.
The field needs disciplined exposure to reality-level clinical processes and a credible pathway for developing therapists who are safer, steadier, and more effective. Empathogen-Assisted Therapist Development may be one such pathway. This workshop both illustrates the principle and helps fund the protocol work required to move from a promising concept to an operational standard.
Enroll now for the two-part live training, secure your seat, and direct a portion of your fee to EATD protocol development. Commit, show up, and translate this material into a cleaner presence and safer, more effective therapy.
Warmly welcome to this clinically stimulating, two‑part workshop:
Embark on a self‑reflective journey through richly immersive clinical material: a detailed, video‑based case analysis of a wounded healer’s own MDMA therapy.
This rare, unfiltered entry into the therapy room illustrates how MDMA-assisted therapy actually unfolds in real practice. You’ll observe a variety of clinical phenomena and therapeutic interventions—going well beyond the impact of conventional lectures or role-play simulations.
Earlier trainings have been well received, earning 4.84 out of 5 stars from 250+ reviews:
“So wonderful – the level of vulnerability and openness, and the depth of both sharing and learning was very impactful.”
“Loved also the neutral, reflective researcher‑angle.”
What makes this training truly distinctive:
Together, these elements create a compelling learning experience—clinically rich, scientifically grounded, and deeply relevant—making this workshop stand out in the field.
By joining this training, you:
NB: A sliding scale is available for those in need. After pressing “Get ticket,” click on the ticket type to see your options.
The second session of this two‑part workshop will take place on Sunday, November 9, at the same time as the first session.
This training will bring you up to date on one of the most exciting frontiers in mental health today. All too often, the true potential of MDMA as a catalyst for therapeutic processing is lost. Learn how to prepare for, navigate, facilitate, and integrate this unique state of consciousness to maximize benefits and minimize risks.
Gain an in‑depth understanding of findings, principles, and procedures from the early pioneers, modern experimental research and clinical trials, with a special emphasis on the MAPS therapy manual and its conceptual framework.
“Highly recommended – also for those who want to deepen their understanding of the psychotherapy process and therapist development as such, regardless of the specific MDMA theme.”
“This has been profound.”
“Thanks a lot for sharing your journey with us. This was both touching, powerful, and such a rich learning experience.”
“A deep and thorough introduction, which combines the research/evidence language and the experience‑based/poetic/subjective language in an exemplary way.””Extraordinarily illuminating”
This training is a modified version of the original, placing less emphasis on the empirical status and more on clinical aspects and the wounded healer theme.
Reflect on how the wounded healer archetype applies to us—what its varied manifestations might look like, and what research tells us about its impact on the intertwined healing journeys of therapists and patients.
Learn from a certified MDMA‑assisted therapist who has participated as a client, worked as a therapist, and conducted clinical trial research on MDMA. Acquire evidence‑based knowledge and skills—and gain a clearer understanding of potential benefits for yourself and those you care about.
Excerpt from a conference abstract outlining core elements of the case analysis:
“Through the deep emotional processing, somatic release, and partial integration of the core childhood wounds that led me to become a therapist in the first place, MDMA‑assisted therapy provided insight into how much my own wounds had been unconsciously triggered on a daily basis in my role as a therapist—and into the specific ways this affected my effectiveness and well‑being. While other treatments and supervision hinted at this, MDMA‑AT actually led to change.
An instant and substantial reduction in previously unconscious anxiety and compulsory defensive behaviors—also playing out in my therapeutic role—was experienced. This resulted in less overworking and exhaustion, and increased receptiveness, trust, effectiveness, and well‑being.
Ultimately, the process led to renewed respect for, and possibly enhanced embodiment of, Carl Rogers’ principles of authenticity, empathy, and unconditional positive regard—necessary and sufficient conditions for releasing the vast inner resources of the patient, their ‘self‑organizing wisdom,’ central to all true healing.”
Recorded October 1
In this candid, practice-focused conversation, Joe is joined by Norwegian psychologist and researcher Ivar Goksøyr to explore how therapists’ own healing journeys can measurably improve client outcomes—and why MDMA-assisted experiences, used thoughtfully, may be a uniquely powerful catalyst for professional development. Ivar shares lessons from Norway’s psychedelic research team (PTSD and the world’s first MDMA-for-depression trial), his clinic Psykologvirke in Oslo, and his online course, “The Wounded Healer,” which uses authentic footage from his FDA-approved MAPS volunteer MDMA sessions to illuminate real clinical processes, countertransference, and the “inner healing intelligence” as a working metaphor rather than dogma.
The discussion ranges from implementation realities (laws, ethics, and conservative regulatory cultures) to the pragmatic: how an MDMA experience helped Ivar resolve chronic anxiety reactions in the therapy chair, reduced burn-out, increased receptivity, and improved attunement—changes he believes many clinicians can cultivate when personal growth is prioritized alongside methods training. He outlines a developing collaboration with the University of Oslo on Empathogen-Assisted Therapies Development—not to “dose for certification,” but to support therapists’ self-awareness and resilience in legally sanctioned research contexts.
They also compare compounds: why MDMA may be easier to integrate into mainstream psychiatry than classic tryptamines (fewer projective processes, more biographical focus, smoother affect regulation), while acknowledging the immense promise—and higher demands—of psilocybin and other psychedelics. Throughout, they emphasize humility, guardrails, and the need to keep learning as the field scales (with frank reflections on ketamine’s mixed rollout and avoiding idealization/devaluation cycles).
November 2 & 9 (two consecutive Sundays, 3 hours each, online). Interactive, footage-driven, method-agnostic—useful whether or not you practice psychedelic therapy.
If you’re a clinician interested in deeper self-work to strengthen your therapeutic presence, this episode offers a grounded path forward—equal parts inspiration, ethics, and hands-on learning.
This transcript was automatically generated and may contain minor errors or inaccuracies.
Joe Moore: [00:00:00] I think yeah. Hi everybody. Welcome back to Psychedelics today. Joe Moore here joined by Eva. Eva, how are you today?
Ivar Goksøyr : Pretty good, thank you. Thank you. How about yourself?
Joe Moore: Oh, I’m doing lovely, beautiful Autumn day here. It’s a peak foliage in the mountains of Colorado right now. Mm-hmm. It’s glorious, glorious beautiful.
Joe Moore: Yeah. And, um, I think I’m fully recovered from Burning Man. Um, so
Ivar Goksøyr : it’s like a month ago or something. Oh my gosh.
Joe Moore: Yeah. It takes a long time emotionally, at least it’s,
Joe Moore: yeah. So I’m excited to talk today. You’ve been up to some really interesting things around advocating for new forms of, um, I guess new additions to, uh, MDMA psychotherapy training and, um. Yeah, can you give us like a high, high level overview of, of what these changes are and then we can [00:01:00] start talking about you.
Ivar Goksøyr : Yeah, sure. So, you know, I’m a member of the psychedelic research team here in Norway, and we’ve done a couple of MDMA studies, one on PTSD and the world’s first on MDMA for depression. And then I’m also running an online, uh, training in MDMA assisted therapy, uh, and the wounded Healer, that’s what it’s called.
Ivar Goksøyr : And. In this training, I show authentic, uh, footage from my own MDMA sessions and, uh, focusing in on, on, uh, the professional development I gained from the personal growth, from the trauma healing I experienced as part of that, uh, uh, MDMA, uh, therapy. Uh, uh, so, and, and building on those experiences, how, how much that MDMA therapy helped me in, in my role as a therapist.
Ivar Goksøyr : And also reading up on other literature and, and looking into that this is, you know, something that so many people report. We’re in the process now, uh, incorporation with the University of Oslo to set up an EM Pathogen Assisted Therapies Development project. So, uh, not, uh, giving [00:02:00] MDMA, uh, to therapists to train them as MDMA therapist, but to, uh, help them with their professional growth.
Ivar Goksøyr : Through personal growth. So that’s the main, uh, project that I’m leading right now, and that I hope that we can, uh, you know, get some attention to, and maybe some more funding from, from our conversation today.
Joe Moore: That’s, you know, amazing. Uh, it’s like, so. Uh, needed in so many ways. And, you know, it’s, it’s the general conventional wisdom.
Joe Moore: Um, and so to be clear, you are, you, you used footage from your session, so it’s you on the videotapes.
Ivar Goksøyr : That’s right. So I’m the patient and I’m also kind of the, uh, the host, uh, analyzing my own, uh, experiences as a, as a patient in, um, this is also important to say from a legal trial, FDA approved trial, uh, healthy volunteers.
Ivar Goksøyr : So it was part of my training, uh, to be in maps, uh, therapist. So [00:03:00] yes, so, uh, so a range of clinical phenomenon will be shown and, and you get to show, you know, uh, how MDMA therapy is delivered and you get the benefit from looking at live, uh, photos. And, uh, and then also we keep the focus on themes that is probably relevant for, if not.
Ivar Goksøyr : Most wounded healers, uh, because, you know, most of us come into this strange profession. You know, while most people would like to have other people’s pain at a, you know, at a certain distance, there are some of us that really seeks to, you know, get closer to, to transform it. And most often that’s because we’ve been, uh, forced to, you know, traverse certain complex emotional terrains from we were kids and many of us have.
Ivar Goksøyr : Taken on certain roles, and, and I believe that, uh, we are very much triggered on some of the core wounds, uh, at a daily basis in our jobs. And of course, we, we all, this is nothing new and we all work on those things. [00:04:00] Uh, but many of us, myself included, even though a lot of supervision and therapy is really helpful and you get, uh, you know, uh, more consciousness on some issues you have, and you also overcome some obstacles, then it is hard to change these more ingrained patterns.
Ivar Goksøyr : Mm-hmm. So, MDMA known as a catalyst for therapy just stands to reason that it might help, uh, us as, uh, therapists as well as patients. Of course.
Joe Moore: Yeah. So let’s, let’s kind of talk about your professional path. How, how did you kind of take this professional route and end up, um, curious about MDMA and, and, uh, seemingly passionate about it?
Ivar Goksøyr : Yeah, well, so, you know, ever, I would say since I was a kid, I, I kind of had this perspective that I, I don’t know, most, most children have maybe a close connection with the light. And I grew up and watched the adults in my life and they seem to be suffering and they seem to not understand their own or [00:05:00] each other suffering.
Ivar Goksøyr : And they were judging each other. So I felt from an early age that there was so much unnecessary suffering going on, and I was kind of shocked that they couldn’t see how beautiful things could be in this world in a way. And so when I started my psychology studies, I was always more interested in the transformative changes instead of symptom management, uh, which is also important.
Ivar Goksøyr : I was always looking for the more depth oriented work. Did my specialization in, uh, in terms of short term psychodynamic therapy. Basically psychoanalytic theory, but with a more humanistic core and a more active approach. And I was very pleased, you know, to be able, uh, with more experience, more training, more self-healing, to reach more people, more deeply.
Ivar Goksøyr : And I got this confirmation that, yeah, this deep transformative healing is possible. However, I also experienced how extremely difficult it can be to release this inherent potential. So, [00:06:00] and the, the more I could help some people deeply, the more it hurt to not be able still to help the majority of my patients that deeply to see the potential and feel helpless.
Ivar Goksøyr : So searching for new strategies and then, you know, a couple of patients told me about psychedelic experiences and then somebody close to me, um, uh, came forth and that’s when I started to really dig in and open up. And, and then when you see all the literature and, and this whole tradition and wisdom tradition that is buried underneath all the stigma, then I really knew that we were onto something important.
Ivar Goksøyr : So that’s how it started.
Joe Moore: Yeah. That’s amazing. And, um, I, I assume, and I don’t want to, well actually tell, tell me this, I, from what I understand, the um. The culture in Scandinavian nations is a little bit conservative around drugs generally in a lot of countries, like UK for instance, MDMA was everywhere, United States, it was very common.
Joe Moore: Um, [00:07:00] but is it, was that somewhat similar, uh, for you?
Ivar Goksøyr : I mean, for sure there’s always been an underground scene under rave scene. Uh, but yes, I mean, it’s quite different from like Colorado where you’re at, for example. So I think I, I, I am not sure, but I think that maybe the, the rate of people that has tried MDMA now is around 5% or something.
Ivar Goksøyr : I believe it’s around 20 in the us So, so there’s a big difference in the baseline levels and their attitudes, uh, for sure. Uh, but you know, this, the medicalization track that we’re on here in Norway has really helped, uh, to change public perception these last few 10 years. Um, since I started getting involved.
Ivar Goksøyr : So, uh, yeah, it’s definitely opening up and, you know, more and more, you know, other others and, and, uh, psychologists and even, not yet any doctors, but people come out of the psychedelic closet and speaks openly. So, and that’s kind quite new, I would say. Um, it’s just a handful [00:08:00] of people have done it, but it, it’s quite impactful still, so, yeah.
Joe Moore: Hmm. Yeah. Okay. That’s, that’s important to know. 5% to 20%. Um, it’s really a big, big shift. So in terms of, um, like were there any kind of organizations where you were paying, paying attention to, were you paying attention to maps in the early days as that was coming along and was that kinda influential for you?
Ivar Goksøyr : Well, yeah, sure. As, uh, as soon as I started ReadUP, uh, of course maps is, is what, what’s what stands out in the MDMA therapy field. So they’ve been incredibly important and they were also our collaborators, uh, on our first trial, uh, and made it also, then we gained experience that we could create our own investigator trial here.
Ivar Goksøyr : So they’ve been really important to us, for sure.
Joe Moore: Yeah. And, um, have you received any kind of pushback in your interest in [00:09:00] developing, um, MDMA assisted psychotherapy and also, you know, for therapist to improve therapists?
Ivar Goksøyr : Well, you know, I mean there’s, uh, there’s been a lot of pushback. I mean, when, back in 2017, my first, uh, psychedelic conference in Oakland, and when I started speaking publicly here in Norway, I mean, my friends took me aside and asked me if I knew what I was doing, like this career suicide, uh, thoughts and, and of course I think, uh, yeah, most people had a very, you know, stigmatizing view on, on what we were up to.
Ivar Goksøyr : But I think also there is a certain, you know, a an intellectual, uh, honesty and openness. Uh, so if you can show some numbers and you can show that you’re serious and you, you know, your intention is right and you, it comes from the right place, and that you’re not an activist, uh, pushing things, uh, because you have your [00:10:00] own agenda and preferences, but that you’re actually, um, looking into exploring this in a, in a very vigorous way, then that gains respect for sure.
Ivar Goksøyr : And I think, uh, we’ve, you know, we’ve been able to gain that respect, uh, as, as, uh, you know, um, a serious, uh, we’re, we’re in a serious endeavor here. And when this idea of the, um, pathogen assisted therapy therapies development has been launched, there has really not been that much pushback, uh, I must say. Uh, however, we, we, the first university program in psychedelic, uh, therapy, uh, was, uh, just launched and the plan was to have ketamine as a self experience.
Ivar Goksøyr : Part of that program, uh, that got shut down, uh, of legal reasons, uh, by the health authorities, uh, since there was no legal way to actually do that. So that will probably be a, a longer process to, to gain the necessary, uh, knowledge to understand that this might be a fruitful thing to do. So, but within [00:11:00] clinical studies, it is, uh, totally legitimate.
Joe Moore: That’s interesting. And yeah, there’s probably all sorts of permission. We have a similar structure and issue here in the United States with experience with ketamine. Uh, physicians will prescribe for things like adjustment disorder or, you know, a lot of people legitimately have depression, so for their experiential component on their training, um, they can do things like that uhhuh, but I see how like integrating that with the university would be really hard and you’d need special permission.
Joe Moore: So
Ivar Goksøyr : do you need the diagnosis to be able to get the Ketamine as part of the training?
Joe Moore: Yeah, Uhhuh generally so, but there’s usually a doctor on staff that kind of understands that most people have conditions that would benefit from it. At least one or two doses. Mm-hmm. And, you know, we’re actually addressing clinical benefit, not experience, which is interesting ’cause I like, I do like the idea of giving somebody the experience of the drug despite clinical situation, their clinical status.
Joe Moore: So it’s [00:12:00] complicated though. Regulators are gonna have, you know, I guess their job is to be very conservative.
Ivar Goksøyr : Yeah. I mean, first of all, do no harm and, uh, you know, it’s possible, totally possible to respect that and, and to follow the laws that society has laid down and, and, and all that. So I really think just takes time to build up the consensus, uh, in, in the, in the field of psychiatry.
Ivar Goksøyr : And when that is reached, then we can approach the politicians and health bureaucrats and, and make, uh, um, you know, new laws.
Joe Moore: Yeah, absolutely. New allowances, licenses, permits. Mm-hmm. Whatever it is. Yeah. Mm-hmm. So that’ll be cool, and I’m glad you’re working on that. Um. So let’s dig into this training. This training comes up in about a month.
Joe Moore: What, um, what made you want to develop this program?
Ivar Goksøyr : Well, so, um, you know, as, uh, therapists, uh, we don’t get to see a lot of the, that other therapists do. I mean, if you’re [00:13:00] co-therapist, yes, but individually you don’t get to see much. And, you know, throughout training, um, there is little also focus on personal development.
Ivar Goksøyr : It’s really, uh, under underweight in, uh, professional, uh, development programs. And this is quite serious because what the psychotherapy research is showing now is that, you know, the, the person as a therapist is much more important for patient process and outcome than what method is being applied. So now, instead of studying which method is most effective, because all seem to be more or less equally effective with nuances.
Ivar Goksøyr : Then, uh, we look into what are the relationship qualities that, uh, that could be called evidence-based. So research is showing therapies as a person is really important, but training, uh, as a general rule and estimates, uh, uh, uh, personal growth. And so I, I just saw when I, what happened for me was that I, I [00:14:00] discovered in that MD MA therapy, you know, I went to the route basically of my, of my interpersonal adversities leading me to become a psychology psychologist in the first place.
Ivar Goksøyr : And, um, you know, I, instead of as a kid, I, I hid, uh, you know, behind this role as a helper and I, nobody kind of tuned into me where I were at. So I developed the ability to find people where they were. And that was also, uh, you know, an epiphany to understand that this was also, you know, out of compassion.
Ivar Goksøyr : But also, you know, because, uh, I needed contact, so a way to avoid being alone. So that’s when I realized, oh, how deeply dependent I was upon my own patience, you know, that I, basically, it was part of my own needs for contact and, uh, you know, and, and also how dependent I was upon a certain progress in their therapy.
Ivar Goksøyr : Like how much [00:15:00] responsibility I felt and, uh, how much I took on. And I, I had this soreness in my, uh, solar plexus, um, more or less, uh, like in most therapy sessions. So when my day at the office was over, I, I really felt a certain level of exhaustion and, and I had this soreness and, you know, uh. Basically overworking.
Ivar Goksøyr : Uh, and the more insecure I was, the more control I did, the more I did, you know? And, and then, uh, the MDMA showed me the little kid, you know, classic inner child work into the boy underneath this role as a helper. And all the fear that I had built in my body, uh, came out, you know, in shivering and neuro neurogenic shivering and stuff.
Ivar Goksøyr : And, and all the pain underneath that, uh, like body armor came. And, um, and there was a lot of linking and understanding. And, and when I got back into my therapy chair, I was surprised really to notice that there [00:16:00] were no anxiety reactions in my body anymore. So, you know, those old feelings of pain and fear, they had been triggered on a daily basis in therapy sessions.
Ivar Goksøyr : I didn’t know that. I wasn’t aware it was unconscious. I had just felt this unease, you know, and I had noticed that I was a bit stressed out and I, I had been working really hard, so. When I had this ability to sit unfunded, uh, I wasn’t afraid anymore, uh, because I, I had, you know, released a lot of the feelings that had created this anxiety.
Ivar Goksøyr : I had also experienced this deep inner healing forces, the inner healing intelligence or self-organized with, or, or whatever you would like to call it. So, uh, I could trust that force in the patient much more. Uh, and I could, uh, you know, take much less responsibility. And I was much less driven by my own anxiety and my own need to regulate my own feelings and needs and sessions.
Ivar Goksøyr : And, [00:17:00] and what happened then, of course, is that the patient led the process better and I was much more receptive. So when my body was more relaxed, I could work much more intuitively and, and take in and react much more adequately. And I’m, I am. Pretty sure I can only compare like from before and after and, you know, no systematic observations, but, uh, I know a hundred percent sure that my wellbeing went up a lot.
Ivar Goksøyr : Uh, and I enjoyed my work much more. And I’m sure also that at least, uh, substantial proportion of my patients, I mean, I was effective with some patients before as well, but a substantial proportion of my patients also are doing better, um, in therapy. So, so it felt really important to see this, you know, this potential and yeah, uh, I saw it as a really good way to, to, um, you know, to heal the healers.
Ivar Goksøyr : And, you know, as Marina Sabina said, you are the medicine. Uh, and so [00:18:00] if we can heal the, you know, the therapist, then we can really reach a lot of people, uh, more deeply. So, yeah. So a good way to spread more healing to, to many people.
Joe Moore: Yeah. I think a funny and interesting analogy is the holotropic breathwork training model where you have to actually do a lot of your own work before you’re approved to do the sessions.
Joe Moore: And that, you know, there’s, I guess in the old psychoanalysis frame, multiple years of psychoanalysis before you could do it, so. Mm-hmm. You know, not that they necessarily got a lot of training, they got a lot of insight, um, you know, um, yeah,
Ivar Goksøyr : sure.
Joe Moore: So, yeah.
Ivar Goksøyr : Yeah. Go ahead. I really thi uh, yeah, I really think it’s, you know, the, the methods that goes more deeply into the unconscious layers of the psyche.
Ivar Goksøyr : There, there’s always been, uh, a demand that the practitioner has his own, you know, a meditation teacher has his, his own meditation practice. Of course, the psychoanalyst have, has [00:19:00] had his own psychoanalysis, of course. So that need might be, uh, lesser with more symptom oriented, uh, methods. But, you know, psychedelics, they go deep and, uh, yeah, I mean, most people would, even though there are no hard, really good evidence like.
Ivar Goksøyr : Through randomized controlled data supporting that claim. I think, uh, most clinicians would, would agree that therapist self-awareness is incredibly important. And also to have felt how these different methods and, and techniques and attitudes, uh, are experienced, uh, from the inside. Um, so the is quite clear.
Ivar Goksøyr : Um, of course there are some pitfalls as well. You can, if you have like one strong, for example, psychedelic self-experience, and then you can, you know, over generalize from your own experience and accept other people to have similar experiences. Why? The truth is that they are very different. And I mean, I think also something that I [00:20:00] see sometimes in, in psychedelic, you know, in the psychedelic sphere is that people might have really strong healing experiences and they’re true, uh, uh, but it cannot sometimes lead people to think that they’re more healed than they are in, in reality that there are so many layers.
Ivar Goksøyr : But it can kind of, some, some people can have a certain narcissistic response maybe, or now I gained so much power and I have so, so much, uh, depth knowledge of myself in the psyche, so now I can go out. So, uh, some, there are some pitfalls, but, uh, you know, I, I cause also an, an article, a model curriculum for psychedelic, uh, training.
Ivar Goksøyr : Um, and, uh, it is a strong recommendation, uh, not a mandatory, um, thing, but to have self experience as part of training programs. Uh, so the consensus is pretty clear.
Joe Moore: Yeah, absolutely. So I think, um, yeah, the consensus is so clear and it’s just so [00:21:00] frustrating that we have to still kind of like figure out how to convince regulatory groups.
Joe Moore: Um, I think, um, can you talk about what kind of data they’ve liked to see? What kind of data was helpful? To present to regulators?
Ivar Goksøyr : Well, so we, we haven’t, uh, we haven’t done that yet. Uh, uh, I, I. Well, I, I, and if I should, you know, make a guess, uh, you know, anything that can actually, uh, provide a link, uh, at least to a proxy that, you know, you, you do something here.
Ivar Goksøyr : You give yourself experience, and then you can see that it actually helps the patients. And that’s, that’s, I think that’s a bridge that is really hard to make because there are so many variables in play. And then, as I said, also from my own experience, uh, I, you know, it’s reasonable to think that, say if you have countertransference issues, uh, some, some people, and I had like some chronic counter [00:22:00] transference issues that came up independently of who the patient was.
Ivar Goksøyr : And that’s true for many of us. But some of us also have, you know, we’re very effective with, with, uh, many patients. But then there are these few that triggers us in ways that we still are not able to, to really, uh, grasp or handle in a, in a therapeutic way. And for, for this. Particular patients, uh, it, it’ll be important.
Ivar Goksøyr : So, and it’s very difficult and it’s very, uh, you know, costly to, to kind of prove those links. However, I, I do have a certain hope that, you know, combining MDMA with other therapist development, uh, methods and start to explore and start to, you know, find, you know, look at a lot of subgroup analysis and looking at moderating variables, and maybe we can, in the future at some point, see that for, for these therapists, this intervention, MDMA, enhanced [00:23:00] therapies development is actually helpful for the outcomes of, of, of this subset of patients.
Ivar Goksøyr : I think that that can be, uh, reasonable, but it’ll be a, a way, and I I also think, you know, if there is consensus in, in a, in a field, in a, in a, in the medical field that this, we believe this is important and there are a lot of. You know, a good argument can be made. I think that should be sufficient as well.
Joe Moore: Mm-hmm. Right. It is a pretty safe drug. It’s really, well, you know, regarded in terms of clinical effects, so that that plus the consensus, like let’s just hope. We can, you know, put together the data we need to make this happen. I, I’m really, really excited. Um, so how many times have you taught your training so far?
Ivar Goksøyr : So, I, I, maybe it’s five times now. So I’ve had like, uh, around 270 people through, um, and it’s been quite well, uh, uh, [00:24:00] received. Uh, people are talking about how they embark on a self-reflective journey and that they can really, uh, you know, have a lot of recognition in, in what they see. And the, you know, it’s something with watching these unfiltered, uh, scenes with these really deep emotions as A-M-D-M-A or a psychedelic therapist, you know, that.
Ivar Goksøyr : And also other emotion, experiential focused therapies that, you know, the, when these unfiltered emotions come out, it really touches our own strings and puts them in motion as well. Uh, so it can really be, um, you know, some, some therapy as well in there. Uh, uh, if you let it, if you want it, and if not, uh, it’ll still be, uh, interesting to, you know, look into, you know, how this, uh, actually can look in real life.
Ivar Goksøyr : And also to look at some quite experienced therapists, uh, working with me.
Joe Moore: Mm-hmm. That’s great. Can you share a little bit about some of your [00:25:00] collaborators?
Ivar Goksøyr : Yeah. So, you know, I’m, I’m the founder of Psychologic, which is a mental health clinic here in Oslo. We are 30, uh, affiliated psychologists, and we have this, uh, cooperation with, uh, uh, the academy clinic here, the leading KE clinic, axon Clinic.
Ivar Goksøyr : Uh, so we’re implementing Ketamine now. So the Axon Clinic is really important for that clinical work we do. And then we also have the hospital, uh, in Ville, uh, which is a county in Norway. Uh, that’s where the psychedelic research team is. So they will be a collaborator on this study. Uh, hopefully it’s not like formally anchored yet.
Ivar Goksøyr : And then you have the University of Oslo where the Institute of Psychology, uh, still not, uh, anything signed or formally anchored, but we’ve had a series of meeting and, uh, the, the right people there wanted to happen. So, um, we just need, uh, of course we need to finalize the grant proposals and project descriptions and, uh, and get the funding.
Ivar Goksøyr : Uh, and then, then, you know, we’ll hopefully let, uh, hopefully gonna let it fly. [00:26:00]
Joe Moore: Hmm. This is really interesting. Yeah. Um, so having that kind of network and affiliation broadly, it, it seems like really prestigious groups and I, I just love that it’s kind of, you know, coming together as if it will be a real project and, and hopefully get real funding and move it all forward.
Joe Moore: So thanks for your efforts there. Um, yeah. Thank you. Mm-hmm. Is the, is the science funding ecosystem a little friendlier? So like, I think I only know of a few psychedelic programs in the United States that have received federal funding. Um, yeah. Like would, would science funding, um, for you come from at the national level, or would it be like bigger institutions?
Ivar Goksøyr : Yeah, so we, we broke through a glass roof there a few years ago, getting the first governmental grant for the MDMA depression study. And then, uh, we got, uh, quite a big grant, uh, from the health authorities again for ketamine study. [00:27:00] Uh, so, uh, yeah, we have had two, uh, two major wins there. And then we’ve also had money from Nors Nors Skin Mind.
Ivar Goksøyr : It’s a Swedish foundation for a second md, a depression study in young adults. And that’s also where I, I’m, we’re seeking our primary funds for this, uh, pathogen assisted therapist training in addition to my s founding some, uh, or funding, some of it, uh, half of my PhD money, uh, can be funded from my clinic.
Ivar Goksøyr : And then, uh, there’s a research council in Norway that I will apply for. For rest of the PhD funding. And then this, uh, training is also helping to, to fund further protocol development and, and get it going.
Joe Moore: Yeah. Um, yeah. Amazing. So are people back to your training now? Are people from around the world taking your training or is it purely Scandinavian folks?
Joe Moore: Yes,
Ivar Goksøyr : yes. So we’ve had, you know, [00:28:00] Australians, Indian people, we had people from South America, you know, South Africa, uh, all across, uh, states and Canada and Europe. So, and we always start with, uh, greeting each other, hello in our mother tongue. So that’s a cacophony of people from around the world. So it’s really a, a nice international, uh, flavor to it.
Ivar Goksøyr : And so I’m very pleased to, to be able to, uh, to bring, to bring that to the world and to bring people together. It’s also inspiring to see how many people, uh, are passionate about this. We also have, you know, plenty of time to have interactions and ask questions. Um, so that’s also, uh, uh, good to have some of that.
Ivar Goksøyr : And, um, yeah,
Joe Moore: outstanding and, um. Can you talk about a little bit about what, what it’s like to actually show your own videos? Like that has to be a little emotional. Yeah. Kind of a big deal, right?
Ivar Goksøyr : Yeah. I [00:29:00] mean, you know, the first time I, I looked into the tapes and they’re quite, you know, they’re, you know, what they say about MBMA, uh, therapy’s, it’s not a no no gay, no pain situation.
Ivar Goksøyr : And, uh, know a lot of the times, and we see it in the MDMA depression trial as well, people have this really affirmative positive experiences reconnecting with love and clarity and, you know, have to have some people have positive feelings in their body for the first time in years, you know, and so some of those clips are really, you know, filled with humor and affirmations and really celebration of life.
Ivar Goksøyr : But then you also, you know, the, the higher you can go the, the deeper you tend to be able to go and vice versa. And, and there are really some really painful. Expressions. There’s, they’re also, so before I showed it, the first time I, I showed it to my wife and I was really curious, what am I doing? And this is this weird.
Ivar Goksøyr : Am I just, you know, being pathetic. Well, even though I knew this is, this is honest, it’s raw, [00:30:00] it’s me. And, and it was important. And it, and it, I think it will be important for a lot of people to be able to watch it because I think it normalizes, you know, it’s not only MDMAs, it’s a therapy or psychedelic therapy that is stigmatized.
Ivar Goksøyr : Uh, the healer’s own wounding is also somewhat stigmatized. Uh, you know, uh, it’s not that easy. I mean, it’s getting better. I mean, culture might, might differ, but. To really talk openly about the wounding. And it’s, it can be a lot of pride also in US therapists, you know, going into this role. And even though we sometimes may feel like hypocrites, we don’t want other people to, to see that we are very, you know, very human.
Ivar Goksøyr : And, um, as I say in NS is a therapist’s about, you know, getting the patient in touch with their inner healer. And if we also, through this training and other, of course, uh, things can, the therapist can get in touch with their inner patient, uh, and heal that, I think, I think then, then you will be able to go even further.
Ivar Goksøyr : So, [00:31:00] uh, but as my wife watched, uh, those, some of those first, most emotional clips and, and I saw how touched she she was and how, how, you know, how, uh, how much compassion she, uh, that was elicited in her than I, I got that necessary, you know, confidence to, to, to show it also to broader audience. But yeah, I must admit that I was quite.
Ivar Goksøyr : I, I was clear that I, I will need you guys to, to give some feedback after this. And I mean, these, it’s like five or six years, uh, since I had these sessions. So it’s very well integrated. Um, that’s also important. So, uh, you know, so I say that I have no need for you to kind of protect me or anything, but, uh, this silence afterwards is, uh, is not something so please, and, and of course, just, you know, uh, as, as in psychedelic therapy and as a therapist to just pay close attention to your own [00:32:00] reactions when you watch these clips.
Ivar Goksøyr : One thing is the technical aspects and, and that meta perspective. And another thing is just tuning into what is going on on the, on the deeper levels in the patient and in you. How the patient is a mirror on processes inside of you. And that’s something that we focus a lot of in the, in the course and it tends to, tends to be quite helpful.
Ivar Goksøyr : Mm-hmm. So, uh, but it has, it has been really gratifying, I must say, because universally, uh, you know, uh, the ra the ratings has been 4.84 stars, uh, from 270 reviews out of five stars studies. So. I also do a lot of lecturing, uh, in other contexts than this course in, in universities and, and psychedelic therapy programs.
Ivar Goksøyr : Um, and in these teachings I tend to show a, a few more, more short, shorter clips. And, and yeah, I think also there is a, a need and a, and a also a certain kind of hunger for being able to actually look at authentic [00:33:00] clinical footage, uh, in training.
Joe Moore: Right? I think, um, a huge portion of the maps, MDMA training is kind of, you know, pausing and playing and pausing and discussing and, and things like that.
Joe Moore: And I think that’s really helpful. Um, especially given we just can’t do it. Um, so mm-hmm. You know? Absolutely. I think even if we could do it, the video analysis and commentary would be really helpful. Um, yep. Yeah. Yeah. It’s a good way to learn. I hope in time we can do that with a lot more psychedelics too.
Joe Moore: Um mm-hmm. There’s very serious differences in how somebody would show up under DMT and Iboga and whatever else, right?
Ivar Goksøyr : Absolutely. No, I, I think that’s key, uh, to, to, to, to build up the video libraries in training, for training purposes is certain, certainly something that I would aim for.
Joe Moore: Yeah, absolutely.
Joe Moore: Um, so could we [00:34:00] spend a little bit of time talking about inner healer stuff? Um, this is a, it’s a complicated topic, at least in America. I don’t know if it’s complicated elsewhere, but I, you know, we, we in our world, frame it as the body knows how to heal. Most of the time we have to set the container properly so that it can, um, and I don’t know how that’s like, um.
Joe Moore: So you’ve, you’ve probably heard the, um, accusations, right? This is cult thinking that there’s some inner healer out there. How do you like to think about it or how do you like to talk about it?
Ivar Goksøyr : Yeah, so, uh, yeah, I’m aware of the critic, you know, and the critics of this being more, having like a concept rooted in spiritual thinking and that it can also lead into this kind of exceptional thinking around psychedelics that somehow psychedelics show you the truth and somehow everything that comes up on psychedelics is inherently benign or [00:35:00] correct, or, and, and the only thing you need to do is you trust it and then ev and it, everything will turn out for the best.
Ivar Goksøyr : Um. And, uh, uh, I, and so I think it’s, uh, it’s an important concept that makes a lot of clinical sense and it has a lot of different names. Uh, but it needs to be seen as, uh, um, a metaphor, not like, uh, uh, you know, it’s not a separate entity or intelligence, but, uh, it is part of our nature and I think it makes a lot of sense to think of us as, uh, you know, we are nature, we are, uh, organic creatures, and the body for sure knows how to heal in many ways.
Ivar Goksøyr : Uh, but sometimes it’s not able to heal itself either. And sometimes it can start attacking, uh, itself. And the psychic can also, you know, uh, attack itself. Uh, and, um. So I think it’s, it’s for sure an really important Ali, and it’s not a new concept. I mean, Carl Rogers, uh, [00:36:00] the principle of self-organizing wisdom, the, the, the therapist only needs to set this certain, you know, the congruence and the positive regard and empathy, the facilitative, uh, psychological factors for the patient’s self-organizing wisdom to take the lead and, and to lead to self transformation.
Ivar Goksøyr : Uh, so it’s really a humanistic and, and beautiful concept, but it needs to be seen as a metaphor. And it’s also important to. You know, to acknowledge that these, uh, substances that, uh, has this great advantage of opening up the psyche, uh, in a faster, deeper way than many other methods, although you can open it as deeply with other methods and so forth.
Ivar Goksøyr : But this, this advantage is also the challenge with a method like the talent is also what can become problematic And, um, uh, and yeah, so, so, um. Uh, [00:37:00] I mean, you know, the, in psychodynamic therapy also, we have this, uh, concept of the Unconscious Therapeutic Alliance, which basically is the same. It is, uh, this part of the patient that has this unconscious will to health in, in the psychoanalytic, uh, thinker auto ranks terms.
Ivar Goksøyr : Um, and, uh, and the, or in Donald Winnekot’s terms, the, the, the, the true self that tries to express itself. Um, so, um, so, uh, in, in, in the traditional training on, in, before we also have this, the main thing you do is to show the patient that there’s, there is this sound part of you, this Healing forces tries to come through, and then there is this fear.
Ivar Goksøyr : Of becoming authentic and to letting this true. And then you have the resistances against it. And then the whole thing is about tilting this inner, uh, power balance between the, the forces that want to express and the forces that wants to, uh, suppress in favor of the expressive forces. [00:38:00] Um, so it’s really a, a way of thinking that I, that I, that I’m well aware of and, and trained in from beforehand and it fits really well.
Ivar Goksøyr : So, but yeah, um, to just say that, I mean, it is a bit complicated because in a way it is, it has a lot of truth in it. If you’re able to trust that whatever is coming up is something that you can handle, then this trusting and this. You know, my frame of mind is, is, is actually creating, uh, that reality, at least to a certain extent, but we must be, uh, mindful that this is not possible, uh, for many of us.
Ivar Goksøyr : Uh, and that, um, the risk of, you know, some kind of patient blaming, if you’re not able to, you know, heal from this, then it’s, uh, in a way your own fault or something like that is, but I, I must say I’ve never seen that as a problem in, you know, in the [00:39:00] therapies teams that we have here in Norway and throughout the training and the way MAPS has trained us.
Ivar Goksøyr : I mean, there is a lot of focus on that, uh, concept, but it, it’s not trained as some, you know, uh, I don’t know. In, I, I think it’s trained, trained in a quite wholesome way. That’s, that would be my perspective on it.
Joe Moore: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. We do need to be really careful about how we talk about it and, um, I think it’s just such Yeah.
Joe Moore: An amazing thing. This is the first time in many years somebody brought up auto rank, so thank you for that. Oh,
Ivar Goksøyr : yeah, yeah. You know it, yeah.
Joe Moore: Major influence on Stan Groff and, uh, transpersonal psychology. Yeah. Yeah. Um, breath work as well. Yeah. I, I love that term of phrase, uh, the will to health. I think that’s great.
Joe Moore: Mm-hmm.
Ivar Goksøyr : Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Joe Moore: Um, yeah, and I’m, I’m with you. It’s just I see it in nature. Rabbits [00:40:00] will shake, dogs will shake sometimes to change state. We don’t really have that, you know, we could. Yeah. Um, but it’s, you know, I mean, kids
Ivar Goksøyr : in, in bomb rooms, kids are shaking, but the adults has learned to, uh, suppress it as part of their culture conditioning.
Joe Moore: Mm. Right. Yeah. So there’s just so much there. And, um, I think, say would, would you agree that psychology is just kind of like, generally speaking, institutional psychology is kind of like missing a number of core ideas that we kind of discussed in the past, but we haven’t figured out how to integrate those things?
Ivar Goksøyr : Yeah, for sure. I mean, uh. You know, there are a lot of different groups, uh, also in kind of the established psychology, at least here in Scandinavia. And they’re really onto a lot of these things. Uh, some coming from humanistic psychology and emotional focus therapies. And I mean, there’s [00:41:00] also, so I would say there’s, in
Ivar Goksøyr : the,
Ivar Goksøyr : the, the cartoon variant of mental health care is of course very little developed, but at least here in Scandinavia, I think there’s a lot of good stuff coming up.
Ivar Goksøyr : So I, even though there are some differences, and you say, I mean, in the maps manual, it’s, you know, one of the, uh, the sayings there is, can, can what is coming up be worked as, as, um, uh, po possibly part of the healing process instead of being pathologized, for example. And I, I do think that in, in many acute words, that would be a good thing to integrate more.
Ivar Goksøyr : Of course. And also I, I believe that like, say. Uh, this, this the psychotherapeutic culture where you, you, you, you suppose that there is a problem and then you dig to find the problem and, and solve the problem. Then you, you, you run the risk of creating, uh, the problem in by this way of thinking. So to assume that, and this is also a good exercise [00:42:00] for life, to assume that nothing is actually wrong, you know, that this is, this is all happening for perfect, uh, reasons.
Ivar Goksøyr : And, you know, in this society we tend to individualize, uh, too much, you know, both our pride and our shame and, and you know, we’re quite, you know. We, we miss the big picture that, you know, we are part of a really, uh, big picture here, a big web of things. And our free will is probably much more, you know, constrained than we like to think, at least when we remain unconscious.
Ivar Goksøyr : So, you know, we are nature and patterns in nature expressing, and if I had had your genetic, you know, uh, uh, genetics and your, uh, learning history, I would’ve taken the exact same choices as you do in your life. And the same is true vice versa. So I really think it’s important to stop individualized and personalize and, and put so much blame [00:43:00] and guilt and, um, I mean, responsibility is important.
Ivar Goksøyr : It’s important to, to wake up and to try to be conscious. And, but at the same time, you know, could your life up until now have, uh, unfolded in any other way than it did? If not, uh, is there anything to blame? And then we tend to compare ourselves, you know, to, to others. And then that’s just nonsense. Mm-hmm.
Ivar Goksøyr : So, yeah. Yeah. Maybe deviating a little bit from your original question, but, so yes. I don’t want to, to, I wanna paint a, a too, you know, black or white picture of what is established. There’s a lot of good things going on, but for sure a lot of room for improvement in, in the way we think about things. And, uh, I do think psychedelic can be a, a positive, bring some positives there.
Ivar Goksøyr : And not to say the least to. Integrate, MDMA asso therapy in, in mental healthcare, but also in in somatic [00:44:00] medicine. Uh, for, for some, uh, disorders, I think will really enhance our understanding of how much unconscious emotional wounds are really, uh, at the core of so much of our symptoms and problems and diagnosis, both mentally and, and somatically.
Ivar Goksøyr : And, uh, so I really have big hopes, uh, for that. And, and I mean, back to the inner healing intelligence, I mean, uh, patients, they really, it makes sense for patients because that’s, this is what they experience my, I mean, some people say it’s people that haven’t taken the drug will not understand. You can read yourself like an open book that they really feel, wow, where did that come, come from?
Ivar Goksøyr : It’s so fascinating that you know, all this, all this inside you, this inner wisdom, this intuitive knowing. Uh, so, so to, to give that I think and also as therapists to, to. Be engaged and to be equipped to do that deep transformative work that most of us wants to do [00:45:00] and to, to see how much this inner intuitive wisdom is, is triggered when.
Ivar Goksøyr : A drug and a context is really putting inside you a lot of trust, uh, and, and compassion. And so when you have trust and compassion you, that that’s what we needed to enter truth that is normally painful. And you know, when you’re trustful, you’re not afraid. So when you’re not afraid, you don’t need to defend and you don’t need to defend, then you have access, uh, to your body and to the contents of your mind.
Ivar Goksøyr : Um, so, so that’s really, it’s empowering for the patients, but it’s also very empowering for therapists and, and to be able to step outta that expert role and, and to really learn from the individual cases and from this rapport of wisdom within each patient is really, really precious. And I, I think it will advance the field and the collective, uh, level of consciousness in mental health care.
Ivar Goksøyr : Uh, [00:46:00] for sure. Yeah.
Joe Moore: Yeah. And I don’t, I don’t mean to like put psychology in, in the psychiatric field in a bad light. It’s, it’s a problem to continue working on, um, if the paradigm stops yielding good results. Maybe we need to broaden the paradigm a little bit. Um, absolutely. Yeah. You know, for instance, like these psychedelic drugs are potentially some of the best drugs we’re adding to psychiatry since Prozac and Prozac.
Joe Moore: Wasn’t that amazing? It was. Okay. Yeah. But it wasn’t amazing. Yeah.
Ivar Goksøyr : Yeah. Absolutely.
Joe Moore: No,
Ivar Goksøyr : I,
Joe Moore: I totally agree. Yeah. And you know, I, I think, um, it’s okay to critique our fields too. I know we’re fighting really hard to make our fields. Um. Defensible and seem respected and whatever, but like, we also, part of that dynamic, for me at least, is like [00:47:00] confronting, like where are we having limitations?
Ivar Goksøyr : Absolutely. And I think, uh, I mean the, the, the, the numbers are clear. Like there’s so many people that we’re not able to reach in mental health care now, so it’s perfectly legitimate to critique it. I just sometimes feel that, you know, to stay out of idealization and devaluation can be really important because devaluation of others, uh, just triggers and idealization of what you’re doing.
Ivar Goksøyr : It, it, it kind of invites devaluation and devaluating others is not something that makes people interested in what you have to, to offer. So to, to have a nuance approach on that. But for sure, I mean, there’s so many people we are not able to help. And, and why is that? And you knows. And we’re talking about, yeah, we know we need more money and more time with each patient, and that’s true.
Ivar Goksøyr : And we need more, you know, better implementation of what actually works already, evidence-based treatments, and that’s so true. Um, but then I also think [00:48:00] that we, we are talking too, a little about the enormous complexity of the task at hand. So that that’s also an a, a good reason why we were not able to reach more people.
Ivar Goksøyr : I mean, anybody that has helped try to help a fellow human being that is stuck in deep self-hate or, you know, lack this early re relational imprints of being lovable or safe in those critical periods growing up, how hard that is to, to change, you know, there, there’s certainly no pill you can give anybody, and there’s no procedure.
Ivar Goksøyr : You can, you know, uh, elicit, even though no matter how much the health bureaucrats would like, that there’s no package you can give people. It’s, it’s really hard. And, uh, the mind is complex. And while in somatic medicines you have all these tools, you know, you have, you can take pictures and take tests to know more about the ethology underneath, you know, the root causes of the symptoms on there.
Ivar Goksøyr : On the surface. Uh, and you can also have this robotic [00:49:00] arms that can do these tiny precise procedures behind all these layers of protective tissue. But in mental health, we, we lack these, um, ways to, to get this deeper picture and, and, and do these incisions deep inside with, with very much position. And I, I do think that psychedelics are technologies for mental health that will really, uh, advance, uh, or give us the possibility to, to advance our knowledge and to, to help so many more people.
Ivar Goksøyr : They don’t come without risks, and especially if not, you know, uh, applied within a, uh, a context as is knowledgeable about how the psyche works. Um, so, but with that, I, I really am hopeful. Right. I mean, you see, you, you can look at the, you know, what has happened with ketamine in the us It, it is, it’s not only pretty, I mean, I’m very happy for all the people that have been [00:50:00] helped by ketamine in the us but the way it’s prescribed and, you know, uh, with, without any context and container and, you know, I, I kind of fear I have some worries that similar things will, will be happening to, to other psychedelic drugs.
Ivar Goksøyr : So that’s something to be aware of for sure.
Joe Moore: And I, the way I frame that, Ivar is like, it’s part of us learning. Like we have to make mistakes before we can learn. Yeah. And what is the optimal container and mm-hmm. Yeah. And, and cost is obviously a big thing, right? So, and I, I kind of know what you’re talking about.
Joe Moore: Some people are talking about at-home, MDMA and, um, not long after at-home, ketamine has had, you know. I, I can’t say bad results yet, but there has been abuse for sure, and there has been sloppy prescription for sure, and people have been hurt. But you know, in medicine people will get hurt. Um, so we have to kind of like, you know, is the standard of care be would’ve been [00:51:00] better for them.
Joe Moore: And that’s a whole thing that we have to work out and science will help us understand it, I hope.
Ivar Goksøyr : Absolutely. I, I like that, that we’re still learning.
Joe Moore: Yeah. Like the idea that we’ve figured everything out just doesn’t work for me. Um, we’re too early. Science is still pretty young like. Double blind. Our cities are very young.
Ivar Goksøyr : I mean, yeah, 1962 or something, that it became the gold standard and, and yeah, psychologists, it’s, it is a very young discipline. And, and that’s what all those that we’re not able to reach, uh, those that our hearts still bleed for, they are, they are reminding us of that, that we are still a young discipline and that there are tons of things we still need to learn and, and psychedelics are, are learning enhancers, uh, done, uh, used in the, in the right way.
Ivar Goksøyr : So, uh, so we as a field can learn from that hopefully.
Joe Moore: Yeah. Um, so very optimistically, say five years out [00:52:00] from now, what might you hope is a little bit different as a result of the training that you’re putting on, and it’s coming up in about a month.
Ivar Goksøyr : Uh, well, so, uh, well, I, I, I really hope, I mean, we have 280 people trained and, and then I’ve done all the marketing myself, and now I’m getting the help of you, this platform, other platforms.
Ivar Goksøyr : And so to really reach thousands of, of, uh, participants in, in the next few years that will, and that this course will inspire them. To do ever more deeply inner healing work on themselves and be able to recognize so much more of the processes in patients because they’re not stocking their own anxieties and defenses.
Ivar Goksøyr : And because they have, uh, uh, walk similar paths themselves and have this increased ability to pattern recognition and to really connect and understand what they’re going through. Um, and that even though if they’re not working with psychedelics or MDMA at all, just that, that’s not a prerequisite at all for taking this course.[00:53:00]
Ivar Goksøyr : Uh, that’s also part of the feedback. You know, even though if you don’t have much interest to, it’s a really good way to, to, to get some, um, depth knowledge on therapist development, uh, in itself and healing processes in general. So, yeah. So. For, for therapists to do their work. And I do believe there’s a lot of truth that you can’t bring anyone longer than you have brought yourself.
Ivar Goksøyr : However, luckily the patient can bring him or herself longer than you have, but then it will be despite of a, not because of. So yeah, that’s a goal. And also that’s amazing, uh, that, uh, this, uh, and pathogenesis therapist development study will be helped by this course to be funded and to be, uh, to have pioneered a new, uh, frontier in psychotherapist method, independent development, and have inspired, uh, many more [00:54:00] research groups to continue that endeavor, to use this learning enhancer together with a range of, of, of methods to really, really heal and help the, the,
Joe Moore: the healers.
Joe Moore: Yeah. So here’s, here’s something we didn’t get a chance yet, and we chatted about this before. Um, we recorded. Um, was this idea of MDMA being, um, at times more optimal for certain populations than tryptamines, like psilocybin? Um, could you speak a little bit about that?
Ivar Goksøyr : Yeah, well, there’s a lot we don’t know yet, but my sense, uh, from my, uh, experience is that.
Ivar Goksøyr : Um, for integrating into mainstream psychiatry. I, I do believe that MDMA has a special potential because it is easier to work with. There will be less projective processes, there will be less dramatic, uh, traumas [00:55:00] coming up. It challenges our metaphysics to a lesser degree. Um, it requires some, I I, I wouldn’t say that it requires less competency at all, but it’s easier to combine with whatever you’re already doing.
Ivar Goksøyr : Uh, you know, MBMA just opens your heart and goes straight into your personal biography, and you can just, no matter what your method you’re trained in, NDMA will help you to see that these processes you’re, that you’re trying to elicit will just become deeper while classic psychedelics. Um, will be much more different, much more, uh, spiritual and much more symbolic.
Ivar Goksøyr : And it can be harder to, to integrate. Uh, and it can, uh, can, can may, it may be more messy and maybe more people will have more dramatic and difficult experiences and, and there will be a bigger chance for, for, for backlash. This being said, uh, classic psychedelics, this is not to speak down classic [00:56:00] psychedelics.
Ivar Goksøyr : They have been shown to be quite safe in a clinical setting. It is possible, uh, but we must remember that the clinical settings in the, in the research, you know, the research settings, they are really tight and, uh, the screening is really tight. So when we open up more, I think, uh, it, it, it requires more to get that right.
Ivar Goksøyr : The potential is huge and there are important, but it just requires more specialized knowledge, um, to, to handle. Uh, the fact that these, that those drugs, they don’t have any inherently anxiety regulating properties, making the takeoff and learnings more, more smooth, like MD Ma, uh, do have. So I think, uh, here in Norway we just implemented, we are in the process of implementing ketamine in the public mental health care.
Ivar Goksøyr : It was just approved. Um, and, um, and I think that’s a, a good place to start. And then [00:57:00] if MDMA follows, uh, and then, uh, classic psychics after that, I think that could be a good learning curve for the field to make this implementation as wise as possible for the betterment of well people. I, I really think, uh, psilocybin is exceptional.
Ivar Goksøyr : Uh, but, uh, you know, we’ll, we’ll see.
Joe Moore: Yeah, absolutely. Time, time will show. Um, yeah. And let’s be intellectually honest as long as we can about these things. And, um, yeah. Yeah. And
Ivar Goksøyr : yeah, it’s, I’m, I’m curious to know, you know, how it will, this is just my fantasies. I mean, and people have so many different views, so Yeah.
Ivar Goksøyr : I’m, I’m excited to see.
Joe Moore: Yeah. Amazing. Is there anything else that you’d like to mention before we work towards closing up? Maybe you can give the details of the training again.
Ivar Goksøyr : Yeah, so it’s coming up the 2nd of November and then the 9th of November. It’s two consecutive Sundays, [00:58:00] uh, three hours each online interactive, a lot of authentic clinical footage and, uh, you know, a little bit on the fundamentals and on the HandsOn aspects, but we don’t do use too much time on it, on it.
Ivar Goksøyr : And then we frame what we see, uh, within this concept of the wounded healer, and we do a scientific clinical and, uh, exploration of that archetype and, uh, encourage self-reflection and watching clips and, and processing what this, how this is, uh, for, for each of us. But the main thing is to, to really get to see a lot of end a assisted therapy in action framed within a container that, uh, uh, therapists, uh, tend to, uh, really be appreciative of.
Ivar Goksøyr : So, and, and I really enjoy doing that. And I, I, I will also say that I. You know, I, I don’t know. I’m not sure who the audience, uh, this live stream of podcast will be, but [00:59:00] I just think that, uh, each one of us that is somehow drawn to this field, we, we have this knowing that there is something important and yes, do not idealize.
Ivar Goksøyr : And there are all these limits and, and challenges in, in how to release the potential and avoid harm, but this inner knowing or feeling that we’re onto something important and that is really important to, um, to follow that, uh, inner knowing. And it’s really important that we mess it up as little as possible and that we really do our own work.
Ivar Goksøyr : That we educate ourselves in all the ways we possible can. Most of us also have this natural respect and maybe a little bit fearful for, you know, that I can certainly feel that every time I’m initiating someone, it’s hard to get an, a true informed consent, uh, but this certain trepid level of trepidation for entering these deeper realms.
Ivar Goksøyr : So I think we really need to be, uh, aware of the potential, but [01:00:00] also there’s responsibility and, and be really to believe in, I mean, to take seriously both this attraction we have towards the field. And I think each of us can have a special, unique contribution to the field. Uh, and also, uh, to take the, the responsibility that comes with engaging in this field.
Ivar Goksøyr : Seriously. So I, I hope to, to assist in, in those matters.
Joe Moore: Amazing. Thanks so much for joining us and sharing, and I hope people check out the program. Um, check out the blog we have coming up from var. There’s gonna be some good insight there as well. Um, and thank you so much. Let’s, um, conclude here and we’ll hang out backstage for a minute.
Ivar Goksøyr : Great. Yes.
Joe and Kyle debrief a hometown Dreamshadow Transpersonal Breathwork weekend in Breckenridge, then sketch the next chapter for Psychedelics Today: a community-centric model (Navigators) that bundles education, live streams, book and film clubs, and small-group access. They kick around the big “creativity + psychedelics” question, contrast subjective “I feel creative” with objective task performance, and highlight new research—from DMT’s potential in stroke recovery to breathwork’s measurable effects. They wrap with quick hits on MAPS leadership, state policy moves, and what’s coming up at PT this fall.
This transcript was automatically generated and may contain minor errors or inaccuracies.
Joe Moore: [00:00:00] Hello everybody. Welcome back to psychedelics today, Joe and Kyle today. Kyle, how’s it going? Pretty
Kyle Buller: good, Joe. How
Joe Moore: are you doing? Lovely. Excited to do this again. This is two weeks in a row. We get to stream together. Yeah, yeah. Well
Kyle Buller: many
Joe Moore: more to come. Yeah, that’s great. Um, so today we’re gonna do some kind of, uh, analysis on some news articles.
Joe Moore: We’re also gonna talk about a launch. We’re kicking off some future classes and, um, just kind of like the direction of where we’re thinking right now for psychedelics today. So excited to do that with you. Yeah, likewise. So, um, let’s talk about this past weekend. Yeah. Breath work.
Kyle Buller: Yeah. We had a nice breath work week weekend up here in Breckenridge.
Kyle Buller: Um, yeah. Really lovely group of folks. Um, and as I think we were mentioning last time, just yeah, know, it’s always a pleasure to be able to share this work with, with people. Um, and I’m just [00:01:00] always, you know, I, we’ve been doing this for a while, right? And we’ve seen all sorts of different experiences unfold, but, um, I think I’m always just still surprised about like how powerful like breathwork is for folks, um, without a substance.
Kyle Buller: Um, and so it just always, you know, makes me excited that we have this within us and techniques to, uh, and practices to be able to go inward without always needing psychedelics.
Joe Moore: I was chatting with, um, man Singh about his book, um.
Kyle Buller: Shaman. Oh gosh.
Joe Moore: Yeah. Uh, the most timeless religion or something like that.
Joe Moore: Uh, throw up a copy of the, uh, cover of the book, um, on the live stream if anybody’s watching the video that Yeah. Shamanism, the Timeless Religion. Cool. And we were chatting a lot about how he thinks that the, the psychedelic, um, kind of like dominance in these narratives, um, around like religion only coming from psychedelics.
Joe Moore: Like perhaps [00:02:00] it’s the case that Sure. Plenty do, but it’s not necessarily the case that all of them do. Right. Like you and I have had plenty of experiences. Non-drug, there were quite extraordinary. Right?
Joe Moore: Yeah.
Joe Moore: Yeah, through
Kyle Buller: breath work, through meditation. My dreams are always very psychedelic and really interesting, um, drumming, right?
Kyle Buller: Like there’s just so many different ways, uh, to go inward and, and have these like connections with the numan and mystical. It doesn’t always necessarily need to be through chemical, uh, means. So
Joe Moore: yeah. And, um, one of his things, um, and I was really happy to chat with him about this, that the three kind of categories that make up shamanism being kind of a non-ordinary state, interactions with the unseen world, and then some sort of services like healing or divination and mm-hmm.
Joe Moore: And that’s just like, you know, a fascinating fundamental definition, um, for like, what is shamanism? And this is definitely [00:03:00] hotly debated, but that’s kind of what he landed on for his book and Right. I just love that.
Kyle Buller: Yeah. Because it is an umbrella term, right? Like shaman shamanistic practices look different cross-culturally.
Kyle Buller: Um, but yeah, there’s, are those kind of like universals, like, you know, entering into trance states. Um, also, yeah, I think that service is a big portion. It’s like, why are you going in there? And then how are you bringing it back? I remember when I was chatting with my one teacher, um, years ago, he had a long talk with me about like service and community when doing this type of work.
Kyle Buller: It’s like, why are you doing this? Are you just doing this for yourself? Or are you doing it for the community that you’re in? And like, being of service. Um, and I think that’s also a really important point because we can kind of get caught up in the transcendence of the experiences and wanna just keep going back.
Kyle Buller: Right? And then it becomes a little self-indulgent, maybe a little bit of bypassing instead of yeah, bringing it forward to the community in a way, whatever way that is.
Joe Moore: Right. Um, and this concept [00:04:00] of the magic is already within us. Like the wonder is already within us is kind of like a concept that I love from breath work.
Joe Moore: Mm-hmm. And like, you know, we don’t necessarily need that magical plant or that magical person. You know, I’ve been kind of being a little shitty about this calling, like, you know, shamans like kind of interchangeably calling shamans magicians. Mm-hmm. To like kind of just say like, there’s not much difference, you know, and like sometimes diminutive, and I’m apologize if I’ve hurt anybody’s feelings here, but just trying to make a point that like you have this already in you and doesn’t necessarily require some powerful person with other worldly abilities to do it for you, with you.
Kyle Buller: Yeah. Yeah.
Joe Moore: Thus breath work.
Kyle Buller: And it’s interesting just thinking about like how like psychedelic ceremonies and plant medicine ceremonies have like shifted over the years and I wonder kind of like where we’re going as a culture when it comes to these like practices and [00:05:00] techniques, right? Like before it was the shaman, the medicine women, medicine man, um, you know, going into those realms, like having years of like, training.
Kyle Buller: Um, and maybe it’s the distinction between like. What is the shamanic role versus somebody just exploring consciousness on their own? You know, and, and maybe that’s something to, to like, you know, differentiate of like how somebody is like working with these states. Um, but yeah, now a lot of people have more access to it, right?
Kyle Buller: Like before it was like the shaman going into those trans states and bringing healing, or I always like Martine Tels, um, definition of a shaman. He’s like a spiritual lawyer trying to make contracts between this world and, and the spirit world. Um, and like just trying to figure out what’s going on. You know, traditionally that’s also kind of like how things were done and now, right?
Kyle Buller: We all have like our autonomy to, to go in there with these medicines and with practices and stuff like [00:06:00] that. But does that mean by just going in there, does that make everybody a shaman? Um, and I think that’s a interesting question,
Joe Moore: right? Like there’s. I think, I think the term is useful in some ways and not useful in other ways.
Joe Moore: Mm-hmm. Um, and we kind of got into that and it’s a really fun thing and I advise everybody to listen to that podcast. It’s really great. I’m excited to dig into it. Yeah. Hopefully next week if I can get it together. Um, but it’s really, really great and I’m excited about the book and I think even, uh, somebody in kind of the psychedelic press UK orbit wrote a review.
Joe Moore: Um, so if you don’t have time for the book, you could check out the review. I think it might have been Mike J who I love his work. Um, masculine book, right? Yeah. Masculine. So many others too. Um, I’m negligent. I need to catch up on his stuff too. So, um, I could say that for the rest of my life, I guess endless.
Joe Moore: Yeah. Which I’m thankful for. But yeah, breath work. It was so good. It was [00:07:00] so good to just be with people again here in our hometown so we, you know, don’t have to travel super far to do it. We have people come to a really beautiful place. Um, we well rested, you know, having to be in our, you know, our own bed.
Joe Moore: This is amazing. And then, you know, we show up really fresh and people can kind of explore nature here. Just gorgeous woods and mountains and kind of at the peak of autumn too, this past weekend.
Kyle Buller: It’s definitely peak foliage season, which is nice. Um, and yeah, it, it has been really nice kind of doing this like in the hometown versus, you know, I’ve been on the road like for the past like two years, well, I guess the past year I’ve been a little bit more settled.
Kyle Buller: But yeah, running retreats all over the place, doing stuff in like, you know, all sorts of different parts of the world. Um. Not sleeping in my own bed, you know, getting, I got really good at sleeping in hotel rooms and other people’s beds. I was like, oh man, this feels like a skill that I can finally get like a good night rest somewhere else.
Kyle Buller: But, [00:08:00] um, yeah, it just felt a lot different to be able to do that, like in your home versus having like travel and do all that stuff and be a little ungrounded at times or dealing with time zone differences and all that stuff. Yeah,
Joe Moore: right. It’s, um, it is really something and there’s, there’s pretty good data that if you’re not sleeping in your own bed, you’re kind of putting yourself at risk, um mm-hmm.
Joe Moore: Over time, right? Like, it takes one or two or three days to, to kind of get to that kind of safety. It’s kind of like a natural survival response. So anyway, like when facilitators can show up rested, um, I think it really contributes to the, to the safety and the overall feel of it. So thanks for everybody that showed up for letting us do it that way.
Kyle Buller: Yep.
Joe Moore: Yeah. Um, so I think, um, we’ll have some more dates in the near term. I think this time of year is a little tough for people to commit to. Um, but hopefully [00:09:00] we can do some in the winter and hopefully we can do some in the spring, maybe even in Denver. So stay tuned, everybody, if you want to do that kind of work with us.
Joe Moore: Um, and yeah, maybe, uh, anything else here or maybe we can pivot to the new project we wanna chat about.
Kyle Buller: Yeah, we can pivot.
Joe Moore: Cool. So we’ve largely funded psychedelics today through education, um, to date. And, um, the, the world is changing. How people want to educate themselves is, you know, always shifting. And as a result, we want to keep delivering amazing stuff to you all out there and keep being of service to the community to the best of our ability.
Joe Moore: And what we’ve landed on in part is. An online community, different tiers and monthly fees, and trying to figure out how to move most or all of our education over into this kind of monthly model, which I think could be really interesting. So folks don’t [00:10:00] necessarily have to show up and pay, you know, 200 $800 for individual trainings, which are, you know, high value.
Joe Moore: We’re trying to be as competitive in the marketplace of education as we can be, and often case we underprice ourselves. So, you know, I think. Just people are more accustomed to let me add this subscription on. Maybe I can just join for two, three months and, and bail. Which we hope you stay around. But you know, that’s always an option too.
Joe Moore: And, um, you know, how can we also develop community? Because I think what we saw in vital and navigating psychedelics and our whole breath work, um, careers is the value of community. Even if temporary community is amazing and mm-hmm. Having people with shared experiences on the same platform, maybe we got to know each other in person here or there.
Joe Moore: Like that really adds things to the, to the stock. Anything you want to add here about the why?
Kyle Buller: Well, the community piece, I think is the, [00:11:00] the big piece. And I think just to echo what you said about like, you know, what we’ve learned in vital, it’s like. That has felt just so amazing to get to know people, to like build a community, have people like, you know, participate in, in different ways, whether it’s coming back and like giving presentations or helping, you know, do some teaching and, and supporting that way.
Kyle Buller: And, um, yeah, I think we all crave it too, um, like finding like-minded others to be part of this path. Um, and so, you know, I think that’s another reason why we wanna do it. You know, we wanna connect with you guys too, right? Like, we wanna be able to create this community to be able to connect, hear what you guys are interested in, um, and also help to hopefully provide value through, you know, doing more of these live streams for you.
Kyle Buller: Um, you know, education, all that stuff. So, yeah. Yeah,
Joe Moore: I was thinking about, like, one of, one of my favorite ever conversations is a, a dear friend who’s a classist and, um, knows a lot about the Mediterranean and then another guy, mutual [00:12:00] friend. Now, um, there’s like a world class. Expert on the Mongols. We just hang out, hung out at dinner, chatting about, like, speculating about, you know, ancient drug trade, ancient, like, kind of pre silk road drug trade.
Joe Moore: And it was just fascinating. Um, and one of my favorite things and, and the idea is that when we get together with people in the psychedelic space, often we have overlapping funny interests that we don’t really get to get into in our day to day. Mm-hmm. Like can’t really talk to the. The banker or the grocery store person about this stuff.
Joe Moore: But, you know, niche interests really feed our soul, right? Mm-hmm. Like that’s why like the Star Trek conventions have such a big, you know, fan base and they’ve grown forever. And same with psychedelic conferences. Like people go ’cause they wanna talk to the other people. Um,
Kyle Buller: yeah, and like, just like what kind of friendships and connections come outta that?
Kyle Buller: Like I think about like, yeah, the connections we’ve experienced in Vital or the students have experienced among one [00:13:00] another, and it’s like, you know, we haven’t, I guess, necessarily been doing that for our general PT audience, um, because we’ve been just so focused on vital, um, and continuing to be, but wanting to expand that.
Kyle Buller: And yeah, just seeing a lot of the connections like Blossom out of that. It’s like always really nice to see people from like cohort one still mix and mingling or like thinking about, um, the pizza party that we had at Psychedelic Science, like, you know, we have like 50 plus people there. It was like really beautiful just to see people come together.
Kyle Buller: Um, the friend and again, the friendships, the collaborations, like everything that’s kind of like blossomed out of that and it’s like, yeah, how do we bring that to the larger audience for you that, you know. You’re not gonna sign up for vital, right? It might be a big investment. It might be, you know, time that’s not your path.
Kyle Buller: Um, but you still wanna connect with others, right? You still wanna like meet other people, make friends those connections, chat about stuff. So, you know, we’re depending on, uh, doing yeah, more of these live streams q and as. Um, depending on the tiers, open [00:14:00] office book clubs, um, we’ve always had a really great time running those book clubs in Vital, so it’s like, yeah, let’s do it for the, the larger, uh, PT audience as well.
Kyle Buller: Um, yeah, and then, yeah, some of those top tiers, you get small group access, maybe one-on-one calls with us. So,
Joe Moore: yeah. And I’m excited to bring film, film, clubs and certain levels of art to the table. So, um, getting kind of behind the scenes conversations with psychedelic artists and, and sending some of the tears.
Joe Moore: Art. Um, I also love the idea of, um, figuring out together how we actually want to discuss psychedelic film, like documentaries and then literal like. Films that are heavily influenced by psychedelics. I’ll say two off the cuff that I want to include, like Blueberry, which had an alternative. Yeah, I forget the name.
Joe Moore: I forget the other name. And then there was a, I forget it
Joe Moore: too.
Joe Moore: Um, like everything by Jurowski, obviously, but then, uh, come on, enter, enter the Void. Have you seen that one? [00:15:00]
Kyle Buller: That was big during my college years and everybody was like talking about it ’cause of the crazy DMT scenes and stuff like that. Yeah, that one’s really wild.
Joe Moore: Yeah, that’s, uh, you gotta buckle up for that one. I, I came in cold to a friend’s house, like right around the time it came out and I was like very stressed out, but gripped the whole time too. Mm-hmm. Um, thankfully only seen it once, but yeah, there’s so many films coming out. There’s so much art coming out.
Joe Moore: There’s so much room for us to get together and talk about niche things, um, and help. Co evolve and co-create the future of psychedelic. You know, that’s, I think the name of the game here. Somebody asked me yesterday, like, what is the future of psychedelic community? And it’s like, oh God, you know, like I should have some special insight on this.
Joe Moore: And I don’t know, but I, but I think it’s people finding friends, finding really deep connection and then developing community around that if you can. Mm-hmm. Um, and it’s not necessarily like there’s gonna be [00:16:00] one big psychedelic community that everybody gets along. I don’t necessarily know. No,
Kyle Buller: you need, you need your diversity of community, right?
Kyle Buller: Whether it’s this like larger online community, your local community, different interests. Like, I just think about like, yeah, the different communities I’ve been part of. Like some, some of ’em are just radically different than psychedelics, right? Like, and I think that’s healthy.
Joe Moore: Yeah, absolutely. So in time, I hope that we can really, you know, get a number of folks in here.
Joe Moore: And this can be how psychedelics today can support you, support, you know, community can support us. And, you know, this is our job, this is what we do full-time, and we want to keep educating as much as possible and putting out as much free stuff as possible and cheap stuff as possible. Because, um, that’s really been our core, like 90 plus percent of what everything we’ve done has been free.
Kyle Buller: Yeah, yeah. And we love that. It’s just like we, I think we just want to keep doing that. But yeah, it’s [00:17:00] also very unsustainable to just give things away for free all the time.
Joe Moore: So if you support that idea, support us and we can hopefully keep, um, keep that going and also do more and eventually build team and, and keep, um, putting more and more out because there’s so much left to discuss here.
Joe Moore: So much left on the table for us to get into for, you know, the whole thing. Like how do we do this safe and safely and legally? What is, what even is safety? Um, what are the actual legal risks? Um, how can we operate in different countries? You know, is that the right move? Um mm-hmm. And what even does like a really, really safe personal practice look like that, you know, if you don’t have the, um, the privilege of doing it in community, what can you do privately?
Joe Moore: And then how do you build community that’s like, there’s so many things. Like what other kind of topics do you think would be useful for folks for us to like, to get into and develop?
Kyle Buller: Um, within like what we’re [00:18:00] doing,
Joe Moore: psychia generally stuff that we can support.
Kyle Buller: Yeah. Um, yeah, there is so much, right? Like this is such a multifaceted field.
Kyle Buller: Um, my mind, it always kind of goes towards, I think we’re chatting about this last week, just like the whole technology development. And I think. You know, that is reason to be, I think, more connected. You know, I keep reading all these like studies about like our disconnection from nature, how alienated people are.
Kyle Buller: And I think, you know, that’s one big lesson I’ve taken away from psychedelics, right? It’s like, you know, being able to connect with nature, connect with others, everything’s like interconnected and you know, we are at this like convergence point, um, with like, you know, society, humanity, with like, you know, the way things are going, the technology.
Kyle Buller: It’s like also how does psychedelics help navigate us through that? Um, like is it a grounding rod at times or helps us to like, give some insight? Um, you know, I was just thinking, um. No, I brought this [00:19:00] up last week, but kind of digging back into like all Terrence McKenna stuff again. Um, he just kind of keeps popping online and the stuff he was talking about, you know, like back then, uh, it’s kind of where we’re at now.
Kyle Buller: Um, what he was talking about with like the internet and like computers and artificial intelligence and just like, man, yeah, he was talking about this stuff in the nineties and like, you know, how did psychedelics also impact that, you know, for him? Like, did they kind of like help him develop these ideas, think about it differently?
Kyle Buller: Um,
Joe Moore: mm-hmm. Yeah. So what was, what were some of the lines? Uh, computers of the future will be drugs and drugs of the future will be computers, is another McKenna lion around this. And you know, I guess let’s talk about that, like this idea of grounding and like in what ways, and this is kind of speculative and kind of going on a little tangent, but like in what ways can psychedelics actually be that grounding rod?
Joe Moore: Like, and then in what ways can they be kind of like the. Um, instigator for, [00:20:00] um, flights away from Nature.
Kyle Buller: Yeah. I think about this like, and I think this is something I’ve struggled with, um, and maybe Terrance also struggled with it too, with like maybe some of his experiences where my previous ex like experiences, I’d have these like deeply kind of like technological type of experiences.
Kyle Buller: Like, you know, Terrence talked about like the machine world, right? And it’s like you could see the future in which if we continue to develop that stuff, maybe that’s where we’re heading to. But then also at the other side, it’s like. Wow. The more, like, I hate looking at my phone on psychedelics, you know?
Kyle Buller: I’m like, I want to be so far away from that thing. It feels like, I don’t know, it just feels like it sucks a soul out of me. Um, and, you know, just staring at a screen. And so that helps me just to ground in nature more, helps me to like, think about my relationship, um, to technology and like, you know, where do I wanna spend my energy?
Kyle Buller: Um, but it’s also interesting right now that, you know, [00:21:00] this is how humans communicate, right? Like we communicate largely online in text, um, through, you know, these types of means. Um, and yeah, I think it’s something to consider, you know, because yeah. And some of this research that’s coming out around just like the loneliness epidemic and or disconnection to nature, and, you know.
Kyle Buller: I keep hearing all these folks talking about like, um, how human experience might be a job, um, in the future. Like paying somebody to go on a walk. You know, I hear Gary v talk about that sometimes, and I’m just like, yeah, are we gonna be so hooked in where it’s like we are looking for like human connection and we’ll be willing to pay for that in a way.
Kyle Buller: Um, and to me that’s kind of sad, but I don’t know.
Joe Moore: I remember how, um, kind of appalled people are when I, when I show them like the app job simulator or, which is just amazing. But the concept is just, [00:22:00] you know, something similar to that. It’s like robots wanting to like, experience what human life was like.
Joe Moore: Mm-hmm. Um, and like, you know, it’s a jokey app, but there’s some truth there. Um, and that’s, that’s interesting. I wonder, I don’t, that’s a little too futuristic for me for right now, right? That that whole concept of paying somebody to go for a walk, but. You know, I shit like I, stuff stuff is getting stranger with AI and, and robotics and I don’t, I don’t understand what’s gonna happen.
Joe Moore: I think that, I don’t think any of
Kyle Buller: us do. I, I think even the people that like have invented it Yeah. Are kind of like confused about like where it’s going.
Joe Moore: Yeah. Yeah. So like how do we, how do we kind of just get grounded in ourselves, in nature, in our community and, you know, build the things we wanna build, whatever that is.
Joe Moore: You know, I remember there was kind of like this weird, uh, yet again, Margaret Atwood kind of apocalyptic trilogy called [00:23:00] ORs and Craig. And there were these kind of like post-apocalyptic survivors called God’s Gardeners and they made a whole cult of, um, you know, kind of permaculture survival, but kind of like biotechnology and like, um.
Joe Moore: They, all the Saints days were like, you know, Darwin Day, Gregory, Mendel, like so many different like big biologists, you know, like who’s to say we can’t develop those cultures and like create culture around that. Um, and you know, get really smart. Like, ’cause I think really we need to become really smart and we don’t, it’s smarter than we are and we need it to not be only from ai.
Kyle Buller: Yeah. I might be a, a, a nice segue into the creativity piece, right? ’cause we’re kind of touching on like creativity and intelligence, um, and all of our conversations in the past, how psychedelics can help like spark creativity. And I know like, yeah, you’ve mentioned it quite a, a you know, we’re dealing with these problems where we need creative [00:24:00] solutions.
Kyle Buller: Um, and like, how do we develop more creative solutions? Um, you know, is it gonna be just like. It’s funny. Yeah. Your, your, your comment the other day, contacting the Oracle, um, you know, contacting like GPT, um, you know, ’cause I feel like a lot of us use it, right? Just for like, creative endeavors, like asking questions and stuff like that, you know, or, you know, are we kind of, uh, moving past some of our uniqueness of being human, uh, with that creativity and, and how do we spark that if we get too reliant, um, on, on that?
Kyle Buller: And, you know, I think what, there has been some research coming out of like MIT around, um, like some cognitive decline or creative decline when you become too reliant on it. Um mm-hmm. That was creepy,
Joe Moore: right?
Kyle Buller: Yeah.
Joe Moore: Um, yeah. Before we go too deep into this, just if people wanna check out what we’re doing with our community, psychedelics today.com/navigators, we’re gonna talk about it a few more times though.
Joe Moore: So [00:25:00] Yeah. Like, historically in the psychedelic arena. The, the stuff out of, um, Fatman and Harmon’s work, um, back in Palo Alto, uh, Harmon was kind of the lead on that. The idea was that they would get together people who are stuck on creative problems for, um, what was it, at least six months, maybe a year and a half.
Joe Moore: And then they would, you know, have a really tight container about, um, administering psychedelics to, to help them solve those problems. And, um, people would come out and solve the problems. And so that, that is kind of like the historical thing and they had a lot of success there. Um, and then, um, we’re, we’re seeing Center for Minds kind of pick this up and try to like figure out the fundamental neurological stuff.
Joe Moore: Like what is creativity in a really, really micro, um, neurological context. It’s kind of how I’m seeing it. Like okay, [00:26:00] and that, so we need to understand what that is and then we can see if psychedelics. M interact with that thing. Um, but creatives kind of, you know, schools of design kind of have their own metrics already that the, that Center for Minds isn’t necessarily interacting with yet.
Joe Moore: So I think that’s kind of an interesting opportunity. Um, all right. And then, so today we’re gonna talk about this study. Um. Let’s pull that up. I’m gonna try to put it on screen, Kyle. Yeah. But what, what did you, can you kind of set the stage, like describing this study?
Kyle Buller: Yeah. So there was a study that, um, was just published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, which starts to kind of challenge this widespread assumption that psychedelics enhance creativity.
Kyle Buller: And so they did a doubleblind randomized design study. Um, and, but they used kind of like a pharmac was, uh, so it was a DMT plus harmine, um, which was against Harmine alone. And the placebo conditions. Um, and some [00:27:00] of the things that they found out was that it necessarily may have not increased certain types of thinking and creative, uh, processes, uh, that like, you know, maybe we think that is happening, um, during the experience.
Kyle Buller: And I thought that was like pretty interesting to, to read. And again, you know, the, some of the limitations there was like all white, uh, men participating in the study. Um, you know, generally a small sample size. Um, but, and you know, uh, the kind of like the Woca mix, like, you know, is that, you know, I mean Fatman was what Exploring LSD, right?
Kyle Buller: Right. So it’s like you didn’t wanna test some of these other substances here. Um, but um,
Joe Moore: did you catch what school they were at? Oh, Dresden interesting. Um, and then Zurich. Yeah. So, you know, like, I think. In support of the research. Like we have to have baselines like this. You [00:28:00] know, we have to have kind of like, yeah.
Joe Moore: Doesn’t look right. Doesn’t look like we’re gonna do this. And I, I remember Robin Carhartt Harris saying a few years ago, some things along the lines of like, do you really want to be consuming psychedelics before you do x, y, Z tasks? And he is like, based on my data a little bit above microdosing isn’t necessarily gonna be helpful for a lot of things.
Joe Moore: Mm-hmm. Um, and I think, I think that’s kind of a little bit clearer in the data now, but also this is, you know, how do, how do you make a creative breakthrough? And I think this is kind of like setting the stage for us to like develop this as a field, right?
Kyle Buller: Yeah. Yep.
Joe Moore: So they did the DMC in harmony and pharma was thing and Yeah.
Joe Moore: That’s interesting.
Kyle Buller: Yeah.
Joe Moore: Macro level, divergent and convergent thinking and. Macro level creative process dynamics. Yeah. Be interesting to have these folks on to talk about it.
Kyle Buller: I think we should. Yeah. Because Right. That’s [00:29:00] been a lot of like our talk track too, like talking about like the creative aspect.
Kyle Buller: Um, again, you know, it’s like a small sample size. Um, but I did find it interesting Yeah. That like, um, I think the study’s results revealed disconnection between subjective experience and objective performance. So while the participants reported feeling more creative and insightful under the influence, uh, their actual performance on creativity, uh, told a different story.
Kyle Buller: Um, so that’s interesting. Right? It’s like, I think, um, Terrance McKen of talked about how psychedelics like foster funny ideas and Right. I think like when we’re in those experiences, like some of those ideas feel really creative and genius, but then it’s also, you know, how many of them. Are actually really great ideas.
Kyle Buller: Um, and can you actually maybe also move those ideas forward? Um, does it also sound like yeah, there was impaired problem solving? So it, uh, significantly impaired convergent thinking, making participants [00:30:00] worse at structured problem solving tasks, which is like interesting compared to like the Fatman stuff, right?
Kyle Buller: Because it’s like you had somebody, you know, you had these scientists that like, um, were really kind of struggling with problem solving and then being able to kind of dig in. And it also kind of challenges the narrative that we all hear too about, um, you know, Steve Jobs, um, you know, Francis Crick, Carrie Mulli, and all these folks that have like, made these creative breakthroughs.
Kyle Buller: Um, you know, and them talking about how impactful their psychedelic experiences were, um, for some of those creative insights.
Joe Moore: Right. So I think, yeah, I think we owe it to, to ourselves and our community to really dig into that one a little bit more. And, um, I’ve always wanted to, I think this is something that we’re kind of really uniquely positioned to chat about.
Joe Moore: So let’s, let’s see what we can do.
Kyle Buller: Yeah, I don’t know. Have you feel like you’ve been really [00:31:00] creative, like on psychedelics? Um, where it’s like been useful? I wanna say yes for me, but
Joe Moore: like, it depends on our definition of creative. Well, maybe that’s an
Kyle Buller: issue too, with the study too. It’s like, how are we defining that?
Joe Moore: Mm-hmm. Do you remember a Whitehead’s definition of creativity?
Kyle Buller: Um, I could pull it up really quick. Um, um,
Joe Moore: uh, so here we go. In his categorical scheme, in process and reality, Whitehead explicitly states creativity is the ultimate behind all forms, inexplicable by forms and conditioned by its creatures, uh, a k the individual actual entity.
Joe Moore: So there’s a lot there that’s like probably not too easy to understand. Um, but it’s kind of like, uh, hinting at potential is what I [00:32:00] see. And like, how do we actually kind of, um, understand that there’s so many potentialities before they’re actual right? And by when we start making decisions, we kinda like collapse that tree of potentiality.
Joe Moore: And, and, and the tree of potentiality kind of keeps going in kind of big, eh, nearly infinite ways. Um, but what did, what did you find here?
Kyle Buller: I was just pulling something up, um, that I posted on our vital community actually, um, because we were talking about creativity, um, and psychedelics. Um, somebody, uh, did a presentation on kind of like, uh, creativity and flow and psychedelics, and it was really interesting.
Kyle Buller: I pulled up, I started researching creativity, and then I started finding all this stuff that like, um, Whitehead might have been, uh, you know, the c. Like the person that kind of like coined that term. I thought that was fascinating. I was like, [00:33:00] what? Um, right. But, but, uh, this is from Michael Hay, Hal Hay words, woods.
Kyle Buller: Sorry, I’m totally butchering your name. Michael. Um, so he wrote, uh, Whitehead’s development of the word creativity. Uh, namely that he coined this very term, uh, this bearing, repeating prior, uh, to his use of the word creativity and religion in the making in 1926. Uh, this word was not, uh, extent in the English language.
Kyle Buller: Creativity is a term of Whitehead’s own devising in 1925 in science in the modern world, and a year or so before his first use of creativity. He instead used the term creativeness, um, but not on, but only really in 1929 in process and reality, um, that he fully adopted the term creativity, um, as best expressing the mode, um, character and ubiquity of the role of novelty within existence.
Kyle Buller: [00:34:00] Um, so that’s interesting. Expressing the mode, character and ubiquity of the role of novelty within existence and its notion of novelty, which is key. Creativity is the principle of novelty, an actual occasion of novel entity, diverse from any entity in the many which unifies. Thus, creativity introduces novelty into the content of the many, which are the universe.
Kyle Buller: Uh, destructively. The creative advanced is the application of this ultimate principle of creativity to each novel situation. It originates.
Joe Moore: Makes me Whitehead
Kyle Buller: terminology and all that stuff
Joe Moore: makes me think about McKenna, who didn’t necessarily get Whitehead from what I understand. But I think like this idea of novelty generation, I think there’s, I think there’s a lot there.
Joe Moore: And I think like if we go really far out, we can get some really big ideas. And this is kind of like some of the [00:35:00] terminology we’ve been using lately, right? It’s like the medium-sized ideas of what we really wanna bring back. Not something that’s so radical that we’re never going to understand what’s happening, but something that’s radical enough that it could help the community, um, and be implemented.
Joe Moore: And, um, yeah, I think like everything else always needs to be like contextually, contextually appropriate, right? Like introducing ideas that would be amazing for like the 13 hundreds and x, y, z region of the world doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the case here now,
Kyle Buller: right? Yeah.
Joe Moore: Thus novelty and creativity.
Kyle Buller: Yeah. I mean, I feel like psychedelics definitely. I don’t, well I guess it’s also a bias objective perspective. Like, you know, it does create like novelty, you know? I feel like the psychedelic experience is very novel in so many different ways. Um, but I don’t know. Yeah. I’m cool. I’m interested to see if anybody else like, picks up this research and kind of [00:36:00] starts to like maybe do a larger sample size, um, maybe more reliable tests and stuff like that.
Kyle Buller: ’cause you’re right, I think it’s also, yeah. How are we defining creativity? How are we defining all this stuff as well? Um, is it also the outcome, you know, like maybe, um, you know, some of our thinking and structure isn’t really great during it, but like also doing some like long-term follow-up, right? Like maybe somebody had an idea wasn’t fully formed, but, you know, a year or two later.
Kyle Buller: Did that, you know, come into, into being in a way? Um,
Joe Moore: yeah, absolutely. I think there’s so much there. Um, and, you know, so much room for improvement in science, just generally, like, I want to see more science, I want science to be radically well funded, and I wanna see people competing for ideas and competing for who’s right.
Joe Moore: And it’s kind of like one of the fun, more fun parts about it. Um, I think I’ve been frustrated about lately, Kyle, is this idea of like, um, and I don’t know how to solve this, um, but we [00:37:00] saw, um, we see people kind of creating the same data sets and they want like, really uniform and, and they’re only using it for like one trial, right?
Joe Moore: Like, um, I was reading some on autism recently and eventually autism researchers actually had like a standard set of ways of surveying people. Then they just shared all the data and they shared this giant data pool so that they could actually mine for all sorts of insights on this giant global situation.
Joe Moore: And like, how could we develop some sort of collaborative process to make science, you know, more science come out more regularly, um, at lower cost to everybody. And I, I don’t know, like I’m, I’m kind of like dreaming pie in the sky, but it has happened elsewhere is kind of the point. And I think maybe when, when, when we were kind of like deep in the, uh, early phases of the COVID situation, we had [00:38:00] similar collaboration.
Joe Moore: Right. Hyper funding from different governments, right?
Kyle Buller: Yeah.
Joe Moore: Yeah. Um, so we’ll see. We’ll see. Maybe we can do that. Um, so let’s talk about this other one. This one’s really fun. Um, strokes. What did, what did you learn about this stroke problem?
Kyle Buller: Yeah, this was really interesting and so there’s some studies done around using DMT, uh, to, um, and this is mostly in animal models, in, in mice so far.
Kyle Buller: Um, but how it could actually help, um, post-stroke, um, so like with inflammation and, and stuff like that. Uh, and which is like really interesting ’cause I actually chatted with somebody a while ago, um, where they were talking, I think they had a mild stroke and they started actually using mushrooms, um, to help out with, with the symptoms there.
Kyle Buller: Um, [00:39:00] so yeah, uh, some of this research where this, uh. Uh, yeah. Uh, it was published in the Science Advances. Um, and here in this article it says, the results market significant step towards, uh, a, a step forward in stroke research as current, uh, treatment options for stroke remain limited. So, researchers found that DMT offers a dual mechanism of action.
Kyle Buller: It protects the blood brain barrier and reduces inflammation in the brain, um, suggesting that it could complement existing therapies, um, or form the basis of new, more comprehensive treatments. Um, so yeah, that’s, that’s really fascinating,
Joe Moore: right? Like, um, I think there is a pharma company working on this. I think they’re called, uh, Algernon Pharmaceuticals, right?
Joe Moore: Um, and I, I don’t know really anything about their status, um, but I’m, I’m just like glad it’s happening. Uh, and then. Where, where was this study happening? I [00:40:00] didn’t really recognize any of these names. Oh. At savo. So maybe this is, Hmm. I’m gonna, I’m gonna actually share this article on the screen so people can follow along.
Joe Moore: Um, yeah, it’s just really exciting to see that we’re, we’re not just, um, exclusively keeping, um, science in like this kind of couch based model, a couch therapy based model, sorry. Um, that there’s like broader horizons. And that’s really, I think, a, a thing that you and I have been excited about for ages.
Joe Moore: Right. It’s, um, yeah. You know, really great to see that it’s not just psychotherapy.
Kyle Buller: Yeah. Right. There could be so many more like implications. And I’m glad like you’ve been getting loud about at court also too about like all the pain stuff and more of like physical implications with psychedelics here, um, than [00:41:00] just versus like the psychotherapy oriented approach.
Kyle Buller: Um, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I just, I just think about like, um, you know, my uncle had two strokes and he actually I think went for stem cell therapy over in Germany years ago. Um, and just thinking like, yeah, could this be helpful? Um, and it’s kind of interesting to think about, yeah, psychedelics being, um, an application for, you know, post-stroke recovery, if it’s possible, you know, I know this is still early in animal models, but,
Joe Moore: right.
Joe Moore: Um, in this, in this stuff, I, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Algernon people are actually administering it to humans at this point. But this is a different set of research that’s happening. Um, yeah. Not like I understand any of these charts at all, but, um, you know, that’s why people have scientific training and we can talk about it.
Joe Moore: Um, yeah, so I think, um. [00:42:00] Just really excited about this. Stroke is really scary. Stroke is really common. Stan Groff had a stroke. I actually wonder if his recovery was aided by his kind of history with psychedelics. Hmm. Um, yeah, I think at a certain point folks, uh, say like, you know, after 80 they’re like, I don’t know how many more times I need to do this.
Joe Moore: Um, right. You know, I have suspicions about Albert Hoffman, but, um, who knows? Um, yeah, and I, you know, I, I, the, the diseases I make jokes, like dark jokes about me getting in the future is like cancer and stroke. So just like really happy we’re looking at it here and I think, I think there could be some interesting, um, interesting, uh, things for different cardiac events.
Joe Moore: Just seeing how, like, this is kind of. Laid out, like, um, [00:43:00] uh, maybe I think that’s a little too speculative. But yeah, I’m just, you know, happy to see this is happening. Um, I love how rigorous this paper looks. Um, it looks like it’s really contributing substantially. So, thank you authors. Thank you for the whole team that did this.
Joe Moore: Oh, look at this. So there is a little bit of a tie here to Algernon. Okay. Um, company had no role in the design of the study. Um, EF and zn, I don’t, um, we’d have to look up top to see who those are, but we. But there’s only two of the total authors had like a stake in or advisors for Algernon. It probably means they’re paid cash and or have like stock or something like that.
Kyle Buller: Algin. Are they also like working with five MEO or they just strictly DMT. Oh, I thought I saw
Joe Moore: some stuff about like, these folks never gave us money. Everybody. Um, we’re just looking it up. ’cause like this is somebody that, uh, so they’re [00:44:00] looking at Alzheimer’s, which is great. Um, their pipeline looks like they’ve got two drugs.
Joe Moore: They’ve got a DMT here. Um, you know, obviously, I don’t know, like these, these code names are just like, what, what biotechs do? AP 180 8, right? Like, what are you talking about? I think that’s just how they make patents so they can like get investors, um, yeah. To do this stuff. But it looks like they’re doing just straight up dimethyl tryptamine and end dimethyl tryptamine.
Joe Moore: Um, and then let’s see what this other drug is. Um, chronic kidney disease, so they’re doing something with kidneys, um, that doesn’t appear to be anything we know about. So, um, yeah, excited to see, um, see how they’re, how they’re looking. I think, I don’t know. Like I, I pretty sure they’re in people. Yeah. See phase one.
Joe Moore: So they’re already in people. Um, they’re about to, looks like phase two starting soon, which is wild. Um, [00:45:00] cool. So that’ll be in more people. I always think the consent conversation here around stuff like this is fascinating. Like, how are you actually getting stroke victims consent if they’re unconscious?
Joe Moore: And I, I think, um, you know, after a stroke you could be really impaired, so how are you, how are you doing that? So I’m sure they’ve worked that out. I would love to chat with them to see how they’re doing that.
Kyle Buller: Yeah. I imagine they’re probably working with people that are able to give consent, but who knows,
Joe Moore: right?
Joe Moore: It could be families, right. Right. Um, but who knows? We’ll learn more in the, in the future, and this is pretty good news. Um, maps decided to finalize their executive team. So the board of directors, I think, um, named Betty Aldworth and Izzy Ali, co-executive directors, they’re no longer interim co-executive directors.
Joe Moore: This is a permanent thing for them. That’s great. Um, I, I remember a while ago, um, when they were both just, um, interim, I was like, [00:46:00] I don’t, I don’t know who they could put in that would make me feel really good about maps. Mm-hmm. Other than Izzy, um, like, because I didn’t think they were gonna keep the, uh, co-ed thing.
Joe Moore: I always thought they were gonna go for one. Right. But I was, I was chatting with Betty, who I, I really appreciate, so smart, so passionate. Been at this for so long, this drug policy thing forever and ever. Um, chatting with her, um, at the Santa Fe conference recently. She’s like, I don’t, I don’t know that I would ever actually want to be the sole ed ever again.
Joe Moore: Mm-hmm. Of an organization. ’cause her last, um, it’s a lot thing before MAPS was SSDP, I think Ed there. And that’s like a handful. It’s a lot. Yeah. And like, um, Betty and Izzy have just a long career kind of working together too. Izzy was a, I think on the board of SSDP for a while. Um, yeah. And I, I don’t know, do you remember, do you remember this story?
Joe Moore: I, I met, um, Betty in 2017 at the Oakland conference, [00:47:00] like one of the after parties. Um, we were just like hanging out, shooting the shit. I didn’t even know who she was. I’m just shooting the shit at the back of some like, dance floor DJ thing. Um, you know, I just, um, making jokes about hula hoops or whatever and I was like dying and she was so, so great and she’s always been like.
Joe Moore: Really, really helpful to us. Yeah, so Izzy’s always been really helpful. I’ve actually called Izzy on a few emergencies and Thank you Izzy. Um, like help, I don’t know which way is up anymore. Um, like, what do I do here? He’s always been so helpful too. So just really excited that those two are leading the charge and I think their vision is really robust and excited to see what they wanna do.
Kyle Buller: Yeah, huge. Congratulations, Betty and Izzy. You guys will kill it and, um, yeah, hopefully steer the ship in, in a really awesome way.
Joe Moore: Yeah, I know it probably hasn’t
Kyle Buller: been easy in the past, like year or two, three years, however, yeah.
Joe Moore: Oh, incredible amount of work. Um, so I, [00:48:00] I know Betty was kind of like comms director for a long time at Maps, so we had some conversations and like would kind of get like, uh, embargoed news and, and things like that.
Joe Moore: And, and I, I would, I would call for strategy and, and sometimes offer my unsolicited opinion. And, uh, it was really just a, a, I don’t know, lovely relationship and I’m hoping I’m in touch with, um, somebody over there to get them on, uh, the show in the near term. And I, I’m excited about that and we’ll hopefully get some intel on, on what they’re up to in the near term.
Joe Moore: Sweet.
Kyle Buller: Awesome. Yeah, I would love
Joe Moore: to
Kyle Buller: hear some direct updates from, from those folks.
Joe Moore: Yeah. Um, so any other news that you thought, like, interesting to point out?
Kyle Buller: I haven’t been keeping up with much of the news, uh, cycles yet. Um, I feel like I need to, you know, dig in, but you just released a whole bunch in our recent, um, email you just sent out like a bunch of psychedelic news.
Joe Moore: Yeah, this week’s, [00:49:00] um, this week’s news roundup. Let me see, let me see how I can share this list. Um, I, I just was like really, really excited to be able to do this. Um, and yeah, I found, uh, found out that it’s not, not like a really intense amount of work for me to do this and I actually appreciate it ’cause I get to stay, um, in the loop on what’s happening in the world.
Joe Moore: Um mm-hmm. Yeah.
Kyle Buller: Um, there was this interesting article that just came out in, on September 2nd, so I guess a month ago. Um, I haven’t dug into this at all, so I don’t know if I wanna chat about it, but, um,
Joe Moore: go for it
Kyle Buller: sis. Scientists reveal how breath work unlocks psychic bliss in the brain. So high ventilation breath work while listening to music was associated with ports of blissful states, reduced negative emotions accompanied by increased blood flow to emotional processing.
Kyle Buller: Repeat the brain. [00:50:00] Um, so yeah, super fascinating. Um, so this was, um, yeah, so just saying breath work while listening to music may indu blissful states, um, in practitioners accompanied by changes in blood flow to emotional processing in the brain. According to a study published on August 27th, 2025, in an open access, uh, journal, PS.
Kyle Buller: OS one by, uh, Amy Amol, uh, Carter. Um, so yeah, I’m excited to dig into this one a little bit more. I’ve been just trying to dig into more breath work research. We just had a short at, well, I guess not short for online, an hour breath work session within Vital yesterday. Um, and getting a lot of these questions too around like, you know, how can psychedelics like produce these, or how can breathworks produce these psychedelic like states?
Kyle Buller: Um, so I’m excited to, to dig in, uh, to, to more of this.
Joe Moore: Yeah. I think, um, the [00:51:00] breathwork science is coming. Yeah. You already have a good amount of it. Um, but it’s, it’s coming. Yeah. So here’s just kind of like what I sent out. Um, yeah, just, just so people know what it looks like. There’s a big list of news articles, kind of mostly chronological.
Joe Moore: Um, there’s this really interesting, um, I. The fact that Hamilton was on Vice, again with Shane, I found really fascinating ’cause he is always had so many critiques about the news the Vice will put out. Um, but Hamilton was also on, um, the five cast. Interestingly, I don’t know if you saw this drama, Kyle, they actually put it up about a month ago.
Joe Moore: Um, they
Kyle Buller: took it down.
Joe Moore: They took it down, and then they put it back up. Um, on, on, uh. I think Saturday of our breathwork weekend. Yeah. Um, so I wonder what they pulled out? They were making jokes about getting sued. Um,
Kyle Buller: right. Yeah. That’s what I was like. They started off with stuff like that or they used that little like clip to start off.
Kyle Buller: So Yeah, I [00:52:00] imagine, I wonder if they were getting into some like pretty heavy things here and there that they needed to clip out, um, for li liability reasons. Right,
Joe Moore: right. You know, some people have a lot of money for attorneys. Um. Yeah. And so, you know, all sorts of stuff. So, uh, there’s just headlines, right?
Joe Moore: Colorado Natural Medicine Board recommends ibogaine for therapeutic use. So it’s looking like that’ll be coming sooner than later. Um, there is also the whole thing about Colorado requiring Nagoya compliant Ibogaine. Mm-hmm. Um, as of now, AMBIO is the only people with, apparently publicly. I got, I got kind of some funny conversations about this.
Joe Moore: The only company with, uh, Goya compliant Iboga. I’m like, eh, is that real? Like, I don’t know. I’ve, I’ve not done done enough digging, but they’re very insistent. But it’s people who are like deeply in that world. But then there’s the whole thing, like how do we get Iboga in? Um, there’s, uh, a new Iboga doc coming out really soon.
Joe Moore: Mm-hmm. Um, I think later this month or in November, [00:53:00] um, that’ll be on Netflix. Um, Alaska is working to gather more signatures for their legalization bill. Um. A cluster headache study was funded psilocybin trial. It’s gonna be great. Um, but they’re using like DMT pens now. I think I told you that one, right?
Kyle Buller: I don’t think so. They’re using that for cluster headaches. Oh my God.
Joe Moore: Totally. So you have a cluster coming on at any point in the day. Could be in the middle of the night, you’re like, oh my God, this is gonna be a nightmare. How am I gonna do this? And like, I have to go eat like two, three grams of mushrooms or something, whatever the dose is.
Joe Moore: Could even be a gram and a half. But it, you know, that sucks to have to do it one in the morning to ab poor cluster. Um, and, uh, they’re having How do you even prepare for
Kyle Buller: that? You’re just like, I’m gonna, like, you don’t, you’re just like,
Joe Moore: it’s cluster headaches are so horrible that anything’s better. Yeah, yeah.
Joe Moore: Like these, it’s so bad that often you’re just bashing your head against the wall and or killing yourself. Right? Yeah. So like it is, um, the most painful condition we [00:54:00] know. Um, it’s up there with, uh, like it’s hard to rank these things. Chronic regional pain syndrome might be on par, um, but yeah, it’s really, really nightmare.
Joe Moore: But DMT smoke it. They can go right back to bed. Aborts it right away.
Kyle Buller: So fascinating. And that seems so, yeah, like, so accessible, right? Like not having to, because I’ve had friends that would like dose for migraines, um, and they said they would take like anywhere between like two and a half, three grams like every month or something like that, just to help to manage.
Kyle Buller: But yeah, it’s also, you know, a lot like what happens if you don’t really wanna go on these like, huge trips every month, uh, just to manage like migraine pain, but to have like a shorter acting, uh, psychedelics. I hear Ds in the background there. Lower, um, yeah, like a shorter acting and accessible, right?
Kyle Buller: Just taking like a hit, like that sounds really awesome. Um, to be able to like have that as an option for people that really struggle. Do they [00:55:00] understand like the mechanism of like cluster headaches, of like what’s going on there?
Joe Moore: It is an orphan condition with not enough research. Um, so yes and no. Um.
Joe Moore: But yeah, so I, I think Yale’s coming out with some data in the near term on the d the DMT pen thing, so they’ll have even more data. Um, no, like there’s, there, it’s, it’s such a rare disease that like people haven’t really funded it all that well. Mm-hmm. Um, yeah. So in time we’ll get more. Yeah, I’ll, I’ll try to get somebody on to talk about that.
Joe Moore: ’cause DMT pens are really fascinating. There’s a new, um, new book on, um, one of Leary’s, um, closest confidants. Rosemary, I’m really excited to read that one. Um, yeah, what, I think you covered this, a kind of crazy amount of contaminants in Oh yeah. Um, mushrooms, uh, well, product sold as mushrooms commercially.
Joe Moore: Um, and there’s another one last week. Yeah. [00:56:00] This other one here. I think. Um, let’s see. Uh. And this one is a good headline. Psychedelics picked far more neurons than expected. Mm-hmm. There is one about, um, psychedelics not helping postpartum moms as well as we thought initially. Thought. Um, come on, where is it?
Joe Moore: Um, it’s in here. There’s just roundup. Yeah. Which is
Kyle Buller: like crazy, you know, like when we started off like doing this stuff, like it was really hard to find news articles about, you know, what’s going on and, um, I mean, yeah, it just shows the interest is really increasing, uh, over the years.
Joe Moore: Yeah. Athletes turn to band IGA for CTE and concussion relief.
Joe Moore: Um, a lot of really interesting things there. Uh, I may or may not be one of those athletes. Um, and yeah, there’s so much happening. Massachusetts is getting active again and um, that’s good. Yeah. Let’s work towards wrapping up here, Kyle, I think like [00:57:00] we have this advanced shadow work class coming up. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Kyle Buller: Yeah. So, uh, October 20th, as a Monday, we’re gonna kick off an eight week course with Dr. Ito Cohen. Um, we run this every fall around spooky time of the year. Um, seems like it aligns. Um, and we’ll cover the shadow. What is the shadow we’ll get into how to work with the shadow, um, more from yeah, this Jungian depth oriented approach.
Kyle Buller: Um, and this time around, um, you know, we wanna make it a little bit more practical for folks. Um, and so we’re gonna make it, yeah, more advanced than, uh, say in the past in, in what we’ve been doing. Um, so yeah, if you’re interested in digging into the shadow, learning how to work with the shadow, learning how to work with it with clients, um, and not just the shadow, but also the golden shadow, which maybe you’ve heard me and Ido talk about in the past.
Kyle Buller: Um. Yeah, we only have, I think a few more seats [00:58:00] left. We’re, we’re getting to capacity, so if you’re interested in, in digging into all the shadow material, um, during Yeah, the, the fall, which the shadow season is upon us soon. Um, yeah, we would love to have you there. I always love teaching with Dr. Yo Cohen.
Kyle Buller: Um, and it’s gonna be a fun class, so, yeah.
Joe Moore: Great. And then, um, finally, let’s just circle back to navigators. Everybody. We’re really excited about this navigators program and, um, I think it’s, it is kind of gonna be a huge part of the future of psychedelics today and vital, and we really want to invite you to be a part of it.
Joe Moore: There’s a number of tiers of, of getting in starts at 9 99 a month, and, and you can go up from there. Um, if anybody, uh, you know, has questions, psychedelics today.com/navigators, you can email us, ask some questions there. Um. And like info at psychedelics today would be a good way to get us. [00:59:00] And then, um, yeah, we would love to see you in the community book clubs, film clubs, regular group meetings, um, early access to content, ad free podcasts.
Joe Moore: So much more so, you know, check it out. Um, anything you want to add about it?
Kyle Buller: Yeah, I would love to see everybody there. Um, again, we’re really wanting to build out the, the community there, get in, get involved in all sorts of different ways, connect with you, host events that you guys might be interested in.
Kyle Buller: So yeah, a show saying the book club ad free podcasts. We’ll do these live streams where you can jump in and do some q and a. We’ll probably have some exclusive live streams with folks that, um, you know, you guys can do. Again, I look at the tiers, it’s all kind of tiered out that way as well. Um, and, uh, yeah, really excited to, to be launching this and developing the community on the PT side of things.
Kyle Buller: Like obviously we’ve been doing that through the podcast, through events, um, but I feel like a lot of our community building has been really focused and vital. And so to be able to [01:00:00] expand the things that we’ve learned about that, um, to our wi wider audience, for those that, you know, vital ISS a big investment that might not be part of your path, um, to really start to bring it to the larger.
Kyle Buller: Larger PT community and our supporters and listeners. So yeah, if you wanna support us, if you wanna join our community, second alex today.com/navigators and we’re excited to, to launch this and meet you
Joe Moore: over
Kyle Buller: there.
Joe Moore: Alright everybody, thank you so much for tuning in. Uh, we’ll get this out on a regular podcast soon and just really appreciate you all being part of this project that’s been amazing over the last nine and a half years.
Joe Moore: So coming up on 10 soon. Crazy. And um, good god. Yeah. Learned a lot. Yeah. Um, yeah. So thank you Kyle. Thank you everybody and we’ll see you all in the next episode.
Kyle Buller: Alright, thank you everybody. Take care.