Voices in the Dark – How to Use Psychedelics Safely
As psychedelics increasingly hit the mainstream, we need to educate ourselves about their risks as well as their incredible potential for healing and growth. While the headlines keep on coming about psychedelics boosting creativity and ‘curing’ depression, there’s far less accessible information available about the care and precautions involved in the research behind the news stories.
That’s where Psychedelics Today comes in, with a brilliantly-designed course on ‘Navigating Psychedelics’ (see below for our exclusive discount code!), dedicated to helping us approach, use and integrate psychedelics safely and to maximum effect. Kyle Buller, one half of the Psychedelics Today team, joins us this week to talk about the course, and why we need it.
Kyle suffered a near-fatal snowboarding accident as a teenager. As he lay in the hospital, his life hanging in the balance, he had an unusual meeting with death. Instead of a confrontation or a desperate clawing for life, he found himself absolutely at peace… which made coming back to life a lot more complicated.
He fell into depression, which would ultimately lead him to experiment with psychedelics in the effort to understand himself, life, and how to make sense of our fleeting existence on this planet. Since then, Kyle’s gone on to train in Transpersonal Psychology and has taught a History of Psychedelics course at university level.
We dig into the history of psychedelic therapy, from the times when LSD was shipped out to psychotherapists around the world with the request that they find some kind of use for it, to the prohibition years and the Third Wave of Psychedelics which we’re in today.
But this isn’t just about mushrooms and LSD. This is about healing and personal growth. The Navigating Psychedelics course incorporates a wealth of knowledge from the explorations of Stanislav Grof into the body’s ability to heal itself through breath- and bodywork. How much trauma do we hold onto in the cells of our body? And can meditative, trance-like states release repressed memories?
All of this is hard work, not to be taken lightly. We have to confront our shadows if we’re ever to integrate them. As Grof put it himself:
‘The full experience of a negative emotion is the funeral pyre of that emotion’
– Stanislav Grof
