Therapy Archives | Psychedelics Today

March 21, 2023March 22, 2023

PT400 – Beckley Retreats: Combining Modern Science, Tradition, and Holistic Wellness

In this episode, Joe interviews the Co-Founder and CEO of Beckley Retreats, Neil Markey.

Markey describes Beckley Retreats as comprehensive well-being programs, and talks about the importance of holistic wellness – that, while the retreats are centered around two group psilocybin experiences, the true benefits come from complementary factors: the four weeks of online prep and community building before the retreat, the six days in Jamaica surrounding the experiences, the six weeks of integration work after, and the depth of connections people find in the new community they may not have realized they needed so badly. He breaks down the details of the retreats and what they look for in facilitators, and tells a few success stories that really highlight how trauma, opposing ideas, and an infatuation with material objects and amassing wealth can all get in the way of real relationships and meaning.

Beckley Retreats is currently working on two new projects: an observational study with Heroic Hearts and Imperial College London on using psilocybin for-traumatic brain injury, and a study with Bennet Zelner and the University of Maryland to bring executives through a retreat to see how it affects leadership and decision-making: can they prove that these types of experiences lead to more heart-centered leaders?

We are currently running a giveaway where you can win a one-on-one meditation class with Neil and a custom Beckley Retreats tote, as well as many other prizes. Click here to enter!

Notable Quotes

“The problem, a lot of times with Western medicine, is if you can’t understand the mechanics of it, then we kind of discard it, or if you can’t isolate a single variable, then we discard it. It’s like: well, some things work in tandem. If you actually peel the physics back, it looks like everything’s connected to everything, so we’ve got to think about more comprehensive approaches. I think that you can learn a lot from looking at traditional practices and some of the Indigenous wisdom that’s out there; that there’s a method to how this work has been done for quite some time and we shouldn’t disregard it.”

“If we can help people in a clinic model, let’s do that. But [with a] clinic, again: when you take someone, you give them a mystical experience, and then they go right back home or right back to work and right back into life, are you creating enough space for there to be optimal change? I think we need to keep studying it and asking those questions.”

“[Amanda Feilding] never saw a rule that she didn’t want to break. She’s [this] lifelong badass that has just gone against the grain for her entire career. But it was never about money for her, it was all because she thought she could help people. It’s so inspiring. We need more of those stories; less stories about people that made a billion dollars or whatever and more material things, and [more of] these stories about folks that are just out there trying to help others. It fires me up.”

Links

Beckleyretreats.com

Upcoming Beckley Retreats

Beckleyfoundation.org

Psychedelics Today: Amanda Feilding – The Beckley Foundation: Changing Minds through Psychedelic Research

Vetsolutions.org

Heroicheartsproject.org

McKinsey & Company

Beckleywaves.com

Brainyquote.com: H.G. Wells quote (Joe said it was Mark Twain)

Pubmed: The gut microbiome and mental health: advances in research and emerging priorities

Psychedelics Today: PT372 – The Heroic Hearts Project: Veterans and The Impact of Storytelling, featuring: Jesse Gould & Zach Riggle

Psychedelicspotlight.com: Imperial College and Heroic Hearts Launch Psychedelic Research Retreat For Veterans With Head Trauma

Psychedelics Today: PT399 – Vital Psychedelic Conversations, featuring: Bennet Zelner, Ph.D. & Giles Hayward

Maps.org: The Pollination Approach to Delivering Psychedelic-Assisted Mental Healthcare

Synthesisretreat.com: Expansion: Leadership Edition (original leadership study through Bennet Zelner)

Nbcews.com: Candidates who support psychedelics as medicine get a political action committee

March 9, 2023March 14, 2023

PT397 – Vital Psychedelic Conversations

In this episode of Vital Psychedelic Conversations, David interviews Vital instructor, Dr. Devon Christie: Senior Lead of Psychedelic Programs at Numinus, MAPS-certified MDMA therapist, and now four-time guest; and Vital student, Emefa Boamah: coach, facilitator, and trauma-informed intuitive guide specializing in embodiment.

We’ve all heard the trope, “It’s all in your mind,” but it’s also in your heart, soul, community, support system, and body – the focus of this episode. Christie and Boamah dive deep into the various aspects of the relationship between non-ordinary states and our bodies: ways to embody our bodies more; how the body is a fundamental source of truth; the benefit of checking in with one’s body after an experience (to validate or disprove what may have come up); the importance of movement and rest; the different bodies we inhabit (physical, emotional, energetic, mental, and spiritual); and ways to accept (and eventually love) our bodies in a society that’s always working to make us hate them – is self-love the ultimate act of defiance?

They also discuss the post-experience plasticity in everything, and the challenge of preparing an experiencer for something we can’t know; how facilitators and practitioners need to track their own subconscious feelings and reactions; the concept of embodied inquiry; the necessity of remaining curious and humble; and the idea of using integrative practices to find ways to become the person you want to be – the person you may have seen glimpses of in non-ordinary states.

And as this year’s edition comes to an end, Boamah reflects on her experiences with Vital, particularly the communal aspects of the retreat and how healing it was to literally be lifted up by her companions. If you’re curious about whether Vital is right for you, please come to an upcoming Q+A. Applications close March 26!

Applications are open for the second edition of Vital, our 12-month training certificate program in psychedelic therapy and integration, beginning in April 2023. Head to Vitalpsychedelictraining.com for more info, or attend a Q+A to have your questions answered.

Notable Quotes

“Something happens with plant medicines (psychedelics (for me, with mushrooms)) that just takes you out of it and you see the inherent worth of who you are as a human, as a person. And integrating that process after coming out, I think, does a lot to help with self-love – not to say that cannot be attained without psychedelics, but it’s a different quality to it when you’re able to see yourself outside of yourself and see that you’re just valuable as you are.” -Emefa

“Not only are we fighting against us as human beings (like, whatever is happening internally), there’s also the societal expectations of how we ought to be. …There’s all these things where society is bent on making sure that we don’t feel comfortable in our bodies, so for me, from that lens, self-love is an act of reclamation. It’s like a defiant political act to reclaim who we are as people and spend that inherent worth without buying into what we’re being told to do, unapologetically – like, own it: ‘This is who we are and this is where we come from and we get to take space.’” -Emefa

“Those strongly reinforced habits: they restrict what we can attend to. They restrict our perception. So when they’re loosened under a psychedelic, we’ve got all these dimensions of experience that we can suddenly experience. That’s where, I think, not only in preparation, but in how we meet and attend to the emergent experience of people in psychedelic experiences, as practitioners, we need to be fluent ourselves in our own dimensions of experience of our being, so that we can meet and be curious and inquire and help that person to come to know themselves in all of that dimensionality, and then for their meaning to percolate up from that place.” -Devon

“The wisdom of ceremony, community ceremony, dance, music: that brings connection, that brings rhythm. And one nervous system by itself in the face of trauma is very vulnerable, many nervous systems together in the face of trauma: there’s resiliency. …Thankfully, in many ways, psychedelics help us to perceive this, and then in each person, perceive: ‘What’s the truth for me in this?’ and then we can try to live that.” -Devon

Links

Drdevonchristie.com

Numinus.com

Psychedelics Today: PT391 – MDMA-Assisted Psychotherapy For Fibromyalgia and Other Central Sensitization Syndromes, featuring: Dr. Devon Christie & Dr. Pamela Kryskow, MD

Psychedelics Today: PT306 – Dr. Devon Christie – Vital Psychedelic Conversations

Emefaboamah.com

Drdansiegel.com: An Introduction to Interpersonal Neurobiology

Pubmed: REBUS and the Anarchic Brain: Toward a Unified Model of the Brain Action of Psychedelics

Psychedelics Today: PT328 – Courtney Watson, LMFT – Ancestral Veneration and Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy For (and By) QTBIPOC

Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto, by Tricia Hersey

Methodspace.com: Embodied Inquiry as a Research Method

Imdb.com: Doctor Strange

Vitalpsychedelictraining.com

March 2, 2023

PT395 – Thank You Life: Accessibility, Fair Compensation, and Trusting Intuition

In this episode, David interviews Kevin Cannella, LPC: MAPS-trained psychedelic psychotherapist and Co-Founder and Executive Director of Thank You Life, a nonprofit organization working to provide access to psychedelic therapy by eliminating its financial barriers.

Co-Founded by Dr. Dan Engle, Thank You Life is very new and still in the process of officially launching, having just obtained 501(c)(3) status in December and recently gaining its first corporate sponsor in Dr. Bronner’s. The nonprofit came from the realization of just how expensive psychedelic-assisted therapy can be, and Cannella wondering: what if there was a fund practitioners could plug into when a patient couldn’t pay? While access for the patient is obvious, this model benefits the practitioner as well, which is something not often discussed in the psychedelic space – we focus a lot on how much these services will cost the patient, but rarely on the practitioner deserving to be paid fairly for their time and expertise.

Cannella tells his story of immersion into a world of ayahuasca, yoga, and vipassana meditation; volunteering at the Temple of the Way of Light, living in Hawaii, then Brazil, and finally, landing at Naropa University, where his passions were finally validated. He discusses looking for signs and learning to trust intuition, ways to increase accessibility outside of a 501(c)(3) model, how it feels to be paid well for your work, and why he only wants to work with practitioners who offer therapy alongside their chosen substance.

Head to their website to donate to the Thank You Life fund, and follow them on socials for details on upcoming launch/fundraising events in April and May, including a public event at the also-new California Center for Psychedelic Therapy. For larger donations or partnership inquiries, email kevin@thankyoulife.org.

Notable Quotes

“If the client couldn’t pay, the financial burden was falling on the therapist or the clinic, although a lot of what was in my field was just therapists in private practice. Therapists can take some sliding scale people, maybe they even do some pro bono, but they still need to make a living and they can’t just be giving away their hours and their time. So this sort of Utopian thought was like: wouldn’t it be great if there was just a fund that we could all plug into, and then that fund could take the financial burden, and we could just be saying yes to the people that we want to be saying yes to?”

“What it feels like in my body when I would do a session for $70 compared to $150: it’s different. It’s different to get paid well. It’s a different energetic experience to get paid well. And I have so much more to give when I’m getting paid well, because I’m not burdened by feeling undervalued and feeling like I’m in this uphill battle with making a good financial living for myself and my family.”

“I think it can be one big shift in the whole way our culture looks at mental health if it becomes a standard that employers offer psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy for trauma healing. I mean, what a shift that that would bring, just on its own. …How different would it be if not only could you share with your boss that you got a ketamine treatment, but that the company was actually paying for it and saying, ‘Yes, go get your healing.’?”

Links

Thankyoulife.org

Pinchbeck.io

Templeofthewayoflight.org

Naropa.edu

Psychedelics Today: PT248 – Pierre Bouchard – Somatic Therapy, Trauma, and the Nervous System

Psychedelics Today: PT376 – Ketamine and Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy as Employee Benefits, featuring: Sherry Rais

Vital: Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Tuition Scholarship Access Fund

Psychedelics Today: PT367 – Colorado Proposition 122 and the Decriminalization of Natural Medicines, featuring: David Bronner

The Educational Foundation of America (EFA)

The California Center for Psychedelic Therapy

Psychedelics Today: PT224 – Dr. Dan Engle – The Concussion Repair Manual

Mayahealth.com

Donate to Thank You Life

February 28, 2023

PT394 – We Are The Medicine

In this episode, David interviews Victor Alfonso Cabral, LSW: Director of Policy and Regulatory Affairs at Fluence Training and Licensed Social Worker and practicing psychotherapist in Pennsylvania.

Cabral is currently involved with the film, “We are the Medicine,” which aims to explore the reemergence of plant medicines from the perspective of people of color from all backgrounds and walks of life, with the added factor of a strong hip hop influence. Filmmakers Eric Blackerby and Esteban Serrano want the film to normalize the concept of psychedelics and healing for people of color, but also the notion of men being truly authentic with each other and building each other up with love and support – something that challenges society’s expectations on how men (and more specifically, Black and Brown men) should be in relationships with one another. Head to pictureacolorfulworld.com to donate and sign up for the mailing list for more info on future fundraisers and screenings.

He begins the episode by reading a powerful poem he read at Horizons NYC, then tells his story: his childhood and his mother’s sacrifices; how trauma caught up to him in college and led to the low point of his life; his subsequent 120-pound weight loss journey and embracing of therapy, how his first psychedelic experience resulted in an awakening of possibility; how he became a social worker and why he felt instantly aligned with the work; how he ended up working for PA Governor Tom Wolf; and how he came to be interviewed by Sway Calloway (who is also an Executive Producer of the film). His story and all of the organizations and efforts he’s been involved with prove that being authentic, following your heart, and building relationships with the right people can lead to growth and positive change in whatever path you choose in this space.

Notable Quotes

“Social work felt like I finally had language to describe the way in which I’d been living and being most of my life, and it felt validating to have this whole profession dedicated to the way in which I felt I was showing up in the world already.”

“After that experience, I felt like there [were] possibilities for me to be whatever I wanted to be, and that I wasn’t everything that had been prescribed to me through intergenerational trauma or systemic oppression or a capitalist society. And I was able to peel those things back one by one and see: okay, what’s under this? And what’s under this? And then when I got to the core of that, the message to me was: love is what matters. So that really made me feel like I do have everything that I need. I have my wife, I have my daughter, I have a family, I have good friends, I have my health. And I have ability to manifest, to do, to plan, to live. I’d been doing a lot up until that point to get my life on track, but that opened up the doors in a way that I didn’t think was possible for me, where I felt a kind of freedom that I’ve never felt before in my life.”

“When we talk about collective healing and about empowering our communities and about joy and freedom and liberation, I think it’s important for us, as men of color – for me and for the people that I love and the people around me – to be liberated, to just love each other and to be together, and to be able to be their authentic selves together without all of these other masks that we’re taught to wear. So I hope that if there’s anything that comes out of the film, [it’s] a message of what we can co-create when we can be our authentic selves with each other and hold each other up and love each other.”

Links

Pictureacolorfulworld.com

Fluencetraining.com

Tiss.edu: Tata Institute of Social Sciences

Indiafellow.org: Who Are The Katkari?

YouTube: Sway’s Universe: Can Psychedelics Help Black and Brown and Indigenous People Heal Trauma?

YouTube: “Symbol of Solidarity” Documentary Trailer

Resilientpa.org: 2022 Day of Racial Healing Recap

Ninawasi.com

Psychedelicsiceland.com

Imdb.com: “Down to Earth, with Zac Efron”

Marijuanamoment.net: GOP Pennsylvania Lawmaker Files Psilocybin Research Bill For Veterans And First Responders

Reason-for-hope.org

Centerforpsychedeliceducation.com: Press Release: PA Psychedelic Education Day

Philadose.com

February 23, 2023February 23, 2023

PT392 – Vital Psychedelic Conversations

In this episode of Vital Psychedelic Conversations, Kyle interviews Carla Kieffer: psychedelic educator, Certified Psychedelic Facilitator, Community Liaison at Maya Health, and Founder of Kairos Integration, a company offering psychedelic training, preparation, facilitation, integration, and microdosing support.

This episode was recorded in-person, in between the first and second psilocybin retreats at Atman Retreat in Jamaica, where Kyle, Johanna, and a large group of Vital students just worked with Carla last month. Many participants that attend retreats are new to psychedelics, and often don’t know each other, so it was powerful to have a group of classmates follow the breathwork model of having sitters and journeyers take turns (which is the same model she uses for her Psychedelic Guide Training and Certificate Program), and demonstrates how much one can learn when taking the role of the sitter and how the journey becomes the teacher. They talk about how big the therapy part of psychedelic-assisted therapy is, in how rare it is to have someone attending to your every need for hours on end, and wonder: How can we take that aspect of holding space for each other and apply it to everyday life?

She discusses the importance of data collection and how her Internal Family Systems training has helped her balance her love for the mystical with her more science and data-based mind; the importance in facilitators meeting some sort of baseline harm reduction and safety training (and the need to establish an agreed-upon set of standards); the need for increased accessibility; how important it is to further educate about and normalize conversations about psychedelics; and how integration isn’t just a box you check off as part of the experience, but a continuous process and part of our lives, where checking in on ourselves should be a regular practice.

Notable Quotes

“If we could hold space for each other to have our own experiences, I think there might be a lot of learning on both sides.”

“The medicine is one part, but it’s also that experience of being held in a container – being heard, being witnessed. I think we also have to acknowledge that about this type of work. Even if it is individual therapy, if it’s psilocybin or MDMA-assisted [therapy]: when do you have somebody just there for you for six hours, giving so much attention to every little need? Does that have a healing quality to it?” -Kyle

“How can you do that in your life: show up for people in support and name what you need and really feel held by each other? I have visions of communities and spaces as we move forward with psychedelics and psychedelic awareness, where people can actually actively listen and avoid the need to interject, and any competitive talking goes away. …I think that, in turn, will reverb into the rest of the world.”

“In the end, you are the medicine. Whether you’re working with psilocybin or LSD or breathwork, these are just ways to access your true self, your higher self (whatever resonates for you), and really, as you move through life, as you have these journeys, whatever they may be, just continuing to integrate that into your life, integrate that into your higher self.”

Links

Kairosintegration.com

Kairos Integration linktree

Atmanretreat.com

Vital Psychedelic Training

Being True To You Coach Training Program

Mayahealth.com

IFS-institute.com

Zendoproject.org

Oneretreatsjamaica.com

The University of Texas at Austin Dell Medical School Center for Psychedelic Research & Therapy

Imdb.com: Fantastic Fungi

Psychedelics Today: PT293 – Stanislav & Brigitte Grof – The Evolution of Breathwork and The Psychology of the Future

Greathimalayannationalpark.org: Parvati Valley

Bakertilly.com: How Section 280E is hindering the cannabis industry

Psychedelics Today: PT271 – Jeremy Narby, Ph.D. – Anthropology, Ayahuasca, and Plant Teachers

February 16, 2023March 1, 2023

PT390 – Vital Psychedelic Conversations

In this episode of Vital Psychedelic Conversations, Johanna takes the helm for the first time, hosting a conversation with Jungian analyst-in-training, writer, researcher, 5Rhythms® teacher, and Vital student: Mackenzie Amara; and clinical psychologist, long time PT collaborator, and Vital instructor: Dr. Ido Cohen.

As this episode features three huge fans of Jung (Johanna wrote her Master’s dissertation on The Red Book and teaches a course through PT), they focus less on education and the future of psychedelic therapy, and instead get pretty deep; shining a light on an integral part of psychedelia (and life) we often avoid: the shadow. What is the shadow and what is true shadow work? What did Jung give us, and why is Jungian psychology so relevant for integrating psychedelic experiences?

They discuss the notion of the unconscious as a place you can develop a relationship with and access by very different means; the idea of the healer as the container; the problematic binary of good vs. evil; the flawed concept of ego death; the differences between authentic and neurotic suffering and personal and collective consciousness; the archetype of the wounded healer and why facilitators should both be wounded and in the process of healing; and how wonderful it is that society is beginning to embrace the weird and what makes us unique.

There are no shortcuts in life and there is no “cure” for the parts of the human condition we aren’t comfortable with, but in the capitalist, efficiency-above-all-else West, we aren’t raised to sit with the unpleasant, and instead learn to seek a quick fix, which has created an environment where we’ve lost the ability to feel in the ways that we need to. Can you be with someone else’s pain if you’re running from your own? Can you have real compassion if you’ve never suffered? Can you be complete without knowing your shadow?

Notable Quotes

“Yes, we’re all suffering and suffering is scary and shadow is scary and it can overwhelm us and it takes time. And there is this thing where we can build a relationship with it. It’s all about the relationship.” -Ido

“Nature is a perfect representation of how the unconscious is. It’s unfinished. It’s in process. It’s not perfect. It’s human consciousness, and [it’s] our egoic, persona-driven striving that have us believe that we can be perfect, AKA not human, AKA have no shadow. So the shadow is this part of the unconscious; it’s the frills, it’s the weirdness, it’s the awkward pauses, it’s the burps and the disgusting stuff and the repulsion, and also the quirks, the idiosyncrasies. In Swiss German, they talk about a square that’s missing a corner – it’s the missing corner. You need to have a piece missing so that life can live there.” -Mackenzie

“There is no ego death. You can have ego disidentification, you can release the center of your consciousness from your ego, but you will never kill your ego, and you shouldn’t want to kill your ego. If you’re going to kill your ego, who’s going to be home to integrate? Where are you going to take all these beautiful experiences? Who’s going to synthesize them and alchemize them for you? …That is a way in which we’re banishing the feminine, which is process, which is yes, being in my body and suffering, because there is also so much beauty in suffering, because if you can’t be in your body to suffer, you’re not going to be in your body and experience love. They work together.” -Ido

“Psychedelics are the opportunity to get outside of oneself far enough that then I can come back and say: ‘Do I consciously want to choose to continue to be the way that I’ve seen that I am, or do I want to use my power, my influence over myself to make different choices?’” -Mackenzie

Links

PT308 – Dr. Ido Cohen, PsyD – Vital Psychedelic Conversations

PTSF79 – Psychedelic Facilitator Abuse and Space Holding Ethics with Dr. Ido Cohen

Psychedelics Today: Ido Cohen – Re-Turn to Wholeness: Jung and Integration

Psychedelics and The Shadow: The Shadow Side of Psychedelia

Mackenzieamara.com

Doubleblindmag.com: How to Become a Psychedelic Integration Therapist

Azquotes.com: Marion Woodman Quotes

Trauma and the Soul: A psycho-spiritual approach to human development and its interruption, by Donald Kalsched

Goodreads.com: Marie-Louise von Franz quotes

Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype, by Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph.D.

Goodreads.com: Charlotte Joko Beck quotes

February 9, 2023March 14, 2023

PT388 – Vital Psychedelic Conversations

In this episode of Vital Psychedelic Conversations, we do something a little different: instead of interviewing a teacher and student to hear their different perspectives, Kyle (Vital’s main creator/developer) has a conversation with Johanna Hilla (our Coordinator of Education and Training), with the two basically interviewing each other.

Johanna is originally from Finland but now lives in the UK, where she is pursuing a Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Exeter. She has worked with us before, but became a full-time part of PT right around the time we launched Vital, so we thought it’d be interesting to hear a talk between two of the main figureheads behind this year’s cohort as it comes to an end.

They discuss the beginnings of Vital and how the pandemic actually helped; how it’s been for Johanna to experience powerful group work for the first time; and what it’s been like to see virtual connections turn into real friendships as groups came together at retreats (this was recorded at Altman Retreat in Jamaica). And they analyze Vital and look to the future: What worked? What didn’t? What were the biggest takeaways from this year? How can we add more somatic work (and maybe even have a retreat centered around getting into flow state and hiking or snowboarding)? How can we incorporate state-specific models as more states legalize? And most importantly: Can we become a new gold standard in the training/education world? We hope so!

Applications for the 2023/24 edition of Vital have been extended until March 26, so check out the curriculum here.

Notable Quotes

“The whole curriculum, the way in which it’s structured with the five elements, the way in which it emphasizes experiential learning and process-oriented thinking and incorporates all of these transpersonal elements but also has a really sufficient amount of clinical backing: I just thought that it was really brilliantly structured (which I think you did most of that work) and I thought that this is exactly what we need right now.” -Johanna

“The emotional density and the charge that happens in a room when people are either doing some kind of plant medicine ceremoniously or doing breathwork: I think it’s always really something tangible, and it’s a great privilege to witness people going into these deep psychological processes. But obviously, it also takes something from you. You really have to be very present, there for many hours, and you go through the experience with the people as a witness. Even though you don’t know what they’re going through, you’re still going through it with them in a way.” -Johanna

“I think breathwork really honors the idea that we all come from a certain baseline and that people have different levels of intensity that they’d like, and different comfort zones. And I think that’s also fine. Not everybody is going to go for the five grams in silent darkness, and I don’t think everybody has to either. If there’s people who are feeling a bit more anxious about going into new experiences, I think breathwork is a really great gateway into the psychedelic world. And then maybe some people will really fall in love with the method and actually want to continue with it. I think it offers something for everyone.” -Johanna

Links

Vitalpsychedelictraining.com

Psychedelics Today: John B. Cobb – Whitehead and Psychedelics – Part 1 (there are 4 parts)

Imagination as Revelation: The Psychedelic Experience in the Light of Jungian Psychology

February 2, 2023February 2, 2023

PT386 – Vital Psychedelic Conversations

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

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

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

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

Notable Quotes

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

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

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

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

Links

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

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

Neupractice.com

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

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

January 31, 2023January 31, 2023

PT385 – Relationships, Conviviality, and The Strength of Empathic Attunement

In this episode, Joe interviews Portland, OR-based licensed marriage and family therapist, ketamine-assisted therapist at Rainfall Medicine, lead educator at InnerTrek, and speaker at our upcoming Convergence conference: Gina Gratza, MS, LMFT.

She talks about how she decided she wanted to become a therapist and when she knew psychedelics were the next step; meeting Rick Doblin at Burning Man; the efficacy of MDMA being used in conjunction with traditional therapy; how the self-compassion of MDMA gives her tremendous hope for its use in treating eating disorders; how non-ordinary states of consciousness teach us the wiseness (and uniqueness) of our inner healer; and her healthy concerns for how Oregon handles psilocybin legality: InnerTrek will be graduating some of the first licensed facilitators in Oregon and they should be certified by summer, but with OHA-approved service centers and manufacturers still up in the air, what happens next?

She and Joe also discuss how non-ordinary states of consciousness teach us the wiseness (and uniqueness) of our inner healers; the need for therapists to continuously do their own work; the idea of a psilocybin-licensed facility doubling as a music venue; David Nutt’s drug harm scale; Kylea Taylor; “The Trialogues”; archetypes of Burning Man; and how in psilocybin-assisted therapy, we can only do so much before the spirit of the mushroom ultimately takes over.

Notable Quotes

“There’s a strength in the empathic attunement that’s happening in the heart space that’s coming forward, so it’s not just talk therapy. There’s a connection happening. And we are creatures of love and belonging and connection, and when we feel that with another human being [and it’s] authentic – that is a very powerful force. We don’t have to compare it, but it’s just as powerful as medicine.”

“I hope to never be a master of any domain. I know that the juiciness of this life and this existence is continuing to stay open to learning and growing and evolving, and for me, that’s coming back to humility: I’ll never know everything, especially when it comes to the realm of altered states of consciousness. We’re trying to understand life in this state of consciousness, let alone bringing in altered states and the many different dimensions at which things can come through to you, and the uniqueness of everyone’s experience.”

“This is what we humans are able to do: Here are the measures, here are the ways in which we’re training. And then there’s the spirit of the mushroom. There’s what we are going to bring and then there is going to be what the mushroom brings: …the mycelium network, the earth, the nature; like a total other force that is beyond our ability to really know or read what will move through that.”

Links

Ginagratza.com

Rainfallmedicine.com

Innertrek.org

Chrisstauffermd.com (SNaPLAB: Social Neuroscience and Psychotherapy Lab)

YouTube: MDMA-assisted Therapy for Social Anxiety in Autistic Adults – Alicia Danforth

Clinicaltrials.gov: Psilocybin-Enhanced Psychotherapy for Methamphetamine Use Disorder

Clinicaltrials.gov: Study of Feasibility and Safety of MDMA-Assisted Group Therapy for the Treatment of PTSD in Veterans (MPG1)

Pubmed: MDMA-assisted therapy significantly reduces eating disorder symptoms in a randomized placebo-controlled trial of adults with severe PTSD

Hopkinspsychedelic.org: Anorexia Nervosa Study Seeking Research Participants

David Nutt’s Drug Harm Ranking scale

Marijuanamoment.net: Most States Will Legalize Psychedelics By 2037, Analysis Published By American Medical Association Predicts

Wikipedia.org: Feminist pedagogy

Psychedelics Today: PT288 – Annie & Michael Mithoefer – Vital Psychedelic Conversations

Pubmed: Combining Cognitive-Behavioral Conjoint Therapy for PTSD with 3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA): A Case Example

Psychedelics Today: PT227 – Dr. Anne Wagner – Couples Therapy, MDMA, and MAPS

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

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

Exploring Holotropic Breathwork: Selected Articles from a Decade of the Inner Door, Edited by Kylea Taylor

Sheldrake.org: The Sheldrake – McKenna – Abraham Trialogues

Damer.com (Dr. Bruce Damer)

Psychedelicsalon.com: Dr. Bruce Damer

January 26, 2023March 14, 2023

PT384 – Vital Psychedelic Conversations

In this episode, David interviews two people from different sides of Vital: clinical psychologist, adjunct professor, Co-Founder of the Psychedelics R2R nonprofit, and Vital instructor, Dr. Dominique Morisano, CPsych (the teacher); and writer, psychedelic-assisted medicine facilitator, integration coach, and Women On Psychedelics Co-Founder, Jessika Lagarde (the student).

With the 2023-24 edition of Vital set to begin in April and applications closing at the end of March, we thought it would be interesting to relaunch Vital Psychedelic Conversations, but with the spin of speaking to both instructors and students to hear their different perspectives on retreats, facilitation, psychedelic education, the quickly advancing psychedelic space, and of course, Vital itself.

Morisano and Lagarde mostly discuss experience: how it’s gained, how it changes perspectives and methodologies, how one decides they’ve experienced enough to be able to know the terrain enough to help others, the importance of knowing when a patient needs a facilitator/therapist who has had the same life experience, and knowing when one’s own skills and limitations means a patient would be better off seeing someone else. And they discuss safety, the importance of being trauma-informed (and what does that mean, really?), and the puzzling cases when facilitators haven’t had their own psychedelic experience but feel the need to use psychedelics to help others.

And of course, they talk about Vital: the joy in joining together in community with people they’ve only known virtually; how interesting these retreats are compared to others due to the level of the participants’ experience; how partnering up and taking turns as the sitter and experiencer shows how little of a difference there is between student and teacher; and how many people have reported the most impactful part of the retreats was not their own experience, but being there for someone else.

Notable Quotes

“Do you know the terrain? Let’s say you’ve taken ketamine once, and you’re doing six sessions of ketamine with a client. Do you really know what they’re going to be experiencing, and can you have had the full range of experience? …How do we define this? I can tell you: You have a hundred psychedelic experiences; most likely you’re going to have a different experience each time, and a different connection to inner/outer terrain or different realms or different ways of thinking and being. So when is enough enough? When did you learn your lesson? When did you gain the experience necessary to navigate someone [else’s experience]?” -Dominique

“You learn a lot about yourself as well, I find at the end of a day. Every journey is also a journey for the facilitator, and we are constantly mirrors to each other, so it’s very interesting work to do in that sense as well, because your own inner work is continuously being done.” -Jessika

“It’s never the same. Two sessions are never the same, and even how you show up on that day for that session, or set and setting; all of that influences [the experience], so we have to constantly be placing ourselves between being a student [and being] a teacher sometimes, but never put ourselves in the spot that we think, ‘Okay, now I know everything. Yeah, I’m done.’” -Jessika

“How do you develop wisdom? The way to develop wisdom is through experience, and often, pain.” -Dominique

Links

Drmorisano.com

Fromresearchtoreality.com: Global Summit on Psychedelic-Assisted Therapies and Medicine

Celebrating Women in Psychedelics podcast: Mental Health for the Masses – The Potential and Pitfalls of Scaling Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy, with Dr. Dominique Morisano and Sonia Stringer

Psychedelics Today: PT315 – Dr. Dominique Morisano – From Research to Reality: Planning a Global Psychedelic Summit

Jessikalagarde.com

Womenonpsychedelics.org

Psychedelics Today: Reclaiming Ownership of Your Body With Psychedelics, by Jessika Lagarde

Spotify: The Jimi Hendrix Experience- Are You Experienced (it’s an album, not a song, David!)

Plants of the Gods: Their Sacred, Healing, and Hallucinogenic Powers, by Richard Evans Schultes, Albert Hoffman, & Christian Rätsch

CIIS.edu

Synthesisretreat.com

Vitalpsychedelictraining.com

Journals.sagepub.com: Developing Guidelines and Competencies for the Training of Psychedelic Therapists

January 17, 2023

PT382 – The Body & Catharsis: Do We Need Psychedelics or Just Better Lifestyles?

In this episode, Kyle interviews researcher, speaker, writer, competitive freediver, and one of the world’s leading experts on 5-MeO-DMT: Dr. Malin Vedøy Uthaug.

As a society, we mostly live in our minds, emotionally constipated while surprisingly disconnected from our bodies, with basic human needs that are all too often not met. Uthaug and Kyle talk about what manifests when those needs aren’t fulfilled, the strength of one’s inner mind state to change perspective, and how powerful true catharsis and embracing grief can be. And they talk about somatics: why we don’t focus on the body more, and how we could embody experiences with non-ordinary states of consciousness to better connect to our inner world.

She discusses the impact (or non-impact) of following a strict dieta before a big experience; preparing for an experience with physical exercise (even right before the ceremony); freediving; the challenge of therapists/facilitators sitting with someone through strong catharsis; the popcorn theory; the guilt people feel from experiencing love and bliss; and the paralysis-by-analysis problem of not making the connection between insight and action.

Notable Quotes

“What I’ve seen throughout all these years working in the field is that there is at least very commonly this notion that the psychedelic is going to heal them; they don’t have to do any other work – just popping that tab of psilocybin or smoking that pipe of 5-MeO is going to result in change. And that expectation is a bit dangerous, I think. They might not get the help that they are seeking because they’re placing that help externally to them. …Healing is actually hard work. It’s not something that happens overnight. It’s the tiny little steps of change accumulated that creates a bigger change. It’s changing your tiny, tiny habits until it changes your life.”

“You can realize a bunch of things, but if you’re not doing anything, nothing is actually going to change. It might feel like it changes because you have felt it in your brain or you’ve seen it or have this insight, but that needs to be translated actively into your life.”

“I think putting the body back into the equation is the way forward, however that might look.”

Links

Drmalinvedoyuthaug.com

Psychedelics Today: Dr. Malin Vedøy Uthaug – Ayahuasca and 5-MeO-DMT Research

Psychedelics Today: Malin Vedøy Uthaug – Exploring Ayahuasca Ceremonies and 5-MeO-DMT

The Ethical and Ecological Considerations of Inhaling Bufotoxins from Incilius Alvarius, by Malin Vedøy Uthaug

Dailymail.co.uk: Was Sigmund Freud really just a sex-mad old fraud? The founder of psychoanalysis was a money-obsessed cocaine addict who groped women patients and had a genius for self-promotion

Link.springer.com: Sigmund Freud’s Use of Catharsis and Cognition

The Smell of Rain on Dust: Grief and Praise, by Martín Prechtel

NeuroDynamic Breathwork online

The Plant Paradox: The Hidden Dangers in Healthy Foods That Cause Disease and Weight Gain, by Steven R. Gundry, MD

Psychedeliceducationcenter.com: DMTx Psychonaut Training Webinar

Johnheron-archive.co.uk: Catharsis in human development

Traumatized.com: Peter Levine – Somatic Experiencing

Your Golden Shadow: Discovering and Fulfilling Your Undeveloped Self, by William A. Miller

Love, Sex, and Your Heart, by Alexander Lowen, M.D.

January 3, 2023January 3, 2023

PT380 – Microdosing, Talking to Physicians About Psychedelics, and Nurses as the Scalability Solution

In this episode, Kyle interviews C.J. Spotswood, PMHNP-BC: author and board-certified psychiatric-mental health nurse practitioner currently enrolled in CIIS’ Psychedelic-Assisted Therapies and Research certificate program.

Spotswood has worked with Psychedelics Today, teaching masterclasses for our Vital and Navigating Psychedelics for Clinicians and Therapists courses, but this is his first appearance on the show. His first book, The Microdosing Guidebook: A Step-by-Step Manual to Improve Your Physical and Mental Health through Psychedelic Medicine came out last year, and we’re giving away three signed copies (US and Canada only). Click here to enter!

He talks about his introduction to psychedelics and his first patient immediately asking him about microdosing; why he changed his mind on microdosing and why he wrote his book; microdosing studies he’s most excited about; the terms: treatment-resistant depression, risk reduction, and flight nurses; Irving Kirsch’s work uncovering the bad science of research studies; the need for physicians to know enough about psychedelics to be able to meet their patients where they are; the importance of group work; and how, while they’re already so well-versed in caring for patients, using nurses to their full licensure could be the answer to the quickly growing psychedelics and scalability problem.

Notable Quotes

“When you look at the early research into the 50s in the 60s; they were doing microdosing research, they just didn’t have a title for it. They thought they were using placebo levels but they were actually looking for threshold levels; things like that. Really, it was what by today’s standards [would be an] amount that we would consider as a microdose.”

“I don’t like the term [treatment-resistant depression] when we use that because if you’re using [it] when you’re looking at the standard medications like SSRIs [or] SNRIs, they’re basically all the same. …So when you say that someone’s ‘treatment-resistant’ for three medications, four medications that are all basically working the same pathways and in the same amount; is that truly treatment-resistant, or are we just trying the same thing with just different medications, whereas doing microdosing is a different pathway [and] is a different approach?”

“My first patient I ever saw as a new clinician, like, literally my first patient: I come in and I’m starting to talk to them for the first interview and I got to the point and I’m asking them: ‘Where are we going, what do you need?’ and they said to me, ‘Do you know anything about microdosing?’ …I said to them, I go, ‘Yeah, I know a little bit.’ …So I asked her what she knew, and she knew quite a bit. And she goes, ‘What do you know?’ and I kind of just said to her: ‘I don’t really know how to put this, [but I] wrote a book on it and it’s going to be coming out next year.’ …It reinforced my feeling [that] I’m doing the right thing: this career suicide I’ve thought of, going into working with psychedelics and being open and talking about it, hearing my first patients talking about it – it’s got to be serendipity.”