stanislav grof

Rachel Harris, PhD, is the author of Swimming in the Sacred: Wisdom from the Psychedelic Underground and Listening to Ayahuasca. A psychologist who has been in private practice for 40 years, she spent 10 years in an academic research department where she published more than 40 scientific studies in peer-reviewed journals and received a National Institutes of Health New Investigator’s Award. Rachel splits her time between an island in Maine and the San Francisco Bay Area. 

Episode Highlights

▶ How Dr. Harris' childhood experiences led her to pursue a spiritual path and become a psychologist

▶ The transformative psychedelic experiences Dr. Harris had at the Esalen Institute in the 1960s

▶ Dr. Harris’ study with top therapists and spiritual leaders at the Esalen Institute, which shaped her understanding of psychedelics

▶ How a particular medecine retreat led Dr. Harris to research Ayahuasca use in North America

▶ Dr. Harris' most recent research, which has culminated in her book, Swimming in the Sacred: Wisdom from the Psychedelic Underground, which has a focus on the work of women elders in the psychedelic underground

▶ The importance of trusted mentors when working with psychedelic medicines in the psychedelic therapy space, especially for women

▶ Cautions against blindly believing everything experienced in a psychedelic journey

▶ Having a support system and seeking guidance from elders as vital in navigating the complexities of psychedelic integration

▶ Recognizing - with humility and gratitude - the power of psychedelics to help in our troubled world 

▶ The limitations of current research methodologies to fully understand the scope of psychedelic experiences

▶ How ongoing relationships with plant medicine offer continued guidance and growth over time

Rachel Harris’s Links & Resources

▶ Website:  http://www.swimminginthesacred.com/

Rick Doblin, Ph.D., is the founder and executive director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). Rick studied with Dr. Stanislav Grof and was among the first to be certified as a Holotropic Breathwork practitioner. His professional goal is to help develop legal contexts for the beneficial uses of psychedelics and marijuana, primarily as prescription medicines but also for personal growth for otherwise healthy people, and eventually to become a legally licensed psychedelic therapist. He founded MAPS in 1986.

Topics discussed in this episode...

• Rick's childhood and the influence of his Jewish heritage on his spiritual and career development 
• Two books that had a profound impact on Rick as a college student:
  • One Flew Over the Cookoo's Nest, Ken Kesey (partially written under the influence of LSD!)
  • Realms of the Human Unconscious: Observations from LSD Research, Stanislav Grof
• How MAPS is trying to demonstrate a new approach to psychotherapy as it pursues a mission of mass mental health care
• The way MAPS is seeking to maximize "public benefit" through its public benefit corporation, which is essentially an open source pharmaceutical company
• Rick's hope that legalization will enable people to work with psychedelic medicines responsibly on their own
• Our need as a culture to understand that a 'difficult' experience does not equate to a 'bad' experience 
• "The full expression of an emotion is the funeral pyre of that emotion" - Stanislav Grof
• The role of MDMA in end of life and pain management
• There are countless psychedelic career opportunities available to people in fields beyond psychotherapy 
• Future psychedelic healing clinics will be sites of initiation
• You can get anywhere you need to without psychedelics, but it could be a lot slower/harder

Resources

• Rick's Ted Talk:
  https://www.ted.com/talks/rick_doblin_the_future_of_psychedelic_assisted_psychotherapy?language=en 
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rickdoblinmaps/
• Website: https://maps.org/

Kyle Buller is the Co-Founder and Director of Training and Clinical Education of Psychedelics Today, an online media and education platform exploring the therapeutic potential of psychedelics.

Kyle's interest in exploring non-ordinary states of consciousness began at the age of 16 when he suffered a traumatic snowboarding accident. After this near-death experience, Kyle’s life changed dramatically. Kyle subsequently earned his B.A. in Transpersonal Psychology from Burlington College, where he focused on studying the healing potential of non-ordinary states of consciousness by exploring shamanism, Reiki, local medicinal plants and plant medicine, Holotropic Breathwork, and psychedelic psychotherapy. Kyle has been studying Dreamshadow Transpersonal breathwork with Lenny and Elizabeth since October 2010.

Kyle earned his M.S. in clinical mental health counseling with an emphasis in somatic psychology from Prescott College. Kyle’s clinical background in mental health consists of working with at-risk teenagers in crisis and with individuals experiencing an early episode of psychosis and providing counseling to undergraduate/graduate students in a university setting.

Topics discussed on this episode...

• Kyle's incredible story of how a near death experience as a teenager ultimately led him to psychedelics
• Kyle's psycho-spiritual struggles coming back to the mundane after his near death experience
• How a psilocybin experience at age 19 helped provide some answers and inspired Kyle to formally study non-ordinary states of consciousness during his university years
• The influence of Stanislav Grof's work on the healing potential of psychedelics and holotropic breathwork
• How Psychedelics Today got started and created some of the first online resources for integration, both thorough the podcast and online courses
• The challenge that because we don't live in a culture that provides a framework for transformative psychedelic experiences, there's a tendency for people to get so inspired that they rush into work as a facilitator, coach, etc. before sufficiently integrating their own experiences
• The shadow side of people rushing into psychedelic entrepreneurship
• Issues around scaling psychedelic assisted therapies – what happens when you create a more capitalistic model of mental health which may lack preparation and integration support and safe containers for people experiences of both spiritual emergence and 'spiritual emergency'?
• Psychedelics and death – do we need to wait until the end of out lives to develop a relationship with our death, or can psychedelics help us?
• The importance of being in alignment - we have no idea when our time is going to come
• How somatic work plays into psychedelic integration
• The seed metaphor of integration: bringing the seed of insight back and planting and tending to it as it grows towards the light of the sun
• Psychedelics as disruptive technologies that are disrupting the way we view mental health and mental healthcare

Resources

psychedelicstoday.com
settingsunwellness.com

In-depth interview with Kyle about his near death experience on The Thought Room Podcast with Hallie Rose

Discount Code and Offer: 10% off courses 
Discount code: PSYCHEDELICENTREPRENEUR 
Affiliate Link: https://www.psychedeliceducationcenter.com/?affcode=80460_agdabga2

IG: 
instagram.com/psychedelicstoday
instagram/com/settingsunwellness