psychedelic chaplaincy
expand into wisdom
/ˈsistəm/
Psychedelic Therapy is disrupting Mental Health Care,
and it must embody Spiritual Health Care.
As psychedelic use becomes more mainstream and clinical research progresses, chaplains bridge a critical gap in psychedelic therapy as both clinical guides and spiritual caregivers with a professional, intimate relationship with the ineffable.
The emergent field of Chaplaincy is in an innovative process of redefining itself. The collective need has expanded the traditional role of the chaplain from just hospitals, prisons, hospice, and the military to include new forms of this grounded form of leadership in Eco-Chaplaincy, Movement Chaplaincy, Corporate Chaplaincy, Community Chaplaincy, Gender Chaplaincy, and now, my particular wheelhouses, Systems Chaplaincy, and Psychedelic Chaplaincy.
In an attempt at systemic harm reduction, Chaplains are trained thoroughly and significantly in skills that are noticeably absent in many of our guiding systems: Mental Health, Industrial Medicine, Nuerotypical Educational Systems, Legacy Business Structures, Traditional Investing, and Extractive Governance Models.
Notably, some of these skills are:
Neurobiologically Attuned Presence
Empathic Self-Awareness
Intensive Self-reflective Capacity from the Neurobiological + Spiritual dimensions
Non-Anxious Conflict Mediation
Compassion-Based Resilience Training
Inter + Pan-Faith Ritual Care
Rapid Spiritual Assessment
Multi-Modal Interventions in Crisis, with Strategic and Integrated Ethics
Intimate Experience with Non + Extraordinary States of Consciousness that occur in the natural rhythms of the human psyche and life cycle, alongside excitatory and inhibitory rites, ritual, ceremony, and theurgy.
Chaplains are credentialed to stay in intimate relationship to the Great Mystery, in whatever form it may present.
The third wave + medicalization of psychedelics has as much shadow as it does light: Potential dissociation from their ancestral lineage, risk of over or misuse, undertrained therapists and MDs without appropriate transpersonal and dimensional understanding of spiritual emergency, monetization and sterilization of plant allies and sacred medicine, and contribution to the reification of an extractionary + industrial health/death care system, as well as a host of other ethical, spiritual and medical considerations revealing themselves in-real-time in this avalanche of industrialization afoot.
From the spiritual perspective, psychedelics themselves are not a stand-alone path toward awakening. They are an upaya, a tool to use skillfully and intentionally on your way home.
a Tool, not the way. the only way out is in.
“Long before a disease has progressed far enough for Western medicine to diagnose it, there are signs that something is wrong”
“You didn’t come into this world. You came out of it, like a wave from the ocean. You are not a stranger here.”
A discussion panel from Harvard Divinity School outlines the scope + point of view for psychedelic chaplaincy.
the merit of this work is dedicated to co-creating the world our hearts know is possible*
2 Sessions, pre and post, for each journey
Intention framing, harm reduction, and integration of psychedelic or ceremonial experiences for greater efficacy, impact, and union of the ritual field and neuroplastic window.
If You’re Wanting:
A safe container to explore sacred technologies
Guidance through the expansion process
Support to process and integrate your journey through embodiment
To learn harm reduction approaches and strategies
Please note: I do not provide medicines or psychedelics.
