Ever since Freud, psychotherapists have worked with non-ordinary states such as dreams, hypnosis, and free association to understand and heal the heart and mind. In the past decade mindfulness and compassion practices have become mainstream tools, while more recently research on psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy has mushroomed. Psychedelics, often combined with insights from mindfulness and compassion practices, now offer not only possible breakthrough treatments for PTSD, depression, addictions, and end-of-life anxiety, but provide new insights into the nature of psychological distress, mechanisms of healing.

What can clinicians learn from these developments? What can they teach us about the neurobiology of human suffering and flourishing? How can they inform our practice?

In this course, you’ll learn practical tools and techniques derived from mindfulness and compassion-oriented treatment and psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy to help clients with a wide-array of disorders. We’ll explore ways to help clients integrate split-off traumatic memories, open their hearts, embrace vulnerability, surrender to the flow of everchanging experience, move from isolation to deep connection with people and nature, appreciate the unreliable fluidity of thought, and find meaning in everyday moments.

You’ll learn how to use mindfulness and self-compassion practices along with other techniques to harness these healing mechanisms, while also gaining the knowledge necessary to help clients who might be experimenting with psychedelics to integrate and grow from their experiences.