"The human mind knows how to heal itself if you give it the trust filled atmosphere and opportunities to become deeply aware of the levels of consciousness within you." - William Richards
Exploring the Potential of Psychedelics
Psychedelics have become recognized for their capacity to transform suffering into inspiration and visionary experience. They’ve shown themselves as breakthrough treatments for common ills like anxiety, depression, and PTSD, while also showing their ability to inspire visionary and transformative experiences in otherwise well people. Their efficacy is undeniable. So the question that needs to be asked is, “How will this remarkable consciousness technology make a difference for those in need right now?”
Psychedelics require neither “shamans” nor adventure travel to make them effective tools of transformation. They are transformative because they release a person from a lifetime long habit of identifying with their history and biography, and the conditioned feelings, thoughts, and sensations that recall creates. When used in proper environments with noble intentions, psychedelics open people to the places in themselves where they are whole, timeless, and untouched by conditioned misunderstanding.
In this state, they find themselves in an endlessly creative and insightful space where many new insights are possible. Once this state of consciousness is experienced and understood, one never needs to return to the old ways of experiencing the world and oneself. For a few hours, psychedelics can lift the veil and remind their user of their true origins. This reminder catalyzes an awareness that affects both the brain, and the consciousness that it grounds in physical life. When used properly, the insights of a profound psychedelic experience can illuminate the path forward in one’s life with previously unavailable insights.
By the time psychedelics became recreationalized in the 1960’s, they’d already been used successfully for two decades in clinical settings in Europe and the Americas. Before that, they’d been used as tools of wisdom for ten thousand years, wherever they had grown. Their clinical success demonstrated that psychedelics required neither shamans, nor ceremony, nor travel, in order to work. What they do require is preparation, wisdom, empathy, and dexterity in their utilization. Clear intentions, optimal environments, thorough preparation, enthusiasm, and faith in the purpose of life, are the true elixirs of transformation. Sub-optimal environments, unclear intentions, and unwise utilization where the profound power of psychedelics is not properly respected or understood, can limit their capacity, or even create harm.
Presently, a psychedelic opportunity exists to combine the clinical success of the the 1950’s and 60’s with the folk wisdom of millennia. People are hungry for the consciousness transforming experiences that these substances provide. Sadly, this hunger is being exploited by providers with no formal therapeutic training or education, who lack the dexterity to transmute challenging experiences into life changing positive outcomes.
Psychedelics are not a magic pill, nor are they a last chance gas station for those running low on their faith in their ability to transform their lives. They are a tool among many other consciousness transforming tools that include meditation, dreamwork, and breathwork that can support and enhance the effectiveness to create lasting change
MY BACKGROUND AS A CONSULTANT
I have an undergraduate degree in Religious Studies from Syracuse University and a Master’s Degree in Counseling from The California Institute of Integral Studies. At Syracuse, my focus of study was Carl Jung’s theories about how the stifling of the psyche’s religious(meaning to re-connect with its’ origins) instinct is the ground from which all psychological problems arise.
At CIIS, I studied with many of the pioneers of Psychedelic Therapy. Presently CIIS is the world’s only academic institution offering certification in Psychedelic Assisted Therapy. While there, I trained as a psychotherapist, and did three years of psychotherapy internships. I have thirty years of experience in helping people utilize consciousness transformation technologies for their maximum benefit. It is my experience that when used intelligently, psychedelics can be a tremendous tool of insight, change, creativity, healing, and overall well being.
HOW I MIGHT ASSIST YOU
If you are interested in utilizing psychedelics for personal transformation, I can position you for maximum safety, comfort and benefit. Whether you are considering micro-dosing, or using psychedelics to overcome a psychological, creative, health, or spiritual challenge, there is a battle tested protocol that will position you for success, while minimizing the chance of difficult experience.
Many variables in the use of psychedelics can be controlled to ensure a maximally beneficial experience. We’ll work together to customize a program based on your goals, life experience, your unique psychological constitution, to empower you to have a fulfilling outcome. After your experience, I will help you weave the insights it provided into the fabric of your daily life. Ultimately, the value of the psychedelic experience is determined by its impact on the quality of one’s life going forward.
It should not be a spectacular phantasm whose recall is an exotic memory, but a reservoir, whose deep life giving waters can be drawn on during all the days that follow. Psychedelic experience offers you the opportunity to look at the circumstances of your life from a fresh perspective, and if used intelligently, can be a tool of healing, transformation, inspiration and joy. Let’s work together to create a program in service of your highest good.
IN PERSON CONSULTATIONS
I work with clients in New York City, as well as worldwide via online consults. I also frequently travel to work all across the United States with motivated clients.
- MICRODOSING CONSULTATIONS
- CONSULTATIONS WITH HEALTH PROVIDERS
- MEDITATION CONSULTATIONS
- DREAMWORK CONSULTATIONS
Microdosing is a technology that is having a huge impact on mental health and well being. Using psychedelics in sub perceptual doses is a way to transform one’s state of consciousness in an incredibly positive way.
The key to successful microdosing is using proper dosages in the proper frequency of use. I have been consulting with clients in their microdosing regimens for years. Every person is different in their needs, and getting to know the physiology, psychology and intent of the individual is the key to success.
I can work with you to create a regimen that can help you achieve your goals, whether those goals involve breaking habits, changing views, or transforming the way you think by creating new neuropathways.
Collective awareness of the healing properties of Psychedelics is exploding. Research shows that they can help with depression, anxiety, ptsd, addictions, smoking cessation, OCD, and several other difficulties. Trained professionals in Medicine, Psychiatry, and Psychology, are being asked by their patients and clients about the utility of these remedies. I am in frequent contact with professionals in these fields who wish to educate themselves about the healing properties of these substances.
I have years of experience in these matters as well as a Master’s Degree in Counseling. The protocols I use were successful in medical and psychological settings in the 1950’s and 60’s before Psychedelics were marginalized for political reasons. I consult with many professionals in these fields who wish for their patients to receive the profound benefits of these technologies. If you are a professional and would like to discuss the utility of these substances in a one on one, private conversation, I am pleased to serve as an educator and experienced information source.
Meditation is psychedelics in slow motion. There is nothing that will benefit someone before and after psychedelic experience more than a consistent meditation practice. During psychedelic experience, we gulp previously unexperienced parts of our consciousness, and during meditation, we sip. If a person is serious about making their psychedelic experience a part of their everyday life, there is no act that communicates this to themself that compares to meditation.
If I had to choose between meditation and psychedelic experience for anyone for who I cared deeply, I would choose meditation. Results, benefits, and insight is guaranteed with proper effort, with very little risk. Together, psychedelic experience and meditation support each other, like nothing else with the exception of personal therapy. The expansion that is hinted at with psychedelics, can be realized with meditation. It is the most efficient vehicle for transformation, as well as the best carriage for psychedelic experience. Time and time, I see that my clients who benefit the most from their psychedelic experiences are the ones who are inspired by them to meditate consistently.
If you are considering working with psychedelics, or are already involved with them, meditation will mature and support your experience. Meditation offers identifiable brain changes, like added matter in the prefrontal cortex, and new neuropathways in just six weeks. Meditation has been shown to shrink the amygdala, which is the organ in the brain that creates fight or flight, and is the instrument of depression and anxiety. Speaking plainly, meditation is medicine. It will calm you, clarify your thinking, and deconstruct lifelong patterns of thinking. It has no known negative side effects, and can create a platform of expansion for all areas of your life.
If someone is serious about their well being, both mentally and physically, there is nothing else, outside of exercise, that can match its benefits. I am not a professional meditation teacher. But, I have gotten numerous clients started successfully on a meditation practice that is practical, useful and realistic. I have had the good fortune of studying with a number of excellent teachers. As a child and young adult, I was taught Vipassana (mindfulness) meditation by family friend Jack Kornfield. As an adult I took up a decade long Zen study with John Daishin Buksbazen, author of Zen Meditation in Plain English, at the Ocean Moon Sangha in Santa Monica. Combining the techniques of Zen and Vipassana, has allowed me to instruct clients in a style of meditation that is simple, immediate, calming, and has great utility in exploring consciousness.
The technique is simple, but it is not easy. I have taught people to meditate in preparation for their psychedelic experience, and I have taught people to meditate afterwords, to help them bring a consciousness technology into their life that they can utilize everyday. I believe that psychedelic experience without meditation is an incomplete experience that wastes the potential that psychedelics hold. If you are preparing for an experience, or have had one, let’s talk about getting a practice started for you that will keep the benefits flowing into your life.
Dreaming occurs in the same part of the brain that psychedelic experience does. Dreams and psychedelics use the same metalanguage to communicate with our everyday egoic state. Every night, the same intelligence that presents itself during a psychedelic experience, reveals itself while we dream. We each spend roughly two hours per night dreaming. Over the course of human lifespan, we will spend six years of our life dreaming. These years can be tapped as a gold mine of insight, transformation, and guidance from our most profound depths. Many of the challenges of the current age are the result of our culture’s inability to recognize, harvest, and utilize the riches of these resources. Yet each one of us has access to this wisdom source. It is a democracy. Each one of us chooses whether or not to engage this intelligence.
Over the past 28 years, I have recorded and worked with nearly eight thousand dreams. The value I have experienced in doing this is inexpressible. I have been warned of health problems, been granted insight into areas of my life whose the meaning had eluded me, and been shown that there is an intelligence that views me objectively, and has opinions about how I am living. By recording so many dreams, I have discovered that there is a topography of my consciousness that is both mappable, and comprehensible. Examples of the utility of relating to my dreaming life as something of tremendous value are too numerous to mention. If you are curious, we can discuss it. I am an avowed believer that there is no other source of wisdom that is as intimate and as profound that is available to anyone, as their dreams. No creed, no religion, no philosophy speaks as directly to the life experience of the individual. Period.
When I was seeing clients as a therapist, I was told frequently by new clients, “I do not remember my dreams.” After making a few practical suggestions, the next week’s meeting often began with the statement, “What have you done to me?” Carl Jung thought that if you turned toward the unconscious, it would turn back toward you with twice as much energy. Once the unconscious knows that you are paying attention, it will offer up its riches enthusiastically. However, it does not speak in the same language we use in the day world, and learning to translate its language into ours, is a lifetime’s work of art. I can provide you with a program to increase your dream recall, and begin to understand the language of your dreams. Don’t hesitate to start this journey. No matter where you are in your life, dreams can provide you with access to your own hidden riches. Together we will put together a program that is practical, thorough, and transformative. Guaranteed.