Slow down, do your shadow work

Carl Jung, the Kemetic tarot and a regenerated wicca feature in Shadow Zine, a boutique publication from cutting-edge coven The High Priestxss. 

Its editor, designer turned shadow sorceress Claire Yurika speaks to me atop the blasted heath of Zoom.

Claire Yurika put the brakes on a glittering fashion career to focus on her inner work.

“Allowing shadow to pass through a room brings softness, like switching from overhead office lighting to a lamp-lit glow,” is her eloquent description of life post ‘shadow integration’.

Psychologist Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud’s star student who favoured a spiritual and proactive approach to living, claimed the world would be a much better place if we all did the same. 

"Shadow work could be explained as exploring life”

Crucial to this effort was a merciless examination of ‘The Shadow’, the side of us that we suppress and deny. Taming these instincts involves earning their trust. Shaming them leads to frustration, and later madness.  

“The shadow is where there is subtlety, and mystery”

Dr Rick ‘Spirit Molecule’ Strassman stressed the importance of self-reflection to psychedelic therapists in his Vital lecture earlier in the syllabus.

And at 2022’s Breaking Convention conference Magnificent Maria Papaspyrou (The Psychedelic Divine Feminine, Institute of Psychedelic Therapy), cited collective shadow integration as key to emerging from our liminal age intact.

“Most of our shadow work is about fear. It's fine to be fearful of wasting your life. Investigate why that scares you”

Shadow Zine is Claire’s polished, playful and practical companion for our own shadow work, published by her cutting-edge coven The High Priestxss in London. In my latest broadcast interview, Claire talks about how shadow work can save the world, slowing down, self-agency and ancient Egyptian magick in the cosmopolis. 

Follow Claire on Instagram for more shadowy goings-on.

Grab your copy of Shadow Zine here.

Britain's only traditional master builder is erecting stone circles in Glastonbury

Mark rewilding

Mark Leib is a contemporary geomancer and biodesigner. He uses the ancient tradition of sacred geomtery to create structures, spaces, settings and sensations in the now.

"The planet can heal and sustain us like a plant can, whether that’s in the Amazon or a field close by," Mark says. Hear more from him, and all about his stone circle building workshops near Glastonbury, England in my first broadcast below.

A geomancer (left) talking down the astralabe

Mark’s an award-winning restaurant and nightclub designer. He gave up throwing shapes to master them instead and trained in the arch-discipline of traditional master building for ten years.

The almost-forgotten art kept pace with civilisation in this part of the world from the Egyptian empire if not before, and was used to raise pyramids, temples and cathedrals. It’s also one of those antediluvian innovations that somehow spread across the globe – Mark points out that seed fossils have been found atop South American pyramids, where farmers left their fledgling crops to harness bio-energies.

Sacred shuteye

Among many techniques it includes building in harmony with the energy fields of natural objects nearby. So like “Chinese medicine for the construction industry” and “feng shui for the encvironment.”

He’s currently the only traditional master builder in Britain and one of only a handful in the world. But their ranks are swelling as people turn to holistic solutions for habitat and health.

Futurists too are frothing at the mouth at ‘bio-architecture’ examples like these Buckminster Fuller-style concept domes by BioArc.

BioArc’s dome habitats

Mark began fusing his ancient and modern skills in projects ranging from modern menhirs to integration tactics. And amateur megalith masons are in luck, because Marks’s hosting a workshop near Glastonbury, England on Sunday 8 May 2022.

Soul Sanctuary’s site near Glastonbury

Particpants will build a stone circle together and learn the fundamentals of sacred geometry.

Enjoy a day in the countryside, maybe bust out a ritual later on

If you’re up for it get in touch with Gibby from Soul Sanctuary via gibby74@sky.com.

The treatment can be applied to mandala and labyrinth designs too

No going too fast as per usual, I don’t want to hear about anyone burning out after whacking up a pyramid in their back garden.

Mark’s website: www.markleib.com

Frontline workers on Vital: “The mental health crisis is real”

‘The Living’ by Mat Eco, buy it here

Doctors, psychiatric nurses, social workers and community leaders were clear on the urgent need for effective, easily available treatments during their personal introdcutions in the first Vital remote sessions.

Dispatching from the frontline, they believed psychedelic medicine could be the answer. But they met cost and even time frustrations where available, and prohibition otherwise.

“The mental health crisis is real” said a fellow student earlier this week highlighting a growing volume of patients in desperate need, and a healthcare sector under siege. 

Currently available treatments, including those available at UK ketamine clinics are famously dear. Likewise an Amsterdam session or more exotic retreat. I’m a big believer in psychedelic medicine but for that money I’d prefer a hair transplant. Maybe that’s because I haven’t got major depressive disorder. 

Lots of others do. In particular, the poor. An extensive  2020 report for MIT Economics cites that, internationally, ‘Rates of depression, anxiety, and suicide correlate negatively with income. Those with the lowest incomes in a community suffer one and a half to three times more frequently from depression, anxiety and other common mental illnesses.’

“We see competing, profit-seeking ways of turning psychedelics into something that are going to be less accessible”

Dr Erica Dyck

My ADHD meds are more effective than anti-depressants from what I can tell and I’m fortunate to have them. Lots of others don’t – and they’re in prison. The Justice Select Committee Inquiry into Mental Health in Prisons here in the UK were told recently in an expert witness report ‘An estimated 25% of prisoners have ADHD. Despite the disproportionate prevalence, ADHD remains critically under-diagnosed. Furthermore, there is insufficient commissioning of ADHD care pathways across the system.’ A 2010 report from Sweden registered 40% only two of whom had received diagnoses as children and went for a figure of ’40% of adult male longer-term prison inmates. Further, ADHD and coexisting disorders, such as substance use disorder, anti-social behaviour, personality disorders plus mood and anxiety disorders, severely affected prison inmates with ADHD. Nearly 80% of adults with ADHD, present with at least one coexisting psychiatric disorder.’

Depression and anxiety are indeed more achievable diagnoses, here in the UK for adults at least. When my ADHD was identified after the best part of fifty years, I was first prescribed Elvanse after a rigorous process by a noted expert, at significant expense. My National Health Service GP refused to take on the ‘shared care agreement’ that provides a subsidised prescription, and told me that the surgery he runs doesn’t deal with it at all. 

‘Primitive psychology has produced no methods for solving crime, conflict, alienation, prejudice, stupidity, boredom, aggression, unhappiness…’

Dr Timothy Leary

Fortunately I found another doctor. Or I wouldn’t be able to afford it. Even though it’s essentially speed. While we’re on the subject my psychiatrist told me ketamine treatment was “expensive”, the only time I’ve heard him use the word. 

Vital’s lecturer this week was Canadian historian Erica Dyck. Among her specialities is the early research of Abram Hoffer and Humphry Osmond, the British scientist who turned on Aldous Huxley and coined the term ‘psychedelic’. During the Q&A I asked her what she learned about human nature through her research.

“The early researchers definitely were trying to align a health access point within a publicly funded system,” she responded, “That is certainly not on the horizon today. We see lots of competing, profit-seeking ways of turning psychedelics into something that, I would argue, are going to be less accessible.”

‘Keeping ADHD prisoners in jail costs the UK £74 million, but it’d only cost £30,000 to treat them’

Dr Phil Anderton, police oficer turned therapist

Consciousness is policed by an old boys’ club with a mighty pen (if famously shit handwriting). The medical consensus-cum-caper fills its boots from patented versions of otherwise cheap chemicals, or narrative-approved, victim-blaming re-education sessions. Both of which continue to make it wealthy, at the considerable expense of the less fortunate. And the taxpayer. Keeping ADHD prisoners in jail costs the UK £74 million, but it’d only cost £30,000 to treat them.

Dr Leary, who was once on a path to being the Sigmund Freud of his generation, in Exo-Psychology:

“Primitive psychology, in spite of its enormous, state-supported bureaucracy and its priesthood mystique, has produced no verifiable theory for explaining human behaviour, nor any methods for solving the classic problems of human society: crime, conflict, alienation, prejudice, stupidity, boredom, aggression, unhappiness, and philosophic ignorance about the meaning of life.”

Yet plant medicines remain forbidden, exclusive, or gate-kept by bureaucracy, ignorance, banality and greed.

Even though they grow in the garden. And the healthcare workers we claim to value are insistent they can help address this mental health crisis, which is real.

What happens on Vital Psychedelic Training?

Organised by Psychedelics Today, the course has healing at its core, but covers subjects ranging throughout the sector.

Vital is a brand new course from the current leader in online psychedelic education for health professionals and the producers of the space’s number one podcast, Psychedelics Today. Its cirriculum features ‘training in the elements of psychedelic therapy and integration.’

For the uninitiated, ‘integration’ is the art of weaving an experience into regular life; holitsic philosophy and spirituality to consolidate the positive effects of a trip.

Class begins tomorrow at the time of writing on Bicycle Day, the anniversary of Albert Hoffman’s first intentional LSD trip of 19 April 1943. I’m writing this after the initial welcome Zoom. Turns out there are just under 130 of us students, gathered from the four corners of the globe. Actually, it was by far the most exotic Zoom I’ve been on. There was something of a moment when co-founder Kyle Buller asked us to chat-post where we were calling from, resulting in a a pan-global roll call.

I opted for Vital’s programme because it struck me as intellectually robust, forward-facing and splendid value for money. Five modules cover: heritage, a snapshot of the contemporary sector, the assisted experience process itself, medical specifics, and the aforementioned integration.

The training includes the acumen required to oversee and improve psychedelic sessions. That’s whether the intention is therapeutic, entheogenic spiritual trips, or in performance fields like problem solving.

More basic background – this is known as ‘guiding’. ‘Guides’ don’t necessarily offer qualified psychotherapy in addition, although that’s far from unknown. Usually though specialist collaborators are recruited case by case as requested or required. Plus guides don’t ingest any hallucinogens themselves. They provide a fothold in reality for the ‘voyager’. This area of the course cirriculum draws on knowledge drawn from scientific experiments, diverse international tradition, and subcultures both reverent and recreational.

Vital also provides an overview of the burgeoning industry as a whole. There’s a variety of preset mini-modules in related fields. Sure, Vital’s primarily aimed at doctors, therapists, counsellors and coaches wanting to get completely clued up… and who are in a position to monetise the skills straight away. But it also makes sense for any professionals working in the field or with aspirations thereto. Trainees get over 180 hours of live and assisted study, a private online community, a choice of six international retreats, access to umpteen hours of material, and more.

A stellar line-up of live lecturers ranges from frontiersmen like John Hopkins’ Bill Richards and Rick ‘The Spirit Molecule’ Strassman to contemporary names such as AWAKN’s Ben Sessa, Numinus’ Devon Christie, and Imperial College Centre for Psychedelic Research’s David Luke.

The faculty even includes psychologist Dick ‘Internal Family Systems’ Schwartz. Adele La France, Erika Dyck and Ido Cohen are among the compelling voices I’ve discovered during my initial skim of the faculty.

To cap it all my study group tutor is Johanna Hilla from the Philosophy and Psychedelics Exeter Research Group, based in Britain’s West Country. (Where I grew up. Not exotic). Preorder its forthcoming edited essays now. Johanna wrote her master’s thesis on Carl Jung’s Red Book and lists ‘Western Esotericism’ as an interest in her official bio, which are exceptional characteristics in a teacher if you ask me.

Now I must cram research module one, Psychedelic Therapies: Historical and Current Approaches.

You can go straight through to Vital’s website for direct info on the course, refer to its online resources and not this site for specifics.

Who I am, and why I started this blog

‘Fade 2’ above is by Adam Neate and you can buy it here

My name is Steve Langsford Beale. I’m a blatantly middle-aged British journalist who was diagnosed with adult ADHD in January 2021. The accompanying psychotherapy and medication has put life in sharp perspective, and prompted shifts in my mindset.

At least that’s my current justification for enrolling in the first Vital Psychedelic Training course starting 19 April 2022.

The programme will actually bring depth to my writing work in the areas that I wish to pursue in the future: not only psychology, spirituality, philosophy, performance and health but also alternative art, music and culture too. I’ll be blogging here but my focus, naturally, is on lived experience not staring at a personal device experience. I’ll cover my studies on the Vital course itself, and where possible developments in the psychedelic space, integration ideology, and the culture of consciousness expansion. I hope to fit in some interviews, immersive reports – what the suits call ‘Top Gear-style stunts’  – and enthusiastic, studenty hypothesising too.

Moreover through Vital, I can explore my long-term aspirations to a healing or teaching practice of some description. To that end I’ve embarked on minor work experience, getting a vew on potential areas for development and/or catastrophe.

Besides my ADHD ‘journey’ I have family experience of addicition. I’m taking this opportunity to tell anyone involved that I love them, I forgive them, and I hope they can forgive me.

While I may drop some details from my own life on this blog, I won’t be discussing or divulging other people’s stories. This confidentiality applies to the students and teachers on the Vital course also; this website is not a ‘behind the scenes’ account of my time studying. Neither is it officially affiliated to Vital, nor should the content be taken as representative of the cirriculum as a whole.

My background is lifestyle journalism, which isn’t the most transcendent arena. In the print era I enjoyed diverse roles, including fashion director of FHM, editor at large of The Face, and the dating columnist at Marie Claire. But I snatched opportunities to engineer chaos where possible: over the years I’ve interviewed authors Michel Houellebecq and Grant Morrison, artists Banksy, Kelsey Brookes and Cleon Peterson, film director Paul Verhoeven and The Venus Project’s Jacques Fresco (RiP). Plus a bunch of musicians, including Bill Drummond from the KLF. The interview was conducted over the telephone and he was driving; I pictured him slicing through the Scottish countryside behind the wheel of the band’s signature interceptor. 

I’ve written about mental health since my award-winning column ‘Steve Beale is Unwell’ ran in Arena magazine during the mid-2000s, and up until much more recently in for example Mr Porter Journal. I write with mental health professionals including clinical psychologist Dr Stephen Blumenthal, who appeared in ground-breaking 2021 BBC documentary Joey Essex: Grief and Me.

In 2020 I wrote a science fiction short story for Dazed & Confused magazine’s Lockdown Special that landed me on the writing team for Milkblood, a music and ‘ARG’  (ask your teenager) project from JJ Abrams’ Bad Robot studio and Tap Music Management. Other clients include art dealer and immersive event pioneer Steve Lazarides, plus spiritual teacher Jason Louv. See more on my agency website or email me here. And if martial arts, boxing and wrestling are your thing I urge you to check out another project, Battles of London. Men’s Health magazine calls it “the brand making fight clothing cool.”