Exploring Indigenous Traditions and Wisdom with Dr Joe Tafur

My unofficial Vital Student Zine #2 with observations from Vital Psychedelic Training and recent happenings in the space.

Celia Vasquez Yui, ‘The Council of the Mother Spirits’ via Salon 94 and Shipibo Conibo Centre

In Vital’s second lecture Dr Joe Tafur blew minds with a clinical overview of shamanic plant medicine healing. It included his staggering current research into conditions possibly related to epigenetics that range from PTSD to cancer.

The family doctor from Phoenix, Arizona is also a shaman in the Shipibo curanderismo tradition trained by Maestro Ayahuasca Shaman Ricardo Amaringo. He’s the author of ayahuasca blockbusterThe Fellowship of the River (‘with introduction by Gabor Mat´é') plus the co-founder alongside Amaringo of Nihue Rao healing centre near Iquitos, Peru.

In the Zine this week, arranged in the Vital curriculum colour scheme:

Approach: Saving souls for three million years. And now with MDMA

Therapy: Psychedelic therapy is an art first and a science second

Space Holding: Songs in the key of life: energy and entropy

Medical: Public opinion counted a lot back then in things like pharmaceutical intervention. It still does

Integral: The Eagle and the Condor

These five items I pulled from the week’s research are themed along Vital’s natural element-themed structure. Air provides an overview of psychedelic use, Fire concerns therapeutic applications, Water covers ‘space holding’ – the art of keeping it together, Earth is where you’ll find medical matters, and Ether discusses integration, the process of bringing psychedelic power into regular life. Click straight through to your pet subject below.

Next issue: consciousness expansion from cave painting to the 2022 Psych Symposium