Unofficial Vital Student ‘Zine
Class of ‘23 Edition
My Unofficial Vital Study Zine features observations from learning on the inaugural Vital class of ‘23
Search my Unofficial Vital Student ‘Zine by expert lecturer, or by the topics Approach, Therapy, Space Holding, Medical, Integration… and the funny pages:
“If psychedelic therapy embraces animism it can do wonderful things” says star anthropologist Dr Luis Eduardo Luna.
Savvy brits are sussed to self-care and change is happening. But the vulnerable are being left behind.
New strategies inspired by nature are already being adopted by business leaders.
Strassman and Andrew Gallimore’s seemingly lunatic plans for a ‘DMaTrix’ have become reality. If you can still call it that.
“Social, ethical, legal and metaphysical issues can undergo a transformation akin to psychedelic therapy” says an inspiring new movement, with beards to match.
Can psychedelic philosophy explain the healing powers of the cosmic whole?
To Maria Papaspyrou the psychdelic feminine represents self-expression, spontaneity, intuition, inclination towards change, mindfulness, connection, and acceptance.
It’s okay to get the giggles says John Hopkins’ Centre for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research professor Dr Bill Richards.
Dr Lafrance doesn’t insist that patients ‘surrender to the medicine’ when they’re not up for a challenging experience.
Rugby lads on ibogaine, reality stars in hyperreality and tarot cards swapped for toys. Turns out the revolution will be fun.
Only by learning on the job can guides figure out how to deliver ethical psychedelic therapy.
But there aren’t nearly enough healers to dish out the medicine from its “world leading” scientists.
Syrupy new age spirituality cannot hope to illustrate our lived experience. What can?
Your regular round-up of trippy clippings, merry pranks, and psychedelic student life.
What if the patient would benefit from a clasp of the shoulder ot supportive hug? Easy tiger…
A quiet psychedelic revolution in health care has already happened down West Country way.
The placebo effect is valid, “scientific, and real”. It could be behind the psychedelic experience.
The performance enhancing and problem-solving powers of psychedelics are growing in legitimacy and acceptance.
LSD’s flexibility and potential has been underestimated say thought leaders Beckley Psytech.
Wasiwaska is Dr Luis Eduardo Luna’s psychedelic nature reserve. Gardening just got even more quietly inspirational.
Atheists need answers from their insights too. So do jedis. And children in care.
Psychedelic integration doesn’t make for ideal water cooler chat in the office on Monday morning.
What is a mystery school? Are we in one? Should we be? And what are we doing there?
Dr Lafrance gave Vital students a heroic dose of authenticity during her Vital lecture packed with brass tacks advice.
Dr Lafrance mixes up emotion focussed therapy with a ‘theoretically informed’ treatment room style.
This requires interacting with the patient – in stark contrast to the ‘non directive’ approach considered sacrosanct…
Frontline clinical psychologist Dr Lafrance answers the big question: if the patient’s tripping balls, when does the therapist definitely need to get involved?
Dr Lafrance doesn’t insist that patients ‘surrender to the medicine’ when they’re not up for a challenging experience.
Take a (small) step closer to the dark side for more assertiveness and self-compassion.
One week in the jungle and your relationship might never be the same…
Dr Bill Richards is a staple of the Postwar-era mystery school researching psychedelics. He’s now at the Johns Hopkins Centre for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research.
Psychedelic treatment at John Hopkins’ and MAPS prompts our inner self to do the healing – in a radical change to exisiting therapies.
It’s okay to get the giggles says John Hopkins’ Centre for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research professor Dr Bill Richards.
Psychedelic therapy uses the guide approach, “creating a container” to encourage the voyager’s “own choreography of the experience” says Dr Richards.
What is a mystery school? Are we in one? Should we be? And what are we doing there?
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 epigentics that range from PTSD to cancer.
Could the love drug offer salvation to the lost?
You can train as a shaman with Dr Joe! But there’s a catch. You actually have to go and do it.
“It’s living in the jungle for four months, eating right,” says Tafur, “You can’t read it and write it.”
Mystic heaing is far from an established profession in the West. And cultural appropriation casts a deep shadow.
“Ultimately we’re reopening metaphysics. The research is in review now and we’re looking forward to hsaring it with the world,” says Dr Tafur.
This two thousand year-old propehcy that could be said to predict the colonisation of the Americas, the resulting cultural holocaust, and a re-emergence of mystical healing techniques.
Dr Ben Sessa’s book The Psychedelic Renaissance acted as exactly that.
Atheists need answers from their insights too. So do jedis. And children in care.
Who on an otherwise genteel psychedelic training course would casually riff on orgasms, prophets and brainwashed assassins? Dr Rick ‘Spirit Molecule’ Strassman.
Strassman and Andrew Gallimore’s seemingly lunatic plans for a ‘DMaTrix’ have become reality. If you can still call it that.
Spare no sacred cows in your own work, is Dr Rick Strassman’s top tip for psychotherapists.
Arguing what DMT entities are is moot says Dr Strassman. Besides, they're angels.
The placebo effect is valid, “scientific, and real”. It could be behind the psychedelic experience.
Gotta love MAPS, whose therapist dyad ‘The Mithoefers’ conceived the almost-FDA-approved MDMA-AT program.
Here’s all the back issues of the Unofficial Vital Student ‘Zine
My Unofficial Vital Student Zine features observations from learning on the inaugural Vital class of ‘23. The top post is a round-up. Highlights follow themed by Vital’s core learning elements: Traditional and Modern Approaches, Therapy, Space Holding, Medicine, and Integration. Plus there’s funnies at the end.
This blog is not affiliated to Vital beyond my study on the course. The content shouldn’t be taken as representative as it’s a personal reflection and includes my own lived experience of the sector too.
Top integration tips from the Vital Psychedelic Training founder and friends.
Your voyager no idea what to expect? Whip up a quick mock ceremony for a taste of the sacred and profane.
Someone to listen to our trippy BS is often all we want when we first get back to Earth.
Crisis management is the reality of integration therapy. And this is what it looks like.
Peak existence is the new peak experience, says 5-MEO DMT expert Dr Malin Vedøy Uthaug.
Your regular round-up of trippy clippings, merry pranks, and psychedelic student life.
Dr Lafrance gave Vital students a heroic dose of authenticity during her Vital lecture packed with brass tacks advice.
Dr Lafrance mixes up emotion focussed therapy with a ‘theoretically informed’ treatment room style.
This requires interacting with the patient – in stark contrast to the ‘non directive’ approach considered sacrosanct…
Frontline clinical psychologist Dr Lafrance answers the big question: if the patient’s tripping balls, when does the therapist definitely need to get involved?
Dr Lafrance doesn’t insist that patients ‘surrender to the medicine’ when they’re not up for a challenging experience.
Take a (small) step closer to the dark side for more assertiveness and self-compassion.
One week in the jungle and your relationship might never be the same…
Your regular round-up of trippy clippings, merry pranks, and psychedelic student life.
Dr Charles Nichols has discovered how psychedelics can treat psychosomatic physical conditions like asthma and psoriasis. And he’s pioneering tests for the tricky treatment of Alzheimer’s disease.
Purists sneer at scientific tinkering. But lab studies showed Dr Nichols how psychedelics heal the body. Could he uncover the secret of profundity too?
“Biology drives the effects of psychedelics but therapy shapes them,” says the latest scion in the Nichols psycho-pharmacological dynasty.
Keep those hearts open to differing emotions triggered by corporate psychedelia. And watch our for N-BOMes.
A chemical component of mescaline can treat asthma, perhaps many more physical problems. And it’s not even the bit that makes you trip.
Ready for ceremonies with you, mum and dad, the grandparents plus your kids and even the dog?
Your regular round-up of trippy clippings, merry pranks, and psychedelic student life.
Dr Luna took yagé for the first time with Terrence McKenna, discovered ayahuasca artist Pablo Amaringo and founded Wasiwaska psychedelic nature reserve.
“If psychedelic therapy embraces animism it can do wonderful things” says star anthropologist Dr Luis Eduardo Luna.
Sacramental plants and fungi are intended to be ingested entirely and not carved into compounds.
Wasiwaska is Dr Luis Eduardo Luna’s psychedelic nature reserve. Gardening just got even more quietly inspirational.
Your regular round-up of trippy clippings, merry pranks, and psychedelic student life.
Dr Ben Sessa’s book The Psychedelic Renaissance acted as exactly that.
Atheists need answers from their insights too. So do jedis. And children in care.
Veronika Gold’s written the first Ketamine Assisted Therapy (KAP) program designed around the drug.
Does anyone really want talk therapy with their K? They do once they see The Death Door…
Rugby lads on ibogaine, reality stars in hyperreality and tarot cards swapped for toys. Turns out the revolution will be fun.
K’s used by combat medics but its ‘glutamate surge’ could hold victory for depressed civilians.
A fungus using K to clear parasites could connect the mental and physical elements of many diseases.
Your regular round-up of trippy clippings, merry pranks, and psychedelic student life.
Gotta love MAPS, whose therapist dyad ‘The Mithoefers’ conceived the almost-FDA-approved MDMA-AT program.
Your regular round-up of trippy clippings, merry pranks, and psychedelic student life.
Fall back for Imperial College London and its historic PsiloDep Two trial, presented by Ashley Murphy-Beiner.
Psilocybin patients “experience everything” in contrast to the emotional anaesthsia of SSRI medication.
PsiloDep 2 used a new therapeutic model ACE devised by Drs Ros and Richards, with inspo from Stan Grof.
Psychedelic integration doesn’t make for ideal water cooler chat in the office on Monday morning.
Your regular round-up of trippy clippings, merry pranks, and psychedelic student life.
Grof-trained Kylea Taylor’s 2017 book The Ethics of Caring is considered a definitive text for the therapy sector as a whole. She says inner work and self-compassion are essential tools in the explorer’s kit as we venture into the unknown.
Probe your own intentions, for the floor of the abyss is littered with wounded healers.
Only by learning on the job can guides figure out how to deliver ethical psychedelic therapy.
What if the patient would benefit from a clasp of the shoulder ot supportive hug? Easy tiger…
Your regular round-up of trippy clippings, merry pranks, and psychedelic student life.
Essential intel from the front lines in the war of attrition for medical and legal accessibility.
Savvy brits are sussed to self-care and change is happening. But the vulnerable are being left behind.
My hometown has a psychedelic amusement park and high street ketamine clinics. How did that happen?
But there aren’t nearly enough healers to dish out the medicine from its “world leading” scientists.
Woods near ‘Bedlam’ asylum will house the NHS’ first purpose-built psychedelic ward.
Only psychedelic economics can save us now, says Dr Benjamin Zelner business advisor to Synthesis, MIND and more.
New strategies inspired by nature are already being adopted by business leaders.
Ancient principles for living encourage a wondrous view of the world. Is this the ‘re-enchantment’ with life we need?
Syrupy new age spirituality cannot hope to illustrate our lived experience. What can?
A quiet psychedelic revolution in health care has already happened down West Country way.
“We are in infinite debt to the biosphere, that we cannot possibly hope to repay.” But let’s give it a go.
Your regular round-up of trippy clippings, merry pranks, and psychedelic student life.
Who on an otherwise genteel psychedelic training course would casually riff on orgasms, prophets and brainwashed assassins? Dr Rick ‘Spirit Molecule’ Strassman.
Strassman and Andrew Gallimore’s seemingly lunatic plans for a ‘DMaTrix’ have become reality. If you can still call it that.
Spare no sacred cows in your own work, is Dr Rick Strassman’s top tip for psychotherapists.
Arguing what DMT entities are is moot says Dr Strassman. Besides, they're angels.
The placebo effect is valid, “scientific, and real”. It could be behind the psychedelic experience.
Your regular round-up of trippy clippings, merry pranks, and psychedelic student life.
‘Psychedelic philosophy’ or ‘psy-phi’ aims to legitimise the culture of consciousness expansion. And much more.
“Social, ethical, legal and metaphysical issues can undergo a transformation akin to psychedelic therapy” says an inspiring new movement, with beards to match.
Can psychedelic philosophy explain the healing powers of the cosmic whole?
The shadow, obvs. And it has unfinished business… with you.
The performance enhancing and problem-solving powers of psychedelics are growing in legitimacy and acceptance.
Your regular round-up of trippy clippings, merry pranks, and psychedelic student life.
Dr Bill Richards is a staple of the Postwar-era mystery school researching psychedelics. He’s now at the Johns Hopkins Centre for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research.
Psychedelic treatment at John Hopkins’ and MAPS prompts our inner self to do the healing – in a radical change to exisiting therapies.
It’s okay to get the giggles says John Hopkins’ Centre for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research professor Dr Bill Richards.
Psychedelic therapy uses the guide approach, “creating a container” to encourage the voyager’s “own choreography of the experience” says Dr Richards.
What is a mystery school? Are we in one? Should we be? And what are we doing there?
Your regular round-up of trippy clippings, merry pranks, and psychedelic student life.
Dr David Luke is the real ‘new psychonaut’ pushing the boundaries of research here in London.
Science meets the super-normal in Stanislav Grof’s school of mental health study developed around psychedelic therapy.
To Maria Papaspyrou the psychdelic feminine represents self-expression, spontaneity, intuition, inclination towards change, mindfulness, connection, and acceptance.
“What can the medical sector learn from the underground?’ Eveything,” says Dr David Luke.
Your five-corner round-up of trippy clippings, merry pranks, and psychedelic student life.
Dreamshadow founder Dr Lenny Gibson’s winsome and poingnant presentation took in the ancient gods, Jesus, The Matter with Things author Iain McGhilchrist plus the Baka tribes… whose singing is “So beautiful the self melts away.”
LSD is a promethean invention that has democratised the sacrament, and given humankind the ability to heal itself says Dr Lenny Gibson.
The inner healer remains the preserve of the elite but its gatekeepers look ever more ridiculous.
In psychedelic therapy as any other, you have to take some responsibility for your own mental health.
LSD’s flexibility and potential has been underestimated say thought leaders Beckley Psytech.
Is there more to integration than walking in the woods while listening to John Hopkins?
In Vital’s debut lecture ‘the first lady of LSD history’ presented an intriguing analysis casting new light on thorny modern-day issues, ranging from affordability and addiction orthodoxy to… chill out DJing.
This post contains an overview and more about Dr Dyck’s work which history buffs will fall upon.
Aesthetics pioneered by 50s researchers are sorely lacking down at your local ketamine clinic.
LSD treatment is most effective against the demon drink, says a 2020 report. AA founder Bill ‘W’ was ahead of the curve back in the Fifties.
After Abram Hoffer’s wife Rose soothed a tripping patient by changing a jarring record to an elegant Bach number, she was thenceforth delegated I/C the tunes.
Thus began a legacy stretching from Rose to music therapy pioneers Hermione Browne and Helen Bonny… to 2022’s DJ Bus Replacement Service, obviously. That’s actually Delia Derbyshire in the picture.
Social disapproval – not legislation – wiped out LSD testing in the 20th Century.
Osmond’s innovations included art therapy, autonomy for nurses, field trips, family visits and Kiyoshi ‘Kiyo’ Azumi’s revolutionary hospitals.
The inaugural round-up of trippy clippings, merry pranks, and psychedelic student life.
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 epigentics that range from PTSD to cancer.
Could the love drug offer salvation to the lost?
You can train as a shaman with Dr Joe! But there’s a catch. You actually have to go and do it.
“It’s living in the jungle for four months, eating right,” says Tafur, “You can’t read it and write it.”
Mystic heaing is far from an established profession in the West. And cultural appropriation casts a deep shadow.
“Ultimately we’re reopening metaphysics. The research is in review now and we’re looking forward to hsaring it with the world,” says Dr Tafur.
This two thousand year-old propehcy that could be said to predict the colonisation of the Americas, the resulting cultural holocaust, and a re-emergence of mystical healing techniques.
The reborn round-up of trippy clippings, merry pranks, and psychedelic student life.
Purists sneer at scientific tinkering. But lab studies showed Dr Nichols how psychedelics heal the body. Could he uncover the secret of profundity too?