
Unofficial Vital Student âZine
Class of â23 Edition
My Unofficial Vital Study Zine features observations from learning on the inaugural Vital class of â23
Search my Unofficial Vital Student âZine by expert lecturer, or by the topics Approach, Therapy, Space Holding, Medical, Integration⊠and the funny pages:
âIf psychedelic therapy embraces animism it can do wonderful thingsâ 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 Gallimoreâs seemingly lunatic plans for a âDMaTrixâ have become reality. If you can still call it that.
âSocial, ethical, legal and metaphysical issues can undergo a transformation akin to psychedelic therapyâ 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.
Itâs okay to get the giggles says John Hopkinsâ Centre for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research professor Dr Bill Richards.
Dr Lafrance doesnât insist that patients âsurrender to the medicineâ when theyâre 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 arenât nearly enough healers to dish out the medicine from its âworld leadingâ 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 tigerâŠ
A quiet psychedelic revolution in health care has already happened down West Country way.
The placebo effect is valid, âscientific, and realâ. It could be behind the psychedelic experience.
The performance enhancing and problem-solving powers of psychedelics are growing in legitimacy and acceptance.
LSDâs flexibility and potential has been underestimated say thought leaders Beckley Psytech.
Wasiwaska is Dr Luis Eduardo Lunaâs 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 doesnât make for ideal water cooler chat in the office on Monday morning.
DMT could be key to womenâs earth-shattering cervical âfull bodyâ orgasms.
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 âtheoretically informedâ treatment room style.
This requires interacting with the patient â in stark contrast to the ânon directiveâ approach considered sacrosanctâŠ
Frontline clinical psychologist Dr Lafrance answers the big question: if the patientâs tripping balls, when does the therapist definitely need to get involved?
Dr Lafrance doesnât insist that patients âsurrender to the medicineâ when theyâre 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 sameâŠ
Dr Bill Richards is a staple of the Postwar-era mystery school researching psychedelics. Heâs now at the Johns Hopkins Centre for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research.
Psychedelic treatment at John Hopkinsâ and MAPS prompts our inner self to do the healing â in a radical change to exisiting therapies.
Itâs okay to get the giggles says John Hopkinsâ Centre for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research professor Dr Bill Richards.
Psychedelic therapy uses the guide approach, âcreating a containerâ to encourage the voyagerâs âown choreography of the experienceâ says Dr Richards.
What is a mystery school? Are we in one? Should we be? And what are we doing there?
In Vitalâs 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 thereâs a catch. You actually have to go and do it.
âItâs living in the jungle for four months, eating right,â says Tafur, âYou canât read it and write it.â
Mystic heaing is far from an established profession in the West. And cultural appropriation casts a deep shadow.
âUltimately weâre reopening metaphysics. The research is in review now and weâre looking forward to hsaring it with the world,â 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 Sessaâs 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 âSpirit Moleculeâ Strassman.
Strassman and Andrew Gallimoreâs seemingly lunatic plans for a âDMaTrixâ have become reality. If you can still call it that.
Spare no sacred cows in your own work, is Dr Rick Strassmanâs top tip for psychotherapists.
Arguing what DMT entities are is moot says Dr Strassman. Besides, they're angels.
The placebo effect is valid, âscientific, and realâ. It could be behind the psychedelic experience.
DMT could be key to womenâs earth-shattering cervical âfull bodyâ orgasms.
Gotta love MAPS, whose therapist dyad âThe Mithoefersâ conceived the almost-FDA-approved MDMA-AT program.
Hereâs all the back issues of the Unofficial Vital Student âZine
My Unofficial Vital Student Zine features observations from learning on the inaugural Vital class of â23. The top post is a round-up. Highlights follow themed by Vitalâs core learning elements: Traditional and Modern Approaches, Therapy, Space Holding, Medicine, and Integration. Plus thereâs funnies at the end.
This blog is not affiliated to Vital beyond my study on the course. The content shouldnât be taken as representative as itâs 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 VedĂžy 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 âtheoretically informedâ treatment room style.
This requires interacting with the patient â in stark contrast to the ânon directiveâ approach considered sacrosanctâŠ
Frontline clinical psychologist Dr Lafrance answers the big question: if the patientâs tripping balls, when does the therapist definitely need to get involved?
Dr Lafrance doesnât insist that patients âsurrender to the medicineâ when theyâre 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 sameâŠ
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 heâs pioneering tests for the tricky treatment of Alzheimerâs 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?
âBiology drives the effects of psychedelics but therapy shapes them,â 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 itâs 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.
âIf psychedelic therapy embraces animism it can do wonderful thingsâ says star anthropologist Dr Luis Eduardo Luna.
Dr Luis Eduardo Lunaâs got a plan to mix shamanic ceremony with Western medicine.
Sacramental plants and fungi are intended to be ingested entirely and not carved into compounds.
Wasiwaska is Dr Luis Eduardo Lunaâs 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 Sessaâs book The Psychedelic Renaissance acted as exactly that.
Atheists need answers from their insights too. So do jedis. And children in care.
Veronika Goldâs 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 DoorâŠ
Rugby lads on ibogaine, reality stars in hyperreality and tarot cards swapped for toys. Turns out the revolution will be fun.
Kâs used by combat medics but its âglutamate surgeâ 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 âThe Mithoefersâ 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 âexperience everythingâ 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 doesnât 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 Taylorâs 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 explorerâs 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 tigerâŠ
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 arenât nearly enough healers to dish out the medicine from its âworld leadingâ scientists.
Woods near âBedlamâ asylum will house the NHSâ 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 âre-enchantmentâ 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.
âWe are in infinite debt to the biosphere, that we cannot possibly hope to repay.â But letâs 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 âSpirit Moleculeâ Strassman.
Strassman and Andrew Gallimoreâs seemingly lunatic plans for a âDMaTrixâ have become reality. If you can still call it that.
Spare no sacred cows in your own work, is Dr Rick Strassmanâs top tip for psychotherapists.
Arguing what DMT entities are is moot says Dr Strassman. Besides, they're angels.
The placebo effect is valid, âscientific, and realâ. It could be behind the psychedelic experience.
DMT could be key to womenâs earth-shattering cervical âfull bodyâ orgasms.
Your regular round-up of trippy clippings, merry pranks, and psychedelic student life.
âPsychedelic philosophyâ or âpsy-phiâ aims to legitimise the culture of consciousness expansion. And much more.
âSocial, ethical, legal and metaphysical issues can undergo a transformation akin to psychedelic therapyâ 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. Heâs now at the Johns Hopkins Centre for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research.
Psychedelic treatment at John Hopkinsâ and MAPS prompts our inner self to do the healing â in a radical change to exisiting therapies.
Itâs okay to get the giggles says John Hopkinsâ Centre for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research professor Dr Bill Richards.
Psychedelic therapy uses the guide approach, âcreating a containerâ to encourage the voyagerâs âown choreography of the experienceâ 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 ânew psychonautâ pushing the boundaries of research here in London.
Science meets the super-normal in Stanislav Grofâs 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.
âWhat can the medical sector learn from the underground?â Eveything,â says Dr David Luke.
Your five-corner round-up of trippy clippings, merry pranks, and psychedelic student life.
Dreamshadow founder Dr Lenny Gibsonâs winsome and poingnant presentation took in the ancient gods, Jesus, The Matter with Things author Iain McGhilchrist plus the Baka tribes⊠whose singing is âSo beautiful the self melts away.â
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.
LSDâs 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 Vitalâs debut lecture âthe first lady of LSD historyâ 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 Dyckâs 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 âWâ was ahead of the curve back in the Fifties.
After Abram Hofferâs 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 2022âs DJ Bus Replacement Service, obviously. Thatâs actually Delia Derbyshire in the picture.
Social disapproval â not legislation â wiped out LSD testing in the 20th Century.
Osmondâs innovations included art therapy, autonomy for nurses, field trips, family visits and Kiyoshi âKiyoâ Azumiâs revolutionary hospitals.
The inaugural round-up of trippy clippings, merry pranks, and psychedelic student life.
In Vitalâs 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 thereâs a catch. You actually have to go and do it.
âItâs living in the jungle for four months, eating right,â says Tafur, âYou canât read it and write it.â
Mystic heaing is far from an established profession in the West. And cultural appropriation casts a deep shadow.
âUltimately weâre reopening metaphysics. The research is in review now and weâre looking forward to hsaring it with the world,â 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?