Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Dr Simon Ruffell: Bringing together indigenous knowledge and western science: challenges and possibilities
211 Plays5 months ago
In this episode, I’m going to be speaking with Dr Simon Ruffell. He is a friend and a close collaborator.
I’m working alongside Simon as one of the teachers on the psychedelic mentorship training organised by Onaya Health.
In this conversation, we discuss Simon’s journey into his work researching Ayahuasca, our shared history in refugee mental health, the importance of including indigenous perspectives in research and the challenges of this, integrating indigenous wisdom into clinical practice and our approaches to supporting clients following psychedelic experiences.
Dr Simon Ruffell is a medical doctor, a psychiatrist and research psychologist with a PhD in Ayahuasca and mental health and he’s also a student of Shipibo shamanism, Simon has worked on several major psychedelic trials at leading universities worldwide including as a senior research associate at Kings College London on their trial looking at psilocybin assisted therapy for treatment resistant depression. Since 2016 his work has been primarily been dedicated to exploring the traditional psychedelic brew Ayahuasca. He is the CEO of Onaya Health where I also serve as advisor. He co-founded the not for profit Onaya Science which researches the effect of Ayahuasca in naturalistic Amazonian settings. Simon’s work seeks to understand plants such as Ayahuasca from both indigenous and western viewpoints with a goal of generating a richer understanding of healing modalities involved.
I hope you enjoy listening to this conversation as much as I enjoyed having it.
keep in touch with me at Insta: dresmedark
Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/dr-esme-dark-627156a0/
website: https://www.esmedarkpsychology.com.au/
Find Simon at https://www.onaya.io/
https://www.iceers.org/
Find Monash Clinical Psychedelic Lab at www.monash.edu/psychedelics
Disclaimer: This podcast if for general information only and does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation for psychedelic- assisted psychotherapy.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Acknowledgments
00:00:04
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Beyond the Trip, a psychedelic therapy podcast with me, Dr. Esme Ta. During this podcast, I'll be bringing you conversations with thought leaders and other inspiring humans, exploring a wide variety of themes relating to the use of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy in the healing of human distress.
00:00:26
Speaker
Whether you're an aspiring therapist, already a therapist, or just simply interested in the emerging field of psychedelic therapy, then this podcast is for you. Join me for a journey into the psychedelic world. Before we get started, I want to take a moment to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the unceded land on which this podcast is recorded. The Wadda Wurrung people. I pay my respects to elders past, present and emerging.
00:00:54
Speaker
and I extend that respect to any Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander peoples listening today.
Dr. Simon Raphael's Journey into Psychedelic Therapy
00:01:04
Speaker
ah everybody in this episode i'm going to be speaking with dr simon rael he is a friend and a close collaborator I'm working with Simon as one of the teachers on the Psychedelic Mentorship Program organized by Oneida Health. Dr. Simon Raphael is a medical doctor, a psychiatrist, and a research psychologist with a PhD in Iowa State and Mental Health.
00:01:27
Speaker
He's also a student of Shabibo Shamanism. Dr Raphael has worked on several major psychedelic trials at leading universities worldwide, including as a senior research associate on King's College London's psilocybin trial for treatment-resistant depression. Since 2016, his work has been primarily dedicated to exploring the traditional psychedelic Peru, Ayahuasca.
00:01:52
Speaker
He is the CEO of Oniah Health, where I also serve as an advisor. He co-founded the not-for-profit Oniah Science, which researches the effect of ayahuasca in naturalistic Amazonian settings. Simon's work seeks to understand plants such as ayahuasca from both an indigenous and a Western viewpoint, with a goal of generating a richer understanding of the healing modalities at play.
00:02:18
Speaker
I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I enjoyed having it. Let's get into it. Hey, Simon, welcome to the podcast. hi hi Thanks very much. ah It's so lovely to have you on here. And you and I obviously have known each other now for quite a few years. And we talk a lot. We all have lots of interesting conversations. And today we have decided to record one of them.
00:02:44
Speaker
Yeah, I'm glad we're finally doing this. After years of having these conversations. Yeah, I know, I know. And, and so do you want to just start by kind of introducing yourself a little bit and just explaining a little bit about kind of, yeah, how you first got interested in psychedelics, and where that began to you?
00:03:06
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So I'm a psychiatrist by background. So I was working as a ah medical doctor, working in psychiatry in the NHS, which is the National Health Service in the UK for, yeah, for for a few years. And after a while, I began to get, yeah, I guess a little bit disillusioned with the way in which we're treating many of our common mental health conditions, particularly the stroke treatments.
00:03:34
Speaker
And I found that our patients would just come back time and time again. And we even have a term for that. We call it the revolving door syndrome. And so I decided to take a bit of a break from medicine to, yeah, I don't really know what I was aiming to do. I was aiming to try and find some kind of inspiration. And I ended up working overseas a fair amount, working in psychiatry and in different and different countries.
00:03:59
Speaker
and Which was awesome and then eventually my path took me to the Amazon rainforest where I came across ayahuasca and I had my first experience drinking ayahuasca and so I was in ah in a retreat setting and I was pretty amazed by the results that I was seeing in the participants that were on the retreats.
Indigenous Practices and Western Perspectives
00:04:21
Speaker
And by a fortunate stroke of luck, when I was there, the man who ran the ayahuasca foundation has just started building a research center. And he unfortunately didn't have any doctors or researchers who were doing any research into ayahuasca. So he was on the lookout for those people. And so within six months I came back again and we did our our first study looking at the effects of ayahuasca on personality.
00:04:49
Speaker
And then over the years, they're just snowballed. This was in 2015. Since then, I actually did a PhD into aahuasca ayahuasca, ayahuasca and mental health, Amazonian ayahuasca, and founded a research not-for-profit called One Eye of Science. And now we do research all year round looking into ayahuasca in the Amazon rainforest and working with indigenous healers and cordon perros.
00:05:13
Speaker
Beautiful. And you, what was it in particular that drew you, do you think, to ayahuasca in terms of psychedelic work? Because this, this podcast is about all kinds of different psychedelics and psychedelic-assisted therapy. Was it just that you happened to be in that place at that time and you met that person and then, or is there something else that for you draws you into that particular medicine?
00:05:40
Speaker
Mm. Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, I definitely was in the right place at the right time with that. But I've also worked with other psychedelics as well. And so I used to work on the psilocybin trials at King's College London. I worked in a ketamine clinic at the Wardsley for a little bit as well. And so I have had experience with working with other psychedelics.
00:06:00
Speaker
But the thing that really fascinated me with ayahuasca was the the indigenous framework and the fact that there are indigenous communities that are still around today who have mapped out a way to navigate this psychedelic space. And they seem to be saying that there's a completely different way that you can interact with psychedelics and that we don't really acknowledge in in the rest in in our Western paradigm.
00:06:28
Speaker
this spiritual component. so And that just always fascinated me. So from the very first time when when I was and drinking ayahuasca in the retreat in the Amazon rainforest, even though I didn't necessarily subscribe to what the indigenous people were saying in terms of there are these spirits and that are interacting with us, I was just fascinated by the facts and that they said that and they were all saying the same thing. And they didn't disagree that ayahuasca You know, it contains DMT which acts on serotonin receptors, you know, they wouldn't necessarily phrase it like that, but when I spoke to them about it, they were like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that that can happen, but that allows us to communicate with these spirits. And so I became really interested in that. And is it just another way of describing the healing work that's going on? Why isn't anyone really thinking about this, like, a lot more? And why in Western science do we all just assume
00:07:26
Speaker
And that what indigenous people are saying, or a lot of people assume that what indigenous people are saying, is either wrong, or it's just a metaphor, or it's just theology. And indigenous people definitely are not saying that, you know, they're not saying this is some kind of metaphorical thing, this is, this is the way that they explain.
00:07:45
Speaker
what's happening in their treatments.
Refugee Mental Health and Interest in Psychedelics
00:07:47
Speaker
And even more interesting than that is that indigenous people all around the world are saying that and have been saying that before a very long time. And so that really piqued my interest and then I was hooked.
00:07:59
Speaker
And we connected on the phone initially, quite well before you ended up coming because of delays and the whole process. But one of the things that I remember when we first spoke was that we had both kind of worked prior to psychedelics in the refugee mental health space in different ways.
00:08:19
Speaker
a And something that I've kind of wondered about for myself is like, did that work somehow lead me into this kind of field of psychedelic research? And I was reflecting on that kind of over the last few days thinking about this conversation. And, and I feel like for me, it really did. And one of the reasons that I feel like it kind of, ah it was like the seedlings to me getting really interested in psychedelic assisted psychotherapy was because in the work that I was doing, which was working in first of all, and the time me and my border, and then in Melbourne with refugee populations,
00:08:58
Speaker
A lot of what we were doing was kind of working with people from all over the world, from all different frames, like understandings of their distress and frames of reference for making sense of their distress. And we really had to kind of appreciate, explore and see things from their worldview in order to be helpful in order to work with people best.
00:09:21
Speaker
And, and I think that you'd be able to do that as men may be really interested in psychedelic work, because but what you were talking about before, where we think about kind of indigenous worldview, and actually, even in clinical use of psychedelics, I really feel like we should be holding some of those worldviews in mind. And so that ability to kind of look outside of the generic Western model feels really important to me. a It's funny you brought this up because I was speaking about this only ah only a few days ago. Yeah, like it's similar to you. So I was working in Uganda,
Challenges in Integrating Indigenous and Scientific Approaches
00:09:59
Speaker
I was working in northern Uganda, in an area that had been really affected by by child soldiers. And I was working a psychiatric the psychiatric ward in a hospital. And one of the outreach things that we were doing
00:10:15
Speaker
was to make contact with traditional healers yeah and to ah set up these meetings, these kind of teaching days, where for half the day, we would talk about Western mental health. And for the other half of the day, they would talk about their traditional indigenous healing practices.
00:10:34
Speaker
I found what they were saying just so fascinating. It was absolutely fascinating. And once again, it was it were it was a completely different paradigm, a completely different way of understanding understanding the world, of understanding illness, of understanding it in the terms of energy and spirits.
00:10:54
Speaker
And yes, again, the traditional healers were saying things that everybody resonated with and everybody agreed with and all of these, all the locals were using these practices seemingly for seemingly to to great effect.
00:11:09
Speaker
I think you know many people would say, if you're engaging in these in traditional medicines, you know they lack efficacy. There aren't clinical trials that are proving that that this stuff works. you know It's just placebo. you know None of it actually none of is actually true. But one thing that really struck me is, and this has kind of come across with the and the research as well, is that we we arguably lack the tools and to to investigate many of these things.
00:11:38
Speaker
And so when people are saying, well, there's no evidence to, you know, support the fact that, you know, the spirits aren't causing healing. And for example, ayahuasca ceremonies. yeah But how do we know that? Like, how do we know that? And with our, with the way that we conduct research, you know, we're, we're doing our best. So for example, we did some studies where we were looking at the effects of different medicinal songs, like Ikaros on brainwaves, to see if they have an effect. But at the same time,
00:12:05
Speaker
I'm sure that's not what the show people are talking about when they say that it grows having an effect.
Ethics and Research in Psychedelic Studies
00:12:09
Speaker
They're not talking about the impact is having on electricity in the brain, it might show up there. But they're talking about something very different. Though because it's in a completely different paradigm, and it's extremely difficult for us to investigate. Yeah.
00:12:21
Speaker
A good starting place would be you know to and to take these concepts seriously and to work with indigenous healers in this area to see see if we can begin to investigate these things. And that's before we even get into the ethics of whether we should be, whether we're placing science in a way where it could either validate or like not validate indigenous practices. So I think we need to be working towards descriptive science in that area.
00:12:45
Speaker
What do you think is a way forward to kind of bring this kind of scientific approach into the kind of work that we're doing in psychedelics with ayahuasca in particular? Like what's important for people to bear in mind?
00:13:01
Speaker
Yeah, i mean i think I think a few things. Firstly, just going back to into randomised control trials and the clinical model. I have absolutely nothing against those. like those Those trials are fantastic. you know That's the gold standard that we have before for determining whether drug treatments are effective. But that's really important to remember. like They're designed for pharmacological treatments. That's what they're for. yeah They work to reduce and the ah confounding variables, extra pharmacological variables, things outside of the drug environment, get get reduced so that we can just focus on the effects of the drug.
00:13:38
Speaker
But we could argue that that's not appropriate for other kinds of treatments. And psychedelics, you know, that there's been some question as to whether randomized control trials are the best fit for psychedelic medications. And there are definitely challenges to do with that. But when we're looking at indigenous ways of working and ways of thinking, if we're reducing ayahuasca, for example, going back to your question, down to just DMT and monoamine oxidase inhibitors,
00:14:03
Speaker
That's arguably not ayahuasca. I mean, the Shabibo who I work with in the Amazon rainforest, they say that the main part of treatment comes through the medicinal healing songs and comes through the ichros. So what do we do to begin to investigate this from a scientific point of view? I think, well, first of all, we need to make sure that indigenous peoples want to investigate it from a scientific point of view.
00:14:27
Speaker
yeah i ah I mean, the Coronadero, the shamans that I work with, and they definitely do. And so I think that it's a case of opening up the dialogue with them from the very beginning, and including them at every stage of the research process. So from study conception to the interpretation of results, and then also making sure that all of those findings are accessible to those communities that we work with.
00:14:50
Speaker
And so when we begin to do that, I mean, we have our indigenous advisory boards, which is a bunch of and people called and arrows and we try to as best we can work with them at every stage of the research process. And they're always asking for us to look at things that are really hard to look at. So the the last thing Give us an example of that as well and how that conversation came about as well. It's normally me sitting down asking them what they want to look at yeah and then there's normally a lot of laughing in my face and that happens quite a lot. and i yeah So the last couple of things they said was to look at the effects of different Icarus and different medicinal healing songs on on participants.
00:15:38
Speaker
And then they wanted to look at the role of faith. That was like a huge thing, to to look at the role that faith has in healing. They say, there should be, but always talk about having faith in the plants, faith in the spirit is the most important thing.
00:15:52
Speaker
Which obviously, I think some people would say, well, that's just placebo. But again, I think there's a bit of an issue when we discount everything as placebo and thinking that that's not, you know, that could be the key. It could be that we're harnessing something, something that's free, something that has no side effects, something maybe we should be looking into more. ah Yeah.
00:16:12
Speaker
And have you done the the research yet that you were just talking about with ichros? Yeah, I mean, this is, but again, I mean, this this work is so challenging on many levels. So we did, we ended up putting EUG caps on participants within a ceremony and then recording Don Rona singing his ichros and then timestamping.
00:16:37
Speaker
the recordings of rhona singing ichros and time stamping the change in electrical activity in the brain. And then what we were going to do was to translate rhona-shippebo ichros and then see if there's any correlation between him singing a protection ichro, for example, versus a healing ichro and changes in brainwaves. But before we did that, there was just something that didn't feel right. And I was speaking to a couple of senior researchers who work with ayahuasca.
00:17:05
Speaker
And we all had some concerns about bringing in technology like EEG into shamanic ceremonies in the Amazon rainforest. For a few reasons. One, it it felt to me a little bit invasive actually during the ceremony. and So
Collaboration with Indigenous Healers
00:17:23
Speaker
now when we use EEG, we we use it before and after in the hotel room before people go into the jungle.
00:17:30
Speaker
And then also, I, my concern was that that might open up the floodgates for other researchers thinking that that was okay. And I think, you know, we've been working with Fisher Bibo since 2015. So we have good working relationships with them.
00:17:46
Speaker
I know them, you know, I know the current areas that we work with really well. But I was also slightly concerned that ra that it might be too much, and firstly, for me to do it, but then other people who hadn't built those relationships over time might think, oh, this is a completely legitimate way to do science. And then it could become extractive and exploitative. So we just decided not to analyze the data, at least for now, and just stop doing that side of the research. So that's, yeah, that's why we're out with it.
00:18:16
Speaker
I think what you're talking about is so important, isn't it? There's so many different layers of complexity when you are trying to do this really well. And I think something that I you know i know from your work is that it's really important to you to work in partnership with Indigenous healers in a way that feels right to you and to them. And there's so much to that. It takes time, right? Like, I worked at a foundation house in Australia, which is ah service a refugee and and service refugee mental health service, we had a lot of advisory group models that we would use to kind of set up services. And, you know, it takes
00:18:56
Speaker
a lot longer to do things. Everything's a lot slower. It's very relational, but it it's so much so much more powerful than and and more useful, I think, than us going in with our Western framework to try to provide a service.
00:19:12
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. And there are some really good examples of, you know, Western science working in partnership with indigenous with indigenous peoples, not so much in the psychedelic space. But yeah, there's some really good examples of people working with I think with Inuit communities, if I remember correctly.
00:19:30
Speaker
and and going into the communities, speaking to to the Inuit people, and so figuring out what they would like to research and what they need help with, and then working together to reduce disease burden based on what, based on the information that the Inuit people were giving, so they helped design these studies through and through. I mean, one thing that I found is that, yeah, you're right, working in partnership with indigenous healers is super, super important, super important to me and and to the work that we do, Al and I, but it's also incredibly hard, like the practicalities of doing that are really, really hard. and
00:20:08
Speaker
You know, Don Rona and the indigenous Coroneros, they're not trained in Western science. And so that already means that there's a power imbalance because we're producing all the research and we're trying to interpret what they're saying. And so already you're on slightly, slightly uneven grounds. And it doesn't mean that that you shouldn't be trying. You definitely should for this. It's an ongoing work in progress for sure.
00:20:34
Speaker
Yeah, you know, it's come up a lot here. So obviously in Australia at the moment, we are moving through kind of the first steps of clinical use of psychedelic medicine in terms of we're working with cyber-assisted psychotherapy and to treat depression at the moment and MDMA assisted psychotherapy for PTSD.
00:20:57
Speaker
And, you know, I've had quite a few conversations with people who are really interested in, you know, really very much aware of Indigenous wisdom being something that's really important in this space. And how do we hold that in mind as we move towards clinical practice in a way that feels okay, useful. And I don't know that anyone has any answers to this, but I don't know, like what do you think in terms of kind of moving into clinical practice here, you've had a bit to do with Australia? What do you think for someone who's interested in finding out more about how to do that? Where would you be sending them?
00:21:37
Speaker
It's all about open dialogue and relationships, I think. Yeah, totally. It has to just be including Indigenous healers from the very beginning and then working with them to try and co-design these studies. I think that there are a few ah few major issues. One is tokenization and just thinking, oh yeah, Indigenous wisdom, we can put like a little statue of Ganesh in the room and that's you know that's that's fine. you know and it's you said I see that so much. i was like jeny trouser I walk into this, I get to agree with this, this random paraphernalia from different religions across the world. and as are There you go. That's the spiritual aspect of it. sort of yeah this
00:22:20
Speaker
yeah yeah Including people from the very beginning. There's also issues to do with and to do with recognition as well, like recognition of, for a better sense of word, qualifications. And of course, in Don Rowno and the, you know, the the indigenous people that I know from Australia, I mean, some of them have Western style qualifications, but most of them, quite rightly, have trained in in their own indigenous practices. Many of them are super senior, they're super experienced, they have a high level of expertise.
00:22:50
Speaker
But we don't recognize that. And so I think, again, recognizing different ways of acquiring knowledge, and then working with those people together. But again, this is what we're talking about here is is absolutely huge. this It's not a small thing. It basically, you know, pulls the rug or as objective pull the rug from outside of the science's feet. And so it makes sense that scientists are just like, well,
00:23:16
Speaker
the What the hell are you talking
Dr. Raphael's Dual Training and Integration
00:23:18
Speaker
about? you know These people aren't qualified in the way that we're qualified. It's not safe. This can't be done, etc., et etc., e etc. But I think it's is really important. where We're now working with indigenous medicines. If we're working with indigenous medicines, this is this is something that we need to and to really consider. but i The question on my mind is, is science ready for this? Is science ready for ah for all of these these concepts that arise when we work with indigenous plant medicines? Is science ready to actually acknowledge indigenous people, rather than just saying, oh, yes, yes, yes, we need to be acknowledging or whatever, giving 10% of profits back? It's like, well, no, this is really about
00:24:01
Speaker
having that openness and respect them for other cultures rather than placing Western science in a dominant position. Yeah, yeah. And I think that's such an important point. But you just said about like, is, is science ready? Are we ready for that? But but we have to start somewhere too, right? Yeah, we have to start somewhere. And, and I think, you know, people are quite interested, wanting to and then I really resonated with what you just said around thinking about different ways of acquiring
00:24:34
Speaker
knowledge and and being really kind of clear that and wanting to kind of understand that more, you know, kind of more in a deeper way, because you're a psychiatrist and you've trained in that model, but you're also training in a type of shamanism. Do you want to speak to that as well? ah Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah. So I've been training in a shippebo, according to this one, which is shippebo shamanism. Yeah, since 2019.
00:25:02
Speaker
And that's a completely different paradigm. It's a completely different way of thinking about the world, of thinking about mental health, of thinking about nature and and spirituality. Yeah, and the I think that if we're if we're really serious about about progress,
00:25:23
Speaker
In my opinion, it's when we can combine those worlds, where we can combine psychology with shamanism. Because one of the issues that I've come across, and this is kind of the flip side of the coin of working with indigenous medicines, is yes, they can be fantastic. Yes, they can they can be amazing. And there are other issues kind of like a lack of regulation when it comes to and to Westerners using them and people are not being properly trained.
00:25:47
Speaker
but One of the major things that i've come across is is the confusion when you tap into these different world views and these these different paradigms and i've definitely had this like especially with the the training that i've been doing where you start experiencing things and people indigenous people start describing things to you from their paradigm, where suddenly, it's a fact that spirits are real, you know, you're interacting with these energies. And it can
Training Therapists in Shamanic and Western Approaches
00:26:15
Speaker
lead to something called ontological shock, which is when you when you question your worldview, and it can send lead to a sense of confusion and anxiety. And then the other thing that we see
00:26:25
Speaker
are when people have these experiences with what they perceive to be spirits, and then become quite grandiose, or get this and this kind of spiritual narcissism and think, right, that's it, I had this contact with the spirit, I'm on a mission and I am the reincarnation of Christ, you know, or something like that. yeah we yeah sorry I think if we're going to be, again, working, working with these concepts and working with indigenous peoples, we need to think very carefully about how we ground and anchor this into the Western framework. I think there are ways to do that. I mean, as part of ONIA now, we're developing preparation and integration courses, while we already have developed preparation, integration courses, for people undergoing psychedelic experiences that
00:27:13
Speaker
come at it from both a shamanic and a Western psychological and psychiatric lens. yeah And then equally, we're now developing courses that are training therapists to be trained in both having an idea of the shamanic worldview, and the Western psychological worldview, and how these things link together, and also where they don't so that we can try and equip people Yeah, to to better understand and get less confused and hopefully avoid some of the negative effects that tapping into another paradigm can can result in.
00:27:47
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I think, you know, I think it's really, I think people can probably resonate with what you spoke about, about ontological shock. And also, you know, he sat in ceremonies, he probably met people who've connected with some kind of spirit and maybe got a bit grandiose afterwards. And so that sounds like a really interesting and important approach to kind of bring those two things together. And say so for people who want to find out more about that, do you have any idea about when that's going to be available?
00:28:17
Speaker
Yeah, and so the preparation and integration courses are available now. You can get them at our website, onaia.io, which is o-n-a-y-a.io. But for the the training courses, so we actually have our our first cohort starting the course this week. And then this is really the, it's the beta nerve version, so it's it's the trial version. and And we're going to be opening opening up the first cohort to the general public in August, September time.
00:28:46
Speaker
So yeah, please do check that out. Yeah, absolutely. And and so I have a few ways I could go with the next question, but are there particular kind of therapeutic modalities that you think lend themselves particularly well to kind of bringing together with shot the shamanic approaches?
00:29:08
Speaker
Yeah, IFS, internal family systems is is naturally quite shamanic. yeah you know Looking at the kind of the multiplicity of self, these different parts of you, different parts that come up. And this is something that people talk about spontaneously a lot in psychedelic ceremonies, these different parts of them.
00:29:30
Speaker
Yeah, Dick Schwartz, who invented IFS, even talks about different energies that are external to you as well, and um but that you can interact with, which correct me if I'm wrong, but that's sounding very similar to a lot of a lot of the work that these indigenous curanderas are talking about, with energies that might interact with us that are outside of us.
00:29:52
Speaker
So I think that IFS is a really fantastic tool. It's not without its issues. like You definitely have to watch out for describing things as multiplicity of minds, because people can start thinking that you their self is fractured, and you've got to watch out for that. But in general, I think that using that kind of a language can help be a bridge between more shamanic ways of thinking and working and Western psychological frameworks.
00:30:18
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I agree with you about IFS. I feel like it's got that kind of natural approach where they're talking about parts. And I think that, um you know, there's a book called The Others Within Us that yeah is written by a colleague of Dick Schwartz actually, Bob Falcone, I think it is.
00:30:38
Speaker
And he talks a lot about unattached bird, as he calls them, yeah which sounds a lot like entities, but he doesn't he kind of leaves it open for us to interpret a little bit. yeah However, we want um and names up all different kind of cultures from across the world that talk about these things in different ways, which I think is really interesting.
00:31:00
Speaker
I also think about kind of as ah a bias in me probably, but I'm a somatic therapist as you know, and and I do think ah when you know a lot of somatic psychotherapy kind of has its roots in in some indigenous practices as well in terms of the shaking, the movement, and the use of rhythm and things like that. I think actually, yeah, there's quite a lot of crossover there too. a Yeah, for sure, for sure.
00:31:30
Speaker
Yeah, it's ah it's really interesting with the unattached burdens. a I remember I was doing a ah training course in IFS and somebody asked Dick Schwartz about the unattached burdens and he basically said, if I remember correctly,
00:31:47
Speaker
that he didn't want to write too much about that when he was getting is validated because he thought people wouldn't take it seriously and but it's definitely a thing he just kind of left it as a footnote which is why people seem to be talking about it a little bit more now because now is is recognized but yeah he's done a great job of getting a ah pretty shamanic framework into an intertro west and into into a west which is yeah is awesome.
00:32:14
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I have a question that I it's kind of related to that and kind of his I think that he was quite worried about putting that but that book out there the book I was talking about before he he had a forward in there about kind of you know, he was nervous about Paul Falconer talking about this kind of unattached
Psychedelic Research and Mainstream Acceptance
00:32:35
Speaker
burdens. He doesn't want IFS to be discredited. And, you know, I think we've come a long way in the space. And I think, you know, if you think about where we were even 15 years ago with psychedelic research and psychedelic medicine, we're so much further along for the for it to become kind of almost mainstream. Is it mainstream? Like, what do you think? I think there's still
00:32:57
Speaker
some tensions in the field about these kinds of conversations. i like I'd love to like unpack that a little bit because it's been something that's been on my mind recently. oh like you know when When you're working in a field, you kind of are in a certain space and you you feel like everyone else around you is kind of knows lots about psychedelic medicine, knows lots about this kind of work. But actually, I think still people feel slightly freaked out by talking about untouched burdens or entities. I don't know. What do you think? I people are probably still quite freaked out in talking about entities. I don't think that that is. They mention psychiatry quite yet. and But in general, the scientific research I think is really difficult.
00:33:51
Speaker
not to take the psychedelic research seriously if you're if you're a serious researcher. There are psychedelic research departments at every major university that I'm aware of. and the fields you know The field's moved a long way, like I remember when I applied to train in psychiatry at King's College London. I was advised not to mention any of any of the work that I've been doing in psychedelics and ayahuasca in my interview.
00:34:16
Speaker
And so I literally has a period of about six months where in the interview they say, what were you doing for this six months? And I've been doing research like entire West Coast. I say, oh, you know, just nothing. Yes, I'm backpacking. And I've been doing research, which is later became my PhD. How long ago was that? How long? When was this?
00:34:36
Speaker
a That was 2016-17. yeah okay And then but pretty soon after that, there was research department departments that were formed, you know Kings and you know and these other places.
00:34:53
Speaker
and So I think it's very difficult to to not at least consider the possibility that psychedelics may be an effective medicine. There's a flip side to this, and I think that you know many people think that they're going to going to save the world.
00:35:08
Speaker
And what we're seeing in a lot of these clinical trials is that, yeah, they're good, but you know, they're not that good. And they seem to be as good as the best antidepressants that we already have. And many people are disappointed by that. But I would also kind of argue with that. Well, if you treat it like a serotonin agonist, if you treat it like an antidepressant, you're going to get anti-depressant, you know, you're, you're reducing it into one tiny thing in a hospital based setting, and really kind of making it quite similar to the way that we use anti-depression drugs, just with a lot of additional psychotherapy. Obviously, it's not quite as simple as that. But yeah, I think there's a lot more that we that we can be doing with psychedelics when we work in collaboration with indigenous communities. Yeah, which is obviously the work that you have been doing and we'll be doing more of with Oneia. Yeah.
00:35:57
Speaker
So a lot of people listening to this podcast are going to be kind of nervous for people who are trained as psychotherapists and kind of wanting to work in psychedelic assisted psychotherapy. So I'm going to get slightly nerdy on that for a moment, if that's all right.
00:36:13
Speaker
So when you were kind of thinking about the courses that you are writing writing for now, the therapist training, how did you decide which parts of the clinical knowledge to include and which parts to include from Shabiboo? That's probably a big question. but a Yeah, that's quite a difficult one to answer. I mean, we're trying to avoid just using like information from Shippebo culture for more indigenous concepts as a whole. yeah So it's really this course is a four month course. So it provides you with a good knowledge base, a good baseline structure for how indigenous knowledge and indigenous concepts could fit with psychology.
00:37:02
Speaker
the But obviously, if you want to delve deeper into Tibetan Buddhism, or Shubhibokurun Dharizmo, or like ah whatever it is, yeah then you're going to need to probably go and train with that and train with that community. say but So yeah, it's really these it's really these baseline concepts. But there are a lot of ways that they do that they do overlap. And so we're trying to yeah find those places where they overlap, and then really kind of emphasize that and then also come on pitfalls that might arise and what to do with them.
00:37:33
Speaker
Yeah, that sounds great. I think that's that's a really important distinction that you're kind of working with indigenous concepts in general rather than just one particular yeah thing because that, yeah, I feel like that feels that feels really important actually. Yeah.
00:37:49
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's important. We're designing the course and the way that we're doing it is we're getting experts in and to teach about different things. yeah So, for example, we have the Shipibo Coronveros who are coming in to teach about Shipibo concepts. And we have from people who have trained in Tibetan Buddhism teaching about that. But I think it's also important that we're not, you know, suddenly teaching about the Shipibo. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that I think that's a little bit. It's not a place to do that. But it is our place to find commonalities and how that intersects with the psychology to try and help participants from going west when they engage in different in different paradigms. Yeah, yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense to me that, you know, if you want to dive really deeply into should be both current terrorism, then you should go and train
Reciprocity and Collaboration with Indigenous Communities
00:38:39
Speaker
in that. Yeah. But there are some concepts that are kind of
00:38:43
Speaker
would there's There's a lot of similarities in certain concepts that you see all in in Indigenous cultures all across the world. yeah he' yeah yeah yeah kind that we kind of draw and and together Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, for sure. So for example, thinking about the importance of of dreams, like it in the dreamscape, that's a huge thing with indigenous peoples and that I'm aware of like from all around the world. And then it also lends itself to psychoanalysis, you know, and and all these different areas. So that's quite a good example of how we can bring these things together and how we can think about dreams from different ways of thinking.
00:39:19
Speaker
yeah Yeah, there are a few ways that they do overlap. Yeah, absolutely. And we've kind of touched on this a little bit, but I really wanted to kind of zoom in on the concept of reciprocity. and Because you talk about that on your website, and it's a really important part of the work that you do at Oneire. Could you define what you mean by that? And how you use that in the work that you do?
00:39:49
Speaker
Yeah, I understand reciprocity to be sharing ah sharing the benefits with the people of the work that you're doing with the people that you're working with, especially where you're using when you're using concepts and medicines that belong to a different culture. and so there are many you know There are many ways to do this, and the most obvious one is is financially. yeah and There is a reality in a lot of these indigenous communities. they really you know A lot of fish people live in poverty. It's really, really tough in the Amazon rainforest.
00:40:23
Speaker
And so we work with with other organisations like ICES and Shakruna, I definitely recommend, and people check those websites out. And they work to to support Indigenous communities all around the world. um but Those are two of the two organisations that that we collaborate with and we support.
00:40:40
Speaker
But then there are other ways to and to engage in reciprocity as well. So, for example, sharing knowledge. Sadly, it's really cool. There's a group of Indigenous Australian people who are just about to head over and to go and see Don Rona next month to do a knowledge exchange, which is really cool. So that's like a really, really awesome, really awesome way of sharing, sharing knowledge and sharing the benefits of of different things that you know.
00:41:08
Speaker
And then in terms of in terms of science as well, so working together with indigenous people. So in our last paper, because Rona came up with the concept of wanting to communicate with, to measure the communication of humans and plants, that's what we wanted to look at. We designed a study that looks at nature relatedness and looking at how people feel connected to nature, whether they feel the bacon. Yeah. even communicated that they're one with nature. And he was involved in all the data collection for that as well because he's running the ceremonies. So he's an author on that in the scientific paper. So that's another way that we can that we can collaborate with indigenous peoples and make sure that they're getting the benefits for this as well. Another thing that we do is to write labors and summaries of our research and then translate them into Spanish.
00:41:54
Speaker
so that they can be distributed and around the communities that we're working with so that everybody knows yeah if they want to, if they're interested, can read about the work that we're doing or why it's being done. And of course, we have to make sure that when we're working with Indigenous communities, there's always a free and prior informed consent.
00:42:12
Speaker
so that they're happy for us to, to do this research. They know the direction that it's going in. They know what the results might be. And also what might happen when we publish these papers, what could happen as a result of that. So yeah, there are many ways to engage in reciprocity. But it's also, you know, it's hard, it's, it's much easier said than done to say, I yeah work in collaboration with indigenous healers, is that tough like it's It's tough to figure out how to and do that in a you know in a substantial way that's actually meaningful.
00:42:46
Speaker
Yeah. yeah and I i really ah think that idea of kind of getting consent first, before what you're going to do, in a way that's meaningful, in a way that they understand is so important. and and I think you know often when I've heard reciprocity talked about, it is often, okay, we're just going to give a portion of the profit to said organization. And I really respect how you guys go your work is a lot deeper than that. It's not just about that.
00:43:17
Speaker
We tried to do it on three different levels. So we tried to do it on the ground. And so working with indigenous peoples that we know personally, to try and provide personal benefits to those that we're actually collaborating with. And then we tried to do the middle level, which is indigenous peoples as a whole, you know, and that's where working with ICS and Shakurina comes in. yeah I mean, that's largely kind of financial and you know, and actually, no, that's not true. It's not just financial. I i do a lot of talks with recruitment and work with them and so yeah, trying to support that organization in other ways that's not financial. And then the final way is environmentally. And so we also support organizations that engage in, you know, reforestation and agroforestry to try and protect, you know, the Amazon rainforest. So I think there's always really
00:44:04
Speaker
three tiers that you can think of. And if you're covering those three tiers, that doesn't mean that you're doing it right. But it's is' a good start and to make sure that you're doing as much as you can do. Yeah, absolutely. That sounds thank you for explaining all that. I think it's really important because people have been thinking about it here as well and talking about it a lot. But I think that gives a really clear kind of way that people can engage and start start to understand that a bit more.
00:44:33
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, it's it's a nice structure to start with.
Comparing Clinical and Indigenous Approaches
00:44:36
Speaker
I think so. Yeah. So what you and I are both kind of working in psychedelic assisted psychotherapy in different ways, right? So you spoke about the the courses that you're running, and the work that you're doing with one eye around the kind of prep ceremony or navigation and then integration.
00:44:57
Speaker
And I've been working in psychedelic research, looking at psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy to treat anxiety disorder. We've actually wrapped that up now. Now we're working. We're opening up the clinic. And I guess I'm just thinking about like, what do you think is different about the two ways that you and I are working in this space at the moment, although we're also doing some work together? And what do you think is similar?
00:45:22
Speaker
o a I think there are there are clear similarities in terms of trying to harness the therapeutic potential of psychedelics. But obviously the setting is different. And i think that I think that there's enough space for both. you know I think it's all about accessibility and I guess the work there and the work that I'm doing has a much heavier spiritual component. Not to say that the work that you're doing doesn't have a st spiritual component, but is yeah but it's it's different. you know The way that people describe connect with spirit and in clinical trials, in my experience, has been more along the lines of you know connect to the spirit of yourself or you know like feel more connected into nature and to your family.
00:46:10
Speaker
yeah But an Indigenous work is is literally like there is a spirit over there, you need to try and connect with it and communicate with it. It's a slightly different take on it. But I think it' so what's really important with psychedelics is is accessibility as well, and making sure that these are accessible to people, people who need it. yeah And for many people with this thing,
00:46:32
Speaker
they might, you know, listen to what I'm saying and think, oh, either that sounds like, you know, complete horseshit, or, you know, that's definitely not something I want to engage in. yeah In which case, fine, that's absolutely fine. And there are many people that would feel much more comfortable receiving a tablet of MDMA or a capsule of psilocybin.
00:46:55
Speaker
from a doctor and in a white lab coat and in a clinic, in which case, great. you know that's that's That's fine. That's absolutely fine. go Go ahead and do that. That's awesome. But then there are other people as well who would think, well, I resonate a lot more with these structures that are already in existence. you know I don't want to be taking it in in a clinical setting, in a clinical framework. And then I think you know i need to I want to engage in this more a kind of indigenous spiritual worldview.
00:47:22
Speaker
In which case, that's also totally fine as well. So, I think that they're both striving for the same end, aren't they? They're both striving for the same goal. It's just a different way different way of accessing it. yeah Obviously, with the Indigenous worldviews, it's not just about healing. good psychedelics for a wide variety of other things as well. And in the clinical settings, hopefully everyone's just focused on
Integration in Psychedelic Therapy
00:47:45
Speaker
healing. So that would be maybe one difference in in the work that happens that people seem quite reluctant to talk about, which i which I understand. But yeah, I think there's definitely room for both.
00:47:57
Speaker
I think so too. And I think I've noticed, I think there's definitely going to be people who feel much more comfortable and perhaps need that extra kind of support of having two psychotherapists with them for the whole journey that are the same people that do the kind of psychotherapy before that do the dosing that continue to work with them afterwards. And also that just feel more comfortable in that space.
00:48:22
Speaker
And the way that we're working with them, we're kind of using the the dosing sessions as very much kind of a way to go deeper with psychotherapy, which which I don't know if that's necessarily always the case in the clinical setting, but that's definitely how we're using it. And we're working with people over ah like six months, six month period. And so I think some people will feel more drawn to that. And some people are going to feel more drawn to medicines like MDMA or psilocybin versus ayahuasca as well. But other people are going to think they really want to sit in ceremony and they want to sit in a group and they want to be more kind of interested and then more kind of held by the indigenous practices and worldview. And I think that's okay. I think there's a really beautiful place to go.
00:49:08
Speaker
I was just gonna say, yeah, I mean, another interesting difference is that that community side of things as well. Because it's, it's such a Western ah thing to think of, to think of treatments as individual and you go through it by yourself and you know, is it's all about the individual. Whereas this is much more indigenous point of view to think about things as a collective and to go into ceremony as a collective and it's for the benefit of the group.
00:49:32
Speaker
Yeah. And many people resonate with that a lot more. But also, you know, I think some people will feel like they need that support from two therapists. But we're also beginning to see clinical psychedelics and being used more in group settings now. There are a few studies starting up. So it'll be interesting effects of that.
00:49:49
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. I think there is something important about community that comes up in general with psychedelic healing and psychedelic medicine, psychedelic therapy. I guess the way that I've always thought about healing in humans is in an interconnected way. So when a client sits in front of me,
00:50:08
Speaker
I'm meeting with them and I can do all sorts of work with them. and That's great. But then I send them home to their family structure where things are not working. That's not it's not going to be as effective. i do you know And so one of the things that I'm really interested in and I've had all sorts of ideas about this is how do we bring more people from someone's family system into into the therapeutic work that we're doing. And now that we're outside of a trial saying we've got so much more flexibility to do work with couples, to do work with family groups, but also to do group work for people. And we're definitely setting up kind of integration circles and groups.
00:50:46
Speaker
which is a way to bring people into connection with each other. We're still at the beginning and we're still quite restricted in how we're able to use psychedelic assisted psychotherapy and what for in terms of the Western models of mental health that we we can only use it for treatment resistant depression. We're still at Cybernet and MDMA for PTSD at the moment.
00:51:06
Speaker
e Yeah, that's super interesting. I mean, that's that's something we go into in the courses quite a lot. The importance of, you know, this community and this connection and how that's emphasized in indigenous communities a lot. And yeah, I'm really excited to see how the clinical use of psychedelics changes as we move out of hospitals and into clinics, as you say, because there's a lot more flexibility. We're no longer restricted by the randomized control model, yeah which is fantastic when you're trying to Yeah, prove the the safety and the autumn, determine the safety and the efficacy of a treatment. But now we're outside of that. I'm excited to see yeah excited to see what that looks like. And it might be that there's a lot more scope for bringing in some of these Indigenous concepts into that kind of work. but So we'll leave the yeah leave mantle with you as me and the responsibility to try and do that in Australia.
00:51:59
Speaker
yeah i mean i i don't know if i want the whole mantle and the whole responsibility but hole is hang on you ah But definitely it's something that we have been thinking and talking a lot about. I want to go back to what you shared before about that sometimes when people may have contact with a spirit in a session, yeah they come out and they feel like in a ceremony, they seem grandiose or there's something kind of intense going on for them. How would you support someone like that if you were working with them in the jungle?
00:52:34
Speaker
And then maybe I can talk a bit about how I might work with something like that in clinical saying. e Yeah, that's a really good question. I think providing a safe support structure is super, super important. So making sure that they that they have people that they can talk to that can they can talk through this experience with and come to understand what that experience might mean. So, ah for example, if somebody
00:53:11
Speaker
feels that they've had contact with the spirit of Jesus Christ and now they are, you know you know, the second coming of Christ and they have a mission that they need to do. They would maybe speaking to them about what that could what that could mean, what that contact could mean, rather than jumping to a conclusion that they are Christ themselves.
00:53:37
Speaker
yeah Could there be other explanations? Could there be other reasons? And trying to ground that experience, because it has the potential to be a really positive experience. You know, they suddenly feel this sense of of belonging or this sense of peace.
00:53:55
Speaker
To try and help them to come to terms with what happens in a way that they can integrate that into their life without, yeah, without causing and damage to themselves and to others. yeah So yeah, I say it would be a lot of.
00:54:14
Speaker
unpacking what actually happened, and exploring what it actually could mean. I would stay away from yeah obviously confirming that that's the case, or saying, you know, this is this is wrong, like you are wrong, there there will be something in there. And they just need help to understand what that experience or that process could mean.
00:54:38
Speaker
Yeah, it's so interesting listening to you because I'm thinking about how we would work with something a bit similar in a trial space. And it's very similar to what you just described as as two therapists supporting someone who had had contact with some kind of spirit.
00:54:54
Speaker
even even if they're attributing it to a positive or negative experience, the way we would work is quite similar in that we wouldn't kind of confirm that that's definitely the case or deny it. We would kind of just sit with an um unpick and untie and get to the core of what that might mean for them. Not taking things to literally is something that we always talk to people about and kind of sitting with something for a little while before you kind of make any big decisions, but also
00:55:26
Speaker
that, you know, what does it mean to them for in their life? And we, we eventually we might look at like how that interacts with their history. But we wouldn't do that initially, very much in the kind of early stages, we're really just listening and holding space for and kind of maybe also untying any unhelpful conclusions a little bit, which is, but not just that's not about saying this is real or not real. Yeah. So how does what does that mean to you? And how does that make sense for your life?
Creative Techniques and Future Directions
00:55:58
Speaker
And maybe if if you if the if Jesus Christ told you to go and quit your job tomorrow and move to an island in the Pacific, don't rush to do that just yet. Just kind of pause and sit with. And maybe that's not exactly. Yeah, it's really important to take things to literally and to let things settle, because when someone comes out of an experience, they can
00:56:19
Speaker
have one way of meaning making with it. And that can really shift, especially over the kind of few days and weeks in afterwards as well. ah For sure, for sure. I mean, it's such good advice to leave all major decisions for at least, you know, a month after after you've had a psychiatric experience. And there's there's such a huge issue with people taking these things literally or misinterpreting, especially when you're from a Western background. Yeah, or you know, what is what's your own mind? What's the spirit? Is there a difference? Is it just consciousness? What is real? You know, is the path is fraught with all of these, you know, all of these pitfalls. And you see so many of these examples of people misinterpreting information or following something like Iowaska, Iowaska told me so.
00:57:06
Speaker
and so For a while, there was a really good reminder. In the Amazon River, in Akitos, where somebody had been told by Alaska that they needed to build a floating pyramid on the Amazon Basin, there was going to be a retreat center. and so They went home. I think they're from Australia, actually. They went home. yeah If I've got this right, they sold sold that all that stuff, much to the dismay of their wife and family, and to build a floating pyramid which abruptly sank and was just poking out of the Amazon River.
00:57:43
Speaker
and so whether or not ayahuasca did tell this person to to build a pyramid is is out for discussion. But yeah I think that is a really good example of not taking what comes up in ceremony, literally as well, and taking time to let it settle taking time to let it integrate. What does it mean to you? What's the effect that is had on you? Yeah, and, and not rushing into not rushing into anything. That's really such a common thing that we see with psychedelics, especially ayahuasca.
00:58:14
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think that's really, really important advice and one that we definitely will give people with on this when we working with Simon as well. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, what I love about this work is that people find their own ways to integrate as well that you can kind of just, um you know, sometimes people will come and ask me like, what can I do to integrate psychedelic experience? And how do I do that? And there are obviously kind of like some basic things that are really important in terms of like letting it settle and journaling for some people is really good or drawing or kind of seeing and and and really important to talk with another person. For some people, it's not a one size fits all approach. And have people get really if you give you if you give people the space to get to to find their own way, sometimes they get really creative. We had one person who
00:59:07
Speaker
used AI image generating to to create images of his that the gods that he met, mask and really, really cool and showed them to us, which was really amazing for us to be able to see. Because, you know, so often we think I wish I could see you and be where that person has been with them because I have such ah such a hard thing to put into words. And I'm sure there was a lot more to his experience and what he was able to show us in this image. But he said it was a really clear similarity and helped him to remember to feel connected to that experience, which for him was a really positive one. So slightly less complex than if someone has a big grandiose experience. but But it was a really beautiful kind of and we would never have suggested that I wouldn't have even thought of it. He just came up with it himself. yeah That's really cool. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of other people were doing that as well, actually, using AI to try and recreate trip experiences. I've never tried it. But it sounds. Yeah, it sounds super interesting.
01:00:07
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. I'm sure there'll be lots more kind of ways of working with technology that people will try as as things move on in that space. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Okay. Well, is there anything that we haven't talked about that you would like to bring up or mention before we finish today, Simon?
01:00:29
Speaker
vision No, I don't think so. and But I am very interested to see how the clinic that you're that you're helping to to run pans out, especially as you begin to have a little bit more freedom outside of the the hospital trial space. yeah And I wonder yeah wonder what that will look like. And I wonder how, if it will be possible to Yeah, and to work with Indigenous Australians during that, that would be awesome. Yeah, there's exciting times in Australia, a lot of potential for good. Yeah, I think so. And there's definitely so many exciting ideas that we've got already. And also, like one of my biggest hopes is that, you know, in the randomised controls, trials are really important. And that research is really important to to, as you said, kind of work out the safety and efficacy of treatments.
01:01:23
Speaker
But the other part of research that's really important is research outside of a trial setting in a clinical setting. and So we're really excited to be able to start doing some of that in a more naturalistic environment as well. Yeah. And and maybe kind of will be able to work more with families and carers and systems around people too. So that would be good. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, really excited to see how that pans out.
01:01:50
Speaker
Thank you. Thank you for coming on today, Simon. Always good to see you, Esme. I'm looking forward to seeing you next time. Yeah, I'll see you soon. Thanks for listening. If you're interested in following along on the journey with me, check out my Instagram or website details listed in the show notes. And if you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review and share this podcast to help get this important conversation out to more listeners.