Shows re: Entheogens
January 28th, 2012
an interview with Geoff Oelsner
Geoff Oelsner has built a following as a performer both of his own songs and of poems which he sometimes sets to music or chants and recites to the accompaniment of guitar, harmonica, dulcimer, autoharp, harmonium, and the shruti box (a drone instrument from India). He has released 2 CD’s of original songs, Morning Branches and Ordinary Mystery with musician friends, including Kelly Mulhollan and Leslie. Geoff has published a collection of his poetry, Native Joy: poems songs visions dreams (1963-2003) (2003, Trafford) and his work has been featured in several other books, including Writing Poetry from the Inside Out by Sandford Lyne (Sourcebooks Inc., 2007). His new book, A Country Where All Colors Are Sacred and Alive, A Memoir of Non-Ordinary Experience and Collaboration with Nature (2012) is now available from Lorian Press.
A Buddhist meditator since 1974, Geoff founded the Buddhist Meditation and Spiritual Support Group in 1995. As a licensed certified social worker in private practice of psychotherapy in Arkansas since 1982, Geoff also utilizes poetry therapy with selected clients in psychotherapy. He is committed to sharing the healing and inspirational power of poetry, music, and story with the community.
A long time environmental activist and researcher, Geoff co-authored a book titled Fighting Radiation and Chemical Pollutants with Foods, Herbs,and Vitamins (1992). He is presently involved in several environmental initiatives, including the Psi-Sci Alliance project, which brings together established climate scientists with highly qualified intuitives to innovate new approaches to addressing and ameliorating climate change.
www.geoffoelsner.com
Geoff Oelsner speaks with Joanna about his deep love and connection with the natural world, transpersonal experiences in Nature, the emergence of a spiritual form of environmental activism…
Music: “The Sacred Hoop” (from Morning Branches) by Geoff Oelsner.
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Filed under Gaialogues » eco-psychology, Entheogens, environmental activism, Gaia, mysticism, perofrming arts, shamanism, soulwork, storytelling, writing
July 31st, 2011
an interview with Roshi Joan Halifax
Joan Halifax is a Zen Buddhist Roshi, anthropologist, ecologist, civil rights activist, hospice caregiver, and the author of several books on Buddhism and Spirituality. She currently serves as abbot and guiding teacher of Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a Zen Peacemaker community which she founded in 1990. In the 1970s she collaborated on LSD research projects with her ex-husband Stanislav Grof, in addition to other collaborative efforts with Joseph Campbell and Alan Lomax. She is founder of the Ojai Foundation in California, which she led from 1979 to 1989. As a socially engaged Buddhist, Halifax has done extensive work with the dying through her Project on Being with Dying (which she founded). She is on the board of directors of the Mind and Life Institute, a non-profit organization dedicated in exploring the relationship of science and Buddhism.
Roshi Joan speaks with Joanna about aging and death, engaged Buddhism and systemic activism, personal and social transformation, the historic significance of LSD as a Dharma door, embodied compassion with dying people, speaking truth to power…
Music: “Song without words to Bohdana Pivnenko, I.-Elegy” (from Fleeting Melodies) by Valentin Silvestrov {Bohdana Pivnenko (violin) and Valeriy Matiukhin (piano) }
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Filed under Gaialogues » activism, Buddhism, consciousness studies, ecology, Entheogens, soulwork, spirituality, systems thinking
May 13th, 2011
an interview with Dennis McKenna
Dennis McKenna is an American ethnobotanist and ethnopharmacologist. He has authored numerous scientific articles and books, among them - The Invisible Landscape – with his brother Terence McKenna.
Dennis has spent a number of years as a senior lecturer for the Center for Spirituality and Healing, part of the Academic Health Center at the University of Minessota. He is now a senior research scientist for the Natural Health Products Research Group at the British Columbia Istitute of Technology in the Vancouver area. He is a founding board member of the Heffter Research Institute and serves on the advisory board of non-profit organizations in the fields of ethnobotany and botanical medicines. He recently completed a project, funded by the Stanley Medical Research Institute, to investigate Amazonian ethnomedicines for the treatment of schizophrenia and cognitive deficits. At the Heffter Research Institute, he continues his focus on the therapeutic uses of psychoactive medicines derived from nature and used in indigenous ethnomedical practices.
http://www.heffter.org/board-mckenna.htm
Dennis’ kickstarter.com Project: The Brotherhood of The Screaming Abyss
Dennis speaks with Joanna about the KickStarter project of writing a memoir of his experiences with his brother Terence McKenna as a collective effort, the noetic experiment at La Chorrera, teonanacatl and primordial language, following the call of the Mystery…
Music: “Tejido de sueños (Tissue of dreams)” from Nierika, by Jorge Reyes
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Filed under Gaialogues » eco-psychology, Entheogens, shamanism, soulwork, spirituality, storytelling, writing
April 1st, 2011
an interview with Neal Goldsmith
Neal M. Goldsmith, Ph.D. is a psychotherapist specializing in psychospiritual development and resistance to change.
Dr. Goldsmith applies innovative techniques drawn from many schools of thought and traditional practices, such as Psychosynthesis, Imago Relationship Therapy, regressive psychotherapies, Rogerian client-centered counseling, yoga psychology, and other humanistic, transpersonal and eastern traditions. He facilitates deep life review, awakening to personal history, and life planning, with a special focus on existential and midlife crisis and with young adults suffering from lack of direction or substance abuse. Dr. Goldsmith is particularly helpful with couples – many feeling “in-love” again after years of vicious cycles.
Author of dozens of popular and scholarly articles, Dr. Goldsmith is a frequent speaker on spiritual emergence, resistance to change, transpersonal psychology, drug policy reform and the post-modern future of society. He is the author of Psychedelic Healing – The Promise of Entheogens for Psychotherapy and Spiritual Development.
www.nealgoldsmith.com
Neal speaks with Joanna about his book Psychedelic Healing, life-changing experiences with the entheogens, the soul as the “original self”, the psychedelic renaissance, keys of therapeutic change, the reunification between mind-body/ancestral-postmodern/spiritual-scientific…
Music: “Every Person Is One Life” (from How Much Is Yours) by Arto Tunçboyaciyan & Armenian Navy Band
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Filed under Gaialogues » activism, Entheogens, healing, Psychotherapy, soulwork
March 4th, 2011
an interview with Stanislav Grof
Stanislav Grof, M.D., is a psychiatrist with over fifty years experience researching non-ordinary states of consciousness.
Grof is one of the founders of the field of transpersonal psychology and a pioneering researcher into the use of non-ordinary states of consciousness for purposes of analysing, healing, and obtaining growth and insight into the human psyche. Being the founding president of the International Transpersonal Association (founded in 1977), he went on to become distinguished adjunct faculty member of the Department of Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness at the California Institute of Integral Studies, a position he remains in today.
He has published extensively in professional journals and has written many books including LSD: Doorway to the Numinous: The Groundbreaking Psychedelic Research into Realms of the Human Unconscious, Psychology of the Future: Lessons from Modern Consciousness Research (SUNY Series in Transpersonal and Humanistic Psychology)
, When the Impossible Happens: Adventures in Non-ordinary Reality
, Holotropic Breathwork: A New Approach to Self-Exploration and Therapy, The Adventure of Self-Discovery: Dimensions of Consciousness and New Perspectives in Psychotherapy and Inner Exploration (SUNY Series in Transpersonal and Humanistic Psychology). Click here for the full list of his books.
At the 25th Anniversary Convocation of the Association for Transpersonal Psychology (ATP), held in August 1993 at Asilomar, California, Stanislav Grof received an Honorary Award for major contributions to and development of the field of Transpersonal Psychology. Grof received the VISION 97 award granted by the Foundation of Dagmar and Václav Havel in Prague on October 5, 2007.
www.stanislavgrof.com
www.holotropic.com
Stan speaks with Joanna about his relationship with Nature, the unified worldview emerging from the study of holotropic states of consciousness, working with the archetypes, entheogens and holotropic breathwork as powerful means of transformation, personal experiences versus belief systems, the perils and evolutionary potential of humankind…
Music: Galileo, (from En Concert) by Claire Pelletier
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Filed under Gaialogues » consciousness studies, Entheogens, shamanism, soulwork, transpersonal psychology
February 11th, 2011
an interview with Eliot Cowan
Eliot Cowan is the author of Plant Spirit Medicine, and a fully initiated Tsaurirrikame (shaman) in the Huichol (Wixárika) Indian tradition. Eliot is the founder of the the Blue Deer Center and is a member of the Council of Elders for the Temple of Sacred Fire Healing. As a provider at the Blue Deer Center, Eliot Cowan offers Plant Spirit MedicineSM practitioner training courses, continuing education for PSM practitioners, healing camps based on traditional Huichol shamanic healing, and animal totem courses.
www.bluedeer.org
Eliot speaks with Joanna about the experience of awe, the aliveness of Nature, retrieving our indigenous soul, our relationship with the ancestors and the appropriate conditions in which to engage with the teacher plants…
Music: “Japeru” (from Piercing The Veil) by William Parker & Hamid Drake
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Filed under Ancient Wisdom Rising 2011 » eco-psychology, Entheogens, Indigenous Culture, shamanism, soulwork
December 13th, 2010
an interview with Julieta Casimiro
Filed under Gaialogues » Entheogens, healing, Indigenous Culture, shamanism, soulwork
December 10th, 2010
an interview with Julieta Casimiro
Filed under Gaialogues » Entheogens, healing, Indigenous Culture, shamanism, soulwork
December 6th, 2010
an interview with Timothy Freke
Filed under Gaialogues » activism, Entheogens, gnosticism, mysticism, shamanism, soulwork
October 11th, 2010
an interview with Fantuzzi
Fantuzzi is a world-class musical star who is charismatic, funny, sensual, and highly-energized and will definitely get you moving! Meet the man that Newsweek Magazine featured on its cover to symbolize the gathering of the original 1969 Woodstock Concert. A continuous world traveler to over 50 countries throughout the past 35 years, Fantuzzi has performed on every continent at thousands of events including those at Carnegie Hall, the United Nations, Rio De Janeiro Earth Summit, as well as at all 3 Woodstocks, 3 Khumba Melas, 29 Rainbow Gatherings, multiple Cannabis Cups, European Festivals, Bali Festivals, Australian Festivals, Harmony Festivals, Bhakti Festivals, Mystic Garden Parties, and Raw Spirit Festivals. He has played with Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Stephen Stills, Billy Preston, Richie Havens, Babatunde Olatunji, Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead, Cedella Marley Booker (Bob Marley’s Mother),Taj Mahal, and Joe Higgs. He opened for “Third World”, and is friends with Ram Dass and the late Timothy Leary, and many other fascinating leaders. http://fantuzzimusic.com/
Fantuzzi speaks with Joanna about his lifetime experience as an ecstatic, expressing the transformation happening today, and as a Global Troubadour who continues to perform at tribal and musical gatherings around the world.
Music: “Shiva como Shango” (from Tribal Revival), Fantuzzi
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Filed under Gaialogues » activism, Entheogens, music, performing arts, soulwork
August 13th, 2010
an interview with Richard Doyle
Filed under Gaialogues » activism, eco-psychology, Entheogens, Grief, healing, writing
July 19th, 2010
an interview with Richard Doyle
Richard Doyle earned his Ph.D. in Rhetoric at UC Berkeley. He was the Mellon Post Doctoral Fellow in History and Social Science of the Life Sciences at MIT in 1993. Professor of Rhetoric, Doyle holds appointments in English, Science Technology & Society and the College of Information Science and Technology at Penn State University and was Visiting Associate Professor at UC Berkeley, Department of Rhetoric in 2003.
Doyle teaches courses in the history and rhetoric of emerging technosciences – sustainability, space colonization, biotechnology, nanotechnology, psychedelic science, information technologies, biometrics – and the cultural and literary contexts from which they sprout. Professor Doyle has published two books: On Beyond Living: Rhetorical Transformations of the Life Sciences (Stanford, 1997) and Wetwares:Experiments in PostVital Living( Minnesota, 2003) – in a putative trilogy about emerging transhuman knowledges. These knowledges and practices, linked to molecular biology, artificial life, nanotechnology, psychedelic and information technologies render the experiential distinctions between living systems and machines frequently dubious and often indiscernible. This excited and confused rhetorical membrane between humans and an informational universe nonetheless broadcasts a clear message: humans, in co-evolution with the technical matrices transforming the planet, find themselves in an evolutionary ecology that is as urgent as it is experimental.
Continuing his collaborative work on the “transhuman imperative”, Doyle ( aka mobius) has now completed the trilogy with a scholarly book about archaic and contemporary psychedelic media technologies and the evolution of mind: The Ecodelic Hypothesis: Plants, Rhetoric and the Evolution of The Noösphere, currently in press with University of Washington. Other current projects include a book, Admixtures: Dialogues After Genomics with Anthropologist Mark Shriver. The Admixtures Project has grown The Penn State Center for Altered Consciousness, currently investigating the genetics and phenomenology of legally altered consciousness with the help of a flotation tank.
Doyle directed the Penn State Composition Program from 2004-2006, and serves as Expert, Wetwares and Human/Machine interaction for international organizations and a volunteer to the Penn State Center for Sustainability. More about mobius’ work and teaching can be found by browsing his web site.
Richard speaks with Joanna about language and the ecstasy of creativity, ego-death as a revelatory practice, eco-humility, Timothy Leary, freedom & Imagination…
Introductory music: “Amazon Beginnings” (At Play In The Fields Of The Lord, soundtrack) by Zbigniew Preisner
You can listen to PART TWO of this interview here.
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Filed under Gaialogues » activism, eco-psychology, Entheogens, Grief, healing, writing
June 30th, 2010
an interview with Jennifer Palmer
Jennifer Palmer is the news editor of Reality Sandwich and Community Director of Evolver – two dream jobs merged into one. She is a writer, DJ and internet philosopher who goes by the name TRUE online. Her blog, BRANDTRUEBOY http://www.brandtrueboy.com, started as an art experiment in 2002, in which she posted as three fictitious characters that she passed off as “real” people who emailed, commented and chatted with other bloggers. Her current projects include willing the (r)evolution with love, writing a novel, honing her Twitter stream skills and building the dopest vinyl based beat library in NYC.
Jennifer speaks with Joanna about the co-creation of reality, opening to interconectedeness, love as the strongest psychedelic, Gaia and the conciousness shift… among other topics
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Filed under Gaialogues » Entheogens, futurism, Synchronicity
August 21st, 2009
an interview with Dr. Rick Strassman
Dr. Rick Strassman is a medical doctor specialized in psychiatry with a fellowship in clinical psychopharmacology research. Dr. Strassman was the first person in the United States after twenty years of intermission to embark in human research with psychedelic, or entheogenic substances.
rickstrassman.com
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Filed under Gaialogues » Entheogens, psychedelic research
August 3rd, 2009
an interview with Rick Doblin
Filed under Gaialogues » eco-psychology, Entheogens, Gaia
July 21st, 2009
an interview with Rick Doblin
Rick Doblin studied with Stan Grof, M.D., and was in the first group to become certified as holotropic breathwork practitioners. His dissertation was on “The Regulation of the Medical Use of Psychedelics and Marijuana,” and his master’s thesis focused on the attitudes and experiences of oncologists concerning the medical use of marijuana. His undergraduate thesis was a twenty-five year follow-up to the classic Good Friday Experiment, which evaluated the potential of psychedelic drugs to catalyze religious experiences. He has also conducted a thirty-four year follow-up study to Tim Leary’s Concord Prison experiment.
In 1986, Rick founded MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies). His professional goal is to help develop legal contexts for the beneficial uses of psychedelics and marijuana, primarily as prescription medicines but also for personal growth for otherwise “healthy” people, and to also become a legally licensed psychedelic therapist.
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Filed under Gaialogues » Entheogens, medical marijuana, psychedelic research
January 29th, 2009
an interview with Margaret De Wys
Margaret De Wys is a professor at Bard College, Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts as well as a composer and sound installation artist.
A dramatic shift in her life set her on a pilgrimage to Ecuador and to becoming a world traveler and explorer dedicated to the preservation and transmission of traditional wisdom in the modern world. She has recently been published, her book came out in January 2009: Black Smoke: A Woman’s Journey of Healing, Wild Love and Transformation in the Amazon which chronicles her encounter with a Shuar master of medicina milenaria who guided her into a world of potent visionary plants, harrowing initiations and ritual purification.
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Filed under Gaialogues » Entheogens, shamanism
December 9th, 2008
an interview with Stephen Harrod Buhner
Stephen Harrod Buhner is an Earth poet and the award-winning author of ten books on nature, indigenous cultures, the environment, and herbal
medicine. He lectures yearly throughout the United States on herbal medicine, the sacredness of plants, the intelligence of Nature, and the states of mind necessary for successful habitation of Earth. His website Gaian Studies is a non-profit organization exploring – and participating with – the non-linear intelligence of nature. Stephen’s work has been widely published in North America and Europe and his most recent works are entitled The Secret Teaching of Plants: The Intelligence of Heart in Direct Perception of Nature and Healing Lyme: Natural Healing and Prevention of Lyme Borrelosis and its related Co-infections.
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Filed under Gaialogues » eco-psychology, Entheogens, healing, herbalism
December 5th, 2008
an interview with Rocky Caravelli
Rocky Caravelli is the primary facilitator and founder of Awakening in the Dream house, an innovative treatment and rehabilitation center near Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, that uses ibogaine, an entheogenic alkaloid of the iboga plant. He worked at the Ibogaine Association for 1 year and has run the Dream House for 2 1/2 years. He also spent 2 years providing treatments in the underground US community.
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Filed under Gaialogues » Entheogens, healing, shamanism
October 19th, 2008
an interview with Jodie Evans
Jodie Evans has worked on behalf of community, social-justice, environmental, and political causes for more than thirty years. As Director of Administration in former California Governor Jerry Brown’s cabinet and staff, Jodie championed environmental causes, resulting in breakthroughs in wind and solar technology and worked to bring historic diversity into the staff and appointments. As Manager of Governor Brown’s 1992 Presidential Campaign, Jodie instituted a cap on financial contributions of $100, resulting in a stronger push for campaign finance standards. Jodie has traveled extensively on behalf of global peace. Since the start of the Iraq war, Jodie has traveled to Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and Jordan on several occasions. She is the co-founder of CODEPINK for Peace, a women-initiated grassroots peace and social justice movement which has an international membership of 150,000.
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Filed under Gaialogues » activism, Entheogens, feminism
May 20th, 2008
an interview with Carolyn Garcia
Also known as Mountain Girl, Carolyn was a Merry Prankster and the wife of Jerry Garcia. In 1964 she met Neal Cassady who introduced her to Ken Kesey and his friends, one of whom gave her the name “Mountain Girl”. She quickly joined the inner circle of Pranksters and was romantically involved with Kesey. She later met and married Jerry Garcia.
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Filed under Gaialogues » Entheogens, feminism, storytelling
April 28th, 2008
an interview with Daniel Pinchbeck and John Lash
Daniel Pinchbeck is the author of Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism and 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl and advocate of the use of psychedelic substances for enriching people’s intellectual, psychological and spiritual beliefs through the psychedelic experience.
John Lash is the author of Not in His Image and Quest for the Zodiac, co-founder and principal author of the Metahistory.org and one of the foremost exponents of the power of myth to direct and shape an individual’s life, as well as history itself.
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Filed under World Psychedelic Forum » Entheogens, shamanism, technology
April 28th, 2008
an interview with Kajuyali Tsamani
Kajuyali Tsamani (COL) – Shaman, initiated by Bernardo Moscote, Master Shaman of the Kogi Nation, indigenous people of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia.
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Filed under World Psychedelic Forum » Entheogens, Indigenous Culture
April 28th, 2008
an interview with Stanislav Grof
Stanislave Grof is one of the founders of the field of transpersonal psychology and a pioneering researcher into the use of altered states of consciousness for purposes of healing, growth, and insight. Grof received the VISION 97 award granted by the Foundation of Dagmar and Vaclav Havel in Prague on October 5, 2007. He developed a form of psychotherapy called Holotropic Breathwork believed to allow access to nonordinary states of consciousness.
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Filed under World Psychedelic Forum » Entheogens, transpersonal psychology
April 28th, 2008
an interview with Jeremy Narby
Jeremy Narby is anthropologist and writer who spent several years living with the Ashaninca in the Peruvian Amazon cataloging indigenous uses of rainforest resources to help combat ecological destruction. Narby has written three books, as well as sponsored an expedition to the rainforest for biologists and other scientists to examine indigenous knowledge systems and the utility of Ayahuasca in gaining knowledge. Since 1989, Narby has been working as the Amazonian projects director for the Swiss NGO, Nouvelle Planete.
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Filed under World Psychedelic Forum » Entheogens, healing, shamanism
December 4th, 2007
an interview with Dr. Ralph Metzner
Psychotherapist, writer and researcher who has been involved in the study of transformations of consciousness since graduate school when he worked with Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (later Ram Dass) on the Harvard Psilocybin Projects. He co-wrote The Psychedelic Experience, and was editor of The Psychedelic Review. He is the co-founder and president of the Green Earth Foundation, an educational and research organization dedicated to the healing and harmonizing of the relationships between humanity and the Earth.
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Filed under Gaialogues » Entheogens, shamanism, transpersonal psychology
August 31st, 2006
an interview with Dieter Hagenbach
Dieter Hagenbach is the president and founder of the Gaia Media Foundation, a non profit organization founded in 1993 and based in Basel, Switzerland, which conveys a holistic and up to date understanding of the potential of the human consciousness.
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Filed under Gaialogues » Entheogens, Gaia
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Julieta Casimiro es una sanadora mazateca. Además de su labor como sanadora indígena, Julieta ha ganado reconocimiento internacional como miembro del 
This is the 2nd part of the interview with Tim: Tim speaks with Joanna about his experience with entheogens, shamans as a primal force of spirituality, the paradox of polarities, the co-evolution of mind and matter…
Part 2 of an interview with Rick Doblin, founder and president of 
