Listening to Ayahuasca: New Hope for Depression, Addiction, PTSD, and Anxiety
Sunday, April 23, 2017 • 2:30 PM - 3:00 PM • Grand Ballroom

Psychedelic Science 2017 is a six-day global gathering on April 19-24, 2017 in Oakland, California.

Everyone agrees on the importance of integration after an ayahuasca ceremony but what does that really mean? How does a continuing relationship with Grandmother Ayahuasca, which seventy-five percent of people report, facilitate the healing process? How can psychedelic insights be translated into daily life? How can therapists best work with people during this afterglow period? The time immediately following the ceremony is optimum for therapeutic work. Research shows that psychedelics increase neurological flexibility and connectivity and quiet the Default Mode Network responsible for much of our neurotic thought patterns. What I call miraculous healing can happen after a full-blown conversion experience leading to a transformed life and cosmic shift in worldview. Other times, there's an incremental process of more gradual healing. Therapists who work with people using ayahuasca have to differentiate numinous experiences from psychological issues, distinguishing between levels of existential meaning. Drawing on my own personal therapeutic experiences with ayahuasca and over hundred first-person reports, Listening to Ayahuasca explores how this process of healing unfolds and provides New Hope for Depression, Addiction, PTSD, and Anxiety. The book will help people thinking about exploring ayahuasca to make an informed decision. It will give those who have experienced the medicine creative ways to work therapeutically with their experiences. And it will offer insight to therapists who work with people after their ayahuasca journeys.