I read a fair amount of research and thought some people might be interested in recent studies that I've found helpful.  I plan to write an approximately 1,200 word (5 minutes to read) blog post pretty much every week, highlighting helpful material that has emerged in the previous couple of months.  I'll rotate through six topic areas ... Lifestyle, Positive Psychology, Relationships, Ageing, Psychedelics, and Meditation.  I also plan to write occasional posts where I go into more detail about particular related subject areas. 

Here, for example, are ... Psychedelics abstracts mostly published in the last few weeks.

McAlpine, R. G., G. Blackburne, et al. (2024). Development and psychometric validation of a novel scale for measuring ‘psychedelic preparedness’. Scientific Reports 14(1): 3280.   

I read a fair amount of research and thought some people might be interested in recent studies that I've found helpful.  I plan to write a brief approximately 1,200 word (5 minute read) newsletter/blog post pretty much every week, highlighting helpful material that has emerged in the previous couple of months.  I'll rotate through six topic areas ... Lifestyle, Positive Psychology, Relationships, Ageing, Psychedelics, and Meditation.  I also plan to write occasional posts where I go into more detail about particular related subject areas. 

“ Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony. ” - Gandhi

“

It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that things are difficult.

” - Seneca

Description ...

"You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist."                                      Friedrich Nietzsche

"When I get to heaven, they will not ask me 'Why were you not Moses?'.  They will ask 'Why were you not Susya?  Why did you not become what only you could become?'"                    Susya, a Hasidic rabbi

I gave a talk today about Positive Psychology and suggested a couple of areas where there could be helpful synergies with psychedelics.  Here is the full downloadable talk and below are a few of the slides ... initially just below are the first three:

“

... and you too have come into this world to do this, to go easy, to be filled with light, and to shine.

” - Mary Oliver

                        Trip-sitting for a dear friend: after

                               "No man was ever wise by chance."   Lucius Seneca

"You have to practice for a long time before you can learn to sound like yourself."   Miles Davis

“ The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper. ” - Eden Phillpotts

                         Trip-sitting for a dear friend: during

              "I feel the capacity to care is the thing which gives life its deepest significance."   Pablo Casals

"Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new."   U Le Guin

“

Nothing is so strong as gentleness and nothing is so gentle as real strength

” - Ralph Sockman

                  Trip-sitting for a dear friend: before

               "Who will prefer the jingle of jade pendants if he once has heard stone growing in a cliff?"   Lao Tzu

I'm just off to the Netherlands with a dear friend.  They're planning to take psychedelic truffles and have asked me to 'trip-sit' for them.  Thinking about the different things I can do to support them, I came up with the somewhat 'clunky' acronym IDSPM. It stands for Information, Discussion, Safety, Practicalities & Measurement.  

“

The genius of Tulku Urgyen was that he could point out the nature of mind with precision and matter-of-factness of teaching a person how to thread a needle and could get an ordinary meditator like me to recognize that consciousness is intrinsically free of self ... I came to Tulku Urgyen yearning for the experience of self-transcendence, and in a few minutes he showed me I had no self to transcend ... Tulku Urgyen simply handed me the ability to cut through the illusion of the self directly, even in ordinary states of consciousness.  This instruction was, without question, the most important thing I have ever been explicitly taught by another human being.  It has given me a way to escape the usual tides of psychological suffering - fear, anger, shame - in an instant.

” - Sam Harris

     Psychedelics: a group retreat - the ceremony, integration & follow-up

                     "Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow-ripening fruit."   Aristotle 

The previous posts in this sequence are 'Psychedelics: a group retreat - initial thoughts' and 'Psychedelics: a group retreat - meeting up, orientation & the ceremony'.