In & Through: The Onaya Podcast

With challenges to the so-called psychedelic renaissance, do we now need a ‘psychedelic enlightenment’ that changes not just ourselves, but our culture?Alexander Beiner is an author, journalist and facilitator focused on bringing new ways of seeing and being from the margins of culture into the mainstream. Last year, Ali published a bestselling book, The Bigger Picture: How Psychedelics Can Help Us Make Sense of the World (2023), and now writes a popular Substack with the same name. He is an executive director of Breaking Convention, Europe's longest-running conference on psychedelic medicine and culture, and he was also one of the founders of Rebel Wisdom, a popular alternative media platform that explored the cutting-edge of systems change and cultural sensemaking.This episode focused on how we might use psychedelics in the effort to fix our systems and change our cultures, exploring: Ali's background and early fascination with altered statesCrisis, meta-crisis, and the need for systems change‘E-Cognition’ and cultural frameworks that shape our thinkingThe problem of false insights under psychedelicsThe need for discernment and collective interpretation'Saving the world’ vs changing cultureArtificial intelligence and the prospects of an animist revivalAI interactions as entity encountersShipibo perspectives on progress and technologyAli Beiner is one of many experts on Onaya's new 6-month Psychedelic Mentorship Training programme. For more information and to find out how to enroll, visit Onaya's website and use the code 'INTHROUGH10' for a special 10% discount.

“The Earth is a huge field of sentience..." 🌎 Dr Isa Gucciardi holds degrees in cultural and linguistic anthropology, comparative religion, and transpersonal psychology. She has spent 50 years studying spiritual, therapeutic, and meditative techniques, working with master teachers of Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, and Sufism, as well as expert indigenous and shamanic practitioners from around the world.She has trained thousands of students in Depth Hypnosis, her therapeutic model that blends elements of ancient wisdom and contemporary psychological thought, alongside her unique programmes of Buddhist Psychology and Applied Shamanism. She also lectures at UC Berkeley and internationally.In this episode, Isa and Simon discuss the influence of her unusual upbringing in Hawaii; the common stream running through different spiritual traditions, and their different layers of orthodoxy; the idea of Jesus as a curandero, and the possibility that he spent time learning in India; attitudes towards psychedelics within Buddhism; companionship and resonance between different plants; the fallibility of shamans and dangers of glorifying indigenous cultures; the dark sides of shamanism compared to the ethical framework of the Dharma; impermanence, interconnection and the place-based teachings of the earth; and other topics.Dr Gucciardi is one of many experts on Onaya's new 6-month Psychedelic Mentorship Training programme. For more information and to enroll in the next cohort, visit Onaya's website and use the code 'INTHROUGH10' for a special 10% discount.

“Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.” ~ Gustav Mahler. From Simon's misadventures with a not-so-traditional Shipibo treatment for tinnitus, to the connection between spirituality and madness, this episode is a ride through all things weird and wonderful at the fringes of spiritual scholarship with Julian Vayne. Julian's obsession with group ritual practice began within the Western Esoteric Tradition when he was 16. Since then he has worked in ceremony with practitioners from many different lands and lineages, as a senior member of the Magical Pact of the Illuminates of Thanateros and widely recognized as one of Britain’s leading occultists. Today, Julian is the author of books, essays, journals and articles in both the academic and esoteric press, including Getting Higher: The Manual of Psychedelic Ceremony (2017). He sees his work as part of the process to help re-imagine an earth-centered, non-dogmatic, open-source spirituality.Julian is one of many experts on Onaya's new 6-month Psychedelic Mentorship Training programme, which Simon outlines at the start of this episode. For more information and to enroll in the next cohort, visit Onaya's website and use the code 'INTHROUGH10' for a special 10% discount.

“Knowledge is only a rumour until it's in the bones.” ~ Proverb from the Asaro people of Papua New Guinea. In this episode, Simon talks to Dr Esme Dark about the special interplay between felt intuition, embodied knowledge and psychedelic experience for facilitating healing and transformation.Dr Esme Dark is a psychedelic and somatic therapist with over 15 years of experience working as a clinical psychologist, including a decade of refugee mental health work in Australia, Thailand and the UK. She works as one of the core trial therapists as part of the Clinical Psychedelic Research Lab at Monash University, having supported participants through the largest psychedelic trial in Australia to date, exploring psilocybin-assisted therapy to treat anxiety. Esme also has a private practice offering in-person and remote services, and has launched a new podcast of her own, Beyond the Trip.Dr Dark is one of many experts on Onaya's new 6-month Psychedelic Mentorship Training programme. For more information and to find out how to enroll on our next cohort, visit Onaya's website and use the code 'INTHROUGH10' for a special 10% discount.* * *“Real intuition isn't one-size-fits-all. And it isn't an inner voice. It is a door into greater participation with the landscape around us... a call and response with the world through our senses. Our inner voice is the bitter taste in our mouth, nudging us into an appetite for carminative greens that will prepare us for hotter weather. The indefinable smell of a lover perfectly suited to our microbiome and DNA. The cheerful sparkle of a finch across our path on a morning run, which reminds us of a similarly cheerful friend we should call and check up on.“ ~ Sophie Strand, The Flowering Wand

"These are smart people: bright, hard-working, truth-telling and funny, and they have this whole approach to the living world that's off the charts compared to ours. They have lots of knowledge that we won't even recognise. We're ready to rip it off if we can make remedies with it, but actually taking them seriously, in terms of what they say about how they know things? No way!"Jeremy Narby is a renowned anthropologist, author, and advocate for indigenous knowledge systems, particularly in the Amazon. His influential book, The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge (1998), explores the parallels between shamanic visions and molecular biology, proposing a connection between indigenous knowledge and our scientific understanding of DNA. He has conducted extensive fieldwork with indigenous communities in the Peruvian Amazon, advocating for their rights and the preservation of their traditional knowledge. His involvement with NGOs like Nouvelle Planète supports sustainable development and highlights the importance of indigenous perspectives in addressing global environmental challenges. Through his writing and lectures, Jeremy's work continues to bridge the gap between indigenous wisdom and modern science, promoting a holistic understanding of knowledge and the natural world.Dr Narby is one of many experts on Onaya's new 6-month Psychedelic Mentorship Training programme. For more information and to find out how to enroll, visit Onaya's website and use the code 'INTHROUGH10' for a special 10% discount.

How can we develop models of psychedelic-assisted therapy that incorporate Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing, and acknowledge that we heal together in community - models that have cultural safety at the forefront, that are accessible and of benefit to Indigenous peoples and Westerners alike?Indigenous Psychedelic-Assisted Therapies (IPAT) is an Australian organisation dedicated to this mission, acknowledging the Indigenous wisdom that has underpinned the use of plant medicines for thousands of years, and Indigenous peoples globally as the knowledge keepers in their use.Here, IPAT co-founders Jem Stone, Kirt Mallie and Dr Bianca Sebben present Simon with IPAT's vision for a safe and healthy cultural ecosystem of psychedelic usage, navigating obstacles and facilitating intercultural synergies. Jem is a First Nations woman of mixed heritage, a cultural Educator, wellness practitioner, trainer and co-founder of IPAT; Kirt is a Mualgal man, an Indigenous therapist, cultural educator and spiritual counsellor; Bianca is a clinical psychologist with a special interest in complex trauma, dissociative disorders and working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.All three are experts on Onaya's new 6-month Psychedelic Mentorship Training programme, with the first cohort launching later this month: for more information and to find out how to enroll, visit Onaya's website. *** For a special 10% discount to the course, head to our website and use the code 'INTHROUGH10' ***Onaya holds a fierce commitment to Indigenous reciprocity, evidenced through our Shamanic Advisory Board at the heart of our research, and financial support of local and global initiatives that protect Indigenous lands and traditions, including Chacruna Institute, the International Center for Ethnobotanical Education, Research, and Service (ICEERS), and the Regenerative Agroforestry Impact Network (RAIN).

What is reality, really? Dr David Luke has been teaching the Psychology of Exceptional Human Experience at the University of Greenwich for 15 years. He is also a Lecturer at the Alef Trust as Programme Leader of the Professional Certificate in Psychedelics, Altered States and Transpersonal Psychology, and tutor on the MSc Consciousness, Spirituality and Transpersonal Psychology. In a wild and varied research career, he has focused on transpersonal experiences and altered states of consciousness, especially via psychedelics, having published more than 100 academic papers in this area, including thirteen books, most recently DMT Entity Encounters: Dialogues on the Spirit Molecule (2021).Here, Simon and Dave discuss the more extreme end of psychedelia, how they can alter our understanding of reality and connection to nature, and the future of the psychedelic movement in light of transpersonal experiences that are hard to explain within a Western scientific framework.Dr Luke is one of many experts on Onaya's new 6-month Psychedelic Mentorship Training programme, with the first cohort launching later this month. For more information and to find out how to enroll, visit Onaya's website.*** For a special 10% discount to the course, head to our website and use the code 'INTHROUGH10' ***The paper on ayahuasca and nature relatedness, mentioned by Dave in the first few minutes, is freely available along with the rest of Onaya Science's research: https://onaya.science/research/2024-ayahuasca-nature-connection