The panel discusses a novel 12‑week online resiliency program that weaves psychedelic‑assisted experiences (ketamine and psilocybin) into a structured curriculum of large‑group teachings, small‑group facilitation, and community integration. Speakers describe how the program blends psychodynamic theory, embodied awareness, and lifestyle medicine, emphasizing unconditional positive regard and compassionate witnessing to create a safe container for participants. Historical context is provided, outlining the rise and suppression of psychedelic research from the 1950s‑70s and the recent resurgence. Clinical observations highlight the program’s relevance for patients with metabolic syndrome, chronic pain, trauma, depression, and even terminal illness, illustrating how psychedelic sessions can unlock emotional and somatic blockages that traditional CBT and medication often leave untouched. The discussion also stresses the necessity of foundational health practices—hydration, nutrition, movement, and social connection—before psychedelic work. Finally, a visionary “big‑tent” future is outlined, advocating a shift from a disease‑management model to a wellness‑optimization paradigm that offers integrated services early, before pathology develops.
Chapters
We took the 12-week resiliency program and we put the psychedelic experience into it to accelerate the healing. And so it's a 12-week program online. Our participants come together for 2 hours a week in a big group. And what we have is some teachings there that we call coming to knows where different team members teach on what is relevant at that time for that cohort of people based on the challenges they have come into our program with. And then they go from a big group online, and COVID has made this completely necessary to happen this way, and then they go into small groups, small group formats that are facilitated with two facilitators with very specific targeted questions. So the whole program takes the best of all psychodynamic theories and takes the best pieces and puts them together to create a unique offering And so based on what's happening in the team, they go into the small groups, they do some small group work. They start to model unconditional positive regard and compassionate witnessing so that they're starting that healing process right away in a community. And then that same community then also has their psychedelic ketamine journey as a group. So they come together, they get to meet each other for the first time. They have a psychedelic journey and they integrate together, and then there's group integration within the bigger program again and a continuation. So 3 psychedelic weekends within that 12-week program.
I would have told you intellectually that I love myself and that I have self-compassion and that sort of thing. I've been to enough sort of retreats and And I thought I had done the work, but I realized in Roots to Thrive that I was fully in my head with all of that. It was all up here. I wasn't really feeling it in my body. And the experience of learning to really feel my body sensations and understand what was going on and to talk about emotions connected to those body sensations That was not easy, and it was quite physically painful.
The traditional practices include medications, and so it's a biological model, and cognitive behavioral therapy, so that combination. However, you can get to a certain place with cognitive behavioral therapy. You can understand your life story. It's staying in the story and whatever you've been conditioned along the way. And it may not relate to your authentic self, which is, you know, your thoughts and your deep-down emotions and your physical sensations in your body. So individuals describe almost like a blockage. They can't get past that point, and it's because they've become disconnected from their true selves, so their authentic selves, by this conditioning. And so the only time I've been able to see getting past it is through the use of psychedelic-type therapies where you bypass the default mode network, what you've been conditioned to believe, and it's your set point. It's your go-to. It's the pathways that are well-worn in your brain. You just go straight to them. What we're trying to do now is go into our emotions and our physical sensations in our bodies and then choose what we want to believe and then choose our actions.
So in the 1950s, '60s, and into the '70s, there were thousands of research studies going on around psilocybin and LSD especially, and LSD was actually gaining a lot of traction. MDMA was coming onto the scene and actually stayed legal until 1985, but the rest were scheduled in about 1972 with a lead from the American government, from Nixon, and then the UN Declaration on Drugs, and so at that time, the research was very promising. It was the psychiatric movement. These medicines were being used for alcoholism and depression with good success. There was a lot of write-up. This was legitimate medicine and it was moving forward in those times, and then the war on drugs came, and it was essentially a cultural and racist control. They recognized that there was the war resistance to Vietnam, the Black Panther movement was strengthening, there was a lot of unrest, like people were demanding their civil rights, and you can't really just criminalize people for that, but you can criminalize the drugs they use, and so there was a full propaganda machine that was brought out there, and I think many of us in North America were fully ensconced in it. And it was in my education all the way through, like, this is your brain on drugs, the fried egg in the pan, you know, that person's burnt out because they did LSD. And so it's a really, really strong propaganda, but it wasn't based on science. It wasn't driven by science. It wasn't driven by scientists. It wasn't driven by MDs, but nonetheless, it took these medicines away from us. And then we've had this 40-year break. It just really shows you how strong propaganda is. But once you know that there was no scientific data presented, there is no push from the medical community. You have to press pause and go, what the hell? And we should be angry because we should be 40 years ahead of where we are right now.
I facilitated 3 groups now, 2, 3 groups. And every single time you bring together individuals who don't know each other and they look around in that group the first week and they— everybody is very, very different from each other. And you can see the look of kind of trepidation on everyone's faces. And then we start to practice unconditional positive regard and compassionate witnessing, and by about week 3, there's an extraordinary shift of the safe container and being able to hold each other and being able to witness each other and feel love and compassion. And that is the bypassing the disconnect that's been held by the depression, anxiety, and trauma. So it's an extraordinary thing And we always say, you know, individuals sign up for the ketamine, but they stay for the community.
Patients who come to the lifestyle medicine clinic, they're often referred because they have metabolic syndrome, they've got coronary artery disease, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, eating addictions, food addiction, binge eating, that kind of thing. And then, oh yeah, they've also got insomnia. They come into my clinic and I see all this, and then I see that they're on a few different antidepressants, they've got a history of being diagnosed with depression and anxiety. No one's ever asked them if they have trauma, but they have nightmares. So I started asking the question and it just is shocking how often the answer is, well, yeah, I have nightmares and I have a history of trauma. So as I'm seeing that and making these connections, it's so exciting for me to feel like I'm getting it and I can actually help these people figure out how to get to that root cause.
We can test out the yin yang and image of the yin yang, but if the foundations of a person's house are not strong, then to me it feels asinine in a way. If they're not drinking water, if they're not hydrated, if they don't have the tools of food to support their biological processes, if they don't have enough fat in their diet to make cholesterol, to make hormones, to make new cellular walls, like We've got to do that first. And if they're not, you know, moving their body in some sort of meaningful, enjoyable way daily, we've got to help them with that. If they don't have connection in their life, we've got to help them with that. There is no pill, no test, no imaging that is going to insert some sort of magical answer if we don't build the foundations. Medicine has done this to patients and medicine has done this to ourselves. And we have to retrain ourselves out of this. In my chronic pain clinic, people want to get all sorts of stuff, and I'm like, you just walked in here with a big massive Coke and you have a bag of chips in your purse. Like, let's build the foundations. Like, seriously, this is not rocket science. This is foundational medicine. Like, we need people to do first things first.
Getting those foundations into place is far more likely to happen when you're in a connected group where you feel supported. So it's all about coming together. I'm just thinking of one example of a participant. I did her intake, and so everyone has a stage 4 terminal diagnosis. And during that intake, I couldn't really talk to her. All she could do was cry, and she couldn't communicate with her children or her partner about the kind of existential distress she was feeling in this diagnosis. And after going through the 3 weeks and then the psilocybin experience, there was something she said that will stay with me forever. She said that it was so profound that she didn't feel fear anymore, that she could go right now and it would be okay. And it was because she could see her connection with others and everything, and wherever she was going, it was going to be okay. And she was able then to have the conversations with family members and important people and just start to place herself in her life in a way that she could feel more dignified.
I have a big tent vision. What I see, what I want, and I want it now, so within 5 years, damn right, is that this big tent approach happens. That you don't have to wait till you have PTSD or an eating disorder or depression. That we have whole human services. That we move, instead of seeing drug advertisements on TV, we see water and exercise and food and happiness and connection advertisements, and that people are doing that, that we are building up ourselves as whole humans, that we are taking that responsibility back into ourselves, into our families, into our communities, and demanding that of our healthcare systems, and that you get access to these types of services, whatever you need, early, so that you're not 17 years later with PTSD or 5 years later with sleep apnea or 2 years in of metabolic disease, that you get it right away, what you need early on, right away, and that we move away from an economy of disease management to an economy of wellness optimization, and that we demand that.
