Mihael Keehl

Has anyone of you heard of that project? It is a collection of several NFTs with different use cases. They are about psychedelics and mental health. These are the goals of this brand: they are donating to psychedelic therapy organizations in May they will release an app for holders of PA NFTs which will grant them access to mental health professionals they are establishing a brand around psychedelics later they want to give access to the mental health app for other NFT communities These are some of the main points about this project. If you want to learn more you can check out their websit: https://psychedelicsanonymous.com/ourprocess I suggest to read through update #4, there is a ton of information. I think it is great that they are establishing the first ever brand around psychedelics and are supporting organizations which work with psychedelic treatments. By the way the art of the genesis NFTs looks dope. I am curious to hear your thoughts regarding this project.

It might be helpful to look up therapists who have experience with psychedelics and to talk to one of them. There is a big list of these therapists on the website of the MAPS organisation. It is called "psychedelic integration list". You can find it somwhere here: https://maps.org/take-action/resources/

I wanted to share my experience of participating in an online workshop (called: Communication and Relationship workshop) with Peter Ralston and Brendan Lea via Zoom. Participating in this workshop was so great that it inspired me to share it on this forum because I think many people here could benefit a lot from it or other workshops from Peter like "Experiencing the Nature of Being". At first I was skeptical whether this workshop can be effective when you are participating online and are not present at the center, but it turns out that it works very well online. One thing that surprised me was the fact that this workshop was really fun! I suspected that it will be very strict and you just have to shut up and contemplate, but that was a wrong assumption. Brendan was fascilitating most of the time and Peter Ralston came in the evening to answere questions. Brendan is very good at fascilitating and he clearly has a lot of experience. There are several different exercises that you do which are very interesting. You also get to work with most of the other participants and see their perspectives. During the workshop I had a few interesting experiences which can be described as "consciousness expanding". One time we were investigating what a relationship is. When Brendan made an assertion about it and I grasped it experiencially, it was suddenly so obvious that I had to laugh for a long time. The fact that I was able to grasp something already on the first day of the workshop showed me how powerful this is compared to my own meditation and contemplation practice. I already registered for the "Experiencing the Nature of Being" (ENB) workshop in April and I am planning to do many more in the future. They are worth every penny. Here is a link for more information: https://chenghsin.com/workshops/

Peter sends out a fewsletter a few times per year. There you will find a lot of information from him, a lot of feedback from participants and Q&A. You can sign in for the newsletter on his website.

Hello friends, I wanted to ask if anyone of you knows a good therapist who also has psychedelic experience and is familiar with the work of Stanislav Grof. Or do you have ideas where to find one?

@itachi uchiha You can visit ashrams, there are plenty of green people there. I live in an ashram in Germany. Almost all people here are green. A lot of people that I have met here have had psychedelic experiences, one guy told me that he did a workshop with Peter Ralston years ago. And a few weeks ago I have coincidently met an interesting woman who is pretty much turquoise. You can stay at an ashram for "free" in exchange for around 6 hours of work per day. While you are working, you will have plenty of opportunity to meet new people.

@flowboy Peaple come here (or do it online) to become Yoga teachers or do other workshops or seminars. There is a huge variety of trainings and seminars that you can participate in here. That is the main source of income.

Hi, I actualiy live in a Yoga Ashram in Germany and I like it a lot! It is called Yoga Vidya Bad Meinberg and it is the biggest Ashram outside of India. Here you work 7 hours a day 6 times per week in the first year. That may sound like a lot but it is managable. You safe a lot of time because you dont need to prepare food or buy grocerys because healthy food is prepared everyday by the people who work in the kitchen team. You get 360€ per month, free internet and they also pay for your health insurance (and other cool stuff that I am too lazy to write down).

https://londonreal.tv/dr-rashid-buttar-hosts-a-doctors-covid-19-roundtable-1000-voices-strong/ You will need to sign up with your E-Mail in order to watch this discussion. I can highly recommend it.

1) Intention My intention for this trip was to consciously re-experience and release something which was probably my birth process. I am not sure whether this was actually my birth process but it seems very likely if I compare my experience to Stanislav Grof's description of a perinatal experience. I chose that intention because this "theme" was occurring for at least six of my previous trips. It was clear to me that something important, unpleasant and dense wanted to be experienced consciously and released. I was not thrilled to do this trip because I felt pretty good and I knew that, like my past trips, this one will be very unpleasant, confusing and exhausting. 2) Preparation & come up I went outside and practiced different movements (pullups, capoeira etc.). When I arrived at home, I meditated for 30 minutes and then I took the tab. During the come up phase I like to do Yoga because it helps to transition into the psychedelic state smoothly. After half an hour of that, I sat on my bed and was wandering about who I am. I was looking for the "I" but could not find it. At some point I noticed a feeling in my gut that was getting stronger and stronger. 3) A very complicated feeling After a while I had to lay down because this feeling was now dominating my experience. I recognized this feeling from previous trips, so I knew what was coming next. It was a very complicated feeling which is difficult to describe. It felt like a mixture of the following: undifferentiated pain, struggle and suffering, a sense of enduring something very difficult, a lot of frustration, tension in the head, a "knot" in the stomach which was accompanied with small convulsions. Similar to my previous trips, I had a strong desire to move around in my bed, crawling in and out of blankets covering my head and pushing with the legs. 4) Those poor babies This struggle went on for at least one hour. After some time I also felt anger and the desire to bite things. Furthermore I have noticed a shift taking place. The feelings of suffering and pain turned almost into lust. Towards the end, I felt that the knot in my stomach was gone and I could finally breathe deeply into my belly, which was very pleasant. Later, as I was more able to cognize what was happening, I noticed that going through this experience as an adult is pretty rough but just the thought that small babies experience something like this, broke me into tears. After grieving a little bit, I felt love, a sense of proud and empowerment for being able to go through this. It felt like this birth experience or whatever it was, was finally released fully. I was laying still, just enjoying breathing deeply. 5) Absorption into the LSD sound As I was laying around, I became very introspective. There was an interesting sound which I recognized from a previous trip. (maybe a typical LSD sound?). As I listened to it, I became more and more absorbed and fascinated by it. The focus on the sound was so strong that I only noticed in retrospect that "I" almost disappeared while listening to it. Shortly after that, my normal cognitive processes reappeared and I felt almost sober. As I opened my eyes, I felt joy, harmony, inner peace and a general sense that everything will be alright. 6) I went outside and met my old Yoga teacher I prepared some fruit and went outside because the weather was fantastic. I went to a park nearby, laid around and practiced different movements like handstand and juggling. I recognized an old yoga teacher whose classes I went to a year ago, he was balancing on a slackline between two trees. It was funny to see him because I remember he once told us in class that he is doing yoga for over 40 years, but here he was getting angry because he could not stay balanced on the slackline without falling off quickly. Anyway, I went up to him, we talked a little bit and he let me try to balance on the slackline. 7) Psychedelics and movement I have noticed that it is much easier to learn new movement skills when you are on a psychedelic, because you get a very fine tuned feeling sense. Joe Rogan once talked about MMA fighters who microdose which helps them to "see the movements of opponents before they happen". It was much easier for me to practice handstand and I could stand a few seconds longer then when I am sober. I also was able to learn how to juggle with my left hand in just 10 minutes and as I tried to balance on the slackline for the first time in my life, my yoga teacher could not believe that it was my first time trying this, because I could maintain balance, walk forwards, backwards and do pistol squats on the slackline almost instantly. 8) Conclusion I am happy that this birth process thing is finally worked through. It has been three weeks since this trip and I still feel much better. What I find surprising is that similar trip reports are hard to find. I have never heard or read trip reports about birth trauma except in Stanislav Grof's books. Christopher M. Bache also mentioned having gone through perinatal experiences in his book. I can imagine (because it happened to me in the past) that for someone who is starting to experiment with psychedelics and who had only heard trip reports about machine elves, consciousness, insights and God, could find this experiences to be very confusing and disturbing. 9) What I have learned - A "theme" such as the birth process can last for several trips until it is completely released, in my case it lasted for 7 trips - A lot of times, if the "theme" is not worked through completely in one session, at the end of the session you can feel like something is not done yet, there may be no sense of release or natural conclusion which feels very uncomfortable. - Also, during the days, weeks and months after some of the "incomplete" trips, I was feeling worse, depressed, sometimes very angry, addiction behavior increased and I had a more negative and pessimistic outlook towards the future, which made it very undesirable for me to do more tripping.

@OBEler I have never experienced a hangover after AL-LAD, only a pleasant afterglow. But I have noticed a correlation between having "incomplete" psychedelic experiences on AL-LAD and a decrease in sleep quality. Of course, it is also difficult to go to sleep even after a good trip, but that usually lasts only for one night. I usually do a full or partial hatha yoga sequence. The bridge is great, I also like the shoulder stand and the triangle.

@Loving Radiance Only after my very first trip with a moderate dose, I knew that there is a lot of stuff in my psyche/subconscious that I need to deal with but I have never expected something like the reliving of the birth process to happen. "Why should it be confusing when one intutitively knows that there is something to be left integrated?" I would not say that I had an intuition, I only started expecting this "theme" because it happened so many times in the past that I recognized a pattern and also because I had a conceptual understanding of perinatal experiences. But this puzzle pieces only connected after the third or fourth trip with the birth process theme. Before that, it was very confusing.

@outlandish The thing about balance is interesting. In the book "Zen body being", Peter Ralston says that we are very good at handling being out of balance all the time, even when we are just standing. To truly find balance however, it is necessary to increase your sensitivity. So it makes sense that psychedelics help you with that, because they make you very snsitive. I remember one time, during a trip, I suddenly found out what gravity actually feels like. It was as if I experienced the gravitational pull for the first time. It was amazing, I was literally floored. I did not find it necessary to tell the Yoga teacher that I was tripping, we were not that close and I felt pretty sober. The LSD sound that I heard a few times is deep, metallic and the more I concentrate on it, the more it seems to slow down. First you hear it like this: -------------------------------- when it slows down it is more like this: -------- --- --- --- -- -- -- -- -- -- - - - - - - it is like the deep, metalic sound gets stretched out and you start to notice the silent spaces in between the little bits of sound. If I remember correctly, the sound also has qualities of expansion and contraction. It pulsates like a jellyfish and becomes louder, quiter, louder, quiter. It becomes so fascinating that it absorbes you.

The one that I went to is called 'Yoga Vidya'. Here is the website: https://www.yoga-vidya.org/english/

Have you tried to search for an Ashram near your city? Last weekend I went to a Yoga Seminar in a Yoga Ashram in Germany. It was better than I expected. The people there are amazing, I found a lot of friends instantly, the food is delicious and the atmosphere and energy are very pleasant. Right now I am planning to move into the Ashram to live and work there.

Terence McKenna was sure that there is beginners luck when it comes to taking psychedelics. I think if you are taking them responsibly it might be true. My first psychedelic trip was very pleasant and magical, so I can confirm that. How about you?

1) Soulful Toz She creates the most authentic and realistic videos about walking the spiritual path, that I ever saw on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCz1XJrEItAE-RxKAGngsIkg 2) Adventures Through The Mind He does a lot of high quality interviews with interesting people in the psychedelic community. https://www.youtube.com/user/DiscoveringAgape

1. Come up I was laying in bed with an eye mask on, listening to the John Hopkins spotify playlist through headphones. Pretty soon I was tearing up a bit by the music. But after a while I stopped paying attention to the music and instead was confronted by the strange and alien seeming situation that I was in - I was a biological creature needing to drink and eat, a young man laying in bed high on acid listening to classical music, the son of a single parent mother who is in a different country, a brother of two siblings. All of this seemingly obvious observations and facts, suddenly turned into an alien whirlpool of random thoughts that I had no connection to, I could not relate to them anymore. 2. Confusion Suddenly I had no idea why I am in this situation. Why did I take acid? Why am I listening to strange sounding music that I enjoyed just a few minutes ago? Why am I so confused? I had zero context to what I was doing or why. It seemed completely bizarre. I had no ground, nothing I could be sure of, everything seemed alien, even the thought that I am part of a family. It felt like something has slowly showed a crowbar into my mind and then, with a sudden jerky movement clamped it sideways. I tried to get a grip on reality by thinking about my little brother which normally brings about positive, warm associations in me - but not this time, I felt like a cold alien creature. I tried to eat the food that I love most, delicious mango - but it tasted like soap. 3. Psychotic reaction I was confused beyond comprehension. I thought that I must have taken something that was not real AL-LAD, something that fucked up my psyche, because this experience seemed to have no beneficial elements at all. I had no insights, no emotional releases just stupid confusion. It felt unbearable, I was convinced that "I did it this time". I have come to the logical conclusion that I must have taken a substance from a untrustworthy source (even though a tested the substance) and that I am legitimately mad now. At this point I had no hope that things can get better, I accepted that my life is over and that I will be in a madhouse from now on. I knew that I am not able to take responsibility for my own survival anymore and that I should contact a friend who can bring me into a hospital and help to distribute my materialistic possessions to my family members. 4. I called a friend By a miracle I managed to use a smartphone to call a friend to put the responsibility on her to hospitalize me. I was talking completely gibberish which made her laugh. For me it seemed rude that she laughed at my condition but it helped me a lot to hear her voice and to see her face (video chat). After about one hour of total confusion and alienation from everything I began to notice that by talking to her I was slowly regaining my cognitive abilities and after two hours I felt quite normal again and could laugh about it. 5. What was that? I don't know what to make out of this trip. Was the dose too high which caused my ego to snap? This theme of confusion is something that is recurring in some of my trips, this time it was by far the most intense. Some trips are very insightful and healing but sometimes it is just confusion. Do you have any similar experiences?

@ActualizedDavid It did feel very depersonalizing @outlandish Very well said, thanks, I definitely feel that this knowledge is now embedded in me. I thought 450ug will be ok because I had a very good trip on 375ug in which I was able to release a lot of supressed emotions. After that I had a trip on 400ug which was also very healing but I had the sense that I could go even deeper. It seemes for me that there are a lot of variables that influence the potency of a trip. I guess just to find your "perfect dose" is not always enough. Wow, I did not know that about the narrower effective range, very interesting. @Leo Gura Contemplation on a lower dose is an interesting suggestion that I will try out. Right now my priority is integration of the shadow / emotional healing. Do you think this is a good strategy to do that before starting to contemplate, or should I just focus on contemplation instead and the rest will become a natural byproduct? "Don't doupt the trips. Doubt your sober state." - that's a good quote

I have exactly the same condition. What helped me is to make thoughts into my meditation object. Focus on thoughts and label them to keep track. You can use the labels : "see in" - for mental images and "hear in" - for mental sound. I personaly like to label them more specific as for example "self talk", "planing", "phantasizing"etc. When you become good at it you can progress further by making more subtle destinctions. This techique makes me more aware of my phantasies and future-projections and the habit of labeling thoughts makes it much easier to meditate throughout daily life because I have thoughts all the time. Antoher exercise which helps a lot is Kriya Yoga. There is an exercise where you meditate and focus your eyes on the point between your eyebrows. Your eyes are closed and you try to look at your third eye (read the book for a better explanation). I recently discovered that when I am lost in phantasies - my eyes are usually in motion. But when I do my best to focus my eyes on the point between the eyebrows, my eyes are still in one position and that makes it much more difficult to get lost in phantasies or future-projections. Good luck

Your post reminds me of a similar story. A few weeks ago I also talked to my grandma (also russian) about meditation because she often mensioned to me that she is often very stressed and has other bad symptoms. I maneged to sit her down with me and to meditate with me for two minutes. It was fascinating to see how much resistance she had sitting still for a couple of minutes. When the 2 minutes where over, (I sat an alarm) she emediately started talking non stop about random topics as if they were bubbling up the hole time we were meditating. Of course she also mentioned her skepticism towards meditation and so on. At least she gave it a shot

1) Preparation & intention I cleaned my room Went outside and did Yoga for 1-2 hours Bought some food for later For training and documentation purposes, I recorded a video where I talked about: My general feelings towards this session something what Terence Mckenna called the 'examination of conscience' My intention My Intention was to work through repressed emotions, processing past trauma and reconnecting with my authentic self, because I felt that I have lost touch with that. I was also hoping to get some instructions or a direction that I need to go because I felt a little bit lost. Setting: alone in my appartement, laying on my bed listening to music 2) The come up As I was laying still just listening to the playlist, I began to feel the music more and more until I could not help but move to it until I just started rolling around in my bed. I can not remember the transition phase but suddenly I was overcome by an intense energy. In one moment I was moving to the sound, enjoying the music and in the next moment I was screaming into my blanket and punching my pillows. It was a very strong anger energy that took over me. Then sadness and guilt joined the party and all these intense emotions where first aimed towards myself, for not being able to be who I really am, but also at society and life in general and then towards nothing particular, just pure emotion. 3) Perinatal phase These emotions where accompanied by physical body movements that looked like I was reliving my birth process. My neck was very weak and my head just hung around withouth the support of neck muscles. Furthermore I was crawling on my fours and it seemed like I was trying to crawl in or out of something. Stanislaf Grof says in one of his books that this is not uncommon in LSD psychotherapy and that the birth process is probably the biggest trauma that every person has. Interesting was also that this body movements, I already experienced in a previous trip. It seemes like I did not worked through it completely so it keepes coming up again, which is also common. 4) More healing At some point, during my crawling around crying and being angry phase, I experienced something which can be described as repressed negative emotions which manifested in my throat and nose area. I suddenly had a lot of spit and mucus coming from my mouth ant nose. I did not expected something like that to happen so I just spited right into my blankets and pillows and cleaned my nose all over my bed. Later, as I gained some cognition back, I quickly grabbed a blanket and a bucket and put it right next to my bed. I remember one time when I was experiencing this overwhelming sensations of emotions, body movements and purging as I was laying on the ground and asking "what the fuck is happening!?" It was definetly the most intense experience I have ever had on a psychedelic. Now I definetly found the right dose for me. 5) Confusion and slight paranoia After the peak when I was able to stand up, there was a moment of utter confusion. I did not remember why I took LSD what LSD does or how I ended up here. I remembered my intention but it somehow made no sense to me. Spirituality, psychotherapy, healing, being authentic - none of this concepts I could understand aymore. There were even a few paranoid thoughts. But fortunately I could manage this confusion very well, I trusted that my cognitive abilities will eventually come back so I decided to go to the kitchen and eat some fruit as I was waiting for the confusion to pass. When I opened my refrigerator and saw the delicious fruit that I have prepared, all worries where gone. I had prepared an insane amount of differnt delicious fruit. By the way, I reccomend you to try putting grapes into the refrigerator, especially on warm days, you can thank me later. So I ate fruit, put my favourite music on and enjoyed life, completely forgetting the confusion or that it was even a problem. 6) Last few hours The last few hours of the trip where spend listening to music, cleanig my nose and throat and drawing a picture with crayons. I remember on my way to go for a walk outside I looked into the mirror and I looked like I had just returned from a fight. I was physically and mentaly exhausted but at the same time I was feeling extremely good. It was also very clear to me what I needed to do next in life. I needed to talk to my sister and my mother about what I am going through, what I struggle with and tell them that I take psychedelics, because until this point it was like I had a secret life, where I did things that I can not talk to anybody with. At the end, around midnight, I went outside to catch fresh air. 7) Life after the trip Two days after this experience I met my sister and her husband and we went into a beautiful park. I was finally able to tell them what I struggle with and that I take psychedelics for 1,5 years and do 'psychedelic psychotherapy'. They received it very good, we had a great conversation and a beautiful day. My sister even told me that my voice has changed. The Next day I called my mother and also talked to her about it which went also great. Life feels more like a flow now and less like something I need to work through. Insecurities and overthinking decreased dramaticaly, almost fanished. I am able to reconnect with some friends that I had lost touch with. I am thrilled to start working on my life purpose and slowly escaping wage slavery. It feels like I have matured emotianlly 5-10 years during this trip. Even if it is still just the afterglow effect and I will eventually fall back to old patterns, I do not worry because I still have enough supply for a few years A new life chapter begins. 8) Some additional things to keep in mind for the next time: The setting can be even better Do it in the evening Create the music playlist with more Love Have a bucket next to you Prepare blankets for spitting and cleanig your nose Cold grapes are exquisite Clean your toilet Here is the picture that I drawed: I hope you are doing good and I wish the best for you. Thank you for reading. Much Love