Apply Psychedelic Neuroscience to Optimize Integration & Personal Development with Manesh Girn - 68
Sep 3, 2023
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Psychedelic neuroscience expert, Manesh Girn, discusses leveraging our understanding of psychedelic neuroscience to optimize integration and personal development. Topics include neural plasticity, the impact of psychedelics on the 5HT2A, critical periods, metaphor and meaning making, mental health issues, the power of stress, and the role of gamma brainwaves.
Psychedelics enhance neuroplasticity, allowing for the exploration of new avenues of information and facilitating personal transformation.
Understanding the neuroscience of psychedelics helps us explore their potential for optimal living and highlights the importance of mindfulness and a supportive community.
Psychedelics enhance self-directed adaptive neuroplasticity, and integrating the psychedelic experience in real-life contexts supports meaningful transformation.
Deep dives
Neuroplasticity and Psychedelics
Psychedelics enhance neuroplasticity, the brain's ability to change connections and facilitate learning or adaptation. The main receptor targeted by psychedelics is the serotonin-2A receptor, which is densely located in the areas responsible for learning intergenerational or cultural knowledge. Psychedelics disrupt the usual patterns of activity in these areas, allowing for the exploration of new avenues of information. Leveraging our understanding of psychedelic neuroscience can optimize integration and support personal transformation.
Using Psychedelics for Human Flourishing
Instead of focusing on using psychedelics to treat mental illness, there is a growing focus on using them to support human flourishing. By disrupting belief systems and encoding new neural patterns, psychedelics open up new perspectives and possibilities for personal transformation. Understanding the neuroscience of psychedelics helps us explore their potential for optimal living. It highlights the importance of being intentional and conscious about our actions, cultivating mindfulness, and connecting with a supportive community.
The Rebus Model and Psychedelic Effects
The Rebus model explains how psychedelics disrupt the stability of our internal frameworks, beliefs, and assumptions. By loosening these frameworks, psychedelics allow us to explore new information and revise our beliefs in healthier ways. This can be useful in integrating the psychedelic experience. The disruption of encoded information and the exploration of new neural patterns contribute to lasting insights and behavioral changes. It is important to ground the transcendental experience of psychedelics in practical, real-life contexts to support meaningful transformation.
Leveraging Self-Directed Adaptive Neuroplasticity
Psychedelics enhance self-directed adaptive neuroplasticity, the brain's ability to change connections in a deliberate and intentional way. To leverage this, it is important to have a clear intention and focus our attention on specific changes we want to make. Journaling, mindfulness, visualization, and affirmations can be useful tools in the integration process. Being mindful of our habits, relationships, and environment is essential in consciously molding our brain and creating lasting change.
Individual-Specific Responses to Psychedelics
One of the main projects at UCSF with Robin Cart Harris involves studying individual-specific responses to psychedelics. This research aims to understand how different individuals uniquely respond to high-dose psilocybin sessions by conducting brain imaging alongside phenomenological exploration. This focus on individual variability could contribute to the personalization of psychedelic therapy in the future.
The Role of Setting in Psychedelic Effects
Another study at UCSF explores the effect of setting on psychedelic experiences. Specifically, the researchers compare the effects of psilocybin in enriched versus unenriched settings. Enriched settings feature comfortable and aesthetically pleasing environments, curated music, and other sensory elements. By examining psychological and brain measures before and after the sessions, this study aims to shed light on the influence of setting on psychedelic therapy outcomes.
Transilience is A 6 Month Facilitator Training to Learn how to support yourself and others on the path of psychedelic integration to fuel personal transformation.
Apply Psychedelic Neuroscience to Optimize Integration & Personal Development with Manesh Girn - 68
How can we learn to leverage our understanding of psychedelic neuroscience to optimize integration so that we can more effectively support ourselves and others on the path of personal transformation?
This is the central question of today's episode featuring psychedelic neuroscientist, Dr. Manesh Girn.
Manesh Girn is also a guest teacher for TRANSILIENCE where he will dive much deeper into the topics we explored here today.
