Voices of Esalen

Adam Bramlage is Founder and /CEO of Flow State Micro, a functional mushroom company and microdosing education platform. Adam has helped hundreds of people, from professional athletes to people suffering from addiction and depression, achieve results through microdosing in his private practice. This interview gives the basics of microdosing; it's a great primer for anyone just at the beginning of their journey. Adam will be hosting a webinar with psychedelic pioneer and the father of modern microdosing Dr. James Fadiman, PhD, live from Esalen on January 14th. It's called Microdosing: The Safe, Surprising and Emerging Psychedelic Frontier. To sign up go to https://www.esalen.org/learn/esalen-digital-microdosing-the-safe-surprising-and-emerging-psychedelic-frontier-011423 I highly recommend it, as you’ll see from this interview, Adam is very skilled at delivering information designed to make any microdosing experience smart, secure and safe. And Dr. James Fadiman is simply an Esalen treasure. He’s been a guest on this show before, a couple years back, in an episode called "A Psychedelic History Lesson." Dr. Fadiman was also one of the very first workshop leaders at Esalen - he helped lead a workshop in 1962 entitled "Drug Induced Mysticism" and he’s been a meaningful figure at Esalen ever since.

Keith Thompson is an author, independent journalist, talk radio host, and former U.S. Senate staff member. Keith’s work has appeared in the New York Times, Esquire and the San Francisco Chronicle. He’s the author of the new book, The UFO Paradox: The Celestial and Symbolic World of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, in which he reveals how the UFO phenomenon ultimately represents a call from the cosmos for humanity to open to greater dimensions of reality and recognize that our understanding of the universe is still far from complete. Together we talked about how he discovered Esalen in 1975 from a New Yorker article, his friendship with Esalen co-founder Michael Murphy, how he became involved in the earliest incarnations of Esalen’s Center for Theory and Research, the genius of Esalen’s "no one captures the flag" approach, the "Tuesday morning phenomenon," and the links between the paranormal and the aims of the human potential movement.

Today we have a special episode. We're bringing you something unique and powerful: a real Esalen check-in. This practice, rooted in the Gestalt therapy that evolved at Esalen over the years, has become a cornerstone of the Esalen experience, often described as a catalyst for self-awareness, connection, and personal growth. Our check-in features an incredible group of people: full-time staff members Nani Almanza, Jess Siller, Alex Shepherd, Sam Stern, and Shira Levine, as well as Faith Blakeney, a participant in the LEEP and REEP residential programs. What you'll hear is real. It is authentic and unscripted. While our participants were aware of being recorded, they spoke from the heart. We've made every effort to preserve the intimacy and rawness of the experience with only minimal editing. This episode offers a rare glimpse into the heart of what makes Esalen truly special. This is the secret sauce - the open, honest sharing that forms the foundation for personal transformation. I invite you to listen with an open heart and mind, as we explore this fundamental Esalen practice together.

Erik Davis stands tall at the intersection between mysticism, technology, and counterculture. He's one of my favorite writers, the author of many stupendous books, among them "TechGnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information," "Nomad Codes," as well as "High Weirdness" a highly entertaining book that explores 1970s counterculture and its relationship with altered states of consciousness. Erik is also an Esalen faculty member, having recently taught a course on Embodied Writing and Spiritual Practice. In this conversation, we went into his new book, "Blotter," an extended meditation on LSD blotter art and the culture that surrounds it. We also found time to veer off into a host of topics, including Terence McKenna, John C. Lilly, Dick Price, madness, Stan Grof, the spiritual emergency network, prep-school deadheads, the Village Voice, the Internet and Erik's theory that it kills subcultures, the phenomenon of what Erik calls "cannabis thinking," how he was never much of a "cannabis writer," tape machines and their place in the counterculture, the Merry Pranksters, Phillip K. Dick, Bay Area Poster art, the DEA and its own little zine - and much more. Erik is one of the cofounders of the Berkeley Alembic - a nonprofit bodymind center committed to experiments in transformation. https://berkeleyalembic.org/ You can also find his collected works at Techgnosis: https://techgnosis.com/

Dr. Rick Hanson is a psychologist, best-selling author, and the co-founder of the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom. The subtitle of one of his books, Budha’s Brain is "The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love and Wisdom," - and that speaks volumes about Rick’s purpose as a clinician and teacher: to show clients effective ways to light up the brain circuits that relieve worry and stress, in order to promote positive relationships and inner peace. Recently, he’s developed the online course Positive Neuroplasticity Training to teach general methods of self-directed brain change. He is a wise teacher and a great resource at this time. Visit his site www.rickhanson.net, and check out the many free resources available there.

Dr. Mellody Hayes is an evidence-based and spiritually-centered medical expert in the emerging clinical science of Psychedelic Medicine. Dr. Hayes is a graduate of Harvard and UCSF medical school and is an anesthesiologist, leader, public speaker and founding member of Decriminalize Nature. She’s also the founder of a Bay Area clinic that offers psychedelic ketamine therapy. Dr. Hayes is the creator of How We Heal, an online community of healers and leaders committed to creating belonging, safety, and health for all people, particularly those from historically marginalized communities. We discussed the mechanics and science of ketamine-based psychedelic therapy, the need for diversity within the psychedelic community, her optimism for the practice of psychedelic medicine in creating cultural change and cultural healing within contemporary society, and the healing power of story. To learn more about Dr. Hayes's work, please visit www.drmellody.com and howweheal.net.

Dr. Shauna Shapiro is a clinical psychologist, professor, and best-selling author, most recently of the book Good Morning, I Love You: Mindfulness and Self-Compassion Practices to Rewire Your Brain for Calm, Clarity, and Joy. We wanted to hear Shauna's perspective this April, 2020, amidst the global pandemic of the Coronavirus, in hopes that she could offer both perspective and actionable practices to help all of us cope, and achieve some calm and clarity.

Encore : Dr. Han Ren is a practitioner of decolonial mental health: she offers liberation-oriented, anti-oppressive, culturally informed therapy, and practices from a justice-oriented, systems-informed framework. Some of her specialties include Asian-American mental health, anxiety, perfectionism, high achievers, children of immigrants/third culture kids, anti-racism, and parenting. Dr. Ren is also a force to be reckoned with on TikTok, amassing a large following on a platform she uses in an attempt to make therapy accessible and applicable to our everyday lives. Together we talked about how white supremacy can be internalized, what it looks like when you center BIPOC mental health in treatment, how one decolonizes language, the conceptual shift from a dyadic trauma perspective to a more collective, societal notion of trauma, and her struggles as a recovering perfectionist. https://www.drhanren.com

Dr. Biko Gray is an Assistant Professor of Religion at Syracuse University whose work and research focuses primarily on the connection between race, subjectivity, religion, and embodiment. Dr. Gray is currently working on a book that explores how contemporary racial justice movements, like Black Lives Matter, demonstrate new ways of theorizing the connection between embodiment, religion, and subjectivity. Together we discussed white guilt, anti-Black violence, how corporations co-opt diversity and anti-racism, what an equitable Esalen may look like, how scholarships function, tokenism, Hegel, subjectivity, and much more. He's amazing, and this episode is a must-listen.

Today our episode centers on a talk given at Esalen in 1985 by Dr. Andrew Weil. Dr. Weil is a prominent figure and a trailblazer in the field of integrative medicine, which combines conventional medical practices with alternative and complementary therapies such as herbal medicine, acupuncture, and mind-body techniques. (All of this of course used to be rather fringe; Esalen in the 1980’s, was a bit fringe, too. Nowadays, things like acupuncture and herbal medicine raise nary an eyebrow, and Esalen, to be honest, is pretty darn mainstream too.) On this date in 1985, Dr. Weil speaks about various drugs and psychedelics, as well as the cultural attitudes attached to them. Weil to this point had had a curious relationship to psychedelics: in the early 1960s, while a student at Harvard, he observed the infamous Harvard Psilocybin experiments conducted by Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert, and then reported on them in the Harvard Crimson, ultimately leading to the academic downfall and subsequent dismissal of Leary and Alpert. Later in his life, Weil would reconnect with Alpert, who had by then assumed the moniker of Ram Das, and he would finally taste the forbidden fruit, and henceforth become an advocate of psychedelics. Weil speaks a great deal during this talk about the drug MDMA, otherwise known as Ecstasy, which on June 1st of that very year was made illegal and classified as a Schedule 1 substance. MDMA had been widely used as a therapy drug for nearly 15 years since its rediscovery in the 1970s by chemist Sasha Shulgin, but in the early 1980s, it also became quite popular in dance subcultures, particularly in the gay community, and most notably in Dallas, Texas. Of course, in the mid 1980’s, Ronald Reagan’s war on drugs was raging, and it provided the perfect storm for MDMA to be made unlawful. So given this context, it’s both interesting and informative to hear Weil, the former psychedelic whistleblower turned hippie physician, speak at length and quite intelligently about MDMA. He also addresses a host of other topics, including whether or not marijuana causes brain damage, peyote, how DEA scheduling works, the so-called new physics , how belief interacts with the physical mechanisms of the body, hypnotherapy, fire-walking, coffee, chocolate, and more. It's a fun episode. By the way . . . Esalen Institute is a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing human potential and promoting positive social change. Your support helps us continue to offer transformative programs and retreats that promote personal growth and collective wellbeing. To learn more about Esalen and how you can support our mission, visit our website at esalen.org.