UNVEILED: exploring psychedelics and spirituality

Season 2 Episode 2 - Dave‘s Story

In our second podcast of season 2, we unveil Dave's journey from traditional to psychedelic therapist.

Unveiled Season 2 - Restarting the Podcast

Peg and I have been on hiatus since February.  I think we now have a much clearer vision for Unveiled.  We will invite different guests who interest us to talk about whatever is engaging them at this time and then "Unveil" the energies, the creative motivation and the events that have brought them to this place.  As well, we hope that Unveiled can be a catalyst towards the formation of a spiritual community.  In this episode, Peg is "unveiled"

neXus 2.0

On this podcast Dave and Peg discuss the growing number of people who identify as “Spiritual but not Religious”.  These folks are looking for a place to connect and share their lives.  Could Nexus 2.0 fill that gap and help people integrate the deep healing that is happening with plant medicines?   

Introduction to Psychedelics - Part 2

In this second episode of our series on psychedelics we feature part of an interview with Francoise Bourzat. She is the author of Consciousness Medicine: Indigenous Wisdom, Entheogens, and Expanded States of Consciousness for Healing and Growth. 
Trained both as a Shaman in Mexico and as a therapist working with the researchers at UCLA, Francoise is one of the most experienced guides in the world. 

Introduction to Psychedelics - Part3

In our third episode in the series on psychedelics we feature an interview with Dr. Bill Richards who is one of the lead researchers at Johns Hopkins university leading the team doing Psychedelic clinical trials for the past 20 years. He also developed the official playlist used for these trips.  We explore concepts of spirituality and how plants have been used for thousands of years to alter consciousness and provide wisdom and healing. 

Introduction to Psychedelics

After a few months break, we're back to talk about a fairly significant shift in our lives that has taken place over the past few years.  About 4 years ago, we began to read about the use of psychedelics to treat some serious mental health issues like PTSD and the anxiety associated with having to face a potentially life-threatening disease.  Then one of our very own community had to walk this challenging path and psychedelics were instrumental in her emotional recovery.  We begin to tell Laurie's story as a way to introduce this very exciting and complex topic.

The Songs of neXus: Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas

In 2004, a number of us formed a faith community called neXus.  We were trying to reformulate, deconstruct and critically examine our Christian/Evangelical spirituality.  We had a good run, eventually ceasing formal services in 2017.  During that time, a number of songs came to be very important to me and Peg...we thought we would take a look at a few of these.

We decided to start with Brandon Flowers' (The Killers) anthem Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas.  We actually planned for this to be a 20 minute conversation and it morphed into an hour long experience for the both of us.  As during our first encounter with this anthem, we were struck with the idea of coming to terms with our own mortality, and therein finding, among other things, life.

I hope you enjoy.

 

Dave

Understanding IFS - Part 2

Hi, Peg and I continue our conversation about why we consider Internal Family Systems (IFS) as one of the best models out there for working "inside".  Recorded ala social distancing from Peg's garage (read: NOT a recording studio), we had a very personal talk about how the IFS framework has helped each of us live out our values more consistently...hope you enjoy.

 

Dave

Internal Family Systems - A model for life and the Kingdom of God

In our podcast today Peg and I explore a model of therapy that I learned back in the 90s - I still see it as the most useful model for living a congruent and happy life.  As well, Peg gives us an update on Run4Water's efforts to help with the Covid crisis in Ethiopia.

 

A Re-Embracing of Christian Symbols

Peg and I have been on our own personal spiritual journey since neXus stopped meeting a few years ago.  One of the emerging new developments have been a re-examination and a re-embracing of our Christianity.  While I have happily shed some of the more hurtful elements of my own Christianity, I am finding that concepts like "The Kingdom of God" are so rich with meaning for my life today...and they work for me because they contain language and symbols that have personal meaning for me.  In this episode, we talk about this process within us and how it looks in our life today.

We are also trying to learn a format for this podcast...do we want to be unstructured and just riff on topics as they arise, do we want to be heavily themed and do we want to include interviews with other people, exploring their lives and experiences.  So, please give us feedback on how you think we are doing.

Dave