The New Age of Psychedelic Retreats - panel discussion and live Q&A

This ‘psychedelic renaissance’ we are all living through is bringing with it exciting possibilities for how we mould and structure the psychedelic experience in a way that brings the therapeutic side of these drugs to a mainstream audience. As their healing benefits become more widely known, the idea of psychedelics becoming accessible to the masses feels closer to reality than ever before, but how we get to that place is a process heaped in responsibility.

One of the growing trends in this movement is psychedelic retreats, where members of the public can embark on a therapeutic healing journey in a safe, trusted setting. These centres offer you and I the opportunity to access a holistic psychedelic experience rooted in wellness and personal growth, with trained guides and therapists, delivered within a structure and environment that opens the door to deeper healing. 

With many retreats aiming to draw upon learnings from clinical trials using psychedelics, how might someone’s experience at one of these centres differ from that in a trial setting? What advantages and disadvantages do we need to consider? How can we ensure that recent studies and the continued evolution of knowledge in this field be fed into the new psychedelic retreat experience for members of the public to benefit from safely?

For this discussion, we welcome a panel of expert speakers who are directly involved in the creation and running of psychedelic retreats. They will tell us about the work they are doing to make this new form of therapy accessible to everyday people, as the retreat environment looks set to become a staple method of obtaining psychedelic therapy in the future.

Daan Keiman

Daan holds an MA in Spiritual Care and has years of professional experience working in mental health and addiction care, and (psychedelic) drug harm reduction work. He is one of the Lead Facilitators and the Director of Ethics and Advocacy at the Synthesis Institute, where he has guided hundreds of people through psychedelic experiences. He is a co-founder of the Guild of Guides Netherlands, an organization that seeks to professionalize professional sitting services. For the last three years, he has been working on an interfaith model for Psychedelic Chaplaincy, addressing the somatic, moral and relational dimensions of psychedelic experiences.

Adam Aronovich 

Adam is a doctoral candidate at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili in Spain, focusing on Medical Anthropology and Cultural Psychiatry. He is an active member of the Medical Anthropology Research Center (MARC) and part of the Ayahuasca Community Committee at the Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines. In the last four years he has conducted extensive fieldwork in the Peruvian Amazon, where he has been doing qualitative research in collaboration with ICEERS, the Beckley Foundation, and, more recently, the Centre for Psychedelic Studies at Imperial College. Beyond his work conducting and coordinating research, Adam facilitated workshops in the Peruvian Amazon and he regularly facilitates workshops in Mexico. He is also a process facilitator and integration support coach in private practice. 

Beatrix Bliss

Biz Bliss is co-founder and co-director at Alalaho. Guided by a desire to affect positive social change, she’s worked in a range of settings and in the process found that supporting people through transformational experiences is where her skills and passion lie. Her foundation in facilitation comes from participating in, and working on courses worldwide, including community-building, process-work, family constellations, sensuality & sexuality training, coaching and bodywork amongst others, but most of all her learning comes from navigating the seas of life. Biz loves ‘sitting in the unknown’ with participants, guided by an intuitive voice and trust in the process that unravels. She believes the art of working with powerful medicines like truffles is to really listen and act in service to these plants, with reverence and respect, with both feet firmly on the ground. This way of working derives from her own practice with the medicines that have supported her through life’s spectrum of light and dark, grief and joy and everything in between.

A recording of this panel will be sent out within 1 week of the event.

If you would like to attend this event but are unable to afford the ticket price, please do get in touch with us directly at mags@psychedelicsociety.org.uk. At the Psychedelic Society, we believe that everyone should be able to access our events regardless of employment or health circumstances, so we will do our best to accommodate where we can.

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