Evolving from my 2015 Honours thesis examining the overlaps, intersections and parallels between the philosophy of Deep Ecology and the Ayahuasca experience, this presentation explores the concept of ‘The ecological Self’ as a key aspect of entheogenic awakening. The ecological Self is a concept developed by Deep Ecologists such as Freya Mathews, Arne Naess, ...

  Serotonergic (or “classic”) psychedelics have struck many researchers as raising significant philosophical questions that, until recently, were largely unexplored by academic philosophers. In this talk, based on collaborative work with Jaipreet Mattu (University of Western Ontario), I will give an overview of four emerging lines of research at the intersection of academic philosophy and ...

  I have worked for worldwide rainforests since 1979. Although many of our efforts succeeded, for every forest saved 100 have disappeared. Clearly, you can’t save the planet one forest at a time. One green Earth or a bowl of dust.  Without a profound change of consciousness, we can kiss the forests goodbye, the ones ...

  The scent of the prized Périgord truffle is somewhere 'between sex and death', according to one Australian forager. This fungus vies with Iranian caviar as one of the most expensive foods in the world. Australia’s costly culinary predilections have driven a significant European truffle-growing industry since the 1990s. Throughout history, fungi have confounded with ...

In this workshop will show a short film about cannabis cultivation at our licensed and certified organic (BioGro) cannabis farm in Aotearoa. Followed by a deep discussion of cannabis agronomy, techniques, inputs, and crop management with a Q&A about cannabis, legal access to cannabis commodities, and the current status of licensing and cultivation laws. -----------------------------------------------

  This talk explores VR scenarios designed to promote movement through phases of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, and discusses a novel protocol that utilizes unique features of VR as the moderator of the psychedelic journey. The protocol was developed by Enosis Therapeutics- focussed on combining new world technology with old-world wisdom. The unique therapeutic approach of treatment ...

  Prior to MDMA being banned internationally in 1987, it was showing promise as a pharmacological adjunct to psychotherapy. In the past decade, there has been significant global growth in clinical trials of MDMA that have shown MDMA-assisted psychotherapy can be effective in treating treatment-resistant posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), alcohol use disorder, and social anxiety ...

  Psychedelics have moved to the forefront of global mainstream consciousness and research continues to show their efficacy and promise in treating trauma, depression, anxiety and a variety of other conditions. However, despite this focus and excitement, psychedelic research – and the movement more broadly - has a long history of excluding marginalised communities, and ...

  As we go through rites of passage, initiations, plant medicine inductions, we are strengthening our capacity and crafting the vessel of our being. In this way we are capable of holding finer and finer nectar. Vision, wisdom, resilience, power, all has a home in which to reside. Every culture has somewhere in its lineage ...

Following on from my previous EGA presentation on pituri and tobacco substitutes used by Aboriginal Australians, we revisit the topic from another angle by looking at plants used by non-indigenous Australians as tobacco substitutes. The tobacco of the newcomers was mostly imported in the early years of colonisation, and availability could be patchy. Curious townsfolk, ...