Psychedelics Today
Psychedelics Today
Recent Episodes
In this episode, Michael Sapiro joins Kyle Buller to explore truth, healing, and psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy through the lens of his new book, Truth Medicine. A clinical psychologist, ordained Zen Buddhist monk, retreat leader, and fellow at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, he blends Buddhist psychology, trauma work, and consciousness studies. The discussion focuses on how people discover and live their truth, and why that truth becomes the core medicine in healing.
Early in the Podcast with Michael Sapiro
Michael describes how years of clinical work and retreat facilitation shaped his understanding of healing. Real transformation happens when people speak truths they have never allowed themselves to say out loud. These truths often relate to childhood experiences, identity, and how people learned to stay safe.
Key early themes include insight into:
• Truth as a physical and emotional "ring" in the body • Personas formed in childhood to avoid rejection • Depression and anxiety caused by living from those personas
The conversation explores how frightening it can be to challenge old roles and family narratives, yet how necessary it is for authentic healing.
Core Insights from Michael Sapiro
Michael outlines his model of preparation, psychedelic sessions, and integration, especially in ketamine-assisted psychotherapy. Preparation often includes discovering what he calls the "heart of the hurt" and building trust for the internal process.
Core insights include:
• Tracing patterns back to their origins in early experience • Using guided imagery, breathwork, and somatic awareness to practice surrender • Understanding healing as applying love to wounded parts • Understanding growth as becoming who you would be without old limits
Additional points:
• Medicine sessions create real practice in letting go • Defenses should be engaged with, not fought • Sensations in the body offer essential guidance
Later Discussion and Takeaways with Michael Sapiro
Michael compares one-on-one psychotherapy with retreat work. In group settings he holds space and supports safety, while in individual sessions he uses a blend of silence and active therapeutic guidance.
He also shares personal truth work, including embracing his own "bigness," understanding ethics as part of spirituality, and learning to endure anxiety without falling into shame. Listeners gain practical guidance for nurturing wounded parts, developing the ability to endure challenging states, and allowing their strengths to emerge.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Michael Sapiro? Michael Sapiro is a clinical psychologist, ordained Zen Buddhist monk, psychedelic psychotherapist, retreat leader, and research fellow at the Institute of Noetic Sciences.
What is the main idea of Truth Medicine by Michael Sapiro? Truth Medicine teaches that discovering and living one's personal truth is the core of healing, with psychedelics serving as a tool that helps reveal and embody that truth.
How does Michael Sapiro use ketamine in therapy? He uses ketamine within a structured model involving preparation, supportive dosing sessions, and integration focused on compassion, endurance, and meaningful change.
Does he only work in group settings? No. He leads retreats, but much of his work is individual psychedelic psychotherapy focused on trauma, personal truth, and growth.
What can clinicians learn from his approach? Clinicians can learn how to balance guided intervention with open space, work directly with defenses, and support healing as both love and action.
Closing Thoughts
This conversation with Michael Sapiro offers a grounded, practical view of how truth, compassion, and psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy can support real change in the current psychedelic resurgence. By blending body awareness, ethical clarity, and personal growth, this episode provides useful guidance for therapists, guides, and seekers who want to bring more truth medicine into their lives and communities.
Holotropic Breathwork sits at the center of this wide ranging conversation between Psychedelics Today co-founders Joe Moore and Kyle Buller. Drawing from decades of personal practice and assorted types of breathwork facilitation, they explore how breathwork methods from the Grof lineage including Dreamshadow Breathwork can prepare people for psychedelic work, support difficult journeys, and deepen integration over time. Kyle shares how his near death experience, somatic training, and breathwork facilitation shaped this new course on breathwork foundations, while Joe reflects on how reading Dr Stanislav Grof and years of experience in Holotropic Breathwork changed how he approaches psychedelics.
Early Themes: Roots, Lineages, and First EncountersThe episode opens with how each of them first found breathwork. Joe discovered Grof's writing in college, then traveled to Dreamshadow workshops long before he worked seriously with psychedelics. Kyle came to Holotropic style breathwork while studying transpersonal psychology at Burlington College, arriving as a skeptic who assumed people were exaggerating until his first session opened into a full psychedelic level process.
They trace the roots of breathwork in modern psychology back to Wilhelm Reich, character armor, and early somatic approaches, then follow that thread into Grof's work and later branches. Joe and Kyle map out the different schools that emerged, including Grof Transpersonal Training, Grof Legacy Training, and Dreamshadow, and explain why the term "breathwork" has become a huge umbrella that covers everything from Wim Hof to short online sessions that are not actually Holotropic Breathwork.
Core Insights: Breath, Nervous System, and Working the EdgesIn the middle of the episode they move into what this new foundations course actually covers and why it matters now. Rather than promising quick fixes, Kyle frames breath as a flexible tool for:
- Preparation before psychedelic sessions
- Navigation during intense or destabilizing moments
- Integration and nervous system support afterward
They discuss window of tolerance, fight flight freeze responses, and how fast, deep breathing can open powerful experiences but also risk overwhelm if there is no somatic literacy. Kyle shares a vivid story from a ketamine training where his near death trauma was reactivated and how simple breath awareness, slow belly breathing, and body based skills kept him from panicking or fleeing.
Throughout, they return to a key point: Holotropic Breathwork and related practices can restore agency. The breather chooses when to intensify, when to slow down, and how far to go, which can be deeply reparative for people whose trauma involved a loss of control.
Later Discussion and Takeaways: Holotropic Breathwork as Foundation, Not ShortcutLater in the conversation, Joe and Kyle caution against "keeping up with the Joneses" in psychedelic culture. They talk about people chasing ever bigger doses, accruing trauma, and then needing years of therapy to sort it out. Breathwork, including Holotropic Breathwork in a well held group setting, is offered as a slower, more grounded way to explore non ordinary states while building skills that transfer into medicine work.
They outline the core components of Grof lineage breathwork: intensified breathing, evocative music, focused body support, expressive art, and group sharing in a safe container. Joe highlights how group process, mandala drawing, and simply being witnessed can be as healing as the inner journey itself. They also flag practical next steps: Kyle's self paced breathwork foundations course at the Psychedelic Education Center, upcoming live online sessions, and in person weekend workshops in places like Breckenridge.
Frequently Asked QuestionsWhat is Holotropic Breathwork? Holotropic Breathwork is a structured group process developed by Stan and Christina Grof that uses accelerated breathing, evocative music, supportive bodywork, art, and integration sharing to access non ordinary states of consciousness without substances.
Is Holotropic Breathwork as intense as psychedelics? For some people, yes. Joe and Kyle both describe Holotropic Breathwork sessions that matched the depth of powerful LSD or ayahuasca journeys, while also noting that some sessions are quiet, restful, and focused on simple nervous system regulation.
Can I do Holotropic Breathwork alone at home? They strongly suggest caution. Gentle breath practices can be explored solo, but Holotropic Breathwork as taught in the Grof lineages is designed for a trained facilitation team and a group container to reduce risk and support intense emotional or somatic processes.
How does Holotropic Breathwork help with psychedelic preparation and integration? Breathwork helps people learn their own nervous system, practice staying with difficult material, and build trust in inner process. These skills often translate into more resilience, flexibility, and agency before, during, and after psychedelic sessions.
Is Holotropic Breathwork backed by research? Research on breathwork is growing, especially around heart rate variability, stress, and subjective mystical type experiences. Joe and Kyle emphasize that early studies suggest overlaps with psychedelic states, but they avoid framing Holotropic Breathwork as a cure and instead present it as a powerful tool within a broader healing path.
In a culture that often treats psychedelics like quick fixes, this episode makes the case for slow foundations, embodied practice, and honest respect for the risks. By placing Holotropic Breathwork and the other Grof lineage breathwork practices inside a larger conversation about trauma, agency, and community, Joe and Kyle offer a grounded path for anyone who wants to explore non ordinary states in a safer, more skillful way.
Learn more about breathwork in the Foundations class here.
In this episode, Joe Moore sits down with Dr. Jason Konner, a longtime oncologist who recently left his full-time clinical role at Memorial Sloan Kettering to devote himself to the emerging intersection of cancer care and psychedelics.
Dr Konner shares how, after more than two decades treating people, he hit a wall. The accumulated grief, constant exposure to death, and intensity of oncology left him deeply burned out, though he didn't have that language for it at the time. A chance moment in a yoga class, overhearing someone say "ayahuasca retreat" just before he was scheduled for hernia surgery, became the turning point. Within a week, he was in the jungle.
That first week with ayahuasca, followed later by work with mushrooms, "absolutely transformed" his life. His fear of death lifted. The burnout he hadn't even recognized in himself was both revealed and relieved. When he returned to his practice, Konner describes feeling like he suddenly had a "superpower": he could stay present, connected, and compassionate with patients facing advanced disease without collapsing under the emotional weight.
He and Joe explore what this third path looks like: not the classic binary between either hardening and distancing as self-protection, or staying open-hearted and getting shattered. Instead, psychedelics helped him hold deep relationship with patients and families while maintaining inner stability and meaning. This opened space for authentic conversations about spirituality, fear, grief, and what it means to live with (or die from) cancer.
From there, Dr Konner zooms out to critique the broader oncology system:
- The lack of training and support for oncologists around their own emotional and existential load,
- How little space there is for relational work even though it's central to healing,
- Why many support groups and standard psychiatric approaches (like reflexively prescribing SSRIs) often miss the mark for people dealing with cancer,
- How caregivers, partners, family members, and others are deeply affected but rarely truly supported.
Joe and Jason then dig into psychedelics and oncology as a frontier: easing existential distress in patients with terminal cancer, the neglected suffering of caregivers, the potential role of psychedelics in helping people relate differently to death, and what it might mean for ICU use, aggressive end-of-life interventions, and overall healthcare costs if more people could make decisions from a place of peace rather than terror.
Dr Konner also shares a striking ovarian cancer case that hinted at powerful immune changes after shamanic work, and why he believes we need new research paradigms that can honor the integrity of retreat and ceremonial settings while still learning from them.
Finally, he talks about his early-stage project, Psychedelic Oncology, and his hope that the first wave of change starts with clinicians themselves becoming more psychedelic-literate—and, where appropriate, doing their own inner work—so better options can eventually reach the people who need them most.
Clinical psychologist Dr. Genesee Herzberg joins Kyle to reflect on two decades in trauma work and 15 years inside the psychedelic ecosystem—from early MAPS conferences to running Sage Integrative Health. She traces how personal psychedelic experiences set her on a path of service, research at CIIS on MDMA-assisted therapy, and hands-on roles with MAPS: Zendo Project harm reduction, adherence rating, and ultimately serving as an MDMA therapist in clinical trials. Today she leads Sage, an integrative clinic (psychotherapy, psychiatry, bodywork, acupuncture, and functional nutrition) focused on ketamine-assisted therapy while preparing for MDMA's eventual approval. She also co-founded a sliding-scale KAP nonprofit (now Alchemy Community Therapy Center), co-edited Integral Psychedelic Therapy, and is helping to launch the International Alliance of MDMA Practitioners.
In this episode- From counterculture to mainstream: What's been gained—and lost—as psychedelics scaled.
- Accessibility vs. corporatization: Why cutting corners (prep/integration, therapeutic time) undermines outcomes and safety.
- "Myth of the magic pill": Psychedelics can catalyze change, but healing is an ongoing process anchored by integration.
- What good care looks like: Preparation → medicine sessions → robust integration, individualized cadence, and adding bodywork and functional medicine to address gut-brain links, mineral status, sleep, and somatic tension.
- Ketamine realities: Differences between psycholytic (talk-forward) and psychedelic (eyes-closed, inner-directed) dosing; why some need multiple sessions to build relationship with the medicine; risks of mail-order models (high dosing, poor screening/support), daily prescribing, addiction potential, cystitis, and safety concerns.
- Sitting, not guiding: The therapist's task is to follow the client's process; intervene sparingly and with consent—especially in trauma work where attuned co-regulation is essential.
- Multiple access pathways: Support for regulated clinical care and community, peer, and ceremonial models—paired with education and harm reduction (Zendo's SIT peer training and new crisis-responder training).
- The MDMA pause: Initial devastation at the FDA decision gave way to seeing benefits: time to strengthen ethics, accountability, training standards, and to temper hype-driven investment.
- Pace and ethics: Lessons from burnout; moving at the speed of trust; exploring "psychedelic business models" (stakeholder focus, distributed decision-making, employee ownership, public benefit structures).
- Sage Integrative Health
- Alchemy Community Therapy Center (sliding-scale KAP)
- International Alliance of MDMA Practitioners
- Integral Psychedelic Therapy (edited by Genesee Herzberg, Jason Butler, Richard Miller)
Takeaway: Thoughtful preparation, right-sized dosing, and committed integration—held within ethical, community-minded systems—turn powerful experiences into durable change.