As Richards (2014) points out, the mainstreaming of psychedelics has opened the door for scientific researchers to explore and measure the mystical and ineffable. This will offer transpersonal psychology peer-reviewed empirical research studies to buoy up our own studies. Drugs offer reliability in a way...
I am familiar with solitude and silence. I cultivate it. One of my practices is that I get up every morning between 4-5 so that I can be alone for several hours before my husband or the rest of the world wake up. The silence...
The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) has published a psychedelic therapy model of a nine-month course of psychotherapy interspersed with three psychedelic sessions, usually MDMA or psilocybin. This model (Mitthoefer et al., 2014) allows the therapist to assess firstly for the stability of the...
It seems from the research that transpersonal experiences have been seen as healing for millennium, perhaps since the beginning of time, in all cultures except the rational, patriarchal Western ones. Transpersonal experiences were treated with great awe and respect, and the cultures that formed around...
Transpersonal experiences may be held as frightening, painful, overwhelming, or shattering to some people, and thus affect their lives in negative ways. Anyone who naively believes “there is no such thing as a bad trip” has never been on a locked psychiatric ward observing people...
Transpersonal sexual experiences are an overlooked phenomena (Woodward et al., 2009). They can happen to people by surprise (Wade, 2015) and to people with no spiritual practice or awareness, as well as to people who consciously cultivate such experiences (Effers, 2009). In their overview of...
Ancient yoga and meditative practices in Hinduism were technologies designed to induce transpersonal experiences. A practitioner was expected to meditate and perform exercises daily for years in order to be able to enter these states at will. However, as pointed out by Feuerstein (1989)Through intense...
Psychedelic plants and medicines have been part of the human experience for thousands, if not tens of thousands of years (Walsh & Grob, 2015). As noted in the section on Indigenous cultures above, these substances were used for healing purposes. Walsh and Grob also state...
Tibetan spirituality developed techniques for inducing altered states and using them to improve health, encourage long-life, and evolve spiritually; the top three purposes according to Jacoby (2015). These techniques included mantras, ritual, dance, yantras, and mudras (Bernbaum, 1974) as well as sexual practices (Allione, 2000).Tibetan...
According to Barratt (2013, p. 13), “Every known Indigenous culture has shamanic practitioners.” His definition of shamanism is “a set of methodologies involving the use of altered states of consciousness for healing and spiritual and emotional growth.” Shamans have been found around the globe: North...
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