Working as healer and guide in the emerging psychedelic landscape
This week's show is with Frederica Helmiere. Frederica Helmiere is a complexity enthusiast and an aficionado of transformational learning experiences. Frederica currently serves as Director of the Synthesis Institute's Psychedelic Practitioner Training program.
Prior to this, she served as Director of Education at Spiritual Directors International, designing online learning experiences for advanced spiritual professionals. In the past she has served as a Peace Corps volunteer, a global interfaith peacebuilder, a bike mechanic, log cabin builder, and faculty at the University of Washington and Seattle University.
Fascinated by the ways that consciousness, worldviews and discourses change and expand, she has spent the past twenty years exploring the tools available to respond to civilizational crises, especially the modern West's loss of the sacred.
Frederica holds masters degrees from Yale Divinity School and the Yale School of the Environment, and a BA from Dartmouth College in Religion & Environmental studies. She lives in Seattle with her husband and daughters.
In this conversation, Frederica and I explored education and training for psychedelic practitioners in the emerging psychedelic landscape, the different ways we can learn a craft, the notion of ‘calling’, and the readiness to practice.
We’d love to know what YOU think about this week's show. Let’s carry on the conversation… please leave a comment below or share in our fb group.
What you’ll learn from this episode:
I love what Frederica spoke about in terms of the different ways of knowing: somatic/embodied, cognitive, sacred and relational. We so heavily prize cognitive knowing in the modern culture and yet it clearly is only one way, not the only way.
The practices of healing and guiding are thousands of years old, and whilst there very much can be a place for formal training and accreditation, lived experience over many years is something that also has deep value - we can consciously bring both together
Whilst we can think that all we need is a certificate of accreditation, I love what Frederica said about the gnosis of readiness to serve can come directly from Spirit or from our community recognising that we have a much-needed skill to offer.
Resources and stuff that we spoke about:
Thank you for listening!
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Thank you!
Lian & Jonathan