Wednesday, January 18th, 2023
12:00-1:30pm PST | 1:00-2:30pm MST | 3:00-4:30pm EST
This event is FREE. Register for this event here.
This event is a partnership between Chacruna and The Center for Psychedelic Studies at Naropa University.
Colorado recently made history within the psychedelic realm with the passing of Proposition 122. This proposition creates a natural medicine services program for the supervised administration of various psychedelics including psilocybin, mescaline (excluding peyote) and others, and creates a framework for regulating the growth, distribution, and sale of such substances to permitted entities. While this has been an incredibly groundbreaking accomplishment, we are still left with many questions in regards to accessibility, education, community, risks, integration, potential monopolization and qualifications to administer and distribute these psychedelics. What do community model healing centers look like and how do we prepare existing psychedelic communities to handle the growing flow of interest in a safe way for community leadership, community members, and participants, to make sure that people are educated on their rights and responsibilities? What markers of success should determine how and when the NMHA should expand to include more natural medicines? Who should be permitted to facilitate psychedelic therapy and who should be excluded? Join us in the conversation to discuss these questions and more, with speakers Veronica Lightning Horse Perez, who is a NLP practitioner and certified Time Line Therapist, Joshua Kappel, who is is a founding board member of the International Cannabis Bar Association, Bia Labate, who is executive director of Chacruna Institute, Nicholas Powers, who is a poet, journalist and Associate Professor of Literature, Jamie Beachy, who serves as Director of Education for Naropa’s Center for Psychedelic Studies, and Emily Boeschenstein, who is a psychedelic therapist and art therapist.
Dr. Beatriz Caiuby Labate (Bia Labate) is a queer Brazilian anthropologist based in San Francisco. She has a Ph.D. in social anthropology from the University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil. Her main areas of interest are the study of plant medicines, drug policy, shamanism, ritual, religion, and social justice. She is Executive Director of the Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines and serves as Public Education and Culture Specialist at the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). She is also Adjunct Faculty at the East-West Psychology Program at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) and Visiting Scholar at Naropa University’s Center for Psychedelic Studies. Additionally, she is Diversity and Inclusion Chair at Veterans of War, member of the Oregon Psilocybin Advisory Board’s Research Subcommittee, and Advisor at the Synthesis Institute and at InnerTrek. Dr. Labate is a co-founder of the Interdisciplinary Group for Psychoactive Studies (NEIP) in Brazil and editor of its site since. She is author, co-author, and co-editor of twenty-five books, two special-edition journals, and several peer-reviewed articles (https://bialabate.net).
Nicholas Powers is the author of The Ground Below Zero: Burning Man to 9/11, New Orleans to Darfur, Haiti to Occupy Wall Street, a hybrid narrative of journalism and memoir published by Upset Press in 2014. He writes on race and psychedelics for DoubleBlind, Chacruna, Lucid News and TRUTHOUT & has been interviewed for Psychedelics Today. Brooklyn Psychedelic Society developed his three-part course Altered States in America and his talk Psychedelic Socialism. His 2017 Horizon’s talk “Black Masks, Rainbow Bodies” was published in the Spring 2018 MAPS newsletter. He earned a Ph.D in Literature from the CUNY Graduate Center in 2007 and has been writing on psychedelics since 2008. The next project is a book on trauma and psychedelics.
Emily Boeschenstein, MA, grew up a young black female, in the tumultuous world of Grand Junction, CO. This landscape provided access for understanding trauma at an early age and a desire to find the key to deep healing. Emily’s 22 year career in teaching preschool and special education fueled this desire even more. Gaining her masters degree in art therapy in 2016 and later certifications in Trauma Dynamics, 2019, The Center for Medicinal Mindfulness Psychedelic Sitters School, 2021, and MAPS MDMA training 2022, has allowed the door to open and the healing mechanisms to blossom within her. Medicine work was blueprinted in her soul and it has become a deeply fulfilling, humbling, life path to walk amidst the hot coals of trauma with her clients.
Veronica Lightning Horse Perez is Co/chief proponent of the Natural Medicine Healing Alliance of 2022 in Colorado. She believes awareness, equity and harm reduction in the psychedelic realm is paramount to our relationships with each other, our ability to heal individually and as a community and our shared relationship with our very wounded Mother Earth. She has served in a healing capacity most of her life but only fully stepped into that role for the past decade and is now Certified in 8 different healing modalities. She is called a Medicine Person. She is also an entrepreneur, wife, mother, sister, daughter, friend, activist and volunteer. Her mission is to serve in any capacity she is called to, in order to alleviate suffering and help people through their trauma back into their strength and power. She is of mixed Indigenous ancestry, and speaks for herself as a woman of color, not for Indigenous people or any BIPOC community.
Jamie Beachy PhD, MDiv, Assistant Faculty and Director of Education for Naropa’s Center for Psychedelic Studies, brings two decades of experience in professional chaplaincy, palliative care, spiritual care education (ACPE), and ethics consultation to her teaching. She currently serves as a therapist with the MAPS MDMA-assisted therapy phase III study in Boulder and is trained as a MAPS MDMA-AT supervisor/consultant. Jamie holds a deep interest in earth-based approaches to end of life care and advocates for the role of chaplaincy in psychedelic-assisted therapy.
Joshua Kappel is a founding partner of Vicente Sederberg with a practice devoted to helping entrepreneurs and like-minded professionals build human-centric and regenerative companies in the cannabis and psychedelic communities. Joshua also has a passion for helping advocates draft legislation and build sustaining vehicles that will forever influence these emerging industries.
Recently, Mr. Kappel was a co-author and chair of the campaign committee for Colorado’s Proposition 122, which was the first successful state ballot measure to create access to natural psychedelic healing through both a state-regulated model and a decentralized community healing model. Joshua was also a drafter of Denver’s psilocybin decriminalization initiative and has assisted in drafting cannabis and psychedelic measures across the country for over 12 years.
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