It has been a busy summer filled with planning and hosting two foundational trainings and the launch of our End of Life/ Existential Distress KAP Training. This past weekend, during our August Foundational KAP Training, we were gifted by a spectacular display of the Perseids. These meteor showers were apropos for our four days together exploring the mystery, each inducing an embodied sense of awe and wholeness. A felt sense of aliveness, a reminder of the miracle of living and interbeing on this planet we call home, hurdling through the cosmos.
Perhaps I’m still reeling, from our End of Life and Existential Distress KAP Training where with colleagues we were able to host, witness, and experience living and dying together. We so hope you can join us for our EOL trainings in 2024. While designed for those working with psychedelics in the EOL setting, or palliative care, at the core this training explores the fundamental question of what it means to be alive, to be human and thus impermanent; what really matters.
As we are learning psychedelics are powerful tools to help us each access this awareness. And, sometimes simply living is sufficient. I’m reminded of the wisdom shared by Gladys McGary, MD, the “mother of holistic medicine” in her recent book The Well-Live Life, A 102-Year-Old Doctor’s Six Secrets to Health and Happiness at Every Age,
“When we turn toward life, we realize that it is turning toward us in return. Life is always trying to show us something. It’s communicating with us through the events, people, and ideas that show up in our lives, offering us an opportunity for gratitude… When we look for the lessons, we move our attention away from our suffering and direct it back toward life. Everything in life becomes a teacher… Our souls benefit from our holding on to the idea that we don’t know what’s going to happen next…we’re called to radically, but gently, flip our understanding on its head, from thinking that we are in life to understanding that life is in us.”
I am so grateful to be doing this work, experiencing life with all of you. May you feel the aliveness with yourself and in the world around you.
