planetary Dharma: Elective Course

PSYCHEDELIC DHARMA

EXPLORING TRANSPERSONAL REALMS WITH Plant medicines

with Nicole Churchill, MA, MT-BC, and others

Psychedelic Dharma Is Part of the Mother Tantra School…

This is a lifestyle practice path at the heart of the home and village life. The Mother Tantra tradition is grounded in the Buddha Womb (Tathagatagarbha) school of contemplative practice - the “womb of the thus-come-one”.

It highlights the everyday path of the Sacred Feminine:

  • through our bodies (somatic yogic practices)

  • community worship & sadhana plant medicines as Divine Sacrament (Psychedelic Dharma)

  • applying Ayurvedic principles: plant medicine, sattvic lifestyle (nourishment & longevity)

  • in our relationships: with ourselves, intimate partnerships, child rearing, and extended community circles (right relationship)

  • by engaging in sacred, elemental, and expressive arts practices (ritual, elements, art, music, movement)

  • exploring sacred duality - sacred polarity (as well as non-duality!)

 
 
 

WHO IS THIS Immersion FOR?

  • Dharma Practitioners/Yogis

  • Spiritual Seekers

  • Psychologists & Psychotherapists

  • Expressive Therapists: Art, Music, Dance, Psychodrama

  • Ministers

  • Integral Practitioners

  • Psychonauts

  • Philosophers

  • Those interested in Transpersonal Psychology, Human Development, and knowing Oneself as his/her/their Own Psychologist.

 

Psychedelic Dharma

The use of an entheogen to support healing, integrating, and ecstatic contemplative experience is ancient and universal. Psychedelic beers, wines, and foods were a facet of early indigenous Europe, and the Greco-Egyptian, Judaic and Gnostic Christian traditions. Working with plant medicines is our birthright and an expression of our freedom to worship and be taught by the Mother Guru - Gaia herself.

This foundational immersion teaches the aspirant to work cross-paradigmatically with Cannabis Sativa, and introduces its humble, yet powerful qualities to the student as a sacred tool (sacrament) to open up access to sacred world.

This immersion is focused on teaching practitioners of transpersonal psychology and the dharma to become their own self-psychologist/medicine healer, utilizing cannabis sativa as an earth-based Guru Spirit Teacher.

Transpersonal Psychology

Transpersonal Psychology is a spiritual psychology and orients itself towards the transcendent aspects of human experience, humanity's highest potential, and with the recognition, of transcendent states of consciousness.

In the transpersonal realm, one experiences the sense of identity or self that extends beyond (trans) the individual or personal to encompass broader aspects of humankind, life, the psyche, and the cosmos.

Themes or facets of work that come up are: mythological death/rebirth, spiritual awakening, self-development beyond the ego, peak experiences, mystical experiences, spiritual crisis, altered states of consciousness and other sublime and/or unusually expanded experiences of living including working with psychedelics as a healing modality.

The transpersonal stage is well described by the psychological approaches of Assiagoli, Jung, Almaas, Washburn and Wilber. It is explored by the Indigenous traditions of the planet and the mystic lineages such found in Gnostic Christianity, Buddhism and Hinduism.

integral view & maps

*Needs more writing here:

Quadrants, Levels, Lines, States and Types (AQAL)

Quadrants: Interiors, Exteriors, Individuals, Collectives - The Three Faces of God from 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person perspective (I, We, It).

Levels & Stages of Development

Lines, Streams, or Intelligences: Cognitive, Emotional, Ethical, Kinesthetic, Musical, Affective, Relational, Spiritual

States: Gross, Subtle, Causal - and non-ordinary SOC

Types: Jungian Archetypes, Enneagram, Five Buddha Families

plant medicines

Cannabis sativa is an annual herbaceous flowering plant originally indigenous to Eastern Asia, now enjoying wide spread cultivation. It has been grown throughout recorded history, used as a source of industrial fiber, seed oil, food, recreation, religious and spiritual sacraments and medicine.

With the pioneering work many psychonauts, we are uncovering Cannabis Sativa’s psychedelic effects when certain terpenes and cannabinoids in varying strains of the flower are present in a single or combined alchemy blend. These terpenes and cannabinoids give rise to psychedelic experiences when consumed and amalgamate with music, breath, body awareness, multi-paradigm pointing out instructions, and a sensitive and conscious set and setting.

Many practitioners report non-ordinary states of consciousness mimicking the same effects of MDMA, psilocybin, Ayahuasca, and DMT, particularly when combined with breathwork practices.

This is great news, because Cannabis Sativa is low hanging fruit on the tree in terms of therapeutics:

  • It has an expanding list of legalization in 18 states, and growing acceptance worldwide

  • Aside from a few contraindications, Cannabis Sativa is very safe to use

  • It intrinsically has a full-spectrum spirit guide capacity

It’s time to bring this abundant plant out of the closet ever more, and own our reverence for its healing potentials.

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pranayama - Breathwork

Pranayama or “breathwork” is a state-shifting yogic practice used for deep self-exploration. It harnesses the innate intelligence of your own body to enter into non-ordinary states of consciousness and reveals your inner healer, or self-psychologist.

For thousands of years, conscious breathwork has been practiced by yogis

• To expand consciousness

• To access healing and insight

• To gain clarity and vision

• To connect with higher forces / spirit guides

It has the power to alter your state of consciousness by hyper-oxygenating your lungs. It has been researched that the lungs create the highest amounts of DMT in our bodies. In turn, pranayama allows us to access higher realms of awareness, which is deeply transpersonal.

embodying the open ground

This Tantric meditation practice path is grounded in Transpersonal, Trans-Himalayan psychology and designed specifically for the psychosomatic and cultural conditioning of Western aspirants. The practices work with the underlying life intelligence of the sacred feminine principle of body and matter (Mother).

The practice reveals sacred duality and open non-dualily, unbounded ground of being through relaxation, loving kindness, and a softening into the natural vulnerability that supports deep existential release, and heals trauma. The plant intelligence of Cannabis is an initiator awakening the intrinsic energetic dynamism of the life force that allies with the wisdom of the deep unfolding psyche revealed in Open Ground Practice.

Kundalini Yoga alchemy

Kundalini, defined in Vedantic culture as energy that lies dormant at the base of the spine until it is activated and channeled upward through the chakras in the process of spiritual perfection. Kundalini is believed by adherents to be power associated with the divine feminine. As we engage in the wisdom of these ancient teachings, we learn to establish endurance, subtlety, stillness, frequency and radiant presence to stay strong in the face of suffering. Yogic philosophy gives us an understanding of the source of dis-ease and the pathway of health as a form of self-discovery.

Kundalini Yoga Alchemy includes:

  • Kriya (posture, movement, action)

  • Mantra (utilizing the sound current)

  • Mudra (taking extraordinary archetypal forms - psychodrama)

  • Dristi (gaze and directing energy and awareness towards chakras)

  • Pranayama (utilizing many breathing patterns for different effects)

Psychedelic Dharma: Module 01

exploring the transpersonal realms with cannabis sativa

Foundations: Theory & Praxis 01

Weekends 1 & 2

with Nicole Churchill & Guests

Practice Schedule: Mountain time

  • Practice Session 1: 8:00am - 11:00am MT

  • Meal Break: 11:00am - 12:00pm MT

  • Practice Session 2: 12:00pm - 3:00pm MT

Overview:

During our first two weekends together we will establish the foundations for entheogenic use of Cannabis in your personal healing and dharma practice. We will learn to come into right relationship with this healing ally, understand its value psychologically, historically, therapeutically and contemplatively.

theory & praxis:

  • Transpersonal Psychology Overview

  • Transpersonal Psychology’s Relationship with Plant Medicine

  • Low Hanging Fruit: Cannabis Sativa: The Mother Plant and Herstory

  • What is Psychedelic Dharma? Where does Psychology, Plant Medicines, and the Dharma meet?

  • Plant Medicine as a Human Birthright (Reclaiming the Sacramental plant)

  • Foundational Relationship w/ Plant Medicine: Attachment, Trust, Ground of Being via Somatic Experiencing (Presence, Attunement, Metacognition, Protection, Unique Gifts).

  • Tantric Attunement to Cannabis: Moving from Recreational Use to Sacramental Use

  • Amalgamation of Cannabis Strains for Therapeutic Work - Cannabinoids, Terpenes

  • Cannabis Sadhana: Non-Dual Tantric ‘Embodying the Open Ground’ Practice with Cannabis

Psychedelic Dharma: Module 02

exploring the transpersonal realms with cannabis sativa

Foundations: Theory & Praxis 02

Weekends 3 & 4

with Nicole Churchill & Guests

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Practice Schedule:

  • Practice Session 1: 8:00am - 11:00am MT

  • Meal Break: 11:00am - 12:00pm MT

  • Practice Session 2: 12:00pm - 3:00pm MT

Overview:

In the Module 2 weekends you will learn to orient yourself towards being your own self psychologist. We will introduce you to different mapping and tracking tools to help guide your journeying experience, and hold them in a therapeutic context.

Theory & praxis:

  • Self As Own Psychologist: How to Work with Yourself Therapeutically

  • Navigating Gross, Subtle, Causal Realms

  • Mapping & Tracking: Integral Maps, and the 12 Links of Dependent Origination

  • Pre-personal vs. Transpersonal Process

  • Receiving & Interpreting Meaningful Downloads

  • Trauma and Shadow

  • Composting and Discharging Experience

  • Big Mind (Internal Family Systems, Parts Work, Gestalt)

  • “Exposure” Therapy + SUDS

  • Utilizing Expressive Therapies: Guided Imagery & Music, Art, Movement

  • Sounding, Vocalizing, and Moving: Working with Suffering & Discharging the Nervous System

  • What Would Jung Do? Explore Carl’s Perspective

  • Cannabis Sadhana

Psychedelic Dharma: Module 03

kundalini Alchemy: Holding the view, navigating the realms of subtle anatomy

Intermediate Theory & praxis

Weekends 5 & 6

with Nicole Churchill & Guests

Practice Schedule:

  • Practice Session 1: 8:00am - 11:00am MT

  • Meal Break: 11:00am - 12:00pm MT

  • Practice Session 2: 12:00pm - 3:00pm MT

Overview:

In the Module 3 weekends you will learn to integrate the use of Cannabis into yogic and alchemical practice. The use of the plant ally supports our accessing the subtle senses, and assists in awakening the subtle body & vision allowing for a deeper integration into the non-dual Open Ground of Being.

theory & praxis:

  • The 5 Sacred Plants of the Vedas: Cannabis in Ayurveda

  • Plant Medicine as a Guru Archetype: Bringing us from Darkness (Gu) to Light (Ru)

  • Lord Shiva & Cannabis

  • Exploring the Five Koshas or Body Sheaths

  • Experiencing Your Subtle Anatomy Nadis through: Pranayama, Retentions, Bandhas, Drishti, Chakras, Mudras, Chanting

  • Opening the Subtle Visual Field - The Fountainhead of Amrita, 1000 Petal Lotus

  • Directing the Energy: Transformative Pranayama Breathwork & Retentions

  • Exploring the Fractal, Holographic Nature of Reality through Subtle Vision

  • Sacred Duality & Non-dual, Open Ground of Being Meditation

  • Cannabis Sadhana - Creating the Ritual and Enactment

Psychedelic Dharma: Module 04

EXPLORING TANTRIC & SHAMANIC REALMS WITH CANNABIS SATIVA

ADVANCed THEORY & PRAXIS

Weekends 7 & 8

with Nicole Churchill & Guests

Practice Schedule:

  • Practice Session 1: 8:00am - 11:00am MT

  • Meal Break: 11:00am - 12:00pm MT

  • Practice Session 2: 12:00pm - 3:00pm MT

Overview:

In the Module 4 weekends you will learn to integrate the use of Cannabis into a ritual alchemical practice. The use of the plant ally supports our accessing the subtle senses, and assists in awakening the subtle body & vision allowing for a deeper integration into the non-dual Open Ground of Being.

TOPICS INCLUDE:

  • Protections for Traversing the Subtle/Astral Realms

  • Psychedelic Alchemy

  • White Magic

  • Creating Sigils

  • Prayers

  • Exploring Tantric Plant Medicine through the lenses of Indigenous Planetary Culture (Druids & Other Wisdom Tribes)

  • Cannabis Sativa as Sacrament

  • Ministry & Plant Medicine

  • Growing Your Own Medicine

  • Infusing Your Medicine with Prayers, Essential Oils, Chants

  • The Heroic Journey: Meeting Yourself as a Medicine Man/Woman/Human

  • Developing Intuition and working with the Pineal & Pituitary Glands

  • Developing ritual and ceremony

  • Working with the drums, rattles, and chants

  • Energetic Clearing, Healthy Boundaries, Cord Cutting

  • Rebirthing & Breathwork

Legal use of Cannabis in the United States: Colorado, Washington, Alaska, Oregon, Washington DC, California, Maine, Massachusetts, Nevada, Michigan, Vermont, Illinois, Arizona, Montana, New Jersey, South Dakota, New York, Virginia, New Mexico, Connecticut