Therapy
PT290 – Kylea Taylor, M.S., LMFT – Vital Psychedelic Conversations
February 4, 2022
In this episode of the podcast (and episode 3 of Vital Psychedelic Conversations), Kyle interviews Kylea Taylor: M.S.; LMFT; Grof-certified Holotropic Breathwork® practitioner; Vital teacher; and author of several books, including her newest, The Ethics of Caring: Finding Right Relationship with Clients (which you can win a signed copy of here).
In this episode of the podcast (and episode 3 of Vital Psychedelic Conversations), Kyle interviews Kylea Taylor: M.S.; LMFT; Grof-certified Holotropic Breathwork® practitioner; Vital teacher; and author of several books, including her newest, The Ethics of Caring: Finding Right Relationship with Clients (which you can win a signed copy of here).
She discusses her past and what she’s doing now, from learning breathwork from the Grofs at Esalen; to working through (and with) her 5-year spiritual emergency; to her work bringing breathwork to a residential substance abuse recovery program; to her InnerEthics® program, which she developed after realizing how traditional ethics education didn’t come close to covering the intricacies of working with non-ordinary states of consciousness.
They talk about how much the psychedelic community undervalues the reciprocity and knowledge one can gain from sitting for someone else; how a facilitator’s simplest question to ask when looking to intervene is, “Who’s this for?”; the need for therapists to have their own experiences and learn the territory of the medicines they’re using, how our multiple selves complicate already-complicated relationships, and three tools likely not yet mentioned in this podcast: Angie Arrien’s naming ceremony, SoulCollage®, and Brainspotting.
Plus, they talk about having dreams about taking psychedelics (have you ever had one?), and Kyle tells the story of his psychic dream – or as this show notes writer believes, his “making-prank-calls-while-sleeping” incident (sleep-pranking?).
Notable Quotes
“Informed consent is completely different, because how do you describe what a person is going to go into if they’ve never been into it? They’ve never had an extraordinary state of consciousness, let alone experience with that particular medicine. So you can describe it, but do they understand it? And can they really make an informed consent?”
“There’s exponential kinds of connections between the multiple selves, and it gets really confusing to sort out, so it’s another reason to know ourselves as well as we can, and to have experience in these states, and also to trust – when in doubt, go back to trusting the inner healing intelligence.”
“Therapists, with psychedelic-assisted therapy, need to be properly prepared and experienced, and know their scope of practice, and know themselves. I think trainings are doing a good job and we’ll get better as we go, but I think experience is the part that it seems like people are going to have to take care of themselves. If they really want to do the best they can for their clients, then they need to do it. We need to do it. We all do.”
Links
The Ethics of Caring: Finding Right Relationship With Clients, by Kylea Taylor
Click here to win a signed copy of The Ethics of Caring!
Holotropic.com: “Doing Not Doing: A Facilitator’s Guide,” by Tav Sparks
Pathwaysvermont.org: Soteria House
Jungny.com: The concept of “Inferior function,” from Jung Lexicon, by Daryl Sharp
Psychedelics Today: PT288 – Annie & Michael Mithoefer – Vital Psychedelic Conversations
About Kylea Taylor, M.S., LMFT
Kylea Taylor, M.S., LMFT developed and teaches InnerEthics®, a self-reflective, self-compassionate, approach to ethical relationship with clients that she is now teaching in psychedelic psychotherapy trainings. Kylea started studying with Stanislav Grof, M.D. and Christina Grof in 1984 and was certified by them as a Holotropic Breathwork® practitioner in 1990. She worked with Stan Grof and Tav Sparks as a Senior Trainer in the Grof Transpersonal Training throughout the 1990s, and worked for nine years in a residential substance abuse recovery program. She is the author of The Ethics of Caring: Finding Right Relationship with Clients, The Breathwork Experience, Considering Holotropic Breathwork® and is the editor of Exploring Holotropic Breathwork®.
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