Welcome to this Week's Edition of Red Things on Tuesday. Have you met time travellers? "If time travel is a real thing, where are all the time travellers?" I've met time travelers. They're at Grateful Dead shows. (present tense!) Grateful Dead shows are timeless. Time travellers gravitate towards timeless places, I believe. Television and movies would have you believe that they flock to singular historical events, but that's only part of it. It certainly makes for better TV to have a bunch of...
15 days ago • 2 min read
Welcome to this Week's Edition of Red Things on Tuesday. The hero in our bodies I need to remind myself to be the hero of my yoga practice sometimes. I need to remind myself not to let myself off the hook and play the victim. I had Achilles tendon surgery a few years back. It affects my balance poses. The pose on one foot is very different from that on the other. It would be really easy for me to write it off. I catch myself making excuses, telling myself it's ok to give up. It's never going...
22 days ago • 1 min read
Welcome to this Week's Edition of Red Things on Tuesday. Pumpkin Spice Lemon Tek Ginger, Cinnamon, Clove, Nutmeg, Lemon, Mushrooms. It's autumn. Why not? There are plenty of people in the world who use peanut butter and jelly as their ceremonial offering. I've seen pictures of the little saints decorating slices of cheese pizza. To each their own. Spices aren't high on the list of sacrileges, I think. We're spice people. We love the touch of a cinnamon stick. The pop of a cardamom pod. The...
29 days ago • 3 min read
Welcome to this Week's Edition of Red Things on Tuesday. The Felt Sense of Safety, Relational Safety I've just been thinking about the different ways that we contemplate and experience safety lately. Psychedelic use is risky business, and the presence of a guide, a shaman, or a community container doesn't immediately erase that risk. It can perhaps mitigate some of them, but it also introduces more levels of complexity that we might not immediately intuit. Good integration coaching helps us...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
Welcome to this Week's Edition of Red Things on Tuesday. Psychedelic Dharma It's better to do your dharma imperfectly than to do someone else's dharma perfectly. - Krishna says that in the Bhagavad Gita. (in this case, Dharma loosely translates to mean one's life path, one's way.) We each have a unique makeup. We have individual constitutions, talents, and interests that guide us through life, and that's ok. We needn't try to fit in where we don't. Just because someone we know is dedicated to...
about 1 month ago • 6 min read
Welcome to this Week's Edition of Red Things on Tuesday. Sometimes I need to unplug my integration. Sometimes, my experiences have been ultra wild, and I’m left scratching my head or shaking in my boots. When that happens, it’s my instinct to overcomplicate things and get all up in my head about it. But that doesn’t help. I need to get out of my head, not go deeper into the confusion.You can’t solve a problem with the same consciousness that created it.These situations ask for simplicity....
about 2 months ago • 4 min read
Welcome to this Week's Edition of Red Things on Tuesday. There is nothing wrong with you. Try that on for size. A client told me that every time he shared one of his challenges with his old therapist, the therapist would explain it was proof of deep-seated problems. Shame, attachment issues, or some other sort of compulsivity or obsessional behavior. Everything about our friend was broken, or a problem to be solved. After a time, this approach made him more miserable, and he left the...
about 2 months ago • 5 min read
Welcome to this Week's Edition of Red Things on Tuesday. End of Summer Psychedelic Reading As the seasons change, and the kids get ready to go back to school, it's getting to be time to start cozying up with books. I don't want to brag (I want to brag), but I've got some pretty brilliant friends who have written some pretty great-looking books that have just come out. I'm looking forward to digging into their books, and it's also my pleasure to share them with you as well. In all...
2 months ago • 4 min read
Welcome to this Week's Edition of Red Things on Tuesday. The psychotic drowns in the same waters in which the mystic swims with delight. This is a quote from Joseph Campbell. A classic. It gives us something to shoot for, or rather, swim for. It helps us realize that the water isn't the issue; it's what we do with it. Not only are we invited to swim, we're encouraged to do it with gusto. Enjoy it, it's the perfect temperature. Funny thing is, though, none of us were born instinctively knowing...
2 months ago • 5 min read