SoundMind’s Psychedelic Facilitator Training Program was recently featured in the MAPS bulletin. We are grateful to have the recognition of Jon Dennis, an esteemed psychedelic advocate and lawyer and are proud to announce that he has joined our advisory team as the Oregon Psilocybin Policy Advisor.

An excerpt from MAPS Bulletin 2022 Vol. 32, No.2, “Psilocybin Facilitator Training Programs in Oregon: An Inside Look at Oregon’s Burgeoning Psychedelic Marketplace” can be read below:

Last June, the Oregon Health Authority began accepting applications from training programs who wish to become approved by the state. As of July 21, 2022, OHA has approved 8 different training programs, and at least 4 other programs are known to be working through the application process. These programs reflect some of the diversity within the rapidly-expanding psychedelic culture. They also reflect varying philosophies and approaches to psychedelic experience.

Some Oregon training programs require their students to have advanced medical or therapeutic degrees. Others are proud to have previously-underground practitioners on their teaching staff. Tuition for most schools is around $8,000-$9,000 with outliers in both directions. At least 2 are nonprofits. Many programs celebrate diversity and seek inclusion of marginalized populations. Several discuss the intersection of Indigenous wisdom with modern clinical research. Generally, schools tend to focus on healing, wellness, personal growth, and safety. Nearly every program’s website discusses the spiritual dimensions of working with psilocybin.

Earth Medicine Center has a shamanic character. It partners with an Indigenous plant medicine community in Colombia and teaches from “an ecological perspective.” The Alma Institute is a nonprofit that is fiscally-sponsored by MAPS. Its mission is “to strengthen and diversify the network” of facilitators “by offering prioritized enrollment and certification opportunities to members of marginalized and low-income communities.” Another nonprofit, the Synaptic Care Institute, is also dedicated to diversity in the psychedelic ecosystem and roots its program “in holism, wisdom, and science.” The mission of InnerTrek, the program started by the co-chief petitioner of M109 Tom Eckert, is “to spark healing and wholeness through Oregon’s newly legal psilocybin therapy and wellness framework.” Fluence focuses on training licensed mental health practitioners and offers a Postgraduate Certificate in Psilocybin-assisted Therapy. Subtle Winds uses “an integrative humanistic approach” and highlights its team’s decades of hand-on harm-reduction work at music festivals and other events. SoundMind combines medicinal approaches to psilocybin with ceremonial and traditional approaches, and requires teachers to be centered in anti-racism and anti-oppression. Vital Oregon, the training program from the Psychedelics Today team (and, full disclosure, the program I’m involved with) aims to provide exceptional and affordable training for a niche marketplace in a way that advances psychedelic community and culture. Even UC Berkeley has announced that it’s going to have an Oregon training program that will emphasize “psilocybin facilitation and its applications for spiritual and psychotherapeutic care.” Michael Pollan serves on its leadership team.

Facilitator training programs are regulated both by the Oregon Health Authority and by the Oregon Higher Education Coordinating Commission. Some of the smaller, nonprofit, and more mission-driven training programs have expressed concern that the weight of the regulatory burdens—and in particular the regulatory compliance ordinarily required of private career schools—may cause their programs to no longer be financially feasible. This should be cause for alarm because the prevalence of smaller training programs contributes to the cultural diversity and cultural equity of this fledgling system, which is already facing considerable diversity and equity challenges.

Read more.

We are taking applications for our next cohort of the SoundMind Psychedelic Facilitator Training! To find out more and to apply, please visit this page.