Lauren Taus - Wellness through Yoga, Meditation and Psychotherapy
Release Date: 07/28/2020
PT 645 - Oli Genn-Bash: Functional Mushrooms, Hype Cycles, and Mycelial Thinking
Psychedelics Today
(Brighton, UK) joins Joe Moore for a grounded conversation on the boom in functional mushrooms and why the category may be moving too quickly. As the founder of , Oli works with consumers and brands to demystify functional mushrooms, with a focus on education, traceability, and realistic expectations. The conversation begins with a critique of wellness hype cycles. Oli explains how consumer desperation for help with anxiety, sleep, stress, and cognition can create an opening for a rapid wave of products that are not always grounded in careful sourcing or clear science. Using as a case...
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PT 644 - Tricia Eastman: Seeding Consciousness, Ancestral Wisdom, and Psychedelic Initiation
Psychedelics Today
In this live episode, joins to discuss . She explains why many Indigenous initiatory systems begin with consultation and careful assessment of the person, often using divination and lineage-based diagnostic methods before anyone enters ceremony. Eastman contrasts that with modern frameworks that can move fast, rely on short trainings, or treat the medicine as a stand-alone intervention. Early Themes: Ritual, Preparation, and the Loss of Container Eastman describes her background, including ancestral roots in Mexico and her later work at Crossroads Ibogaine in Mexico, where she supported...
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PT 643 - Logan Davidson - American Ibogaine, State Strategy, and the Future of Psychedelic Policy
Psychedelics Today
Logan Davidson joins the show to talk about the fast-moving world of Ibogaine in American and why state-based leadership is shaping the future of psychedelic reform. Davidson is the executive director of , the legislative director at , and a key strategist behind Texas’ landmark interest in ibogaine research. He also advises for . His work sits at the intersection of science, policy, and lived experience, and this conversation offers a clear look into what is happening right now. Early Themes: The Rise of State Advocacy Davidson explains how he entered politics at nineteen and how his...
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PT 642 - Michael Sapiro PhD - Truth Medicine, Psychedelics, and Living Your Truth
Psychedelics Today
In this episode, joins Kyle Buller to explore truth, healing, and psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy through the lens of his new book, . A clinical psychologist, ordained Zen Buddhist monk, retreat leader, and fellow at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, he blends Buddhist psychology, trauma work, and consciousness studies. The discussion focuses on how people discover and live their truth, and why that truth becomes the core medicine in healing. Early in the Podcast with Michael Sapiro describes how years of clinical work and retreat facilitation shaped his understanding of healing....
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PT 641 - Joe Moore & Kyle Buller - Holotropic Breathwork, Somatics, and Foundations for Psychedelic Work
Psychedelics Today
sits at the center of this wide ranging conversation between Psychedelics Today co-founders Joe Moore and Kyle Buller. Drawing from decades of personal practice and assorted types of breathwork facilitation, they explore how breathwork methods from the Grof lineage including can prepare people for psychedelic work, support difficult journeys, and deepen integration over time. Kyle shares how his near death experience, somatic training, and breathwork facilitation shaped this new course on breathwork foundations, while Joe reflects on how reading Dr Stanislav Grof and years of experience in...
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PT 640 - Alexander Beiner - Psychedelics, Culture, and the Games We Play
Psychedelics Today
Alexander joins Psychedelics Today to explore how psychedelics, culture, and power shape each other. A writer, facilitator, and co founder of the conference and the media platform , he has spent years thinking about how psychedelic experiences ripple into politics, economics, conflict, and community. In this episode, he and Joe trace the path from early internet forums to today’s psychedelic renaissance, and ask what it would mean to bring a truly psychedelic perspective into our institutions. Beiner is less interested in psychedelics as a niche medical tool and more interested in how they...
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PT 639 - Evelyn Eddy Shoop PMHNP-BC: Lived Experience, Qualitative Data, and the Future of Psychedelic Care
Psychedelics Today
Overview Evelyn Eddy Shoop PMHNP-BC joins Psychedelics Today to share her journey from Division I athlete to psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner and psilocybin research participant. In this conversation, she explains how sports injuries, OCD, and intensive treatment led her into psychiatry and eventually into a psilocybin clinical trial at Yale. Her story weaves together lived experience, clinical training, and a call for more humane systems of care and better qualitative data in psychedelic science. Early Themes: Injury, OCD, and Choosing Psychiatry Early in the episode, Evelyn...
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PT 638 - Dr Jason Konner - Psychedelic Oncologist
Psychedelics Today
In this episode, Joe Moore sits down with Dr. Jason Konner, a longtime oncologist who recently left his full-time clinical role at to devote himself to the emerging intersection of cancer care and psychedelics. Dr Konner shares how, after more than two decades treating people, he hit a wall. The accumulated grief, constant exposure to death, and intensity of oncology left him deeply , though he didn’t have that language for it at the time. A chance moment in a yoga class, overhearing someone say “ retreat” just before he was scheduled for hernia surgery, became the turning point....
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PT 637 - Genesee Herzberg — Ketamine Truths, MDMA Hopes, and the Work of Integration
Psychedelics Today
Clinical psychologist Dr. Genesee Herzberg joins Kyle to reflect on two decades in trauma work and 15 years inside the psychedelic ecosystem—from early MAPS conferences to running Sage Integrative Health. She traces how personal psychedelic experiences set her on a path of service, research at CIIS on MDMA-assisted therapy, and hands-on roles with MAPS: Zendo Project harm reduction, adherence rating, and ultimately serving as an MDMA therapist in clinical trials. Today she leads Sage, an integrative clinic (psychotherapy, psychiatry, bodywork, acupuncture, and functional nutrition) focused...
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PT 636 - Dr. Ros Watts – Building Communities and Connection
Psychedelics Today
Clinical psychologist joins to share insights from her decade of work with and her evolving focus on community-based integration. As the former Clinical Lead for , Dr. Watts witnessed how psychedelic experiences can foster profound feelings of — to self, others, and nature — yet also how that connection can fade without ongoing support. In this conversation, she reflects on what years of research have taught her about connectedness as both a healing mechanism and a human need. She explores how can transform fleeting psychedelic breakthroughs into lasting change, and why community is...
info_outlineIn today's episode, Kyle interviews Lauren Taus: yoga instructor with 20 years of experience, host of the Inbodied Life podcast, and psychotherapist specializing in ketamine-assisted psychotherapy.
Taus talks about growing tired of more traditional therapy and cognitive loops so many people find themselves in through cognitive behavioral therapy leading to her taking a break from therapy altogether, trying psychedelics with her brother, learning of psychedelics being used therapeutically, and coming out of the psychedelic closet to her father (who now works with her). She speaks about her practice, and the process and importance of building up therapeutic relationships first before introducing any psychedelics.
She discusses how Covid-19, cannabis legalization and the way our culture is set up are all exacerbating mental health issues and the challenges of fighting through that while trying to better partner with disadvantaged communities, the frustrations around the illegality of certain medicines, the power of ketamine, the concept of spiritual bypassing, what she's doing differently during this disconnected time, harm reduction around psychedelics without a therapist nearby, mindfulness, and the importance of touch and dancing.
Notable Quotes
“Healing happens in relationship, and it happens in relationship with self too. I believe that so many people (and I certainly have been one of them) are walking warzones. The violence that happens inside of an individual heart and mind is far more outrageous than what you’d read in the news, and what you read in the news is a lot. ...With my work, I want to know you, I want to feel you, I want you to feel safe, I want you to feel love, I want you to feel unconditional regard and care. And that doesn’t happen overnight, and that doesn’t happen when you take a pill.”
“When I think about what’s happening with cannabis now, there’s essentially white cartels, and there’s cannabis stores on every block of Venice Beach, and people making lots and lots of money on weed. And then there’s so many black and brown people in prison for smoking a joint. And so the inequity there- what kind of reparations can we do? I like to say you can’t bypass the 'fuck you' on your way to forgiveness. And love is big enough to hold the anger and the rage, and there’s appropriate righteous anger that’s due.”
“People are struggling to be with what is- to welcome the wildlife that courses through their veins, to sit still with their fear and their sadness, and even their joy. I have so many people who try to crush their joy and celebration because they’re afraid of losing it. And they will- it’s going to shift. But can we be in the big wideness of what it is to be human? And in our inability to do so, we create all these different unique and not-so-unique misguided defense mechanisms. All these mechanisms for evasion- flight strategies. They can look like work, they can look like sex and food and drugs and alcohol and running or even meditation. The intention is what informs it a lot- what are you doing? Are you looking to go in, or are you looking to leave?”
“Do your work and remember to play along the way. Joy is an act of resistance.”
Links
Inbodied Life podcast, featuring Kyle
About Lauren Taus
Lauren Taus graduated summa cum laude from Barnard College at Columbia University in 2004 with a BA in Religion before continuing on to NYU for her Masters in Social Work. Lauren is licensed as a clinical therapist in both New York and California with a specialty in addiction and trauma treatment.
As a clinician, Lauren integrates alternative modalities of treatment into her work. She trained with David Emerson under the supervision of Bessel van der Kolk at The Trauma Institute in Boston in trauma sensitive yoga, and she’s trained by the Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) for MDMA assisted psychotherapy for complex PTSD.
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