Community Dialogue Series: Facing the Shadow

The Aware Project (www.awareproject.org) hosts a series of monthly Psychedelic Awareness Salon events in Los Angeles and San Diego. We are creating a connected and educated community that feels passionately about balancing the conversation about psychedelics.

Over the next few months the Aware Project is planning a new series of events, the Psychedelic Community Dialogue series, to create space to have these important conversations. Let’s come together in community to address what we need, the standards we want to set, and the future we want to create.

DESCRIPTION
The imbalances of power within our society are glaring at us more and more. With the backdrop of the #metoo and multiculturalism movements, we see that same issues facing our psychedelic/entheogenic subculture and we are in need of taking a deep self-reflective look at how we may be perpetuating these problems.

How are we conducting ourselves?
What are our blind spots?
Why do we continue to support shamans and practitioners who commit sexual abuse?

The answers to these questions are easy to uncover through a historical lens, but how can we now cultivate truth and reconciliation, healing, and create lasting changes?

PANELISTS
SITARAMAYA SITA, who has traveled and worked in the Amazon for the past 17 years, is a spiritual herbalist and plant wisdom practitioner formally trained in the Shipibo ayahuasca tradition. Founder of PlantTeachers, dedicated to cultivating entheogenic awareness, and Producer of the Visionary Convergence conference, she lectures, teaches, and works with individuals and groups in ceremonies and stewarding plant dietas. She currently trains, teaches and practices to heal personal, institutional and cultural trauma. PlantTeachers.com

LIANA SANANDA comes to us from a diverse background that spans across anti-war and drug reform activism, event design and production, film production, artist representation, and art curation. She spent several years working in the cannabis industry at the ArcView Group and now is the Development Officer at the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS.org).

TONY MOSS is a visual and recording artist, event producer, and founder of I.AM.LIFE, a non-profit event production company focused on interconnectivity. His work is a synthesis of passions in art, spirituality & science, with emphasis on the evolution of human consciousness and potential. From 20 years experience working with ayahuasca, he is a public advocate for "right relationship" use of all plant medicines. tonymoss.me

ASHLEY BOOTH is founder of the Aware Project: Rethinking Psychedelics and co-founder of InnerSpace Integration. She has a background in environmental science and is currently working towards a Masters in Social Work. Her work blends her background in the sciences with a deep spiritual core ignited through the use of entheogens. She currently works as a study coordinator for a MAPS clinical trial. AshleyBooth.net

FEATURED MUSICIAN, SKYE WEAVER: Skye is a Ceremonialist of the body, mind and soul through body work, yoga, facilitation and Integration Coaching. Her songs have come to her through honoring the Great Mystery and listening to the elements flow through her. She's a member of I.AM.LIFE and manages the tea lounge at their many events in the southern CA area.

FURTHER SUPPORT
If you are a woman that has suffered sexual misconduct by a shaman or facilitator, Katherine MacLean (katherinemaclean.org) on the East Coast created this email to gain council and report abuses: [email protected]

Synergistically Co-Created & PRESENTED by:

** I.AM.LIFE. **
I.AM.LIFE combines life-affirming art, music & media to create immersive, transformational experiences of interconnectivity. We create and nurture connections with the natural world, each other, and indigenous peoples to support a more thriving, just, and sustainable world. To foster and nurture a sense of value and respect for the importance of “native wisdom” in the modern world. https://www.iamlifeproject.org/

** PLANT TEACHERS **
PlantTeachers support the preservation, conservation and stewardship of land in Peru which is held as a global resource where Medicinal and Master Teacher Plants are cultivated and old growth trees, waterways and rainforest flora and fauna are protected. Collaborations with Nihue Rao promote the development of integrative medicinal practices, utilizing multiple healing disciplines for people all over the world. www.plantteachers.com

If you like what the Aware Project is up to, support us on Patreon!   / awareproject