Katrina Michelle, PhD, LCSW is a holistic psychotherapist who specializes in spiritual emergence and psychedelic integration. Her strength is working with clients in making the mystical practical for those in service. Katrina is the former Director of Harm Reduction at MAPS, and has lectured for many prestigious universities and organizations in her field. She's currently involved in conducting research exploring challenging psychedelic experiences with The Emergent Phenomenology Research Consortium, and is working on producing When Lightning Strikes Film, elucidating the phenomenon of spiritual awakening. Katrina offers consulting, supervision, and personally-crafted ceremonies for those interested in genuine transformation through her private psychotherapy and coaching practice, The Curious Spirit.
In this episode, Sinclair and Katrina dive into:
- Her initiation into this work through a spontaneous mystical and transpersonal experience
- The exciting new frontier of psychedelic-assisted therapy
- The importance of harm reduction, and taking the opportunity to create new therapeutic spaces for transformation
- The current healthcare system is not working
- The "psychedelic umbrella" and how many different experiences and ways of thinking that this encompasses
- The role of the psychedelic therapist and merging the spiritual and the clinical in a safe space
- Psychedelic therapists who don't work with medicines themselves
- The importance of being familiar with altered states when you are holding space for others
- Vetting your facilitators, whether they are therapists or spiritual teachers
- The differences between sitting with pharmaceutical medicines like MDMA and LSD and plant medicines like ayahuasca and the presence or absence of Spirit
- The role of psychedelic therapists in guiding your therapeutic medicine experience
- Spiritual emergence, the natural process of our own spiritual development that's starting to come online
- Removing everything that's not you, remembering who you really are is a huge mess
- Finding out how to be yourself
- Unlearning the linear path and program so your intuition and gifts can come to the surface
- Removing the need for a third party to access the spirit realm, realizing YOU are Spirit, and you can access this
- Katrina's spontaneous spiritual awakening coming out of the New York City subway
- The obstacle is the path, embracing resistance, loving all your parts
- How our culture understands awakening as a beautiful epiphany without the shadow
- When Lightning Strikes film, documenting the unsexy side of awakening
- The importance of sharing your experiences with psychedelics as a professional if you are able
- Katrina's family history and her fear of sitting with medicine prior to beginning this work
- The repression and pressure of growing up in New York City hustle culture
- Not giving ourselves permission to embrace joy
- Spiritual fitness routines and how medicine recalibrates your compass
- The path of finding your way to the medicine is part of the medicine experience
- The culture shift that's coming and how we can start preparing now
- Healing in community, starting where you are, and doing what you can with what you have
- The healing power of the hive mind, the critical mass of consciousness to spread ideas and awakening in Nature
- Embracing the magical times we are living in vs. meeting them with fear - we have a choice
- Open up to your heart wisdom
RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
Connect with Dr. Katrina Michelle
Katrina's website: The Curious Spirit
Follow Katrina on Instagram: @katrina_thecuriousspirit
When Lightning Strikes Film
WORK WITH SINCLAIR:
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