Navigating Between Spirit and Science: A Holistic Approach to Psychedelic Healing

HDS 2932 Subject & Catalog Number

Description

What does it mean to accompany someone into the unknown? How do we learn from Indigenous knowledge keepers while reimagining models of psychedelic therapy? How does the role of the psychedelic chaplain differ from the role of the therapist? Can plants and fungi carry intention or agency? Do synthetic molecules possess spirit? How is culture evolving to give shape to new forms of psychedelic spirituality?  
This course invites students into the plural worlds of psychedelic healing through four interwoven strands: tradition, phenomenology, spirituality, and psychedelic facilitation skills. Centered on the art of holding ceremonial space, we will seek a deliberate balance between the spiritual and the clinical—honoring mystical experience while grounding it in research, ethics, and embodied practice. Designed especially for chaplaincy students, the course highlights their distinctive calling: to serve as companions who are both attuned to sacred presence and equipped with rigorous clinical insight. 
We will engage sacred questions, explore cross-cultural and ritual technologies, role-play guiding scenarios, and read deeply across Indigenous, psychological, religious, and psychedelic texts. Drawing on the Mi’kmaq principle of Two-Eyed Seeing, we approach psychedelic healing as a relational discipline—holding Indigenous and Western paradigms side by side, not in opposition, but in respectful dialogue. Echoing the Buddhist Middle Way, this course resists endorsing one view. Instead, we walk a centered path holding space where multiple truths can coexist harmoniously.