Altered States of Healing: A Deep Dive Into Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy

Dr. Signi Goldman, MD, is a board-certified psychiatrist and the Co-founder and Medical Director of Living Medicine Institute, which offers psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy training programs. As a certified provider for psychedelic-assisted therapy and research, she has practiced in various clinical settings, including hospital systems and alternative treatment settings. Dr. Goldman also serves as a Psychiatrist and Psychotherapist for Concierge Medicine and Psychiatry’s Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy Program for Mental Health.

Dr. Sandra (Sandy) Newes, PhD, is a licensed psychiatrist and the Co-founder and Programming Director of Living Medicine Institute. With over 25 years of clinical experience as a psychedelic-assisted psychotherapist, she specializes in anxiety, chronic stress, trauma, and recovery. Dr. Newes has provided ketamine-assisted psychotherapy through Concierge Medicine and Psychiatry since 2019. She is also an educator and speaker offering workshops, events, and education on psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy and the intersection of nature connection, trauma, and mental health.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

[1:24] Dr. Signi Goldman and Dr. Sandy Newes’ inspiration to pursue psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy
[4:34] How ketamine-assisted psychotherapy differs from traditional psychotherapy and enhances its techniques
[7:26] A trauma-informed approach to psychotherapy
[8:50] The role of nature in therapy
[11:38] Frequent misconceptions about psychedelic-assisted therapy
[13:51] Addressing safety concerns in psychedelic-assisted therapy
[17:15] How ceremonies and rituals impact psychedelic-assisted therapy
[21:21] Post-psychedelic integration sessions

In this episode…

In recent years, psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy has emerged as a groundbreaking new therapy technique that stimulates healing through altered states of mind. Yet this space is still in its infancy, with misconceptions and concerns surrounding drug use and safety. What should you know about this evolving space, and how can you break into it?

As certified psychedelic-assisted therapy providers, Dr. Signi Goldman and Dr. Sandy Newes maintain that this modality involves more than drugging patients one time to heal them for life. Instead, psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy is an ongoing process that begins with establishing patients’ medical histories, establishing treatment goals, and building a relationship with them to ensure they feel comfortable enough to withstand treatment. During the process, Dr. Goldman and Dr. Newes employ trauma and nature-based approaches to help patients navigate their altered states. After the session, the doctors observe behavioral shifts and align them with their treatment goals.

In the first episode of Living Medicine, Dr. Signi Goldman and Dr. Sandra (Sandy) Newes are interviewed by Rise25’s Chad Franzen about psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. Together, they explain how it enhances traditional psychotherapy techniques, how they incorporate trauma, nature, ceremonies, and rituals into their approaches, and how they address psychological safety concerns.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Quotable Moments:

“Psychedelic states remove defensive holds, allowing things to emerge into consciousness that might otherwise not.”
“Trauma-informed care is about building a base of safety and security, transforming a hyper-vigilant presence into well-being.”
“Nature connection can significantly influence the therapeutic process by anchoring patients to the world around them.”
“The ‘one and done’ myth of psychedelic therapy underestimates the profound healing process involved in these treatments.”
“Experience in altered states is essential for therapists to navigate and support the patients’ psychedelic journeys effectively.”

Action Steps:

Explore and understand the role of altered states in personal and patient healing: This addresses the foundational aspects of psychedelic therapy, emphasizing the transformational nature of conscious experiences.
Cultivate a trauma-informed care approach in your practice: This is essential for creating a safe base for successful therapeutic outcomes.
Integrate nature-based activities into your therapeutic approaches: Doing so can strengthen patients’ connections with the world, leveraging the healing potency of nature.
Seek immersive training in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy: This guides practitioners safely into the field, ensuring a solid foundation built on firsthand experience.
Foster a nurturing setting for therapy: Creating a supportive environment can affect the potential success of psychedelic-assisted therapy sessions.

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by the Living Medicine Institute.

LMI is a training, resource, and membership program educating providers about the legal and safe use of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy.

To learn more or participate, visit https://livingmedicineinstitute.com.

Episode Transcript

Dr. Signi Goldman 0:00

Welcome to the Living Medicine podcast, where we talk about ethical medical use of psychedelic psychotherapy, teaching skills, examining the issues and interviewing interesting people. Now let’s start today’s show.

Dr. Sandy Newes 0:18

Hi. It’s Dr Sandy Newes and Dr Signi Goldman, your host for Living Medicine, where I interview licensed clinical and medical professionals who really break down the evolving ketamine and psychedelic assisted psychotherapy overall space recent interviews that we’ve done with Dr Ron Siegel, Dr Dick Schwartz and Dr Michael and Annie Mithofer, we encourage you to check those out. Those are available through our podcast and on our YouTube channel. This message is brought to you by the Living Medicine Institute, a growing professional network with content and resources for the psychedelic assisted psychotherapy community. And I have Cha here from rise 25 and Chad has done 1000s of interviews with successful entrepreneurs and CEOs, and we’re actually flipping the script, so he’s going to be interviewing us. So Chad, welcome to the show, and thank you so much for joining us. Hey,

Chad Franzen 1:09

thanks so much for having me. I’m looking forward to talking with both of you today. Why don’t we get started just just to learn a little bit more about you. You’re both psychedelic assisted psychotherapists. What inspired each of you to kind of go down that road. Why don’t you start out, Dr. Signi?

Dr. Signi Goldman 1:22

Gosh, it’s a bit of a long story, but I think one way of kind of putting it in a nutshell is that my life accidentally fell into this unexpected pathway where I almost had two lives. I had this professional life where I went to medical school, became a mainstream psychiatrist and had a mental health practice. And then I’ve always had this other life, which for a long time was just more in my personal life than my professional which is involved in working with altered states and shamanic and indigenous forms of healing, sort of ceremonial forms of healing. So it was always an interest of mine, when psychedelic and altered state therapies became more emergent in mental health and it became apparent that they had healing properties, it became sort of an obvious bridge for me to meld the two. So I was one of the early adopters of bringing in the legal psychedelic at the time, which was ketamine, into my clinical practice in the States, and using what we knew, what I knew, from those traditions and those teaching traditions, to kind of meld that with the science based, you know, literature that was coming out showing that psychedelics were actually really helpful for depression and anxiety. So I started pulling that into my clinical practice, you know, about eight years ago, and because they’re following that, there became, like a upsurge in interest in that from other professionals for the same reasons, and because I had, you know, already started doing that, I started being approached by people that wanted more training or information. And it led to the eventual development of a training program and a collaboration with Sandy so great.

Chad Franzen 3:02

What about you? What about you? Dr, Sandy, well, I

Dr. Sandy Newes 3:05

have been sort of following and tracking and involved in psychedelic culture and the development of the field, really, for my entire adult life. I have been studying psychology and psychotherapy. Really feels like forever since high school. And really, when I look at the things that have influenced my life, the most outside of my important relationships are really non ordinary states of consciousness. So finding that through nature and the outside world, through finding that through dance, meditation, mindfulness, practice, and ultimately psychedelic states. So I’ve been excitedly following the research and kind of exploring all the different applications of that, really, throughout my entire life. So it’s it’s woven into who I am in the world, as well as who I am as a professional. And when Signi and I met around 2017 2018 and began having conversations about the clinic that she and her husband, Dr Badal Goldman founded, and so I was really excited to kind of merge into that, and to finally find a way to really bring all of those pieces together.

Chad Franzen 4:20

Dr Signi, you mentioned ketamine when you were when you were talking a little bit earlier. How does ketamine assisted psychotherapy differ from traditional psychotherapy? I mean, some of it’s kind of obvious, but give me a little bit more of a breakdown in terms of the difference. No,

Dr. Signi Goldman 4:34

no, it’s a great question. I think it’s the one that a lot of people have, and is, you know, the understanding of that is evolving even as we speak in the field, ketamine assisted psychotherapy is technically a subset of what we call psychedelic assisted psychotherapy. So even though ketamine itself is a substance with multiple uses in medicine, it does have the ability to induce a psychedelic altered state, and ketamine, as opposed. Some of the more traditional psychedelics people think of like LSD, for example, is legal. And so if you want to induce a therapeutic psychedelic state for someone in a clinic, and if you have the skill set to do that, and the training and the then ketamine is the one that you can legally use. And so it’s been this sort of early adopter psychedelic for most of the people in this space right now, my clinic included. And so it is a form of psychedelic assisted psychotherapy using ketamine. And the term psychedelic assisted psychotherapy really means what it sounds like, which is you’re doing psychotherapy with someone. So this is, this does involve being a skilled psychotherapist, but you’re using the psychedelic altered state to kind of enhance the therapy process in a clinic.

Chad Franzen 5:48

Dr Sandy, how does, how does a psychedelic altered state enhance the therapy process? Oh,

Dr. Sandy Newes 5:55

well, that’s a big question. So what? What we do is we, you know, embed it within a therapeutic process that has preparation and integration on either side, and then the medicine session is a part of that. So psychedelic assisted psychotherapies and ketamine in particular, speaking of that, you can’t really separate out that from the preparation and the integration piece. So people often think it’s just the medicine, but it’s really not. So you know, the preparation parts are about getting to know the client, doing an extensive developmental history setting, and establishing treatment goals, really building that relationship. And the integration is applying what happens in the session within the context of that which you know in advance. So the medicine session itself, helps somebody remove the defensive holds that they’re holding on their content. It helps them soft as their nervous system. It helps them experience the relationship with with me and with themselves differently. And then, because it of that quote, unquote, loosening of that tightening, loosening of that tightening, but because of that loosening, it allows things to emerge into their consciousness that might otherwise not. And then, you know, we partner with the client, really, to co create meaning around that that comes up in integration. I

Chad Franzen 7:16

see that makes it, that makes sense. So can you explain the concept of a trauma informed approach that you take in your work. Sure, for me,

Dr. Sandy Newes 7:26

everything that I do is really trauma informed. So I specialize in trauma throughout my work, and by trauma, I really have a broad, like a broad definition of that. It isn’t processing the trauma, it’s a trauma informed approach really is about how that influences, how difficult, overwhelming, traumatic circumstances in life overwhelm our sense of safety and security in the world. So really, a trauma informed approach is about building that need so about helping them develop at the very basic level, a sense of safety and security with us, with me, with the clinic, with everything that they come in, and building that platform that allows them to safely go into the traumatic material or the things that have influenced them. And then ultimately, it’s about kind of shifting somebody’s hyper vigilance and their constant scanning the world for perceived threat, because trauma, ultimately is about them putting that state onto the world and operating from there. So trauma informed care is safety at the most basic level, and then really exploring the way the experiences that somebody’s had in their life have led to the way in which they are currently in the world.

Chad Franzen 8:43

Dr Signi, what role does nature connection play in your therapeutic approach?

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