
Dr. Ron Siegel is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Harvard Medical School, where he has taught for over 40 years. As a clinical psychologist in private practice, he has worked with low-income children and families, treated adults with chronic pain and stress disorders, and provided mindfulness-oriented psychotherapy. Dr. Siegel has written and edited several books, including Mindfulness and Psychotherapy, The Mindfulness Solution, Sitting Together, and Wisdom and Compassion in Psychotherapy.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- [3:58] How mindfulness practices apply to psychedelic psychotherapy
- [5:39] The evolution of the brain through generations
- [10:16] Dr. Ron Siegel talks about the brain’s inherent need for survival and safety
- [25:40] How negativity bias influences the brain’s survival instinct
- [33:03] Fight or flight responses versus somatic interventions
- [41:39] Navigating fixed states by expanding notions of consciousness
- [44:08] Why it’s evolutionarily beneficial to compare ourselves to others
- [55:06] Techniques for integrating psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy into mindfulness practices
- [1:00:39] How to support clients during the psychedelic psychotherapy integration process
In this episode…
Psychedelics offer the potential to address the brain’s evolutionary tendencies that contribute to emotional distress. While essential for survival in early human history, these propensities often lead to modern challenges like anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem. Mindfulness and psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy provide tools to counteract these harmful patterns. How can psychotherapists leverage these practices to combat ingrained mental habits and improve psychological well-being?
Mindfulness-based psychotherapist Dr. Ron Siegel describes the four survival-driven tendencies as danger avoidance, negativity bias, a fixed self-concept, and social comparison. Psychedelics disrupt negative thought cycles, enabling individuals to connect with deeper aspects of their consciousness and identity. By integrating mindfulness practices, individuals can maintain the insights gained from psychedelic experiences, grounding them in a broader awareness of the present moment rather than harmful thought streams. This combination helps reframe emotional struggles as transient and fluid, reducing their perceived permanence.
In the latest episode of Living Medicine, Dr. Sandy Newes hosts Dr. Ron Siegel to talk about integrating mindfulness practices with psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. Dr. Siegel explains the difference between fight or flight and somatic interventions, how the brain has evolved through human existence, and how to expand traditional notions of consciousness.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- Dr. Sandra (Sandy) Newes on LinkedIn
- Dr. Signi Goldman on LinkedIn
- Living Medicine Institute
- Dr. Ron Siegel: Website | LinkedIn
- Mindfulness and Psychotherapy edited by Christopher Germer, Ronald D. Siegel, and Paul R. Fulton
- The Mindfulness Solution: Everyday Practices for Everyday Problems by Ronald D. Siegel
- Sitting Together: Essential Skills for Mindfulness-Based Psychotherapy by Susan M. Pollak, Thomas Pedulla, and Ronald D. Siegel
- Wisdom and Compassion in Psychotherapy: Deepening Mindfulness in Clinical Practice edited by Christopher K. Germer and Ronald D. Siegel
- The Extraordinary Gift of Being Ordinary: Finding Happiness Right Where You Are by Ronald D. Siegel
- “The Origin Story of MDMA Research: Annie and Michael Mithoefer” on Living Medicine
- “The Challenges of the MDMA Research Studies: Annie and Michael Mithoefer Part Two” on Living Medicine
Quotable Moments:
- “Mindfulness practices and psychedelics are antidotes to the propensities of the brain that were great for survival but terrible for well-being.”
- “The artifacts of consciousness, like thoughts and feelings, are no different from clouds passing through a vast sky.”
- “True equanimity isn’t about suppressing emotions but allowing the space for them to arise and pass naturally.”
- “The work of integration starts with giving space to the emotional states that resurface after the expansiveness of the psychedelic experience.”
- “Our pursuit of self-esteem is an illusion — a liberation we can taste through both mindfulness and psychedelics.”
Action Steps:
- Practice mindfulness regularly to cultivate acceptance and awareness of your present experience, paving the way for more profound psychedelic therapy sessions: Mindfulness meditation helps create a trusted relationship with one’s mind, which is crucial during altered states encountered in psychedelic sessions.
- Embrace a compassionate self-inquiry practice like RAIN (Recognize, Accept, Investigate, Nurture) to navigate and integrate experiences effectively: By doing so, individuals can build resilience against automatic negative patterns, supporting emotional well-being.
- Explore and familiarize yourself with various modalities of psychotherapy that can assist in psychedelic integration: This provides a toolkit for grounding insights and revelations from psychedelic sessions into practical life changes.
- Engage in psychoeducation to understand the biological and evolutionary underpinnings of our mind’s tendencies: Knowledge about the origins of thought patterns empowers individuals to take a non-judgmental stance toward their experiences, which is critical for healing.
- Adopt daily routines that involve connecting deeply with sensations, such as walks in nature or somatic practices: These routines counteract the brain’s propensity for negative bias by anchoring in the present sensory experience.
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
Intro 0:03
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. Signi Goldman 0:18
Hi and Welcome to Living Medicine, where we bring together community for ketamine and psychedelic assisted psychotherapy providers. This is your host, Signi Goldman. Be sure to check out our recent episodes with Michael and Annie Mithoffer, renowned MAP psychedelic researchers, as well as Dick Schwartz, the creator of internal family systems, talking about his encounters with unusual psychedelic experiences, doing parts work. Today we’re going to feature Sandy’s recent interview with Dr. Ron Siegel of Harvard University, author and thought leader, frankly, in mindfulness and contemplative practice, he’s talking today about the interface between mindfulness practice and psychedelics, with its interesting implications for why are human beings able to access alter states in the first place? And what does this say about healing? Enjoy.
Dr. Sandy Newes 1:19
Well, I am excited everyone. I am Dr. Sandy Newes, and I am here with Dr. Ron Siegel, who I’m thrilled to be interviewing and have the opportunity to do so I have been following Dr. Siegel’s work, as I’m sure many of you have from the beginning when I was like a baby clinician, and the I don’t know if it was the first book, but it was the one I found, the mindfulness and psychotherapy book that sat on my shelf and is still on my shelf for the longest time and really began to inform my work and my work with applying mindfulness into psychotherapy. And I have been following you ever since Dr. Siegel, so I’m utterly thrilled to be here and to have this opportunity to do so. So thanks so much for the opportunity. Yeah, could you would like to kind of introduce yourself just a little bit. Don’t know which parts of your you know, wonderful background to really
Dr. Ron Siegel 2:10
highlight. Well, thanks so much for inviting me. And so I’m Ron Siegel. I’m a psychologist on the faculty here at Harvard Medical School, where I’ve been for a very, very long time, many decades. And as as Sandy just said, I’ve, I’ve had a focus on the integration of mindfulness practices, and more recently, I think compassion practices as well into psychotherapy. And both how the how, what we know from these ancient wisdom traditions can inform modern psychotherapy, and how modern psychotherapy, neuroscience, clinical science, might be able to enrich some of the wisdom traditions that these other practices come from and and all of this has also some Lovely synergies with the current renaissance and interest in psychedelic assist psychotherapy. So my interests stand at the crossroads of of all of those things. I love
Dr. Sandy Newes 3:09
that. So this conversation, I was just, you know, continuing to kind of appreciate the privilege that I had to spend a week in Costa Rica with you, where you were teaching as part of mindfulness travels with Dr Larry camera and Linda Camerata for as part of their program. And was kind of I had, I was aware of the fact that you had really come out as being really into that application with psyched medicine and non ordinary states. But it was kind of a delightful surprise of me to have that opportunity to really do a deep dive into this. So I want to just, I thought it would be really interesting to just kind of review some of that and just talk about how that really applies to psychedelic psychotherapy, specifically the clinical application of mindfulness and non ordinary states and interventions that go with that,
Dr. Ron Siegel 3:58
right? And, you know, personally, the synergies among these things are, are quite central to my life, because I probably would have been a mechanical engineer or or some such. You know, as a kid, I was the one who, you know, took apart the machines and tried to figure out how they worked, and was very interested in science. And it really wasn’t until some powerful psychedelic experiences in adolescence that suddenly I was interested in the mind in a very different way, and very interested in so, how can some of these non dual states that seem to be so true and so important, you know? How can we, how can we find them without just taking psychedelics. You know, are there? How can we make them more part of our lives? And that’s actually what led me to mindfulness practice, and that’s what led me to become a psychologist. Love
Dr. Sandy Newes 4:4
it. I love the fact that people like yourself and I guess myself too, can really that there’s a time now in the culture and the science and the research that’s driving it, that we can actually say that. Yeah, so I wanted to, kind of just wanted, there was a particular thread of your teaching that I found super interesting, and I was just wondering if we could start with that you really talked about the four propensities of the mind, and I’ve seen you, I’ve saw I’ve seen you give other talks about that. And in particular, you said your brain evolved to keep you alive long enough to procreate and to allow your kids to live in optimal conditions, to help them procreate too. So I was wondering if you could just kind of speak to that piece, and then really maybe we could move into the four propensities and speak about the the specifics of those. Sure,
Dr. Ron Siegel 5:39
yeah, the you know, you’ve probably heard the phrase The Selfish Gene. It doesn’t mean that genes are like little people with, you know, with, with their own volition, but it that’s what it looks like when we reverse engineer natural selection. In other words, if we look at an existing organism, say, a mouse or a human, and we say, so, how come it’s constellated This way? And we can understand the way it’s constellated, at least, you know, by Darwinian understanding that there were historically random mutations, and those random mutations which might facilitate the organism surviving long enough to reproduce and then the kids surviving, those are the ones we’re going to see currently still existing in the genotype and the phenotype, and the ones that didn’t work out so well, well, they fell away. So we could understand that whatever we see in the organization of the human brain is largely based on this. It’s also based, of course, on what happens in our individual development, and it’s based on what happens in cultural evolution as well. But the, you know, a lot of the genetic underpinnings and putting epigenetics aside for the moment have to do with that which allowed us to survive and and think about this, and several people have noticed that there, well, there’s some pretty strong propensities of the brain that were quite good for survival, but especially in the context of modern life, make us thoroughly miserable. And it seems to me that one of the reasons why humans have gravitated both toward psychedelics as one form of non ordinary state, or expanded state of consciousness, as well as developed all sorts of contemplative practices, from yoga to mindfulness practice to visualization practices, and developed all sorts of things like sweat lodges and fasting and chanting. And the list is actually quite long that we develop these basically as antidotes to these propensities of the brain that were great for survival, but they’re terrible for well being.
Dr. Sandy Newes 7:49
So if I’m hearing you correctly, what you’re saying is all of these different strategies and these tools and these methods that we have developed, really to expand consciousness, which sometimes I also like to, I’m always kind of curious about the way that’s expand consciousness versus regulate our nervous system right, in the way that they may or may not be the same, but our antidotes to that to kind of get past some of the suffering that that,
Dr. Ron Siegel 8:13
yeah, is that right? Yeah, I think so. And the, just to go down that tangent that you introduced for a second. I think most of these expanded states of consciousness, or non ordinary states that are useful to us require a certain degree of regulation of the nervous system, because when we’re in fight or flight, which, as modern humans, we spend a lot of time in fight or flight, I’m in fight or flight. Every time I open my email, I’m like, you know what’s gonna be threatening here to me? What’s gonna make me feel bad about myself? Right? Given that, you know, very often these expanded states involve something that starts with relaxing the nervous system, opening in some way, and shifting from fight or flight to some more open and curious state. So I think there is a relationship between what we might think of as emotion regulation, or nervous system regulation, and these expanded states, although you can have nervous system regulation and very much not have an expanded state of consciousness. Take benzodiazepines, for example. They will that, you know, you’ll feel quite cooled out, but I’m not sure they’re going to predispose us toward insights, to a shift of perspective, toward stepping out of the thought stream, towards some of the other benefits that we can get from expanded states
Dr. Sandy Newes 9:38
of consciousness. That’s an interesting balance to kind of play with. And one of the things I love is that you’re bringing that piece into the discussion of mindfulness so often, in my experience, which I know is not fully accurate, it’s so much about thoughts. And so to really bring the body and the brain and the nervous system online is something I really appreciate about what you’re what you’re offering here. I. Yeah. So I just wondered if it might make sense then to talk about the different propensities. So the first one that you talked about was the propensity of the brain to gravitate towards nutrients, safety and other things necessary for survival and away from danger.
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