Clinician to Clinician: Bill Richards’ Fun and Good Advice

Psychedelic-assisted therapy enables patients to access profound states of consciousness, which can facilitate healing and self-discovery. How can therapists create the optimal environment for such breakthroughs while maintaining ethical and supportive practices?

Bill Richards, an early pioneer in psychedelic research, emphasizes the importance of trust, attunement, and presence in therapeutic settings. Psychedelics like psilocybin and ketamine unlock the psyche’s capacity for healing, but therapists must provide a grounding presence and guide patients through challenging emotional terrain. By fostering openness and curiosity and remaining neutral, therapists can support clients in exploring fear, grief, and transcendence, often leading to transformative shifts in perspective and self-understanding.

In this week’s episode of Living Medicine, Dr. Signi Goldman sits down with Bill Richards, PhD, the Co-founder and Senior Advisor at Sunstone Therapies, to discuss how therapists can navigate clients’ alternate states effectively. Bill explains why rationality doesn’t work in psychedelic states, the concepts in his book, Scared Knowledge, and the role of somatic sensations and touch in psychedelic therapies.

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.

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 0:19

Hey Bill,

Bill Richards 0:21

Hi there. 

Dr. Signi Goldman 0:22

It is so nice to see you again. 

Bill Richards 0:24

Likewise. 

Dr. Signi Goldman 0:25

Thank you so much for doing this. And I did get that article you sent me, so that was awesome.

Bill Richards 0:31

That’s very concise and focused, but I think it’s digestible by a lot of people.

Dr. Signi Goldman 0:39

Yeah, I’d like to actually talk through it a bit, because our audience is kind of either new or aspiring psychedelic medicine practitioners, like in clinical settings, they really are craving sort of advice and how tos and you know what to do, what not to do, at that stage of their career. That’s really it’s really helpful. But I also want to talk to you about all of the sort of meta stuff as well, which you are particularly kind of a wisdom keeper for. So I want to enter, I’ll say a little

Bill Richards 1:13

bit. I’ll go, as I said, I’ll go just about anywhere with you. It just let’s enjoy hanging out together and see what happens.

Dr. Signi Goldman 1:22

I wanted to tell you that, like I talked to a lot of people in this job, but you’re one of the few people that Evan I’ve talked to before after I get off. And I think that was fun, yeah.

Bill Richards 1:33

Why not? 

Dr. Signi Goldman 1:37

I mean, it was really educational, but also fun. I really appreciate that about talking to you, and I do want to say one thing, like one heartfelt piece, is that I so many I have benefited, as have most of the people that I am around in psychedelic community from you as a sort of collective mentor. You haven’t met many of the people that you are a mentor for because of the way that you know you speak it from you have a lot of earned, lived experience wisdom in this space, that because you do so much speaking and teaching and because of your book have you’ve mentored a lot of people without even knowing most of them. So I don’t know that must be a strange feeling, but I just

Bill Richards 2:20

like I meet all kinds of people. They say, Well, of course, you know me because I’ve read your book. No, I’m sorry i You do look familiar. Yeah, you have a head in two arms and two legs, like most of the people, like

Dr. Signi Goldman 2:43

they feel, they feel like they know you, yeah, yeah. Well, you’ve, I’m sure you hear this a lot, but you’re one of those people who’s, who’s one person who has influenced many and I just always think it’s interesting to talk to people like that. It’s, it’s such a thing. And I know you probably didn’t set out early in your career thinking that that would be the case, but that’s where you find yourself now. So just shall share the collective gratitude that we all hold for that,

Bill Richards 3:11

right? It’s kind of humbling, but I need to acknowledge it, you know?

Dr. Signi Goldman 3:19

And it’s, a, it’s a, kind of, really a beautiful, big thing. It’s a big deal. I think so

Bill Richards 3:28

for those what missed you, if you’ll get into it, your life unfolds, you know? I mean, you already are, no, there is authority.

Dr. Signi Goldman 3:39

Well, you’ve already got me off my talking points, but that’s okay. That’s why it’s fun. Because I want to tell you, there is this funny thing about following the bread crumbs of life, like you can see in retrospect. You can’t see it when you’re in it. But one example of that, one thing you and I have in common, I don’t know if I’ve told you, is that my undergraduate degree was in comparative religion. Oh, nice. Yeah. So before I was a psychedelic person, way back when I was, you know, an undergrad, I was really interested in the commonalities of the religious experiences across religion. So that’s what my degree was in. And of course, I was particularly intrigued by this, this mystical experience, as formative to the different world religions. And I say, of course, because in retrospect, now as a psychedelic person, I can see why I had that interest. At the time. I had no idea I would be a psychedelic person. Oh yeah. And I was also really like a Carl Jung geek. I was like a self taught Carl Jung fan, and I was fascinated by this concept of the collective unconscious. So that was years ago. When I look back on that now, I say, oh, okay, I was kind of training myself to, you know, when I went to medical school, I thought I would just be a primary care doc. I I didn’t know I would go into psychiatry and then psychedelics, and then, you know, and I didn’t, it’s funny when you look back. You go, Oh, my life was sort of, you know, almost like steering me in that direction, but I didn’t know it. I can hardly wait

Bill Richards 5:07

to see who I’m becoming, yeah, I tell you, Signi, I still might be a musician when I grow up.

Dr. Signi Goldman 5:17

I could see you doing that. Actually, you are very connected to music, as we know just so I do want to say a little bit about you. Most of my audience knows who you are. If you guys don’t know who Bill is, read anything on the web, there’s a lot of information, but some of the just more famous tidbits about you are that you have been in psychedelics, or your life has been influenced by psychedelics since 1963 and that you were in that first wave of psychedelic research in the 60s and 70s. Bill was a prominent figure in that first wave of research, and then came back as a prominent figure in the second wave of psychedelic research, more recently at Johns Hopkins and then now at Sunstone Therapies. You also teach at the California Institute for integral studies. And I believe are you doing a workshop this summer before psychedelic science, right? Yes,

Bill Richards 6:07

yeah. Brian and I agreed to do a an all day workshop in

Dr. Signi Goldman 6:13

den. Yeah, those of you attending psychedelic science this summer in Denver, should this is on June 17. It’s a full day workshop, and you would be a fool not to go to that if you have the opportunity. Because I think I know, Bill, I know you probably think I’m throwing a lot of compliments your way, but some of this, I think I’m saying also, for my audience, like you do have a way of teaching that is not just head heavy. It’s kind of very I think you teach from a place of your heart and have this kind of authenticity that, you know is, is very valuable and sort of reflective of those of us who are in psychedelic, you know, psychedelic world. I think it’s like, it’s respects the psychedelic reality by the way that you show up. If that makes sense, I don’t know if I worded that eloquently, but so June 17 in Denver, that’s that’s happening. And then I would be remiss if I didn’t talk a little bit about your book before I start picking your brain today for my listeners. So those of you have not read this, go out and get it, and I will put a link to in the description for the podcast. But it’s called Sacred Knowledge, Psychedelics and Religious Experience. And I this book is really a great example. I think of you Bill as like a bridge person. And by bridge person I mean someone who has a foot in science and research, the scientific method, but another foot in a sort of in depth study of and lived experience of the spiritual and being willing to name that and kind of look at that interface really honestly, and it’s such an obvious interface that we need to look at, and yet a lot of science people are hesitant to do that, and then a lot of more spiritual people are kind of less appreciative of the science. And so I think that you do this beautiful thing of like saying it has to be both and and, kind of bridging. Yeah, I can do

Bill Richards 8:07

that without apology, because, you know, I am a clinical psychologist and researcher, but I did spend four years in theological schools. I’ve got the right letters after my name to do both. You know,

Dr. Signi Goldman 8:24

you get to say you’re actual expert in both and and this is what you think. And so this was really a seminal, informative book a lot for a lot of the recent people moving into the psychedelic field. And so those of you who are just not aware of it, please go get it. And it also is touches on some of these things we already named, like common religious experiences, this idea of the collective unconscious. And some, I would say, some sort of more meta, what is the nature of reality? And these are things that are, you know, you don’t often quite touch on in psychedelic medicine trainings, per se that are really important for a lot of the individuals getting into the field to actually sit with for themselves, though, and so I value that in that book as well. So all of that being said, thank you for talking to me. And I wanted to ask you a few things today from the perspective of our audience for this podcast, which is a growing audience of people like I said, who are getting into this work and starting to do it. A lot of our trainee community, or trainees coming through other training programs, and they are, they’re trained, and they’re doing the work, but they’re aware that they’re kind of on the edge of something new, and they’re always looking for advice or checking, you know, more supervision on what they’re doing. And so I’m trying to ask experts out there, like, you know, things that would be helpful for them. And I thought we would go through some of the points in the article you sent me that were just great, like teaching points for clinicians and and this is this in in some sense, getting your advice. For the rest of us,

Bill Richards 10:00

I think didn’t it. I think the core counsel, beyond all the guidelines and techniques, is just to authentically Be yourself, to be beside the patient, volunteer, facilitating, supporting, but not going into trying to fix the person like a car mechanic, you know, yeah, more like midwives, really,

Dr. Signi Goldman 10:35

yes, I love that midwife analogy too. Do you think that if someone goes in being a little bit performative or fake accidentally, or because they’re nervous or something like that, that that affects the client’s experience, if the therapist goes in that way? Yeah,

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