Clinician to Clinician: Bill Richards’ Fun and Good Advice

Bill Richards 10:53

I think every dyad of therapist and client is unique. You know, you can’t just apply a manual and you kind of tune into that particular person, where that person is in life, and support them and just be with them as they discover the healing processes that unfold in their own minds. Yes,

Dr. Signi Goldman 11:29

so from the point of view of the therapist, it takes some humility, because you have to drop out of thinking, you quote, know what to do, and you have to just be very relationally present together

Bill Richards 11:41

and trust your own mind, your own intuition and be grounded.

Dr. Signi Goldman 11:49

Do you feel like it’s almost like a bit of an altered state for the therapist that you self you induce in yourself in order to certainly,

Bill Richards 11:56

you know, I don’t like that word altered state, you know, I’d rather say alternate state,

Dr. Signi Goldman 12:09

because we have the choice of mini

Bill Richards 12:10

it’s, it’s a very focused, centered state. It’s being present with a person. Yeah, you don’t play with your iPhone. Yes, you know, you’re really there with the person open as if in that hour, or whatever it is, there’s no one in the universe except the two of you.

Dr. Signi Goldman 12:36

You know? Yeah, that’s beautiful. I’ve heard the word attunement use. And my colleague Sandy Newes, who teaches with me, she she uses this phrase in the bubble being in their bubble, but she means that. She means you tune out the outside world and you go into this place where just the two of you are that is different. You’re sort of tracking the person differently and attuning to them differently, and it’s kind of hard to describe, but you know, what’s that phrase? You know when you see it? You know, that’s right, it’s a felt sense of that, and it is a little hard to describe, but I I notice running a training program that you can you kind of can see when people are just able to do it, or some therapists that are less able to do that because they can’t get out of their own head that’s analyzing. So I think a great piece of advice is to sort of be curious about what the state is that you’re describing, and learn to attune in that way,

Bill Richards 13:32

and to be willing to learn from each patient you know, and their their processes, their minds, their unique way of experiencing, healing.

Dr. Signi Goldman 13:49

Yeah, you almost have to be in the moment to observe what’s coming up with them, rather than having a preconceived idea of what’s going to happen that you put on from the Yeah, in

Bill Richards 13:59

my experience, really, what happens in a well grounded session with the major psychedelics anyway, is like ingeniously choreographed by the mind of the patient, yeah, and usually what happens turns out to be better than anything you could have planned and tried to facilitate, you know, like if I thought, Well, this guy needs to regress to age 12 and relive his father coming home And, you know, like if I tried to meddle and manipulate and do my hypnosis, it would be ridiculous if you just provide this atmosphere of respect, unconditional acceptance, genuineness, the psyche emerges and heals. Yes, I love

Dr. Signi Goldman 15:01

that. So don’t have an agenda and even an unconscious agenda for your client, right? Just be

Bill Richards 15:09

surprised. You know, in the Ayahuasca traditions, when you take the sacrament, you go in for a lesson from the teacher. Yeah? Like, I don’t know what the lesson is today, but we’ll find out, you know, and it might be enjoyable, it might be scary, but it’s going to be a step forward. Yeah,

Dr. Signi Goldman 15:34

yeah. We have a thing where we tell our trainees, when we’re trying to convey this, that your your main job is to be curious and pay attention. That’s right. And pay attention. Pay attention. Be curious and pay attention. And then, because something will emerge that comes from the client, self, unconscious, or whatever words we want to call for that it emerges from something that isn’t you, the therapist. You are not creating whatever’s happening at all. It’s a really and I have to say, like this is kind of one of the more moving parts of the work, but also the thing that’s humbling about it, like me, when that happens, it’s so humbling as a provider to go, Oh my gosh. I, I just witnessed this. I, I didn’t this happen in any way.

Bill Richards 16:22

Probably the phrase we use most silently are spoken, is in and through, in and through whatever manifests. You embrace it. You dive into it. You you’re curious about it, you participate in it, and you don’t hold it at bay and think about it, you know. And there’s no succeeding or failing, you know. A session may open up in absolutely, exquisitely beautiful, meaningful, sacred ways, and it may also open up into the darkest, scariest dungeon of childhood trauma, and one isn’t good and one isn’t bad. They’re both part of the journey, and you trust your own mind and meet whatever emerges as it comes. Yeah, and the therapist is with you, you know. So

Dr. Signi Goldman 17:29

as a therapist, those moments that the client does open up into the darker dungeons or the trauma, what advice do you have for like, how to hold yourself as the therapist, I think you know it is act true like sometimes these, these journeys, go to dark places. So if you’re a new therapist, how, what do you need to do in those moments you said in and through? Can you talk a little more about that? Yeah, you

Bill Richards 17:58

need to trust yourself, trust the patient’s mind. Trust your being together. Trust that I’ve come to believe that if something emerges, that means the person’s ready to deal with it. Yeah, you don’t go on an archeological expedition looking for traumas, you know, but when whatever it is emerges into consciousness, that’s an invitation to meet it and work with it and explore it and go through it. And I’ll go anywhere with you, you know, yeah, I’ll be with you. You know, sex or death or, god, I’m not afraid of any of

Dr. Signi Goldman 18:51

them. Yes, I think it’s that’s very powerful for the client to know that the therapist feels safe and at ease with anything kind of content, and when they know the therapist feels that right,

Bill Richards 19:04

that comes that attitude really develops out of experience. You know, you can read about it, you can entertain it as a hypothesis, but it’s as you work with more and more people and you discover that it’s valid, I think, you know, yeah, then you you relax more, and you don’t, oh my gosh. Is the person getting psychotic? Where are the rescue meds, you know? And you start getting tense and anxious. And then that’s contagious, it is. And the patient gets tense and

Dr. Signi Goldman 19:41

anxious to us, the client with

Bill Richards 19:49

it. Go with it. I’m with you. Yeah, yeah. I often

Dr. Signi Goldman 19:53

do supervision with beginners, and I say things like, if the client gets afraid, the first thing to do. Is to track yourself like, you don’t be afraid just because your client is afraid. That’s right, and it, you know, and really, and then there’s this a teaching there about, like, if, if that is hard for you to do, then you need to do your own work, kind of, to be able to hold this for other people. Like, if, if, if you can’t regulate yourself in that and around that, then you’re not quite ready yet. Or just, you know, just do some of your own work there, because your responsibility is to be present in that way with the client. Of waiting, you

Bill Richards 20:31

need to take a deep breath, yeah, and affirm trust. Let go. Be open, yeah. Except be you know,

Dr. Signi Goldman 20:44

yeah, I’ve heard you talk quite a lot about, like, trust, let go, be open. I know that’s almost a mantra. Now, I don’t, I think it came from you originally, but, and I, I believe when you say that, you’re referring to what in in my little community we call dropping in, but it’s this sense of trust and falling back into the experience and letting whatever happens happens. And that is something I think you’re you. I think you’re educating the client, the patient, on ahead of time. And preparation. Is that right? Right?

Bill Richards 21:17

Yeah, it’s part of prep, and I think it’s incredibly important that one chooses to trust. You know that I’m not just passive, you know, I’ll receive this substance and see what happens. You know, okay, no, I choose to receive this substance and and I look forward to encountering, meeting, wrestling with, learning from whatever emerges, okay, ah, you know, like I I’m an explorer, going into my own consciousness. And if there’s dragons in there, I want to meet them and tame them, you know.

Dr. Signi Goldman 22:06

Okay, I like that. I’m going to add something to what I do from that. Because I think what you’ve touched on there is not just a, you know, dropping in, what I call releasing, but it’s also you’re making a statement that I am dying.

Bill Richards 22:19

The image I have is being on a high dive, ready to dive into a swimming pool. And you don’t know the depth or the temperature or the water, but you know that others have done it, and you’ve got a good lifeguard beside you, you know. But no one’s going to push you off the diving board, you know? Yeah,

Dr. Signi Goldman 22:42

you have to jump. 

Bill Richards 22:43

You choose to dive. 

Dr. Signi Goldman 22:47

Yeah, that’s really powerful. Because that first, that’s an act of courage, yeah, it is courage, yeah. And it second, it it’s very much speaking from my own union and all that world that I know you shared. It’s an initial that’s an initiatory journey, that the jumping into the unknown, willing, yeah, and I think that’s very powerful. I think I’m going to change, maybe incorporate, when I talk about dropping in, or what you’re calling kind of like trust, go, be open. There’s also this piece around willingness, like I am also willing to show up for whatever challenges or fearful things. I’m

Bill Richards 23:27

not just looking for some new drug to make me feel better, you know, you know, like I tried my my Ritalin or my SSRI, and that didn’t do much, so now I’ll try my ketamine or whatever. You know that that framework isn’t helpful, but you know this the ketamine or the other psychedelic gives me an opportunity to wake up more fully, to deal discover, uh, interact with parts of me that have always been there, but I’ve been separated from, you know,

Dr. Signi Goldman 24:13

yeah, and some of those parts, some of those things are going to be scary, That’s right, not every time, but that possible,

Bill Richards 24:20

yeah, good movies have some scary parts. It’s okay to be scared. That’s such

Dr. Signi Goldman 24:32

an important conversation to have in preparation, because obviously we’re all afraid to be afraid. Yeah, again, circling back to the thing we said earlier. As a therapist, you need to not be afraid of your of your patient being afraid, but you also maybe need to have more of a conversation with them about what being willing to be afraid, if that is whether it takes them all

Bill Richards 24:54

it is, is fear in and through. You know, most of us have been scared now and then. Yeah, it’s not the end of the world. It’s part of the terrain. It’s and fear can be very close to excitement too. Yeah. Can you say more about that? I’m on the verge of discovering something new. Yeah,

Dr. Signi Goldman 25:19

it does seem like, and I know that I’m not the first person to say this, but when people do move into or through or towards feared objects or situations in a journey that something new unfolds on the other side of that, or something unexpected in a positive sense. Yeah, there’s

Bill Richards 25:37

also a certain call it intention like Damn it. This is my mind. I have a right to know what’s going on in it. That’s why we use this image of stomping down into the basement of your mind with a bright flashlight and looking in the darkest corners, you can find with this attitude, if there’s something down here that’s generating depression and anxiety, I want to know what it is. You know, show your face monster. You know, I have a right to know this is my mind, after all, okay, but that, instead of, oh no, I don’t want to go down in the basement, because who knows what’s down there. It’s like, you know, if there’s a monster, it’s my very own monster, and I want to know what it’s made of, and how it got created, and how I can game it, you know?

Dr. Signi Goldman 26:44

Yeah, I’m so glad we’re talking about this, because, of course, this is some of the most important aspects of this work. And I also feel that a lot of clients or patients come in a little bit biased towards wanting to have a blissful experience of a unity consciousness experience, and they thinking that, you know, of course, they want that I get it. But, you know, I share with you the idea that this is actually where a lot of the hard work that happens, that does unravel whatever knotted stuff is in your basement. Use your metaphor. It’s interesting.

Bill Richards 27:20

It’s been very interesting to me how some people, in a first session will go straight to the blissful experience, you know, which is beautiful and full of love and joy and playfulness and life enhancing, you know, wonderful. And then in subsequent sessions, they deal with the psychotic areas, the childhood struggles and guilt and grief and unresolved conflicts and other people seem to just go up the mountain the other way, they go through conflict after conflict, and then they break through to the transcendental. You know, both, both ways work well,

Dr. Signi Goldman 28:09

you know, it almost makes me wonder, and I will never be able to know if some deep wisdom in the client or the patient knows whether they need to be resourced first with with a sense of blessedness or love or presence of God, and then do the hard work, or whether they’re ready to do the hard work, and then we’ll be more able to receive the blessedness, right? Like, I’m just curious, like some, some part of them may know that. But of course, these are the mysteries that we don’t

Bill Richards 28:37

both work. You know, I’ve been st, especially with people struggling with addictions, you know, who have lost jobs and relationships and health and may have very low self worth. You know, think they’re very alone and isolated in the world when those people can tune into transcendental forms of consciousness and experience being unconditionally accepted and loved, and know that there are all kinds of creative resources in their mind. They never knew were there, you know? Then afterwards, they’ll say, Well, of course, I can get control of my addiction, you know, I have all these resources within me that I forgot. Were there, you know? Yeah, it’s beautiful.

Dr. Signi Goldman 29:33

It’s such a those moments are so like potent to witness, too, yeah, when you start crying with your client because it’s really impossible to witness, yeah, but

Bill Richards 29:47

the whole concept of the self changes the idea of who I am and what I’m capable of, and who other people are, and what the nature of reality is, you know,

Dr. Signi Goldman 29:59

and. What ways like, like I am less limited than I believed? Yeah,

Bill Richards 30:04

well, it’s your view of the world is changed indelibly. I think after a profound transcendental experience, it has to be integrated and applied. The old saying, you know, it’s easy to love all mankind, but loving your boss is something more difficult. You have to apply some of those insights. But there’s a feeling of you have every right to be on this planet, and so does the tree in your yard. Yeah,

Dr. Signi Goldman 30:52

and I, I just want to reflect it’s, it’s not just a belief, it’s a felt sense of it like you actually feel it. That’s true, not

Bill Richards 31:01

just a thought, yeah, yeah. It’s no, it’s intuitive knowledge, really,

Dr. Signi Goldman 31:09

you know it is true. Yeah? It’s

Bill Richards 31:11

like knowing that you love your spouse. You know it’s not a rational thing, yeah? Yeah. I think that’s

Dr. Signi Goldman 31:20

a really beautiful description of, sort of the therapeutic potential of the peak state, if we could think about it that way, like not all journeys have peak states, and nor should we aim for that to be the goal of every journey. But that is, this is the way in which it can be super therapeutic for people who need that resource, to use a clinical word, you know, in order to go on and do the hard things. Interestingly, I have some clients that never have that experience and just do the hard things, you know. And so I kind of it’s, I like hearing you say that, because it is, but it’s, there’s no predictability there.

Bill Richards 31:59

They’ll have their peak experiences when the time is right. You know it’s part I certainly believe it’s a potential within them, but you can’t push it. Those experiences always come as gifts. I think you can’t make them happen. You know? You receive them when they come. You participate in them, yeah? Kind of like Grace, yeah? Grace, that’s the religious word, yeah, yes. It’s a gift that’s pretty well, I guess

Dr. Signi Goldman 32:44

there’s not really like it’s an understatement to say that this is compelling. But this is what makes this whole world of psychedelics moving into mental health so compelling, because an experience of grace, which is, yes, it’s a religious word, but this, this idea of being gifted, love, acceptance and a sort of felt, known, felt, sense that you are okay, and you know that the healing power of that is just vastly, astronomically higher than any Prozac or anything that we could think of in mental health treatment. That’s right. So it’s that’s, I think, and one of the things that keeps all of us so inspired and also humbled in the in the face of this kind of work, you know, so you’ve what you’ve also taught, you know, in some of like written form, about advice we give to people, this idea of turning off the intellect. And I wanted to ask if you could say a little more

Bill Richards 33:38

about that. Yes, during the action of the psychedelic substance, it’s critical that we turn off our rational minds. Instead of saying, hope, stop the world, I got to figure out what’s going on. I got to put labels on this. You know, that’s called the defense mechanism of intellectualization, okay? And those of us who are college educated are really good at it, yeah, but no, you you say I’m going to dive in, I’m going to experience, I’m going to collect experiences during the period of drug action here, and at the end of the day, I’ll decide what words to put on it okay, and I may draw from my knowledge of depth psychology and world religions and quantum physics, maybe. And you know, I’ll choose my own words to describe it. But while it’s happening, just participate in it. Soak it up, experience it, you know. And. You’ll experience so much more than if you have the brakes on saying, stop the world. I got to figure out what’s happening here. Yeah,

Dr. Signi Goldman 34:28

to quote my co facilitator, Sandra Newes again, but she uses this phrase, suspend the need to know. And I think that’s a similar idea, like, end of the need to know, which we’re teaching trainees how to work with in this work with clients. Like,

Bill Richards 35:29

there’s more than one way of knowing, and our culture minimizes intuition. You know, there’s reason and there’s the irrational, and intuition is kind of a woman’s hunch now, but no intuition is a respectable, platonic way of discovering truth, of learning, of knowing, and in our relationships, we trust intuition often, you know, I know I love these people, These friends, my spouse, my children. It’s not because I like the way they look or the shape of their nose or something. It’s I just trust that intuition and the religious life, whether institutional or more loosely, spiritual, whatever that means, is also based on intuitive experiences and the values you you choose to live by. You know,

Dr. Signi Goldman 36:51

is it almost like saying you may not understand it, but you just feel it.

Bill Richards 36:55

It’s true, yes, yeah, and you choose to trust it.

Dr. Signi Goldman 37:02

Yeah, there’s that willingness, piece again, that you keep bringing in like there’s you’re willing to show up for that, or step into it or trust it. That’s right, yeah, whether it’s challenging material or affirming material, and have to be willing to receive that felt sense shift or, I don’t know your words are a little bit better, but one language I use for this when I’m teaching trainees is this idea of the observer mind. You know how we always have that part of us that’s analyzing, that’s on board and some it is true that with psychedelics, the higher your dose is, the more like, less likely that it, you know, that might go away at high doses, but especially in more psycholytic doses, we have this observer mind on board. And for a lot of clients or patients, they do do, I think what you’re describing, there’s just a tendency to want to analyze the process the whole time, like they’re they’re like intellect is chattering away, yeah, analyzing what’s happening. And we’re often trying to name that and sort of, you know, invite them to, you know, let that be there, but to, just like, set it aside a bit and and do what I think you’re saying. Just Just feel what’s happening and show up for what’s happening, even if you don’t have a quote story that explains it to you in a way that makes sense.

Bill Richards 38:23

In preparation, we often talk through this little discussion with the intellect, and it kind of says, you know, you’re so wonderful and clever and bright, and you got me through graduate school. And you’re you’re really cool, but during the action of the psychedelic tomorrow, you go out and play, you know, and I promise you, when you come back in, I’ll give you all these new experiences to think about, you know, you know, but I love that you go out and play. You’re a wonderful intellect, but you go out and play, you know, while I have this experience, yeah,

Dr. Signi Goldman 39:13

that is great. I don’t do that, but I’m gonna, I think I’m gonna add that in this idea of almost formalizing, prompting them, prompting the patient, to, like, have a little conversation with their intellect and ask it, just step aside for a little while. That’s right. I

Bill Richards 39:29

mean, I love you at all that, and you’re clever, but don’t mess up my session tomorrow.

Dr. Signi Goldman 39:40

Yes, there is sometimes we’ve talked about there is a sort of showing up in your, what I call, like your child mind. You know, the way that you would have received this experience as a little kid before you had you would intellectualize everything, and you would just, you know, little kids understand intuitively that things can be magical, then things can happen. And yet they just sort of are present and witnessing it, and they’re less, they they’re less sitting back going, well, this might be such and such, and, you know, creating some sort of story about it. So I think that’s that is, that’s pretty beautiful. I’m going to start, I’m going to start adding that in. You know, there’s

Bill Richards 40:16

a framework I should write an article on that. I haven’t done it yet. Of the based on the philosophy of the psychiatrist Carl Jaspers. Jaspers and a very German existentialist 100 years ago, 50 years ago. But his model is basically, you know, you have to decipher all the big German words, but that you you go into the psyche, and you encounter what he called a grand city on and boundary situation, and that’s stuff like guilt and grief and shame and traumas of different kinds. But you go in and you you don’t run away from those things. You penetrate right into the mid middle of them. You go in and through them, and you do that with what he called philosophical faith, to distinguish it from adherence to a religious creed, like a religious faith. But it’s the act of choosing to trust, okay, I entrust myself. I go in and through these painful areas that present themselves. And he says that when you do that, you dive deeply into the grief and the guilt that then you discover that you are met deep in the psyche by what he called the umbinta for the room, which is basically the creative power of love that heals and reconciles. Wow, I have never psychedelic therapy. Yes,

Dr. Signi Goldman 42:23

I have never read that, but it almost sounds like he’s been doing psychedelic therapy. Yeah,

Bill Richards 42:29

I’ve often wondered if he and Martin Buber took mescaline together, but I can’t find any evidence, but if so, I would have been totally legal and nothing out of the ordinary to talk about. You know, wow, yeah. There’s a

Dr. Signi Goldman 42:45

lot of famous people in history. I look back and think, did they take psychedelics, yeah?

Bill Richards 42:48

Or did they just have spontaneous transcendental experiences, the Maslow’s and Eleanor Roosevelt’s and Albert Einstein’s of the world?

Dr. Signi Goldman 43:01

Yeah, Einstein has always been a big one. I’m like, what was something? He definitely had some mystical, yeah, experiences like this. Just the way he Yeah, he spoke, okay, that is, that’s very interesting. And this idea of philosophical faith that he’s it’s almost like they don’t have to believe in God. In the Judeo Christian says they have to believe that there is something though, like there’s something

Bill Richards 43:23

to choose to entrust yourself to something, yeah, within consciousness. 

Dr. Signi Goldman 43:32

And that, again, is an act of courage. That’s right, because you don’t rationally know that whether there is anything or not, and yet you’re going to choose to, like, entrust yourself to the possibility of this thing. And I think that is such a potent moment, like it’s there’s so so much power to that choice right there, because then something shows up, whether it comes from an outside, spiritual resource, or something that’s in you that deeply and we I don’t know the answer to that, I won’t but I have witnessed it show up for people. And so what is that that’s fascinating, that he described it that way? Yeah, you should write that article. Bill be like Carl Jasper’s discovered psychedelic

Bill Richards 44:14

and then ordinary people start talking like mystics. You know, yes, ultimately, you are loved, whether you like it or not.

Dr. Signi Goldman 44:25

Yeah. And he also described the moment that you referenced earlier, where, if you go all the way into the hardest, hardest stuff, yeah, then you find, you find the resource there, yeah.

Bill Richards 44:36

And then people literally say there’s nothing to fear, yes, yeah, and the anxiety is gone. Even in terminal cancer patients, yeah, death is no longer feared. There’s no rush to speed it up, yeah, but they’re kind of curious about it instead of frightening. Buy it. Yeah,

Dr. Signi Goldman 45:02

this is great. I have to tell you that, you know, I teach a lot of therapists getting into this work, and, you know, I’m, I’m still learning myself life long, right? So I do, don’t claim absolute expertise at all. Um, but I, because I’m in that mentoring and teaching role a lot, one of the mistakes, if I have to call it, that, that I think that a lot of therapists make, and I think this comes from mainstream psychotherapy training these days, is they have a bias towards keeping the client safe, and that means, in their mind, don’t let them get dysregulated or too scared. And so I think that a lot of times the therapist is pulling them back from this journey that we’ve been referencing here because of the therapist’s own discomfort with the idea that the client or patient is in discomfort. And so let’s go, what are your thoughts on that? Together? Yeah. What is that? Let’s go through the discomfort together. Yeah, yes. So the idea would be to actually be able to say, you know, it’s okay to go into this thing that’s showing up. You can go into it fully, however, like a phrase that I’ve learned from other teachers, or or phrases akin to, no matter how far it goes, I will be there with you, or no matter how scary it gets, I will still be here with you. And then you need to be able to let them know that, as it does get scary, that you are still there. That’s right,

Bill Richards 46:30

and you can scream and cry if you’d like to. You know,

Dr. Signi Goldman 46:35

I have a teacher, cater Brown. He’s great. He says, You can cry with your client, as long as you’re able to stop first,

Bill Richards 46:47

I like that you got to do some of your old work here.

Dr. Signi Goldman 46:56

Oh, gosh, okay. I also wanted to ask you a couple more things before I let you go, because I really appreciate your time, and that is, you have you have given advice on the importance in your lived experience of working with the somatic side of things that includes the patient or client’s somatic sensations, but also the use of touch in separates of working somatically. And I know we don’t have time today to be a do a big treatise on how to do these things, but I wanted to ask you about it, because one other thing that I see with the trainee, the communities coming in to get trained, is that a lot of psychotherapists are trained in modalities that actually tell you not to touch, like psychodynamic is famous for that, but also the CBT School of there’s different types of therapy modalities. So I have trainees coming in with somatic backgrounds that they tend to just jump right into this piece. But a lot of people come in with no background with that and and I think are are wanting to know, wanting to kind of do psychedelic work without that skill set. And we tend to say if you’re going to do good psychedelic work, you need to first do some work yourself with getting comfort, comfortable working with somatic pieces, by all means. Okay, and so I just wanted to get your kind of advice to the audience why that matters.

Bill Richards 48:19

Very important area and in psychedelic therapy, we need to say without apology that there is such a thing as good touch, and sometimes it would be unethical to withhold that. Okay, all even we always normalize it. We rehearse hold hand, hand holding, you know, the day before a session. You know, literally, you know, how does this feel okay? If I put my hand on your shoulder, does that feel okay? You know, and it’s not just that you may be so terrified that that you need to grab my hand, okay? But but our connection may provide a grounding a being in the world together, as if energy is flowing both directions. You know, at times, if I offer touch or you ask for touch, and then don’t need it anymore, just say, Fine, you know, I’m okay, you know, but, but that touch is a major way of allowing the person to let go and go more deeply. I think that echoes back to earliest childhood in a. Yeah, the need for human warmth and connection and being in the world with someone,

Dr. Signi Goldman 50:09

you know, I think there are times, especially when people are in younger states and not which is, you know, so much of it that if someone really needs touch, and you withhold it, it’s, it’s a band. It’s abandoning them. That’s right, it is damaging,

Bill Richards 50:26

and they’re not going to get as much out of the experience. Sometimes you need that connection to be able to fall back, feel safe enough, if you will. Or

Dr. Signi Goldman 50:40

so we call that tethering. In my community, with the tether, they’ll tether to you, and that allows them to drop in, to feel safe, leaning back and falling back into the experience more they’ll if they’re tethered, they know that. You know they

Bill Richards 50:54

and the not to under. Besides human touch, the voice of the therapist can be very reassuring. You know, I’m with you. You’re doing fine, trust, let go, be open, let the music carry you. Are you okay? Are you okay? If the voice of the therapist is full of anxiety. It’s not going to be helpful.

Dr. Signi Goldman 51:25

No, gosh, yeah, they’re cueing to you there that you’re sure that they’re okay, even if they’re afraid, you’re sure that they’re okay. They’re cueing to that That’s right, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, thank you for for saying that, because I I agree, and I think this, you know, training programs are there’s many training programs out there nowadays. We are one of many, and I hope that all training programs encourage people to get a skill set with somatic work, helping them track their body and also using touch in appropriate ways.

Bill Richards 52:00

And the somatic dimension is so much more than touch. It’s also, if you feel nausea, you don’t just complain about it, you dive into your stomach, and often it vanishes instantly. It’s a psychosomatic manifestation of anxiety, okay, if you feel you’re a tremor in your arm. You know, don’t try to freeze and hold it, but exaggerate it, and a memory may wake up. You know that the body, the soma, is a language that can teach you something. You know, it’s not just the undesirable side effect of a drug. If you feel something in your body, you know, yes,

Dr. Signi Goldman 52:49

the body knows so much more than the intellectual mind is aware of, that’s right. And you spoke earlier about the idea of setting the intellect aside, and this is the natural corollary to that, is that let the body speak its own wisdom.

Bill Richards 53:03

Yeah, listen to your body, you know?

Dr. Signi Goldman 53:06

Yes. So there’s two ways that somatic. The term somatic kind of includes touch, but it also includes working with the person’s awareness of sensations in the body and and checking out, checking that out, or furthering it, or having them notice it more, or bringing their attention to it, and so that, that’s another aspect of somatic skills. So I think both those are really critical to have if you’re working with

Bill Richards 53:34

and clearly how much touch you you use. Um, is judged somewhat by the particular person you’re working with, the the history of that person, the culture of that person, the the guidelines of the clinic in which you’re working, you know? I mean, there’s somatic therapy where they’re doing extensive massage at times during sessions, you know. And there’s also situations where you you you wonder if it’s okay to touch the person. So, there is potential for abuse, you know, yes, but it’s not. It’s in all forms of psychotherapy. It’s in relations with professors and lawyers and clergy in whatever, you know, and that’s why we need as therapists to be well trained to care for our own needs to be in community, to discuss what happens in sessions with other providers you know, and maintain an ethical, safe Standard. But the bottom line is, good touch is a very important part of psychedelic therapy.

Dr. Signi Goldman 55:14

I agree, and I’m glad to hear you say that. And, yeah, these, these safety pieces and ethics. Pieces are ghosts, without saying, are important to teach trainees, as well as this idea that I use the term, do your own work. But what I mean by that is like, if you’re going to be a facilitator for someone else, then kind of look at your own shadow stuff. Look at your own trauma triggers like have done your own work on yourself so that you don’t unconsciously put your baggage, so to speak, into the session with the client, and I suspect that some of the cases of boundary violations and things are are due to someone who hasn’t really self reflected A lot, maybe as a therapist, and in a way, all we can do with trainees is really ask that they do that on the honor system, like, really, you know, take it it’s coming upon you to really look at your stuff, and then it’s not really a pleasant experience for any of us to do that, but we have the privilege of doing this kind of work with people. Then it comes with a responsibility to do that, to do your own shadow work. In one

Bill Richards 56:26

way, you can’t be a good therapist without doing your own work. Yeah,

Dr. Signi Goldman 56:31

yeah, not Gosh, gosh. We could probably talk for an hour on that as well as so many things, but I don’t. We don’t have that much time, so I don’t want to keep you too long. Maybe what I’ll do is finish with a couple of just for fun questions. And one of those is something my husband wanted me to ask you. We were hanging out last night, and I was like, I’m gonna talk to Bill Richards tomorrow, if you just want to ask him anything for fun. And he said, Yeah, ask him if he was on a desert island and could only ever have one psychedelic which one is his favorite?

Bill Richards 57:02

Well, as he was growing on the island, dear, actually, if I was on a desert island, I might not need a psychedelic. Grass might be all I needed,

Dr. Signi Goldman 57:15

yeah, that would be an alternate state in and of itself.

Bill Richards 57:21

I am, I am a strong advocate in the research world of concentrating on psilocybin right now. You know the idea, let’s get one drug besides ketamine, you know, off schedule one. Yeah, and kept and psilocybin has a very long natural history, a very wonderful, safe profile. It’s clearly not addictive. It’s essentially non toxic. It’s been used at least 9000 years, if you look at the archeological record here. And I like psilocybin, because the duration of action is six hours at most, which works into the work day in a clinic, you know it, when you take it, it takes you, within the first hour, maybe 40 minutes, to kind of the intense part of The day it gets it’s like, let’s get right down to business. Okay? And then it terminates, gradually but firmly. At the end of six hours, you’re back. You know you could go home, you know you know, and there’s this period when you’re coming back, if it’s a high dose session, where there’s kind of an opportunity for dialog between, if you will, the internal, eternal part of your mind and the temporal part of your mind. And I think that might allow for bringing more treasures back to the everyday world. You know, hypothesis here, yeah. Are you saying that the natural Go ahead? Yeah, as opposed to countries as with five me odmt kind of zooming into the eternal and zooming back, you know, I think, you know, I may be wrong, but I think psilocybin may allow for. Of more fruits for life to use William James’s framework.

Dr. Signi Goldman 1:00:10

Sounds like, tell me if I’m right, that you’re saying that the natural arc of the medicine, the way it moves through your body and your your bloodstream and all that, right? It’s such that, like, the sort of, like intense content, there’s actually a natural stage in the arc of the medicine where you can start reflecting on the content while still in the experience, that’s right. And so you come out almost, it’s almost like a early integration while still on the medicine, you know of is that a fair way to say it? Or Yeah?

Bill Richards 1:00:43

Well, for the first decade of my life, I primarily worked with LSD in the psychedelic research world. And LSD always lasts at least eight hours, and then maybe 12 hours. It builds up very gradually. So the peak is between the third and the fifth hour, so you’re kind of sitting there waiting for the reaction to get stronger. I think it’s kind of a waste of good therapy time. LSD terminates with this kind of bouncing ball effect, you know, you’re back, and then you drift off and you’re back, and you drift off and you’re back and you drift off. But it makes for a very long day.

Dr. Signi Goldman 1:01:35

That is so interesting, because, go ahead, yeah,

Bill Richards 1:01:38

I’d want to stress, I think that the strata of experiencing of LSD and psilocybin and EMT, for that matter, and question mark ketamine, are the same that the experiences aren’t in the Drug, they’re in the human mind.

Dr. Signi Goldman 1:02:01

Yeah, that was actually, oh, you just preempted my very next question. I love it. You’re psychic. Well, before I ask that question, I want to just reflect on what you just said, because it’s actually really fascinating, because what you’re speaking to is there’s the types of experiences that are opened up with these medicines, like the windows that are open, some of them, just by the the way that they show up at the arc of the experience, are more clinically useful, or clinically kind of practical, if to use in a clinical setting. And you like psilocybin, because, like, you get right to the good stuff relatively quickly, and then you have this, like natural integration while still in the journey, which is actually really fruitful. And so it’s it kind of as a as a therapist, you think, Wow, this makes my job easier as the therapist, almost, that’s right, compared to some of the other medicines, yeah. Well, that’s which is really great, because we all need to know this, because we are hoping to move into a place where we do use these in clinics, and this is the kind of stuff that will affect our real lives when we’re designing actual clinical practice. And my comment on ketamine in that way, since I have had to move very heavily into ketamine world for the last. You know, it’s been almost eight years now, but because that’s the one that we have to use in brick and mortar clinics these days, we have experimented with tight you know what? Especially with an IV, you can titrate it so you can dial it up or dial it down, and you can also make it last as long as you want. And so we have done some work with trying to mimic these, these different medicines with ketamine, like longer duration or more intense in the beginning, and then less, because it is so controllable you can adjust. Yeah. And I, you know, we have sort of landed, and this is just us, but in our actual clinic in Asheville, North Carolina, with a particular two hour arc that is designed that like, kind of we do every time that does what you’ve described it like it is a gentle onset, but it’s relatively rapid, and you go to the the journey content relatively quickly, and then the wear off is is also gentle. But there’s also like a built in tail where the therapist starts integrating with the with doing integration type conversation while the client is still in, like, in the alternate state, in the Met in the medicine state. And then there’s a the real tale when the medicine has left their system, and now you’re sort of doing what real in early integration, and then the next day you do, like, quote, actual integration. So it’s, it’s we developed that because our lived experience was like, Well, this is what works best. So it’s

Bill Richards 1:04:44

just this really practical. That’s a major contribution. That’s great. Signi

Dr. Signi Goldman 1:04:51

yeah, yeah. I kind of mean this. We’re fortunate to have that kind of flexibility,

Bill Richards 1:04:56

because I’m sure you’re writing that up. Uh. In your book, or whatever. But, you know, there’s a lot of ketamine therapists who could learn from that model. Yeah,

Dr. Signi Goldman 1:05:07

I should be writing it up more. But we, we have a part of our training program. We have consulting for people setting up clinics, like on the medical side, and my husband does a lot of training people to that model. Because what therapists who are doing this, they need to hear all these things about how to be good therapists that you and I have talked about, but there’s so like, you’d kind of need some practical like, how to make this work in your clinic day, so that you know good stuff. Okay, well, before I let you go, you you preempted this already. But that last question I was going to ask you is, do you think the medicine really matters? Which medicine or are what we really doing just using these different medicines to open a window into something that is universal to all of them, this alternate state, and you sort of already spoke to it,

Bill Richards 1:05:57

yeah, it would certainly be the second that it’s not the right medication to give, but it’s well to back up. Let’s acknowledge that these many different forms of experience, psychodynamic, archetypal, visionary and transcendental, unitive mystical also happens spontaneously to people without any drug at all. Now, what’s going on there are supposedly our bodies naturally generate DMT, so we’re all in violation of federal law by virtue of being human. But people will say, but it’s a very small quantity. But then, you know, a few millions of a gram of LSD take effect on here. I sometimes wonder if, when spontaneous experiences occur, whether there’s a little more DMT generated in the body, or the chemicals that might suppress it are lessened, or whatever, that’s a whole not another language to talk about psychedelics and the responses, but, But it’s normal human experience to have a mystical experience, or a profound encounter with unresolved grief or whatever. And it happens to all kinds of people all the time in meditative retreats in the midst of being caught up in concerts, either classical or rock, you know, in natural childbirth, sometimes in The runner’s high in the midst of creative fervor, sensory isolation and sensory overload. It it’s part of being human, and the value of these psychedelics is their potency and their reliability in one particular afternoon, we can guarantee that something significant will happen. They are incredibly valuable tools in in medicine, certainly in psychotherapy, and they may have incredible value in education and religion as well. But those are other chapters. Yes,

Dr. Signi Goldman 1:09:12

those are like, full conversations that we could still have. And also that’s a lot, I mean, a lot of what your book speaks to, something that I would encourage anyone going into this field in any way to reflect on for themselves. We can’t dictate that for our clients, for our patients, but it’s a little bit artificial for to pretend that these spiritual implications of this work aren’t there, which you sometimes see. But I hear you saying, this is just part of our human our legacy as humans that we have access to this and these medicines are just doorways into into that. Yeah,

Bill Richards 1:09:47

well, bottom line is that we really are more than we tend to think we are. You know, our levels of. Of consciousness that Jung called a collective unconscious, and beyond within each of us, and they’re there, whether we acknowledge it or experience it or not. They’re waiting to be discovered. And you know, if it’s not too grandiose, maybe this is a threshold of human evolution to for more of us to live in a bigger world, if you will, to be aware of that we do have our egos, that part of us that scampers around and goes to work and cooks dinner and takes care of our kids and so on, you know? But there also is a part of each of us that is incredibly beautiful and meaningful with implications for art and religion. There’s a sacred dimension of being human and as completely independent of allegiance to a particular religious creed or organized religion, though it may be, at the origin of all the great world religions.

Dr. Signi Goldman 1:11:21

Well, I cannot think of a better note to end the conversation on that is a beautiful note to end it on. And so

Bill Richards 1:11:31

I want what you’re doing Signi is beautiful. You know, you’re helping to educate the people who can be very helpful to others in the future.

Dr. Signi Goldman 1:11:43

It’s an honor, and I’m very aware of the teachers and kind of guidance that has gone before me to help that supports me in doing that. I bring a lot of gratitude for that, you being part of that, that pool of resources. And thank you very much for doing this. I feel like now we need to do more of them. You once again, have have been a fun person to talk to. So you once again, my favorite person to talk to this month. So we need to do we need to do it more. Thank you like immensely for for being on here today. I feel that our paths will cross relatively soon. Keep in touch. Thank you, Bill.

Bill Richards 1:12:22

Take care everyone.

Outro 1:12:26

Thanks for listening to Living Medicine. We’ll see you again next time, be sure to click Subscribe to get future episodes.