In this episode, Hunt Priest joins to discuss the intersection of psychedelic experiences and religion. Hunt is the founder of Ligare: A Christian Psychedelic Society and was a participant in the Johns Hopkins/NYU Psilocybin Study for Religious Leaders in 2016. The epiphanies he had at Hopkins forever changed the trajectory of his work and led him to start Ligare in 2021.

In this conversation, Hunt Priest reflects on how participating in the Johns Hopkins study reshaped his understanding of Christianity, embodiment, and spiritual experience. Drawing on his background as an Episcopal priest, he explores the deep resonance between psychedelic experiences and Christianity, arguing that non-ordinary states of consciousness have always been central to religious life, even if institutional churches have often marginalized them. The discussion ranges from spiritual emergence and theological disruption to healing, discernment, and the role clergy can play in preparation and integration. Hunt also shares his own profound embodied experience during the study where he encountered Vedic and Upanishadic concepts firsthand. He explains how it ultimately led him to found Ligare, a Christian psychedelic society aimed at bridging psychedelics, healing, and the Christian mystical tradition.

In this episode, you'll hear:

• Hunt's ideas of how psychedelic experiences connect with Christian sacraments and liturgical practices
• How psychedelics connect with understandings of religious pluralism and the diversity of spiritual experiences
• Resources for working through ideas that psychedelic experiences could be sinful or demonic
• Hunt's thoughts on navigating theological disruption, spiritual emergence, and expanded images of God
• Why embodiment and bodily wisdom are central to spiritual insight and healing
• The vital opportunity institutional religion risks missing in the current psychedelic renaissance

Quotes:

"I think there's a lot of us [clergy] out there that understand that the spiritual issues that come up with psychedelics are important and need to be tended to in a sensitive way—in an open minded way, an open hearted way." [14:36]

"The Church has, over time, taught people to not trust their minds or their bodies. And that's a huge mistake because our bodies keep the score and they also are one of the places we hold wisdom—which was the biggest lesson I got from the first experience I had at Hopkins." [17:39]

"That's why the spiritual care professionals could be so important: when these issues, these spirit big spiritual questions or even a collapse of your own theological framework happens, you need help to put it back together. And just like therapy helps us put our emotional life back together, I think a good spiritual director or spiritual advisor—one-on-one or small group work—can help us put our theology back together." [21:47]

Links:

Ligare website

Ligare on Instagram

Hunt on Instagram

Hunt on LinkedIn

Center for Action and Contemplation website

Previous episode: Avoiding the Pitfalls of Psychedelic Medicine with Matthew Johnson, PhD

Psychedelic Medicine Association

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In this encore episode of the Psychedelic Medicine Podcast, psychedelic science researcher and educator Dr. Manesh Girn discusses his studies investigating psychedelic brain action. Manesh earned PhD in neuroscience at McGill University and is an author on over a dozen peer-reviewed articles on psychedelics and related topics. He is also chief research officer at EntheoTech Bioscience and runs the YouTube channel the Psychedelic Scientist.

In this conversation, Manesh discusses his recent article in Trends in Cognitive Sciences titled "A complex systems perspective on psychedelic brain action."He explains the complexity science approach used in the article, which emphasizes the brain is a holistic, interconnected system, rather than individual component networks that can be isolated. From this standpoint, Manesh critiques some simplistic explanations of the neural mechanisms of psychedelics which focus exclusively on interactions with the default mode network isolated from other brain systems.

He also explains how individual some of the neural effects of psychedelics are, citing different findings from different studies and observed variations between brain scans of different people. By better understanding these individual differences, and placing these different responses into a complexity science framework, Manesh believes that more individually-tailored psychedelic therapies are possible once the systems involved are more comprehensively understood.

Manesh closes this discussion by explaining the difference between genuine complexity and sheer chaos. Complexity, he explains, is a delicate balance of novelty and order, which is why psychedelic experiences can be both destabilizing and productive of novel insights and personal transformation.

In this episode:

• The research into psychedelics and the default mode network
• Using frameworks from complexity science in psychedelic research
• Measuring entropy in the brain
• Differences in neurological effects from taking between different studies and different individuals
• How a complexity science approach to neuroscience could better inform precision psychiatry

Quotes:

"You can't just look at a specific brain region or network [in psychedelic research], you've gotta talk about the brain as a whole, in this sense of seeing the brain as a system of interacting parts." [4:49]

"The core idea of this paper is that psychedelics put our brain into this state that is more dynamically flexible, it's more diverse in its activity patterns, and it's more sensitive to inputs that come in." [14:17]

"What we find in the brain imaging findings is that different studies disagree, but also if you look at individual people, they can have radically different effects on their brain—almost opposite." [21:37]

Links:

Manesh' recent article in Trends in Cognitive Sciences: "A complex systems perspective on psychedelic brain action"

​​Psilocybin vs Placebo Brain Connectivity Diagram from Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris

The Psychedelic Scientist YouTube Channel

The Psychedelic Scientist on Instagram

The Psychedelic Scientist on Twitter

Manesh on LinkedIn

EntheoTech website

Psychedelic Medicine Association

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In this episode, Will Van Derveer, MD joins to unpack what we know about which psychedelic medicines are best suited to particular mental health conditions. Dr. Van Derveer has trained several thousand mental health professionals in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, provided ketamine assisted therapy to hundreds of people, and has staffed MDMA therapy trials with MAPS. His book, Psychedelic Therapy: A Revolutionary Approach to Restoring Your Mental Health and Reclaiming Your Life, will be published by Shambala in the spring of 2026.

In this conversation, Dr. Van Derveer offers a clinician's framework for thinking through how different psychedelic medicines may align with different mental health conditions. He explores how factors such as anxiety levels, trauma history, prior psychedelic experience, and a person's orientation toward spiritual versus medical healing shape treatment decisions. Across discussions of anxiety, depression, PTSD, OCD, and eating disorders, Dr. Van Derveer reflects on the relative roles of ketamine, psilocybin, MDMA, and emerging short-acting psychedelics, while underscoring the importance of community, and integration. Throughout, he returns to a central theme: many conditions labeled as psychiatric may also reflect deeper forms of disconnection—social, existential, and spiritual—and psychedelic therapies can be powerful tools for restoring those lost connections when used thoughtfully.

In this episode, you'll hear:

• Why safety, medication interactions, and psychiatric history must come before all other considerations
• The difference between clinical and ceremonial approaches to psychedelic healing
• Considering when group versus individual approaches to psychedelic therapy may be best suited for a particular patient
• How ketamine, psilocybin, and MDMA may play distinct roles in treating anxiety and depression
• Considerations of dose, tolerance, and maintenance sessions for ketamine treatments
• Why MDMA-assisted therapy stands out for chronic and severe PTSD
• Dr. Van Derveer's perspective on emerging psychedelic medicines and the future of treatment

Quotes:

"As time wears on, I lean more toward the group dynamic [for psychedelic therapy] because of the power of community and healing in community. And also, of course, it can help mitigate the cost of access for people." [8:24]

"There's a lot of conversation about ibogaine right now, and I think it's an incredibly powerful, beautiful, sacred, ancient medicine that has a role. But it has a lot more porcupine quills on it than, say, ketamine or MDMA." [27:16]

"In acute suicidality, I think ketamine is the treatment of choice. There's nothing like it. … it can be quite impressive how quickly suicidal thoughts melt away. But it is a short game because often it doesn't stick for people. And that's a huge drawback." [28:39]

"We know that there are clear associations between chronic depression and high levels of inflammation in the body and also in the brain. Ketamine and psilocybin both have strong anti-inflammatory effects. But it seems like somehow the pathways that psilocybin is working on… tends to produce longer term benefits." [30:10]

"I tend to think that spiritual connection—in whatever your language is, whatever your metaphors are, however you think about it—is something that we need to think about for health overall." [40:21]

Links:

Dr. Van Derveer on LinkedIn

Dr. Van Derveer on Instagram

Dr. Van Derveer on X

Dr. Van Derveer's forthcoming book, Psychedelic Therapy: A Revolutionary Approach to Restoring Your Mental Health and Reclaiming Your Life

Integrative Psychiatry Institution website

Previous episode: Is Psilocybin Safe for Me? with Seth Mehr, MD

Psychedelic Medicine Association

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