First Collaborative meeting, Ethics committee, priorities, sustainability, membership... oh my!
Spirit Bridge Collaborative - the origin story
For years, psychedelic professionals have been operating in the underground, often in isolation. With renewed interest in this field, more and more people are in need of support to engage safely and ethically with psychedelics. While many folks report positive results, others have had negative experiences, including re-traumatization, consent violations, and unethical power dynamics at the hands of unskilled facilitators. There is an undeniable need to develop best practices, support established professionals, and provide mentorship and education to emerging guides. Spirit Bridge Collaborative is a grassroots organization born out of this need, giving psychedelic support professionals a place to become better at the work we are called to do. We provide community, collaboration opportunities, continuing education, peer supervision and consultation to folks operating beyond the clinical framework. While some of our members trained as therapists, the majority were called to this work and bring many modalities and fields of expertise into their work with psychedelics. Our aim is to provide a voice for non-licensed professionals to help define industry best practices, and a place to build community and gain new skills.
Recap of our first community meeting On January 10, we had the first meeting for Collaborative members and interested parties. We had 17 participants in the conversation, and we had the opportunity to share our visions and desires for the community. We identified the following challenges facing the community.
Lack of standards of care
The need for ways to evaluate competence when folks come from varied trainings and traditions
Lack of industry-wide best practices
Blurred ethical practices and non-existent systems for accountability
The necessity of trauma-informed care as a foundational skill for work with psychedelics
Desire for opportunities to level-up and learn from others in informal settings
Agreement on the need for continued education
Desire for ethical guidelines that take into account diversity of practice
Priorities for Q1 Based on this first meeting, we have prioritized four initiatives in the coming months 1) Develop Ethical Guidelines for the Spirit Bridge Collaborative in collaboration with EPIC, the Ethical Psychedelics International Community. 2) Creation of a Content Calendar for the coming months, and scheduling of educational chats for the community. We had a great conversation around Consent in December. Our next chat in February will be around Peer Consultation and Supervision, and we will be talking about Trauma Informed Practice in March. 3) Peer Consultation groups. Community member Phoenix McGregor will be leading peer supervision sessions once a month, starting in February. Please stay tuned for details. 4) Build alliances and collaborate with other groups with similar missions to strengthen our collective work and provide representation for non-clinical professionals. If you would like to participate in the Ethics Committee or any of the initiatives above, or have an idea for a workshop, panel or talk, please let me know! You can email me at spiraljourney1@gmail.com. Would love to have you join us build this community! Sustainability and Membership I am thrilled to share that I was recently accepted to the Uptima Entrepreneurship Coop and will be participating in their Launch Your Business Bootcamp for the next 8 months. Participation in this program will allow me to lay a solid foundation for Spirit Bridge, and create a sustainable and fiscally solid framework to provide more services and support to the community. Please help me figure out what the community needs by filling out this survey. It will help me prioritize and narrow down our work. As part of the process, I will be investigating various potential business models and structures, with the aim of creating a non-profit entity by the end of the program. My aim is to create a space that provide valuable offerings to the community that can help us all grow and become better at what we do. Eventually, it is quite likely that we will create a membership structure, with certain events and opportunities available exclusively to members. Other offerings will continue to be available to the general public and at a discount for members. Please stay tuned as this model evolves. For the foreseeable future, membership to the community remains free. Please help us spread the word! Finally, please share this newsletter with those who might be interested! We are looking to build a true community resource and would love your support. You can have them fill out this form to sign up for the mailing list. And if you appreciate the work I am doing and feel called to support my efforts, any and all donations are graciously accepted, You can PayPal me at spiraljourney1@gmail.com. In appreciation, Isabel Santis, PhD(C), MA, PMP Founder, Spirit Bridge Collaborative Creator, Spiral Journey Integration spiraljourney1@gmail.com Want to learn about all my projects? Find out what I am up to!