Community, Diversity, Governance, & Scholarships

“As we begin together, let’s acknowledge our shared purpose and desire of coming together to more deeply understand healing from a holistic perspective, while recognizing and honoring that we are each unique and different in terms of our profession, culture, country of origin, race, religion, neurology, sexual orientation, gender, language, training and more and everyone is coming to this with their own unique perspective and experience…”

-A statement of acknowledgment often shared before classes written by a student



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We network and partner with many communities and individuals to successfully manage the complexities of our many programs. It is important that we work with communities and individuals who are similarly aligned with our greater mission and values. For this reason, we have written this statement as a form of cultural informed consent, to share who we are as a program and what values are important to us. Above all else, we are inclusive and accepting, within the boundaries of our ethics and the safety of our community members. 

This document is not perfect, but it has been reviewed by culturally informed experts. Any recommendations or proposed changes can be emailed to safecommunity@medicinalmindfulness.org. We are open to continued learning and turning towards our blindspots.


Turning Cultural Appropriation into Cultural Appreciation

The Center for Medicinal Mindfulness and its members commit to Power Balancing: uplifting, supporting, spotlighting, and learning from marginalized voices. We do not depend on the emotional labor of marginalized folks, and pay them for their knowledge through classes, workshops, patronage, etc. We commit to giving credit to traditional knowledge whenever possible. 

The Center for Medicinal Mindfulness and its members commit to Cultural Compassion: acting from a place of sincerity and love to alleviate suffering, interrupting harm when we can and always paying attention to impact, not just intention.

 

Notice of Non-Discrimination and Prohibition of Harassment

“Committed to equity of transformational opportunity, the Center for Medicinal Mindfulness does not discriminate in offering access to its programs, activities, or employment on the basis of race, color, gender, age, national or ethnic origin, caste, religion, disability, veteran’s status, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, responsible psychedelic medicine use, or any other status protected by law.”

 

We Are a Multicultural, Multifaith Community of Professional Psychedelic Medicine Practitioners.

The Center for Medicinal Mindfulness is a family owned “Legacy Lifestyle Company,” LGBTQ+ and woman led, with a strong commitment to ensuring that our teams are representative of the communities we serve. As “Legacy Practitioners,” meaning we’ve been psychedelic practitioners for a long time, we understand to a degree what it means to live under systems of oppression. A “Lifestyle” company is a business term denoting a company that is managed differently than a typical startup or a corporation seeking exponential growth and profit. In that regard, we remain fiercely independent from corporate interests, live with our roots in mainstream progressive politics and work every day for social and environmental justice. We strive to be good neighbors, locally and globally, and to be exemplars for ethical and moral action, acknowledging our sacred differences of lived experience, as well as our interconnectivity, oneness and familia.

The Center for Medicinal Mindfulness is committed to diversity, equity and inclusion, with all clients, students, staff and practitioners feeling respected and valued for their intersectional identities. Racism, homophobia, antisemitism and gun violence (among many others) are public health crises that result in significant trauma for millions of people around the globe. 

The use of “They/Them” pronouns for those who request them in our community is common and accepted etiquette, and we also recognize and accept that not everyone uses them correctly every single time.

While we hold a very important trauma-informed clinical orientation, and value science and research, we choose to work with both licensed mental health providers as well as competent guides from other professional practices and spiritual traditions. This orientation supports greater inclusion within the field of psychedelic medicines, while simultaneously honoring the sacred as equally important and real.

As an organization, we believe in and trust the innately sacred, ceremonial and spiritual nature of psychedelic medicine experiences. We take the professional stance that ethical guides are required to know the inner terrain through their own medicine practices, and we oppose constraining psychedelic experiences within a solely clinical or medical model of practice. Spiritual and aesthetic practices are equally essential.  Professionally, we take the stance that psychedelic medicines do not exist separately from the history of their lineages. 

We meet our clients and students where they are and honor the spectrum of beliefs, both secular and religious, that our members personally hold. As a program orientation, however, we hold a spiritual, animist and Earth-centered worldview, and recognize that the sacred spaces we enter into are in some way very real experiences, and those we meet in this inner-space can become deeply meaningful transpersonal relationships.  We honor the lineages that we hold as a community, show gratitude for our elders, all of our ancestors, the land and Earth, and acknowledge the Spirits of these medicines as important allies and equal members of our community.

 

Land Acknowledgement

The Center for Medicinal Mindfulness is located on the ancestral lands of the Cheyenne, Ute and Arapaho peoples and we do not take that lightly. We choose to wholeheartedly participate in the lifelong reckoning and collective shadow work related to this. As mindfulness practitioners, we choose to turn towards this truth instead of looking away from it, and we intentionally and regularly invite engaged and respectful dialogue within our community about it and with our allies and teachers.

 

Concrete Steps We Are Taking – Reciprocity & Paying It Forward

The Center for Medicinal Mindfulness and Psychedelic Sitters School support our commitment in the following ways:

  • Our Need Based and Diversity Scholarship has provided over $400,000 in scholarships to our students. 
  • Our core training courses and live classes are available in an online format to increase accessibility for students with limited financial means, who are full time or working parents, or have disabilities that limit their ability to travel.
  • Our program was one of the first organizations to regularly donate to Chacruna Institute (chacruna.net), and we continue to support their work. 
  • We are establishing relationships with other non-profits, including with the Last Prisoners Project specifically to support an organization who helps those injured or incarcerated by the War on Drugs and cannabis prohibition, and the Indigenous Reciprocity Initiative of Chacruna Institute.
  • We commit to having a diverse team that is representative of the communities we serve, and we commit to providing specialized, culturally appropriate care to marginalized communities through ongoing professional training.
  • We created a work trade program to support our younger students who live locally to work at our Center as a trade for their training and to help them build a sustainable practice. This has become an apprenticeship program where all of our work trade students are now paid as assistant guides. 

 

Safety and Consent

We take the safety of our students and our community very seriously and skilled cultural awareness is a dimension of that safety. Due to the profound effects of psychedelic medicines, and our primary organizational identity and purpose being a “professional psychedelic guide association,” it is a conditional privilege, not a right, to join Medicinal Mindfulness Programs. Anyone is invited to apply to and participate in the Psychedelic Sitters School training program, regardless of their professional identity, if:

  • They agree to and comply with our safe community policies, informed consent agreements and other waivers, which include a non-discrimination and anti-harassment policy
  • They are physically, spiritually, psychologically and cognitively well enough to use psychedelics safely and to practice as a professional psychedelic guide safely, ethically and skillfully within a community that supports personal growth, accountability and oversight

 

Our Commitments

We are committed to anti-discriminatory practices and to providing equal opportunities for everyone. We respect and value diverse lived experiences and commit to ensuring all voices are valued and heard. The Center for Medicinal Mindfulness is committed to modeling diversity, equity, and inclusion and to maintaining an organization that ensures equitable treatment for all. Our staff and practitioners recognize how white supremacy, patriarchy, and exploitation can occur in psychedelic spaces and we are committed to turning towards this through radical self reflection for transformation and healing. Showing up for social justice in psychedelics requires leveraging our positions of privilege, critical self-awareness, allyship, and cultural respect.

Therefore, the Center for Medicinal Mindfulness actively works to:

  1. Understand diversity, inclusion, and equity as connected to our mission and critical to our work and stakeholders.
  2. Acknowledge and work to dismantle inequities within our policies, systems, and services;
  3. Challenge operations and policies that create or sustain inequity, oppression, and disparity;
  4. Explore potential underlying, unquestioned assumptions that interfere with diversity, equity, and inclusion practices;
  5. Address the systemic inequities that impact our work and in a manner that is consistent with our mission;
  6. Improve our diversity in leadership by identifying and supporting practices and policies that foster leadership reflective of the diversity of our communities;
  7. Commit time and resources to expand the opportunities for education around these issues with clients, practitioners, staff, and contractual relationships; and
  8. Practice and encourage transparent policies and clear communication in all interactions.
  9. Remain open to a path of continual learning and humility.

As a community of healers, the Center for Medicinal Mindfulness is committed to transforming society with inclusivity, diversity, and empowerment. Ending the war on drugs is merely one step on a long journey to equity.

 

Cultural Considerations in the Ethical Use of Mushrooms in Nontraditional Setting

An important step in healing is acknowledging the harms of the past, and how they are still playing out today. While these harms are not “fixable” in the sense that we can ever take them back, at the very least we can acknowledge the real harms of our cultural history, and work together to alleviate suffering for all people, especially those who were harmed, moving forward. This work is worthy and will forever be an incomplete process.

This statement of acknowledgement, as imperfect as it is, is designed to begin the process of acknowledging the cultural harms associated with the nontraditional use of psilocybin mushrooms, also known as Sacred Mushrooms by the Mazatec People. At the very least we can acknowledge and empathize with what actually happened to real communities, and the very real people that were severely negatively impacted by the global trends that eventually led to mushrooms becoming accepted and legal for spiritual and therapeutic use in Colorado. 

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Psilocybin is a hallucinogenic alkaloid found in nearly 200 strains of mushrooms that grow on almost every continent. The body converts psilocybin into psilocin, which is the main psychoactive compound. There is significant evidence to suggest that this compound has been used ritually, medicinally, and recreationally for at least 12,000 years.  We can find depictions of their use on murals in Australia that archeologists have dated to 10,000 BCE and in Spain in 4,000 BCE.  There is a history of their ceremonial use in Central America by the Aztec and Mayans, in Siberia, in ancient Greece, ancient Egypt and across Europe.

Since their popularization in the 1950s in Western culture, they were nicknamed “magic mushrooms” and became synonymous with the counterculture movement of the 1960s, along with LSD and cannabis.

Psilocybin and psilocin have been thoroughly studied for their potential benefits to mental health by reputable universities such as Harvard, Stanford and Cambridge and are actively being studied at John Hopkins University and the Imperial College of London.

Colorado legalized the personal consumption of psilocybin mushrooms as well as the regulated access for therapeutic purposes.

The community of Medicinal Mindfulness recognizes the nearly universal use of psilocybin mushrooms throughout human history, particularly in ancient times, and acknowledges that some Indigenous communities have a direct, unbroken lineage to these ancient histories. We also can’t help but openly wonder about Terence McKenna’s “Stoned Ape Theory” and the possible relationship of psilocybin containing mushrooms and the evolution of humanity in Africa. 

However, even with the profound beauty of this global history and our own deeply meaningful personal experiences, we cannot ignore the more recent history of this medicine and how it became popularized in the 1950s and 1960s. 

Acknowledging the real pain of what happened here, and bearing witness to it in our practice, is a necessary and essential step towards collective healing.

In 1955, CIA operative and banker, R. Gordon Wasson, on an expedition covertly funded by MK-Ultra (an illegal torture and brainwashing operation of the United States government), tricked a Mazatec healer named Maria Sabina into providing a healing session for Wasson using a mushroom strain now scientifically known as Psilocybe mexicana. After the experience, Wasson wrote an article for Life Magazine about his experience without Maria Sabina’s consent, and, as a result, beginning in 1962, an influx of hippies and other spiritual seekers descended on the community and left Maria Sabina to deal with unwanted police harassment, imprisonment, community ostracization, her house being burned down, her son murdered, and Maria dying in poverty in 1985. This was not that long ago. 

The Mazatec culture was forever changed during this period as well. The influx of interest in their community was extremely harmful and disruptive, and this was compounded by discrimination from the Mexican government. While the harm done was not just from the influx of interest regarding sacred mushrooms, and the other clashes between traditional practices, modernity and colonization, Maria Sabina became a target of the angst and fear during this period of significant cultural change. 

While the Mazatec are reclaiming their traditions and healing practices, these collective harms, and this generational trauma, continue to this day. 

It is important to note that in addition to writing about Maria Sabina and the Mazatec mushroom practices, Wasson also provided Albert Hoffman, the scientist who discovered LSD, with samples of Psilocybe mexicana, from the Mazatec people, and these samples were used to first identify the psilocybin molecule and then synthesize it.

Explicitly speaking, there is a direct link between these historical events and our work today. Yes, maybe the psychedelic movement would have continued unabated, and mushrooms would have been discovered in another way, but that isn’t what actually happened. Real harm was caused, and it is important for us, and our integrity, to acknowledge it.

What then does it mean to be on the right side of history with this issue, particularly as a community that practices with psilocybin mushrooms and other psychedelics in a non-indigenous setting? 

Collectively, the members of the Center for Medicinal Mindfulness acknowledge and grieve this painful history. As inspired stewards for the ethical use of this medicine, in our own way, we have an active and ongoing community conversation about how to ethically work with psilocybin mushrooms in the context of Mindfulness-Based Psychedelic Therapy, and without culturally appropriating and furthering the harms caused by colonial practices.  

With that being said, we recognize that we are forever embedded within a global system of extractive practices, and our work will never be separated from these larger cultural oppressions. Regardless, we remain committed to this work, and the ethical practices required to work with and deeply respect these potent allies, so that we can collectively heal from these generational traumas. As imperfect as it is, the need for collective healing appears to outweigh the very legitimate concerns related to the non-Indigenous use of these medicines, and even if our non-Indigenous practitioners never achieve full alignment with Indigenous and traditional practices due to these inherent injustices. There is a dynamic tension here with no immediate solution. Maybe this resolution will become clearer after a 100 years of intentional effort in healing and repair. 

We choose to actively explore these questions and will continue to invite members of traditional lineages to teach us about their histories, cultures and practices, and to speak about this historical and ongoing harm. We are committed to doing our part and work with whomever we can to help all communities heal from this collective generational trauma.

We recognize that certain traditional community members will never consider our practice as ethical because of our non-Indigenous practitioners. We understand this too. If you would like to learn more about the Mazatec lineage, we recommend exploring the advocacy of one of our allies, Chacruna: Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines, and consider joining us in donating to their work. You can also learn about Maria Sabina by watching this documentary, or reading this book. Our training program invites Indigenous speakers to speak to our students every semester, and we work to create bridges between our communities and cultures for healing and mutual exchange. 

While many of us are inspired by and respect these traditions and Indigenous teachings as essential ways of healthy and ethical living, we make no collective claims to being members of these traditional lineages. We respect their legal right to practice their tradition in accordance with their teachings. We strive to be culturally appreciating, not appropriating, and acknowledge that alignment in these areas is complex with many differing and important perspectives. 

Our team and community come from many cultural backgrounds and have a diverse range of previous trainings (including with Indigenous teachings and practices). We also have diverse life experiences and traditional initiations that may qualify some of us to speak from these perspectives. Fundamentally, we have listened to our elders and actively practice Earth-based philosophies and ways of living, and recognize the sacred and interconnected nature of our human experience, honor our ancestors, and strive towards balance. Although these teachings are Indigenous in their roots, we also believe these are universally understood principles and are the foundation for us healing together. These are values we strive to live by. 

While the Center for Medicinal Mindfulness community acknowledges the near universal use of psychoactive mushrooms and other psychedelic substances in ancient and Indigenous cultures across the planet, we choose not to whitewash our recent history. For this reason, we recognize the real suffering caused by how this medicine was introduced to mainstream America, and we acknowledge Maria Sabina and her community in our prayers. We will continue to actively work towards healing and repair with communities affected by this difficult history.

 

Governance & Accountability

As an above board psychedelic organization, the Medicinal Mindfulness Foundation navigates a number of regulatory and government agencies, from local zoning ordinances to state and federal laws, as well as insurance companies, property owners, other psychedelic organizations and many other community stakeholders. Accountability is central to what we do. Therefore, we hold the highest standards of care possible.  

Our community governance structure is primarily provided through the Medicinal Mindfulness Foundation, a religious non-profit and professional association. Members who wish to participate in community activism through the program are invited to be active in the Foundation.

 

Codes of Ethics for MM Practitioners

Codes of Ethics for Medicinal Mindfulness Practitioners are provided here for our members to study and integrate into their practice. These codes are mentioned in our Training Agreements as foundational principles. Ethical codes are currently being developed by many psychedelic organizations and regulatory agencies and are rapidly evolving. The Center for Medicinal Mindfulness is committed to working within our means to hold the highest ethical standards of practice and care that we can. 

Medicinal Mindfulness Community Code of Ethics

Questions and requests for additional information can be sent to the Safe Community Council by emailing safecommunity@medicinalmindfulness.org.

Need-based Diversity Scholarships

We officially initiated our need-based diversity scholarship program in 2019 to increase the accessibility and inclusivity of our psychedelic services and training program, and since that time have provided over $400,000 in scholarships to our students. These scholarships provide a 10-40% discount on any program tuition or group participation fee. Scholarships for individual sessions are also regularly available and are based on an hourly flat fee discount. Medical evaluations and membership applications are already reduced to the lowest rate possible, and ketamine administration and medical oversight are discounted additionally through group rates. (Cannabis sessions are more accessible and very effective.) Payment plans are also available to increase accessibility. Scholarships renew annually.

We would like to reaffirm our organization’s commitment to racial equality and social justice. We are fully committed to ensuring that everyone in our community is treated fairly, and with dignity and respect.

We would also like to ensure that the communities who need psychedelic healing services the most actually have access to them. There is something very personal about healing and self-actualization, and it is often important to recipients of a psychedelic session that they have a shared identity with their guide. The Center for Medicinal Mindfulness would like to do whatever we can to support access to transformational experiences for all people.

We believe that everyone deserves access to the healing that we offer and we work hard to make these programs financially accessible. Our scholarship program is not based on any sort of donation limitations. If you need a scholarship, and you qualify for our services or training program, you’ll get one for the duration of your time with us.

We acknowledged that marginalized communities have too often been left out of receiving access to essential psychedelic services. This scholarship is designed to give access to people who are marginalized and who experience systemic oppression. The
scholarship is also available to help people who financially need it and would not be able to participate otherwise.

We specifically aim to lift up those most marginalized and therefore prioritize people who hold multiple identities in this application process, especially if you have limited financial means, are a student, a veteran, or disabled. Our hope with this scholarship is to create space for those who have been most often denied access to this type of transformational experience and training by a lack of accessibility or discrimination.

The scholarship is for the duration of your time with us, and includes all tuition costs and group session fees. We also offer a scholarship rate for individual psychedelic therapy services.

What the scholarship does not yet provide a discount on is travel, lodging and meals during our training retreats or visits to our center. We have a partnership with the hotel next door to reduce lodging costs. We have also created online training and psychedelic therapy options.

The application to receive a scholarship is simple and takes less than ten minutes. It is part of the general application process for both our training program application and our membership application for group experiences.