From Despair to Awe

Just after Samhain is a good time to look back on the year that has been, and in doing this I’d like to pay tribute to a colleague whom I’ve had the privilege of working with. Just after Samhain last year, Dr Rosalind Watts invited me to join her team which included psychologists and ecotherapists who were working with some of the participants of the Imperial College trials of the psychedelic drug psilocybin. These trials explored the potential benefits of psilocybin for those with treatment-resistant depression, and the work we have done as a team over the last year has been designed to help participants integrate their experiences and support any transformations or insights obtained during the trials. This has included running fortnightly support groups and monthly workshops devised by Rosalind using the Ogham trees as guides.

It has been incredibly exciting to be combining psychotherapeutic work with an appreciation of the power of nature, and of trees in particular, to bring healing. Rosalind brings a great depth of understanding to this work, combined with the ability to articulate complex ideas clearly and directly, and she has kindly agreed to contribute a paper to the Order’s Mt Haemus collection about this topic, and will be joining us at next Summer’s Glastonbury celebrations to share some of her work.

In the following video, you can hear her speak about ‘Nature’s Codes’. Beneath that, you can hear a beautiful section of John Hopkin’s music, with the words of Ram Dass, from the album ‘Music For Psychedelic Therapy.’