Valerie Beltran & Chelsea Rose Pires: Holding Space with the Zendo Project

In this powerful episode of Divergent States, we’re joined by Valerie Beltran and Chelsea Rose-Pires of the Zendo Project- an organization redefining harm reduction and compassionate care at festivals, events, and beyond.

We explore how the Zendo Project began as a MAPS initiative and evolved into its own nonprofit dedicated to supporting people through difficult psychedelic experiences and emotional crises, not with judgment or clinical detachment, but with radical empathy and peer support.

From creating safe spaces at Burning Man to launching training programs for crisis responders, Valerie and Chelsea offer insight into how the Zendo Project is transforming both event culture and the broader conversation around mental health, community care, and psychedelics.

Whether you’ve had a challenging trip, want to support others through non-ordinary states, or are just curious about what real-world harm reduction looks like, this is an episode you don’t want to miss.

🧘‍♀️ Learn how just being present can change lives.
🧠 Discover why “sitting, not guiding” is a revolutionary principle.
💬 And find out how you can get involved, support their mission, or even join them in the field.

✨ “You don’t have to be altered to walk into the Zendo. You just have to be human.” – Valerie Beltran

🔗 Learn more or get involved: zendoproject.org
💚 Donate. Volunteer. Sit with someone. It matters.

Forgot to mention on the episode, but big thanks to Future Boogz for letting us feature their track on this episode! Ach for the art, Brad for the help, and all of the Patreon Supporters! 

All content in Ask Me Anything sessions are for educational purposes only. Zendo Project does not provide any legal, medical or mental health advice. Consult with a lawyer, doctor, or mental health therapist before making any significant decisions for your own situation. Any references to third party websites or service providers are made without any warranties, express or implied. All participants should conduct their own due diligence on any third party websites or professionals before engaging in any conduct. Zendo Project does not encourage or facilitate any illegal conduct.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to the Zendo Project and Festival Collaboration
04:06 Understanding the Zendo Project's Mission and History
10:27 The Role of Outreach and Community Support
14:46 Experiencing a Zendo Session: What to Expect
17:56 Collaboration with Medical Services and Event Producers
21:11 Challenges in Harm Reduction Awareness
23:57 Exciting New Partnerships and Initiatives
27:39 Success Stories and Impact of the Zendo Project
32:10 The Impact of Zendo Project
34:06 Getting Involved: Training and Community
36:13 Education and Outreach in Psychedelic Spaces
39:06 Navigating Adverse Experiences
42:45 Challenges in Providing Services
44:01 Future Vision and Growth of Zendo Project
48:10 Inclusivity and Accessibility in Support Services
52:08 Integration After Experiences
54:57 How to Support Zendo Project

Transcript

0:15

Welcome back to Divergent States, back with Bryan. Hey, what's up, man? How you doing, man? doing great, doing great. How are you? I'm good. So yeah, today we've got Valerie and Chelsea from the Zendo Project. you know, Bryan and I, were talking and I think this is after we'd done the interview and saying, you know, be a good ideas if we could be like, hey, if we could go and maybe go with them to a festival and see. Well, so I talked to Valerie and Chelsea and we've been kind of going over that and they're totally down for the idea. yeah. Yeah. So Bryan, if you're willing, yeah, like we can get you and have you do their, do the training program and stuff and kind of, you've got the time and do the classes, will you do that? And I'll talk to you and, Valerie was talking about, maybe she comes back and we can chat with her at the same time, kind of about what you're doing and what you're, you're learning from them. Yeah, we talking about that. And I don't know about they said they're not going to have a big as big of a presence at Burning Man this year, but something else they're talking about lightning in a bottle. But that's like late May. And I was like, well, I'm not sure about the timing with that with psychedelic science. Twenty five. But we're going to see if we can try and find something maybe like closer in proximity to us and something like that. So we're talking about it. Yeah. Dude, that sounds really cool. I'm definitely interested. All right. Yeah, cool. We'll get that set up. I think it'd be a great like we could do a little series, you know, like we're doing we're doing the first, you know, episode of the month, kind of these AMAs and interviews and the second episode of the month, maybe for a few episodes. got, know, talking to you about what it takes to go through this into a project, you know, volunteer program. Yeah, yeah, that's something we can talk about. Yeah, I think it's a great idea. I think it'd be a lot of fun. I really kind of show off what the Zendo project does for people. So, right. And I mean, everybody will hear about this as we get into the interview, but I think it's amazing. And, I mean, I just, I wish I could have had access to something like that. So, I mean, it's so cool that, I think that they're willing to do that and give us that kind of access to kind of, you know, you go through and see what they're, you know, the trading process is and, and from sign up to festival, you know, and go see what, they actually do out in the field. think that'd be awesome. Yeah, dude, that sounds great. So yeah, we're gonna go to a festival. Right. We get to go to a festival, which would be great. We can meet a lot of people, lot of you guys out there. Everybody come by and say hi and talk to the Zendo project or anything. We'll be right around. So yeah, it's yeah. Let's get to that interview where we're we got to talk to Chelsea and Valerie from the Zendo project and we'll talk to you after. So yeah, we're here with Valerie Beltran and Chelsea Rose Perez, CEO and Outreach Director of the Zendo Project. How are you guys doing? Doing great. Thanks for having us. Happy to be here. Yeah, yeah, happy to be here today. So can you just tell me a little bit about the Zendo project and how it came to be? Yeah, yeah, I can hop in. Yeah, so the Zendo project was founded in 2012 and it was founded as a project of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, commonly known as MAPS. And in those early years, really the focus was on providing peer support services primarily at Burning Man, although not long after that, we started providing services at a lot of other events around the world. And so our focus has been to create a sanctuary for people who are experiencing difficult psychedelic experiences or complex emotions not related to psychedelics, as well as providing education on harm reduction and peer support. And just two and a half years ago, we separated from MAPS and became our own 501C3, which has really just been a wonderful opportunity. We've had lots of support from MAPS in that process, but it's really been the opportunity to focus on the mission of Zendo project, which is quite different than the mission of MAPS. MAPS has really been focused on MDMA therapy and psychedelic legalization for therapeutic purposes, whereas the Zendo's focus is so different. It's really caring for people in psychedelic states or in non-ordinary states. And so with their support, we've become our own nonprofit. And so the last few years have really been about building our foundations and growing into a a big new nonprofit organization with really exciting things on the horizon. That sounds great. We just had a conversation with Rick a couple of weeks ago, and he was talking about the Zendo and how you guys had split off. It was a lot of fun. Valerie, what role does Outreach play in expanding the Zendo project and its impact? Yeah, well, I want to first start by saying the reason I got involved is because I had heard about Zendo Project for a long time. I'm a therapist. I'm trained to work with psychedelics. did the California Institute of Integral Studies, psychedelic assisted therapy training 2019. So psychedelics have been part of my work and on my horizon for a long time. And so I've been aware of Zendo Project, but hadn't really been to a festival in a long time. I hadn't been to Burning Man, so I didn't really. reach out to the organization and I became friends with some of the people who were involved in the leadership in Zendo Project when I was living in Boulder, Colorado and became so aware of how incredible this organization is. And I saw that it's serving such an important role, but more than just offering like support services at festivals, I see as offering this really integral role of being able to provide support in general. And not just for people on psychedelics, but for people in any kind of state where they're just needing emotional support or attunement or empathy or somebody to provide this unconditional positive regard. And not only that we're providing a service to people in need, we're providing a service for people who want to provide that need, who want to fulfill that. Because I think there's so many people out there who... just don't have an opportunity in a lot of mainstream life and the world. We don't have any opportunities to be able to flex that muscle, to be able to provide care to each other. So Zendo Project serves this really valuable role of being able to provide a space where we can teach basic foundations for providing support and care, and people can provide that to each other, can learn how to be more empathic, more attuned. So I saw all of this incredible organization, the people who are involved in this, And I wanted to get involved and started volunteering three years ago. Just came on as staff this past year and started developing this outreach role as a way to spread the word about what we do, what we offer. And we're just really hoping that we can expand because I see the value and what Zendo Project has to offer to the world. Right, mean, it has a lot of really good value just inherently, can see, but how often do you see that the, just people coming in just for emotional support sometimes and then to enter something. I see it pretty often. I'll Chelsea really comment on this since she has so much more experience, but I see it really often that at festivals, a lot of times people will come in feeling either experiences of grief or having been through a difficult conversation with a partner, a friend, a campmate, or they'd witnessed something that was difficult or just regulating. People don't have to be altered by some kind of substance. They just come in wanting support. Like we all at some point need somebody to just... be there for us, just listen, not try to solve the problem or fix things for us, but just to be there with Yeah, I think on average it's about 40 % of folks who come into the Zendo come in for reasons not related to psychedelics. And really what that's shown us is just how valuable and broadly applicable the skill set is that we teach. In such that, you know, often people will... will come in, like Valerie said, for a lot of different reasons. And psychedelics have really shown us how to work with people in non-ordinary states. But at the same time, we then learn that that skill set can really be applied to caring for anybody who's going through a complex emotion or having a difficult time. Yeah, I think that's kind of important. Go ahead, Bryan. No, I can tell there's a lot of passion behind what you guys do and what's driven you to this field. I'm just curious, like, how did it get started? Like, what inspired kind of bringing these services to festivals in the first place? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I Rick Doblin was a huge inspiration and I, and I, really, I think motivated to provide these services because if you work in the field of psychedelics, you see very quickly how often things can go sideways or how often just a difficult experience arises. And so I think, you know, being out there and doing the work that MAPS was doing, they felt that they couldn't do that in good conscience. without also addressing safety and wellbeing of people using psychedelics. And so I think that really drove them to get this started. so Burning Man was where they piloted it back in 2012. And the response was so positive from the community. And actually I was a guest in the Zendo in 2012. That is what initial, it was my first initial experience of the Zendo. And that experience of having that kind of support that was... compassionate and non-judgmental. I mean, it was massive. It was massive for my whole experience throughout the event. I went in with a partner. It was super supportive for our relationship. And in fact, was the big motivation for me coming back and being more involved from 2013 onward. So when you experience psychedelics or you experience how difficult they can be, and then you get that kind of support, it just really... emphasizes the value and importance of making it more available to people who are exploring altered states. How has your own, any of your experiences with altered states kind of influenced your own work in this field? Valerie, do you have any stories about that? Oh, hugely. I feel like having my own experiences really showed me the need for certain kind of care that I think Zendo Project really specializes in and that we're able to teach to people specifically that when I'm in an altered state, especially feeling dysregulated, I'm often wanting to make me talk. I'm aware I'm not making sense. I just kind of want to throw things out there. I don't necessarily want answers. I don't want people to, if I'm asking a question, I might just be wondering out loud. I don't necessarily want someone to answer the question for me. I just kind of want to hear my voice be posing these questions out into the universe. And I think often friends or other people will want to help and coming from a good place will maybe answer questions or try to ground you or try to talk people out of the experience and one of the principles that we talk about in Zendo Project is through, down, where we don't want to talk people down from their experience or out of their experience, but just help them be in it so they can go through it and help it come to completion to a beautiful resolution. And so for me, I noticed in my altered states, I would feel like I want to speak, ramble, not make sense, just throw words out there, throw questions out there. not have answers and to sometimes feel like I might want somebody to come close, I might want a little bit of space, I don't know how to say that, I don't know how to articulate those needs. So something else that we teach in Zendo is these practices of attunement and how to teach people, like, what are the right questions to be aware of? Like, think in with yourself and see how it feels if I sit here or over there, or is it okay if I sit next to you and... asking these very basic things that when you're in an altered state, you might not have the language to be able to articulate, you might not feel comfortable expressing certain things. So being in this state myself and knowing the kind of care that I have needed has helped me work in the Zendo and also appreciate more the principles that we teach in Zendo Project. That's yeah, it sounds it sounds really cool. Like just to be able to go in some place. And I mean, yeah, like you said, it doesn't have to be related to an altered state. You just need somebody to talk to sometimes. And that's just I mean, that's valuable, valuable in and of itself. So could you kind of walk us through what like a typical Zendo session would be like if you come into your tent freaking out a little bit? Yeah, so the way that it works is when you walk up to the Zendo, you'd be greeted by one of our greeters. And the greeter will pair you with a sitter. And then at that point, we have medical triage volunteers who will take the vitals of the guests just to ensure that they're appropriate for the space and that they don't need any medical care. And then beyond that, you we have these beautiful spaces at Burning Man. They're circular. At events, it just kind of depends, but we always make them quite comfortable. And from there, it really depends on what the guest needs. And like Valerie was saying, we're really there to show up and allow the guest's experience to unfold, and we don't guide the experience. And so in that way, it might be that one guest just wants to be in silence and have someone sit there with them. Another may want to talk about things or engage. Another, want to move around. mean, these expressions of psychedelic states or non-ordinary states or emotions, just emotions themselves can really look different depending on what's happening for somebody. so someone may stay for many hours. Someone may only stay 30 minutes. I would just guess on average, maybe a couple hours is pretty much an average, but sometimes people will come back multiple times. And when they feel ready to return to the festival or event environment, then we support them in doing so. And it really depends on each person what it looks like, but it's very open and flexible. I love that you guys have medical staff there. know a lot of people when they're in a bad trip or something like that, there's that deeper concern of like, is there something wrong with me? Am I going to have a heart attack? Am I going to die like this or something like that, right? So I guess I'm curious, are you guys working with local EMTs or anything like that? Or are you bringing these people with you as part of the company? Are these hired on staff? Yeah, yeah, they're actually volunteers. And so they're EMT trained or hire and they apply to volunteer. And so there's several roles that people could fill while they're in the Zendo. So one of them would be the medical triage volunteer. And we're not providing any medical care. We're just assessing to ensure that they're appropriate. But there's greeters and there's a log keeper. There's several sitters, supervisors and, you know, hierarchical structure of just oversight on the space. So yeah, so everybody who works in the Zendo applies to volunteer in advance and then they go through our training in advance as well. And then each role has a, we train each role individually as well as how to fulfill that specific. That's really cool that you the medical. Like he said, there's been plenty of times I've been just kind of get out of my head a little bit and like, you know, so that'll help with that especially. You said you partnered with Burning Man. How are these collaborations kind of helping support your mission and how what Zendo does to go about that? sure. Yeah. think, I mean, Burning Man is where we got our start. I think there would probably be no Zendo project without Burning Man. And it's been an incredible space where I think most people associate Zendo project with Burning Man. think, doing a lot of public speaking and going to a lot of conferences as part of my role as outreach director, I'll often talk to people who, yeah, hear Zendo project and find it synonymous with Burning Man. And I think a lot of people have even expressed that. What would Burning Man be without Zendo Project or some kind of harm reduction? And a lot of people that I talk to will express the sense of, I've never even been to the Zendo, I've never needed to come, but just knowing that it was an option made it so that I didn't have to come. Like if it wasn't an option, I would probably need to visit a Zendo. You know, it's that paradox of the fact that the services are available make me not utilize the services, but if they weren't available, that's when I would need the services. I think that often happens is that people just knowing that there are people out there who are completely dedicated to just catching you when you fall. And you don't have to pay, you don't have to justify yourself, you don't even have to give a real name, you don't have to say what you're on, you don't have to do anything that makes you uncomfortable. There is a space where we will just catch you. And 24 seven, we're available at festivals. think so many people know that that's available. It just allows them to feel the sense of safety that they can experience whatever they need to. And even if they're out on the Playa or out at a festival, not at one of our Zendos, if they are going through their difficult experience, they might feel more compelled to go through the experience knowing some of our principles of Zendo project. Maybe they've heard that difficult is not necessarily bad, which is another one of our four principles. They might feel like I'm struggling right now. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's okay for me to go through this and I know Zendo's there. Maybe I don't even need to go there. I feel more motivated and more contained within myself that I can traverse this difficult experience. Yeah. And one thing I'll add is that usually if event producers have us at their event, they already recognize the value of these services. And maybe that's because they've had events in the past without them and they've seen how troublesome that can be. But, and so the beautiful thing is when an event sees that and they have us there, really the value just comes through in having that support for your patrons when things are tough. And And it also gives us the opportunity to go and model what it is we do. And then really the community sees the value of it, the producers see the value of it, and also the medical organizations that we work with really have come to appreciate that extra support so that they can focus on the medical needs and when appropriate pass as anybody who's needing some more emotional support. That's awesome. It kind of, it kind of leads me to my next question of there been any specific challenges that you guys have come up against as far as spreading awareness about harm reduction? Yes, there's definitely definitely challenges along the way. Try and think of where to start. I mean, it just feels as though the lack of education around psychedelics and substance use in general You know, it starts early. It starts long before somebody would come to us. And so that feels like just a big challenge we're up against in the world of psychedelics or in substance use. mean, even, there's so much stigma around substance use and it's come a long ways. I mean, we've seen it come so far in the last decade. I mean, even at Burning Man in the early years, they didn't want us to use psychedelics in our promotional material. And now it's very clear and very supportive that that is what we do. But I think the biggest challenge is the stigma around substance use. And harm reduction are set of principles to reduce possible harms. But there's also this piece where people feel like if they put these services in place, then they're acknowledging that there is substance use at their events. And there's the Rave Act is a federal act that essentially says that if a producer knows that there's substance use at their event, they can be held liable for anything that happens to their patrons while using substances. And so that's led to some really terrible outcomes where a producer might be worried about having a chill out space or offering free water, these very basic needs that protect and keep their patrons safe they might be afraid to offer because of the Rave Act. And so... So those are a few of the huge challenges. It's just lack of knowledge, the rave act, and the stigma that's out there. I going to say, I've actually met someone who had the, was a victim of the Rave Act is what I would call it, had a big property seized from him, a bunch of money, spent quite a bit of time. And he was in federal prison and he was really, he was just trying to provide a safe place for people to have fun. so yeah, it's shame that stuff like that happens, but yeah. I see, you know, kind of on your point as you were talking about, you know, it's getting more, you know, becoming more accepted, more into the mainstream. Even I think it was New Year's on the New Year's countdown. That was one of their big predictions for 2025 with psychedelic science and psychedelic therapy. So it's, it's getting there. So are there any new partnerships or initiatives in the work that you guys are particularly excited about right now? Yeah, actually, there's a couple that I would love to share about. One of them is a partnership that we are exploring with a medical organization. Last year, we provided peer support services at the Texas Eclipse, and we worked with a medical organization there, who I think actually felt rather apprehensive initially coming into the collaboration. Again, because I think they often don't know who's providing these services and in working with us, they really saw the professional level of care that we were able to provide and how much weight that took off of them. And after that event, they have been collaborating with us in terms of events that we can accompany them to this next year. And they provide medical for quite a few of the larger producers in the US. So. that could really support us in getting our services into more mainstream festivals and large events. So we're really excited about that. It's still in the works, but hopefully we'll get to do an event with them at least once this summer. And there's this beautiful piece about working with the medical companies because medical services have a standard of care, right? Or like emergency services have a standard of care, but when you work in peer support, there is no standard of care. so it can... actually be really difficult for us to ensure the kind of services we provide. And Zendo is really lucky to be as resourced as we are and able to have good insurance like we do. But if we are able to come in and collaborate with medical and come in and contract under medical, then essentially it it kind of sidesteps the relationship or the challenges that producers have in bringing us in. And we actually come in as part of the medical service. And there's just a lot. It's like an open avenue essentially to getting our services in and really building a standard of care that includes peer support services. And so that will be really huge this year if that takes off. And so we're very hopeful about it. And then the other piece that I was gonna share, this one's really personally exciting for me, is that, like I kind of mentioned early on, because the skill set that Zendo teaches is so broadly applicable and psychedelics, I mean, I just love this kind of piece that where we could take what psychedelics have taught us and bring that knowledge into mainstream mental health and supporting really anybody in a non-ordinary state of consciousness. And so we have an initiative this year, an educational initiative to build a curriculum specifically for crisis response teams working at the county level. and educating them on how to work with folks in non-ordinary states of consciousness, which really when somebody comes in the door of a crisis unit, like any sort of emotional crisis is a non-ordinary state. And often those kind of teams, they're taught how to assess, know, you're assessing for suicidality or you're assessing for ability to meet basic needs, but sometimes someone will come in the door and what they really need is just the support of another human being. And that isn't actually a skill set that is emphasized in those settings. A lot of my original training as a therapist is in crisis settings, so I kind of got to experience that firsthand. And so this next year, we're building a curriculum for crisis workers. We're going to pilot it in the fall. And so yeah, really excited to bring this skill set to mainstream mental health settings so that people outside of the realm of psychedelics can really benefit from the work that we're doing. Yeah, that's really cool. It's almost meta integration. You don't have to take a psychedelic, you know, like the psych aren't for everybody, but what psychedelics have taught us could benefit people in terms of how we model our care. So I love that idea so much and I'm really, really looking forward to that. Yeah, that's a really cool idea. I like that kind of meta integration. So do you have any success stories or Valerie, did you want to have anything you'd want to add to that? Sorry. That feels good. Yeah, think success stories just like Chelsea was talking about, I think, especially with the Texas Eclipse Festival, working with the event producers there. Yeah, they kind of came in, we came in not really knowing what we did, not knowing what level of professionalism we were going to be able to offer. And so think there was this hesitance to like, how do we even collaborate with you? How do we work with you? Like how does security liaise with you or medical? Like what kind of integration? I a lot of people, I know I talked to a couple of people on the medical team, they just kept asking, what do you do? What is harm reduction? How do you function? So I think there's just a lot of unknowing. And yeah, a lot of the success comes from people being able to see us in action and understand first the value that we offer and two, the professionalism that we bring. I think a lot of the volunteers even that I've seen come through have reported like. this is an actual operation. I kind of thought it was just going to be a casual, like I just sign up, I get to go walk into the Zendo, throw on a Zendo t-shirt and I just sit with people. But it's so much more than that. We have an application process, we have medical training, we have trainings for everybody, we have very specialized standards of care, we have principles that we teach to people. It's a whole operation and just the level of professionalism that we have to hold. knowing how to liaise with other organizations or aspects of a festival. Like being a supervisor often at festivals, knowing how to talk with either like Burning Man Rangers when we're at Burning Man or security or the medical teams. Like there's a whole element to collaborating and providing this like wraparound patient care that is a really integral part of it. That there are some care and services that the medical services are not able to offer, that is our expertise, that they don't have the time or bandwidth to be able to have one of their team members sit with someone who's maybe just on LSD and just doesn't want to be alone, doesn't need any medical services, but just doesn't want to be alone for like 12 hours. That's what we offer. We are able to provide that care where people can stay as long as they want, which is provide the safe space. And same with security, there are a lot of security issues where it's not necessarily appropriate for them to be handled by security. And we need security to be able to be free to be taking care of the actual situations that need a higher touch of security. But we are there to provide that gentle touch of just providing supportive care for people who are maybe just not safe to be on their own, or they just want to have an eye on them. We're there to operate in that kind of way. So think we've seen a lot of success just being able to demonstrate how we work with other parts of the festival team and the role that we can play. Yeah, I want to add one place that I feel like I experience our success the most is with our guests. You know, and the feedback that we get from guests when they, I mean, often they'll return or they'll send notes. I mean, an example is we had a guest at Burning Man who needed assistance both going between medical and the Zendo and was with us for a short time, but it was so impactful. that they made a donation of $10,000 after Burning Man to our organization because they really felt the impact of having that kind of support when they needed it. you know, often people who come in as guests will return as volunteers like myself. And so really it's in just seeing the difference it makes for a guest. And sometimes I'll say it's... Like it's all worth it if we can just help one person, but often at events we're helping 200, 300, then yours at Burning Man where we helped up to 700 people. And so I think that's where our greatest successes really are. Yeah, dovetailing off of this, one of my favorite things about like shifts at, especially Burning Man and other festivals is when I'm like upfront at the greeter station and you know, people are constantly walking by, they see Zendo Project, they see our posters, they recognize who we are. People give such an outpouring of love. They are shouting like how much they love us, like thank you Zendo. We have so many people walk up and say, I don't need your support, I just wanna say thank you for being here, or you saved my life last year, or I was here a couple days ago and I just had to come back and say thank you. If you weren't here, I don't know where I would be. Just the outpouring of love and appreciation that we receive is the ultimate success story, like Chelsea is saying. We just get so much positive feedback about how valuable we are and really life-transforming. We are to so many people. Yeah, I mean, it's very important, especially in this day and age. We're in a mental health crisis already, just everyday life. to kind of go out into a festival or to Burning Man or something and get the kind of support you can't even really get at home. I mean, it's amazing. It's really cool what you guys do. So for individuals who want to help out that aren't really experts or what could they do? You know, one of beautiful thing about peer support is that it is accessible. And so for folks who want to get involved, we have our SIT course, our SIT or integration training course, which is open to the public. And the skillset is again, broadly applicable. have clinicians who join that people working in first response, nurses, and just community members who want to be able to support folks who are having a difficult time. So the SICK course is a great way to learn our skill set. And then additionally, to get involved and actually get to volunteer at an event, anyone's welcome to apply to volunteer. The best way to stay in touch with what we're up to and what we're doing is to sign up for a newsletter, which is really easy to do on our website. And then we send updates on when there's a course coming. This year we'll be doing eight different. runs of the SIT course. It's about a 12 hour course in total, although it's spread out in different ways. Sometimes it's two weekends, sometimes it's over a month. In fact, one starts today, our February SIT course starts today. So people can find out more about that online. Yeah, and I want to say too, think people might have the impression that the SICK course is only for people who want to volunteer or actually get involved in a professional capacity within the project. But we have a lot of people who are never planning to be volunteers. They just want to learn the skills. Maybe they're therapists, maybe teachers, coaches, maybe they work in the psychedelic space. But we also have a lot of feedback where people will say, this has helped me be a better parent. or be a better partner, be a better friend, be a better supervisor, employee, et cetera. The list just goes on and on. So we're really just teaching these basic human skills of listening better, being more attuned, being more empathic, knowing how to set appropriate boundaries, set guidelines, but to do so in a compassionate, empathic way. So the training is for everybody and we're getting such incredible feedback about how... People are using it in ways that they never expected to use it and finding it widely applicable to many areas of their lives. Yeah, and I also find that so many people in the psychedelic space are looking to connect with others. And I think community is really at the heart of Zendo Project. I often say I feel like this project is a vision of the community and what we as a community have seen to be so necessary. But it's great building community, you can build community through the SICK course, there's opportunities to connect with your cohort, as well as when you come out to a event and get to work with people. It's really... really where the rubber meets the road in terms of doing the work that we do. Yeah, no, it's education is a great, know, it's kind of central, it seems to you guys, you know, efforts. Valerie is an outreach director. He kind of went over it a little bit and talked about how you kind of engage with communities and festivals and how, but is there anything, anything else that you really offer you guys like as Indo offers the, as far as educational resources or anything? Yeah, I think one thing that's important to mention, I mentioned that I'm a licensed therapist in California, I'm marriage and family therapist, and I did a year long psychedelic assisted therapy training out of the California Institute of Integral Studies. I also did a specific three month ketamine assisted therapy training at Sage Institute in Oakland, California. So I've experienced a lot of training working with psychedelics and this has been a big part of my practice. For a while, I supervised at a ketamine clinic and doing so for five years. But the reason I say all of that is because it wasn't until I got involved with Zendo Project that I really felt comfortable working with psychedelics. And the reason is because at Zendo Project, we see the kinds of experiences that people don't see in most other situations. We see the truly adverse. experiences and by adverse experiences, mean the really difficult things when people are experiencing ego death or getting physically potentially violent or loud and yelling or completely nonverbal or frozen or having extreme release and outpourings of sadness or grief and you just want to fix it or you don't know what to do about it or you're concerned like when do I escalate? How do I know how to take care of this? those are the really extreme situations that in a lot of my training, they were maybe touched on, but because in a lot of controlled environments like therapeutic settings, we don't often see those experiences. So we're not, the training isn't heavily focused on that, but that does happen sometimes. And I think it's a really an integral piece of any kind of psychedelic assisted therapy training or coaching program to really feel comfortable. knowing how to work in those spaces. And this is what Zendo Project really specializes in. I think we offer more experience than anybody else. We've probably had more festival experience and have had the kind of hands-on experiences of really being able to see what can truly happen in the psychedelic space when things like quote unquote go wrong or get really difficult. And how to one, stay regulated in your own nervous system to be able to let me calm myself down so that I can know what to do and then take the steps to what do I actually do in this situation. So I think an important piece of the outreach that I do is connecting with other therapists or therapy training programs, psychedelic assisted therapy. We work with a lot of ketamine clinics. We work with a lot of their coaching programs. We recently did a webinar for psychedelics today where they have a whole year long training program for psychedelics. as well for people wanting to incorporate psychedelics into their professions. And we recorded a webinar just teaching some of our foundations and principles and teaching how to deal with these adverse experiences. And we're partnering with other clinics as well. So being able to provide that piece around the truly adverse experiences and how to deal with them. We are planning on developing a trip set guide this year. So again, encourage field of senate for our newsletter because there's a few exciting pieces like that coming. We're going to have a trip set guide, very simple, very digestible information about the basics of trip sitting. And then like Val mentioned, we're going to develop a training on adverse experiences specifically. So a specialized training on how to help people. who are in particularly adverse experiences. And then we're overhauling our peer support manual, the Zendo Projects manual this year. And so that'll be really exciting once we get that done. So those are a few other educational pieces that will also be coming down the line this year. Nice. Along those same lines, education, what's one of the biggest misconceptions about psychedelic harm reduction you guys encounter? Well, you have any thoughts there? Yeah, I think the biggest thing that I hear often just about psychedelics in general is like it's kind of a paradoxical two sides of the same coin where one side is that anybody could have a bad trip and if you don't control your set and setting perfectly that no you could veer into a bad trip and it's just it's just all bad after that. That's one side and I think a lot of new people to psychedelics or people going to a festival who are less experienced, not really knowing what to expect. I think often there's that fear that I have to get my mind completely right or I have to be in the perfect kind of environment. And if not, if I have a negative thought, it's just going to totally derail me and take me into this hell realm for the next 12 hours. That I think I come across a lot. The other side of that though, where I think people working in the psychedelic space can often want to shift that into feeling like, well, that hell realm is just an opportunity to explore the shadow side of yourself. And there's always a lesson or there's always healing that can come from that difficult space. And so what we say is difficult is not necessarily bad. That's our fourth principle. But that's not the same as saying that difficult is not bad. or that difficult is never bad, where we're not saying there's no such thing as a bad trip. And people will sometimes say, there's no such thing as a bad trip. There's always healing, always a lesson to glean from the most difficult spaces. So we wanna be careful and sensitive to the fact that there can be some difficult things that are not just there to serve or to heal, or it's not your fault if you don't get some kind of beautiful learning from a difficult experience. So we hold both of those. Right, and I've been there myself where, you know, it's, it was, I would, there's times when I would say I've had a bad trip. Just that it was, there was no real learning to be had from it. I was just scared and it was, it was a little overwhelming, but yeah, having a resource like you guys around would have been great back then. So what's some of the unique challenges that you guys face when providing these services to like the really big gatherings like Burning Man? Yeah, I mean, I resources is a big challenge for us and funding, you know, as a nonprofit, takes a lot to get both our, I mean, just to get ourselves out there, the required gear, the travel, all of that. To be able to set up these spaces takes quite a bit of resources. And so, you know, I think a lot of our focus has been around how we can fundraise and how we can build a a really strong donor base to just help us kind of set the foundations to be able to get our services out there and to be able to staff ourselves appropriately. I would say that's my number one challenge at least. And I know Valerie can relate with that as the outreach director. Yeah, it's, yeah, just getting the word out there seems to be that's lot of the issue with even just smaller psychedelic services to even larger ones, just letting people know that these resources are available. That's a big problem in and of itself. So it looks like I'm trying to think. I've got like a what's next for the Zend-O project in the future. Yeah, yeah, I mean, we're kind of at this moment of major growth. And so there's a lot of exciting pieces that are happening, a lot of them which we have already talked about. But yeah, I mean, I think for us, like in in our vision is to really broaden our educational initiatives and to really get this material to the people that need it. I mean, there's so much stigma around providing this kind of education to youth, but we really feel like that would make just such, have such a massive impact because that's often when people start experimenting. And if I think back to myself as a young person, I mean, the first time I took psychedelics, I was expecting like what I had seen in Beavis and Butthead, you know, had no idea, you know, and, and I feel thankful that I fared as well as I did through all those years of really not knowing what I was getting myself into. so, so I think that, you know, just, getting this education to youth feels really important. And so I think in the long-term vision, we really want to see that education making it into the hands of really more people in general. So broadening our educational initiatives, broadening the audiences that we reach, broadening the audiences that can really use this information most acutely. then I think the other piece is just getting our services into more mainstream event environments. partnering with more event medicine providers so that we can really become part of the standard of care at event medicine, in events really. And there's other pieces that we're really interested in. We're taking the data we've collected over the last decade plus and really using that to help policy and advocacy efforts around harm reduction, around psychedelic legalization, decriminalization. And the knowledge that we've accumulated is pretty extensive. And so I think we can really help to shape those initiatives as they grow and change. Yeah, and just beyond that, think it's... really just growing the vision of compassionate community care. These services make a really huge difference. They're accessible. Our four principles are very easy to embody. They really are. There's a simplicity to them that makes them very accessible. And peer support itself is accessible. And as we all know, the state of the world could really use a bit more compassion. so it's You know, in our broad vision, it's that we can bring compassionate care to those who need it and make it accessible and help people to learn those skills. Val, don't know if you could go ahead and add something there if you'd like. Yeah, I think what's coming up from me listening to you speak is that in terms of accessibility, there's a value that Zendo Project, I think really expertly demonstrates not only in the services that we provide, but also in the community. And that's around inclusivity and a sense of belonging and inclusivity really the message that I want people to take away is that I think there has been this previous notion that Zendo Project was just for people on psychedelics. And we're obviously changing that. So big takeaway is you don't have to be altered. You don't have to be on a substance. You can just be anybody who just wants to come in. You don't even have to be dysregulated. You can just want to come in to one of our Zendos and just have a quiet space or have a conversation with somebody. And then the other side of that is that to be on the other side of offering the services. You don't have to be somebody who wants to volunteer or wants to be involved in any kind of professional capacity with Zendo Project. You could be just a human being who wants to learn how to human be better. You just want to be more compassionate, be more connected, be more attuned, and learn how to apply these skills in many different areas of the life. That's really cool. just kind of thought of something that's not really in there. have you guys ever thought about doing like a, like maybe even with a testing, like reagent testing program to do it or would that, you think that might get too close to like messing with something with the RAVE Act? That's a great question. And actually, I feel like people often wonder where we intersect with drug testing. There's places where decriminalization has happened, like Portugal. We've had the pleasure to go to Boomb and work at Boomb, where they have Cosmicare, which is their sanctuary space, very integrated with medical, very integrated with security. And then they have drug testing as well. And drug testing still has a long way to come in the United States around the stigma and acceptability of it. And so we really lean on our partner, Dance Safe, for kind of holding that piece. They've been around for well over 20 years and just have an enormous amount of knowledge and have really been navigating really truly the challenges that things like harm reduction or... all the stigma around drug use or the Rave Act. I feel like they've really kind of, come up against that and even in a harder way because they're really out there trying to promote harm reduction on the front end. That having the education and knowledge before you take the substances. And a lot of times I say Zendo is kind of on the backend, like we want education out there, but we'll catch people on the backend should they need it. And yeah, so we don't provide drug testing or haven't provided it, but we're huge advocates of it. big supporters of Dance Safe and their mission. Nice. we look forward to a time where, you know, where these services are really the standard of care, you know, because it's just going to make a huge difference for the safety, the safety of really anybody curious about these things. And at some point, most people are curious about substance use, whether that's cannabis or alcohol or psychedelics or many others. Yeah, any state of altered consciousness, I guess, there's that innate drive or want to explore it. humans have been doing that since the beginning of time. You know, think sometimes we forget that because it's not part of our day-to-day reality, you know, in our culture, but... Well, some of us. Yeah, it's not part of necessarily, I guess it's a norm, yeah, mean substance use and exploring non-ordinary states has been part of many spiritual practices. yeah, for thousands of years. I mean, I've heard stories. They did some testing on ancient altars. think Israelite and Hebrew altars. found cannabis residue on the altar that they've been using that blue lotus within Egyptian mugs. I talked to Rick Doblin about this on episode we just released. you know, they're finding all of these different, I think you were talking about the elusus mysteries and stuff like that. but even burial like where they will find mushrooms, psilocybin mushrooms that have been preserved in honey or traces of mushrooms where you can see that they were intentionally put in like Neanderthal burial grounds like all the way back to even our species, being able to see like intentionality around those things being incorporated into the burial practice. So there's some kind of sacredness that's held with those substances. Yeah, that's really been kind of a focus, especially here in our Western culture since I think it was Tide magazine did the article in the 50s with the psilocybin. Yeah, I that scene. Yeah. Yeah, and so it's really cool to see, like I said, the culture is finally starting to come around, where people are starting to see the value in these substances and organizations like yours. I did have a question I was thinking of. What do you guys do to support, say, integration after an experience you've had or something? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, when we're out at an event, someone can come in to seek support with an experience that they have had previously. And our SIT course is sitting and integration. So it holds both a piece of sitting and supporting with integration. And then we have quite a bit of resources on our website. So folks can go to our website and look for resources there. One of my favorite integration resources is a website called psychedelic.support. They're just a plethora of resources in general, but they have a big focus on integration there. And Val, maybe you want to just speak to the value of integration? Yeah, yeah, integration I think is an important piece of this, of course, is it's kind of the resolution around like if you have a difficult experience, especially or any kind of experience doesn't have to be hard, but especially the difficult ones, expressing it, finding healthy, safe ways to express it is a very important piece, but it's only one piece. There's also a resolution of the reflecting back on it. And to me, I think a big part of the integration and the value of the reflecting back on it is really honoring it. that we don't just quickly go back into business as usual. We don't jump back into the Monday meetings and forget the experience that we had at the festival over the weekend. We want to truly honor that psychedelic space, truly honor ourselves and showing up and being able to be in that space and not just getting something out of the experience, but learning also what we can do from the experience, allowing it to move us to action into maybe it's a call to be more involved in community. Or maybe it's a call for me to show up with a less bounded heart. Maybe I can show up in more authenticity in my relationships. And the integration is a big part of the accountability of what are the action steps I can actually take to make that happen. So it's not just this cool experience that I had that I'm not able to integrate or incorporate into my daily life. Yeah, yeah. So think really where we put the insight into action in our lives makes a big difference to have support with that process. Yeah, that's always the goal, I guess now is that that's what I think has really been one of the most exciting parts with the the whole psychedelic renaissance is this focus on integration and kind of using these experiences and using that as a tool to move you further in. I've had a great time. think I've had a great conversation. Where can people learn more about the Zendo project or donate or get involved? How? Yeah, I definitely want to say we run off donations. So yes, please, if you heard something that touched your heart, if you're appreciating or excited about the services that we offer, get involved, come contact us or please provide donations. That's how we continue being able to offer the services that we do and expanding the ways that we want to. So zendoproject.org is our website, is a way to sign up for our newsletter. Also follow us on Instagram at Zendo Project. Those are the best ways to keep posted on what festivals we're gonna be at when we're offering our trainings. Like Chelsea mentioned, we're gonna have a lot of other trainings come out, a lot of other educational materials. So stay tuned, get on our newsletter, follow our Instagram, and we will be sending out all kinds of wonderful, helpful offerings. And we always appreciate hearing from you too. So yeah, email us anytime. sendo is sendoproject.org. I check the inbox. I love receiving emails from everybody. So feel free to reach out to us with any kind of inquiry or appreciation or feedback you want to give. Awesome. Anything else that you guys like to share with our listeners? I would just say be kind to one another. Be kind to one another. And you know, I'll say one of our principles is sitting, not guiding. And I often say that's my favorite principle because it gives the person providing support permission to just be, just be there and be with somebody without having to fix or do anything. And sometimes, you know, we're such a do culture and when someone's struggling, we think we have to do something and... It's really nice to just let ourselves know that actually sometimes just being there is all you need to do, breathe, pay attention to the sensations in your body and just provide support and that can be really powerful. So I'd like to share that little gem with folks. That's good one. People, lot of times, even today, know, anytime, just sometimes it's good to just have somebody there. It reminds me of a festival experience I had where someone said, you know, sometimes people just want somebody to hug them and tell them everything's going to be okay. And I think I did that all weekend. I just walk up to random strangers and hug them and just say everything's going to be okay. So, yeah, it's just being present and being aware. You know, having that empathy for people is a great can just be a great tool in and of itself. Well, thank you both for being here so much. I really I look forward to meeting you guys in the future. Hopefully seeing you guys at Psychedelic Science 2025 and. Yeah. No problem. Yeah, we look forward to seeing you in person. Hey, let me think. think what else we got? Thank you, H. Bryan, thank you. Brad, integration to communications. Thank you to the guests, Valerie, Chelsea, Psychonaut. You guys, be sure to subscribe at patreon.com, Divergent States. Follow us, hit us. If you guys want to hit like a one-time donation, help us get somewhere. We got to buy me a coffee. Get that on there. Nice. You can subscribe on the website. DivergentStates.Buzzsprout.com Subscribe on there. Follow us on social media. Things picking up. yeah, you guys keep exploring. All right. See you all next time. you