Integration Circle for Altered States of Consciousness

With Dina Percia & George Woodard

Have you experienced a powerful altered state of consciousness that you are having difficulty integrating into your life?

Perhaps you have recently come back from a psychedelic journey or sober meditation retreat?

Whether your altered state of consciousness results from psychedelics or meditating, we invite you to attend our free integration circle for altered states of consciousness at Judson Memorial Church in New York City.

Our circle is a safe, non-judgmental, and confidential space to ask questions, learn valuable meditation techniques, and process non-ordinary states of consciousness through peer-to-peer support.

You don't have to have experienced an altered state of consciousness to attend. The circle is also a safe space for asking questions and planning a psychedelic or meditation retreat.

We are grateful and honored to be community partners with Judson Memorial Church, in Greenwich Village, New York. With their support, we have been able to offer this community service free of charge since 2019.

All are welcome.

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About DINA
Dina is a somatic psychotherapist living in Kingston, NY. She has trained and served as a palliative and end-of-life care doula at Mount Sinai Hospital, as well as an abortion doula with ACCESS Reproductive Health Justice. Additionally, Dina has trained with Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), provided integration coaching for ketamine therapy with Mindbloom, and offered psychedelic harm reduction and integration support with Fireside Project. She is passionate about supporting those traversing transitional and expanded states of consciousness; the bardos of life and death.

FROM GEORGE
I was a student of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche from 1979 until he died in 1987. I stayed with his organization until 1996. Like a lot of his students, I imitated his behavior instead of hearing what he was teaching. I crashed and burned and had to get sober in 1999. I had stopped practicing meditation and went through a divorce. When I stopped drinking and smoking pot, I met Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche, my teacher, and I have been with him ever since.

The first time I tried to stop drinking a psychiatrist told me I was depressed and that I had been self-medicating with alcohol and he put me on Prozac, which for me was like a miracle drug, just because I felt normal for the first time in my life. 20 years later, I started reading about the resurgence of psychedelics, got off all medications, and started growing my own mushrooms and microdosing. In conversations I have now with old Buddhist practitioners, I am struck by two things. A whole lot of them are psychonauts, but don’t talk about it so much because of the Buddhist restrictions on intoxicants, which they believe as I do, doesn’t include psychedelics if there is proper integration of the experiences. Two, there was a lot of sanctimony about psychedelics but when pressed, a lot of these long-time meditators were taking all kinds of prescription drugs, including SSRIs.

I am very interested in the areas where Buddhism and psychedelics help each other.