John Selby - Professional Guidance Integrating Cannabis and Mindfulness
Psychedelics Today
Psychedelics Today, LLC
4.6 • 598 Ratings
🗓️ 4 August 2020
⏱️ 69 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In today's episode, Joe speaks with spiritual coach, author, and creator of the upcoming High Together app, John Selby. Selby's most recent book is titled Cannabis for Couples: Enhance Intimacy and Elevate Your Relationship.
Selby talks about how he got to where he is today, from signing up for a hypnosis research center at Princeton that turned out to be a secret government NIH psychedelic research center studying if psychedelic states could be induced through hypnosis, to working on the first quantitative EG study of heavy LSD users to determine if it caused permanent damage (that was marred with corrupted data and later found out to have been an MKUltra mind manipulation project), to becoming excommunicated by the Presbyterian church for teaching his youth group yoga and Buddhist meditation, to becoming a therapist, spiritual counselor and author, to his time at Microsoft and Plantronics leading to him wanting to create an app for improving cannabis use.
His High Together app (which should be available soon) works in conjunction with his latest book to help cannabis users focus their attention, augment consciousness, and in the case of couples, improve their relationships. Through short guided sessions, statements of intent, and a strong emphasis on breathwork, his goal is to help regular users aim their attention towards more rewarding ventures, and help new users get through their first cannabis experiences safely and enjoyably (some estimate that 10 million boomer couples will try cannabis for the first time within the next 2-3 years).
Notable Quotes
On leaving Plantronics: "Right when it was time to do the funding and to launch this as their first software product in your headphones, two people on the board- these two old guys- Presbyterian guys- they decided that I was some sort of subterfuge revolutionary trying to undermine American capitalism. And I had to say, 'I think you've got that just about right.'"
On his High Together App: "It's everything that I've found, as a therapist and spiritual guide, that's really, really effective for helping people to focus their attention in directions that augment higher consciousness. We can either get stoned, or we can get high, and people don't realize that really, they have the choice."
"Most of the people, they really need help in the basics. It's very scary for most people. If you're 60 years old and you've never basically let go of control of your ego, it's like 'WHOA!' I'm there to help people make it safely and enjoyably through that first 10 minutes, when you actually have the muse of marijuana come in and say 'Okay, here we go! Let go- there's nothing you can do about this, so enjoy the ride.'"
"There's a pretty sober sense of responsibility that we really have a world civilization that can really self destruct if we don't wake up and act. I think that cannabis and psychedelics are powerful medicines to help us in that direction."
Links
Cannabis for Couples: Enhance Intimacy and Elevate Your Relationship
About John Selby
John is both a fiction and non-fiction author with over thirty published self-help/meditation books plus eleven feature screenplays and half a dozen novels and 40 published folk-jazz songs. John's most recent book is titled Cannabis for Couples: Enhance Intimacy and Elevate Your Relationship. Over the years he has been a cognitive therapist and spiritual counselor, and conducted NIH brain-research studies examining the inner mechanics of mindfulness meditation. John has taught creative writing and publishing strategies, coached authors in book-project development, and ghostwritten over a dozen books for aspiring authors on a wide variety of themes and genres. He now continues with this satisfying work, while also developing a new app-driven approach to mindfulness training and personality growth.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, everybody. Welcome back to psychedelics today. This is Joe Moore coming at you from BrackBanch, Colorado. |
| 0:18.0 | Today on the show we have John Selby. |
| 0:22.6 | This is a really fun episode. |
| 0:28.7 | John was not really on my radar, but John has been around and doing this work for a long time. |
| 0:34.0 | And he recently wrote a book called Cannabis for Couples that you should check out. |
| 0:38.1 | And there's going to be some apps coming out soon as well to help you with that. |
| 0:45.8 | Really interesting stuff. I was very impressed with John. And I really hope to get him back on the show. I don't want to ruin too much with the intro, but he's active as a spiritual coach, |
| 0:52.1 | formerly working as a kind of a therapist. |
| 0:55.1 | And I think you're going to like this one. |
| 0:58.0 | I'm definitely going to be getting involved in that app once it comes out, |
| 1:02.6 | kind of like meditations for cannabis and potentially loads of them. |
| 1:07.7 | So that's great. |
| 1:09.0 | And yeah, if you know people who are, you know, boomers or folks that |
| 1:14.4 | are in a relationship that are just kind of curious about cannabis, like this could be a great |
| 1:19.3 | book for them to check out. Say like, yeah, now this stuff's legal in your state or decriminalize |
| 1:24.5 | in your state. Maybe check this thing out. And perhaps it'll give |
| 1:28.1 | them, you know, more, more happiness in their lives and better relationships, all that kind of |
| 1:33.0 | stuff. So I hope you enjoy this episode with John Selby. I think that's it for the intro part. |
| 1:40.6 | If you want to support us, you can leave us small monthly donations at patreon.com |
| 1:45.6 | slash psychedelics today. You can leave us a review on Facebook or your podcast app or iTunes. |
| 1:53.8 | And if you want to go a little further, we've got a great Facebook group, Facebook.com, |
| 1:59.7 | and just search Psychedelics Today group. We also have a lot |
... |
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