PT480 – Emma Knighton – Psychedelics and Consent: Power Dynamics, Boundaries, and the Concept of 'Safe Enough'
Psychedelics Today
Psychedelics Today, LLC
4.6 • 598 Ratings
🗓️ 23 January 2024
⏱️ 82 minutes
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Summary
In this episode, Kyle interviews Emma Knighton: Somatic trauma therapist, Vital instructor, and psychedelic integration therapist focusing on consciousness exploration, complex PTSD from childhood abuse, and queer identity development.
This episode is a bit of a masterclass on consent and boundaries within the client/practitioner relationship. She discusses power dynamics: how conflicts arise due to the breaking of established boundaries; safety, and embracing the idea of creating a container that is 'safe enough' to go into places that feel unsafe; and the importance of maintaining agreed-upon boundaries no matter how much the client may want to break them. They discuss ways to fulfill the need for touch when touch was not agreed upon, and the concept of practicing touch interactions before the experience – that playing out possible scenarios will create a somatic map so bodies remember what it feels like to be near each other while one body is deep in an experience.
And she talks about much more: What she's learned from the kink and sex work community and their similarities with the psychedelic world; ways to handle consent in group settings; the clash between giving people agency but needing to step in and protect them; restorative justice models and how they could be used in a much-needed psychedelic practitioner accountability system; the need for practitioners to continue doing their own work; and how part of true consent is being honest about one's own limitations or conflicts as a practitioner.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Psychedelics today. My name is Kyle Buller and I am the host for today's episode. |
| 0:14.7 | And on this episode, I get to chat with a dear colleague Emma Knighton, who is a vital instructor. |
| 0:23.3 | It's been part of the program for the past year. |
| 0:28.9 | And it's just really wonderful to finally get Emma on the show to share her expertise and her work with the world. So Emma is a somatic trauma therapist, psychedelic integration therapist, |
| 0:34.1 | an educator, a conscious organizer and leader. And in Emma's clinical work, they focus on the intersection of complex PTSD from |
| 0:43.7 | childhood abuse, queer identity development, and consciousness exploration. |
| 0:48.1 | And Emma teaches at various training programs and teaches on trauma-informed, trauma-attuned consent practices in |
| 0:57.6 | psychedelic-assistic therapy. So this is a really important episode. We get into the conversation |
| 1:03.6 | all around consent. We talk about the topic of touch and the nuance in the power dynamics there |
| 1:10.7 | and the vulnerability that can |
| 1:12.0 | really emerge. I know touch has been a very kind of, I'd say maybe like a little bit of a |
| 1:17.1 | controversial topic within the psychedelic field in the past few years. So we get into that a |
| 1:22.1 | little bit. We also talk about community-based accountability systems, restorative justice model, and then also the importance of personal and professional integrity in psychedelic therapy, |
| 1:33.3 | which also includes a practitioner being able to continue with their ongoing inner work, developing that self-awareness as people are stepping into more leadership roles with power |
| 1:46.8 | dynamics and such as practitioners, facilitators, coaches, educators, yeah, and really anybody |
| 1:52.4 | in these fields where power dynamics can be at play. I think this podcast episode is probably |
| 1:58.1 | one of the most important conversations to be having. So I'm just really |
| 2:01.6 | thankful for Emma to come on the show and share her wisdom and all of her life experiences with us. |
| 2:08.0 | And I learned a ton from Emma in this episode. And it got me thinking about how I've presented |
| 2:13.8 | consent in the past, how I could improve that. And as we mentioned in the show, talk about consent, say, in group process in breathwork sessions |
| 2:23.0 | and maybe how to do that differently. |
| 2:25.6 | So I think this, again, is such an important episode. |
... |
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