PT512 – RIPPLES of Hope: Psychedelics as a Tool for Peacebuilding and Collective Healing, with Sami Awad and Leor Roseman, Ph.D.

Psychedelics Today

Psychedelics Today, LLC

Life Sciences, Science, Medicine, Health & Fitness

4.6 • 598 Ratings

🗓️ 14 May 2024

⏱️ 82 minutes

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Summary

In this episode, David interviews Sami Awad: Palestinian peace and nonviolent activist and founder of Holy Land Trust in Bethlehem; and Leor Roseman, Ph.D.: Israeli neuroscientist, researcher, and senior lecturer at the University of Exeter.

They talk about Roseman's 2021 paper, "Relational Processes in Ayahuasca Groups of Palestinians and Israelis," which looked at what happened when people with fiercely different opinions moved beyond fear, anger, and othering, and sat together in a safe container and drank ayahuasca with the purpose of healing collective trauma. When the focus of the participants moved toward understanding each other, Roseman and Awad saw a unity that gave them a lot of hope, leading to the creation of their nonprofit, RIPPLES, which is focused on using psychedelics for peacebuilding – first in the Middle East, and hopefully soon, everywhere. As Awad says, "If it can happen here, it can happen almost anywhere."

They discuss:

The efficacy of psychedelics as a tool for nonviolent activism, building peace, and recognizing – and healing – collective trauma
The balance between the idealistic and the practical, or 'the irony of harmony' – if you focus too much on the connectivity of psychedelics, do you actually exclude voices?
The concept of "my liberation depends on your healing and your liberation depends on mine"
The challenge in doing something with the hope and enthusiasm that comes after a powerful experience: How do you make sure that wave of hope continues rippling through choppy waters?

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and thank you very much indeed for listening to Psychedelics today. My name is David
0:14.4	Drabkin and I'm the host of this episode, conversation about six weeks ago that I had with
0:20.7	Sami Awad and Leior Rosman. So,
0:23.9	Leoror is an Israeli living in England right now. He's one of our teachers at Vital. He's a psychedelic
0:29.4	researcher, senior lecturer at the University of Exeter, and an honorary senior lecturer at Imperial
0:34.5	College in London. He's also the chair of the Ripples Alliance,
0:38.0	which I'll say more about shortly. Sammy is a Palestinian living in Bethlehem. He's a
0:43.2	multi-generational non-violent peace activist, the founder of the Holy Land Trust and part of the Ripples
0:49.3	Alliance as well. I definitely would recommend you go check out on YouTube the Psychedelic Science 23
0:55.3	keynote speech that Sammy and Leor gave together on stage, beautiful. Part of the energy that we're
1:01.8	talking about with Leor and Sammy is the land here and how ancient and holy it is. And there's
1:08.4	been many names that it's had over thousands and thousands of years.
1:11.8	And it still is the land that we all love to bits. So we try and avoid this simple analysis of
1:18.1	Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And we try and move into a place of learning around how to hold
1:24.9	space for multiple narratives. And a big part of what we talk about is the 2021 paper,
1:30.7	relational processes in ayahuasca groups of Palestinians and Israelis.
1:36.3	Very, very rich and deep study that was done there by Leor and others.
1:42.1	And Leor and Samir also going to be publishing shortly, I hope,
1:46.1	another secondary piece of research working with Jews and Palestinians in Spain that are using
1:51.9	psychedelics together. So we really go deep into this idea of collective healing and emotional
1:57.6	breakthroughs that Lear's really done a lot of work on.. And then this beautiful piece that Sammy speaks about that my liberation depends on your healing.
2:07.1	We all need to heal for ourselves, but also for others and the collective that we are part of,
	...

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