Ceremonial practices bring a spiritual context to work with sacred plant medicines and psychedelic medicines. This expansive context facilitates shifts in emotional processing that appear to underlie relevant mental health improvements. In this lecture, Dr. Tafur will draw upon his experience in traditional ceremonies and on research in the fields of psychedelic clinical medicine, emotional biology, and spiritual well-being.

Ceremonial practices bring a spiritual context to work with sacred plants and psychedelic medicines. This expansive context facilitates shifts in emotional processing that appear to underlie relevant mental health improvements. In this lecture, Dr. Tafur will draw upon his experience in traditional ceremonies and on research in the fields of psychedelic clinical medicine, neuroscience, emotional biology, and epigenetics.

Dr. Cahn will provide an overview of his 20+ years of studies of the neurophysiologic and psychological correlates of meditation in expert vs. novice practitioners and psychedelics. He will also present research findings on the brain & mind effects of both meditation and psilocybin, specifically focusing on how the brain correlates to sensory and cognitive processing, highlighting similarities and differences.

Dr. Linda Carlson will discuss the Mindfulness-Based Cancer Recovery (MBCR) program development and research, with a focus on current innovative studies, including Virtual Mind, which evaluates a Virtual Reality mindfulness program for chronic cancer pain, and the SEAMLESS research, which is evaluating a mindfulness app in a clinical trial of cancer survivors across Canada. She will also review current research assessing the effects of MBCR on the gut microbiome and work in developing mindfulness-based psilocybin-assisted therapy.

Dr. Linda Carlson will review the development of the Mindfulness-Based Cancer Recovery program and summarize research evaluating its efficacy for treating anxiety, depression, stress symptoms, sleep, fatigue, and other psychosocial outcomes. She will also review recently published oncology clinical practice guidelines recommending mindfulness-based interventions and the overall evidence supporting these recommendations.

Mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) have long shown evidence of medium-sized effects for stress, chronic pain, and anxiety. Dr. King's research group and others have shown that MBIs can lead to enduring alterations in large-scale neural networks. This talk will explore specific adaptations of MBIs for depression and trauma / PTSD, potential neural mechanisms and treatment targets underlying their effects, and possible shared and unique pathways for MBIs in the treatment of depression and PTSD.

What is neurophenomenology? Dr. Aviva Berkovich-Ohana will examine the neurophenomenological approach, which aspires to bridge the gap between and integrate first- person and third-person processes to understanding consciousness. Her presentation will explain a proposed framework to study self-consciousness and its embodied and minimal aspects (phenomenology and related cortical networks). She will also explore theory in practice by describing a series of neurophenomenological studies investigating the sense of self accessed via the dissolution of the sense of boundaries with trained meditators, shedding new light on the multi- dimensionality and flexibility of embodied selfhood.

Meditation training shows promise for alleviating anxiety and stress symptoms, but a rigorous trial methodology is necessary to assess its effectiveness and determine how it compares to other treatments. In this talk, Dr. Hoge will present research findings that address the capability of mindfulness meditation training for anxiety, stress, depression, and resilience in the psychiatric setting, including exploration into biological processes associated with anxiety and resilience, such as stress hormones and neuroimaging. Large randomized, controlled clinical trial results that address whether mindfulness meditation training could be equivalent to an antidepressant when compared head-to-head will be included.    

Arnaud Delorme is a CNRS Professor at Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse, France, Research Scientist at the Swartz Center for Computational Neuroscience at University of California, San Diego, and Scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences. At the Salk Institute and UCSD, he developed the free EEGLAB software for advanced analysis of EEG signals in collaboration with Scott Makeig, software which is now amongst the most used in EEG research worldwide. Through his work in developing and refining the freely downloadable EEGLab software he has contributed to the advance of EEG methods in published neuroscience research. His research has focused on both pure neuroscience and applied mathematical methods, especially as applied to EEG signals, as well as on the neuroscience of mindfulness, mindwandering, and meditation. Specifically, Dr. Delorme has a…

This class is for those who feel stuck from habits caused by the uncertainties of everyday life and for those who are new to meditation and would like to start a regular mindfulness meditation practice. If you are sometimes overwhelmed with worry, distracted by recurring thoughts, experiencing problems with restlessness, tension, or insomnia you may have a habit or even be addicted to anxiety or stress which is often an upstream cause of other habits and behaviors. An estimated 40 million Americans are affected by anxiety on a regular basis. For many it’s a developed habit that can be untangled with mindfulness practices. Stress and anxiety follow a habit loop of specific triggers, behaviors, and rewards that support this loop when we get anxious. Our brains get caught up in…