045: "Ayahuasca, anxiety and the reason people get stuck in psychedelic work" with Adam Aronovich

Adam Aronovich is a doctoral candidate at the
Universitat Rovira i Virgili in Spain, focusing on Medical
Anthropology and Cultural Psychiatry. He is the Co-Founder and
COO of Hidden Hand Media, and the Director of Therapy and
Integration for Rē Precision Health. Adam is an active member of
the Medical Anthropology Research Center (MARC) and part of the
Ayahuasca Community Committee at the Chacruna Institute for
Psychedelic Plant Medicines. In the last four years he has
conducted extensive fieldwork in the Peruvian Amazon, where he
has been doing qualitative research in collaboration with ICEERS,
the Beckley Foundation, and, more recently, the Centre for
Psychedelic Studies at Imperial College. Beyond his work
conducting and coordinating research, Adam facilitated workshops
in the Peruvian Amazon and he regularly facilitates workshops in
Mexico. He is also a process facilitator and integration support
coach in private practice.


In his role as a workshop facilitator at the Temple of the Way of
Light, an ayahuasca retreat center in the Amazon we met
personally at the end of 2019.


You’ll hear Adam share some of the insights he has gained through
his research, as well as personal experiences while working with
different healing modalities like ayahuasca. A prevailing theme
that emerges from his research is that the primary dimension of
healing for most people is relational. We discuss the importance
of the collective dimension of well-being, which is completely at
odds with institutional approaches that focus only on the
individual.


And Adam explains why the healing process at a psychedelic
retreat is a co-creative process that is shared rather than a
passive process of becoming a consumer of a treatment that is
handed to you. He describes how our stories and narratives
influence our healing experience, which, according to his
research, can be the biggest obstacle along a person's healing
journey.


On a more personal note, he shares how psychedelics have helped
him with his own anxiety, enabling him to better contextualise
whatever arises. You will also learn where most people in
psychedelic work get stuck and how transgenerational trauma can
affect our well-being.


Finally, we talk about the reasons for our crisis of meaning in
the Western world and how psychedelics can help to navigate a way
between the needs of a system on the one hand and finding balance
on one’s own path on the other.


I’m happy that Adam found the time to share his extensive
knowledge on the topic with me. It brought back lots of memories
and stories of my own first ayahuasca retreat in Peru where he
served as a great facilitator and guide.


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