Mar
4
7:00pm
Decolonising Psychedelic Therapy: A Conversation with Danielle Herrera
By PsyAware
Psychedelic therapy is heading mainstream, but who is it really for?
How can we create more reciprocal, culturally aware, and non-pathologising spaces for healing?
Join us for an open and thoughtful discussion on reshaping psychedelic therapy with Danielle Herrera, LMFT, Ohlone Land (Berkeley)-based Psychotherapist providing psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy (KAT), psychedelic integration, and harm reduction psychotherapy.
Danielle brings a warm, non-judgmental approach to her work, drawing from her experience working within harm reduction and psychedelic assisted therapies. She enjoys working with people who are experiencing spiritual emergence or mystical states, people who use drugs, and others outside the mainstream.
Danielle’s framework is emotion-focused, decolonised, with deep attunement to big-picture narratives, structures, and systems that impact her clients within a complicated ecosystem while helping clients with meaning-making and emerging into a life of vitality and love.
Together, we’ll dive into conversations about:
- What does it mean to decolonise psychedelic therapy, and why does it matter?
- Accessibility and equity: How can psychedelic therapy reach marginalised communities and move beyond exclusivity?
- Integrating Indigenous perspectives and practices into psychedelic therapy for deeper healing.
- How do Indigenous practices of right relationship and reciprocity show up in psychedelic therapy work?
- Rethinking the Western medical model: Moving beyond diagnosis towards holistic, person-centred care.
- How does mysticism and spirituality play a role in decolonizing psychedelic therapy?
- How harm reduction fosters more inclusive healing spaces.
- The role of ketamine-assisted psychotherapy and the integration process.
- The challenges and opportunities in shaping the future of psychedelic therapy
- How does psychedelic therapy connect us to the ancestral? How does it psychedelic therapy connect us to the future?
How does the clinical meet ritual and ceremony within decolonising approaches to psychedelic therapy?
Expect honest reflections and an engaging dialogue on how we can reimagine psychedelic therapy to be more accessible, equitable, and rooted in collective healing.
There will be plenty of time for Q&A, so bring your thoughts and questions.
Whether you're a therapist, researcher, advocate, or simply curious about the intersection of psychedelics and social justice, this event is a chance to explore, question, and connect with others.
Speaker
Danielle Herrera
Danielle M. Herrera, LMFT has spent her lifetime understanding the depth of the human experience in the realm of drug use, addiction recovery, and harm reduction. She was among the first generation of clinicians to train in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. Now, she runs a group private practice, Tender Hearts Healing Arts, where she sees clients at her Berkeley office and virtually in California, providing psychedelic psychotherapy (ketamine-assisted) and integration, faith-based psychotherapy, spiritual emergence integration, and couples/relationship, family, and friendship therapy. She is a course facilitator with Beckley Academy, a supervisor and clinical consultant for Alchemy Community Therapy, California Institute of Integral Studies, Center for Mindful Psychotherapy, and serves on the Board of Directors for DanceSafe National. She facilitates training for practitioners in the foundations of relationship-first psychedelic assisted therapies from a decolonial lens. Her framework is Jungian, emotion-focused, somatic, spiritual, and centers warmth and relationships.
She has experience and works enthusiastically with Indigenous, Sufi / Muslim, Christian, Catholic, Yogic, and Pagan traditions as they may be relevant to her clients. Danielle focuses on careful attunement to big-picture narratives, structures, and systems that impact her clients within a complicated ecosystem while helping clients with meaning-making and emerging into a life of vitality and love. In her wide experience of healing complex traumas, she brings in her own culturally Indigenous traditions as well as her study and practice in initiated mysticism to respond directly to ancestral and intergenerational wounds. Passionate about honoring and uplifting the complexity of each person's individuality, she especially loves working with outsiders and outliers of all types and helps them find their place in the web of life.
hosted by
PsyAware
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