Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy & Innovation Circles: A Pathway to Collective Healing and Regeneration

How Ancient Wisdom, Shamanism, and Design Thinking Can Inspire a New Earth

Imagine this…

Imagine you're a visionary founder who has experienced psychedelics in a therapeutic or recreational setting. You're deeply aware of their transformative potential—and their risks. You're dedicated not only to solving global challenges but also to cultivating authentic connections with nature and community.

A Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy & Innovation Circle (PATIC) is a concept that can help you supercharge your path of healing and growth. A PATIC is a small group of committed leaders dedicated to personal healing, collective growth, and radical innovation. Guided by the wisdom of one or more elders and supported through sacred ceremonies, these circles become tightly-knit communities—families united in radical service.

Members regularly meet in homes, share meals, celebrate life, and collectively support each other through personal and professional challenges. Together, they serve their broader communities, collaborate on projects, and translate innovative ideas into real-world solutions. It's a continual cycle of growth, iteration, and creative release.

This essay outlines the theory, origins, and key elements of a PATIC as an offering for those leaders exploring consciousness, community, and leadership in the regenerative age.

Disclaimer: This is merely a theoretical exploration of an emergent phenomena, not mental health advice. Engage at your own discretion.

The Polycrisis & The Human Mind

Today's global crisis is multidimensional—ecological collapse, geopolitical instability, systemic injustice—but at its root, it's a crisis of human consciousness. We can pick sides and point fingers, but at the end of the day we’re only serving to perpetuate the illusion of separation that is driving this crisis in the first place.

Addressing this web of challenges demands a fundamental shift in how we perceive ourselves, nature, and our collective capacity for change. Integrating ancient wisdom, contemporary neuroscience, and emerging technologies within new organizational frameworks is critical for this evolution.

What Exactly is a PATIC?

During my sabbatical, I observed an emerging global trend: communities combining psychedelics, personal healing, group flow, and human-centered innovation. I call these groups Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy & Innovation Circles (PATICs). They blend ancient wisdom, neuroscience, and technology, attracting freethinking leaders eager to build a regenerative future.

Four Core Elements of a PATIC

PATICs integrate four seemingly disparate yet complementary disciplines:

1. Ancient Essenes

• Inspired by the communal life of Yeshua (Jesus) and his disciples.

• Emphasis on unconditional love, apprenticeship, service, stewardship, and balancing masculine-feminine energies.

2. Therapeutic Shamanism

• The universal spiritual practice of engaging altered states for individual and collective healing.

• Utilizes sacred rituals, ancestral wisdom, archetypes, and animistic kinship with nature.

3. Design Thinking

• Human-centered innovation process focused on empathy, iterative prototyping, and collaborative problem-solving.

• Ensures ideas translate effectively into real-world solutions by getting out of the building and testing ideas with real people.

4. Somatic Psychology

• Body-oriented therapeutic methods for processing trauma and fostering emotional resilience.

• Encourages embodiment, authentic relating, and deeper self-awareness.

Advanced Elements

5. Sociocracy 3.0 (S3)

• Decentralized, consent-based governance ensuring equity, transparency, and collaborative decision-making.

6. DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations)

• Blockchain-enabled, community-managed funding and decision-making systems enhancing transparency and collective agency.

The Origin of The Idea

In summer 2023, amid the trials of startup life and a failing marriage, I was invited to join a psychedelic ceremony with a diverse group of leaders. In this journey and the subsequent months that followed, I experienced profound unified consciousness and radical collaboration such as I’d never witnessed before, marking a pivotal turning point in my personal healing journey.

Our group evolved into a supportive, innovative community committed to deep healing and collective action. Many of us have gone on to realize some of our life’s biggest dreams and we’ve done so with the support of a loving community of leaders who have seen our deepest selves—rooted and grounded in love.

The Power of Unity

On the day of our first group ceremony, we prepared an altar, regulated our nervous systems, and expressed our intentions. We onboarded the medicine, put our eye masks on, turned up the music, and held hands in a big circle—our heads towards the center of the room. What transpired was nothing short of astonishing.

We all experienced a state of ‘unified consciousness’ that I can only describe as dumping your soul into a big mixing bowl alongside 12 other souls. The music and emotion stirred our collective consciousness such that each voice and each soul’s journey contributed to the canvas of our shared experience. No one could tell where one person ended and the other began. We were all one human family, co-existing together in harmony, swirling around the central attractor of unconditional love.

It was by far the most powerful and moving experience of my life.

As I emerged from the water ceremony that concluded the gathering the following morning, I was able to grieve the end of my marriage, separation from my children, and all the pain that had ensued as I gave my all to save a failing relationship. I was held by a group of people—several of whom were previously strangers—through the most intense grieving of my life. On the other side of that release I breathed a sigh of deep relief and felt genuinely reborn into the next stage of my personal growth and evolution.

Yet, the most intriguing part of this journey wasn’t just the ceremony itself, but what unfolded in the days, weeks and months that followed. As our group journeyed, we delved into deep into ancestral trauma and began to explore how we could work together and support each other. The whole experience was underpinned by a basic understanding that “What’s mine is yours, we are all in this together.”

Something bigger was taking shape. To understand it fully, I decided to write about it to reflect upon the model that was emerging.