Dr. Stanislav Grof
Dr. Grof was a pioneer of LSD Psychotherapy and, as one of the founders of transpersonal psychology, has been a prolific contributor to psychological theory. He is a psychiatrist with over fifty years experience researching non-ordinary states of consciousness. He was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, where he also received his scientific training – an M.D. degree from the Charles University School of Medicine and a Ph.D. (Doctor of Philosophy in Medicine) from the Czechoslovakian Academy of Sciences. He did his early research at the Psychiatric Research Institute in Prague, where he was Principal Investigator of a program systematically exploring the heuristic and therapeutic potential of LSD and other psychedelic substances. For several years, Stan was Chief of Psychiatric Research at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center in Baltimore, MD, heading the last surviving official American project of psychedelic therapy. He is also the author of many books, including “LSD: Doorway to the Numinous”, “LSD Psychotherapy”, and “Holotropic Breathwork”, with C. Grof.
Prof. Ralph Metzner
Prof. Metzner participated in psychedelic research at Harvard University in the early 1960s with Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert.
He is the author of many books, practices psychotherapy, and is the Professor Emeritus at California Institute of Integral Studies. Involved in consciousness research for over forty years, including psychedelics, yoga meditation, and shamanism, he is co-founder and president of Green Earth Foundation, a non-profit educational organization devoted to healing and harmonizing the relationship between humans and the Earth.
Dr. Dennis McKenna
Dennis McKenna is an American ethnopharmacologist, author and brother to well-known psychedelics proponent Terence McKenna. McKenna’s research led to the development of natural products for Aveda Corporation as well as greater awareness of natural products and medicines. He has authored numerous scientific articles and books. He co-authored The Invisible Landscape with his brother Terence and Botanical Medicines: the Desk Reference for Major Herbal Supplements with Kenneth Jones and Kerry Hughes. McKenna spent a number of years as a senior lecturer for the Center for Spirituality and Healing, part of the Academic Health Center at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. He is now a senior research scientist for the Natural Health Products Research Group at the British Columbia Institute of Technology in the Vancouver area.
McKenna received his Master’s degree in botany at the University of Hawaii in 1979. He received his Doctorate in Botanical Sciences in 1984 from the University of British Columbia, where he wrote a dissertation entitled Monoamine oxidase inhibitors in Amazonian hallucinogenic plants: ethnobotanical, phytochemical, and pharmacological investigations. His research has included the pharmacology, botany, and chemistry of ayahuasca and oo-koo-hé, the subjects of his master’s thesis. He has also conducted extensive fieldwork in the Peruvian, Colombian, and Brazilian Amazon.
He is currently working on a memoir entitled ‘The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss’ about his and his brother Terence’s journeys together.
Dr. James Fadiman
Jim Fadiman is a prominent figure in Humanistic and Transpersonal Psychology. He has a B.A. in Social Relations from Harvard and both an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Psychology from Stanford University. He has been involved in teaching and facilitating creative problem-solving with and without psychedelics for more than three decades.
His experience ranges from early experimentation with Ram Dass and Tim Leary at Harvard to government-sanctioned legal research with Myron Stolaroff and Willis Harman at Stanford. He was a Research Associate with the International Foundation for Advanced Study in the late 1960s and later served as president of the Institute of Noetic Sciences. In 1975 with Robert Frager, he co-founded the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology. He has recently written a guidebook, The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide: Safe, Therapeutic, and Sacred Journeys.