Launching of the book The Therapeutic Use of Ayahuasca

Co-edited by Beatriz Caiuby Labate & Clancy Cavnar Springer, 2014

Saybrook University 747 Front Street (between Broadway and Pacific), 3rd floor, San Francisco February 6th, 2014 5:00 pm to 8:00 pm
Invitation by RVSP list only. Limited places. To register, write to: Steve Hart shart@saybrook.edu

benefits of ayahuasca for treatment of PTSD. The authors propose a bioinformatics approach to characterize the complex syndrome of PTSD to facilitate rapid and accurate diagnosis and treatment. This approach will help identify risk factors for treatment-resistant PTSD, as well as provide a more thorough and accurate assessment of appropriate therapeutic strategies, including ayahuasca.

3. The therapeutic use of Yag among the Cametsa of Alto Putumayo, Colombia, by Celina M. De Leon, BA This presentation aims to enhance our understanding of the diversity of ayahuasca use by exploring less internationally known modalities. It will focus on the therapeutic use of yag (ayahuasca) from the perspective of the Cametsa indigenous medical tradition of the Sibundoy Valley, of the Alto Putumayo of Colombia. It will offer an overview about both the ceremonies (limpias, aromatics, and music), and the core considerations that inform treatment protocols. Two case studies relating to heroin addiction and Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy (RSD) will be presented and explored. These cases suggest that the therapeutic application of ayahuasca for treating conditions that are not addressed well by western medicine is an area that justifies further research. It will be argued that including the perspective of traditional healers may offer an important contribution to facilitate understanding of ayahuascas mechanism of action and therapeutic potentials. This presentation is based on the presenters five year long ongoing apprenticeship with Taita Juan Agreda Chindoy, a Camentsa traditional healer with over 25 years of experience. Taita Juan is perhaps best known internationally for having been detained by US Customs officials and charged with possession with intent to distribute a Schedule 1 drug (ayahuasca) in 2010.

Round table: The Therapeutic Potentials of Ayahuasca, moderated by Stanley Krippner

1. Presentation of the book: by Beatriz Labate, PhD and Clancy Cavnar, PsyD 2. Ayahuasca and PTSD, by Jessica L. Nielson, PhD This presentation will review the epidemiology of PostTraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), the current and candidate treatments for PTSD, and the pharmacology of ayahuasca as a potential new therapeutic candidate. PTSD is a disorder that is affecting a growing number of individuals. Recently, there has been an increase in the number of veterans returning home from duty who are struggling with the symptoms of PTSD. The syndrome is difficult to treat and many victims have been unsatisfied with the currently approved therapies. Alternative treatments for the disorder are being explored, with research and anecdotal reports indicating the potential

es, drug policy, shamanism, ritual, and religion. She is Visiting Professor at the Drug Policy Program of the Center for Economic Research and Education (CIDE) in Aguascalientes, Mexico. She is also Research Associate at the Institute of Medical Psychology, Heidelberg University, co-founder of the Nucleus for Interdisciplinary Studies of Psychoactives (NEIP), and editor of NEIPs website (http://www.neip.info). She is author, coauthor, and co-editor of nine books, one special-edition journal, and several peer-reviewed articles. For more information, see: http://bialabate.net/ Clancy Cavnar is currently completing her postdoctoral hours in clinical psychology at the Marin Treatment Center, a methadone clinic in San Rafael, California. In 2011 she received a Doctorate in Clinical Psychology (PsyD) from John F. Kennedy University in Pleasant Hill, California, with a dissertation on gay and lesbian peoples experiences with ayahuasca. She attended New College of the University of South Florida and completed an undergraduate degree in liberal arts in 1982. She attended the San Francisco Art Institute and graduated with a Master of Fine Art in painting in 1985. In 1993, she received a certificate in substance abuse counseling from the extension program of the University of California at Berkeley and, in 1997, she graduated with a Masters in Counseling from San Francisco State University. In that same year, she got in touch with the Santo Daime in the USA, and has traveled several times to Brazil since then. She is also co-editor, with Beatriz Caiuby Labate, of two books: Ayahuasca Shamanism in the Amazon and Beyond (Oxford University Press, in press), and Prohibition, Religious Freedom, and Human Rights: Regulating Traditional Drug Use (Springer, in press). Jessica Nielson received her BS in biology from Cal Poly Pomona in 2003, and her PhD in anatomy and neurobiology from the University of California, Irvine, in 2010. During her doctoral work, she resolved a century-old controversy regarding the fate of the corticospinal tract following spinal cord injury, demonstrating definitively that this important motor pathway survives injury and is available in chronic cases for therapeutic interventions to promote regeneration and functional recovery. She joined the Brain and Spinal Injury Center at the University of California, San Francisco, in 2011 as a postdoctoral scholar, where she has been developing a novel bioinformatics approach to characterize syndromic features of spinal cord injury, with future plans to apply this approach to traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder. Celina M. De Leon is an independent researcher based in Oakland, California. She received a BA in Human Biology from Stanford University and was a US/India Fulbright Scholar in 2007. She is the co-founder of Posada Natura in Costa Rica, an interdisciplinary healing arts center dedicated to the practice and research of traditional medical systems (www.posadanatura.com). In 2009, she was initiated as a formal apprentice of Taita Juan Agreda Chindoy from the Cametsa indigenous lineage of the Sibundoy Valley, Alto Putumayo, Colombia.

For more information, see:

http://www.springer.com/biomed/ pharmacology+%26+toxicology/book/978-3-642-40425-2

Biographies:
Stanley Krippner, Ph.D., is a professor of psychology at Saybrook University, San Francisco, a Fellow in four APA divisions, and past-president of two divisions (30 and 32). Formerly, he was director of the Kent State University Child Study Center, Kent OH, and the Maimonides Medical Center Dream Research Laboratory, in Brooklyn NY. Krippner is a pioneer in the study of consciousness, having conducted research in the areas of dreams, hypnosis, shamanism, and dissociation, often from a cross-cultural perspective, and with an emphasis on anomalous phenomena that seem to question mainstream paradigms. He is the co-author of Extraordinary Dreams and How to Work With Them (SUNY Press, 2002), Perchance to Dream (Nova Science, 2009), Mysterious Minds (Praeger, 2010), Debating Psychic Experience (Praeger, 2010), Demystifying Shamans and Their World (Imprint Academic, 2011), The Voice of Rolling Thunder (Inner Traditions, 2012); and is the co-editor of Varieties of Anomalous Experience: Examining the Scientific Evidence (APA, 2000), as well as dozens of other books. He also has over 1000 published, scholarly articles, chapters, and papers. Beatriz Caiuby Labate has a Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil. Her main areas of interest are the study of psychoactive substanc-