Could doing yoga while on psychedelics improve insight? What about yoga while lucid dreaming? Our guest, Henry Kandel, teaches what he calls “Ketamine-State Yoga” which he says improves healing outcomes, stokes creative flow, and cultivates spiritual experience. While ingesting an unintentionally large amount of ketamine while meditating, our guest discovered the value of doing spiritual practices while using psychedelics, and now he teaches it to others. When it comes to breaking patterns of depression or addiction, Henry says that the key to getting a healing effect is to have a spiritual or mystical experience whether meditating, having a lucid dream, or using psychedelics. He then touches into microdosing and how it can enhance noticing the dream-like nature of things.
After the break we take two calls, the first is from Henry’s daughter Alice in Brooklyn who describes starting a lucid dreaming practice at age eight to help her deal with her troubling sleep paralysis. The second caller is Ellen from Soquel who shares some of her experiences of using Tibetan Dream Yoga practices to enhance lucid dreaming. At the end of the show, Henry speculates why mystical experiences are emotionally healing.
BIO: Henry Kandel is a science teacher and yogi living in Brooklyn. He has studied diverse forms of yoga for over 30 years including Tibetan Dream and Sleep Yoga from Tenzin Wangyal and Chongtul Rinpoche. He originated Ketamine-State Yoga and has taught it to yogis, therapists, and hundreds of folks online.
Find our guest at: HenryKandel.com where you can find out about his psychedelic yoga meetup.
This show, episode number 273, was recorded during a live broadcast on August 24, 2024 at KSQD.org, community radio of Santa Cruz.
Intro and outro music by Mood Science. Ambient music new every week by Rick Kleffel. Archived music can be found at Pandemiad.com. Many thanks to Rick Kleffel for also engineering the show and to Tony Erik Nelson for the phones.
SHARE A DREAM FOR THE SHOW or a question by emailing Katherine Bell at katherine@ksqd.org. Follow on FB and IG @ExperientialDreamwork #thedreamjournal. To learn more or to inquire about exploring your own dreams go to ExperientialDreamwork.com.
The Dream Journal aims to:
Increase awareness of and appreciation for nightly dreams.
Inspire dream sharing and other kinds of dream exploration as a way of adding depth and meaningfulness to lives and relationships.
Improve society by the increased empathy, emotional balance, and sense of wonder which dream exploration invites.
The Dream Journal is produced at and airs on KSQD Santa Cruz, 90.7 FM. Catch it streaming LIVE at KSQD.org 10-11am Pacific Time on Saturdays. Call or text with your dreams or questions at 831-900-5773 or email at onair@ksqd.org. Podcasts are available on all major podcast platforms released the Monday following the live show. The complete KSQD Dream Journal podcast page can be found at ksqd.org/the-dream-journal/.
Note that closed captioning is available on the YouTube version of this podcast and an automatically generated transcript is available at Apple Podcasts.
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