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Community, Diversity & Governance

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“As we begin together – acknowledging our shared purpose and desire of coming together to more deeply understanding healing from a holistic perspective, while recognizing and honoring that we are each unique and different in terms of our profession, culture, country of origin, race, religion, neurology, sexual orientation, gender, language, training and more and everyone is coming to this with their own unique perspective and experience.”

-A statement of acknowledgment often shared before classes written by a student

We network and partner with many communities and individuals to successfully manage the complexities of our many programs. It is important that we work with communities and individuals who are similarly aligned with our greater mission and values. For this reason, we have written this statement as a form of cultural informed consent, to share who we are as a program and what values are important to us. Above all else, we are inclusive and accepting, within the boundaries of our ethics and the safety of our community members. 

This document is not perfect, but it has been reviewed by culturally informed experts. Any recommendations or proposed changes can be emailed to safecommunity@medicinalmindfulness.org. We are open to continued learning and turning towards our blindspots.

 

Turning Cultural Appropriation into Cultural Appreciation

The Center for Medicinal Mindfulness and its members commit to Power Balancing: uplifting, supporting, spotlighting, and learning from marginalized voices. We do not depend on the emotional labor of marginalized folks, and pay them for their knowledge through classes, workshops, patronage, etc. We commit to giving credit to traditional knowledge whenever possible. 

The Center for Medicinal Mindfulness and its members commit to Cultural Compassion: acting from a place of sincerity and love to alleviate suffering, interrupting harm when we can and always paying attention to impact, not just intention. 

 

Notice of Non-Discrimination and Prohibition of Harassment

“Committed to equity of transformational opportunity, the Center for Medicinal Mindfulness does not discriminate in offering access to its programs, activities, or employment on the basis of race, color, gender, age, national or ethnic origin, caste, religion, disability, veteran’s status, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, responsible psychedelic medicine use, or any other status protected by law.”

 

We Are a Multicultural, Multifaith Community of Professional Psychedelic Medicine Practitioners.

The Center for Medicinal Mindfulness is a family owned “Legacy Lifestyle Company,” LGBTQ+ and woman led, with a strong commitment to ensuring that our teams are representative of the communities we serve. As “Legacy Practitioners,” meaning we’ve been psychedelic practitioners for a long time, we understand to a degree what it means to live under systems of oppression. A “Lifestyle” company is a business term denoting a company that is managed differently than a typical startup or a corporation seeking exponential growth and profit. In that regard, we remain fiercely independent from corporate interests, live with our roots in mainstream progressive politics and work every day for social and environmental justice. We strive to be good neighbors, locally and globally, and to be exemplars for ethical and moral action, acknowledging our sacred differences of lived experience, as well as our interconnectivity, oneness and familia.

The Center for Medicinal Mindfulness is committed to diversity, equity and inclusion, with all clients, students, staff and practitioners feeling respected and valued for their intersectional identities. Racism, homophobia, antisemitism and gun violence (among many others) are public health crises that result in significant trauma for millions of people around the globe. 

The use of “They/Them” pronouns for those who request them in our community is common and accepted etiquette, and we also recognize and accept that not everyone uses them correctly every single time.

While we hold a very important trauma-informed clinical orientation, and value science and research, we choose to work with both licensed mental health providers as well as competent guides from other professional practices and spiritual traditions. This orientation supports greater inclusion within the field of psychedelic medicines, while simultaneously honoring the sacred as equally important and real.

As an organization, we believe in and trust the innately sacred, ceremonial and spiritual nature of psychedelic medicine experiences. We take the professional stance that ethical guides are required to know the inner terrain through their own medicine practices, and we oppose constraining psychedelic experiences within a solely clinical or medical model of practice. Spiritual and aesthetic practices are equally essential.  Professionally, we take the stance that psychedelic medicines do not exist separately from the history of their lineages. 

We meet our clients and students where they are and honor the spectrum of beliefs, both secular and religious, that our members personally hold. As a program orientation, however, we hold a spiritual, animist and Earth-centered worldview, and recognize that the sacred spaces we enter into are in some way very real experiences, and those we meet in this inner-space can become deeply meaningful transpersonal relationships.  We honor the lineages that we hold as a community, show gratitude for our elders, all of our ancestors, the land and Earth, and acknowledge the Spirits of these medicines as important allies and equal members of our community. 

 

Land Acknowledgement

The Center for Medicinal Mindfulness is located on the ancestral lands of the Cheyenne, Ute and Arapaho peoples and we do not take that lightly. We choose to wholeheartedly participate in the lifelong reckoning and collective shadow work related to this. As mindfulness practitioners, we choose to turn towards this truth instead of looking away from it, and we intentionally and regularly invite engaged and respectful dialogue within our community about it and with our allies and teachers.

 

Concrete Steps We Are Taking – Reciprocity & Paying It Forward

The Center for Medicinal Mindfulness and Psychedelic Sitters School support our commitment in the following ways:

  • Our Need Based and Diversity Scholarship has provided over $400,000 in scholarships to our students. 
  • Our core training courses and live classes are available in an online format to increase accessibility for students with limited financial means, who are full time or working parents, or have disabilities that limit their ability to travel.
  • Our program was one of the first organizations to regularly donate to Chacruna Institute (chacruna.net), and we continue to support their work. 
  • We are establishing relationships with other non-profits, including with the Last Prisoners Project specifically to support an organization who helps those injured or incarcerated by the War on Drugs and cannabis prohibition, and the Indigenous Reciprocity Initiative of Chacruna Institute.
  • We commit to having a diverse team that is representative of the communities we serve, and we commit to providing specialized, culturally appropriate care to marginalized communities through ongoing professional training.
  • We created a work trade program to support our younger students who live locally to work at our Center as a trade for their training and to help them build a sustainable practice. This has become an apprenticeship program where all of our work trade students are now paid as assistant guides. 

 

Safety and Consent

We take the safety of our students and our community very seriously and skilled cultural awareness is a dimension of that safety. Due to the profound effects of psychedelic medicines, and our primary organizational identity and purpose being a “professional psychedelic guide association,” it is a conditional privilege, not a right, to join Medicinal Mindfulness Programs. Anyone is invited to apply to and participate in the Psychedelic Sitters School training program, regardless of their professional identity, if:

  • They agree to and comply with our safe community policies, informed consent agreements and other waivers, which include a non-discrimination and anti-harassment policy
  • They are physically, spiritually, psychologically and cognitively well enough to use psychedelics safely and to practice as a professional psychedelic guide safely, ethically and skillfully within a community that supports personal growth, accountability and oversight

 

Our Commitments

We are committed to anti-discriminatory practices and to providing equal opportunities for everyone. We respect and value diverse lived experiences and commit to ensuring all voices are valued and heard. The Center for Medicinal Mindfulness is committed to modeling diversity, equity, and inclusion and to maintaining an organization that ensures equitable treatment for all. Our staff and practitioners recognize how white supremacy, patriarchy, and exploitation can occur in psychedelic spaces and we are committed to turning towards this through radical self reflection for transformation and healing. Showing up for social justice in psychedelics requires leveraging our positions of privilege, critical self-awareness, allyship, and cultural respect.

Therefore, the Center for Medicinal Mindfulness actively works to:

  1. Understand diversity, inclusion, and equity as connected to our mission and critical to our work and stakeholders.
  2. Acknowledge and work to dismantle inequities within our policies, systems, and services;
  3. Challenge operations and policies that create or sustain inequity, oppression, and disparity;
  4. Explore potential underlying, unquestioned assumptions that interfere with diversity, equity, and inclusion practices;
  5. Address the systemic inequities that impact our work and in a manner that is consistent with our mission;
  6. Improve our diversity in leadership by identifying and supporting practices and policies that foster leadership reflective of the diversity of our communities;
  7. Commit time and resources to expand the opportunities for education around these issues with clients, practitioners, staff, and contractual relationships; and
  8. Practice and encourage transparent policies and clear communication in all interactions.
  9. Remain open to a path of continual learning and humility.

 

As a community of healers, the Center for Medicinal Mindfulness is committed to transforming society with inclusivity, diversity, and empowerment. Ending the war on drugs is merely one step on a long journey to equity.

 

Governance & Accountability

As an above board psychedelic organization, the Medicinal Mindfulness Foundation navigates a number of regulatory and government agencies, from local zoning ordinances to state and federal laws, as well as insurance companies, property owners, other psychedelic organizations and many other community stakeholders. Accountability is central to what we do. Therefore, we hold the highest standards of care possible.  

Our community governance structure is primarily provided through the Medicinal Mindfulness Foundation, a religious non-profit and professional association. Members who wish to participate in community activism through the program are invited to be active in the Foundation. 

 

Codes of Ethics for MM Practitioners

Codes of Ethics for Medicinal Mindfulness Practitioners are provided here for our members to study and integrate into their practice. These codes are mentioned in our Training Agreements as foundational principles. Ethical codes are currently being developed by many psychedelic organizations and regulatory agencies and are rapidly evolving. The Center for Medicinal Mindfulness is committed to working within our means to hold the highest ethical standards of practice and care that we can. 

Medicinal Mindfulness Community Code of Ethics

Questions and requests for additional information can be sent to the Safe Community Council by emailing safecommunity@medicinalmindfulness.org.

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FREE Virtual Open House with Daniel & Alison McQueen