In this deeply engaging episode of PsychedelicIQ: Guidance for Guides, Gv Freeman welcomes mindfulness-based somatic counselor and psychedelic educator Kristina Hunter. Together, they explore the nuanced intersection of psychedelics, therapy, spirituality, and somatic awareness. Kristina shares insights from her 20 years of experience and her work at UC Berkeley’s Psychedelic Facilitation Program, touching on the complexities of field phenomena, emotional processing, spiritual cosmology, and ethical facilitation. This episode is a must-listen for guides, therapists, and seekers navigating psychedelic healing, integration, trauma, and personal growth. Subscribe now to keep exploring the future of safe and sacred transformation.

[01:06] Guest intro: Kristina Hunter’s background and deep experience

[02:56] Kristina’s early interest in psychedelics, meditation, and consciousness

[03:29] South American apprenticeship and integration into Western frameworks

[04:00] Role at UC Berkeley and consulting for psychedelic practitioners

[05:00] The “interference” and initiatory challenges of recording this episode

[05:38] How proximity to medicine amplifies phenomena and signals

[06:56] A deeper dive into worldview: psychedelic medicines as portals

[08:30] Contacting spiritual energies and the invisible world

[09:55] Trusting the universe as loving awareness; organic unfolding

[10:31] Wholeness and evolution as the foundation of healing

[11:17] Discussion of evil: Buddhist and Tantric perspectives on darkness

[13:37] Technical difficulties as a metaphor for spiritual resistance

[14:01] The necessity of shamanic tools when love alone doesn’t transmute

[15:15] Working with anger in sessions: allow vs. repress

[20:29] Recognizing when trauma turns into possession or dense energy

[23:57] Shamanic intervention and calling in spiritual protection

[25:33] Dangers of shutting down client expression in love & light culture

[27:31] Importance of personal experience for psychedelic facilitators

[30:00] The limits of clinical models without a transpersonal cosmology

[33:11] The shaman’s cosmology and holding “everything” in the field

[35:37] Kristina on teaching at Berkeley: bridging science and ancestral traditions

[38:49] Weaving diversity, ethics, and spiritual care into guide training

[41:11] Pineapple after ayahuasca: psychedelics and sensory magic

[42:44] Should guides be trained therapists? When psychology helps

[46:27] What clinical therapists must learn about expanded states

[49:26] Somatics and body-based awareness as key to integration

[51:00] Ethics of touch: Oregon law and the principle of “leave no residue”

[54:37] Who is this for? Consent, subtle harm, and facilitator responsibility

[58:22] Ketamine clinics and unconscious harm through lack of attunement

[01:03:00] Field phenomena: Instagram in your pocket, in your client’s journey

[01:05:38] The value and limits of large-scale training programs

[01:09:13] Real mastery comes through apprenticeship and ceremony

[01:13:00] Transmission vs instruction: becoming through being

[01:14:33] Rupture, repair, and the subtle power of the field

[01:20:16] A personal story about a comment that caused unintended harm

[01:27:03] How to hold space, work with projections, and repair consciously

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Kristina Hunter is a mindfulness-based somatic counselor, writer and educator specializing in psychedelic integration. She has spent 20 years studying the transformative potential of expanded states of consciousness with teachers in both South America and the US who integrate expanded states work with psychotherapeutic approaches. She has also studied and practiced Vajrayana Buddhism with Tibetan and American teachers for the past two decades. Kristina’s passion is the intersection between psychology, expanded states of consciousness, and Buddhist contemplative practice with the guiding question of how these paths can help us become more awake, compassionate humans.

Kristina consults with clinicians on individualized approaches to psychedelic facilitation with an emphasis on preparation and integration, ethics, and harm reduction. Kristina is the Program Coordinator and an instructor for the UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics’ Psychedelic Facilitation Certificate Program. Kristina is the co-author of Consciousness Medicine (2019) and is working on a new book to educate seekers on ways to approach psychedelic healing safely and thoughtfully from a place of personal empowerment.

The post Rupture and Repair w/ Kristina Hunter # 10 first appeared on PsychedeliqIQ.