Yeah, but that's a really interesting

point that's very rarely made in our

field. It's very rarely made in our

field. People don't tend to make that

point. They're usually saying things

like, oh, you know, come and talk it out

more, get into your body more. the

actual the kind of utilitarian view of

recovery is as good as recovery looks,

as recovery does, as recovery lives, is

often lacking. But you're very

passionate about that.

>> I am. And so the goal of treatment is

not to talk about your trauma.

>> Right.

>> The goal of treatment is to be fully

arrive on September 30th, 2025.

>> Mhm.

>> I hope got the date right actually.

>> Not bad. But that's really the goal is

are you a life and what will give you a

sense of fulfillment and pleasure and

the pleasure word is the f word is

always left out. Fun.

>> Fun. Fun. That's what I was thinking of.

Yeah.

>> If you feel traumatized, you can't have

fun.

>> Yeah.

>> So, it's really important to get a sense

of pleasure and get your reward system

working that makes you feel I feel

alive. I feel well. I don't feel like a

victim. So being able to do things that

really give you a sense of agency is

unbelievably important.

Well, I personally think you're lots of

fun, but that's because I kind of like

talking about really nonfun things like

trauma. Um,

I think this is a really good point and

you know, I'm really grateful for that

because actually what I want people to

try to take on board is not just this

kind of you talk about expansion versus

contraction. I don't want people to

contract into what's wrong with me and

how do I get someone to fix it for me,

but to expand into what's right with us

and how do we nourish and support that

with each other. That's important. What

is working?

Um, for example, today in a panel in

Oxford and somebody said, uh, I feel

like you don't really listen to me. And

so they talked about how to deal with

this. And I would have said, "Oh, but do

you remember somebody who did listen to

you?"

I what I would say. And do you remember

what it felt like when somebody really

listened to you? Right?

>> And what you usually will find is that

nobody ever listens to me.

>> Right?

>> And then the question comes, how can you

get people to listen to you? And maybe

moving together in sync might be

helpful. Or maybe being a member of a

theater group and acting a particular

role and feeling you're a vital part of

the theater group might be very

important or part of a music group that

your contribution becomes important and

you listen to each other. Yeah.

Okay. Well, on the subject of listening

to each other, we're going to transition

into taking questions.

Um because I'm sure that many people in

the audience have many things they want

to ask and we'll only be able to pick

out a few. So forgive me.

How can psychedelics be used to treat

trauma in people suffering from

addiction without creating the risk of a

new dependency?

Um so addictions are very highly related

to trauma.

>> Yeah. I like to say that if I little pen

with heroin here, I say, "Hey guys, I

have a little pen of heroin. come from

America, so you have nothing to worry

about. And if you want some heroin, come

over here. Most of you would say, "This

guy's crazy." But there's probably going

to be two or three people in this room

who feel so terrible that you will say,

"I'll take some heroin because I cannot

stand the way I feel." So people take

drugs not in order to part their family

or ruin their family's finances. They

take drugs because they cannot stand the

way they feel. And so drugs is a way of

healing themselves or at least

functioning well. And so when you deal

with drug addiction, you need to really

work with what was so unbearable that

made it. And so you deal with a

troubling issue. But now when when you

don't take drugs, you go into withdrawal

and you your old trauma comes back even

more. And so withdrawal in and of itself

will break will break big break your

demons. And so the question is can we

hold people long enough to feel their

demons and to help them to move through

it and it takes time and it takes a very

safe environment. Um again we are

exploring psychedelics where the pain

often times comes up but after a while

you start feeling safe and so that's

true for treating addictions also.

Addictions are almost invariably start

with trauma. And then you need to help

both the withdrawal symptoms, but also

what was unbearable about your internal

world and how can you learn to own the

sensations in your body and tolerate the

sensations you have in your body.

So really the organism needs to be taken

care of.

>> It's fascinating.

Um,

if a child has PTSD but is too young for

EMDR,

can they overcome PTSD with play therapy

or will they need EMDR when they're

older? Now, EMDR is one nice technique.

I don't think anybody is too young to do

EMDR actually. I think and a kid doesn't

just get PTSD, you know, very at the

core is a study here in London by Anna

Freud with a generation that grew up

under these Nazi bombers from 1942 to

1945 here in London. And they discovered

that the kids who were sent off to the

countryside did very poorly. But the

kids who stayed in London did okay

because kids take their cues from their

parents. And kids can become very

scared. But as long as my mom or dad are

there and I feel loved by them, I'm

going to be okay. And so kids who even

under the most adverse circumstances if

they feel like somebody is looking after

them and has their is taking care of

them they won't get traumatized by and

large. So if a kid has PTSD, you wonder

what is going on in the environment that

this kid is not comforted only by their

parents presence and that indeed that

may happen but a play therapy would be

the first treatment of choice where the

kids really gets to play it out and can

see and feel what makes them feel

better. I would not start with EMDR with

kids. The kids are are filled with rich

fantasy lives and you use the fantasy

life to help them to script alternative

outcomes. Huh? Uh when you're

traumatized, everything always has the

same outcome. Somebody touches your

shoulder, that means you're going to get

raped.

Once you're better, somebody touches

your shoulder. Maybe somebody's happy to

see you. Maybe somebody's stumbling.

Maybe somebody tried to rape you. And

your mind is wide open. So you try to

open up this kid's mind to really feel a

whole bunch of different sensations and

really feel much more open to

experience. So I would not start with

EMDR. Yeah.

>> But you can do EMDR with very small

kids.

>> Here's one of your favorite questions.

Where do you think the next breakthrough

in treatment will come from?

>> Next breakthrough? God knows. I cannot

predict the future

but um a big breakthrough but we I see

breakthroughs all the time but the but

the very most compelling breakthrough

right now is psychedelics.

Uh and our research on psychedelics was

really had amazing results. Actually one

of our papers declared one of the test

most important scientific papers of the

year in overall science. a very big big

thing and and psychedelics people's mind

gets opened up. They may go into very

dark places but you don't get stuck and

psychedelics clearly help people to get

unstuck. And so I can give you an

example. I wrote a scientific paper

about it is that after three sessions of

MDMA XZ therapy with psychotherapy

uh the people who got therapy only

improved a little bit. The people who

got therapy plus MDMA

uh they had a dramatic change in their

self-compassion.

They they felt like oh I was such a

little kid. I did not know any better or

I loved my daddy and he did this to you

and I was paralyzed and I feel so bad

for this little kid and you really have

compassion for yourself. Usually people

have shame about it. I feel I was so

weak. I was so little. I was so stupid

and that becomes a part of your internal

self-perpetration.

You can really hate yourself have me so

vulnerable on psychedelics over and over

again. We see that people say that poor

kid what I went through. I was just a

kid. I did not know any better. If that

would happen to me today, I'd kick him

kick kick his ass and defend myself. But

back then, I couldn't. But it didn't end

there. after they really got to feel

like I was a beautiful little kid who

just people did this to me and I didn't

deserve this. The next thought they

often times have is and I feel so dead

bad for my father who used to beat me up

all the time because he never got to

appreciate that he had this beautiful

child me and got to feel the pleasure of

being the father of a beautiful child.

So he missed the boat also, but I got

treated. He didn't. That was a mortal

response. Pretty good, huh?

And just to come back to the question,

I've heard you say on occasion things

like, you know, 50 years time, people

will look back on my book and say, "What

was that nonsense about?"

>> Maybe

>> you're very humble about the possibility

of being swept away by advances. You

just don't know where they're coming

from.

>> Absolutely. You know, we are we live in

the culture we live in and you know like

like I'm a big fan of Darwin. Darwin

published his paper on a book on the

emotional expression of animals men that

he shows photography to to show people's

expressions. Today you would do the most

sophisticated neuroiming scan or a

genetic analysis. We have a different uh

tools. We have different ways of

measuring things. And today we think

those pictures are stupid. I don't think

they are actually but but we we have

moved and we see the world in different

way. What I also see is that people

discover new things

like neuro feedback let's say but they

lose old things. For the last 100 years

the best treatment that people knew for

trauma was hypnosis.

In the US nobody does hypnosis anymore.

So we have lost an important therapeutic

tool because we want something new. So

there's there's many different options

and oftent we lose old options. Yeah.

Well, speaking of that, we have another

question which is since publishing the

body keeps a score, what new research

has surprised you the most about trauma

and the body?

>> What new research has surprised me most?

Certainly our psychedelic research has

oh the the the brain circuitry stuff

>> brain circuitry

>> the brain circuitry

>> and how we started off looking at

specific brain areas and now we're

thinking about what part of the brain is

working together with other parts of the

brain and people have identified three

networks one network is the salience

network and it tells you how your mind

automatically interprets something as

being dangerous or safe. And so let's

say it's not happening. Yeah, somebody

just did it. Often times somebody coughs

when they say this. You all heard it,

but it went into your brain and your

sisters network said that's completely

irrelevant. So you ignored it. But if

the person who molested you was

coughing, you might may now sit here and

hear somebody cough and you go like

every time that person coughs like that.

So you're saying this network is off and

that that faces the challenge is how can

we change this neural circuitry so that

actually you can hear the same thing but

you go like oh there's somebody coughing

so we have found different states of

being including the thing I talked about

earlier about the default note network

was very important finding is that many

time people when there is no trauma they

don't feel anything but they feel alive

when they are hurt or in danger. I saw

this very clearly. I've worked closely

with a journalist advanced journalism

program at Harvard, the Neiman

Foundation, and we'd get mid-career

journalists from who had been in

Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Congo and

Libya. And they were terrific war

correspondents and they come back to

Cambridge, Mass, which is almost as nice

as Cambridge, England. And they fell

apart because their brains were not

capable of dealing with quiet and with

peacefulness.

And so these are very important

discoveries in that. And so the focus

now becomes how can I help a person

whose brain has been wired for danger to

learn to be calm and safe. And we

actually have some methods of doing

that. Neuro feedback being one of them.

Psychedelics being another one. And

there's probably other ones as well.

>> Yeah.

>> That's exciting. Um kind of going down

that theme a bit further. The question

is, how do you navigate the tension

between evidence-based protocols and the

more body-based experimental practices

that don't yet have the same research

base? That is the purpose of our

foundation

>> of which he is a board member. Um, TRF,

the Travel Research Foundation, because

I've been really impressed because I'm a

researcher. I can get money to study

project but I couldn't get money to

study

neuro feedback. I got some money to

study theater very difficult but when I

study want to study tango dancing and

get funded by the National Institute of

Health there's no way they're going to

give me money for that. Yeah. So our

foundation is focused on creating more

evidence-based treatments. So we look

out for programs that look really good

and we say we're going to help you to

study it. We're going to look you up

with some some researchers. So have a

new evidence base for that particular

treatment because as we talked about

earlier medicine is stuck in chemical

models. You can get money to study

chemistry. You cannot study u singing

for drama.

And so if we say like we're involved in

a beautiful theater program called

Shakespeare in the courts as a

Shakespeare program for uh juvenile

delinquents and you may not think about

America as a civilized country but I

live in a very small little very

civilized place and when you're a

juvenile delinquent in my little country

and you break into a home you steal a

car you have a 50 chance% chance that

the judge will condemn you to become a

Shakespearean actor. Not bad. And so

these kids start doing theater. They

have never stood up straight. They've

never actually shown anybody because

they're always ashamed and frightened.

And they learn how to live in their

bodies and they learn how to interact

with people and they have an experience

they've never had of speaking their

mind, speaking a role, being a powerful

king, being a nasty person. And that's

what it feels like and they feel in

their body. So we're funding that

program to find out how effective it is

for the treatment of trauma. NIH would

never give us money for that. Yeah.

Great.

Change tax slightly. With the current

global conflicts, what are your thoughts

on how this exposure to violence will

affect today's children in the present

and later in their lives?

Boy, that's a very painful question.

Actually, I had a my son

fell in love with an Irish girl and she

said, "I want to get married because I

want to get a visa to stay in America."

So, he married her and when he got

married, he says, "Dad, I'm not married.

I'm married for the visa." But slowly,

he fell in love with her and they moved

to Ireland. My grandchildren live in

Ireland and boy am I grateful that my

grandchildren live in Ireland because if

they live in the US right now they would

be exposed to all this craziness from

our government but luckily they're

sequestered away from it and it will be

some years before they discover how

crazy the world is. Uh and so creating

very safe environments for your kids is

terribly important and hopefully you

still do that here. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay, I'm going to finish up with a

pretty straightforward question which

you can give a long or short answer to,

but if you could change just one thing

in mainstream healthc care's approach to

trauma, what would it be?

That's a 50

million question, isn't it? Um,

why one thing?

One thing

I think I wrote a book that made one big

difference. Um

I would introduce

action

ethnicity

movement. I would ask

let me just fantasize that if people go

to the doctor they actually help that

doctor to take care of other patients

>> to help their doctor take care of other

patient

>> help other patients so they can actually

feel that they can make a difference in

other people's lives.

>> Yeah. But that's here's an example of to

actively engage in your life and to not

passively wait for somebody to fix you,

>> but actually have to contribute

something in order to get something

back.

Just a fantasy.

So I mean in a way the the theme of the

evening is kind of expansion and

connection, collaboration,

movement, action

and and we pulled ourselves away from

the kind of narrow silos of healthcare,

psychotherapy, modalities.

>> That's not science. That is the that's

not the science of healthcare. as the

insurance-driven

>> right

>> institutional stuff. There's no science.

>> Yeah.

>> You are I mean you're advocating

>> for the humanity.

>> Yeah.

>> Of treatment to emerge for people to

collect and to help each other.

>> We are also learning a good amount how

the brain functions.

>> Yeah. And we really learning that your

sensory experience is the core of your

motivation and your aliveness. And so

really focusing on your sensations and

working with your sensations as you

move, as you sing, as you dance, as you

move your body, as I talk to you, and to

really feel what it feels like to be

with you and feel the vitality of my

organism with you is terribly important.

Yeah. Yeah. And and you are enacting the

cure you advocate. You come here to

speak to thousands of people. You bring

your body. You bring your instrument.

And you share to some degree to did he

or did he not have

>> I call what we did here preaching. And

we in a Methodist church so it makes

sense that I'm preaching. But if I

really did what I wanted to do, I would

have got you up on your feet and we

would sang together.

>> Well, that's a promise for next time.

Okay, ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Vessel

Vand.

Heat. Heat.