SoundMind Institute

The class begins with 3 months of psychodynamic curriculum, that is offered for asynchronous completion, and can occur before or after the Cor.e Curriculum (8 weeks). You will have weekly optional Q&A sessions you may attend with instructors. Starting in September 2024, the class meets for 2 hours weekly for 8 months. These are live Zoom sessions with guest lecturers present, which allows you to ask questions directly. This is a special part of our curriculum and unique in the psychedelic education space. Each student also attends weekly, hour-long small groups where they can get to know their classmates, ask questions, and practice skills. The Accountability Group Times can be set to your schedule.

We ask you to plan for 8-10 hours per week total from September until May for readings, assignments, class and Accountability Group. Readings and other activities typically take 5-6 hours outside of class each week. Each week there are homework short-response questions assigned, as well as periodic short quizzes to assess comprehension of the material. If students get behind on readings, they can request an extension and be granted up to 6 months from the completion of the course to finish and turn in all assignments. To earn the class certificate you need to have completed all readings, homework assignments, and quizzes, as well as pass a final written, comprehensive exam and attend an approved hands-on experiential retreat (required to achieve Level 2 SoundMind Training). All classes are recorded and you have access to those videos after each class and also beyond the completion of the course.

It is not a problem if you have to miss up to 4 live classes. Classes will be recorded for you to catch up on what was covered that week. If you need to miss more than 4 lectures across the 8 months of the core curriculum, you may need to arrange for make-up classes to ensure you meet the curriculum requirements. We work with students individually should this occur.

Yes, we have accountability groups each week that are required, which are hour-long sessions with other members of your class, supervised by a small group facilitator, in which students can discuss course material, practice skills, and have an open forum for questions.

Yes! We open the application to everyone who is interested in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy facilitation. About 30% of the students in previous cohorts are not clinicians. Many have had direct work with clients in other ways and this is assessed in the application process. If you are not a clinician, please keep in mind this course is designed for people who have some background in psychotherapy or clinical work. If you are still interested and have none of this background, please apply and if accepted we have some preparation homework to get you up-to-speed. We've also recently added our psychodynamic curriculum, which focuses on providing all students with a strong foundation in psychoanalytic and psychodynamic therapy skills.

We have always believed that an equitable and thriving psychedelic ecosystem does not limit its training programs to those with pre-existing medical or mental health licensure. Since 2019, we have accepted a blend of licensed and unlicensed trainees and focus instead on students’ capacity for ethical practice and commitment to self-reflection and growth throughout the training journey. We prioritize accepting students with experience in non-ordinary states as well as daily meditation practices. We also look for curiosity around scientific literature and folks with additional skills to add to their facilitation offerings (such as bodywork, somatic training, herbalism, or other skills).

We have an extensive roster of instructors who have taught in our program since its inception in 2019, and who hold expertise across fields: psychedelic medicine, psychology, pharmacology, bioethics, and traditional medicine practice. We make a special effort to bring in providers who hold diverse expertise in therapeutic approaches, including somatic approaches, meditation, breathwork, hypnotherapy, internal family systems, and psychoanalytic methods. All our teachers must also be grounded in an anti-racist, anti-oppression framework.

The only psychedelic that is currently legal to use therapeutically in all regions of the United States is ketamine. To provide ketamine-assisted therapy, a facilitator must be affiliated with a physician who can prescribe ketamine. In the states of Oregon and Colorado, psilocybin has also been legalized for therapeutic use, and these states are hard at work to roll out psilocybin therapy. Our program has been approved by the Oregon Health Authority (OHA) to provide state-sanctioned training to become a psilocybin facilitator in Oregon. We are also licensed as a private career school by Oregon’s Higher Education Coordinating Commission (HECC). We are one of only a handful of training programs in the nation to receive approval to train Oregon psilocybin providers. We plan to apply for the same designation in Colorado when it is available as well.

For prescription psychedelics, MDMA is slated to be available legally in the United States within 2-3 years. To provide MDMA-assisted psychotherapy in this context, additional training from MAPS /Lycos is required and is an abbreviated training. Other pharmaceutical companies will likely require a brief training to learn their FDA-approved protocols (e.g. synthetic psilocybin, 5-MEO-DMT, etc). We see this rolling out in 5-7 years, and the SoundMind Program program will prepare you well to be a facilitator in numerous settings with numerous medicines.

Our program teaches students how psychedelics, especially ketamine, psilocybin, and MDMA, are used in conjunction with psychotherapy. We also teach students how ceremony, ritual, and traditional medicine practice have contributed to our understanding of psychedelic medicine and provide hands-on learning on ways to integrate these practices into psychedelic-assisted therapy modalities.

Outside of Oregon and Colorado’s psilocybin legislation, there is no standardization or credentialing board for psychedelic-assisted therapy at this time, which means no individual course or program can provide “accreditation” to practice with psychedelics. What this course will provide is the groundwork to build a career in psychedelics, including the ongoing community and support network of like-minded practitioners to help graduates succeed in this field as aboveground psychedelics emerge.

Please note that this course provides the foundations of training in psychedelic facilitation. Continued hands-on learning and ongoing clinical supervision is strongly recommended before becoming an independently practicing psychedelic facilitator. As with many therapeutic modalities, it is a lifelong learning and growth process!

If you are already a clinician or you do decide to go to graduate school, you will likely have a few more options of roles within the psychedelic ecosystem than non-clinicians, but there will be plenty of other possible roles as well. Part of the purpose of this course is to get us all connected so we can form teams including all the different roles of people — prescribers, therapists, breathwork practitioners, music therapists, overnight sitters, designers to create the physical setting, mycologists and chemists, pharmacists, nurses, bodyworkers, and more. These classes are dynamic and the community-building is amazing! You will not be disappointed.

The cost to take this program is $11,300, with an option to pay all at once or in 4 or 12 equal monthly installments. The in-person experiential is $4,000 to $6,000, depending on which option is chosen. Once you complete your one-year training program and 40-hour practicum, you can consider yourself a “SoundMind Psychedelic Practitioner” (which is our Level 2 Certificate).

Yes, up until a week from the first lecture, you may receive a full refund, no questions asked. We respect that your life or choices may change and we want to make sure all students in the class have the time and space in their life to engage fully. You also can receive a prorated refund if you decide to cancel your enrollment, up until half-way through the course.

We pride ourselves in creating courses and trainings that have equity, social justice, and ethics as the centerpiece of all conversations. These therapies need to be made available to the most marginalized among us, and we need to start the conversation and any training there. We are women-led and operated, as well as neurodiverse-founded and operated. We prioritize marginalized populations at every step.

We have operated a Psychedelic Treatment Center in urban Philadelphia since 2020, creating inclusive and innovative psychedelic protocols for populations in need. We were the first psychedelic-assisted therapy treatment center on the East Coast, and our innovation continues to grow over the years.

When choosing a training program, please note that several other psychedelic training programs have investors whereas we do not take investment and have bootstrapped our buildout, enabling us to lead the way in innovation and quality without compromising our core values.

We have live classes and small Accountability groups (the weekly groups do not exceed 15-20 students), we allow you to meet the expert instructors directly and ask questions, and we pay our expert instructors well.

Profit is not our primary motive, and we are excited to include you in the psychedelic revolution that starts with our communities and inclusivity. Welcome aboard!

Oregon Health Authority has approved our curriculum to train facilitators in the Oregon Psilocybin Model. After this was approved, all programs and individuals involved with measure 109 learned programs would also need to be approved by a secondary branch of the Oregon Government, called HECC (the Higher Education Coordinating Committee). We received HECC approval to operate as a private career school in Oregon in October 2022.