Will Hall

I have more than 13 years experience with counseling and community development work around altered and extreme states of consciousness, including what gets labeled psychosis, bipolar, and schizophrenia, as well as having a background guiding and integrating psychedelics experiences. I work from a perspective outside the clinical gaze and diagnosis, and view altered states as natural pathways of personal trauma integration, spiritual initiation, and collective awakening. Like psychosis, psychedelics magnify emotionally charged and symbolic possibilities latent in the psyche, and render individual identity permeable to collective and ancestral forces. Visionary plant medicines and substances are useful tools but also have their shadow sides: shadow work with power and trauma is vital to integration. My work is dynamic, body oriented, and here-and-now present moment focused, and methods I use include roleplay, dreamwork, meditation, synchronicities, narrative tools, family dynamics, and conflict resolution. I have a certificate in Open Dialogue; a diploma in Process Oriented Psychology; am a NADA Acu-Detox auricular acupuncturist; am currently a PhD candidate at Maastricht University; am among the teachers for the annual Legacy of R.D. Laing Seminar at Esalen Institute, and am author of the Harm Reduction Guide to Coming Off Psychiatric Drugs, translated into 14 languages. www.willhall.net www.outsidementalhealth.com.