Deeper Learning with Psychedelics PDF Download

Author: David J. Blacker
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438498144
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description
In both clinical and informal settings, psychedelics users often report they have undergone something profound and even life-altering. Yet there persists a confounding inability to articulate just what has been imparted. Informed by multidisciplinary emerging research, this book provides an account of the specifically educational aspects of psychedelics and how they can render us ready to learn. Drawing from indigenous peoples worldwide who typically revere these substances as "plant teachers" and from canonical thinkers in the western tradition such as Plato, Spinoza, Kant, and Heidegger, the author proposes an original set of categories through which to understand the educational capabilities of "entheogens" (psychedelics with visionary qualities). It emerges that entheogens' real power lies not in destabilizing and decentering—"turning on and dropping out"—but as powerful aids in restoring and reenchanting our shared worlds.

Author: Michael Pollan
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0735224153
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 481

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Book Description
Now on Netflix as a 4-part documentary series! “Pollan keeps you turning the pages . . . cleareyed and assured.” —New York Times A #1 New York Times Bestseller, New York Times Book Review 10 Best Books of 2018, and New York Times Notable Book A brilliant and brave investigation into the medical and scientific revolution taking place around psychedelic drugs--and the spellbinding story of his own life-changing psychedelic experiences When Michael Pollan set out to research how LSD and psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms) are being used to provide relief to people suffering from difficult-to-treat conditions such as depression, addiction and anxiety, he did not intend to write what is undoubtedly his most personal book. But upon discovering how these remarkable substances are improving the lives not only of the mentally ill but also of healthy people coming to grips with the challenges of everyday life, he decided to explore the landscape of the mind in the first person as well as the third. Thus began a singular adventure into various altered states of consciousness, along with a dive deep into both the latest brain science and the thriving underground community of psychedelic therapists. Pollan sifts the historical record to separate the truth about these mysterious drugs from the myths that have surrounded them since the 1960s, when a handful of psychedelic evangelists inadvertently catalyzed a powerful backlash against what was then a promising field of research. A unique and elegant blend of science, memoir, travel writing, history, and medicine, How to Change Your Mind is a triumph of participatory journalism. By turns dazzling and edifying, it is the gripping account of a journey to an exciting and unexpected new frontier in our understanding of the mind, the self, and our place in the world. The true subject of Pollan's "mental travelogue" is not just psychedelic drugs but also the eternal puzzle of human consciousness and how, in a world that offers us both suffering and joy, we can do our best to be fully present and find meaning in our lives.

Author: Chris Letheby
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192581090
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 175

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Book Description
Recent clinical trials show that psychedelics such as LSD and psilocybin can be given safely in controlled conditions, and can cause lasting psychological benefits with one or two administrations. Supervised psychedelic sessions can reduce symptoms of anxiety, depression, and addiction, and improve well-being in healthy volunteers, for months or even years. But these benefits seem to be mediated by "mystical" experiences of cosmic consciousness, which prompts a philosophical concern: do psychedelics cause psychological benefits by inducing false or implausible beliefs about the metaphysical nature of reality? This book is the first scholarly monograph in English devoted to the philosophical analysis of psychedelic drugs. Its central focus is the apparent conflict between the growing use of psychedelics in psychiatry and the philosophical worldview of naturalism. Within the book, Letheby integrates empirical evidence and philosophical considerations in the service of a simple conclusion: this "Comforting Delusion Objection" to psychedelic therapy fails. While exotic metaphysical ideas do sometimes come up, they are not, on closer inspection, the central driver of change in psychedelic therapy. Psychedelics lead to lasting benefits by altering the sense of self, and changing how people relate to their own minds and lives-not by changing their beliefs about the ultimate nature of reality. The upshot is that a traditional conception of psychedelics as agents of insight and spirituality can be reconciled with naturalism (the philosophical position that the natural world is all there is). Controlled psychedelic use can lead to genuine forms of knowledge gain and spiritual growth-even if no Cosmic Consciousness or transcendent divine Reality exists. Philosophy of Psychedelics is an indispensable guide to the literature for researchers already engaged in the field of psychedelic psychiatry, and for researchers-especially philosophers-who want to become acquainted with this increasingly topical field.

Author: Andrew Glassner
Publisher: No Starch Press
ISBN: 1718500734
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 1239

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Book Description
A richly-illustrated, full-color introduction to deep learning that offers visual and conceptual explanations instead of equations. You'll learn how to use key deep learning algorithms without the need for complex math. Ever since computers began beating us at chess, they've been getting better at a wide range of human activities, from writing songs and generating news articles to helping doctors provide healthcare. Deep learning is the source of many of these breakthroughs, and its remarkable ability to find patterns hiding in data has made it the fastest growing field in artificial intelligence (AI). Digital assistants on our phones use deep learning to understand and respond intelligently to voice commands; automotive systems use it to safely navigate road hazards; online platforms use it to deliver personalized suggestions for movies and books - the possibilities are endless. Deep Learning: A Visual Approach is for anyone who wants to understand this fascinating field in depth, but without any of the advanced math and programming usually required to grasp its internals. If you want to know how these tools work, and use them yourself, the answers are all within these pages. And, if you're ready to write your own programs, there are also plenty of supplemental Python notebooks in the accompanying Github repository to get you going. The book's conversational style, extensive color illustrations, illuminating analogies, and real-world examples expertly explain the key concepts in deep learning, including: • How text generators create novel stories and articles • How deep learning systems learn to play and win at human games • How image classification systems identify objects or people in a photo • How to think about probabilities in a way that's useful to everyday life • How to use the machine learning techniques that form the core of modern AI Intellectual adventurers of all kinds can use the powerful ideas covered in Deep Learning: A Visual Approach to build intelligent systems that help us better understand the world and everyone who lives in it. It's the future of AI, and this book allows you to fully envision it. Full Color Illustrations

Author: Ido Hartogsohn
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262358948
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 433

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Book Description
How historical, social, and cultural forces shaped the psychedelic experience in midcentury America, from CIA experiments with LSD to Timothy Leary's Harvard Psilocybin Project. Are psychedelics invaluable therapeutic medicines, or dangerously unpredictable drugs that precipitate psychosis? Tools for spiritual communion or cognitive enhancers that spark innovation? Activators for one's private muse or part of a political movement? In the 1950s and 1960s, researchers studied psychedelics in all these incarnations, often arriving at contradictory results. In American Trip, Ido Hartogsohn examines how the psychedelic experience in midcentury America was shaped by historical, social, and cultural forces--by set (the mindset of the user) and setting (the environments in which the experience takes place).

Author: Jean-Pierre Briot
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319701630
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
This book is a survey and analysis of how deep learning can be used to generate musical content. The authors offer a comprehensive presentation of the foundations of deep learning techniques for music generation. They also develop a conceptual framework used to classify and analyze various types of architecture, encoding models, generation strategies, and ways to control the generation. The five dimensions of this framework are: objective (the kind of musical content to be generated, e.g., melody, accompaniment); representation (the musical elements to be considered and how to encode them, e.g., chord, silence, piano roll, one-hot encoding); architecture (the structure organizing neurons, their connexions, and the flow of their activations, e.g., feedforward, recurrent, variational autoencoder); challenge (the desired properties and issues, e.g., variability, incrementality, adaptability); and strategy (the way to model and control the process of generation, e.g., single-step feedforward, iterative feedforward, decoder feedforward, sampling). To illustrate the possible design decisions and to allow comparison and correlation analysis they analyze and classify more than 40 systems, and they discuss important open challenges such as interactivity, originality, and structure. The authors have extensive knowledge and experience in all related research, technical, performance, and business aspects. The book is suitable for students, practitioners, and researchers in the artificial intelligence, machine learning, and music creation domains. The reader does not require any prior knowledge about artificial neural networks, deep learning, or computer music. The text is fully supported with a comprehensive table of acronyms, bibliography, glossary, and index, and supplementary material is available from the authors' website.

Author: Michael Pollan
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0593296915
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
The instant New York Times bestseller | A Washington Post Notable Book | One of NPR's Best Books of the Year “Expert storytelling . . . [Pollan] masterfully elevates a series of big questions about drugs, plants and humans that are likely to leave readers thinking in new ways.” —New York Times Book Review From #1 New York Times bestselling author Michael Pollan, a radical challenge to how we think about drugs, and an exploration into the powerful human attraction to psychoactive plants—and the equally powerful taboos. Of all the things humans rely on plants for—sustenance, beauty, medicine, fragrance, flavor, fiber—surely the most curious is our use of them to change consciousness: to stimulate or calm, fiddle with or completely alter, the qualities of our mental experience. Take coffee and tea: People around the world rely on caffeine to sharpen their minds. But we do not usually think of caffeine as a drug, or our daily use as an addiction, because it is legal and socially acceptable. So, then, what is a “drug”? And why, for example, is making tea from the leaves of a tea plant acceptable, but making tea from a seed head of an opium poppy a federal crime? In This Is Your Mind on Plants, Michael Pollan dives deep into three plant drugs—opium, caffeine, and mescaline—and throws the fundamental strangeness, and arbitrariness, of our thinking about them into sharp relief. Exploring and participating in the cultures that have grown up around these drugs while consuming (or, in the case of caffeine, trying not to consume) them, Pollan reckons with the powerful human attraction to psychoactive plants. Why do we go to such great lengths to seek these shifts in consciousness, and then why do we fence that universal desire with laws and customs and fraught feelings? In this unique blend of history, science, and memoir, as well as participatory journalism, Pollan examines and experiences these plants from several very different angles and contexts, and shines a fresh light on a subject that is all too often treated reductively—as a drug, whether licit or illicit. But that is one of the least interesting things you can say about these plants, Pollan shows, for when we take them into our bodies and let them change our minds, we are engaging with nature in one of the most profound ways we can. Based in part on an essay published almost twenty-five years ago, this groundbreaking and singular consideration of psychoactive plants, and our attraction to them through time, holds up a mirror to our fundamental human needs and aspirations, the operations of our minds, and our entanglement with the natural world.

Author: Brent Stevenson Pt
Publisher: Brent Stevenson Physiotherapy Corporation
ISBN: 9780995324107
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Why Things Hurt is a collection of true stories and meaningful explanations about how our bodies work and the journeys we travel to maintain them. It provides accessible answers and structured principles on topics such as posture, pain, pregnancy, exercise, footwear and sports. Physiotherapist, Brent Stevenson discusses how to navigate your medical systems and what you should and should not expect from your physicians. He outlines what everyone should know about their own body, both physically and emotionally, by combining conversational lessons with cathartic true stories of injury, pain, resilience and perseverance. This book will empower you to make proactive choices for your body and help guide your journey in the right direction. Praise for Why Things Hurt: "This book encapsulates Brent's wisdom beyond his years and is extremely well written. It is personal, yet professional. Through his blogs and patient's stories Brent explains the current state of the art and science of physiotherapy and has made the complex topic of chronic pain simple to understand. Experience doesn't always create wisdom, but reflection and sharing of experiences often does. I personally and professionally resonated with many parts of this book and look forward to using it as a tool in my practice to help clients understand Why Things Hurt." -Diane Lee, Physiotherapist & Educator "From cover to cover, Why Things Hurt is a rare and exciting reading adventure. He explores the ever-fascinating multiverse of the dynamics of the body and mind, related with his own unique heart, empathy and practicality. A handbook for every health care professional and any "body" that loves to move regardless of age or stage of life." -Siobhan O'Connell, Physiotherapist & Clinical Pilates Instructor 'First and foremost, Why Things Hurt is a great read. Through his interaction with thousands of patients, Brent has developed a unique and special insight into how our bodies work, both on a functional and holistic level. What is remarkable is how he has translated this into a book that has useful lessons and guidance for everyone; there is valuable learning here in terms of how to manage pain, both physically and psychologically, as well as how to prevent it. He advocates for a multidisciplinary approach to pain management which is key. A must read, even if you don't hurt, yet.' - Dr. Kenneth Ryan, MD, Anesthesiologist "Why Things Hurt takes you on a wildly entertaining journey of discovery into how your body actually works or doesn't work, and how to fix it according to Brent's unique mastery of physiotherapy, IMS and complex problem solving. Being a detail-oriented PhD scientist, and having competed at numerous world championships in triathlon and mountain running, this book is a fantastic resource for keeping my body moving and pain-free even with all the twists and turns life throws at me! -Mike McMillan, PhD Scientist & Triathlete

Author: Richard Louis Miller
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1620556987
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Explores the potential of psychedelics as medicine and the intersections of politics, science, and psychedelics • Explores the tumultuous history of psychedelic research, the efforts to restore psychedelic therapies, and the links between psychiatric drugs and mental illness • Offers non-technical summaries of the most recent, double-blind, placebo-controlled studies with MDMA, psilocybin, LSD, and ayahuasca • Includes the work of Rick Doblin, Stanislav Grof, James Fadiman, Julie Holland, Dennis McKenna, David Nichols, Charles Grob, Phil Wolfson, Michael and Annie Mithoefer, Roland Griffiths, Katherine MacLean, and Robert Whitaker Embracing the revival of psychedelic research and the discovery of new therapeutic uses, clinical psychologist Dr. Richard Louis Miller discusses what is happening today in psychedelic medicine--and what will happen in the future--with top researchers and thinkers in this field, including Rick Doblin, Stanislav Grof, James Fadiman, Julie Holland, Dennis McKenna, David Nichols, Charles Grob, Phil Wolfson, Michael and Annie Mithoefer, Roland Griffiths, Katherine MacLean, and Robert Whitaker. Dr. Miller and his contributors cover the tumultuous history of early psychedelic research brought to a halt 50 years ago by the U.S. government as well as offering non-technical summaries of the most recent studies with MDMA, psilocybin, LSD, and ayahuasca. They explore the biochemistry of consciousness and the use of psychedelics for self-discovery and healing. They discuss the use of psilocybin for releasing fear in the terminally ill and the potential for MDMA-assisted psychotherapy in the treatment of PTSD. They examine Dr. Charles Grob’s research on the indigenous use and therapeutic properties of ayahuasca and Dr. Gabor Mate’s attempt to transport this plant medicine to a clinical setting with the help of Canada’s Department of National Health. Dr. Miller and his contributors explore the ongoing efforts to restore psychedelic therapies to the health field, the growing threat of overmedication by the pharmaceutical industry, and the links between psychiatric drugs and mental illness. They also discuss the newly shifting political climate and the push for new research, offering hope for an end to the War on Drugs and a potential renaissance of research into psychedelic medicines around the world.

Author: Tim Read
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1644113333
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 535

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Book Description
• Examines the therapeutic potential of expanded states, underground psychedelic psychotherapy, harm reduction, new approaches for healing individual and collective trauma, and training considerations • Addresses challenging psychedelic experiences, spiritual emergencies, and the central importance of the therapeutic relationship • Details the use of cannabis as a psychedelic tool, spiritual exploration with LSD, micro-dosing with Iboga, and MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for PTSD Exploring the latest developments in the flourishing field of modern psychedelic psycho-therapy, this book shares practical experiences and insights from both elders and newer research voices in the psychedelic research and clinical communities. The contributors examine new findings on safe and skillful work with psychedelic and expanded states for therapeutic, personal, and spiritual growth. They explain the dual process of opening and healing. They explore new approaches for individual inner work as well as for the healing of ancestral and collective trauma. They examine the power of expanded states for reparative attachment work and offer insights on the integration process through the lens of Holotropic Breathwork. The contributors also examine the use of cannabis as a psychedelic tool, spiritual exploration with LSD, microdosing with Iboga, treating depression with psilocybin, and MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for PTSD. Revealing diverse ways of working with psychedelics in terms of set, setting, and type of substance, the book concludes with discussions of ethics and professional development for those working in the field as well as explores considerations for training the next generation of psychedelic therapists.