- Calendar
- IONS Events
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- Teleclasses
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Teleclasses
Gain greater insights into the noetic sciences and how they apply to your life in IONS' teleclasses. Interact with instructors and fellow classmates during weekly telephone classes, and gain additional insights and experiences through written materials, online resources, experiential practices and more.
The classes are grouped into courses, most of which take place over 8 weeks. There will be no live teleclasses over the summer of 2012.
These classes will resume in the fall.
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TeleseminarMemoirs of the Soul
- Speaker
- Nan Phifer
- Host
- Kathleen Erickson-Freeman
- Feb 24, 2011
- None
To sign up, click here.
Nan Phifer wrote Memoirs of the Soul as a travel guide to help you reach the center of your spiritual labyrinth. She will tell us about inspirational transformations she’s witnessed as she’s watched people making the effort to write about the large and small moments of their lives.
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TeleseminarThe Use of Psychedelics in Psychiatry and Medicine
- Speaker
- Charles S. Grob, MD
- Host
- Cassandra Vieten, PhD
- Feb 23, 2011
- None
This discussion will review the history of psychiatric research with psychedelics from the 1950s to the present. Particular focus will be applied to recent approved investigations with normal volunteers and with specific patient populations, including those with advanced-cancer anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder and chronic post-traumatic stress disorder. Implications of research conducted in the Brazilian Amazon with the plant hallucinogen decoction ayahuasca to future investigations designed to explore safety and efficacy in the treatment of chronic alcoholism and substance abuse will also be examined.
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TeleseminarBridging the Worlds of Contemplative Practice and Science
- Speaker
- Alfred Kaszniak
- Host
- Cassandra Vieten, PhD
- Feb 16, 2011
- None
This discussion will focus on some of the fruits of "contemplative science," and the implications of this body of meditation research for contemplative practice. It will also explore how this area of research has come to gain increasing respectability within the scientific community, and address the question of
whether contemplative science may serve as a skillful means for making meditation practice more approachable for a greater number of people in modern western culture. -
TeleseminarPsilocybin and quantum change in attitude and behavior
Background, findings, and implications
- Speaker
- Roland Griffiths
- Host
- Cassandra Vieten, PhD
- Feb 9, 2011
- None
Two recent double-blind studies have shown that under carefully controlled conditions psilocybin can occasion profound personally and spiritually meaningful experiences (i.e., mystical-type experiences) in the majority of healthy participants. Most volunteers had a “complete” mystical-type experience after a high dose of psilocybin, although more than a third of volunteers also indicated they had experiences characterized by fear, anxiety, or unpleasant psychological struggle sometime during the session.
The overall finding that psilocybin can occasion, in most people studied, mystical-type experiences having sustained personal meaning and spiritual significance, indicates that such experiences and the changes they produce are now amenable to rigorous prospective scientific study. Several ongoing studies will be discussed, including a study of psilocybin on meditation and spiritual practice in healthy volunteers, a study of psilocybin in psychologically distressed cancer patients, and a study of psilocybin-facilitated treatment of drug cigarette smoking cessation.
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TeleseminarThe Power of Transformational Presence
Shifting Paradigms to Create a World That Works
- Speaker
- Alan Seale, PCC, MSC
- Host
- Angela Murphy
- Feb 2, 2011
- None
To sign up, click here.
We are living in challenging yet extraordinary times. Many things must be transformed if we are going to create a world that works. Accelerating transformation and making a sustainable difference through our actions begins with shifting how we think and how we “show up” to life each day. As transformational workers, we must each develop a dynamic, authentic, and impactful personal presence that is in itself transformational. This means developing a keen awareness of our intuitive intelligence and the interconnection of all things, understanding life and leadership as energy in motion, listening to the great potential of our future and letting it show us the way to action.
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TeleseminarRethinking the Scientific Method
- Speaker
- Jonathan Schooler, PhD
- Host
- Dean Radin, PhD
- Jan 19, 2011
- None
Why, despite a wealth of evidence to the contrary, is the prevailing scientific paradigm is essentially materialist, reducing all phenomena to physical substrates and excluding consciousness? IONS Senior Scientist Dean Radin will talk with social psychologist and consciousness researcher Jonathan Schooler, recently profiled in the New Yorker Magazine, about why psi research has yet to convince the scientific and academic community that consciousness is a fundamental element that must be included, rather than excluded, from scientific inquiry.
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TeleseminarEvidence-Based Spirituality
Challenges to change
- Speaker
- Charles T. Tart, PhD
- Host
- Dean Radin, PhD
- Jan 12, 2011
- None
Given that it's reasonable to be both scientific and spiritual in approaching life, just exactly what does this mean? How do we apply the best of science and the best of spirituality to each other to work toward what Tart likes to call "evidence-based spirituality for the 21st century," a practical spirituality that works in life and is compatible with science? Professor Tart will share some ideas to get us started thinking about this direction of evolution, and then draw us out to give us even more possibilities…..
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TeleseminarThe Self and the Emerging Paradigm
- Speaker
- Michael Nagler
- Host
- Angela Murphy
- Jan 5, 2011
- None
To sign up, click here.
This conversation will explore the slowly unveiling convergence of human wisdom traditions with the emerging sciences of consciousness to reveal an inspiring vision of the authentic state of the human being. Michael will suggest why this vision is of crucial importance to the desired paradigm shift and weigh some appropriate strategies to enable its timely realization, with special attention to the role of nonviolence.
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Teleseminar"Cross-Cultural Traditional Healing" with Sylver Quevedo
- Speaker
- Sylver Quevedo, MD, MPH
- Host
- Marilyn Schlitz, PhD
- Dec 15, 2010
- None
Cross-cultural traditional healing practices are finding a place in modern western medicine. Dr. Sylver Quevedo discusses the anthropology of traditional medicine and integrating indigenous healing practices into modern medicine. He is actively involved in the development of an interdisciplinary curriculum for future doctors in Kenya. As a visiting professor at the Aga Khan University in Nairobi, Kenya, Dr. Quevedo in participating in the design of the cutting edge health care curriculum which will include traditional healing disciplines and the humanities in the medical doctoral program.
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TeleseminarLife Before Life
- Speaker
- Jim B. Tucker, MD
- Host
- Marilyn Schlitz, PhD
- Dec 8, 2010
- None
Some people seem to have memories of past lives. Are those memories accurate? How would you go about assessing the truth of those memories? Jim Tucker has made it his business to explore these matters. In his book, Life Before Life: A Scientific Investigation of Children's Memories of Previous Lives, he presents an overview of more than 40 years of research at the University Of Virginia Division Of Personality Studies into children's reports of past life memories.
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TeleseminarIntegral Healing
- Speaker
- Lee Lipsenthal, MD
- Host
- Marilyn Schlitz, PhD
- Dec 1, 2010
- None
Dr. Lee Lipsenthal will discuss the new integral model of healing that is emerging, and how it represents the next step in health care, as it aims to incorporate all dimensions of healing, from physical to spiritual, and ecological to cosmological. He will describe how this approach takes “mind-body medicine” to the next level, one that integrates spiritual dimensions fully into our understanding of how the body works in health and illness. To sign up, click here.
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TeleseminarScience of Meditation
- Speakers
- Roger Walsh, MD, PhD, Shauna Shapiro, PhD
- Host
- Cassandra Vieten, PhD
- Nov 17, 2010
- None
Roger Walsh and Shauna Shapiro will discuss how the meeting of meditative and Western psychological disciplines holds major theoretical and practical implications for each, as well as the promise of mutual enrichment and potential integrations. If handled skillfully, this meeting may enable them to become partners in one of the greatest of human quests—the exploration, understanding, healing, and enhancement of the human mind.
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TeleseminarTransformative Practices
- Speaker
- Frederic Luskin, PhD
- Host
- Cassandra Vieten, PhD
- Nov 10, 2010
- None
Among transformative practices is the practice of forgiveness. It has been shown to reduce anger, hurt, depression and stress and leads to greater feelings of hope, peace, compassion and self confidence. Forgiveness means you take back your power. You literally say, "My life is mine." When you meet people who have forgiven, you see their power. Forgiveness allows you a fresh start, whether it's a big insult or a small one. It's like a rain coming to a polluted environment. It clears things.
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TeleseminarScience of Transformation
- Speaker
- Daniel Siegel, MD
- Host
- Cassandra Vieten, PhD
- Nov 3, 2010
- None
How can we understand transformation in a scientific way? We could start by understanding the mind. Mind is the process that regulates the flow of energy and information. So how would you regulate the mind? By developing the ability to see mental activity with more clarity and then modify it with more effectiveness. Dr. Daniel Siegel calls this ability “Mindsight” and says there’s something about being able to see and influence your internal world that creates more health. To sign up, click here.
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TeleseminarScience of Intuition
- Speaker
- Rupert Sheldrake, PhD
- Host
- Dean Radin, PhD
- Oct 20, 2010
- None
What is intuition? And how would you go about measuring it? Such questions may seem impossible to study, because one definition of intuition is "knowing without knowing how you know." But for over a century many experiments have been conducted exploring the nature of "unknown knowing," and we are beginning to understand this domain.
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TeleseminarNear Death Experience
- Speaker
- Bruce Greyson, MD
- Host
- Dean Radin, PhD
- Oct 13, 2010
- None
Bruce Greyson discusses how cumulative research into Near Death Experiences challenges both a classical physical view of reality, and an exclusively neuroscience-based view of consciousness.
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TeleseminarThe Science of Noetic Experience
- Speaker
- Daryl Bem, PhD
- Host
- Dean Radin, PhD
- Oct 6, 2010
- None
In science generally, a phenomenon is not considered a reliable fact until it has been observed repeatedly by numerous independent researchers. One criticism of parapsychology, the branch of science that studies psi phenomena, is that it has not produced a repeatable psi effect. Another criticism is that psi experiments have inadequate controls and safeguards. In 1974, an experimental procedure was developed that is now known to adequately address both of those criticisms. The "Ganzfeld experiment" provides an independently repeatable demonstration of telepathy under rigorously controlled conditions, and it has been repeatedly discussed in mainstream academic psychology journals. Several other classes of psi experiments have also achieved this level of credibility. To sign up, click here.
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TeleseminarMetaphysics in Popular Culture
- Speaker
- Jeff Kripal
- Host
- Cassandra Vieten, PhD
- Sep 29, 2010
- None
Jeffrey Kripal discusses the paranormal in popular culture. He describes the history of “metaphysical religion” where mind is ultimate in some sense, and it is mind that creates the reality. These concepts are as recent as “The Secret” and as old as “Plato’s Cave,” and have never entirely disappeared from the culture.
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TeleseminarWhat is Consciousness?
- Speaker
- Stuart Hameroff, MD
- Host
- Marilyn Schlitz, PhD
- Sep 15, 2010
- Virtual Event
This is a big question and there are many approaches to this mystery. In this teleseminar we explore the question of consciousness with Dr Stuart Hameroff of the University of Arizona, whose approach to consciousness research looks at bringing modern physics into the workings of the brain. To register for this teleseminar, click here.
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TeleseminarHistorical Roots of Noetic
- Speaker
- Mitch Horowitz
- Host
- Dean Radin, PhD
- Sep 8, 2010
- Virtual Event
Noetic Sciences are not exclusively new but instead contain the esoteric core of all the world's religions, East and West, ancient and modern. During previous times of repression, the wisdom was hidden underground by various wisdom keepers. Mitch Horowitz describes how religious freedom in America provided safe harbor for such wisdom.