Understanding and managing the process of aging is a central issue in modern society. This is a critical factor given the demographic shift toward an aging population and the negative stereotypes around aging that can limit people’s worldview on aging with gratitude and well-being. This discussion overviews a naturalistic model of grateful aging and transformation.

IONS Senior Fellow Marilyn Schlitz will help identify a set of steps to promote well-being and to shift the fear of aging into inspiration for living well. The nine steps to Grateful Aging include:

1. answer the call to transformation
2. cultivate curiosity
3. formalize an Aging practice
4. set intention for Aging
5. pay attention to the gifts of aging
6. build Grateful Aging habits
7. find guidance
8. move to acceptance
9. transform self and society

Educational programs are described for elderly patients and for the healthcare professionals who serve them. The Grateful Aging Program is designed to expand awareness of healthy, mindful, and meaningful aging; promote individual and social well-being; and facilitate a supportive atmosphere for personal enrichment and shared learning.

What innate potential lies dormant within you? What dreams are yearning to be expressed? What does it look like to be fully alive, live an integrated and embodied life, and become an engaged part of the larger ecosystem of nature and community? It’s time to meet your future self and find out.

Co-fascilitated by former IONS CEO, Cassandra Vieten, this workshop focuses on creating a robust, loving relationship with the best future version of you — the one who can help you pivot the direction of your life toward your heart’s vision. We will learn how to communicate with and embody that future self while mapping out the new terrain of your life in a process we call “futuremaking.” Using the sciences of imagination, transformation, and hope, you’ll chart a course for your next chapter.

Join us for a three-day workshop where we will engage in futuremaking experiences, including talks to spark insights; small and large group discussions to ground learning; guided imagery, meditation, and creative processes to connect you with your deeper wisdom; and movement and deep engagement with the beauty of Esalen to renew your spirit.

As we weave cutting-edge science with deep experiential practices and rich connection with kindred spirits, you’ll move forward — not back to “normal” or even a “new normal” — but ahead into a new extraordinary. Your future self is calling for you.

The Thrive @ Zen Rock’s Online Gathering aims to unite people from around the world to inspire personal growth and collective action for a sustainable future. Through engaging talks, workshops, and activities, participants will connect with leading teachers, philosophers, and activists to address the pressing issues facing our planet. This is your chance to explore the interconnectedness of humanity and the environment; empowering individuals to make meaningful change in their local communities.

With the global shift toward potentially accepting psychedelic therapy as an evidence-based treatment for a variety of mental health issues, it becomes increasingly important for people struggling and the therapists who treat these conditions, to better understand and be prepared for the innovative use of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. How does psychedelic therapy benefit the individual, our communities, and specialized groups like first responders and combat veterans? And what actually occurs in a session, in group settings, and on retreats that make this therapy so revolutionary? And is this treatment right for everyone, and if not, why, and who would be excluded?

The core message of IONS Fellow Michael Sapiro’s work is that truth heals wounds and leads to transformation, and that psychedelic therapy is the most powerful and accelerated intervention we have to date. Discovering, exposing, speaking, and ultimately living one’s truth has been the missing component in traditional psychotherapy. Truth Medicine explores these topics from a heart-centered, integrative approach, looking at how psychedelic psychotherapy addresses healing and transformation on a variety of levels, including the physiological, psychological, social, and spiritual.

Most of us have been affected in some way by the current mental health crisis. The good news is that there is a mental health renaissance underway that offers real hope and new solutions for mental health and well-being.

More people are talking openly and honestly about their mental health than ever before. Stigma has been substantially reduced, and everyone from kids, elite athletes, celebrities and late-night talk show hosts—as well as us everyday people—are being more open and vulnerable about what we are experiencing.

The conference is open to students, psychologists, health professionals, supervisors, as well as anyone from the helping and educational professions.

The conference welcomes representatives of the assisting and educational fields (psychologists, medical practitioners, consultants, social professionals, supervisors, etc.), as well as students, spiritual teachers and practitioners.

Key topics include:

• Challenges to science on the threshold of metamodernism
• Wellbeing studies: a cross-disciplinary methodological perspective
• Spirituality, spiritual practice, and spiritual experience in mental health
• Psychological assistance and support for working with different groups of clients and patients
• Integrating technologies into psychological assistance
• Psychological research and evaluation in professional activity
• Modern trends in psychological assistance
• Digitisation in professional life
• Professional identity and professional activity
• Health behaviour, self-help, and recreation
• Development trends in modern military psychology and military psychologists’ professional activity during the war in Ukraine

Participation is free of charge, but we invite you to make a donation to “Support Groups for the People of Ukraine” project. The donated funds will be used to organise psychological support groups for local residents in Ukraine.