October 12-25, 2024
Invited speakers
Bernard Carr, Cosmologist
Natuschka Lee, Micro and Astro Biologist
Ede Frecska, Psychiatrist and Psychopharmacologist
Dale Millard, Naturalist
Sarima Rodríguez, Holotropic Breathwork Facilitator
Organizers
Adriana Rosa, Cultural Producer
Luis Eduardo Luna, Anthropologist
Bernard Carr
Biography
Bernard Carr is Professor of Mathematics and Astronomy at Queen Mary University of London. His professional area of research is cosmology and astrophysics and includes such topics as the early universe, dark matter, black holes and the anthropic principle.
For his PhD he studied the first second of the Universe, working under the supervision of Stephen Hawking at the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge and the California Institute of Technology.
He was elected to a Fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1975 and in 1979 spent a year traveling around America as a Lindemann Fellow before taking up a Senior Research Fellowship at the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge.
In 1985 he moved to Queen Mary College and he became a Professor there in 1995. He has also held Visiting Professorships at various institutes in America, Canada and Japan.
He is the author of nearly three hundred scientific papers and the books Universe or Multiverse? and Quantum Black Holes. His monograph, Cosmological Gravitational Waves, won the 1985 Adams Essay Prize. which is one of the UK’s most prestigious mathematical awards.
Beyond his professional field, he is interested in the role of consciousness in physics, regarding this as a fundamental rather than incidental feature of the Universe. In particular, he is developing a new psycho-physical paradigm, linking matter and mind, which accommodates normal, paranormal and mystical experiences. This has been described in his monographs Worlds Apart: Can Psychical Research Bridge the Gulf between Matter and Mind? and Hyperspatial Models of Matter and Mind.
He also has a long-standing interest in the relationship between science and religion. having been the coholder of a grant from the Templeton Foundation for a project entitled Fundamental Physics, Cosmology and the Problem of our Existence. He was President of the Society for Psychical Research in 2000-2004 and is currently President of the Scientific and Medical Network.
Lectures by Bernard Carr
Natuschka Lee
Biography
Finnish-Swedish-Chinese Dr. Natuschka Lee, microbial ecologist and astrobiologist, studied biology and chemistry at Lund University in Sweden. After her PhD in biotechnology, she performed research at different universities in Sweden, Denmark and Germany. Today, she is a Fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study at Uppsala University. Within the interdisciplinary program “Exoplanet and Biological Activity on Other Worlds” she explores the challenges for science and society when searching for life and intelligence in the universe and the ethics and concerns around human colonization in the universe, such as on planet Mars. She has conducted academic research in microbial ecology, biotechnology, plant microbiology, geomicrobiology, astrobiology, pollinator ecology, clinical microbiology, and probiotics. Apart from studying regular organisms on Earth, she has also explored mysterious extreme ecosystems, such as waste areas, caves, meteorites in deserts and how terrestrial life responds to real space conditions on the international space station.
She is a board member of non-governmental space organizations in Sweden, and a regular member of microbiological, astrobiological, environmental organizations, and interdisciplinary societies, such as the Scientific and Medical Network, Open Sciences and the Swedish Society of Psychedelics. During the last years, with the growing awareness of the global insect crisis, she became a beekeeper and started to support endangered insects and their habitats. She is the chair of the Northern Swedish Entomology Society, a board member of the Swedish and the international network for the conservation of the threatened western dark bee species, and a member of an interdisciplinary team aiming to combat the fraud of honeybee products. In parallel with her academic research, she is also engaged in scientific and humanistic outreach at schools, museums, in news media, and with artists. Last but not least, she has studied for many years different kinds of philosophical, psychological, metaphysical and spiritual topics.
Lectures by Natuschka Lee
Ede Frecska
Biography
Ede Frecska received his medical degree in 1977 from the Semmelweis University in Hungary. He then earned qualifications as certified psychologist from the Department of Psychology at Lorand Eotvos University in Budapest. Dr. Frecska completed his residency training in Psychiatry both in Hungary (1986), and in the United States (1992). He is a qualified psychopharmacologist (1987) of international merit with 17 years of clinical and research experience in the United States, where he reached the rank of Associate Professorship.
During his academic years, Dr. Frecska’s studies were devoted to research on schizophrenia and affective illness. In his recent research he is engaged in studies on psychointegrator drugs, especially on the physiological effects of DMT in acute and chronic cellular stress like hypoxia.
His theoretical work focuses on the interface between cognitive neuroscience and quantum brain dynamics. He is specifically interested in the mechanism of initiation ceremonies and healing rituals. He published more than 100 scientific papers and book chapters on these topics.
Dr. Frecska is a member of several professional organizations (APA, ECNP, CINP), and has received grants and awards from a variety of sources (NARSAD, NIAA).
Ede Frecska is a co-author with Rick Strassman, Slawek Wojtowicz and Luis Eduardo Luna of Inner Paths to Outer Space and has chapters in Ervin Laszlo’s books (The New Science and Spirituality Reader and A New Map of Reality). A recent study lead by him, published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, proves that ayahuasca increases creativity and another one in Frontiers in Neuroscience that DMT has neuroprotective effect in hypoxia.
Lectures by Ede Frecska
Dale Millard
Biography
Dale Millard is a naturalist and biodiversity explorer, with diverse interests and experience in fields ranging from herpetology to ethnobotany.
His interest in the study of snake venoms for drug development later led to study of the chemistry and use of plant medicines. Dale has lived and travelled in Indonesia, Brazil and African countries and has worked with traditional healers in these areas, documenting their use of medicinal plants.
He has maintained a lifelong interest in the healing role of entheogens and continues to document their use in poorly explored regions of the world.
Dale has a special interest in the cultivation of medicinal plants and mushrooms and has taught numerous workshops relating to agro forestry and plant based primary healthcare. He is a contributing author of the books Ethnobotanical search for Psychoactive Drugs. ESPD 50 and ESPD55 published through Synergetic Press.
He currently works as an ethnobotanist and advisor for Neuromindbiopharma, a biotech company doing research into novel psychoactive and plant compounds to develop new medicines.
Sarima Rodríguez
Biography
Sarima Rodríguez has a Master in Language and Communication, accredited in techniques of corporal expression, dance and theater. She was certified in Holotropic Breathwork by Grof Transpersonal Training USA, leading groups in Spain since 2002. She was trained in the SAT Program of Claudio Naranjo 2004-2007, and is Certified in the Hoffman Process. Sarima is a retired school teacher, living in Banholas, Catalunya.
Holotropic Breathwork is a method developed by Stan and Christina Grof. Its basic elements are deeper and accelerated breathing, evocative music, and facilitation of energy release through a specific form of bodywork. With the eyes closed and lying on a mat, each person uses their own breath and the music in the room to enter a non-ordinary state of consciousness. This state activates the natural inner healing process of the individual’s psyche, bringing him or her a particular set of internal experiences. With the inner healing intelligence guiding the process, the quality and content brought forth is unique to each person and for that particular time and place. While recurring themes are common, no two sessions are ever-alike.
Adriana Rosa
Biography
Adriana Rosa is a cultural producer, an actress, and a theater and art educator. She has a Master in Cultural Management from Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Besides her work as an organizer of cultural events in the city of Florianópolis, she is the producer of the Wasiwaska seminars since its creation. Adriana is in charge of providing healthy and nutritious food for seminars, adapted, when necessary, to the needs of our participants. She is with Dale Millard in charge of Wasiwaska’s ethnobotanical garden.
Luis Eduardo Luna
Biography
Luis Eduardo Luna was born in Florencia, in the Colombian Amazon region (1947). He studied Philosophy and Literature at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, earned an interdisciplinary Masters degree while teaching Spanish and Latin American Literature at the Department of Romance Languages of Oslo University. He is a former Senior Lecturer at the Swedish School of Economics, Helsinki, Finland, from where he retired in 2011, and a former Professor of Anthropology at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil (1994-1998).
He received a Ph.D. from the Institute of Comparative Religion at Stockholm University (1989), and an honorary doctorate from St. Lawrence University, Canton, New York (2000). He is currently an Honorary Research Fellow of the Department of Philosophy, Anthropology and Sociology of Exeter University, England.
Luna is a Guggenheim Fellow and Fellow of the Linnaean Society of London. He is the author of Vegetalismo: Shamanism Among the Mestizo Population of the Peruvian Amazon (1986), and with Pablo Amaringo of Ayahuasca Visions: The Religious Iconography of a Peruvian Shaman (1991). He is co-editor with Steven F. White of Ayahuasca Reader: Encounters with the Amazon’s Sacred Vine (2000, with a revised new edition in 2016), and co-author with Rick Strassman, Slawek Wojtowicz and Ede Frecska of Inner Paths to Outer Space: Journeys Through Psychedelics and Other Spiritual Technologies.
In 1986 he co-founded with Pablo Amaringo the Usko-Ayar Amazonian School of Painting of Pucallpa, Peru, serving as its Director of International Exhibitions until 1994. He has lectured about Amazonian shamanism and modified states of consciousness worldwide, and has curated exhibitions of visionary art in several countries. Luis Eduardo Luna is the Director of Wasiwaska.