Festival season is here!

Festival season is here!

For many of us, festival season is a much-anticipated yearly time to reconnect with ourselves and each other, and to experience what community can be.

In these spaces, we get to practice a way of being together that many of us long for in the wider world, where presence deepens and there is more room to feel fully connected.

There is something very special about the way these gatherings invite us to explore, express, release, and transform in ways that stay with us long after the weekend ends.

Alongside the ecstatic moments that often take place at festivals, there’s also the potential to meet more complex parts of ourselves and our experiences. As many of you know, overwhelm can arise, grief can surface, and big experiences can become challenging or disorienting.

Our Four Principles of Psychedelic Care sprouted from these complex moments in community.

Zendo’s principles help create a stronger safety net for our communities, so that when someone is moving through a difficult or non-ordinary experience, they are held with skill and compassion.

Because the kind of festival culture we love does not happen by accident.

We build it through how we care for each other.

Heading to Lightning in a Bottle, Sonara, Burning Man, or any festival this summer? Spend a moment with Zendo’s Four Principles of Psychedelic Care.

Take our free mini course to prepare!

Where Psychedelic Policy Ends, Peer Support Begins

The recent executive order on psychedelic research is a real milestone – one our community has been working toward for years. It signals growing recognition that psychedelics may have a role in addressing some of our most pressing mental health challenges.

But mainstream acceptance does not automatically create community preparedness.

As psychedelics move into the mainstream, more people will encounter them outside of clinical settings: at home, at events, and in community or ceremonial spaces. Healing rarely stays confined to clinics. It continues through the people around us: partners, peers, and community members whose presence can shape what happens next.

Mental Health Awareness Month: Building Networks of Care

Nearly 60 million people in the US struggle with mental illness every year. In our work, we see every day that healing is not just about the individual – it must be collective. It has to live in our living rooms, our friendships, and our communities.

How we show up in moments of crisis shapes what happens next. This Mental Health Awareness Month, we’re building networks of care by sharing Zendo Project’s core skills to meet intensity with compassionate presence.

Université Paris Cité Seeks Research Participants

Researchers at Université Paris Cité are studying the cognitive shifts that can follow non-ordinary states of consciousness, and they are inviting our community to participate.

If you have had a meaningful psychedelic experience, your perspective could help shape how these experiences are understood and supported.

What’s involved: A 35 to 40 minute focused online session. You will be guided through a shape-and-person association task, a visual illusion task, and three brief questionnaires on psychological functioning and past experience.

This is an anonymous study approved by the Université Paris Cité ethics committee. Open to anyone 18+ who reads English comfortably.

Rigorous research is essential to improve how we understand and support psychedelic experiences. Every honest data point helps researchers, clinicians, and educators understand the impact of these experiences and how to better support the people moving through them. This is how we make care a cornerstone of the psychedelic movement.

Zendo SIT Weekend Intensive

We have heard your request! Our upcoming Zendo SIT is in a weekend intensive format in hopes that more people will be able to join. This timeframe was selected to accommodate the schedules of professionals and EU Zendo friends – we hope to see you there.

Join us June 6–7, 8am–2:30pm PT / 11am–5:30pm ET.

Subsidized Access Program

We believe everyone who feels called to support others deserves access to supportive training. If cost is a barrier for you, please submit an application for the Subsidized Access Program by Tuesday, May 26. 30% of our students enroll through full or partial subsidized access.