Sam Woolfe

Freelance Writer, Editor & Author

Altering Consciousness Without Drugs: My Experience With Psychedelic Breathwork

Altering Consciousness Without Drugs: My Experience With Psychedelic Breathwork

There are many reasons why someone may want to alter their consciousness without drugs: legality, safety, more controllability, and fewer side effects. Humans have also long engaged in non-drug methods for altering consciousness, including meditation, fasting, chanting, drumming, and dancing. The Czech psychiatrist and LSD researcher Stan Grof developed a mind-altering technique called holotropic breathwork…

View Post

You may also enjoy:

Asemic Writing in Shaun Tan’s Graphic Novel ‘The Arrival’

Asemic Writing in Shaun Tan’s Graphic Novel ‘The Arrival’

The Arrival (2006) by Shaun Tan is a wordless graphic novel (which can be read here) that tells the story of an immigrant’s life in an imaginary world. It consists of small, medium, and large panels – as well as pages of full artwork – depicting a world that sometimes resembles our own but which…

View Post

You may also enjoy:

The Potential Trap of Spiritual Highs

The Potential Trap of Spiritual Highs

I’ve been thinking recently about this idea of ‘spiritual highs’ becoming a trap – something that can become one’s focus in life, to the detriment of other areas of life. The result of chasing spiritual highs ultimately becomes a barrier to personal growth, or ‘spiritual development’.  I came across this Tweet that got me thinking…

View Post

You may also enjoy:

Syndeogens: Psychedelics as Connection-Generating Agents

Syndeogens: Psychedelics as Connection-Generating Agents

I previously wrote about how we can think of psychedelics as trickster chemicals, based on how their effects often align with the attributes of the trickster archetype. This is not meant to replace other terms for psychedelics, such as entheogen or medicine, but merely supplement them. But there are other unique and common effects that…

View Post

You may also enjoy:

Driven by the Unfamiliar: Novelty as a Basic Psychological Need

Driven by the Unfamiliar: Novelty as a Basic Psychological Need

In previous blog posts, I have introduced and explored the concept of the will to novelty: the idea that we are motivated to experience newness, difference, and variety (see my posts here, here, and here). Reading more about the psychology of novelty seeking, I came across some literature on the self-determination theory of human motivation.…

View Post

You may also enjoy: