Atheist spiritual director Britt Hartley explores climbing out of the void and building a life that is worth experiencing rather than focusing on what comes next.

This week on The Indie Spiritualist, Chris and Britt explore:

• Deconstructing truth claims and focusing on momentary experience
• How Sufism reopened Britt to spirituality
• The brain’s struggle to make choices without a direction or faith
• Existential bravery and challenging the religions we inherited
• The beauty of living in deep honesty
• Living a life that is worth living, even if nothing comes after we are gone
• America’s movement from theological religion to political religion
• Not claiming an “ism” and putting all options on the table
• Imagination and overapplying agency outside of ourselves
• Looking into the connection between Autism and Nihilism

“I would rather suffer and see than accept some story and never question it and live and die according to some story that I inherited.”–Britt Hartley

About Britt Hartley:

Britt Hartley is an Atheist spiritual director and secular spirituality content creator. She holds a masters degree in theology and considers herself a nihilism survivor and Sufi mystic. She is also a published author, religious deconstruction coach, and program director for Spiritual Direction Training. Check out her book No Nonsense Spirituality and keep up with her on Instagram.

“Mysticism, what still allowed that to take root in me even with all my skepticism, is mysticism is the focus on the experience of what people have called God without having to put specific language around it or a box around it or put it into a manual. That has been really helpful for me to focus on experience as a place you can build even in the void, even in existential crisis. The one thing we can know is that there is something to be experienced.” –Britt Hartley

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Exploring the vital role of boundaries, Dr. Lissa Rankin calls on the medical and wellness fields to confront power imbalances and deepen their understanding of trauma.

Check out Dr. Rankin’s numerous books on trauma, medicine, healing, and more HERE

This week on The Indie Spiritualist, Chris and Lissa explore

• Moral injury and Lissa’s transition out of the medical world
• What the medical world misunderstands about trauma
• Cult-type dynamics within the wellness community
• Naive compassion and recognizing that sometimes we are responsible for our own harm
• Waking up to spiritual bypassing and developing a trauma-informed awareness
• How medical training forces you to dehumanize in order to detach and perform in surgeries etc.
• Going through a reckoning of power imbalance
• Internal Family Systems as a wonderful healing modality for trauma
• Standing up for ourselves and asking for what we need

About Lissa Rankin, MD:

Lissa Rankin, MD, is an OB/GYN physician, author of 7 books, founder of the Whole Health Medicine Institute and the non-profit Heal At Last, and an encaustic artist who researches radical remission, trauma-informed medicine, and spiritual healing. She teaches memoir writing for therapeutic purposes, in addition to being an educator of Internal Family Systems (IFS). Her TEDx talks have been viewed over 6 million times, and she starred in two National Public Television specials. Lissa is currently co-writing her eighth book with Harvard psychiatrist Jeffrey Rediger, MD, MDiv about the link between relational trauma and medical illness, focusing on how healthy boundaries and Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy can help reverse diseases related to nervous system dysregulation caused by traumatizing relationships. Lissa lives with her partner Jeff Rediger and her housemate April Sweazy in the Bay Area, now that her daughter has flown the nest. She thrives on daily hikes in nature, dancing with her Bay Area dance community, singing, writing, DJ’ing music whenever she can, and healthy gourmet cooking. Check out Lissa’s website HERE.

“I was using my naive compassion to enable and tolerate some of the most narcissistic people on the planet without good boundaries and consequences to that behavior. It was shattering to realize that I was responsible for my own harm, I was continuing to keep the door wide open. I was a porous, boundaryless, gap. That was part of the ecstatic part, it was ‘it’s all one, we’re all connected.’ I wasn’t seeing the boundarylessness of that and the boundary wounding that came from my boundaryless mother.” –Lissa Rankin, MD

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Blending together the clinical and the beautiful, Dr. Robert Krause and Vicki Marnin discuss mental health, psychedelic therapy, and integrative healing.

Check out Centered, a pioneering mental health center offering affordable, multidisciplinary care designed to empower individuals on their path to healing. From traditional therapy to advanced psychiatric care and ketamine-assisted therapy, they provide a full spectrum of services to meet diverse needs.

This time on The Indie Spiritualist, Chris, Robert, and Vicki discuss:

• Bringing together different healing perspectives rather than being strictly clinical
• Considering what it means to be centered
• Ketamine as a therapeutic modality and how treatment changed Chris’s life
• Considering set & setting in mental health spaces
• Thinking of ketamine-assisted therapy as a gradual tool for change (not a cure-all or quick fix)
• The psychological benefit of creating sharp contrast between everyday life and the psychedelic experience
• Surrendering into ego dissolution for emotional healing
• Holistic care, trauma-work, and setting boundaries

About Dr. Robert Krause:

Robert Krause DNP APRN-BC is the Director of Clinical Services & Co-Founder of Centered, a unique mental health center for integrative healing. Dr. Krause pursues his work through various schools of philosophy, psychotherapy and pharmacology, as well as meditation, yoga, tantra, sex therapy and psychedelic therapy. Dr. Krause holds a BA in Philosophy from WCSU, a certificate in Nursing and a Master of Science degree from the Yale School of Nursing, and a doctoral degree in nursing practice from Quinnipiac University. His doctoral research work was focused on using a program of yoga and meditation to decrease incidents of aggression in an inpatient psychiatric unit. He also holds certifications in Global Mental Health: Trauma and Recovery from Harvard University, and certificates in both Psychedelic Assisted Therapy and Research and Sex Therapy from the California Institute for Integral Studies.

Robert has been a faculty member of the Yale School of Nursing and the Yale School of Medicine in the Department of Psychiatry. At Western Connecticut State University and Quinnipiac University he has lectured in their philosophy programs; and at the Graduate Institute, he has lectured in Holistic Health and also in the Consciousness Studies Department.

“When I started studying psychedelic therapy about ten years ago, one of the things that was really front and center was the importance of set and setting. The setting for psychiatric work should be as important, but the setting for psychedelic work is very important because if we’re going to give people medicine that’s going to really open them up, in order to do that, they have to feel like they’re in a safe environment.” –Robert Krause

About Vicki Marnin:

Vicki Marnin, RN, CNM, APRN-BC, is a board certified psychiatric nurse practitioner. She has been assisting with ketamine assisted therapies for the past two years at Centered. Vicki has developed her skills for holding space for journeys in her practice as a midwife for the past 27 Years. Her path has turned toward helping people with personal growth, and mental health concerns.

“The day before your ketamine session, I want you to clean up your space so that when you come home it’s beautiful for you. I want you to make some food so you don’t have to struggle. You’re greeting this new, vulnerable, potential self. Put some flowers in your room, make sure your sheets are clean. I want it to signify a beginning that people may hold onto as a sign post, as a commitment to themselves.” –Vicki Marnin

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