Shamanic lineage of the Andes and working in nonlocal states of consciousness

Can you get therapy from AI?

This is a question I never thought I would be asking! I have to confess I have stuck my head in the sand regarding AI until very recently, but I am now getting bombarded about AI therapy from friends, from blogs I read, from advertising, from other therapists saying they believe they are losing business to AI therapists and so on. My initial reaction was horror, but some people do say that they find it helpful. Available any time without an appointment, cheap, and highly supportive. So a warning up front – this is one of my less well researched blogs. More of an horrified reactionary piece (you could say rant!). Hence comments by email would be very welcome. I need to be educated on this and I would be fascinated to hear how people are getting on if they are engaging in AI therapy. Much of my researched information comes from Jules Evans and his wonderful substack writings. In particular he wrote a long and detailed piece on 9^th May discussing how AI bots urgently need to be taught therapeutic ethics. I have passed this on to various therapist friends of mine, most of whom are horrified by the extent of therapeutic intervention being carried out by AI. On the other hand, another friend who is using an AI therapist/friend, sees them as “Unconditional support. They won’t get bored, go off you. They won’t get jealous or run off with your friend. And that is why it will win.” We then proceeded to have an interesting conversation about who the AI therapists are owned by and the conditions attached to the information you give them. Do you really want some billionaire owned company knowing all your personal traumas, fantasies, desires, fetishes, fears etc? Then I get on to my concern that some people are treating AI as an oracle, believing every word it tells them. From my own very limited personal experience, my AI interactions have frequently given information that is just wrong factually. Of course I am using free AI, which is not comparable to some of the sophisticated subscription based LLMs or other complex AI offerings out there. But if it can’t give me accurate information about practical things that involve it reading a manual, or checking what websites offer what services, am I really going to trust it to give me accurate information about my life purpose, or karmic history, or esoteric concepts about consciousness or extra-terrestrial life? But this is what some people are doing. They are asking AI for their karmic history, for information about ETs and a host of other deep philosophical questions, and as far as I can see, the AI models tend to give people answers which (a) pander to and re-enforce their pre-existing beliefs and (b) enhance their ego by telling them how very special they are to be asking such sophisticated questions. And people believe that this is THE TRUTH. My cynicism sees it as sychophantic and possibly manipulative, but certainly not therapeutically helpful. Unless of course AI really is the oracle. This is where in my opinion things are going really off the rails, but you can call me old-fashioned! And investigating beliefs around this hypothesis has sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole over the last few days – so more to come next time.

Death Doulas

I recently attended the Foundation Training for Living Well Dying Well and I would like to promote this to everyone! In the western world we have developed a paranoia about death and many people are kept alive for a few extra days or weeks, when this may or may not accord with their wishes. As […]

Reiki Healing With Clients

I love Reiki and it is one of the first therapies I learned, back in 2005 – 2007. While it can be very helpful for lots of people, I find that there are two particular groups of clients that really benefit from it. Firstly, those who are completely dissociated from their bodies, often due to […]

Reiki Healing – the need for protection and clear intention

As a Reiki Master I do all levels of Reiki attunements – Level 1 for self-healing, Level 2 to work with others, then Level 3 the Master level, to allow people to teach/attune others. I have learned from others who have done Level 1 and maybe even Level 2 with other teachers, that many Reiki […]

Specific Rituals for Our Lives

Some of the rituals that I work with regularly and often recommend to clients are: Letting go of that which no longer serves us by breathing into where you feel it in the body, then breathing it out into a stone, then giving it to Mother Earth, or Water, or breathing it out into a […]

The Importance of ritual

Over many years as a shamanic practitioner, I have gained great appreciation of the ancient traditions of ritual and ceremony. It is important that we acknowledge, celebrate and honour significant events in our lives, witnessed by friends and family. These events include marriage, handfasting, vow renewal, child naming, death, grief, or other important milestones such […]

Psychedelic risks and psycho-spiritual crises – emergence or emergency?

First in this post, let me briefly address some risks of psychedelics. Medically, if taken commonsensically, in a safe set and setting and as long as there are no medical contraindications – these risks are very small. For example see this academic article. There is a great organisation founded by Jules Evans which assists people […]

Preparation and integration

As I wrote about before, preparation of set and setting are crucial before engaging in a psychedelic trip. And integration afterwards is also crucial. Preparation is to help the client who is about to undergo a psychedelic experience to be in as good an emotional state as possible, understanding what they are about to experience […]

Set and Setting

Ever since psychedelics started to be used widely again in the 1960s, the importance of set and setting has been emphasised. Set is the person’s internal state, the beliefs, expectations and current mindset of the patient. This includes their reason for taking the psychedelic, their intention for the trip. Is it for ‘therapy’ because they […]

Psychedelics and altered states of consciousness

In recent years there has been such an enormous surge of interest and research into psychedelics, that it is hard to know where to start in a 500 word blog! First of all let me just put a definition in place. I am largely referring to what are known as classic psychedelics, including psilocybin, DMT, […]

Placebo vs Nocebo

In the Oxford English Dictionary the definition of a placebo is a medicine or procedure prescribed for the psychological benefit to the patient rather than for any physiological effect. But when we accept that the body and the brain are not separate, that they are inextricably linked, with our mental and emotional state intricately bi-directionally […]

Conscious Dying at end of life, and Death and Rebirth within life

In the Western world in particular there is huge fear of death, and in a surprisingly high percentage of people, even denial of its inevitability! Some of the stories collected by Stephen Jenkinson in Die Wise illustrate this. This is gradually changing however, since the work of Elisabeth Kubler Ross and her seminal book On […]

Evelyn Brodie

Shamanic, Reiki & Craniosacral Healing Rottingdean, Brighton, East Sussex

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