SPEAKING
Bring the conversation into the room.
Speaking for clinicians, organizations, and communities navigating the changing landscape of psychedelics, mental health, spirituality, and transformation.
I speak to clinicians, healthcare organizations, professional associations, universities, retreat and wellness communities, and interdisciplinary audiences about what this moment asks of those of us entrusted with helping people through profound experiences of change.
Christopher Shaw, LCSW-S CSAT-S RYT
Clinical Educator · Consultant · Psychotherapist · Psychedelic Medicine Practitioner · Speaker
THE PREMISE
The conversation has already changed.
Psychedelics have moved from the margins into mainstream culture. Clients are bringing extraordinary experiences into therapy. Spirituality is returning to conversations from which clinical training often excluded it. Questions of consciousness, identity, meaning, mortality, and transformation are increasingly sitting alongside diagnosis, symptoms, and treatment goals.
And the people responsible for holding these conversations are being asked to navigate territory for which many were never formally prepared.
My speaking work begins there.
Not with hype about psychedelics. Not with fear of them. And not with the assumption that every transformative experience can be understood through a single clinical, spiritual, or scientific lens.
I invite audiences into a more disciplined conversation about what is changing—and what it asks of us.
SPEAKING TOPICS
Coversations worth having.
Every presentation can be adapted to the audience, setting, and length of the event. Current topics include:
PSYCHEDELICS ARE ALREADY IN YOUR PRACTICE
Our Clients Are Using Psychedelics. Now What?
What every clinician needs to understand about psychedelic use, preparation, integration, risk, and the clinical realities already entering the therapy room.
BEYOND GATEKEEPER AND CHEERLEADER
A Third Clinical Stance Toward Psychedelic Experience
How clinicians can move beyond reflexive skepticism and uncritical enthusiasm toward a stance grounded in curiosity, discernment, humility, and clinical responsibility.
WHEN THE MAP NO LONGER FITS
Clinical Discernment in Extraordinary Experience
How do we think about experiences that may be psychological, spiritual, neurobiological, symbolic—or some combination of all four? A practical exploration of uncertainty, interpretation, and the limits of our existing clinical maps.
THE CLINICIAN IS IN THE ROOM TOO
Countertransference, Worldview, and the Helping Professional as Instrument
Psychedelic and transformative work does not only activate the client. It can challenge the clinician’s beliefs, fears, fascination, authority, and unresolved material. This presentation examines the part of the clinical encounter we are often least trained to assess: ourselves.
INTEGRATION IS NOT A BUZZWORD
What It Actually Means to Help Someone Integrate a Transformative Experience
Moving beyond recounting the experience toward the slower work of translating insight into relationship, behavior, identity, embodiment, and life.
HOLDING TRANSFORMATION
What the Changing Mental Health Landscape Asks of the Clinician
A broader keynote on the capacities helping professionals will need as psychedelics, spirituality, nonordinary states, and transformative experiences become increasingly visible in clinical practice.
THE DIFFERENCE
I'm less interested in telling an audience what to think than in helping them think better.
The psychedelic conversation can become polarized quickly. For or against. Science or spirituality. Pathology or awakening. Skepticism or belief. The most important clinical territory often exists between those positions.
My work draws from nearly two decades in clinical practice, years of teaching and supervising clinicians, psychedelic-informed practice, contemplative and spiritual traditions, and direct experience accompanying people through significant processes of transformation.
But the goal is not to replace one certainty with another. It is to help professionals become more capable of remaining present when certainty is unavailable—while still making thoughtful, ethical, clinically responsible decisions. That is a capacity we can develop.
WHO I SPEAK TO
Audiences.
Speaking engagements can be designed for:
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Mental health professionals
Therapists, psychologists, social workers, counselors, psychiatrists, and clinical supervisors.
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Healthcare and behavioral health organizations
Clinical teams, treatment programs, hospitals, group practices, and interdisciplinary organizations.
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Professional associations and conferences
Keynotes, breakout sessions, panels, continuing education events, and professional gatherings.
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Universities and training programs
Graduate programs, faculty development, clinical education, and student audiences.
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Psychedelic and integrative health communities
Organizations working at the intersection of mental health, psychedelic medicine, consciousness, and human transformation.
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Retreat, wellness, and spiritual communities
Audiences exploring how psychological, embodied, contemplative, and spiritual perspectives can remain in meaningful conversation with one another.
FORMATS
From Keynotes to Smaller Conversations.
Speaking engagements can include:
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Keynotes
Big-picture presentations designed to open a conference, gathering, or organizational conversation.
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Conference Presentations
Focused talks addressing specific clinical or professional questions.
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Interactive Workshops
Longer sessions combining teaching, reflection, case material, and audience participation.
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Panels & Conversations
Interdisciplinary dialogue around psychedelics, mental health, spirituality, consciousness, and transformation.
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Organizational Trainings
Customized presentations for clinical teams, practices, treatment programs, and professional organizations.
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Podcasts & Media
Long-form conversations, interviews, and professional commentary.
ABOUT CHRISTOPHER SHAW
Clinical Experience. Teaching Experience. Lived Proximity to the Questions.
I’ve spent nearly two decades serving as a psychotherapist, three years as a psychedelic medicine practitioner, and more than ten years teaching, supervising, and consulting with clinicians.
My work now sits at the intersection of psychotherapy, psychedelic-informed practice, clinical supervision, addiction & recovery, sexuality, spirituality, integration, and transformative experience.
CUSTOM ENGAGEMENTS
Your audience may need a different conversation.
Not every organization needs a standard presentation.
You may be introducing clinicians to psychedelic-informed practice for the first time. Your team may already have considerable experience and need a more sophisticated conversation about assessment, integration, ethics, or clinical complexity. Your conference may be exploring the intersection of mental health and spirituality. Or you may simply know that something important is changing in your field and want someone who can help your audience think about it with greater depth.
I’m happy to develop a presentation around the questions your audience is actually facing.