Wanda Handel (USA)

A former Neuroscience Clinical Nurse Specialist with 30 years of experience, Wanda brings a deep curiosity for Earth-based and holistic medicine to her work. Now a board-certified Advanced Holistic Nurse, she offers education and private sessions on working with plants and is pursuing licensure in Colorado.

Andrés Forzán (Mexico)

A queer, non-binary spiritual activist, Andrés brings a lens of cultural identity, sacred activism, and Krishna consciousness to their work. They’re preparing to enter Practicum after a deeply affirming experience in the training.

Jim Kiely (USA)

Jim began his path during the AIDS epidemic and has spent decades supporting queer men. Grounded in Dzogchen Buddhism and body-based wisdom, he joined the training to refresh his practice and prepare for licensure in Colorado.

Denise Vargas (USA)

A certified hypnotherapist and integration therapist, Denise draws from hypnosis, Gestalt, breathwork, and EMDR. She is now a Colorado-licensed facilitator in training through the Synthesis Colorado track and supports clients through integrative healing.

Sapphire Ramon Brown (Ibiza)

A former national-level athlete turned breathwork guide and psychedelic practitioner, Sapphire bridges embodiment, ritual, and plant medicine in her work. She offers space for both personal and collective healing.

Mark O'Daniell (USA)

A former healthcare sales leader with 25+ years creating B2B growth in diagnostic imaging and enterprise IT solutions. Now employed as a Career Transition Coach supporting post-layoff executives and a Psychedelic Integration Coach serving legal clinics and private ceremonies in Arizona.

Mina Samuels 

Mina Samuels is a writer, speaker, playwright, and performer — and in a previous career, a litigation lawyer and human rights advocate. An athlete and meditation practitioner trained in Nonviolent Communication and Internal Family Systems, Mina offers workshops and one-on-one sessions on the transformative power of the body–mind connection. Her books include Run Like a Girl 365 Days: A Practical, Personal, Inspirational Guide for Women Athletes and Run Like a Girl: How Strong Women Make Happy Lives. She also writes regularly for Medium and Fit Is A Feminist Issue, and has created and performed two award-winning solo shows and an ensemble play.

Chara Caruthers is a skilled facilitator with decades of personal and professional practice as an educator, therapist, and lifestyle medicine practitioner working with groups and individuals. Her work is grounded in Eastern spiritual traditions, ancient and Indigenous wisdom, and modern science and philosophy. She holds a professional certification in psychedelics, entheogens, and transpersonal psychology; is a graduate of the Center for Holding Space Foundations program at the Leadership level; and is completing a Master of Science in Transpersonal Psychology. As a Yoga Therapist (C-IAYT), certified Ayurvedic practitioner, and psychedelic researcher, Chara is passionate about building bridges between ancient lifestyle traditions and modern Western approaches to mental health and wellbeing. She believes that loving, supportive community is a vital — and often missing — piece of the picture of wellbeing, and that her work in the psychedelic space is to build and empower such community as a container for embodying wholeness.

Mary Bredin is a Synthesis retreat facilitator and psychotherapist with over 30 years of experience in UK healthcare as a clinical supervisor, group facilitator, researcher, and educator. She specializes in supporting people through loss, illness, and life transitions, using nature connection, mindfulness, self-compassion, and vision quests as tools for growth and renewal. In her free time, she tends her Cornish garden, swims year-round in the sea, and walks in wild places.

Ladybird Morgan, MSW, RCST, has helped guide medical practitioners, families, caregivers, programs, and institutions around the world — including with Doctors Without Borders and in California prisons — on how to be present to difficult experiences by remembering, embodying, and responding from the deepest place of truth. Her work is informed by a lifelong commitment to meditation, sacred practice, and personal inquiry. Currently a private palliative care consultant with MettleHealth and a co-facilitator for Commonweal’s Cancer Help Program and Healing Circles, she also serves as a co-investigator/study therapist with a University of Washington study on psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy and as Co-Founder and Program Director of the Humane Prison Hospice Project.