Over the weekend, I attended Europe’s largest psychedelic consciousness conference — Breaking Convention. With over 200 presenters from Mexico to New Zealand, the energy itself felt like an altered state. I found myself moving between rooms filled with indigenous wisdom keepers, neuroscientists, therapists, artists, veteran plant medicine facilitators, and curious first-timers, all mingling without hierarchy. As Floris Wolswijk poetically put it, “flower crowns brushed alongside tweed blazers.”
It felt like separate worlds — science and spirit, tradition and technology — were being bridged through open, humble dialogue. There was no pecking order, only presence.
A Fusion of Worlds
The opening ceremony set a tone that merged invention with ancestral wisdom, academic rigour with embodied knowing. It was crowned by a ceremonial address from Mac Macartney, whose presence infused the space with reverence.
Even the foyer was its own kind of medicinal space — filled with fungi-themed fashion, non-psychedelic plant medicines, supplement samples, deep conversations, and books on exploration and awakening. The whole experience blurred the lines between conference, ritual, and art installation. Dissolved boundaries resemblant of a psychedelic experience.
Insights That Landed Deeply
Across three days, I gathered a constellation of insights. Here are a few that stayed with me:
🌿 The Dark Side of Vision
One speaker warned of the dangers of psychedelics; when psychedelic visions or experiences are misinterpreted. If an experience is not properly integrated, it becomes just a hallucination — or worse, a source of delusion. When authority is placed outside ourselves — trusting spirits or insights blindly without discernment — we risk collapse. This, they said, is the line between spiritual emergence and spiritual emergency.
We were reminded as to why elders and guides have always held the space for these experiences in traditional communities. Now, with psychedelic retreats popping up like startups, that wisdom-holding is often missing. “Kids without elders in the village will burn it down to feel its warmth.” A stark warning for the future influence psychedelic plant medicines will inevitably have globally.
A great quote from Julie Holland, psychopharmacologist and psychiatrist and author:💡 “A revelation is a merging of unresolved parts of the psyche.”
This line struck a deep chord because of my learning from yoga. It reframes insight as integration — not adding new knowledge, but reuniting what has been split off, hidden or avoided within us. Like an analogy my yoga teacher used- we work to remove layers of dust from the mirror and then begin to see things that have always been in front of us more clearly. It’s all already inside of us.
One of the many nature-oriented talks:🌾 Sustainable Cultures, Ancient Technology
A beautiful talk highlighted sustainable living systems like:
- the Khasi tribe’s remarkable living root bridges in Meghalaya (India) which withstand powerful floods every year (I was lucky to see these in person a few years ago)
- Bali’s ancient Subak irrigation system, which turns large scale rice farming into a harmonious relationship with nature. A complex, pulsed artificial ecosystem which functions to manage water co-operatively with the environment.
These aren’t just clever designs — they’re embodied philosophies about interconnection and sustainability.
Some exposure to riveting old ancestral philosophy:🔥 Self-Actualisation: Whose Lens Are We Using?
Self-actualisation is the process of bringing out the unique gifts each of us possess inside of us. If we do not realise this potential, we can often feel a sadness. One speaker contrasted Maslow’s hierarchy — with self-actualisation as a goal for personal dominance (e.g. self-oriented)— against the Blackfoot Indigenous perspective, where self-actualisation is seen as an inherent state of being, rather than a goal. In Blackfoot perspective, the goal is not personal achievement, but rather the self-actualisation fuels community actualisation that in turn supports cultural continuity — a life-sustaining ecosystem.
There’s a revolution in this idea. Growth is not separate from community. It is for the community.
🪶 Prosocial Plants
Applying the above perspectives to the use of plant medicines: in the West, we often ask psychedelics or indeed any psychoactive plant: “What can this plant do for me?” But in many Indigenous cultures, the question is: “How can this plant help serve the community?” That shift in framing changes everything. Another yogic learning: intention is a way of bringing a mindful, purposeful experience. The intention behind the plant medicine experience completely changes its effects.
The coca leaf, for instance — source of cocaine — is used in Andean communities during long ceremonies to help people focus and listen. Similarly, tobacco leaf, far from its modern commercial form, has long been used in indigenous councils and talking circles to bring clarity, presence, and respect. These plants were not tools for escape, but for connection and community.
Synchronicities & the Space Between
One of my personal highlights was a totally chance meeting with Darren Le Baron, a speaker I’ve admired for ages. He’s a mycologist, psychedelic educator, horticulturist, and permaculture tutor at Somerset House — doing incredible work with underrepresented communities all over the world, in particular London and Africa. He’s run interesting projects where he has taken juvenile offenders out into the forest and taught them how to cultivate plants and helping them use some of their skills from the streets in the natural world and legitimate business.
His speech flows with a natural musical rhythm — his words are like educational spiritual poetry. I was looking down at my phone whilst walking and smiling at a joke someone had just sent me. As I popped my phone away and looked up grinning, there he was — standing right in front of me, matching my smile and locking eyes like he was expecting me. ‘Darren Le Baron, YES!’ We chatted, and now there’s talk of a potential collaboration. So excited at the thought of it.
These kinds of synchronicities weren’t isolated moments. They were everywhere throughout the conference— like breadcrumbs on a trail I didn’t know I was following. And many of the attendees talk about it. A few years ago, I might’ve dismissed the whole concept as hocus-pocus or fluffy nonsense. But I fully subscribe to it, based on personal experiences. I’ve even developed a bit of a rational explanation.
When we’re constantly in thinking mode, planning mode, or certainty-driven behaviour, our world becomes boxed in with limitations and controlled outcomes. When we try to control outcomes, label everything, and make sense of the unknown by putting it into neat mental categories, we narrow what’s perceivable and possible. The more we label, the less we actually experience.
What happens when we let go of the boxes? When we loosen our grip on the plan, reduce the mental noise, and allow ourselves to be present?
That’s when the magic begins.
Take something simple — like tasting ice cream. You can describe it as sweet, tangy, mango-flavoured. Those words might help, but they don’t truly convey the experience. Someone who hears them doesn’t actually know what that ice cream tastes like — not until they’ve tasted it themselves. Because flavour is experiential, not conceptual. It’s indescribable. Alan Watts’ once paraphrased the Tao To Ching:
‘The five colours will blind a man’s sight. The five sounds will deaden a mans hearing. The five tastes will spoil a man’s palate.‘ Highlighted in the teaching is that fixed notions, like limited colour palettes or soundscapes, can hinder perception
Words can point towards experience, but they can never fully capture it. This is the difference between the finite realm of language and rationalisation, and the infinite realm of experience. The moment we intellectualise something, we reduce it. But when we’re present — truly present — we enter a space beyond words. This is where originality, creativity, and synchronicity live. It’s the space where life surprises us.
To access that space, we need to quiet the thinking mind and turn inward — toward our sensations, feelings, and breath. And we need to stop trying to control things — to let go of fears, step into uncertainty, and lean into trust. Practices like meditation, breath work, goalless play, creative expression, and yes, psychedelics, can help open those famous doors of perception.
Final Thought
Breaking Convention was not just a conference. It was a reminder that the future of healing, consciousness, and culture does not come from any one discipline — but from integration. Of science and spirit. Innovation and tradition. Self and society. Inner and outer.
And maybe my real revelation is just that: a merging of what has been divided. A calling to merge science and spirit.
Mindful Medic 
I was interested to hear of the man with the melodic voice that instructed so much. It reminds me of certain DJs you can catch on the airwaves who have smarts to match their voices; they are untapped resources, so often, in a world that denigrates the spoken word.
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http://www.dark.sport.blog
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Thanks Greg, will check it out
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