Clinician to Clinician: Bill Richards’ Fun and Good Advice

Living Medicine

Bill Richards, PhD, is the Co-founder and Senior Advisor at Sunstone Therapies, which delivers psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy in medical settings. In his role, he oversees, guides, and trains new therapists from educational, medical, and religious perspectives. Bill is also a Clinical Psychologist at the Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. With over five decades of experience researching psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, Bill focuses on its legal and safe integration into palliative care for cancer patients.

In this episode…

Psychedelic-assisted therapy enables patients to access profound states of consciousness, which can facilitate healing and self-discovery. How can therapists create the optimal environment for such breakthroughs while maintaining ethical and supportive practices?

Bill Richards, an early pioneer in psychedelic research, emphasizes the importance of trust, attunement, and presence in therapeutic settings. Psychedelics like psilocybin and ketamine unlock the psyche's capacity for healing, but therapists must provide a grounding presence and guide patients through challenging emotional terrain. By fostering openness and curiosity and remaining neutral, therapists can support clients in exploring fear, grief, and transcendence, often leading to transformative shifts in perspective and self-understanding.

In this week’s episode of Living Medicine, Dr. Signi Goldman sits down with Bill Richards, PhD, the Co-founder and Senior Advisor at Sunstone Therapies, to discuss how therapists can navigate clients’ alternate states effectively. Bill explains why rationality doesn’t work in psychedelic states, the concepts in his book, Scared Knowledge, and the role of somatic sensations and touch in psychedelic therapies.