Explore every episode of the podcast Stand In The Circle

There's a lot to be angry about right now. But rage can't be the only thing we feel. This is a place to come for stories of people moving from disconnection to connection, numbness to feeling, isolation to belonging.

In this first episode, clinical psychologist Ros Watts introduces Stand in the Circle. What it is. Where it came from. And the night she walked out in the rain and ended up with her arms around a tree.

Ros tells the story of her years running one of the first clinical trials treating depression with psychedelic therapy, and the truth is: she was publishing research on connectedness while living a deeply disconnected life.

The heart of the episode is the difference between the pyramid and the circle. The shape most of us were raised inside, where you climb, perform, and hide what's hard. And the shape we're learning instead, where no one stands above anyone else and the question shifts from "how am I doing" to "how are we doing."

Each month on the podcast will include 4 episodes: a solo episode, a conversation with someone from the ACER community, a thinker or researcher, then your questions answered.

Mentioned in this episode:
ACER Integration. Free live ACER circles: https://acerintegration.com/acer-live-events To try a tree journey, come to the Introduction to ACER Integration.
The Watts Connectedness Scale, on connectedness across self, others, and world: https://bit.ly/3Qe5KJK
bell hooks, on healing as communion, from All About Love: New Visions (2000): https://bit.ly/44261Tb
Dacher Keltner, on human contact and the nervous system: https://bit.ly/3Q8qRgx
Suzanne Simard, on forests, mycorrhizal networks, and mother trees: https://bit.ly/4dZK2SQ
Maria Sabina, the Mazatec medicine woman whose ceremony reached LIFE magazine without her consent.
Michelle Baker Jones, who set up the first online sharing circles with Ros.

If you need support: This podcast holds some tender ground, and listening can bring things up. If you are struggling, please reach out. You don't have to carry it alone.
UK and Ireland: call Samaritans free, any time, on 116 123. Or text SHOUT on 85258.
US: call or text the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, free and confidential, any time, by dialing 988. You can also chat online at 988lifeline.org. Crisis Text Line is available 24/7. Text HOME to 741741.
Elsewhere: please look up your local crisis line. Help is there and asking for it is a choice to stand in the circle.

Connect with Dr. Rosalind Watts:
https://www.drrosalindwatts.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-rosalind-watts/
https://www.instagram.com/acerintegration

Submit a question for a future episode: https://forms.gle/jVcGniTN3uS1bjz18
Find out more about ACER, the year-long community Ros founded: www.acerintegration.com

Psychedelic medicines can open a door. But what happens when there's nothing waiting on the other side to help you stay open?

In this episode, Dr. Rosalind Watts tells the story of John, a participant in one of the first psilocybin trials for depression. Through John's story, Ros explores a question that sits at the heart of modern psychedelic care: what happens after the breakthrough?

Along the way, she reflects on a major new U.S. executive order designed to accelerate access to psychedelic medicines, and the mix of hope and ethical tensions it raises.

Ultimately, this episode asks a bigger question than whether we are ready for psychedelic medicines. It asks whether we are ready to build the kinds of communities that can hold all of life's threshold moments: grief, birth, loss, love, transformation, and healing.

References and links:
Watch Magic Medicine (dir. Monty Wates), the documentary following John and the Imperial College London psilocybin trial. Netflix (UK): https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/81409016 and Prime Video.
The Watts Connectedness Scale (Watts et al., 2022, Psychopharmacology, open access): https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00213-022-06187-5
The US executive order on accelerating treatments for serious mental illness (White House, April 2026): https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2026/04/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-is-accelerating-medical-treatments-for-serious-mental-illness/
Jules Evans on therapists' safety and ethics concerns in psychedelic trials (Ecstatic Integration): https://www.ecstaticintegration.org/p/therapists-on-psychedelic-trials
On Gabon protecting iboga (National Geographic): https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/ibogaine-pschedelic-drug-root-fair-trade-gabon
Book: María Sabina: Her Life and Chants, by Álvaro Estrada
Sophy Banks and Healthy Human Culture

Submit a question to Ros, to be answered on a future podcast episode:  https://forms.gle/JgJaAjDRbowAcyWZ9

If you are struggling:
If you are in the dark place Ros describes, you do not have to sit in it alone. Samaritans volunteers are there any time. In the UK, call 116 123. In the US, call or text 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.

Learn more about the ACER community:  https://acerintegration.com/

Connect with Dr. Rosalind Watts:

https://www.drrosalindwatts.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-rosalind-watts/

https://www.instagram.com/acerintegration

https://medium.com/@DrRosalindWatts

Michelle Baker-Jones is a relational psychotherapist and psychedelic guide who worked alongside Ros on the first Imperial psilocybin-for-depression trial. In this conversation: attachment, friendship and loss, the wounded healer, what's being lost as psychedelic therapy scales, and finding sanctuary in trees.

The trials & the film

• Magic Medicine (2018, dir. Monty Wates)-  the documentary following the 1st Imperial psilocybin-for-depression trial: magicmedicine.net · Netflix
• The Watts Connectedness Scale:  overview and manual: drrosalindwatts.com/watts-connectedness-scale · validation paper (Watts et al., Psychopharmacology, 2022): link.springer.com
• The ACE model: the prep-and-integration approach Michelle refers to building on (Watts & Luoma, 2020) and access to 'pearl dive' the visualisation made from the ACE model- to prepare for a psychedelic experience: https://www.drrosalindwatts.com/pearl-dive

Ideas & terms we mentioned

• IFS (Internal Family Systems): therapeutic model developed by Richard Schwartz: ifs-institute.com
• Attachment styles: Bowlby's four patterns and the Adult Attachment Interview
• The wounded healer: the Jungian archetype Michelle names.
• Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner & Richard Alpert, The Psychedelic Experience (1964)
• Druidry: the Bardic and Ovate training Michelle is undertaking, through the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids (OBOD) https://druidry.org/

The wider context

• Trump's executive order on psychedelic therapy (18 April 2026), which Ros references alongside concurrent healthcare cuts: White House order · plain-English explainer: TIME

ACER & staying connected

• ACER Integration: https://acerintegration.com/
• Submit a question for a future Q&A episode: https://forms.gle/JgJaAjDRbowAcyWZ9

  
  If you are living with the kind of heavy depression Ruth describes, you do not have to sit in it alone. Samaritans volunteers are there any time. In the UK, call 116 123. In the US, call or text 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.

What does healing actually look like in the years after a psychedelic experience? Not a straight line, but a spiral. In this first guest episode, Dr Rosalind Watts is in conversation with Ruth, who took part in a psilocybin-for-depression trial and has spent the years since walking the long, slow road of integration.

Ruth had lived with depression for most of her adult life, and had tried most of the conventional routes, when she joined the trial in 2019. She talks about what brought her to it and the two strikingly different sessions she had: one expansive and full of light, and one that was hours of darkness and fear.

But the heart of this conversation is what came after. Ruth went home weeks before COVID lockdown, with her integration circle cancelled and almost no support around her. She talks about the ACER sharing circles that grew out of that time, the somatic practices she tried (some that worked, some that made her furious), and the slow, spiralling, six-year journey since. It is an honest picture of integration as real work, and of how being witnessed by others, and witnessing them, is part of what makes an opening last.

In this episode:
Why Ruth chose a clinical trial over travelling abroad, and what safety made possible
"This is not where you belong, you are trapped here," and finding meaning in the hard journey
Tree meditations, and reconnecting with the living world
Knowledge versus wisdom, and learning to use what she already had
Trying somatic practices and breathwork, and letting some things not work
Being witnessed, reciprocity, and not carrying the whole load alone
Six years on: the ups, the downs, and the spiral

References and links:
The trial Ruth took part in: Trial of Psilocybin versus Escitalopram for Depression (Carhart-Harris, Giribaldi, Watts et al., New England Journal of Medicine, 2021). Free summary on PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33852780. Full paper: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2032994
If you're interested in taking part in a clinical trial: search current studies on ClinicalTrials.gov (https://clinicaltrials.gov) or, in the UK, the NHS "Be Part of Research" service (https://bepartofresearch.nihr.ac.uk).
"Trust, let go, be open," the trial's guiding phrase, comes from psychedelic pioneer Bill Richards, in his book Sacred Knowledge: Psychedelics and Religious Experiences.
The Watts Connectedness Scale (Watts et al., 2022, open access): https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00213-022-06187-5

If you are living with the kind of heavy depression Ruth describes, you do not have to sit in it alone. Samaritans volunteers are there any time. In the UK, call 116 123. In the US, call or text 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.
ACER Integration: https://acerintegration.com/
Submit a question for a future Q&A episode: https://forms.gle/JgJaAjDRbowAcyWZ9

Next week: Ros is in conversation with Michelle Baker Jones, the colleague she started those pandemic sharing circles with, a therapist on multiple psychedelic trials, with her own story of disconnection and connection.

Nearly 1 in 2 of us in the UK will face cancer in our lifetime. This month, Dr Rosalind Watts opens the territory of cancer, not the medicine, but the loneliness, the fear, the missing village, and the connection that can hold us through it. In this first episode, Ros sets out the ground for the month and shares a personal story. Her cousin Tom was diagnosed with a rare cancer at ten and died at 13. His mother, Ros's aunt Amelia, speaks about walking him through it, the night he died, the community that held her, and a connection to him that has never ended. Please note: this episode holds the story of a child who died of cancer. If you have lost a child or are going through serious illness with someone you love, please go gently and see the support resources below.

Amelia's shared crossing
Witnessing part of Tom's journey as he died is what researchers call a shared death experience. Her account is part of the work of the Shared Crossing Project, founded by William Peters, whose book is At Heaven's Door (2022): https://www.sharedcrossing.com

The prayer Ros mentions: The reimagined feminine Hail Mary comes from Way of the Rose, by Perdita Finn and Clark Strand and the community they founded: https://wayoftherose.org. The words Ros says are her own remembered version.

References

UK lifetime risk (Cancer Research UK): https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-statistics
The Watts Connectedness Scale (2022): https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00213-022-06187-5
Psilocybin for cancer distress, 2016 trials: Johns Hopkins, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0269881116675513, and NYU, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5367551/
MD Anderson psilocybin nerve-damage trial: https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT07227909
Katherine MacLean's Being Ground: https://www.katherinemaclean.org

Support lines
Cruse Bereavement Support (UK): 0808 808 1677. The Compassionate Friends, for bereaved parents (UK and US): tcf.org.uk, compassionatefriends.org. Macmillan Cancer Support (UK): 0808 808 00 00. CancerCare bereavement counselling (US): 1-800-813-4673.
In crisis: Samaritans (UK) 116 123. In the US, call or text 988.

ACER Integration:  https://acerintegration.com/
Submit a question for the Q&A episode: https://forms.gle/jVcGniTN3uS1bjz18

Next week: Ros is in conversation with ACER members Rebekah, who is living with metastatic breast cancer, and Kim, whose son survived cancer. Both describe psychedelic experiences that helped them find connection in the hardest times.

Katherine was a guide in the early psilocybin trials at Johns Hopkins. 

Yvan Beaussant is a palliative care physician in Boston. We talk about the circles of care that hold people through serious illness and through losing someone.

Katherine MacLean: https://www.katherinemaclean.org
Midnight Water: https://www.katherinemaclean.org/midnight-water

Being Ground, the forest sanctuary in Vermont: https://www.katherinemaclean.org/being-ground
Yvan Beaussant: https://www.dana-farber.org/find-a-doctor/yvan-beaussant
Psychedelic-Assisted Therapies: https://labs.dana-farber.org/psychedelics
The Watts Connectedness Scale: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00213-022-06187-5

ACER runs free live drop in sessions online: join us, you don't have to say anything, you can just listen: https://acerintegration.com/acer-live-events

ACER applications https://acerintegration.com/apply-now

Submit a question: https://forms.gle/jVcGniTN3uS1bjz18

Looking for a trial in your area: https://clinicaltrials.gov (US), https://bepartofresearch.nihr.ac.uk (UK), https://www.anzctr.org.au (AUS)

UK: Macmillan Cancer Support, https://www.macmillan.org.uk, Marie Curie, https://www.mariecurie.org.uk, Cruse Bereavement Support, https://www.cruse.org.uk
US: CancerCare, https://www.cancercare.org If you are in crisis: Samaritans 116 123 or text SHOUT to 85258 (UK). Call or text 988 (US).

We explore connectedness as medicine across 3 levels: connection to self, to others, and to the living world. In this episode we meet two members of the ACER community with two different paths and a shared truth: we are not meant to carry these things alone.

Support: For families caring for a child with cancer: US: Momcology, peer support built by and for caregivers, momcology.org. UK: Young Lives vs Cancer, younglivesvscancer.org.uk. Childhood Cancer Parents Alliance, ccpa.org.uk. For anyone bereaved by suicide: UK: Survivors of Bereavement by Suicide helpline 0300 111 5065. Suicide&Co, suicideandco.org. US: American Foundation for Suicide Prevention loss resources, afsp.org/ive-lost-someone. Alliance of Hope, allianceofhope.org. For families grieving a child UK: The Compassionate Friends, 0345 123 2304. Child Death Helpline, 0800 282 986. US: The Dougy Center, dougy.org. If you are in crisis right now: UK, Samaritans 116 123. US, Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, call or text 988.

ACER Integration is a year-long community for people who want to heal in connection, not isolation. https://acerintegration.com/

To submit a question for the podcast https://forms.gle/jVcGniTN3uS1bjz18

Mentioned in this episode: Rebekah trained in psychedelic-assisted therapy with the Integrative Psychiatry Institute (IPI). More at integrativepsychiatryinstitute.com.  Kim took part in a registered psilocybin clinical trial. Anyone wanting to understand what trials are open and where can search by condition and location: US, clinicaltrials.gov. UK, Be Part of Research, bepartofresearch.nihr.ac.uk. Australia and New Zealand anzctr.org.au. Legal, supervised psilocybin therapy in the US is currently available only through licensed programs in OR and CO, with NM expected to follow. Everywhere else, access remains within research trials.