Katherine Maclean

Katherine Maclean is a research scientist, mother and adventure-seeker. She has spent the past two decades studying the effects of mindfulness meditation and psychedelics. At Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Katherine conducted legal clinical trials of psilocybin, the primary chemical found in "magic mushrooms”. She was a lead researcher and session guide on the first study to test the combined effects of high-dose psilocybin, daily meditation training and integration support. Her research on meditation and psilocybin indicates that these practices can promote positive and lasting changes in concentration, emotion regulation, openness, wellbeing, and prosocial traits.

Following Katherine’s younger sister’s untimely death from cancer in 2013, she left her faculty job, traveled the world and finally settled on an organic farm with her husband. In 2015, she co-founded and was the first director of the Psychedelic Education and Continuing Care Program in New York, where she led training workshops and monthly integration groups focused on increasing awareness and reducing risks of psychedelic use. Katherine has helped to bring medical and humanitarian aid to remote Himalayan villages, as well as create sanctuary spaces for psychedelic support at large outdoor festivals. However her most gratifying and humbling experiences have been as a mother to her two young children.

Katherine’s teaching and integration approach combines over a decade of training in rigorous academic and clinical research with practical intuition guided by personal experiences, including five silent meditation retreats, a 2-month pilgrimage in the Himalayan mountain range in Nepal, her sister and father’s death journeys through cancer, and natural homebirth. During her professional and personal life experiences, Katherine has developed a unique set of skills that allow her to feel safe, and help others feel safe, in extremely unusual environments and powerful states of consciousness. She believes in the power of the body and mind to courageously create healing and transformative relationships with self, community and nature.

MORE ON KATHERINE’S RESEARCH BACKGROUND...

Katherine completed her BA in psychology and neuroscience with Dr. Yale Cohen at Dartmouth College (1999-2003), her PhD in research psychology with Dr. George R. Mangun and Dr. Clifford Saron at the University of California, Davis (2004-2009), and her postdoctoral research fellowship in psychopharmacology with Dr. Roland Griffiths at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (2009-2012). She was hired as a tenure-track faculty member in the Department of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins from 2012-2013. During her graduate training at UC Davis, she was one of the lead researchers on the Shamatha Project, a groundbreaking study of the effects of intensive meditation on psychological and brain function. While a research fellow and faculty member at Johns Hopkins, she apprenticed with and was supervised by two of the world’s top psychedelic therapists -- Bill Richards, PhD and Mary Cosimano, LSW -- learning how to effectively and safely support people before, during, and after high-dose psychedelic experiences.