Maria-Paula Almiron, CPsych, FPsych

As a young psychologist, I had mentors who guided me wisely on paths I would have otherwise not walked. I was left with a legacy of knowledge and ethics that continues to serve me to date. My earliest encounters with trauma were in the Dutch asylum-seeking service with displaced refugees from the Balkan’s war. I spent my formative years in the UK maximum-security hospitals with forensic inpatients. My clinical career progressed thereafter through public and private healthcare systems. As a psychologist, I engaged with individuals and systems across extreme ends of privilege and exclusion relying on our shared humanity to maintain relatability. My current clinical practice is at the junction of science and spirituality. My work builds on years of formal education and my personal growth in the non-Western paradigm. Pilgrimage, silence, prayer, contemplation and service, had great influence in the present version of me. As it is often the case, my journey with visionary plants started with my own transformation. I have been in ethical relationship with all the medicines that I facilitate. My strength is in my reverence for ritual and ceremony, be it in the mountains, deserts, jungles, temples or cities.