BTA Team
Retreat Facilitation Team:
Phil Searing
Mental Health Nurse
Phil is mental health nurse, and a musician with King's Gambit. In his career as a carer spanning 20 years he has worked with all ages from 1 to 101 and is looking forward to the next chapter of his life where he hopes to use psychedelics as a tool for healing with a burning passion to bring this to the NHS as soon as possible in a safe and therapeutic way. He believes strongly that everyone should have access to these life changing medicines if they so wish and that legislation should be changed to sensibly reflect the mounting evidence within the research base globally, supporting the efficacy and tolerance of psychedelics.
Phil leads an amazing group of nurses, counsellors and therapists, the group is called the 'Psychedelic Practitioners' and you can join them on Facebook here.
Mandy Young
Transpersonal & Psychedelic Practitioner
Mandy is a soul connection healer. Accessing all she has learned from coaching, yoga teaching, and personal spiritual guiding, using various modalities, practicing with a no-nonsense, challenging but gentle attitude. She works with a highly personalised approach and invites clients to access their inner world where their own intuition is their personal guide back to a healing soul connection. Mandy also runs breathwork sessions in the north of England.
Lilia Sophia Popgantcheva
Psychoanalyst
Lilia devotes her work as a psychoanalyst, therapist and body-mind consultant to people who are facing challenges in their lives or want to unlock their own evolution and personal growth. Lilia is an author and leader of retreats and a public speaker at personal growth festivals. She is trained in psychedelic therapy, psychodrama method, individual and group analysis, Soul Detective Work method, mental game coaching, breathing and meditation tools. Lilia is a kite surfer and mountaineer,
she loves art in all its forms and is a newbie beekeeper. She is an author for Bulgarian magazines, an executive producer of two award winning feature films and a social activist. She has prior corporate background in the USA and the Bulgarian government before starting a family and changing vocation. Lilia understands that universal mental health and spiritual evolution is greatly enhanced by the resurrection of ancient knowledge, practices and medicine.
Asa Scott
Counsellor
Asa lives in Northern Portugal where he has been for over 5 years. After a life changing event he decided to leave his career in Finance behind and focus on a new path. Having completed his counselling qualifications, he will finish his Holistic Therapy Training early this year, which then opens up the opportunities to work with people individually or in group settings. Having attended quite a number of retreats as a participant and also as a retreat assistant for the BTA, he looks forward to giving back with the knowledge he has gained and looks forward to holding space in upcoming retreats.
The BTA advisory team is comprised of a diverse group of professional individuals. We have recently launched the International Psychedelic Action Network (IPAN), which will monitor the political and legal landscape of psychedelics in the U.K.
BTA International Advisory Team:
Robert W. E. Laurie
Strategic Advisor
Robert is an international lawyer, qualified in England at the University of Oxford and is currently president of Ad Lucem Law Corporation in Vancouver.
Robert serves as a Board Advisor to the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) Canada and Steve DeAngelo’s Last Prisoner Project.
He is a legal advisor to the Heroic Hearts Project, a founder of the McKenna Academy of Natural Philosophy, and a director with the Ecuador Amazon Restoration Project.
Maya Albert
Strategic Advisor
Maya is an operations specialist and writer, bringing a thoughtful presence to all of her work and business practices. She has authored a compressive analytical report on the business of psychedelics, and is now co-authoring the book, Our Trip Together.
She has consulted for, and worked with, a number of other organizations in the space, including the Heroic Hearts Project, Synthesis Institute, and Tabula Rasa Ventures and has co-founded the annual psychedelic conference, Psyched.
Andrew Penn, MS, PMHNP
Strategic Advisor
Andrew is a UC San Francisco trained psychiatric nurse practitioner. He serves as an Associate Clinical Professor in the UCSF School of Nursing and practices at the San Francisco VA where he works with NP residents and students.
He has completed the CIIS, MAPS, and USONA trainings in psychedelic assisted therapy and has worked as a study therapist on a phase 3 MDMA-assisted therapy protocol for PTSD and is
Co-investigator the Usona-sponsored study of psilocybin assisted therapy for major depression.
An internationally invited speaker, he is the co-chair of Sana Symposium and a cofounder of the Organization of Psychedelic and Entheogenic Nurses (OPENurses.org), advocating for the perspective of nurses in psychedelic therapy and has published on psychedelic nursing in the American Journal of Nursing and The Journal of Humanistic Psychotherapy.
Andrew can be found at Andrewpennnp.com
Dr Dayna West
Strategic Advisor
Dayna earned her PhD in clinical psychology from Alliant University and it was whilst working as a staff psychologist in the Department of Psychiatry at Children’s Hospital in Oakland, California, that she fully realized how small our tool kit is for helping people heal from traumatic events and illness. In 2019 she earned a Certificate in Psychedelic-Assisted Therapies & Research from CIIS (the California Institute of Integral Studies). She has also spent time at Synthesis in the Netherlands where she participated in a retreat and was also a retreat assistant.
Dayna has also worked as an educator, school counselor and administrator serving students & their families from pre-school through high school in the United States, Europe and South America.
Dayna is currently executive-producing a documentary about the US FDA clinical trials for MDMA-assisted therapy for treating PTSD. She is committed to being the best ambassador possible for the psychedelic renaissance.
National Advisory Team:
Dr Jaazzmina Hussain
Jaazzmina is a consultant psychiatrist, specialising in the care of older adults. She began learning about psychedelics as a therapeutic option for people’s mental and emotional suffering after reading Michael Pollan’s book, How to Change Your Mind, purchased on a whim whilst attending a neuroscience conference.
The amazing results of the John Hopkins medical trials, administering psychedelics to people who are close to death to mitigate fear, has captivated her interest ever since.
She is now learning about psychedelics and their place in history, culture, society and medicine - which she finds to be a very humbling experience, and one she is very grateful for.
Jaazzmina brings to the team, an open and enquiring mind, a joyful heart and the knowledge and skills developed over the last decade of medical training and practice.
Dr Jake Hawthorn
Jake is a psychiatrist currently working as a specialty doctor in addictions and general adult psychiatry. He graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 2013 before completing his medical foundation training in Greater Manchester. He then worked in psychiatry in New Zealand for a year before applying to start core psychiatry training in South East Scotland in 2017. He passed the Royal College of Psychiatrists membership exams in 2019 and completed core training in 2020.Jake has been interested in the therapeutic potential of psychedelics since early on in his medical career, and in particular the use of psychedelic-assisted therapy for addiction. Jake is hoping to start a clinical research project in this area in Scotland, and contribute to bringing the safe and therapeutic use of psychedelics back into practice.
Xanthe E. Horner
Xanthe is a multidisciplinary artist, witch and intuitive tarot reader based in East London, UK. Her creative practice perches playfully on the intersection between art-making, visionary experience and mythopoesis. She draws on the archetypes of contemporary culture and historical narratives alike to spin new spells towards collective healing, reversing the hex of disenchantment by reimagining and reinventing the myths we live by.
Adam Knowles
Adam is an existential psychotherapist working in London, while researching the Amazonian plant medicine ayahuasca. His Master's research analysed what UK participants in ayahuasca ceremonies make of their experiences. Breaking Convention, Europe’s biggest psychedelics conference, awarded this research a prize in Social Sciences in 2019, and Adam is now continuing this qualitative research for his PhD.
Dan Lawrence
Dan is professionally registered/accredited with the British Psychoanalytic Council, UKCP
(Jungian/psychoanalytic college), the College of Psychoanalysts, Eurotas and the Confederation of Analytical psychologists.
He has held NHS roles and undertook further postgraduate trainings allied to increasing clinical responsibility and senior roles. He blended NHS work with consultancy and private practice over many years until transferring to full-time private practice/consultancy in 2016.
His approach is post-Jungian/Transpersonal with a broad appreciation of psychoanalytic thought.
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Stefan Batorijs
Stefan is an Ecotherapist, a wanderer and explorer of remote terrains and feelings. He is also a Forest Bathing Teacher, and for 25 years has been an Associate Lecturer at Plymouth University teaching the benefits of wild Nature for recovery on the Clin. Psych. Doctorate. Stefan is passionate about the rights of Nature, reciprocity, and transpersonal experiences in Nature. Recently he has been the Director of Ecotherapy for a Therapeutic Psychedelics Organisation weaving Nature into preparation and integration processes within retreats.
Annette Kaye
Annette is a transpersonal/psychosynthesis therapist, spiritual director, and giver of the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises. She is also a ceramic and multi-media artist and occasional writer about the intersection between psychology, spirituality, and creativity. She grew up in South Africa and New Zealand, gravitated to London in young adulthood, and more recently, to the northern countryside of England - further north than she ever imagined she would live! - where she finds the close connection with nature there to be a wonderful gift and teacher. Although long acquainted, in herself and others, with transpersonal and spiritual experiences, her discovery of plant medicines has taken her deeper and more convincingly into an experience of the Divine.