This Music, Creativity & Mental Health podcast is with Jake Isaac, who is a Manchester-based, multi-instrumentalist with a distinctive style as a singer-songwriter fusing soul, jazz and rock. He’s had a stellar career having worked with and supported a diverse range of artists from Sting, India Arie, Ella Eyre, Paloma Faith, Lake Street Dive, Joan As Police Woman, Angus and Julia Stone, Tori Kelly and Elton John. This was a really stimulating discussion and you’ll see what a delightful, gentle and thoughtful man Jake is. Themes in this conversation included: the central role of one’s ‘internal antenna’ or intuition in the creative process; how Jake’s managed a happy medium in terms of family and wellbeing, not compromising his music and learning how to be content with what he has; his advice to musicians to be true to their creative identity, not just to copy others; the spiritual and sacred aspects of music; the role of highs and lows, including suffering in making art authentic and relevant; the centrality of the African philosophy of Ubuntu or ‘I am because we are’ in Jake’s whole approach; and his advice to young artists to both diversify and to get enough rest to sustain and stimulate creativity. It was a wonderfully diverse and well-humoured conversation, and I hope you love it too.

The Sharon Niv podcast on psycholytic ketamine therapy stimulated a deep andvibrant roundtable discussion. We began by exploringg state-dependnet memory - highlighting the fully embodied (cogntiive, motivational, emotional, physiological) nature of memory and the consequent link to somatic-based therapies. We briefly discussed the positive implications of an adffordable and readily available means of accelerating psychological growth. We then dug deep on neuroplasticity (the way the brain restuctures itself to instantiate change). This appears to be the primary action of ketamine, and paired with intentional activity (therapy, journaling, intriospection), this creates very promising outcomes with psycholytic ketamine dosing. We then went broader into the notion of habits and 'loops' being more amenable to intentional change, extending the efficacy beyond therapy to more everyday challenges. Finally, we discussed the centrality of receptivity and openneess in providing the user with a sense of agency and psychological safety.

Dr Sharon Niv, is the cofounder of Joyous, a platform for providing Psycholytic, or very low dose, Ketamine Therapy. The promise here is an affordable, effective mode of treatment that is effective and possible at scale. Sharon takes us through what a psycholytic dose is; how ketamine at this level affects people; the neuroplastic action of ketamine and how this is integrated into therapeutic practice; the safety of the protocol; and details of the actual process. Central to this discussion is memory reconsolidation to resolve trauma and other debilitating psychological patterns that repeat on a kind of psychic loop. In essence, it appears that repeated doses in conjunction with intentional inquiry and/or therapeutic assistance helps separate the memory part of trauma or habitual distress from the full-brain-activated dysregulation that generates a whole system of distress: somatic, episodic memory, nervous system activation, emotional memory processing, and narrative stories. It was a delightful and stimulating discussion.