The Lineage
Where this work
comes from
Payam does not practise in isolation. Everything he brings to the mat has roots — in teachers he sought out during his own darkest years, in traditions that have held this knowledge for centuries, and in a body of public work that has been tested in front of physicians, surgeons, and researchers across three continents.
This page is for those who want to go deeper — into the people whose thinking lives inside his work, the public lectures and conversations where he speaks directly, and the research that grounds this practice in something verifiable. The lineage is the foundation. What is built on it is what matters.
Conversations
Podcasts &
public interviews
The most direct way to understand how Payam thinks and speaks is to hear him in conversation. These interviews span trauma therapy, IFS, chronic pain, the nature of sacred medicines, and the relationship between shamanic and Western practice.
Public Work
Lectures & academic
presentations
Payam has presented his work at medical conferences, universities, and psychedelic research institutions across the United States, Europe, and Latin America — bringing the intersection of shamanic medicine and Western therapeutic practice to clinical and academic audiences.
Integrative Holistic Ceremonial Use of MDMA
Presented to the Yale community on the ceremonial and integrative use of MDMA — the spiritual, somatic, and psychological dimensions that clinical protocols typically leave unaddressed.
Synchronicity Conference
Presented at one of the United States' leading psychedelic research and community gatherings — exploring the relationship between IFS, somatic medicine, and sacred plant medicines in the treatment of trauma.
Psychedelics, Trauma & Chronic Pain
Presented to 500 clinical professionals at the CANA Annual Conference — making the case for psychedelic-assisted approaches to chronic pain and trauma within a medical audience.
Plant Medicines for the Healing of Physicians
Presented to an international surgical audience in Costa Rica on the potential of plant medicines to address the unacknowledged trauma carried by the medical profession itself.
Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy for Trauma & Chronic Pain
An early and significant medical presentation — bringing psychedelic-assisted approaches to a mainstream surgical audience, reporting on the nature of pain through the unitary mind-body paradigm.
Healing Trauma with Psychedelics — A Somatic Lens
A conversation with Tobias Penno MSW exploring psychedelic-assisted trauma healing through the somatic lens — examining what happens in the body during medicine work and why the body must be included in any meaningful account of healing.
Depression, Psychedelics & Internal Family Systems Therapy
An academic exploration of the intersection of IFS therapy and psychedelic-assisted work in the treatment of depression — examining how the two frameworks inform and deepen each other.
The Use of Psychedelic Agents for the Management of Chronic Pain & Trauma
Published in General Surgery News — bringing the conversation about psychedelic-assisted approaches to chronic pain into one of the primary publications of the surgical profession.
The Teachers
The work that
informs this work
These are not influences Payam discovered in a reading list. He sought them out because he was suffering and needed to understand what had happened to him. The lineage found him before he found it. Each person below contributed something that became part of how he works.
Dr Richard Alpert — Ram Dass
Spiritual Teacher · Pioneer of Psychedelic Consciousness
Ram Dass is Payam's spiritual teacher and guide. The understanding that consciousness extends beyond the individual, that the soul is not the personality, that suffering can be a teacher rather than an enemy — all of this was seeded through Ram Dass. He is the lineage that connects the medicines to the spirit rather than the clinic.
Dr Gabor Maté
Physician · Author · Trauma & Addiction Specialist
Gabor Maté was among the first voices Payam encountered who named what he had been living — the relationship between childhood trauma, the body, and the illnesses and addictions that grow from unprocessed pain. Maté's work confirmed what the medicines had shown: the question is never why the addiction, always why the pain.
Dr Richard Schwartz
Founder of IFS · Author of No Bad Parts
IFS gave Payam the language for what he had experienced and the framework within which Western seekers could understand their own interior. The concept of self — the essential, unharmed witness at the centre of every person — is the bridge between the shamanic and the therapeutic. Schwartz built the bridge. Payam walks it.
Chris Burris
LMFT · Senior Lead Trainer IFS Institute
Chris Burris is Payam's closest active collaborator in the project of bridging IFS and shamanic medicine. Through Weave, they are building the formal language that allows IFS therapists to understand what it means to be in hollow bone — the shamanic principle of the facilitator as empty vessel — within the framework they already know. This is ongoing work and it matters: without this bridge, IFS practitioners entering medicine space carry a model that has no account of what the facilitator must become in order to hold ceremony safely.
Dr Peter Levine
Founder of Somatic Experiencing · Author of Waking the Tiger
Levine's work gave Payam the understanding of how trauma lives in the body — not as memory, but as arrested biological response. The nervous system's incomplete survival patterns, held in the body long after the danger has passed, are what the medicines open and what somatic practice helps complete. The body is not a symptom of the trauma. It is the site of healing.
The formation
behind the practice
Payam's formation is not self-taught. Every modality he brings to the mat has a teacher, an institution, and a rigorous training behind it. These are not courses taken for credentials — they are the result of a practitioner seeking to understand his own experience and build something he could stand behind. This is the full record of that formation.
Clinical Research & Institutions
The institutional
and scientific grounding
For those who want to understand the evidence base behind this work — the clinical trials, the research institutions, and the published literature that has brought psychedelic medicine into the mainstream conversation.
The Next Step
The lineage is the foundation
The Work is what builds.
If what you have found here has deepened your sense that this is the right direction, the next step is a conversation — not a commitment, not an application. A conversation, to understand where you are and whether this is the right moment and the right fit.