Simon Yugler has spent time inside traditions ranging from Aboriginal Australia to the Shipibo lineage in Peru. Most of us will only ever read about experiences like that. I admire the ground he's stood on, and what it has done to his worldview.
Simon is a depth psychotherapist, psychedelic facilitator, educator, and the author of Psychedelics and the Soul: A Mythic Guide to Psychedelic Healing, Depth Psychology, and Cultural Repair — and his central conviction is that psychedelics are not primarily a mental health intervention. They are initiatory and speak to the soul.
At twenty, he traveled to an Aboriginal community in Arnhem Land, Australia, and was changed by what he encountered there. He went on to apprentice within the Shipibo ayahuasca tradition in the Peruvian Amazon, spending six weeks inside a lineage that didn't reconstruct its transmission from texts. He completed his master's at Pacifica Graduate Institute, where his thesis explored the loss of male initiation rites in Western culture and what the medicine might restore. Today he trains facilitators, runs men's groups, and continues his healing work with individual.
In this conversation, Simon walks inside what he calls mythopoetics — the practice of helping people find the mythic story inside their experience and carry it home. We get into what myth actually means, what archetypes are doing inside psychedelic experience, and why Jungian depth psychology sees what the neuroscience frameworks are blind to.
We also talk about what the medicine gets right. Simon offers a moving case study: a man who, during a psilocybin retreat, rediscovered his own goodness and a genuine encounter with soul.
And we hold the critique. A six-month facilitator training is not a substitute for years of depth work. The medicalization box is too small — and, as Simon puts it, the alien always gets out.
In this conversation:
Mythopoetics and what myth actually is
What living Indigenous traditions carry that Western therapy lost and can't get back from books
The male initiation crisis and the loneliness epidemic
What the medicine reveals that slow depth work cannot reach
A case study in rediscovering one's own goodness
Why the initiatory can't be regulated and why it never will be
Timestamps
00:00 Welcome and Show Intro
00:47 Housekeeping and Links
02:57 Meet Simon
05:57 Mythopoetic Approach Explained
07:32 What Myth Really Means
10:20 Archetypes and Psyche
14:16 Simon's Origin Story
16:57 Australia and Indigenous Reality
23:23 Apprenticeship and Lineage
26:16 Western vs. Psychedelic Training
30:32 Why Psychedelics
36:44 Roots and Calling to Heal
38:41 Therapy Spark Moment
39:33 Choosing Pacifica
41:17 Lineage and Early Openings
43:14 Men's Work Thesis Roots
45:07 Why Men Need Gathering
48:40 Loneliness, Grief, and Soul
53:15 Psychedelic Healing Story
58:41 What Psychedelic Work Gets Right
1:04:32 Critique: The Medicalization Box
1:06:41 The Alien Always Gets Out
1:08:22 Closing: Book and Where to Find Simon
Find Simon:
simonyugler.com
simonyugler.substack.com
The Sacred Speaks:
www.drjohnwprice.com
youtube.com/channel/UCOAuksnpfht1udHWUVEO7Rg
instagram.com/thesacredspeaks
facebook.com/thesacredspeaks
Theme music: Modern Nations — modernnationsmusic.com
