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Our History
The Phoenix Academy training program is led by Bradley Foster and faculty. He founded Phoenix to realize his goal of training psychedelic therapists experientially. Since beginning his training programs he has instructed over 200 therapists in Phoenix’s advanced stacking protocols.
Our Values
Phoenix Academy actively espouses and expect all who join us to uphold these values and principles in their practice:
- Know yourself/Do your own work
- Know your client
- Do no harm
- Only treat people within your expertise
- The safety of your client is your first priority
- Always try substances and combinations on yourself first
- Always test your substances
- Meet the client where your client is
- It’s your client’s experience, not yours
- Work with the highest of intentions
- Stay humble
- Stay present
- Stay balanced and open
- Learn from others — teach others
- Your client is your best teacher
- Treat the disadvantaged in any way you can
Our Training
Online Learning
Phoenix Academy offers high level experiential and therapeutic learning experiences to professionals and lay people who are interested in learning how to use psychedelics in a safe and therapeutically effective way.
Our training starts with a self-paced online course Psychedelic Therapy Level 1 which is a primer on our whole process and philosophy. It takes you through each step of our process with quizzes along the way. Our philosophical stance is of sacred duty, harm reduction, common sense, education, and being accountable to our community. We humbly present our work as a statement of best practices and a model of how to work with these medicines. Click below to see the material covered in the Psychedelic Therapy Level 1 course.
We also offer Heal the Healer: Psychedelic Level 2, an advanced course to accompany our Level 2 training. This course is included with our Level 2 retreats or can be taken on its own. In addition, we offer other online courses which are available for self-guided learning and continuing education. Click below to see our full list of online learning opportunities.
Training Retreats
At the training retreat participants are fully immersed in group processes, growth, healing, connections, and transforming themselves and their relationship to their environment. We believe guiding is a profoundly human and spiritual calling, as opposed to a technical or professional career. We will teach you how to work with others and the medicine
We explore set and setting, holding space, being witnessed, somatic and therapeutic interventions, integration, corrective experiences, and therapeutic modalities.
The retreat is intended for those interested in learning through direct experience how to conduct successful transformational psychedelic therapeutic treatments. Participants will be taken through the entire process — from preparation, intake, treatment, integration, follow-up and aftercare.
We are looking for mature practitioners who have had their own experiences, and feel called to work in this rapidly emerging field of practice. If you feel strongly called to this work and feel aligned with us then you may find our training and community appealing.
We encourage you to bring all of yourself to this work: your wisdom, experience, strengths, trauma and your willingness to learn. Everything is welcome. By healing yourself, you heal those around you.
We are all wounded healers.
We recognize that each of us has an inner healer, waiting to be awakened
Be aware that it is common to experience very strong emotional and somatic reactions during the retreat. Everything is welcome. The safety of the container allows us all to be our human self in all its beauty. We are looking for people who are comfortable in a group and team settings.
Phoenix Academy is committed to diversity. We may have scholarships available POC and indigenous people. Contact admin@phoenixacademy.ca for more information.
Our Founder
Bradley Foster MA
Bradley Foster started with a background in education. His BA from McGill led to a Master’s degree from the University of Toronto and training from the Gestalt Institute in Toronto. With them, he transitioned into a 15 year career as a psychotherapist and a coach, focusing his practice on leadership and creativity. He then branched out to found the Toronto Psychedelic Society and organized many conferences, webinars, and meetings for the psychedelic community. He created and linked psychedelic communities and individuals across Canada. Bradley has treated or overseen hundreds of clients and is training an army of excellent underground therapists.
With his then partner Melania Lumezanu, they co-created many effective psychedelic treatment protocols. Inspired by their results, Mela and Bradley decided first to train therapists in their clinic in Toronto and later in 2020 to create the Chiron Academy to bring this work out to others. Mela and Bradley went different ways professionally in 2021. The result for Bradley was Phoenix Academy, which embodies and exemplifies Bradley’s philosophy of training and collaboration with others. For those interested in Mela’s offerings, please see CHIRON ACADEMY.
Bradley believes psychedelic therapy can heal people’s deepest wounds when done with gentleness, safety, awareness, and intention. His grounded spirituality, rooted in the here and now, holds space for whatever may appear during treatment.
As far as his teaching philosophy, Bradley’s goal is to share his knowledge, learning and experience with others so each can comfortably develop their own protocols and practice. He stresses integration as the most important part of treatment to continue the healing process. It’s 80% of the experience and it’s the part that really makes a difference to your life.
Bradley encourages a healthy and up-to-date exchange of information so he created channels and networks of mental health professionals, and graduates to connect and resource them. Phoenix is a co-creation of its faculty. Bradley is grateful to work along side such passionate and talented teachers and therapists.
Student Testimonials
The training I received with Phoenix Academy was the most profound experience of my life. The entire program was planned out with methodical intention and placed in a beautiful sequence that really helped to heal the healer while growing within a beautiful group of beings together learning how to best serve future clients. This is one experience that I’ll take with me for the rest of my life. Thank you Bradley & Team for being the beautiful souls that you are and making the world a better place.
– Jillian Walsh
THANK YOU! From the bottom of my heart, thank you. I really mean it when I say that this has been the best training experience I’ve had. It was also the best healing experience I’ve had. I’ve been searching for the right fit for years and I am glad I was seen and supported. To feel supported enough to meet an exiled part of myself, to go into the pain and stay with it, and to emerge with the knowledge that I’m a really good person and other people can see that I’m a really good person is life-changing for me. I’m grateful to have been given training and encouragement that will allow me to feel confident in supporting others.
I will continue to enthusiastically recommend the Phoenix training. I hope to attend the future level two training. It would be wonderful if there was a way I could give back to the community or contribute to future offerings.
– J.F. (Vancouver)