Ruth Vassilas is a corporate lawyer turned social scientist. Her PhD research at the University of York focuses on how Westerners integrate spiritually transformative experiences (STEs)—such as psychedelic, near-death and Kundalini experiences—into their professional, spiritual, health and social lives. Ruth is the president of York’s Drug Science Society and teaches on various undergraduate modules including Understanding the Self in Society and Spiritual Realities. She is passionate about understanding mechanisms of personal and collective transformation.

Embodied Existence after Psychedelic (and other Spiritually Transformative) Experiences

Spiritually transformative experiences (STEs)—such as psychedelic, Kundalini or near-death experiences—reshape how individuals perceive, inhabit and manage their bodies. This talk explores qualitative data on how experiencers navigate existential paradoxes of self, free will and agency arising from tensions between unity and separateness, boundaries between self and other, and feeling ‘guided’ by unseen forces. Health, spiritual and relational practices become vehicles for maintaining lives and bodies open to, yet protected against, unseen realities and transcendence. This analysis offers a new lens into embodied and social aspects of integration and how STEs shape beliefs, belonging and being in the modern West.