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Chris Kilham | |
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Born | Christopher Scott Kilham July 22, 1952 Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. |
Occupation(s) | Medicine Hunter, TV Personality, Educator, Author |
Spouse | Zoe Helene (2007–present) |
Website | www.medicinehunter.com |
Chris Kilham (born July 22, 1952) is an author, educator, and researcher of plant-based medicines. He is known for his appearances on Fox News as the "Medicine Hunter". [1]
Chris Kilham was born and raised in a family of ministers, broadcast and public speaking professionals. He is the son of Elizabeth Scalise Kilham “Bette Day” (1925-2006) and Gene Kilham (1919-1971). Bette Day was one of the first female television broadcasters at Boston's WBZ-TV and also worked as a radio disc jockey. [2] Gene Kilham worked in broadcasting and as a songwriter. His grandfather, Rev. Dr. Victor Scalise graduated Yale Divinity School in 1932. Kilham's uncle and first cousin are both Baptist ministers. [3]
Kilham's first live broadcast appearance was at the age of 7 and worked as a commercial actor in his youth. [4]
Kilham married Zoe Helene in 2007. [5]
Chris Kilham | |
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Founded by Kilham, Medicine Hunter sources medicinal plants and organizes cultivation and trade with indigenous peoples. Kilham's wife is a partner in the company. [6] [7]
Kilham has conducted research on the following plants:
Kilham's work with aphrodisiacs has been featured on CNN, [16] The Dr. Oz Show, [17] Good Morning America, [18] The New York Times, [19] The Washington Post, [20] ABC News Nightline, [11] Outside Magazine, [21] and Business Insider. [14]
From 1985-1990, Kilham was the Vice President of Marketing for Bread and Circus. [22] In 1990, Kilham founded Cowboy Marketing, a consulting firm for the natural foods industry. [23] His book, Cowboy Marketing: How to Shoot from the Hip and Win on the Wild Frontier of Natural Foods Retailing is about his experiences in the natural foods industry. [24]
Kilham is an activist in the movement to legalize marijuana [25] and has written about the topic, including the use of cannabis for medicinal purposes and U.S. patent 6.630.507. [26] [27]
Kilham appears in Robyn Grigg Lawerence's, The Cannabis Kitchen Cookbook (2015), [28] He was listed as one of the "Top Cannabis Chefs" in Culture Magazine. [29]
Chris Kilham | |
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Kilham is recognized as a chief in the South Pacific. [30] He researches and promotes psychoactive and psychedelic plants used in traditional shaman rituals, including kava and ayahuasca. [31] He has written a book about the medicinal qualities of psychoactive and psychedelic plants, entitled Psyche Delicacies: Coffee, Chocolate, Chiles, Kava and Cannabis and Why They're Good for You. [32] Chris' most recent book, The Ayahuasca Test Pilots Handbook - The Essential Guide to Ayahuasca Journeying, [33] has been featured in Newsweek , [34] Boston Magazine, and Reset with Amber Lyon. [35] The Ayahuasca Test Pilots Handbook - The Essential Guide to Ayahuasca Journeying [33] is dedicated to Kilham's wife, Zoe Helene, and to the late Ipupiara, Bernardo Dias Peixoto, a shaman.
Kilham's Ayahausca Monologues have been described as a “psychedelic TED talk” and “Insightful, funny, wild, and totally real". [36] Chris is the founder of Ayahuasca Test Pilots, [37] a “collaboration of individuals who engage in the ceremonial practice of ayahuasca journeying with skilled shamans”; his wife, Zoe Helene, serves as “Co-Pilot” for that organisation.
Kilham is a yoga teacher, conference speaker. [38] Nicki Doane, Deepak Chopra, and Dr. Mehmet Oz are quoted on the book jacket. [39] Kilham has been featured on The Dr. Oz Show teaching Dr. Mehmet Oz the exercises. [40] He has also demonstrated The Five Tibetans on Fox News. [41] His book, The Lotus and The Bud: Cannabis, Consciousness, and Yoga Practice, is a guide to blending cannabis with the practice of yoga. [42]
Kilham is sometimes referred to as the "Psychedelic Yogi". [43] [44] He has a Mind Body Disciplines degree from University of Massachusetts-Amherst, a major that he designed himself. [45]
Kilham has taught ethnobotany at University of Massachusetts since 2000 and referred to as “Explorer in Residence.” [46] He leads the Shaman's Pharmacy Amazon Field Immersion Course, an expedition to primary rain forest in Peru for students from UMass Amherst, Amherst College, Mount Holyoke College, Hampshire College, and Smith College. Students experience the Amazon while learning about field expedition, sustainability, shamanism, and medicinal plants of the region. [7] [47]
Kilham is the author of fourteen books and numerous publications on medicinal plants, natural products, and yoga, including The Five Tibetans: Five Dynamic Exercises for Health, Energy, and Personal Power and Stalking the Wild Orgasm, [48] which appears in the 1988 movie, Earth Girls Are Easy.
Kilham's other books are:
Kilham is a frequent guest on The Dr. Oz Show with Dr. Mehmet Oz, appearing on at least 15 occasions from January 2008 to January 2015, [49] [50] [51] [40] [52] [53] [54] and Good Morning America, where he has appeared to discuss herbal remedies, his cocoa sustainability project, and libido boosting plants. [55] [56] [57] Kilham also serves on The Medical Advisory Board of The Dr. Oz Show. [58]
Kilham has appeared as a guest expert on numerous radio and television programs, speaking primarily about medicine hunting, mind/body health and wellness, traditional botanical medicine, sustainability, environmental and cultural preservation and other related topics.
Ayahuasca is a South American psychoactive brew, traditionally used by Indigenous cultures and folk healers in Amazon and Orinoco basins for spiritual ceremonies, divination, and healing a variety of psychosomatic complaints. Originally restricted to areas of Peru, Brazil, Colombia and Ecuador, in the middle of 20th century it became widespread in Brazil in context of appearance of syncretic religions that uses ayahuasca as a sacrament, like Santo Daime, União do Vegetal and Barquinha, which blend elements of Amazonian Shamanism, Christianity, Kardecist Spiritism, and African-Brazilian religions such as Umbanda, Candomblé and Tambor de Mina, later expanding to several countries across all continents, notably the United States and Western Europe, and, more incipiently, in Eastern Europe, South Africa, Australia, and Japan.
Entheogens are psychoactive substances that induce alterations in perception, mood, consciousness, cognition, or behavior for the purposes of engendering spiritual development or otherwise in sacred contexts. Anthropological studies have established that entheogens are used for religious, magical, shamanic, or spiritual purposes in many parts of the world. Entheogens have traditionally been used to supplement many diverse practices geared towards achieving transcendence, including divination, meditation, yoga, sensory deprivation, healings, asceticism, prayer, trance, rituals, chanting, imitation of sounds, hymns like peyote songs, drumming, and ecstatic dance. The psychedelic experience is often compared to non-ordinary forms of consciousness such as those experienced in meditation, near-death experiences, and mystical experiences. Ego dissolution is often described as a key feature of the psychedelic experience.
Harmala alkaloids are several alkaloids that increase effects of reward system neurotransmitter dopamine by acting as monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs). These alkaloids are found in the seeds of Peganum harmala, as well as leaves of tobacco and coffee beans. The alkaloids include harmine, harmaline, harmalol, and their derivatives, which have similar chemical structures, hence the name "harmala alkaloids". These alkaloids are of interest for their use in Amazonian shamanism, where they are derived from other plants. Harmine, once known as telepathine and banisterine, is a naturally occurring beta-carboline alkaloid that is structurally related to harmaline, and also found in the vine Banisteriopsis caapi. Tetrahydroharmine is also found in B. caapi and P. harmala. Dr. Alexander Shulgin has suggested that harmine may be a breakdown product of harmaline. Harmine and harmaline are reversible inhibitors of monoamine oxidase A (RIMAs). They can stimulate the central nervous system by inhibiting the metabolism of monoamine compounds such as serotonin and norepinephrine.
Dennis Jon McKenna is an American ethnopharmacologist, research pharmacognosist, lecturer and author. He is the brother of well-known psychedelics proponent Terence McKenna and is a founding board member and the director of ethnopharmacology at the Heffter Research Institute, a non-profit organization concerned with the investigation of the potential therapeutic uses of psychedelic medicines.
Jeremy Narby is a Canadian anthropologist and author.
Santo Daime is a syncretic religion founded in the 1930s in the Brazilian Amazonian state of Acre by Raimundo Irineu Serra, known as Mestre Irineu. Santo Daime incorporates elements of several religious or spiritual traditions including Folk Catholicism, Kardecist Spiritism, African animism and indigenous South American shamanism, including vegetalismo.
Jonathan Ott is an ethnobotanist, writer, translator, publisher, natural products chemist and botanical researcher in the area of entheogens and their cultural and historical uses, and helped coin the term "entheogen".
Icaro is a South American indigenous and mestizo colloquialism for magic song. Today, this term is commonly used to describe the medicine songs performed in vegetal ceremonies, especially by shamans in ayahuasca ceremonies.
A drug is any chemical substance that when consumed causes a change in an organism's physiology, including its psychology, if applicable. Drugs are typically distinguished from food and other substances that provide nutritional support. Consumption of drugs can be via inhalation, injection, smoking, ingestion, absorption via a patch on the skin, suppository, or dissolution under the tongue.
Christian Rätsch was a German anthropologist and writer on topics like ethnopharmacology, psychoactive plants and animals.
The stoned ape theory is a controversial theory first proposed by American ethnobotanist and mystic Terence McKenna in his 1992 book Food of the Gods. The theory claims that the transition from Homo erectus to Homo sapiens and the cognitive revolution was caused by the addition of psilocybin mushrooms, specifically the mushroom Psilocybe cubensis, into the human diet around 100,000 years ago. Using evidence largely based on studies from Roland L. Fischer et. al from the 1960s and 1970s, he attributed much of the mental strides made by humans during the cognitive revolution to the effects of psilocybin intake found by Fischer.
Traditional Brazilian medicine includes many native South American elements, and imported African ones. It is predominantly used in areas where indigenous groups and African descendants reside, like in the northeast coast, nearly all interior regions including Amazon regions, savannahs, rainforest, foothills, and Pantanal. According to Romulo R. N. Alves, "although Brazil's health system is public...use of traditional remedies and rituals provide an economical way of healing for much of the populace, but that also does not mean that wealthy Brazilians don't seek it out as well. Traditional medicine is a deep part of Brazilian heritage."
Michael James Harner was an anthropologist, educator and author. His 1980 book, The Way of the Shaman: a Guide to Power and Healing, has been foundational in the development and popularization of Core shamanism as a new age path of personal development for adherents of neoshamanism. He also founded the Foundation for Shamanic Studies.
In general use, herbs are a widely distributed and widespread group of plants, excluding vegetables and other plants consumed for macronutrients, with savory or aromatic properties that are used for flavoring and garnishing food, for medicinal purposes, or for fragrances. Culinary use typically distinguishes herbs from spices. Herbs generally refers to the leafy green or flowering parts of a plant, while spices are usually dried and produced from other parts of the plant, including seeds, bark, roots and fruits.
Guillermo Arévalo Valera is a Shipibo vegetalista and businessperson from the Maynas Province of Peru. His Shipibo name is Kestenbetsa.
Researchers have noted the relationship between psychedelics and ecology, particularly in relation to the altered states of consciousness (ASC) produced by psychedelic drugs and the perception of interconnectedness expressed through ecological ideas and themes produced by the psychedelic experience. This is felt through the direct experience of the unity of nature and the environment of which the individual is no longer perceived as separate but intimately connected and embedded inside.
Zoe Helene is a cultural activist who founded Cosmic Sister, an environmental feminist collective, and coined the phrase “psychedelic feminism.”
Jerome Sarris is co-director of Psychae Institute, Professor of Integrative Mental Health at Western Sydney University, Australia, and a visiting scientist at the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health at the University of Melbourne, Australia.
The International Center for Ethnobotanical Education, Research, and Service (ICEERS) is a non-profit organization (NPO), headquartered in Barcelona. ICEERS is dedicated to transforming society's relationship with psychoactive plants by engaging with some of the fundamental issues resulting from the globalization of ayahuasca, iboga, and other ethnobotanicals. Founded in 2009, ICEERS is registered as a non-profit organization, and has charitable status in the Netherlands and Spain, and through partner organizations in the US and UK. ICEERS also has consultative status with the United Nations’ ECOSOC.