Over its long life, downtown Bend’s Drake Park has hosted everything from festivals and water pageants to duck races, concerts and live-action role playing.

On Thursday evening, it will host a new event: A Dose of Magick, in which registered, vetted participants will be given a mild dose of hallucinogen, followed by breathwork, yoga and a curated sound-bath experience.

“Sound is used to activate the experience leading to enhanced visuals, sensations, and insights,” the Eventbrite description of Thursday evening’s event reads in part. “Enjoying a psychedelic sound bath may lead to mental clarity, emotional release, and an enhanced sense of physical well-being. Please join us to experience this powerful tool in activating and regulating the nervous system in a whole new way.”

Said Kevin Kraft, “sounder and founder” of Soundshala, the company putting on A Dose of Magick, “The park is incredible, and to add these other things is just super sweet.”

According to Kraft, A Dose of Magick is not just new to Drake Park or Bend, but also may be the first such kind of event in Oregon, where psilocybin, a hallucinogenic compound found in certain types of mushrooms, has been legal for use in a therapeutic setting just since January 2023.

“I know I’m biased, but this is really next level. I think we’re a bit ahead of the curve,” Kraft said. “No one else is really doing this yet, but I’m sure it’s coming in so many shapes and sizes.”

How A Dose of Magick came to light

Kraft’s soundhealing company, Soundshala, has put on a number of previous soundhealing events.

A while back, he partnered with versatile Bend musician Pete Karsounes on a Beatles soundhealing program.

“I asked him if he could play some Beatles tunes for a class I was curating … The Music and Mantra of The Beatles, as they spent time in India and wrote over 30 songs, 18 of which were featured on the White Album. Their time in India really influenced the whole planet. It’s, like, really amazing what they did.”

The class was quite different from some of the other soundhealing classes Kraft had previously done.

“What we figured out, really by accident, was that through the breathwork and yoga and awareness sets that I do to prepare the body for the soundbath really just open up the entire body. The lyrics, the songs and music really impacted people in a whole new way.”

At its end, someone asked if they could do a Pink Floyd class, which they did, followed by Led Zeppelin. They eventually hatched more than a dozen such programs of other artists’ music, a series they call Rock of Consciousness (ROC). 

“(Kartsounes) sounds and matches the energetic imprint of these artists, and combined with the breathwork and the yoga, it’s a special combination,” Kraft said. 

There is also now Shakti ROC, which launched with a Sarah McLachlan program.

All of this sonic exploration eventually led Sounshala to host its first Micro ROC event on June 8, which featured the music of Pink Floyd. 

Thursday’s Drake Park event, which is just the second microdosing event Soundshala has put on there, is not a ROC event. Rather, Kraft will be employing gongs, crystal bowls and other instruments to conjure atmospheric tones. 

About soundhealing

At the same time, “half the population doesn’t know what soundhealing is. Soundhealing is still a really new term for your average Joe and Joanna. And then to combine that with psilocybin, it gets even more niche,” said Kraft, who has about 15 years of experience in the discipline of soundhealing.

He refers to it as “all things related to sound and meditation and breathwork and stillness,” and describes soundhealing as “the new yoga,” which was about a lot more than pure physicality prior to being “hijacked into a flexibility and exercise type of activity,” as he put it.

Traditionally, the physical aspect of yoga is but one-eighth of what yoga really is, he said.

According to his about page at Soundshala.com, he was living in Hawaii a decade ago when he began his foray into soundhealing.

“If yoga is the union — that’s what that word means — with your higher self, and that can be any definition that you want, then that alignment with your higher self … your quieted self, your peaceful self, when you can calm down the chatter of the mind,” he said, “how do we break that cycle?”

By way of soundhealing, Kraft said, and the kinds of musical instruments he’ll have on hand.

“Through soundhealing, we can become really sensitive to sound and sensitivities and feelings,” he said.   

Microdosing chocolate

Tickets for Thursday’s event were $44.52 at Eventbrite, which does not include the psilocybin, which is administered through Bend psilocybin center Drop Thesis at a cost of $40 in cash. There were still a number of spaces left as of early this week.

However, because the dose is administered by a licensed professional, it may be too late to register for Thursday’s event. More microdosing events on the schedule at soundshala.com/calendar: On July 13, they’ll be back in the park for another microdosing ROC event, featuring Kartsounes playing the music of The Grateful Dead. 

For the clinical aspect of these events, Soundshala is working in tandem with Drop Thesis, and Lindsay Reinhart, a certified physician assistant, will be on hand to administer the doses and remain present throughout the two-hour event.

For 10 of her 15-year PA career, she was in private practice doing rural medicine.

“I felt like the psilocybin was sort of the fast track for clients who had been on SSRIs (antidepressants) for a decade, and I wanted to offer that option to people,” she said.

In a therapeutic setting where someone is taking a macrodose, they start with 20 to 30 milligrams of psilocybin, “whereas the chocolates that we’re giving people at the park are 2 milligrams.”

The long game

Kraft feels that people are paying attention to these new events, but are perhaps hesitant, having doubts about the legality of microdosing and how soundbathing works. He’s also confident that going forward, participation in them will only continue to grow.

“We’re having some really powerful events,” Kraft said. “Sound and microdosing are like two amplifiers working together. You take the songs of the birds and the breeze and the green grass and this perfect weather in Bend, and … it’s just so peaceful.”

He’s also in talks to put on microdosing events elsewhere around Oregon.

“We have conversations going in Portland with some psilocybin centers there,” said Kraft, a yoga teacher of 15 years. “We’re talking to the Eugene Science Center for doing some things there. We’re talking all over the state.” 

“Soundhealing is still a really new term for your average Joe and Joanna,” he said. “And then to combine that with psilocybin, it gets even more niche.”