Christopher's Story
I have spent much of my adult life interested in transformation—not as an abstract idea, but as something human beings actually have to live.
For nearly two decades, I have worked with individuals, couples, families, and groups navigating addiction, recovery, trauma, sexuality, relationship rupture, identity, and profound periods of change. I founded and served as Clinical Director of SHAW Center for Healing (2015-2020) in Austin, Texas, and my clinical work continued to expand into consultation, education, psychedelic-informed practice, and the formation of clinicians themselves.
Psychology has never been the only lens through which I understand human experience. Spiritual practice has profoundly shaped my life. Yoga, meditation, mantra, contemplative philosophy, nondual traditions, recovery, ceremony, and years of sitting with people at important thresholds have all influenced the way I understand what it means to change.
Over time, those worlds stopped feeling separate. I became less interested in helping people simply understand themselves and increasingly interested in what happens next: How does insight become embodiment? How does experience become practice? How does what we discover about ourselves change the way we love, choose, repair, lead, and live?
Those questions remain at the center of my work today.
A Life of Practice
My spiritual life is not separate from my professional life, but neither do I confuse the two.
I am deeply interested in the meeting place between psychology and spirituality—between what we can understand clinically and what remains mysterious; between disciplined discernment and genuine openness; between extraordinary experiences and the very ordinary work of becoming a better human being.
My practice draws from kundalini yoga, meditation, mantra, contemplative traditions, Kashmir Shaivism, Hindu philosophy, nondual thought, interspirituality, recovery, and psychedelic and altered-state experiences.
I don't consider myself a guru, although, aren't we all gurus?
For me, devotion means returning. Practice means returning. Relationship means returning. Again and again, we are invited into presence.
ArcherShaw: My Shared Work with Aeon
ArcherShaw grew from the life Aeon and I began building together. We are husbands, spiritual partners, teachers, collaborators, facilitators, and—perhaps most importantly—two people living what we believe.
Together, we co-founded Merkaba Temple & ArcherShaw Temple and created spaces for spiritual practice, teaching, retreats, ceremony, community, and honest conversation. Much of what we offer has emerged from what we ourselves have had to learn about relationship, recovery, devotion, transformation, and becoming. ArcherShaw is where that shared life becomes shared work.
My Professional Work
Alongside ArcherShaw, I maintain a distinct professional practice as a clinical educator, consultant, psychotherapist, psychedelic medicine practitioner, author, and speaker.
My professional work is increasingly focused on helping the people who help people—particularly clinicians navigating the rapidly changing intersection of psychotherapy, psychedelic experience, spirituality, integration, and clinical discernment.
That work now has its own home at ChristopherShaw.net.
Clinical Education · Consultation · Live Trainings · Speaking · Writing · Resources
Still Becoming
I don't teach because I believe I have arrived. I teach because I believe the path asks something of us. To become more honest. More discerning. More responsible for the lives we create. More capable of relationship. More willing to repair. More available to wonder. And, perhaps most importantly, more capable of love.
I'm still practicing. And that's the work.