Naropa University Spins Off Psychedelic Clinic Into Memoru Center

In mid-December of last year, Naropa University, the Buddhist-inspired private institute that's home to the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, announced its Center for Psychedelic Studies was breaking off to form the new Memoru Center for Visionary Healing Arts.

The separation of the Center for Psychedelic Studies and Memoru's creation was necessary for the program's evolution, according to university president Charles G. Lief. Because of federal funding the 51-year-old contemplative teaching university receives, the Center for Psychedelic Studies couldn't work with or research the federally prohibited psychedelics it was training clinicians to facilitate, such as psilocybin.

"We didn't have a clinical practice and we weren't providing any medicines," Lief says. "The higher ed insurance market started to get pretty skittish about universities that were reliant on federal financial aid. So we made a little more crunched decision than we wanted to to carve out the training that Naropa was doing for post-graduate clinical practitioners — that was the primary work we were doing in the psychedelic space."

The Center for Psychedelic Studies was three years old when it split off from Naropa and became Memoru, which will provide the psilocybin facilitator training program that Naropa previously administered — but once Memoru receives a license from the state Natural Medicine Division, students will be able to work with the medicines in a clinical context.

In 2022, Colorado voters legalized psilocybin therapy for adults aged 21 and up while also decriminalizing DMT, ibogaine, psilocybin and mescaline that is not from peyote. Earlier this year, the first state-licensed psilocybin cultivaitons, testing labs and healing centers opened for business, although it's still a small amount.

Under Colorado's new law, psilocybin therapy laws, facilitators must participate in a forty-hour psilocybin practicum that includes time administering psilocybin. Naropa could not provide courses that meet those requirements, as psilocybin is not federally approved for therapeutic use.

Naropa hasn't completely cut out its psychedelic studies, though. Lief says the university offers a twelve-credit psychedelic studies minor, and in the fall semester of 2026 it will launch a 45-credit major in psychedelic studies. The university also plans to offer a master of arts degree in spiritual care, offering a concentration in psychedelics.

In February, a new scholarship opportunity was announced thanks to a $1.5 million grant from Unlikely Collaborators, a nonprofit founded by Elizabeth R. Koch, daughter of conservative billionaire Charles Koch. Financial aid will be available for undergraduate students interested in the BA psychedelic studies minor at Naropa.

Sara Lewis was the primary architect of the Naropa classes that make up the new minor in psychedelic studies at Naropa, but she is now a co-founder of Memoru, which just signed a lease for its new clinic to reside at 100 Arapahoe Avenue on the western edge of Boulder. Lewis doesn't expect the clinic, courses or research facility to open for a couple months as Memoru waits for a state natural medicine license, but she says it already has an extensive waitlist for therapy.

Memoru's other co-founders have deep resumes in the psychedelic space, as well. Marcela Ot'alora, Bruce Poulter and Sara Gael Beauregard have all worked in clinical trials for MDMA-assisted psychotherapy, and Lewis says that Memoru has approval to conduct two clinical trials with MDMA next year.

Memoru will offer ketamine therapy, which is federally legal, along with psilocybin therapy and non-psychedelic therapy. It's a "community clinic plus a training institute," Lewis says. "It's these three pillars of research, clinical care, and training that we'll be focusing on."

Lewis and her cofounders anticipate offering a psychedelic hospice program, too.

"As soon as we open our doors, we will be able to start working with people who are at the end of life," she says, noting that psychedelic therapy can also help spouses and adult children of people facing the end of a life. Memoru also plans a focus on postpartum care for new parents.

Right now, Memoru is dotting i's and crossing t's, applying for a state healing center license and shopping for the right cultivator to provide the fungi.

"The mushroom is actually a living entity that deserves respect, and that matters a lot to us as far as choosing the cultivators that we're going to work with," Lewis notes.

Dosage will range a wide spectrum and be determined in the intake process, according to Lewis, who estimates that around 20 percent of clients will need more extensive screening with a psychiatrist or doctor.

"If people are on certain medications — for instance, if people are on SSRIs [selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors], they might actually require a pretty large dose in order to feel the same effects," she says.

As Memoru gears up to open, Lewis says that all is still on course, despite the separation from Naropa happening sooner than her team had planned.

"It was always clear that if we wanted to continue being a leader in the training space, which we have been, that we would have to carve out this separate entity," she says. "We already had a business plan. To really do the training well, it can't just be reading books and articles and having discussions about psychedelics; we need the ability for these clinicians and chaplains and healers to actually work with the medicine."