Latest / Plant More Worry Less: The Huachuma Foundation Podcast / Safe in the Calm: Why the Gentlest Medicine Is Often the Hardest One to Face

Transcript

Safe in the Calm: Why the Gentlest Medicine Is Often the Hardest One to Face · Plant More Worry Less: The Huachuma Foundation Podcast

• 0:00
  [music]
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Plant More Worry Less, a podcast by the Huachuma Foundation.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: We are grateful for the supporters who make this show possible.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: To learn more about our work or support our mission, please visit huachumafoundation.org.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Also note, in this podcast, we discuss sacred plant medicines for educational purposes only.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing herein should be considered medical or legal advice.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: And we do not encourage using any substances in places where they are illegal.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: We hope you enjoy this very special episode.
• 0:43
  [music]
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: I will say it's really nice to see you.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, likewise.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_02: Nice to see you both again together.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry. Good.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_02: I've been listening to lots of the podcasts,
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_02: so I feel like I've actually had you both there anyway, which is cool.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Cool.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we've been missing you in our integration calls and traveling.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we'd love to hear about that at some point too, about how all that went down.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it was amazing.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: Where did you go again?
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_02: I went to Spain for the Ayahuasca Forum,
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_02: and then I met up with my mum to go to Greece
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_02: and indulge in the mysteries.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I'm very into myth and story, so being in Greece was like, oh.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_02: I went to Eleusis, if you're familiar with the Eleusinian Mysteries.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, let's get into it.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: Let's just go right into it.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: What are the Lucinian mysteries?
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_02: Well, they're like these ancient kind
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_02: of cults of Demeter and Persephone sort
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_02: of celebrating the return of Persephone
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_02: to Demeter after Persephone.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_02: Hades took her to the underworld.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_02: So Persephone's father is Zeus and Zeus's brother is Hades.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_02: So Zeus had kind of given permission for Hades to take Persephone as his queen
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_02: to the underworld.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_02: She was kidnapped.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_02: And understandably, Demeter was not happy about that.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_02: And she's the goddess of like agriculture and fertility and things like that.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_02: So...
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_02: It's not ideal to have the goddess
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_02: of agriculture really upset because then no crops grow.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_02: There's like famine, you know.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_02: So Zeus was like, oh, we better do something about it.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_02: So he kind
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_02: of had to say to Hades,
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_02: look, you've got to give her back.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_02: So two other gods and goddesses,
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_02: Hecate and Hermes,
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_02: went down to the underworld to retrieve Persephone.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_02: And when Persephone was on her way back up, Hades said, Oh, well,
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_02: like in case you get hungry for your journey, here's some pomegranate seeds.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_02: And so on the way back, Persephone is eating the pomegranate seeds.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_02: They come back up.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_02: Demeter's super ecstatic, so excited, asks her if she's hungry after her long journey.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_02: And she says, no, it's okay.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_02: Hades gave me something to eat.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_02: And Demeter's just distraught
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_02: because she didn't Persephone didn't know the rule
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_02: that if you consume something in the underworld,
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_02: you are forever tied to the underworld.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_02: So that's why Persephone Persephone had
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_02: to go back to the underworld for a couple
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_02: of months, a year, and that's our winters when Persephone is back in the underworld.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_02: So Ellisonian mysteries are to celebrate the return
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_02: of Persephone and celebrate these goddesses.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_02: So at Eleusis, the site where the mysteries happen, there's also the Plutonian,
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_02: which is where The Sephony re-emerges from the underworld to meet Demeter again.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_02: And so these mysteries went on for, you know, over a thousand years.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_02: The initiates kept the mysteries
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_02: under wraps because it was punishable by death
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_02: to disclose what these mysteries entailed.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_02: And so all we kind of know is the path and the process
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_02: and that there was this brew called the kukion that was consumed,
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_02: which is made of barley.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_02: But then there's the ergot in the rye.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_02: Which is kind of what LSD is made from.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_02: The traces of that have been found on chalices and things like that.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_02: It was kind of like this, they know it to be like a psychedelic brew.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_02: So you had these initiates that were fasting,
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_02: walking 20 kilometers from Athens to Eleusis
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_02: to then consume a psychedelic brew.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_02: And then they were in this kind
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_02: of temple space and And they seemed to think
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_02: that they were completely in the dark for over 24 hours.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_02: So you can just imagine, like, being fasted, this brew, and then darkness.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um...
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_02: And the procession was to carry the sacred objects.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_02: But to this day, nobody knows what those sacred objects are
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_02: because every initiate kept it under wraps.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_02: And even some of the Romans and the Stoics that were initiates,
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_02: there was one guy that kind of had a plan to go and find out what it was
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_02: and share it.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_02: But then he had a dream that was like...
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_02: You cannot disclose any of this.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_02: So nobody really disclosed, which I find amazing.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_02: It really still remains a total mystery.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_02: What these initiates went through.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah. Very cool.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for sharing. The only thing that I know is from Brian Maurescu's book.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, The Mortality Key.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: The Mortality Key, which I think a lot of people that was there...
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: Their Bible for that. Yeah.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_02: It's such an interesting book.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah. So everybody that's listening, we didn't even introduce who you are.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: Bianca, our good friend here.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: Bianca, you want to introduce yourself or share where you're at in the world?
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: Where are you coming to us from?
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_02: Sure. I am based on the Gold Coast,
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_02: on the east coast of Australia,
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_02: on Coommeri Country.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_02: It's a very beautiful part of the world, fairly close to Byron Bay,
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_02: which might be familiar to some people.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_02: We're just...
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_02: Everything's coming alive here now.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_02: We are in our spring heading into summer, so it's just the best time of year here at the moment.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: That's amazing.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: And we should also say how we met you, which was in Peru this last summer,
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: which was so fun to be able to spend a whole retreat with you and ceremonies
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: and songs and making medicine and time sitting and talking on the couch.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: Totally.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that was like such a beautiful time.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: So it's so nice to be with you again.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_02: It's so funny how I ended up finding you guys and joining this because I was,
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_02: one afternoon I was setting up for a breath work and a sound healing with my partner
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_02: who, he travels to Peru twice a year to work with his teachers.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_02: And he has always sort of said, you know, to come, Come with me, come with me,
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_02: but I haven't felt that cold for a deeper journey with ayahuasca yet.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_02: And I picked up my phone to send a message to a friend of mine on Instagram who was coming.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_02: And then just...
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_02: An ad for your retreat came up and I was just, oh, what's this?
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_02: And having a look.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_02: And then I saw it was Miguel that you were going to be working with.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_02: And he'd been on my radar for several years.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_02: I had a friend here that was like, you have to go work with Miguel.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_02: I had another friend in the US was like, you have to go work with Miguel.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_02: And then just in that second, I was just like, oh my God, okay.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_02: And I turned around to my partner.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, babe, guess what?
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_02: I'm going into Peru in June too.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_02: And he's like, that's great.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: And then we ran our sound healing.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_02: And then I contacted Hamid and then it did happen.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_02: So it was great.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: Amazing.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if I knew that full story, but it seems to work that way.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: We don't get a lot of people, you know, our retreats are small, as you know,
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: but we always get like the right person sees it at the right time.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: And then it means something, you know.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: We did spend the time and yeah, I'm just curious, you know,
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: where we can go a lot of ways with our conversation today.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: Is there anything on your heart that you really want to share?
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: We mentioned that before we really started recording and talking,
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: you were recently in Spain and you were sharing about Greece.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I know Spain was, is it the World Ayahuasca Forum? Yeah.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: Is that the conference?
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah. Yeah.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_02: That was...
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_02: Pretty amazing to have
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_02: so many Indigenous tribal leaders congregate
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_02: in the one place in Europe.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_02: There was representation from...
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_02: Indigenous groups throughout Brazil, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru,
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_02: and I just cannot imagine
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_02: the feat it would have been to get people out
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_02: of their communities and over to Spain.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_02: And there's a real history to that conference as to why it was...
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_02: Planned or needed to be in Spain
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_02: because I was wondering why it wouldn't be
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_02: in South America somewhere.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_02: But having worked a lot with Indigenous communities here in Australia,
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_02: very remote communities and having some traditional healers come and stay with me
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_02: and knowing just how difficult it was to To get people a two-day journey out
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_02: to the same, somewhere else in the same country,
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_02: I cannot imagine what it would have been like to make that whole conference happen.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_02: So that just was very, very impressive from my get-go.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_02: But...
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I really have no words what it was like to hear
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_02: the call from these leaders
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_02: in their communities as to how we take care
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_02: of these medicines and shepherd them
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_02: into the Western context
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_02: with reverence and respect and reciprocity,
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_02: but also real...
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_02: Acknowledgement of who the original knowledge holders are here
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_02: because they're not things that you want to, you know,
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_02: mess around with if you don't really know what you're doing.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_02: Like there's, you know, high risk, high reward kind of situation.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_02: So it was really humbling to be there but also very inspiring as well.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_02: And it was nice to share the work I presented with my business partner today.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_02: And on our work in our organization,
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_02: which is called Indigenous Psychedelic Assisted Therapies,
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_02: to share the work that we've been doing over here in Australia.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, there was representation from all over the world and it was amazing.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_02: And we went over with a bunch of our Maori colleagues from Aotearoa, New Zealand.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_02: And it was nice to have
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_02: a little Oceania crew happening
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_02: over there too.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_02: So left there feeling a real response,
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_02: like a greater responsibility to these people.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_02: Medicines, uh, as well, which is certainly how I feel,
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_02: uh, with Huachuma too,
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_02: you know, it's a medicine that I have been connected
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_02: with for several years now
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_02: and I remember having an integration call with you, Hamid, and, uh,
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_02: The jumping back into life straight
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_02: after being in Peru and doing a lot
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_02: of integration work myself, knowing like, oh gosh,
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not practicing what I preach here because I'm just getting straight into it.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_02: But as I was having that thought of I really need to
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_02: Focused on tuning in with my integration.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_02: I was actually planting a cactus at the time that I'm having this thought
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_02: and my intention was to just deepen my relationship with the cactus.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_02: So I just had to have a little giggle,
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_02: like I should be doing my integration as I'm planting cactus.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_02: Probably about seven cacti that just came into my,
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_02: into my, um, I adopted off a friend.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, a good reminder of the organic nature of these things.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_02: And it's not something you always have to like go and do,
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_02: you know?
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I remember that.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: And, um, I think that's one of the interesting things about huachuma is it's
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: a little bit different, you know, than ayahuasca.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: They're not really—I know people who are growing ayahuasa,
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: which is interesting too because you can grow it as a house plant and somebody
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: that I met had it in a pot and it had found its way around their fan
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: on their ceiling and was just wrapping around and it was just basically taking
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: over the house.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, wow, the cactus are so much,
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: this is such a different energy to work with them.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you've been in Australia.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'm really curious if you can share about that too.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: Somehow there's a big relationship between Huachuma and Australia.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know the history of it, if you know,
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: but the cactus is there and it's been there for a while.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: So obviously there were people that brought it there.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, I'm not sure of the story of how it arrived here,
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_02: but I guess particularly in certain parts of the country,
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_02: very, you know,
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_02: dry and warm temperatures.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_02: So there's certain places where it just absolutely thrives, you know,
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_02: and I do think it is often quite happy.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_02: Here, and there's certainly some hybrid species
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_02: that were born in Australia as well.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_02: There's one called the yaoi that's a hybrid
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_02: that was born in Australia.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_02: I'm sure there's probably more,
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_02: but the yaoi is kind of like a mythological creature,
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_02: kind of like Bigfoot or something like that that's in the...
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_02: Watch out for when you're camping, just like our drop bears.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_02: So, yeah,
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_02: it's been a long relationship here and...
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_02: People just like to grow them.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_02: I know so many cacti enthusiasts.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_02: It's just a real, yeah, whether or not it's medicine work is beside the point.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_02: People just love the cacti.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_02: I have a friend that works in a place that's called Cactus Land and it's amazing.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_02: This giant property of just every kind of cactus you can imagine.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_02: And his job is to like attend.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_02: It's a dream job, really.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah,
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_02: my relationship
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_02: with that particular medicine doesn't surprise me in that the...
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_02: For me, the characteristics of Huachuma has really been
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_02: that grandfather energy,
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_02: you know, even just looking at like Hactus and it's tall, it's sturdy,
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_02: like there's a real sense of being held by this wise person.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_02: Knowledgeable but kind energy
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_02: and I think
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_02: in my own life everything has usually been like pretty pressured like you've got
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_02: to do more, be more
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_02: and even myself being I would say very in a like masculine
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_02: And that not being a great thing,
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_02: it's kind of caused a lot of like health and,
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_02: you know, challenges.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_02: And so for me, the...
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_02: The gentle grandfather energy of this cactus and just being around it all
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_02: the time has just been so healing of, I guess what you might say,
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_02: like a masculine wound in myself because...
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't always have to be more or harder or do it properly.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_02: You hear this so much in medicine spaces of like...
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_02: You didn't really do it properly,
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_02: like if you didn't get your head blasted off or if you didn't, you know,
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_02: have a full release kind of dose or if you didn't have more than one cup and kind
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_02: of go all in like you didn't do it properly.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_02: And I feel like Huachuma just kind of laughs in the face
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_02: at that because it's like you've just missed the point.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_02: Of just being like, where are you trying to go?
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_02: It's kind of, you know, I almost have this image in my head of like a chirpy sort
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_02: of grandfather laughing and tapping someone on the head like, what are you trying to do?
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: Where are you trying to go?
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: Come back here.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_02: If that makes sense.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah. Yeah.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the way I've spoken about it a little bit,
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: it's like sometimes we're trying to walk all the way around the earth,
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: like really just going after it.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: And Huachum was a lot of times just like turning around
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: and realizing like you don't have to go all around the earth to get there.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: Just turn around. The spot is right there.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's right here.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah. What you know and
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_02: I think people miss out
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_02: on this medicine because there's this sense that like it's too subtle.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's, you know, you don't really,
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_02: you're not going to feel anything is what people often say, which, you know.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: Obviously, it depends what kind of cacti you're working with and lots
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_02: of different variables there.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_02: But I think it's very indicative
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_02: of this desire to escape or get away from ourselves
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_02: and go to another realm or whatever
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_02: because we don't know how to be with ourselves.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_02: You know, even when I did my first vision quest and telling people what
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_02: that was being, you know, three days and nights solo in the wilderness by myself,
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_02: people were mortified at the idea Of having to be with themselves
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_02: for an extended period of time, you know.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_02: So when people kind of dismiss Huachuma as like this subtle thing,
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_02: I think actually what's happening is they're probably terrified
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_02: of what it might be like to come home to themselves or be embodied or to be
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_02: so present to what is that you might actually have to Be with what comes up
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_02: as a result of not being blasted off here
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_02: or there or outrunning oneself.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_02: So it's definitely not subtle when you look at it like that.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_02: I had a client say to me once that the hardest drug they've ever done is sobriety.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_02: And I had a good laugh because it's very, very true.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I've said that before, too, on occasion.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, what you like can be very sobering, in a way.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and that's...
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_02: The presence that it brings, I certainly feel that it is a very heart opening,
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_02: but what happens when our hearts are open?
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_02: It's not necessarily that we're going to feel joy
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_02: or be happy or it's going to be pleasant.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_02: When your heart is open, that's opening you up to the full gamut
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_02: of the human emotional spectrum.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_02: I know that Huachuma has been my biggest ally in processing grief
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_02: that I haven't been able to allow myself to come into contact with.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_02: You know, like I remember one time being curled up in the chair of a tree,
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_02: a chair because it felt like a chair,
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_02: just curled up and just sobbing and sobbing and sobbing for hours.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_02: But That experience of being held not only by the medicine,
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_02: but Mother Nature herself.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_02: And it was just the most beautiful, profound experience.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_02: But...
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_02: It was gut-wrenching too and it was, you know, in the integration of that,
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_02: like no wonder people don't want to go to this medicine
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_02: because you might actually have to feel what's there, you know,
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_02: without being distracted by visuals or going on a journey of sorts.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_02: Not that that can't happen, which I only really know one person
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_02: that told me they had very strong visuals on me.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's the medicine that we need right now.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_02: Might be a bit biased, but... We're
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: talking to the Huachuma Foundation.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: We might be a little bit biased.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: I was actually just going to ask you, Bianca,
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: because I don't know that we like said this yet,
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: but you're like you're what you do is like a clinical psychologist.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: So I was curious how you felt Huachuma fit into.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_01: This sort of epidemic and the things that people are going through as a collective
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: And how it might be helpful to be in this love and light unity sort
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: of consciousness. So maybe the subtlety of it too,
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_01: versus like the blasting off into another dimension,
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: which also like I say that with most respect for mushrooms and ayahuasca
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_01: because I do think that's helpful.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: But what is it about huachuma and the way that it's sort of an embodiment medicine?
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: How do you think this is going to help the people.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I think of people with,
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_02: you know, trauma in their histories, for example,
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_02: and a lot of people have been through
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_02: The ringer already, you know,
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_02: and what I have come to see
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_02: in my own work is Most people,
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_02: the origins of their trauma is
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_02: in their attachment disruption
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_02: or attachment wounding.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_02: So somebody either did something to them that was harmful
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_02: or they didn't do something and that's caused significant harm.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_02: So thinking more along like neglect or neglect.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_02: I wasn't believed or nobody saw me.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_02: Nobody intervened, those kinds of things.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_02: And so...
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_02: To experience like I guess the heart opening
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_02: and I guess that more gentle embrace
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_02: of Huachuma compared to say other medicines I think is often going more
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_02: towards that original wounding around the attachment like to what a lot
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_02: of these people I work with can't tolerate is warmth
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_02: because they haven't experienced it.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_02: Because harmful things may have happened to them
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_02: when people have insincerely offered warmth, but forget for their own gratification,
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_02: right?
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_02: So this state of stillness
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_02: or an experience of warmth or calm is actually
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_02: the most threatening state to be in.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_02: That's why...
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_02: People can often be in tumultuous relationships or things like
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_02: that because we get comfortable in the chaos.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_02: It's familiar.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_02: I often liken it to listening to the Jaws music
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_02: of like the anticipatory anxiety
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_02: of something that's going to happen.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_02: So the calm state is unbearable.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_02: And so we have to do something to kind of set things off.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_02: To be in the chaos or the intensity because that's what
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_02: the nervous system is familiar with and knows how to navigate.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think Huachuma is a beautiful, gentle,
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_02: kind teacher of learning how to feel safe in the calm.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_02: You know, to build a connection to the body
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_02: and the felt sense in a way that's,
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_02: I guess, very assisted
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_02: by the qualities
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_02: of this beautiful teacher.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I certainly work with people where perhaps they've gone and seen
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_02: a somatic therapist or they've tried to do something different.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_02: Focused on embodiment because they know I have to learn to get into my body
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_02: because I'm very dissociated, I'm disconnected.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_02: But it can be too much too soon and just send people into total overwhelm.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_02: So I think there's a real gradual,
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_02: supported invitation from Huachuma
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_02: to get to find safety in the body because even
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_02: though the body is the host of trauma, it's also the host of trauma.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_02: The healing potential,
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_02: but also millennia of intergenerational strengths
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_02: that people become very disconnected to when they're
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_02: in the thick of a trauma
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_02: or the legacy of trauma with, you know, say the previous one or two generations.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_02: So...
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_02: I'm hoping that Huachuma will get more of a look in as a medicine
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_02: to be used in that context.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_02: I think MDMA is an incredible medicine for trauma as well.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_02: And I imagine the real motivation
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_02: to not research deeply things like Huachuma is
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_02: because holding space for people for 15 hours is not a great business model.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_02: But I really do think it's a beautiful medicine
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_02: to support the finding safety
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_02: in being present and being embodied in In a gentle and supported way.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that more,
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_02: even how that's kind of a more masculine quality for many
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_02: of us with Huachuma to, especially for women to experience,
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_02: have an experience of like safe masculine energy
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_02: is incredibly profound as well,
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_02: you know.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_02: I think there's a lot going on in the world at the moment where we're really focused
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_02: on the danger of men and the danger of the masculine.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, I think for good reason we're getting up in arms about that.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_02: But how do we find safety
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_02: in these things,
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_02: like a strong, supported, masculine situation?
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_02: And I think Huachuma has a real potential to play a part in that too.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for sharing that.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: Good to have your perspective as somebody who holds space too.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: Because I had always intuited
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: that As a psychologist, perhaps,
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: there are more psychologists entering the field of holding space
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: in the psychedelic realm.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: Huachuma just seemed off the table in my mind because I've been in therapy
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: and it's usually like a one-hour session.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_00: So then I'm thinking, well, if they're going to hold space for something for four
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_00: to six hours, that's a lot of energy.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's a lot of energy.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: And then you have a medicine like Huachuma,
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_00: which might take three hours just to take effect
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: once you give it to somebody.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_00: And it might last 16 hours or longer.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: Then it's a really profound thing.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, one of the reasons I really love Huachuma is that swowness.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: You kind of hinted at it, but it doesn't seem to have
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_00: that rollercoaster feeling like you get with the medicines.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: We were talking to somebody on our last podcast about mushrooms and all respect
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_00: to the mushrooms.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_00: But at my age, I don't like rollercoasters, but when I take them, it's like,
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why I say with people.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: Totally.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_02: And that's why I think people with trauma,
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_02: they've already been through enough to add the intensity of some of these medicines.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_02: Not to say that they're not going to get a lot of benefit, whatever,
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_02: but It can be really, really, really tough for some people.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_02: Like in Australia, we can legally work with MDMA and psilocybin.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_02: So that's what I'm working with.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_02: And I mean, there's lots of positives to being able to do that,
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_02: but there's also lots of disadvantages of how these things fit into the Like
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_02: a therapeutic model
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_02: because of all the, you know, I mean,
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_02: we're kind of the first country to be doing this as well.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_02: So there's no path to follow.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_02: We're kind of having to carve it out as we go.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_02: And it has been really beautiful to offer this to people,
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_02: but it's also really It can be really harrowing, you know.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_02: If you are working with psilocybin
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_02: but you don't know how to or you,
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_02: parts of you are really defended against surrendering and allowing the medicine in,
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_02: it can be so harrowing for people, you know.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_02: And I...
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, of course, you can get fruits from that.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_02: And I think there's a lot of – sometimes there can be
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_02: a lot of benefit for people
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_02: for seeing that they have the capacity to go through something like that.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_02: But I would – I think, like,
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_02: aren't we missing the first step of actually getting – like,
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_02: building safety to actually be –
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_02: In one's body to build safety in the relationship more deeply.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_02: And something like Huachuma to me can be such a facilitator of...
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_02: Building that connection to the body,
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_02: but the fact that it's got a slower onset as well for many, many of us,
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_02: like you said, sometimes it might be a couple of hours or at least 90 minutes
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_02: or whatever before something kicks in.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_02: And it's not like, whoa, I'm being blasted off into space.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_02: You can learn how to surrender
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_02: and allow in a much more doable way.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_02: I really hope
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_02: that that might be something we can start to work with more.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_02: Reality is a lot of people are traveling overseas, you know, like myself as well.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_02: I had the good fortune of living in Mexico for five years,
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_02: which was great to be able to work with these master teachers.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_02: But reality is here a lot
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_02: of people are traveling a lot to go and work
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_02: with these medicines in California.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_02: In Peru or other places,
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_02: I think I told you my business partner
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_02: has another business called Sacred Roots
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_02: where they actually take Australian psychedelic therapists
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_02: over to Chavin to work
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_02: with a teacher there that they're connected to help.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_02: Give Australian therapists the opportunity
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_02: to connect with these master plants
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_02: in their homelands
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_02: and people are often so blown away
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_02: because Huachuma's not ever really entered their consciousness
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_02: of something they would work with and then they fall in love.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_02: Because how could you not?
• 39:28
  I know.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_02: Especially in Chamin.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_01: I hope to get there one day.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_02: Let's go.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_01: I would say me too, but we went.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_01: So maybe we can go again.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_01: Put it on your vision board.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_01: I know, he can't wait.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_01: If we had a plane flight, I think I know what we can do better with next time
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_01: to make it more appealing for him.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_01: A little bit at least.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_00: Chavin is a lot for a first-timer.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's interesting to take people who haven't worked with Huachuma there.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's sort of like, I don't know, you combine,
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_00: it's the master's degree of Huachuma to go there.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_00: So that's pretty awesome.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_00: I can imagine that if that's one's first experience with Huachuma too, that's pretty different.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_00: Some of the people's first experiences are those very mild,
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_00: hard to connect with type experiences and there would not be very palpable.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_02: And even though I certainly recognize the challenge of that,
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_02: I think the context at which these therapists are going over as well
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_02: of like what we're actually asking
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_02: of the clients that we work with when they come
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_02: to either MDMA or psilocybin,
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_02: most of them are psychedelically naive patients.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_02: Some of them have never even had a drug recreationally in their life.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_02: And then they're being asked to have probably what's
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_02: the equivalent of four
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_02: to five grams of mushrooms.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_02: But then not only that, putting an eye mask on and going
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_02: into their internal experience I think that's
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_02: the master's degree or probably PhD
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_02: that we're asking of them.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_02: And I think if you're going to hold space for people,
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_02: you need to know what it's like to go where they're going.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_02: And that's a bit of a contention, I guess, with this kind of...
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_02: Medical model of psychedelic therapy is the age-old question,
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_02: do psychedelic therapists really need personal experience?
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_02: And people will often say, oh,
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_02: you don't expect your neurosurgeon to have had his own brain surgery.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_02: But to me,
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_02: that's just the most pointless comparison because it's not psycho-spiritual...
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_02: same, the psycho
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_02: -spiritual Fragility
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_02: of what we're doing here is a profound
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_02: and immense responsibility.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_02: And I can say as a psychologist,
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_02: the most robust training I've done in any therapeutic modality that I've trained
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_02: in has required me to undergo my own experience
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_02: and experiential work
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_02: of that modality.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_02: So if we're looking at this as a therapeutic modality in the context
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_02: in which we're working in these medical models,
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_02: then to me it makes sense that you have to have had your own experience
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_02: because you can only take somebody as far as you've been yourself, you know.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think it's really fantastic that they are being really challenged.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_02: Mind you, a hike at Kinsokocha would probably challenge quite
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_02: a few as well.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_02: So for various different reasons,
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_02: but I think it's It is imperative that we know what it's like to go
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_02: where they're going if we're going to hold space and that responsibility.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_02: Because how do you create safety if, you know,
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_02: or you try to provide support to someone saying, like, you're safe.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, how do you know that they are?
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_02: Physically, they might be.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_02: But when we're looking psycho-spiritually, yeah.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_02: People can't often receive support if they know
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_02: that you actually have no idea what's going on because how do you know?
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_02: How do you know?
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_02: So good on them for going.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's a great thing
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_02: and I have no doubt that it's a big challenge
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_02: but the ones I've spoken to have all kind of said it was
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_02: the most amazing experience ever.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not sure how they navigate the ceremony,
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_02: but I imagine it's pretty intense.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's been a big exploration that I've had too over the years.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I think I saw it most in the jungle where I was with the Shipibo,
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_00: but he was very adamant that Every plant medicine that he's given to anybody,
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_00: he makes it and he takes it first.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_00: And part of that is not just the physical safety, but like you said,
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_00: to understand what it does to people is very important.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's the other layer that you mentioned,
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_00: which is that if we haven't experienced somebody's life,
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_00: Or anything related to what they're going through,
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_00: it's very hard to understand sometimes what they're going through from the outside.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes people don't communicate it in a way that is easy.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's all of these things that come out of the shamanic models, which is,
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_00: I think, much more insightful, which is doing your own work.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_00: Doing your own exploration with the plants, the medicines,
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_00: and your own nervous system, your own biology, your own psyche,
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_00: so that you can relate versus having been taught it in a workshop.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_02: That's hard.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_02: It just kind of blows my mind here
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_02: that we're doing a couple of day trainings
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_02: or even some people, it's like a weekend training and now they're
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_02: a certified psychedelic therapist
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_02: and we can be certified but somebody
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_02: in the jungle, they have to go through a 10-year apprenticeship
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_02: or In Mexico,
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_02: Amatakame in the, you know, Urarica tradition of peyote,
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_02: a decade-long apprenticeship as well.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_02: But we can do it in a weekend, I think.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_02: And I know that it's, like, it's a different context.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, I myself am about to run a seven-day training,
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_02: you know, to certify people.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_02: But...
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_02: That commitment to one's ongoing process is so important because what I really see
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_02: a lot of, not just in the psychedelic space,
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_02: but I think in our modern world in general is this rush to become the teacher
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_02: without spending enough time being the student or the apprentice.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_02: Even I supervise psychology students and I've, you know,
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_02: seeing people that their first plan as soon as they graduate is to go out there
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_02: and go and start their own private practice.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_02: And that does...
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_02: It terrified me a lot because I'm like, hang on,
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_02: now's your time to go and find a wise person
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_02: to continue your apprenticeship.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_02: Like, of course, you're going to be working and seeing people and doing all of that,
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_02: but to have some guidance and some eldership in what you're doing.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I think so many people nowadays want to expedite the process where they become
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_02: The master or the teacher and now they jump into trying to supervise other people
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_02: or run their own training or, you know,
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_02: serving medicine without really committing to an ongoing apprenticeship.
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_02: So whether that's being connected to a teacher, you know, like you guys with Miguel,
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_02: for example, or whether it's a psychologist that is going and working
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_02: in a group practice for a while so that they can learn from senior clinicians
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_02: and keep building their skill.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_02: I really think we need to learn to slow down
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_02: and be humble enough to be a student for longer.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_02: Without rushing to be the teacher.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_02: And again,
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_02: I feel like that's something I've got
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_02: a lot from with my relationship
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_02: with the cactus is just in general to just slow down, just with everything,
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_02: just slow down.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_02: No matter what it is,
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_02: that's often the key thing I take away from anything and I And the.
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_02: I think that translates to being a space holder as well, like what's the rush?
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_02: We can do it quickly or we can do it safely and well, like they're our choices.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_02: So these weekend workshops to become a psychedelic therapist
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_02: or you can go
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_02: and I've had someone say about I bet.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_02: You tell me once that they were initiated into the Shipibo tradition
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_02: after their six weeks in the jungle.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, really?
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_02: You were initiated in six weeks?
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_02: You must be pretty special.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it usually takes eight weeks.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_02: You must be a quick learner.
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's when they give you the microchip at the end of the course and they send
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_00: the song into you.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_00: In fairness, I did go to that.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so what they did tell us, you know, after you pay your $6,000 and you're there,
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_00: you're already there.
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_00: So they say, well, this is not an initiation for you to go serve medicine.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_00: Don't think that this is enough.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_00: And to their credit, you know,
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_00: the only thing they need to do is change the marketing for that program and put it
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_00: in the advertisement.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_00: And then it would be in full alignment because they're very clear, like it is a lifetime thing.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the Shipibo themselves are sort of like that.
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_00: They're constantly learning, you know,
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_00: and maybe they might say their teacher is the plants, right?
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's like you have supervisors, you're a supervisor in therapy.
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_00: I actually, you know, I have a family of therapists in the family.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_00: And when I was first going to therapy, I couldn't afford a therapist, right?
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_00: So my sister was in her supervision and she recommended her friend
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_00: who was getting supervision hours.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_00: They have to get thousands, right?
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_00: Super affordable, though, because I needed help when I was in my 20s.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_00: But I always marveled at that and how
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_00: that profession really honored this way
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_00: of learning, which was slow.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that even after the formal 2,000, 3,000 hours, whatever they do,
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_00: that it seems to me like really good therapists are always in supervision.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_00: They're always with colleagues themselves.
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_00: Who are able to help them with cases and also they're also in their own therapy.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_00: Like there's never like a time where a therapist doesn't have their own therapist.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so one of the things that I really appreciate and I mean, you know,
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_00: as far as if I were to pick, I'm not at all picking,
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_00: if I were to pick a therapist to hold space for me versus an MD therapist.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_00: What I see is I'd rather have the therapist because of that.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas the MDs in the United States are the ones that I see taking the courses
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_00: to do, let's say, ketamine or something like this.
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_00: And they have absolutely no experience holding space for this type of thing.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas the therapy...
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_00: At least from the outside, it looks very well put together.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_00: And then in the plant medicine world, when you're outside of the system,
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_00: which a lot of us operated for years outside the system,
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_00: there's no formal anything.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_00: If you want supervision, you have to be the type of person that's humble enough
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_00: to go ask for it.
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_00: And be willing to have that because it could just be that you decide.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like this at the beginning.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_00: It could just be that you decide that you're just going to do things yourself.
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_00: And that could be good learning, except that other people are involved.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_02: We have such a, you know, I think, yes, it's a responsibility for,
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_02: Being a doctor and managing someone's medication or physical health or whatever.
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_02: But as a therapist coming like that,
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_02: the psychospiritual consequences
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_02: of causing psychological harm can be just as severe.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_02: You know, like dealing
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_02: with someone's psyche in an ordinary state
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_02: of consciousness is enough of a responsibility to Let alone when someone is
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_02: in a non-ordinary state.
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_02: And when I have people tell me that they're interested in becoming
• 55:17
  SPEAKER_02: a psychedelic therapist and how do I, you know,
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_02: what psychedelic therapy training do you recommend?
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, well, there is no such thing as psychedelic therapy.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_02: But what about therapy?
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_02: How about we start with do you know what transference and counter-transference is
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_02: and your own stuff and how it's going to not only show up in the room as it does
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_02: but way more amplified when you're in the field of a non-ordinary state
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_02: of consciousness when someone might be projecting their stuff onto you
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_02: in that moment as well and
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_02: Do you have any training in some kind of somatic modality where you can work
• 56:05
  SPEAKER_02: with not only what's coming up for yourself and using your body as an anchor,
• 56:13
  SPEAKER_02: as a tool of co-regulation, but to be able to not be afraid
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_02: of somebody else's process as it's happening as well.
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_02: And then, you know, I think we're getting a little bit better,
• 56:32
  SPEAKER_02: but can you even say the word spiritual
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_02: without thinking that someone has lost
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_02: the plot and gone off the deep end in it?
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_02: Because if you cannot grasp the idea that there is a real transpersonal
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_02: and spiritual component to this work,
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_02: then Then don't do it because you can't slap cognitive behavioral therapy onto this.
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't work like that.
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_02: So are you prepared to have your paradigm shifted?
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_02: Because if the answer is no,
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_02: then go and keep doing what you're doing and don't mess around with this
• 57:14
  SPEAKER_02: because there's high reward, but there's very high risk as well.
• 57:19
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's like, It's such a responsibility and it's the greatest privilege
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_02: of my life to do that work too,
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_02: but it's not lost on the delicacy
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_02: of holding space for someone going through such
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_02: a psycho-spiritual process
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_02: and doing one's own work first is so important
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_02: because everything is amplified by a thousand people.
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_02: In that space, because particularly we're in a, most of the time we're in a,
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_02: Consult kind of room or I actually have a cabin on my property where we see clients from.
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_02: So we're able to actually do the work there.
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_02: I did a ketamine assisted therapy session with somebody yesterday, which was, yeah,
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_02: it's beautiful to work from that space.
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_02: We're very lucky, but you're still in a confined kind of space, right?
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_02: So the energy can really build, you know, and yeah,
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_02: How do we work with that without our stuff coming into it?
• 58:33
  SPEAKER_02: Because we have to have that attunement.
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_02: And I think attunement is a skill you can only build from knowing yourself really,
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_02: really well as well.
• 58:46
  SPEAKER_02: So when someone says to me, what training should I do to be a psychedelic therapist?
• 58:52
  SPEAKER_02: My answer is always...
• 58:55
  SPEAKER_02: Related to their personal work or building skills in modalities that have a focus
• 59:01
  SPEAKER_02: on either somatic processes, parts work,
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_02: the multiplicity of self and the multiplicity of the psyche
• 59:09
  SPEAKER_02: because that shows up more often than not for people.
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_02: And then something transpersonal, like do you have a spiritual lens that you can...
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_02: Not only offer or offer up this idea
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_02: of spiritual lens to people or have some way
• 59:32
  SPEAKER_02: to navigate it yourself, whether, you know,
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_02: you meditate or maybe you're interested in Buddhist psychology
• 59:38
  SPEAKER_02: or maybe you've read Stan Groff's work or more
• 59:42
  SPEAKER_02: of a depth psychologist like myself.
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't really matter, but have something, right?
• 59:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_02: To be open to that aspect of the work because if we are going to shepherd this
• 59:59
  SPEAKER_02: into a more clinical level, Like model,
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_02: then we have to be prepared for the paradigm to shift.
• 1:00:08
  SPEAKER_02: And I think Western psychotherapy has done a huge injustice to people over the years
• 1:00:13
  SPEAKER_02: by not including the element of spirituality because that doesn't have
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_02: to be religion. That doesn't have to be yoga.
• 1:00:21
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I do a lot of outdoor therapy with people
• 1:00:24
  SPEAKER_02: because nature is my spirituality, you know, and I love yoga.
• 1:00:31
  SPEAKER_02: Supporting people to cultivate or states being in nature, you know,
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_02: that is where I feel most connected to the divine in any way.
• 1:00:41
  SPEAKER_02: And so it doesn't have to be like spiritual
• 1:00:46
  SPEAKER_02: as we might think of with, you know,
• 1:00:49
  SPEAKER_02: religion or whatever.
• 1:00:50
  SPEAKER_02: But maybe the way I like to think of spirituality is like the layer of the soul.
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_02: We need to bring the soul back in because that's what psychedelics actually mean.
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_02: It's soul revealing.
• 1:01:05
  SPEAKER_02: And if we can't talk about things at the level of the soul,
• 1:01:08
  SPEAKER_02: but we want to work with these soul revealers, then that just makes no sense to me.
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_01: Amazing.
• 1:01:19
  SPEAKER_00: I really appreciate that.
• 1:01:21
  SPEAKER_00: I don't live in that world that you live in, so it's interesting to hear that.
• 1:01:27
  SPEAKER_00: We're always just great mystery and great spirit all the time and prayer.
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_00: Our hats say, pray more, worry less.
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_00: We're just kind of off the deep end.
• 1:01:41
  SPEAKER_00: We forget that people are very clinical.
• 1:01:48
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't make sense, but I think it does come from a fear as well in a way
• 1:01:53
  SPEAKER_00: because Once you go there, you start to open even for yourself.
• 1:01:59
  SPEAKER_00: If somebody is a therapist and has spent a long time,
• 1:02:04
  SPEAKER_00: I can imagine learning and studying the psyche and all of these frameworks,
• 1:02:11
  SPEAKER_00: all of a sudden there starts to become a higher force,
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_00: outside force that it's a little bit confronting to some of the models.
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_00: So I can understand a little bit of that,
• 1:02:27
  SPEAKER_00: but I appreciate you sharing your perspective on that too, because I share,
• 1:02:33
  SPEAKER_00: I've never been a religious person, I'm just going to share that here,
• 1:02:36
  SPEAKER_00: but I grew up with three religions.
• 1:02:39
  SPEAKER_00: My dad, Muslim, my mom, Jewish, you know, Holocaust survivors on that side,
• 1:02:44
  SPEAKER_00: and then they raised us Catholic.
• 1:02:46
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, just the exposure to that, I think,
• 1:02:50
  SPEAKER_00: told me that religion wasn't the answer because I had three of them and none
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_00: of them knew what they were talking about.
• 1:02:56
  SPEAKER_00: If they did, the others were wrong, you know, it didn't make sense.
• 1:03:00
  SPEAKER_00: But I am, I would say today I'm a deeply spiritual person and it transcends,
• 1:03:06
  SPEAKER_00: you know, like a religion, but it opens up so much, opens up so much freedom.
• 1:03:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like when you're able to do that.
• 1:03:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's almost like an exhale. Like, ah.
• 1:03:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah. Absolutely. And that's why.
• 1:03:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I also think, this is just a comment,
• 1:03:23
  SPEAKER_00: is I think that if you get a lot of the people who are Scared to say anything
• 1:03:29
  SPEAKER_00: about spirituality.
• 1:03:30
  SPEAKER_00: You put them hanging on the edge of a cliff and you put a hidden camera,
• 1:03:35
  SPEAKER_00: they're going to start praying.
• 1:03:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, totally.
• 1:03:38
  SPEAKER_02: Totally.
• 1:03:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:03:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:03:45
  SPEAKER_02: And that's kind of like, I mean, I've...
• 1:03:48
  SPEAKER_02: My background, I've always worked with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
• 1:03:52
  SPEAKER_02: So I often call myself a not very clinical psychologist because working
• 1:03:57
  SPEAKER_02: in that way is not relevant to the worldview of Aboriginal
• 1:04:03
  SPEAKER_02: and Torres Strait Islander people.
• 1:04:05
  SPEAKER_02: So I've kind of been in this world
• 1:04:10
  SPEAKER_02: in a different way for a long time
• 1:04:12
  SPEAKER_02: where I haven't been So clinical because the people I work with,
• 1:04:18
  SPEAKER_02: it's not their worldview.
• 1:04:20
  SPEAKER_02: And that's one reason why we created IPAC,
• 1:04:24
  SPEAKER_02: like Indigenous Psychedelic Assisted Therapies,
• 1:04:26
  SPEAKER_02: because we wanted to bring accountability
• 1:04:28
  SPEAKER_02: to the medical model here in Australia
• 1:04:34
  SPEAKER_02: for the wisdom that they're drawing upon,
• 1:04:37
  SPEAKER_02: but also to offer a different way
• 1:04:40
  SPEAKER_02: of doing this work that You know,
• 1:04:44
  SPEAKER_02: that super clinical doesn't always actually mean safe or safer.
• 1:04:49
  SPEAKER_02: And that sometimes in our attempt to make things really safe,
• 1:04:53
  SPEAKER_02: we're actually going to make it more risky because we're trying to slap one paradigm
• 1:04:59
  SPEAKER_02: that doesn't fit with another paradigm.
• 1:05:02
  SPEAKER_02: So we're really wanting to show that it doesn't have to be either or as well.
• 1:05:07
  SPEAKER_02: Like it can be both and.
• 1:05:09
  SPEAKER_02: Like there's some great benefits to practice.
• 1:05:12
  SPEAKER_02: Like Western psychotherapy, particularly for people that are coming to work
• 1:05:17
  SPEAKER_02: with these medicines on the background of very complex trauma histories.
• 1:05:23
  SPEAKER_02: I think it can be a nice like scaffold to the process.
• 1:05:29
  SPEAKER_02: It's not the same as people that are just more like spiritual seekers coming
• 1:05:34
  SPEAKER_02: to these medicines, you know.
• 1:05:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:05:37
  SPEAKER_02: But also that, yeah,
• 1:05:41
  SPEAKER_02: there's from the Indigenous worldviews
• 1:05:45
  SPEAKER_02: and perspectives around healing
• 1:05:48
  SPEAKER_02: and community versus it being this completely individuality.
• 1:05:52
  SPEAKER_02: That's an individual endeavor that we do in the Western world,
• 1:05:55
  SPEAKER_02: you know like it's individual therapy.
• 1:05:58
  SPEAKER_02: You go to your therapist, that kind of thing rather than oh somebody
• 1:06:03
  SPEAKER_02: in our community isn't well.
• 1:06:05
  SPEAKER_02: That's a community approach to supporting the healing of that person
• 1:06:12
  SPEAKER_02: So we're really wanting
• 1:06:14
  SPEAKER_02: to weave both worlds together and A couple of years ago,
• 1:06:20
  SPEAKER_02: I worked on a clinical trial here that was a psilocybin trial for people.
• 1:06:28
  SPEAKER_02: And
• 1:06:29
  SPEAKER_02: the chief
• 1:06:35
  SPEAKER_02: investigator on that trial had heard a talk that my colleague
• 1:06:39
  SPEAKER_02: and I had given and was kind of mortified to know
• 1:06:43
  SPEAKER_02: that the trial wouldn't be accessible to Aboriginal
• 1:06:46
  SPEAKER_02: and Torres Strait Islander people because there was no...
• 1:06:49
  SPEAKER_02: Like cultural responsiveness or cultural safety for people
• 1:06:54
  SPEAKER_02: in this really clinical model.
• 1:06:59
  SPEAKER_02: And of course, loss and grief is huge for Aboriginal people in this country.
• 1:07:05
  SPEAKER_02: And so to her credit, she'd got additional funding to be able
• 1:07:11
  SPEAKER_02: to employ people My colleague, an Aboriginal man,
• 1:07:17
  SPEAKER_02: to be able to come and work on the trial as well so that we could offer some kind
• 1:07:23
  SPEAKER_02: of cultural care to any Aboriginal participants that wanted to participate.
• 1:07:31
  SPEAKER_02: And because it was an afterthought thing,
• 1:07:34
  SPEAKER_02: everything was already through the ethics committee and that kind of thing.
• 1:07:38
  SPEAKER_02: So it wasn't ideal in that We didn't get to create it from the ground up,
• 1:07:44
  SPEAKER_02: but it was still good to give it a go and see how it went.
• 1:07:48
  SPEAKER_02: But I remember I had to introduce my colleague
• 1:07:53
  SPEAKER_02: to the psychiatrist and have
• 1:07:57
  SPEAKER_02: a conversation about the work because he didn't have a clinical qualification,
• 1:08:02
  SPEAKER_02: anything like that. He's an Indigenous healer using culturally informed practices.
• 1:08:12
  SPEAKER_02: And we get into this conversation about energetic hygiene,
• 1:08:18
  SPEAKER_02: spiritual hygiene,
• 1:08:21
  SPEAKER_02: how he might work to kind of hold
• 1:08:26
  SPEAKER_02: the space and protect the energies of the space
• 1:08:31
  SPEAKER_02: because we're opening portals when we work with these medicines
• 1:08:35
  SPEAKER_02: and non-ordinary states and Contrary to that whole statement of trust,
• 1:08:41
  SPEAKER_02: let go and be open, there's actually some energies you don't want to be open
• 1:08:45
  SPEAKER_02: to and we have to have that.
• 1:08:49
  SPEAKER_02: Energetic care and spiritual hygiene.
• 1:08:51
  SPEAKER_02: And I was standing there trying not to laugh,
• 1:08:55
  SPEAKER_02: not at my colleague who I'm so on board on that, but the psychiatrist's face.
• 1:08:59
  SPEAKER_02: That was just so uncomfortable
• 1:09:03
  SPEAKER_02: hearing these terms around like spiritual hygiene,
• 1:09:07
  SPEAKER_02: energetic hygiene and portals and protection from like, you know,
• 1:09:15
  SPEAKER_02: Like darker energies and how he'll hold the space to do that and things like that.
• 1:09:20
  SPEAKER_02: But to the psychiatrist's credit, he goes, look,
• 1:09:24
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not sure what you guys are talking about,
• 1:09:26
  SPEAKER_02: but you two really seem like you're on the same wavelength together and, you know,
• 1:09:33
  SPEAKER_02: let's do it.
• 1:09:35
  SPEAKER_02: And it was really beautiful with one person we worked with.
• 1:09:38
  SPEAKER_02: The psychiatrist came in and As we were opening the space,
• 1:09:44
  SPEAKER_02: my colleague was playing didgeridoo.
• 1:09:48
  SPEAKER_02: He was, you know, opening the directions.
• 1:09:52
  SPEAKER_02: He was using plants to kind of clear the energies of the space.
• 1:09:56
  SPEAKER_02: And it was just really beautiful to have this psychiatrist fully participate
• 1:10:02
  SPEAKER_02: in this ceremony and We were doing, knowing,
• 1:10:05
  SPEAKER_02: and I knew deeply that it challenged him,
• 1:10:08
  SPEAKER_02: that it wasn't his worldview and it was his paradigm.
• 1:10:10
  SPEAKER_02: And it was kind of in that moment of like,
• 1:10:14
  SPEAKER_02: if we can be humble enough to be open to something we don't understand,
• 1:10:22
  SPEAKER_02: then why can't we walk together, you know?
• 1:10:25
  SPEAKER_02: So it was actually really beautiful to...
• 1:10:30
  SPEAKER_02: See those worlds come together because there's just too many conflicts going
• 1:10:36
  SPEAKER_02: on right now, you know.
• 1:10:39
  SPEAKER_02: And so that conflict of does it have to be traditional
• 1:10:44
  SPEAKER_02: or does it have to be clinical?
• 1:10:46
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, well, can we find a way to walk together because, you know,
• 1:10:53
  SPEAKER_02: Indigenous people Ways of working is not complementary medicine.
• 1:11:02
  SPEAKER_02: It's not even...
• 1:11:03
  SPEAKER_02: It's actually science in its own right.
• 1:11:05
  SPEAKER_02: Like we often say Western science and Indigenous wisdom, but it's actually Indigenous science.
• 1:11:12
  SPEAKER_02: They're both sciences and one just happens to be the original science.
• 1:11:17
  SPEAKER_02: And here in Australia...
• 1:11:19
  SPEAKER_02: Like we've got the world's oldest continuous living culture on the planet.
• 1:11:24
  SPEAKER_02: We've got artifacts here that have been dated at 120,000 years old.
• 1:11:31
  SPEAKER_02: We've got 65,000 year old rock art in the Kimberley.
• 1:11:35
  SPEAKER_02: So it's almost like these people have survived two ice ages.
• 1:11:41
  SPEAKER_02: Like.
• 1:11:44
  SPEAKER_02: I think we could probably learn something from them if we were humble enough
• 1:11:49
  SPEAKER_02: to be open to their ways of navigating,
• 1:11:54
  SPEAKER_02: rather than just being like, oh,
• 1:11:56
  SPEAKER_02: that's a complementary, secondary wisdom thing,
• 1:12:01
  SPEAKER_02: rather than an actual, ancient,
• 1:12:04
  SPEAKER_02: original form of science.
• 1:12:06
  SPEAKER_02: So it was really special to do that.
• 1:12:11
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 1:12:13
  SPEAKER_00: I love the imagery of the man playing didgeridoo and clearing a space,
• 1:12:20
  SPEAKER_00: a psychiatrist present.
• 1:12:24
  SPEAKER_02: And this was happening, by the way, in a cancer research institute.
• 1:12:28
  SPEAKER_02: So we had to really work very hard to make
• 1:12:32
  SPEAKER_02: that space really warm and like a space
• 1:12:38
  SPEAKER_02: that you might want to take medicine in.
• 1:12:40
  SPEAKER_02: And we...
• 1:12:41
  SPEAKER_02: We did a really good job.
• 1:12:43
  SPEAKER_02: Like every time I was in that room, I kind of forgot where I was.
• 1:12:49
  SPEAKER_02: And so it was nice as well for, I think,
• 1:12:55
  SPEAKER_02: for these clinicians to see that it doesn't have
• 1:13:01
  SPEAKER_02: to be sterile and clinical in order
• 1:13:05
  SPEAKER_02: to be safe and well-held, you know,
• 1:13:08
  SPEAKER_02: and I'm I hope to be a bit of like a bridge between those worlds
• 1:13:14
  SPEAKER_02: because there are advantages to me that I am clinically trained because, you know,
• 1:13:20
  SPEAKER_02: I do value,
• 1:13:25
  SPEAKER_02: like I said, Western psychotherapy and things like that.
• 1:13:29
  SPEAKER_02: But I also am not keen on over-pathologizing things that don't need to be pathologized.
• 1:13:36
  SPEAKER_02: You know, not everything...
• 1:13:38
  SPEAKER_02: Is a diagnosis.
• 1:13:41
  SPEAKER_02: Not everything needs to be seen as a problem that needs treatment.
• 1:13:47
  SPEAKER_02: You know, that's why we need to bring the soul back in because I don't know
• 1:13:52
  SPEAKER_02: that we're in a mental health crisis.
• 1:13:53
  SPEAKER_02: I think we're in a crisis of the soul right now, you know,
• 1:13:59
  SPEAKER_02: and that there's a reason that these medicines are leaving their communities
• 1:14:07
  SPEAKER_02: and Come out into the world right now because I think they want to help this crisis
• 1:14:13
  SPEAKER_02: of the soul that we're in, you know.
• 1:14:17
  SPEAKER_02: We don't need to pathologize that.
• 1:14:19
  SPEAKER_02: You know I very rarely diagnose people
• 1:14:23
  SPEAKER_02: unless there's a particular reason for it
• 1:14:28
  SPEAKER_02: because I'm working with what's arising with the symptoms they're experiencing
• 1:14:35
  SPEAKER_02: or whatever and These medicines take us into the symptoms,
• 1:14:40
  SPEAKER_02: whereas a lot of treatments, whether it's medication or therapy,
• 1:14:45
  SPEAKER_02: I think are inherently suppressive.
• 1:14:48
  SPEAKER_02: Like how do I get rid of that rather than how do I move
• 1:14:52
  SPEAKER_02: through that or what is it trying to teach me or show me?
• 1:14:56
  SPEAKER_02: So I think it's no coincidence
• 1:15:00
  SPEAKER_02: that these medicines are really coming out into...
• 1:15:04
  SPEAKER_02: Our communities again in these times because, like I said, psychedelics,
• 1:15:10
  SPEAKER_02: psyche and delos is so revealing, you know.
• 1:15:17
  SPEAKER_02: Good reason.
• 1:15:19
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for that. I have a question that's been on like the tip of my tongue.
• 1:15:22
  SPEAKER_01: So earlier we talked a little bit about huachuma and holding space for 15,
• 1:15:27
  SPEAKER_01: 16 hours and how that's like not really the best business model.
• 1:15:31
  SPEAKER_01: But I've actually talked with our friend Katie about this too
• 1:15:35
  SPEAKER_01: and how she's like curious about therapeutic modalities, working with the medicine,
• 1:15:40
  SPEAKER_01: kind of how people would with like an MDMA ceremony or experience,
• 1:15:44
  SPEAKER_01: like an actual assisted therapy process.
• 1:15:48
  SPEAKER_01: I'm wondering, since you've been with us in a ceremony and in the four altar prayer,
• 1:15:52
  SPEAKER_01: and sometimes that's enough to work through whatever it is that we need to work
• 1:15:55
  SPEAKER_01: through, right? On the mountain and doing the prayers.
• 1:15:58
  SPEAKER_01: But like, I'm wondering if in your mind and feeling,
• 1:16:02
  SPEAKER_01: is there a clinical application to use Huachuma in therapeutic?
• 1:16:07
  SPEAKER_01: Like, could that be helpful?
• 1:16:08
  SPEAKER_01: Or do you think the ceremonies and being in that prayerful state is like
• 1:16:13
  SPEAKER_01: the most helpful for that medicine?
• 1:16:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
• 1:16:18
  SPEAKER_01: I mean I think by like it
• 1:16:23
  SPEAKER_02: could be
• 1:16:26
  SPEAKER_02: in a clinical sense like I definitely see like I was saying
• 1:16:29
  SPEAKER_02: before with trauma how like the gentle nature of that medicine
• 1:16:35
  SPEAKER_02: and the gentle way it builds embodiment.
• 1:16:38
  SPEAKER_02: I see that having the potential to be so supportive with trauma.
• 1:16:44
  SPEAKER_02: Particularly people with trauma, right?
• 1:16:48
  SPEAKER_02: But just as you were talking and what you guys do with the hikes...
• 1:16:57
  SPEAKER_02: It's almost huachuma-assisted EMDR, right?
• 1:17:01
  SPEAKER_02: Because EMDR is based
• 1:17:07
  SPEAKER_02: on bilateral stimulation, right?
• 1:17:09
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, gold standard is the eye movement, but bilateral stimulation, it can be tapping, right?
• 1:17:16
  SPEAKER_02: It can be, I have a djembe that people can drum,
• 1:17:21
  SPEAKER_02: but what is another form of bilateral stimulation?
• 1:17:24
  SPEAKER_02: Walking.
• 1:17:25
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 1:17:27
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, if you want to clinicalize what you're doing,
• 1:17:31
  SPEAKER_02: just call it a tumor-assisted EMDR.
• 1:17:38
  SPEAKER_00: I have explained it to clinical people that way. Have you? Yeah.
• 1:17:43
  SPEAKER_02: Because you have to think like, I mean, even, I mean,
• 1:17:46
  SPEAKER_02: it was definitely my experience on the mountain.
• 1:17:49
  SPEAKER_02: Like I was processing a lot and I really, I mean,
• 1:17:53
  SPEAKER_02: I'm so keen to come back for fire at some point,
• 1:17:59
  SPEAKER_02: but, um, the, I, I, I almost think,
• 1:18:04
  SPEAKER_02: and my bias here may be because I'm an EMDR therapist,
• 1:18:09
  SPEAKER_02: but I think there's something you can really get out of a combination of that,
• 1:18:13
  SPEAKER_02: that walking in the bilateral stimulation from a processing things perspective
• 1:18:19
  SPEAKER_02: that you're probably not going to get from like sitting in a fire.
• 1:18:25
  SPEAKER_02: Like I think there's a different reason for both and neither one is better
• 1:18:29
  SPEAKER_02: than the other necessarily, but from a, um,
• 1:18:33
  SPEAKER_02: Just maybe from like more
• 1:18:36
  SPEAKER_02: of a neurobiological perspective and the benefit
• 1:18:41
  SPEAKER_02: of that bilateral stimulation in the assisting of processing things,
• 1:18:48
  SPEAKER_02: then I think like that there's a,
• 1:18:54
  SPEAKER_02: you know, the hiking or tumour that to me is,
• 1:19:01
  SPEAKER_02: has a clinical application for I mean,
• 1:19:03
  SPEAKER_02: it's why I do outdoor therapy with people as well, because being in nature,
• 1:19:09
  SPEAKER_02: being in a state where we can cultivate or also have,
• 1:19:16
  SPEAKER_02: you know, our senses engaged,
• 1:19:19
  SPEAKER_02: but that walking, that bilateral processing can really help people
• 1:19:28
  SPEAKER_02: to where these are not the people that are going to come and sit
• 1:19:31
  SPEAKER_02: in a therapist's office.
• 1:19:33
  SPEAKER_02: By the way, they're not going to process much sitting there in an office
• 1:19:39
  SPEAKER_02: because they're going to feel claustrophobic or they're going to be too anxious
• 1:19:45
  SPEAKER_02: or they just can't engage.
• 1:19:47
  SPEAKER_02: Like, you know, I'll often go out of people that have, you know, hyperactive type,
• 1:19:53
  SPEAKER_02: ADHD kind of stuff going on, for example,
• 1:19:55
  SPEAKER_02: because that's how they can engage and concentrate is when they're moving, you know,
• 1:20:01
  SPEAKER_02: and they process more.
• 1:20:04
  SPEAKER_02: I've had great, I think great insights happen for people and it's, I mean,
• 1:20:09
  SPEAKER_02: it's kind of great for me because I actually don't have to do much.
• 1:20:14
  SPEAKER_02: I'm just holding the space because when you're walking and you've got
• 1:20:18
  SPEAKER_02: that stimulation and you kind of,
• 1:20:20
  SPEAKER_02: it's like the mind is supported to go wherever it's going to go, you just keep,
• 1:20:25
  SPEAKER_02: you keep out the way. You don't want to interfere in that.
• 1:20:29
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you,
• 1:20:32
  SPEAKER_02: Until it's warranted to interfere.
• 1:20:35
  SPEAKER_02: So we call it in EMDR like an interweave.
• 1:20:38
  SPEAKER_02: So if I can see someone's a bit stuck,
• 1:20:40
  SPEAKER_02: I might offer something up based on what I'm attuned to what's going
• 1:20:43
  SPEAKER_02: on and then that kind of helps them to keep going.
• 1:20:46
  SPEAKER_02: So I imagine it's the same on the mountain.
• 1:20:48
  SPEAKER_02: If you guys have someone that's maybe struggling a bit and you can be attuned
• 1:20:53
  SPEAKER_02: to that, you might offer up some words of, you know,
• 1:20:57
  SPEAKER_02: Support or encouragement or whatever.
• 1:21:01
  SPEAKER_02: And then they can keep going, you know?
• 1:21:03
  SPEAKER_02: So, yeah.
• 1:21:06
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's the tumor-assisted EMDR is the next thing.
• 1:21:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:21:15
  SPEAKER_00: There's another aspect to it as well, which is...
• 1:21:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, you have the bilateral stimulation.
• 1:21:21
  SPEAKER_00: And then what I've come to realize is that a lot of the ceremonies
• 1:21:25
  SPEAKER_00: that I've done inside or like in a maloca
• 1:21:30
  SPEAKER_00: or like indoors on a mat, eyes closed,
• 1:21:35
  SPEAKER_00: you can confront fears that way.
• 1:21:38
  SPEAKER_00: Fear is a big thing that we confront.
• 1:21:41
  SPEAKER_00: But the fear is a little bit different when it's an actual fear like on a mountain.
• 1:21:48
  SPEAKER_00: That you're not going to make it up the hill.
• 1:21:51
  SPEAKER_00: That the weather is going to turn.
• 1:21:55
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of this stuff with Huachuma is very interesting to me because combining
• 1:22:00
  SPEAKER_00: the Huachuma with probably what is going to be the hardest hike
• 1:22:05
  SPEAKER_00: that anyone's ever done also brings up this fear.
• 1:22:09
  SPEAKER_00: And then you walk through it.
• 1:22:12
  SPEAKER_00: And you kind of are...
• 1:22:16
  SPEAKER_00: Like the way Miguel has described it is that it really gets to the core of limiting beliefs.
• 1:22:23
  SPEAKER_00: If you believe something about yourself that isn't true,
• 1:22:27
  SPEAKER_00: that hike will show you that it's not true because you've moved
• 1:22:32
  SPEAKER_00: through it physically.
• 1:22:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the body can recognize that it did something.
• 1:22:40
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas sitting there You might work through it psychologically
• 1:22:46
  SPEAKER_00: in some circumstances, but not always the body is recognizing that it did it.
• 1:22:53
  SPEAKER_00: The psyche is.
• 1:22:54
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like the top-down approach in some of the ceremonies where you can process that way.
• 1:23:00
  SPEAKER_00: But this is really like that bottom-up approach, like you're saying.
• 1:23:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's just like move it.
• 1:23:06
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of times people do not know what it is,
• 1:23:10
  SPEAKER_00: but they'll report a lot of people that they feel like they left a thousand pounds
• 1:23:17
  SPEAKER_00: on that mountain of something.
• 1:23:18
  SPEAKER_00: They don't know exactly what.
• 1:23:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:23:24
  SPEAKER_02: And I actually took a photo of a sticker that a girl had on her phone
• 1:23:32
  SPEAKER_02: at the Ayahuasca Forum because I loved it so much.
• 1:23:34
  SPEAKER_02: It said, I love not knowing.
• 1:23:37
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that one of the maybe challenges
• 1:23:43
  SPEAKER_02: with therapy is that we often think
• 1:23:47
  SPEAKER_02: if I understand something, And I know where it comes from and I know why it's there
• 1:23:54
  SPEAKER_02: that I won't have to feel bad about it anymore.
• 1:23:59
  SPEAKER_02: Like I understand it now and it's all good.
• 1:24:01
  SPEAKER_02: But insight's just the first step, right?
• 1:24:07
  SPEAKER_02: But then you actually have to metabolize the emotional and the somatic processes
• 1:24:13
  SPEAKER_02: and to just be in Just to just be in it,
• 1:24:20
  SPEAKER_02: whatever that is,
• 1:24:21
  SPEAKER_02: whatever the feelings are, whatever the emotions are without necessarily needing
• 1:24:25
  SPEAKER_02: to understand where it comes from or because there's probably
• 1:24:31
  SPEAKER_02: a million different things from your lifetime
• 1:24:36
  SPEAKER_02: that have built that emotional backlog in there.
• 1:24:41
  SPEAKER_02: You know, people often ask me, I don't know why I'm getting so angry.
• 1:24:43
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, well, I know you and I can think of a thousand different things
• 1:24:48
  SPEAKER_02: in your life that would be warranted to be angry about.
• 1:24:51
  SPEAKER_02: And so just simply knowing, oh,
• 1:24:54
  SPEAKER_02: why do I feel angry right now is not going to be as necessarily as helpful
• 1:25:01
  SPEAKER_02: as to just allow oneself to really metabolize it without trying
• 1:25:07
  SPEAKER_02: to figure it out cognitively in that moment because then the plot twist is by virtue
• 1:25:12
  SPEAKER_02: of actually doing that.
• 1:25:15
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we tend to have
• 1:25:19
  SPEAKER_02: the insight drop in at a later stage
• 1:25:23
  SPEAKER_02: because we were just able to give it permission to be there and to process it
• 1:25:29
  SPEAKER_02: without trying to dissect it at an intellectual level,
• 1:25:35
  SPEAKER_02: which most people do as a means of avoiding actually having to feel it
• 1:25:40
  SPEAKER_02: in the first place. So one thing that was...
• 1:25:44
  SPEAKER_02: Very apparent to me in our hikes, it's like you can't hide from what's there.
• 1:25:51
  SPEAKER_02: Like you're on a mountain in Peru
• 1:25:58
  SPEAKER_02: and the only way back is to finish.
• 1:26:02
  SPEAKER_02: Like you've got no toes. You have to keep going.
• 1:26:05
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, I was very fortunate in that, you know, I had it.
• 1:26:11
  SPEAKER_02: Beautiful, beautiful time.
• 1:26:13
  SPEAKER_02: But there were definitely moments of struggle, particularly when I was very,
• 1:26:18
  SPEAKER_02: very nauseous at times.
• 1:26:21
  SPEAKER_02: And my
• 1:26:28
  SPEAKER_02: mantra,
• 1:26:29
  SPEAKER_02: if you will, in those moments was, it's good to make yourself do hard things.
• 1:26:34
  SPEAKER_02: It's good to make yourself do hard things.
• 1:26:36
  SPEAKER_02: It's good to make yourself do hard things because...
• 1:26:40
  SPEAKER_02: In our modern world right now,
• 1:26:42
  SPEAKER_02: we have found every single way possible to avoid discomfort to our own detriment.
• 1:26:51
  SPEAKER_02: And I have this conversation with a friend
• 1:26:55
  SPEAKER_02: of mine a lot around what's
• 1:26:59
  SPEAKER_02: the difference between trauma and initiation when we look at initiatory rights
• 1:27:04
  SPEAKER_02: because trauma For the outsider looking in at some
• 1:27:07
  SPEAKER_02: of these very ancient initiatory rites, it looks traumatic,
• 1:27:12
  SPEAKER_02: but why aren't the people doing it, you know, traumatized?
• 1:27:15
  SPEAKER_02: And I think, well, number one is there's a lot of preparation and guidance
• 1:27:19
  SPEAKER_02: from elders, but there's also an acceptance and a conditioning of like the need
• 1:27:25
  SPEAKER_02: to do something difficult, right?
• 1:27:28
  SPEAKER_02: Like that that's actually part of one's growth
• 1:27:32
  SPEAKER_02: and moving from Boy to man
• 1:27:37
  SPEAKER_02: or whatever, whereas we have this hyper focus at the moment
• 1:27:41
  SPEAKER_02: on how do we remove every form of discomfort we could possibly face
• 1:27:48
  SPEAKER_02: and I think it is such a detriment to us as human beings
• 1:27:53
  SPEAKER_02: because whenever we encounter some kind of challenge or adversity,
• 1:27:58
  SPEAKER_02: it's like infinitely harder than it needs to be because We want to try and find
• 1:28:03
  SPEAKER_02: a way to make it easier or get rid of it or escape it in some way.
• 1:28:09
  SPEAKER_02: So the challenge of it, I think,
• 1:28:14
  SPEAKER_02: is the most almost like beyond the medicine,
• 1:28:19
  SPEAKER_02: like to actually have gone and done something that you thought was impossible.
• 1:28:25
  SPEAKER_02: It's one of the best things.
• 1:28:27
  SPEAKER_02: Therapeutic things you can do for yourself, you know,
• 1:28:31
  SPEAKER_02: rather than try to constantly think how do I make this easier
• 1:28:35
  SPEAKER_02: or how do I make this less uncomfortable, you know? Yeah.
• 1:28:41
  SPEAKER_00: I've been doing a deep dive on that topic recently.
• 1:28:45
  SPEAKER_00: My grandfather and my mom's side,
• 1:28:47
  SPEAKER_00: he recorded two and a half hours of testimony and In the 1990s because he was
• 1:28:54
  SPEAKER_00: in Auschwitz and other camps actually when he was 19.
• 1:29:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then I found some more research and this was brought up to me
• 1:29:05
  SPEAKER_00: in the jungle actually like eight years ago about how trauma, you know,
• 1:29:11
  SPEAKER_00: people can go through very difficult things like, you know,
• 1:29:15
  SPEAKER_00: concentration camp is very difficult.
• 1:29:19
  SPEAKER_00: And some people emerged from that Without trauma
• 1:29:24
  SPEAKER_00: in the sense that they were able
• 1:29:27
  SPEAKER_00: to move through it and that some people didn't.
• 1:29:30
  SPEAKER_00: And Viktor Frankl, of course, you're familiar with him.
• 1:29:34
  SPEAKER_00: He talked about how he watched people that were resilient and a lot of it came
• 1:29:41
  SPEAKER_00: to meaning making.
• 1:29:44
  SPEAKER_00: That they had a reason.
• 1:29:47
  SPEAKER_00: In his case, he was thinking about his wife, I think.
• 1:29:51
  SPEAKER_00: And he also had an image of what he would be doing, which was teaching afterwards.
• 1:29:57
  SPEAKER_00: That kept him going.
• 1:29:58
  SPEAKER_00: And then on...
• 1:30:01
  SPEAKER_00: On this research that I found,
• 1:30:02
  SPEAKER_00: there's also this aspect of openness that it appears a little bit like
• 1:30:07
  SPEAKER_00: if we don't have a fixed notion of who we are that's so fixed,
• 1:30:12
  SPEAKER_00: then we're more resilient.
• 1:30:14
  SPEAKER_00: So it's sort of that, what we were saying, like you were saying, like, I don't know.
• 1:30:20
  SPEAKER_00: People that have the I don't know outlook.
• 1:30:25
  SPEAKER_00: Tend to move through trauma and actually becomes, it's not traumatic.
• 1:30:29
  SPEAKER_00: The event is hard, but it doesn't inflict the same wound.
• 1:30:34
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas people that cling to the idea of what it was and they hold on to that,
• 1:30:42
  SPEAKER_00: then it starts to create the pain and the suffering later.
• 1:30:48
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't know where I was going with this, but it really...
• 1:30:52
  SPEAKER_00: Interesting, interesting things that we start to uncover in these processes.
• 1:30:58
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely. And without a doubt, in my work,
• 1:31:01
  SPEAKER_02: the most terrifying thing for people in their journey of healing or recovery
• 1:31:08
  SPEAKER_02: or whatever you want to call it, is the unknown.
• 1:31:12
  SPEAKER_02: You know, there is so much comfort in the devil.
• 1:31:14
  SPEAKER_02: They know and...
• 1:31:17
  SPEAKER_02: The fear of like,
• 1:31:20
  SPEAKER_02: who am I if I am no longer
• 1:31:24
  SPEAKER_02: so troubled by this thing that's been
• 1:31:27
  SPEAKER_02: with me for 20, 30,
• 1:31:29
  SPEAKER_02: 40 years and to let that go
• 1:31:34
  SPEAKER_02: and despite the kind of, uh,
• 1:31:41
  SPEAKER_02: You know, they're being sold the story through therapy or whatever that what's
• 1:31:44
  SPEAKER_02: on the other side of this is much better, you know, liberation, healing,
• 1:31:51
  SPEAKER_02: a better life, whatever.
• 1:31:52
  SPEAKER_02: It's like that is actually the single most terrifying thing to anybody
• 1:31:57
  SPEAKER_02: because it can't be controlled.
• 1:32:00
  SPEAKER_02: It can't be predicted, you know,
• 1:32:02
  SPEAKER_02: and that's our safety net in trauma a lot of the time is to be able to predict
• 1:32:07
  SPEAKER_02: and control our environment the best way Possible as a means of survival.
• 1:32:13
  SPEAKER_02: So to be
• 1:32:17
  SPEAKER_02: in a situation like on the mountain,
• 1:32:22
  SPEAKER_02: walking where
• 1:32:26
  SPEAKER_02: you're in full trust of, you know, Miguel, of course, that like,
• 1:32:34
  SPEAKER_02: because this is a situation I have no control over.
• 1:32:36
  SPEAKER_02: I have no influence over.
• 1:32:38
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know where we're going.
• 1:32:40
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know how we're getting back.
• 1:32:42
  SPEAKER_02: I don't even know like really how much medicine I've had.
• 1:32:48
  SPEAKER_02: I know nothing.
• 1:32:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:32:52
  SPEAKER_02: And then, you know, you go through that.
• 1:32:55
  SPEAKER_02: Why do I do these things?
• 1:32:57
  SPEAKER_02: What am I doing?
• 1:32:58
  SPEAKER_02: You know, what's wrong with me?
• 1:33:01
  SPEAKER_02: And then you get back and you're like, that was the best thing of my life.
• 1:33:04
  SPEAKER_02: Let's do it again.
• 1:33:10
  SPEAKER_02: So my, yeah, obviously within reason,
• 1:33:15
  SPEAKER_02: but I'm always encouraging people.
• 1:33:19
  SPEAKER_02: It's, you know, we've got to,
• 1:33:23
  SPEAKER_02: We've got to like kick our hard because business as usual is also really hard,
• 1:33:30
  SPEAKER_02: you know, and doing something brave or different is hard,
• 1:33:37
  SPEAKER_02: but the potential for the,
• 1:33:40
  SPEAKER_02: you know, for things to change is there, you know.
• 1:33:45
  SPEAKER_02: So, yeah,
• 1:33:47
  SPEAKER_02: we're really not great at tolerating discomfort.
• 1:33:53
  SPEAKER_02: We have so many ways to remove it nowadays.
• 1:33:56
  SPEAKER_02: So when we do encounter uncomfortable situations,
• 1:34:00
  SPEAKER_02: they're often far more distressing because we just don't have
• 1:34:05
  SPEAKER_02: the skill set to be
• 1:34:08
  SPEAKER_02: in discomfort.
• 1:34:11
  SPEAKER_02: So...
• 1:34:14
  SPEAKER_02: Something like Huachuma hikes at Kintsukocha is a great way to get acquainted
• 1:34:21
  SPEAKER_02: with discomfort but simultaneously with like the support of not only the medicine
• 1:34:27
  SPEAKER_02: but the group as well because that's what trauma is most of the time is what I had
• 1:34:32
  SPEAKER_02: to go through by myself,
• 1:34:34
  SPEAKER_02: what I had to do alone rather than the thing itself, right?
• 1:34:40
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I've worked with people that have experienced very significantly know,
• 1:34:44
  SPEAKER_02: traumatic experiences.
• 1:34:45
  SPEAKER_02: But kind of like you said, Hamid,
• 1:34:47
  SPEAKER_02: they didn't go on to develop trauma -related symptoms
• 1:34:50
  SPEAKER_02: because they were well supported, they were believed,
• 1:34:54
  SPEAKER_02: people did their best to intervene or get some kind of justice or whatever.
• 1:34:58
  SPEAKER_02: And then I've had people that have experienced maybe like a lesser, if you will,
• 1:35:03
  SPEAKER_02: kind of traumatic incident, but they have been left
• 1:35:06
  SPEAKER_02: with absolutely debilitating trauma symptoms because no one cared,
• 1:35:11
  SPEAKER_02: no one intervened, no one held space, no one bared witness.
• 1:35:15
  SPEAKER_02: So it's a total attack on that person's self-worth and self-concept
• 1:35:20
  SPEAKER_02: because it's like I'm either worthless or I'm alone.
• 1:35:26
  SPEAKER_02: And so us human beings, we can get through a lot if we don't feel like we're having
• 1:35:31
  SPEAKER_02: to carry it by ourselves.
• 1:35:34
  SPEAKER_02: So that's why I am
• 1:35:38
  SPEAKER_02: a fan of group processes when they're well held
• 1:35:41
  SPEAKER_02: because if there was a hill I had to die on around...
• 1:35:48
  SPEAKER_02: What I think the most important domain is in healing from trauma,
• 1:35:54
  SPEAKER_02: obviously all domains are important,
• 1:35:56
  SPEAKER_02: but I think the one that disturbs them all is social connectedness.
• 1:36:04
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 1:36:06
  SPEAKER_02: So something like these group processes and retreats that you guys offer
• 1:36:10
  SPEAKER_02: and creating that community, that is the meta sense.
• 1:36:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah. Well, that's certainly what I think, too.
• 1:36:21
  SPEAKER_00: Kind of what I've realized is that we're holding space for each other.
• 1:36:26
  SPEAKER_00: And many people don't realize that that is the medicine.
• 1:36:30
  SPEAKER_00: They think they're coming for the huachuma.
• 1:36:34
  SPEAKER_00: And they realize a lot of it is just every interaction we have is supported.
• 1:36:40
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 1:36:43
  SPEAKER_00: We get to be ourselves in a way
• 1:36:46
  SPEAKER_00: that is not often accepted in other parts.
• 1:36:53
  SPEAKER_02: Also, the epidemic of the 21st century is loneliness,
• 1:36:58
  SPEAKER_02: which is crazy when we're supposedly supposed to be more connected than ever
• 1:37:04
  SPEAKER_02: with globalization and social media and all of those things, but You know,
• 1:37:11
  SPEAKER_02: some of the people I work with, you ask them,
• 1:37:14
  SPEAKER_02: it's like they couldn't tell you their neighbours' names.
• 1:37:19
  SPEAKER_02: They could easily go a week without actually interacting
• 1:37:24
  SPEAKER_02: with a single human being in person.
• 1:37:29
  SPEAKER_02: There's no real sense of like who they could call to ask for help or even
• 1:37:36
  SPEAKER_02: if there was someone, it's like I don't want to be a burden.
• 1:37:40
  SPEAKER_02: We have this hyper-individualism
• 1:37:43
  SPEAKER_02: of the Western world and this idea of, you know,
• 1:37:47
  SPEAKER_02: we have to do it all by ourselves.
• 1:37:48
  SPEAKER_02: And if you can't do it all by yourself, then there's something wrong with you, right?
• 1:37:52
  SPEAKER_02: But we've historically never had to be the jack of all trades, right?
• 1:37:58
  SPEAKER_02: Like, we've lived in multi-generational households or in community settings,
• 1:38:03
  SPEAKER_02: those kinds of things. Like, humans are social creatures.
• 1:38:06
  SPEAKER_02: We're wired for connection and
• 1:38:12
  SPEAKER_02: that's why I say I don't like to over-pathologize things where it's like, oh,
• 1:38:16
  SPEAKER_02: you've got these symptoms.
• 1:38:17
  SPEAKER_02: This is that diagnosis.
• 1:38:18
  SPEAKER_02: This is what we do for people like you.
• 1:38:20
  SPEAKER_02: It's like when you audit what's actually going
• 1:38:24
  SPEAKER_02: on in someone's social context,
• 1:38:29
  SPEAKER_02: people are often isolated, disconnected.
• 1:38:34
  SPEAKER_02: There's no soft place to land.
• 1:38:36
  SPEAKER_02: And So without a doubt, that domain of social connectedness is
• 1:38:40
  SPEAKER_02: the first one I'm always trying to cultivate with people
• 1:38:44
  SPEAKER_02: because so many other things are mitigated by a good social network.
• 1:38:51
  SPEAKER_02: You know, like build the foundation
• 1:38:56
  SPEAKER_02: before you try to put the roof on.
• 1:39:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, wow.
• 1:39:10
  SPEAKER_01: Bianca, I really love that because one of my favorite things
• 1:39:12
  SPEAKER_01: about the Huachuma Foundation and everything that's come before that is
• 1:39:17
  SPEAKER_01: the community and all the friends that I've made along the way.
• 1:39:20
  SPEAKER_01: And it's even cool for like integration.
• 1:39:22
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes we'll get on a call and, you know,
• 1:39:25
  SPEAKER_01: get to process things together that we don't like on the group calls
• 1:39:28
  SPEAKER_01: or something else comes up.
• 1:39:29
  SPEAKER_01: And it's just been such a valuable part of this whole journey for me.
• 1:39:34
  SPEAKER_01: And even thinking my very first Huachuma ceremony,
• 1:39:37
  SPEAKER_01: I remember I didn't know it was with like five or five or so complete strangers.
• 1:39:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember walking off the mountain and just being like, oh, my God,
• 1:39:45
  SPEAKER_01: they're all aspects of me.
• 1:39:47
  SPEAKER_01: These are all little mirrors like, oh, I'm the older sibling. I'm the partner.
• 1:39:50
  SPEAKER_01: I'm the this. I'm the that.
• 1:39:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm even, you know, Hamid, too.
• 1:39:54
  SPEAKER_01: I was like I could see my reflection in everybody.
• 1:39:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I was almost laughing my way down the mountain.
• 1:40:00
  SPEAKER_01: Like I didn't know these people, but then they were they were me.
• 1:40:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I just thought how you can't really get that when you're doing a solo ceremony,
• 1:40:07
  SPEAKER_01: even still working with Huachuma,
• 1:40:09
  SPEAKER_01: like you don't have those reflections with you all the time.
• 1:40:11
  SPEAKER_01: And even when we're on retreat, I think even outside of the ceremony,
• 1:40:16
  SPEAKER_01: we're getting the big reflections,
• 1:40:17
  SPEAKER_01: like even talking at the dinner table or watching how other people interact.
• 1:40:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, oh, this is now my sibling.
• 1:40:23
  SPEAKER_02: And I think there's so much medicine and groups and friends.
• 1:40:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah. Absolutely.
• 1:40:30
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, without a doubt, anytime you sit in a sharing circle or something,
• 1:40:35
  SPEAKER_02: there's always someone that will make that comment of,
• 1:40:37
  SPEAKER_02: I heard myself in every single one
• 1:40:41
  SPEAKER_02: of the shares before it came to me.
• 1:40:45
  SPEAKER_02: And we need more of that to share.
• 1:40:50
  SPEAKER_02: Dissolve this illusion of separateness that we have.
• 1:40:54
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's you and me, but it's actually us, you know.
• 1:40:59
  SPEAKER_02: And so something like Huachuma
• 1:41:05
  SPEAKER_02: that is, I would say,
• 1:41:06
  SPEAKER_02: more often done in a group process than solo, you know,
• 1:41:12
  SPEAKER_02: is offering the medicine for the times, which is social connectedness.
• 1:41:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 1:41:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it could go on and on.
• 1:41:27
  SPEAKER_00: What are you up to these days?
• 1:41:29
  SPEAKER_00: And what can people that are listening do to interact with you, if anything?
• 1:41:34
  SPEAKER_00: And it's okay to say, don't contact me.
• 1:41:37
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to hear from you.
• 1:41:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so...
• 1:41:47
  SPEAKER_02: Briefly mentioned in a couple of weeks' time,
• 1:41:51
  SPEAKER_02: I'm doing a week-long psychedelic-assisted therapy training with IPAT,
• 1:41:57
  SPEAKER_02: which is Indigenous Psychedelic Assisted Therapies.
• 1:42:00
  SPEAKER_02: I'm really looking forward to that because it's going to be...
• 1:42:07
  SPEAKER_02: I guess what's different about this training compared to others is we're going
• 1:42:10
  SPEAKER_02: to be camping at a creek.
• 1:42:13
  SPEAKER_02: It's going to be a seven-day immersive experience on the land
• 1:42:20
  SPEAKER_02: through weaving both of those worlds.
• 1:42:25
  SPEAKER_02: So if people are interested in the work that we do, they can look at our website,
• 1:42:31
  SPEAKER_02: which is just ipat.au.
• 1:42:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and then I'm running
• 1:42:43
  SPEAKER_02: a couple of retreats in March for psychedelic therapists.
• 1:42:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um, that is kind of what we were talking about before,
• 1:42:52
  SPEAKER_02: looking at more the self-work of the therapist through like a depth psychology, um,
• 1:42:58
  SPEAKER_02: um, And I guess what you would call shadow work.
• 1:43:02
  SPEAKER_02: So I've got a couple of people from the US coming over for the development
• 1:43:09
  SPEAKER_02: of these therapists as well,
• 1:43:11
  SPEAKER_02: because I think that's my real area
• 1:43:15
  SPEAKER_02: of passion is not only integration,
• 1:43:19
  SPEAKER_02: but supporting therapists to develop themselves in this work.
• 1:43:26
  SPEAKER_02: That's what I'm up to at the moment.
• 1:43:29
  SPEAKER_00: Cool.
• 1:43:32
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we would love to see you again in person.
• 1:43:35
  SPEAKER_00: And also, we would love it if you're able to.
• 1:43:39
  SPEAKER_00: We already talked about perhaps getting you on our Huachuma Wisdom group.
• 1:43:43
  SPEAKER_00: We're still trying to work out the time differences.
• 1:43:46
  SPEAKER_00: But I think if we can work that out, that would be just to have you.
• 1:43:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'd love to.
• 1:43:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, that'd be fantastic.
• 1:43:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, I definitely hope to come and join a fire path soon.
• 1:44:06
  SPEAKER_00: You, of course, are welcome anytime.
• 1:44:10
  SPEAKER_00: The fire, we didn't talk about it, but there's no EMDR there unless you're doing it yourself.
• 1:44:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's really, you would find it so fascinating to see what happens.
• 1:44:23
  SPEAKER_00: I would like to take you to one where we take first timers
• 1:44:27
  SPEAKER_00: because what you end up seeing is the reason I don't take first timers
• 1:44:32
  SPEAKER_00: and you would know exactly what's happening with them.
• 1:44:36
  SPEAKER_00: Somatically, very,
• 1:44:38
  SPEAKER_00: very challenging not to be able to express sometimes and move
• 1:44:44
  SPEAKER_00: and they often have It's not just first-timers. It can happen to anybody.
• 1:44:49
  SPEAKER_00: But without the knowledge of how to move energy, the fire can be really intense for people.
• 1:44:54
  SPEAKER_00: Challenging.
• 1:44:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
• 1:44:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:44:58
  SPEAKER_02: So I am glad I did do the heart path.
• 1:45:03
  SPEAKER_02: Now it just whet my appetite for the fire path.
• 1:45:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah. Well, we're still working on dates for 2027.
• 1:45:15
  SPEAKER_00: I have the heart path up already.
• 1:45:17
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, I'll just mention it here on the show while we're on it because all
• 1:45:22
  SPEAKER_00: of the retreats in the future are coming through Huachuma Foundation.
• 1:45:27
  SPEAKER_00: And we have formed a subsidiary called Huachuma Works.
• 1:45:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so that way, if there are any profits, I have yet to figure out how to make it profitable.
• 1:45:38
  SPEAKER_00: But if there are any profits,
• 1:45:40
  SPEAKER_00: they would go directly to the Huachuma Foundation and then back
• 1:45:44
  SPEAKER_00: into the preservation education work we're doing.
• 1:45:48
  SPEAKER_00: So we do have the heart path up already.
• 1:45:50
  SPEAKER_00: And actually after this podcast, I have to talk to someone who's interested.
• 1:45:55
  SPEAKER_00: So if anyone is interested, that's up.
• 1:45:58
  SPEAKER_00: And the fire path will be for advanced people ready to sit all night around a fire.
• 1:46:05
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, we do the hikes too.
• 1:46:08
  SPEAKER_00: They're absolutely beautiful in ways that when you're ready for it,
• 1:46:13
  SPEAKER_00: it's the right medicine.
• 1:46:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah. Wow.
• 1:46:18
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Bianca.
• 1:46:19
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for taking your Saturday morning.
• 1:46:23
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 1:46:24
  SPEAKER_02: So lovely to chat with you both.
• 1:46:26
  SPEAKER_02: And thank you for the work that you do with the Huachuma Foundation.
• 1:46:31
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm so glad that we connected.
• 1:46:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah. Thank you.
• 1:46:36
  SPEAKER_01: Us too. Thank you.
• 1:46:37
  SPEAKER_01: Blessings for your training. Thank you.
• 1:46:40
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you very much.
• 1:46:41
  [music]
• 1:46:49
  SPEAKER_00: This podcast episode was a production of the Huachuma Foundation.
• 1:46:53
  SPEAKER_00: If you would like to be a guest on our show, email us at huachumafoundation at gmail.com.
• 1:47:01
  SPEAKER_00: If you would like to learn more about us or support our mission,
• 1:47:05
  SPEAKER_00: please visit huachumafoundation.org.
• 1:47:09
  SPEAKER_00: And most of all, remember to plant more, worry less.
• 1:47:12
  [music]