See You On The Other Side
Meet Leah and Christine. Busy moms and entrepreneurs just trying to balance this crazy thing called life. But we don't do surface, and we're definitely not your typical momtrepreneurs...so let's go a little deeper. Empaths, traumatic childhoods, generational trauma, people pleasers, toxic relationship patterns, anxiety, depression, feeling stuck and desperately seeking peace and happiness. And then we fell into the world of magic mushrooms and psychedelics. The catalyst that helped us break out of our comfort zones and took us DEEP into our personal healing journeys. We'll take you behind the scenes as we learn more about the holistic side of healing and all the amazing people we plan on meeting along the way. Join us as we share the good, the bad, and the ugly side of healing. With and without psychedelics. We hope to see you on the other side! Note: We are not professionals and we do not advise the use of illegal substances. For more about psychedelic support or clinical trials in your area, visit https://psychedelic.support/
See You On The Other Side
82 | Bridging Ancient Wisdom with Modern Psychedelics (with Azalea Montaño-Kemp)
Embark on an entrancing exploration as Azalea, a medicine woman for the modern era, shares her wisdom on intertwining curanderismo with the verve of today's generation. Grasping the essence of ancient practices, she reveals how traditional mushroom ceremonies and microdosing can coalesce with our contemporary existence, urging us to connect with plant spirits with both reverence and a hint of playfulness. Her insights invigorate our understanding of psychedelics' therapeutic joy, challenging preconceived notions that these rituals are strictly somber or solely a novelty.
We also traverse the poignant transformations of individuals who've encountered the profound depths of shamanic healing, awakening ancestral ties and imbibing the age-old wisdom of plant medicines. Their personal narratives, from soul-stirring revelations to the integration of these expansive experiences into daily life, underscore the delicate balance of honoring the past while navigating the present.
Finally, we reflect on the present-day role of shamanism and the intriguing potential of plants like the blue lotus, revered since antiquity for its dream-enhancing properties. Our discussion illuminates how these earthly remedies can illuminate the dark corners of our lives and provide holistic support. This episode is an invitation to those curious about the intersections of plant medicine, personal transformation, and the modern rebirth of ancient healing practices—it's a conversation that may well alter your perception of the spiritual landscape and the time-honored wisdom guiding us towards inner light.
Find Azalea here: www.instagram.com/azaleadetierra
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We're silly Like a kid.
Speaker 2:I get so excited for these interviews because I feel like each interview is like just I learned so much. It's great integration for us and I don't know.
Speaker 1:Can I say what we were saying earlier? Yeah, like when we found out your age, I want to say like the thing that popped in my head was like age is nothing but a number. Because immediately we were like and she's only in her 20s, I feel not intimidated, but where you are, I could not have imagined being in my 20s or even my 30s. It took me into my well, I'm 40 now, but it took me a long time to get to where it sounds like you have been for quite a while. So it's very commendable. And I'm like, oh my God, we're not in the presence of a 20 something year old. We're like in the presence of like wisdom. We're in the presence of a medicine woman.
Speaker 2:So, literally, our best behavior. We're in the presence of a medicine woman. Literally, we need to get our best behavior, I know? Okay. So, azalea, welcome to See on the Other Side. We are so excited to have you on. You emailed us I think two years ago and I remember this vividly. The second I saw your email, I took a screenshot of it, sent it to Leah and I'm like I have to email her back. She sounds incredible. And I emailed you back and I was like I think verbatim, what I said was I don't mean to sound weird, but I feel like I'm already obsessed with you and I didn't hear back and I was so sad and I think I tried emailing you again just recently and we figured out that you didn't receive my email.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I was so sad, I was so sad.
Speaker 1:So Christine is in charge of like booking and I remember every time I would see a new name on the on our schedule, I'd be like is this that girl? And she was like no. She never responded and I'm like dang it. Oh, I've said that a couple of times. I was like is this the one? Yeah, so we are honored to have you.
Speaker 2:We are very excited. One of the things that you said in your email is that you consider yourself a modern day medicine woman. Can you kind of elaborate on just who you are and what you're doing in this space now and what that means?
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, definitely yeah, and I'm so happy to be here. Thank you for having me. I mean, I felt the same. I sent the application and I was so sad not to hear back, so I'm really glad that it all worked out and we found each other in the right timing.
Speaker 3:But yeah, this whole modern day medicine woman thing, I hold like really old and ancient traditions of curanderismo, which is healing with plant medicines, and specifically I'm Mexican and working in a lineage where I hold traditional mushroom ceremonies and these are very, very ancient practices that date back to our ancestors thousands and thousands of years ago.
Speaker 3:But at the same time I am Gen Z and I just like have a fun little life of my own, you know. So I just always look for ways to kind of like integrate that ancient medicine work into the modern age. For example, microdosing is like a really beautiful way to do that, because microdosing is a super ancient practice that has been done in indigenous communities for a long time too. But now that it's coming into the scope of the modern world and we have like the Fatimans protocol, which is still new, and things like that, I really like to find ways to still integrate the ancient ways of being with this medicine and making microdosing kind of like an offering to the path of life instead of just a pill that we consume. So this is just kind of like a really easy explanation of how I try to integrate those worlds and sort of walk that path just a pill you take.
Speaker 1:This isn't a replacement for your antidepressants. This isn't a replacement for your anti-anxiety medications. There is like a practice and you can't it's not easy to explain to someone who doesn't understand that like there's like a ceremonial thing to it or like a sacred practice to it. So, yeah, I love that, because I would like to know how to incorporate that more into my practices, into my microdosing protocols and also into just when I commune with medicine in general, like how can we do this and also hold space for the indigenous practices of this medicine? It's not a new, modern thing and everybody thinks it's new and modern and it's not.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and part of the reason that I was so excited when I found y'all and I originally reached out is because I really loved that your podcast was one of the few like psychedelic therapy or psychedelic therapy adjacent podcasts where you talk about like the fun of taking these medicines, you know, and how these recreational experiences can be really therapeutic as well.
Speaker 3:And, just having my background and my training, I'm really passionate about like decolonization, education and I think that that's a really big part of like decolonizing even the modern therapy model. But decolonizing psilocybin as we see it today, like this medicine, is also for us to play with the spirit of it and to hear both of you just like speak about that all the time was really exciting. And a lot of people you know, they know my background and they see my work they think that I'm going to be this really black and white shaman or whatever. They start to place labels on me and they think that I'm going to be really opposed to even microdosing. But I don't think that's really a part of it. You know, the shamanism or the practice of curanderismo doesn't need to be strict. It's a practice of being in deep relationship to plants and plant spirits and a lot of that is play.
Speaker 1:That's huge. We get a lot of like. Sometimes we get pushback on our TikTok for being playful about it and they're like this is serious work and I think we're funny with and without that, and so why would we pretend to be serious when we're talking about something like? When? We're not serious all the time anyway, Right.
Speaker 2:And it's both yes, yes, well, we're both like we're. We're a lot of things like, yes, I can be deep, we were, you know, we were just talking about it before we started recording. Yes, I can be deep and have these intense conversations and carry grief and anger and all these things, but also I can be really goofy and I can laugh and I cannot take myself too seriously and love to joke around, like you know, putting ourselves or labeling ourselves like we have to be one thing or the other. Same thing with this medicine, right, all of the things. Same thing with this medicine, right, All of the things. So, yes, yes, can I ask you, did you grow up with this around you, or how did you kind of get into this space?
Speaker 3:So I didn't grow up with psilocybin practices specifically but, like I said, my mom's side of the family is Mexican and they're indigenous, so I grew up with a lot of curanerismo and herbalism in the home and just like natural ways of healing, and I was also raised Christian. But my parents did a really beautiful job of always making this even religious practice about like prayers into the earth and about connecting to creation. So a lot of like the sort of concepts of how I raised were there. And then, as I got older, I went into my own journey with mental health. I was depressed for as long as I can remember. I had PTSD since I was a child. I was anorexic for many years. I used to be a professional dancer, actually.
Speaker 3:So there's just a lot of things coming into the color of my life that we're adding to this in addition to just general childhood trauma and that sort of stuff, and I had been doing lots of meditation, yoga, mindfulness. I was in regular therapy for many, many years and it was all really supportive and helpful. But things just got to a point where I felt like I needed to take antidepressants or something. I needed some support. But being raised in this more traditional way, really connected to the earth. I was always encouraged to just not take medications and try to find my own healing naturally. So I just did some really deep research on, like you know, natural supplements or whatever instead of SSRIs. And I actually came across a Reddit thread for ayahuasca, as many people do, and I had never taken a psychedelic but I was like, yeah for sure. I mean I knew we used to have peyote in the home. That was another part of, like my family, but as a kid I never thought about it. It was just like the cactus on the table.
Speaker 1:So like Took it as like nobody took the peyote. It was just kind of in your home as a plant, I guess.
Speaker 3:As a plant, but as medicine as well, like if somebody was sick they would take a little bit, or often, like working with the spirit, like if somebody I don't know, if one of my cousins fell off their scooter then my grandpa would like rub the peyote oil on him, like that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:I mean, I love that, I had no idea. Okay, that's really cool.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I mean, it has so many medicinal uses, yeah, but I found this sort of like Reddit thread about ayahuasca and, again, no psychedelic experience. But I was like this feels like something for me. It's done in ritual. You go visit a tribe or a clan and you sit in the ceremony. Done in ritual. You go visit a tribe or a clan and you sit in the ceremony.
Speaker 3:So I booked my experience and then, about a week before I was supposed to go, it got canceled and I was really upset because I had spent like months even preparing with my therapist, right Like on the dieta.
Speaker 3:And then I just reached out to one of my close friends who I know takes a lot of psychedelics, and I just told her like I don't know, maybe I should just like take mushrooms, like I know it's not going to be the same, but I think it could be fun and I'm in a good mindset, I'm on this diet. And she was like yes, like you're going to love them, this is perfect for you right now. And we were just going to like take mushrooms in my house and like have a good time, and I've taken edibles many times, so I thought it was just going to like laugh and you know that was it. But I had this huge experience of, you know, just coming to terms with, like, all of these things I had been working on in therapy and meditation and mindfulness practices, like coming to fruition during this experience with mushrooms my mind was like what do you mean?
Speaker 2:Can you elaborate on that?
Speaker 3:Like I had spent years just working with specific traumas that I had been going through in therapy, but I still felt like deep symptoms of depression and when I had the psilocybin experience, it was almost like somebody flipped a switch and was like you did the work, you can release this, you're good, and I just felt like my depression had slipped away like straight up it just left. So, it wasn't?
Speaker 2:Oh, go ahead, sorry, no, no, go ahead. Um, I was just going to say so. After this experience, were you like, oh, wow, like I feel such a connection to this, like what else is out there?
Speaker 3:oh, wow, like I feel such a connection to this, like what else is out there A little bit. But it was during the experience that I had that reconnection to like lineage and to this practice. Because while I had kind of entered the experience with this like flipping of switches in my brain, I also just had this experience of like plants and trees coming out of the walls and like wrapping themselves around me, vines wrapping around me and the mother earth like cradling me like a baby and I kept hearing these like invitation into a path of shamanism and at the time I didn't even know what a shaman was. I remember like Googling it after this experience, like what is a shaman? And I was just like like I could literally hear and feel the earth speaking to me and asking me to engage in this path, and I didn't know what it meant, but it felt really, really true in my heart. So after that experience I was like, okay, well, if I tell people about this, I think they're gonna think I'm crazy.
Speaker 3:But months later I'm like no medicine at all, I haven't taken anything, and I'm at the park and like trees are talking to me and they're like telling me to come work with mushrooms and like to come to Oaxaca specifically, and it was just like such a, such a surreal experience. But I knew that I had experienced such deep healing and the healing was like so long-term. You know, I didn't feel depressed for so long after that. So I dove really deep into the research side to see like, okay, what really happened, like what was happening in my brain I was studying psychology at the time too, so really thinking about, like, if you know, parts work, internal family systems, like what parts were activated, what's going on with my parts right now, the different parts of my psyche and I just went like straight into the intellectualization of it to learn what happened, at the same time feeling this spiritual calling.
Speaker 3:So finally, six like six months later, I go to drink ayahuasca in Peru with the Shipibo shamans and all of my ayahuasca experiences were very much asking me to work with mushrooms. It was just like mushroom experience. I felt the mushroom spirit in the room and I spoke to one of the teachers at the center that I went to and he told me that my Mexican ancestors were coming into the ceremony and asking me to like reopen our lineage with mushrooms. So then he and some of the other teachers in the center connected me with teachers in Oaxaca who still hold these ancient mushroom traditions, and then I went into a path of going into these communities, being a part of the community being initiated learning the traditional ways and also a path of like relearning what was inside of me or even the things that I was around as a little girl that I had to reconnect to.
Speaker 2:Wow, when? How long ago was this when all of this happened?
Speaker 3:This was, let's see, yeah, this was about four years ago.
Speaker 1:Wow, I mean, did you ever in a million years think you would like a Reddit thread would take you down Like you're? Like, wait a minute, that's not what I was expecting. I was just trying to heal some stuff and I accidentally ended up a shaman, literally.
Speaker 2:And so you apprentice under and correct me if I say it wrong Mazatec shamans under Maria Sabina's lineage.
Speaker 3:Right, so this is the town that Maria Sabina comes from and I'm not specifically under her family, but the same lineage, yeah.
Speaker 2:Can you share with our listeners who Maria Sabina is?
Speaker 3:Yes, of course. So Maria Sabina was this indigenous Mexican woman, mazatec. So Maria Sabina was this indigenous Mexican woman, mazatec. She lived in the mountains of Oaxaca and she worked with psilocybin mushrooms, but specifically she was a mushroom healer. So a lot of people in this community don't often use mushrooms for divination or spiritual experience. They usually take mushrooms when they're sick, like physically. If you're physically sick, you go to see a mushroom doctor or curandera and she helps you to heal with mushrooms. So Maria Sabina was a curandera.
Speaker 3:And eventually there was like a Western New York banker, gordon Wasson, who heard about these magical mushrooms you could find in the mountains of Mexico and he went into Mexico searching for these mushrooms and he couldn't find them. And eventually he got led to Oaxaca and even so the Mazatec people would not share with him because they had to hide a lot of their traditions during colonization. So a lot of people were skeptical about sharing with people, not just foreigners, but anybody who wasn't of indigenous blood or Mazatec blood at that time. So eventually Gordon Watson just kept going back to Huautla, this village, trying to find somebody who would take him in. And the story goes that he ran into Maria Sabina at the market and told her that his son was really sick.
Speaker 3:A lot of people don't know if that was true or not, or if he was just trying to kind of like, get the ceremony, yeah. So. So she took him in anyways and just told him not to share with anybody her name or the location of this ceremony, and of course he had a huge experience, then went home to New York, wrote about it in Life magazine or something, and everybody started flooding to Oaxaca to try the magic mushroom that he wrote about, because at this time people didn't have an understanding that these mushrooms actually just grow anywhere or you can grow them yourself in a shoebox if you wanted to. So everybody was traveling to this town, huautla de Jimenez, to seek out mushroom shamans and have this experience. And this was all in 1955. So this was like really the start of that big psychedelic boom that we saw in the West.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we just did an episode on that.
Speaker 1:but like the LSD psychedelic, like boom and it's all intertwined, like it all kind of happened around the same time. So it's interesting that you were talking about like the being playful and serious side, because we literally had a conversation about that too, how, when LSD was a thing like, there was the you know West who was trying to be playful and, you know, just have fun with it, and then the East was like, no, this is a sacred practice and you have to be serious and this is a spiritual experience and it's not fun and it's like somewhere along the middle somewhere in the middle people were like this can be both Right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and you see issues with each side right, like there's harm to being too serious and there's harm to being too playful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah there. You know, even I have friends or friends who only do it recreationally and I'm like, oh, you would get, yeah, there's so much you could work through if you you did this with the intention of healing. But then also it's like, yeah, but it is really fun too sometimes, and it can be both and I love that.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So how can Indigenous spirituality and philosophy also be great for harm reduction for people?
Speaker 3:That's such a good question, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I also have some Western psychology background, and specifically in using psychedelics to treat substance abuse issues. Abstinence only doesn't work for everybody and a lot of people who are on that path to sobriety in the past have not looked at psychedelics because they've seen them as drugs. And we're in this space now where people are more open to working with psychedelics, which are drugs, which are substances to get away from other substances, and the key to really making that work is looking at someone's relationship to what they are consuming. And that is like a very ancient indigenous practice, like you cannot go into mushroom ceremony without creating or opening a relationship between yourself and the land that you're going to be consuming on yourself and the lands that the mushrooms came from, yourself and the mushrooms, the mushroom spirit, you know.
Speaker 3:And a lot of this work in the harm reduction specifically for addiction is like helping somebody understand what their relationship to these different substances is like. Right, the abusive relationship, of course, is easy to identify how they're abusing a substance, but when they introduce a new substance, be it mushrooms, ketamine, et cetera, to try to get away from these other substances and to find healing, they have to create a new relationship to that substance they have to think about instead of something that they're consuming. How are they engaging with this substance, and how are they working with, in the case of mushrooms? How are they working with this plant spirit to assist them on their journey of sobriety or to assist them on their healing journey, rather than seeing it as a substance or a pill that they take?
Speaker 1:Do you find it's hard to um for some people to understand like this language of like energies and the spiritual practice of things Like I don't know I'm? I'm saying that because I feel like when my husband first started on this journey and he was an addict, like if I were to say like it's the energy you put into it or like the spiritual, he'd be like get the fuck out of here, right, right, I don't understand what you're talking about. That's bullshit. Very different now, but I think a lot of people resist that type of language and I think our society has a lot to do with that. But but how can you walk someone into that without scaring them away?
Speaker 3:Right, right, yeah, and that's a lot of part of the work that I do. And like going back to this modern medicine woman, it's like I know the language that I use to relate to these things, but I changed these words depending on who I talk to. So you know, right now I use the word plant spirit because I'm talking to y'all. I feel comfortable here saying that. But typically whenever I open up a conversation with somebody, I offer them like vocabulary and ask them what they would like to use. So, instead of like plant spirit, we can use plant energy, uh, plant vibration, plant ally, like ways for them to really start to personalize the plant instead of seeing it as a drug or a substance again. Um, but yeah, it really doesn't matter what word somebody is using. It matters how they connect.
Speaker 1:Very good the language they speak.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, no, and I I you know, to elaborate on Leah like I feel like I will say things to people and they're like I'm, I'm not understanding what any of that means because of just how we have grown up, how we're conditioned Again, the thought of like I'm taking this pill and it's treating this symptom like thinking of things on a much, much deeper and more profound level. Right, and that's. It depends, yeah, it depends on the audience, and sometimes I don't know my audience. I'm not a shaman.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but it's all about just like asking people and like, right, it's a conversation. I don't go up to people and just say like you need to be talking to the plant spirit, like we see where they are, we, we meet each other where we're at, and there's also like a or at least you know most people that find me are interested in that more traditional aspect. So there's usually a base of the holistic understanding of holistic medicines that are not even psychedelic, right, like just the concept of. I know that meditation is supportive to me. Maybe I don't know why. I know that yoga really helps my body relax. I know that a tea over two months, healing like the root of something, is going to be a lot better than a medication over two weeks. You know, like there's kind of a base of understanding there, but it's definitely like teaching moments and learning moments.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, definitely, definitely. Now you oh, I feel like you wear a lot of different hats, and you are. You also work with the Microdosing Institute. What do you do for them?
Speaker 3:Oh, I just help them sort of integrate like the indigenous practices or the Mazatec history specifically into their microdosing cohorts. So they do these like six week cohorts where people come on and learn how to microdose and of course they're really based in like research and science so people get to learn all of that and then I get to teach people the indigenous history as well as offer them pathways into really integrating that into their microdosing protocol if they choose.
Speaker 2:I love that too choose.
Speaker 1:I love that too. I love that too. You're like booming with questions.
Speaker 2:I'm like trying to keep up and I'm like not even so, you just keep doing it and, um, when you, when you emailed us, you also mentioned that you do a lot of, uh, psychedelic journalism. Is this kind of the stuff that you write about?
Speaker 3:It is when I first, like I was explaining that time period where I went really deep into the research of psychedelics, I got really into writing and actually this came out of my first trip too. After the trip I was like I want to write a book about this experience, just for my friends. I'm not going to publish it, I just really want to share with all of my friends what I experienced, and I'm just going to write a book about it. And I started writing this book and at the same time I was like going through the research side. So then I had a lot of friends who just knew that I was like really into mushrooms or whatever, and would asking me I'm sure you know you went through this too like saying, oh, how do you microdose? Or where can I find this kind of stuff.
Speaker 3:So then I started like adding on to the book a section about like if you want to microdose, like here's a protocol you can follow. And it just had like the history of microdosing, the science etc. And then I would just send it around like to my friends as a PDF. And my friends were like Azalea, this is good, you should publish this to see if I could do some writing because I really enjoyed that. So a lot of the writing started out as like more integration content, like helping people understand why community is a big part of these experiences, or how to integrate an experience, how to tell your family about psychedelics, and then eventually transitions to more of this like personal journalism or personal writing specifically about my own journey of integrating psychedelics, integrating that modern psychology with the indigenous apprenticeship and ways of like being a steward of this medicine.
Speaker 1:I kind of feel like we're a little bit of the journalists in this space, a little bit Like we, we base things, things off of the type of questions that we get. So it's interesting. You're like I'll write this little journal and then somebody asks about microdosing and you're like, oh, let me add that that's kind of what it feels like when we're doing something. Is there's questions we don't think about, especially because we're already in this space, and then we'll have somebody new come along and ask a question and we're like I never thought about that Right.
Speaker 2:Let me dig into that.
Speaker 1:Let's have someone on to talk about that. Yeah, you know. So we're doing it like, not with the writing, but with with the bringing people on and having them talk about their experiences.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's so beautiful, but it's that's so beautiful, but it's hard too, because I feel like in the world of psychedelics, it is a huge ocean of information and it can be extremely overwhelming. And sometimes I forget how overwhelming it can be to someone who is just stepping into it or just wanting to learn something, and I'm like, oh, my God, duh, like just Google it, and I'm like, wait, no, it's not that easy, it really isn't so.
Speaker 3:No, and you're right, I think like being so like deeply involved, and especially with these ancient traditions that are just like a whole other world than the psychedelic movement itself. I have such a hard time remembering, like what it's like to be in the beginning or what kind of questions people ask you know. So I think it's so beautiful that people are coming to you with that and you get to like reconnect to it and learn a little bit more yourself about the things that you maybe didn't think about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I feel like with each interview we learn a lot and then we get to continue to spread that information with others. Absolutely, we just keep on passing it on and I love that. I have a question People who aren't indigenous but want to have respect it to. Maybe, let's say, they don't have the resources or the means to go to Mexico and go to a retreat. They have to do it somewhere here, but they still want to be respectful.
Speaker 3:Like serving medicine.
Speaker 1:Partaking in it.
Speaker 2:Partaking Partaking, yeah yeah. Like serving medicine, partaking in it, partaking partaking, yeah yeah.
Speaker 3:Things to look out for or, like you know, I don't know, just just ways that they can be respectful I think it starts with gratitude, like, like informing yourself, having a holistic understanding of not just the people who kept these practices, but also what they went through to get these practices to the US and the practices didn't even really travel, it was just the medicine, right.
Speaker 3:So having that understanding, like really being in gratitude around that, and that is like like really being in gratitude around that, and that is like I mean, that's the key, in my opinion, to serving medicine, to consuming medicine, is like being in that gratitude and being in like a long-term relationship, that this is not just like a one-time experience and maybe you do only consume it one time in your whole life, but that this follows you. You know like the integration path is like. You know like the integration path is like you're still walking with a plant ally. It becomes a part of your life, it becomes a part of your path. So having that understanding of the concept of right relationship, for example, which is this concept that, like, as humans, we're not in this food chain, we're in a circle of reciprocity, so being an active participant in that is like a really important part of consuming this medicine, I believe.
Speaker 2:I love that answer. When you started this journey, were all of your friends and family supportive. Did they understand? Sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1:No, I'm sorry, I was like that's literally what I was thinking.
Speaker 3:I think people I don't, you know, I don't know I'm still learning to this day like how people felt about it, because at the time it felt so true to me that I was like like I might have to go through some shit, but like I don't care. This is my truth.
Speaker 3:I know deep down that like this is the real work and I'm going to do it, um, but when I, you know, some, some of my family members today, still feel a way about it which is so ironic, because I'm like dude, you're literally native, and you're going to be mad at me for, like, connecting to our practices, you get a lot.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, I grew up in the Marshall Islands, where I was born. In the Marshall Islands, my, my mother is white and she brought me to the States and I got disconnected from my culture and a lot of my family. But when I have used psilocybin I feel so connected to my lineage and I feel so connected to my heritage and that has seemed to be the focal point of a few of my journeys now. But the thing that I struggle with is I get a lot of flack from my family. But it's hard because I'm like, but I don't think you understand, I feel so connected and I've always, my entire life I've felt disconnected and this is something where I actually feel so connected to where I come from and I don't understand. I wish you could understand and experience what I'm experiencing. So then, like to me, I feel like I'm respecting it in the most profound way and where before I felt so lost.
Speaker 2:So I I just that's, that's, that's something that I have struggled with is getting flack from that family where, you know, we use a lot of plant medicine. I don't, I don't think that they've used psilocybin, I don't know, but plant medicine is a common practice, so it's it's. It's just been interesting to navigate, I guess. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and, like you know, I say it as if I was just. Like you know, I don't give a fuck, I'm going to do this and I don't care what people say. But of course it was difficult and actually like on that, one of the hardest things on that journey was some of my best friends that I grew up with stopped talking to me when they started seeing me post about mushrooms and I didn't hear from them for years. And recently, literally like two weeks ago, I went back home to visit and one of them reached out to reconnect because she started microdosing and she was like you were right.
Speaker 3:I mean that is so big because I think I also maybe didn't realize how much it affected me. You know that time that we weren't speaking and how I felt really judged by her. But when we reconnected and she was just like yeah, like I took mushrooms and I was like, oh, azalea was right like this is a really beautiful medicine and and it was nice to reconnect and also to not have harsh feelings about it.
Speaker 3:Like I get it, she was at that point in her journey. I was on my path and like in the midst of that it's so hard to accept and you just keep reminding yourself, right? You know I'm following my heart, I know that it's going to be okay. I don't know how but it will be and I could have gone my whole life not talking to her and just trusted that that was supposed to happen. But I was blessed to have her come back in and to like reconnect in that way. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I love that you just shared that, because that is probably one of the things people are constantly bringing to us is like how do you deal with the loss of friendships? And it's something we've never done, a full episode on it, because some of those friendship losses are still very, very, very deep and lot. But it's also nice to know that other people and I hate saying it like that, but I hope you understand what I'm saying it's nice to know that other people have also felt that disconnect from people that they really never expected that from.
Speaker 1:Because we've gotten it from family. We've gotten it from family. We've gotten it from close friends, and I think a lot of times people, before they partake in some type of ceremony, they think like, oh, that'll never happen to me though, right, like I've been friends with these people for my entire life and my family is super supportive of what I'm doing. And then it happens and you're like wait a minute, I thought you guys were going to be my writer. It doesn't always happen like that, so I'm not trying to turn this into a question, but I kind of am. Now, what kind of advice would you give to someone who's experiencing that for the first time?
Speaker 3:Yeah, honestly, the first thing that comes to mind is like, hang in there because you know that what you're doing is right. And it's like, yes, we're talking about psychedelics here, but it's almost like with any boundary you set right. You have to trust that you know what you need, you know what's good for you and not everybody is going to understand that. And on your path, on your journey to self-realization or self-love, you have to be okay with not everybody understanding that. You have to be okay with losing people maybe who don't understand that. But the other little nugget I'll drop in is that nine times out of 10 that this has happened to me or I've seen it happen to other people with psychedelics, the people who were resistant try psychedelics and have a much better understanding of what's going on and totally change their mind, whether or not they continue like taking the psychedelics or believe in it, whatever, usually they have the experience and they're like, oh, okay, I get it and it's fine, like oh, okay, I get it and it's fine.
Speaker 2:And I like what you mentioned, that sometimes people like they come back, like you, you can reconnect again. I mean, I've I've had that where it's people who have been like, wow, you know, I really kind of judged you when you started posting stuff and I was like you know what's she doing? She's a mom, she's this, she's doing drugs and kind of the stereotype, she stereotype, she's doing drugs. And then it was like, oh, but then I know somebody that helped with addiction or I watched this documentary or I, you know, and it just opened my eyes because it's we don't know what we don't know. And at the time and sometimes people need some time to, you know, digest some things and maybe they're used to a certain version of you. So then when you come out and you're like I've done mushrooms and I'm this different person now and I think differently and it can be a lot, it is, and I understand that as well. So it may be hard to kind of digest a little bit.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and kind of like back to this original question. You asked about how my family and friends reacted. The majority of the reactions were like oh, that makes sense, because you've grown so much. You come out or you start speaking about your experience.
Speaker 2:You are an example of that medicine and the way that you carry yourself the way that you walk through life, people will start to notice that, yeah, integration right there.
Speaker 1:You're exactly right. I feel like your first instinct is to defend and ask why. But you're exactly right. I think you know. Ask why. But you're exactly right. I think the more you unapologetically show up and it kind of resonates with with some people and I feel like they see it, the people that we've ran away, they see it, they just don't know what to do with it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and even my partner, um, he didn't do a journey until a year after I did mine, but the reason why he chose to do one is because he saw me change. He saw me heal day in, day out for a year and saw how I started to get better. Get better struggling with anxiety, depression, past childhood trauma, eating disorders, all of that. So I think when they see that transformation, it makes them you know, some of them a little curious, like, oh, maybe I can do that too, something's different.
Speaker 1:Maybe it's those mushrooms she kept talking about in the beginning, because this is going to be talking about in the beginning, because this is going to be I'm a little bit making fun of myself a little bit but I think a lot of times when people first do a psychedelic and they have this really, really positive experience, they want to shout it from the rooftops, they really do. Or they are like immediately like this is what I need to be doing with my life.
Speaker 1:This is it and that that that high lasts for a little while and then, like real life, hits and you're like, well, maybe that's not what I was supposed to be doing, but I was definitely supposed to have that experience and definitely see the power in this medicine. I love that. For you, though, that literally was like the path that it took you and kept you on. You're like I need to be doing something with this.
Speaker 3:And I went through so many waves with it as well, especially like going deeper into it. And you hear all these stories about the person who, like, takes mushrooms and is like oh, I'm a shaman and it's just like not really legit.
Speaker 3:So I questioned myself a lot, which was part of the path. You know, like I think if you're not questioning yourself, then you should be looked out, for you know what I mean. But I went through a lot of waves of and still to this day, I think part of the path, or being somebody who is in stewardship with these medicines, who holds this ceremony, is like being okay with having to let go of that. If you had to, like not making it your identity right, Not letting your ego get involved and like this is just what I do for work and if tomorrow I go work at a coffee?
Speaker 2:shop, then that's what I do for work. Love that I do too, which kind of leads me so I feel like sometimes there's controversy or confusion with the word shaman and what that means. What would you define as a shaman?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's such a tough question because I almost feel that the word shaman should not exist in vocabulary because it's an identity. But the path to shamanism is something that you can practice okay, can you?
Speaker 1:I hate to say like can you elaborate on that? But like, could you please? I know I'm like taking that in. I'm like holy shit. I think the first time I ever met a shaman, I was kind of like you. I was like I didn't even know they wore regular clothes. Like she was in my house like looking all normal and stuff and oh my gosh, it's a person. I'm like I thought you guys lived in the mountains, have this complete misunderstanding of what the word actually is, but I like that you're saying that because it's honest.
Speaker 3:No, and it's true what people think, and we have to learn, and so you know because shamanism's been like ripped from most of modern culture so we don't have this understanding right. And this is also what I mean by like being the modern medicine woman. You know people see me as a shaman or whatever, but I'm just like also walking down the street in my air force ones and like my crop top I said I'm a modern medicine woman styles evolve, yes, but yes, let me elaborate though because I know that might have been a bit confusing.
Speaker 3:But you know a lot of people, especially in indigenous societies, like they don't like the people who you would identify as shamans.
Speaker 3:They don't like being called a shaman because it comes with a lot of ego and identity and there's this sort of like more modern definition that the shaman is like somebody who was the chosen one and they didn't really have to work for it, they were just born into it.
Speaker 3:But the path to shamanism is a little bit of both. Like you're often born into a really difficult life path with a lot of trauma. That gives you a deeper and wider understanding of the world. But the path to shamanism is like working with healing your own trauma, to have that deeper understanding, to bring it back to your community. Like the traditional role of a shaman is to be available for community healing in whatever form that takes, right. So if we're going to talk about like modern shamanism, right, and what that works with or specifically I use the term curanderismo because it's specifically like learning shamanism with plant medicines and that's a whole other world of shamanism is like walking that path, healing your trauma, learning how to help others heal, how to help others walk the path. But then you're also learning how to create really deep relationships with different plant spirits that assist you on that journey.
Speaker 2:So could we one day be modern day Shaman On a plant medicine shaman journey, the way that you're saying it.
Speaker 1:it kind of reminds me of like the hero, the heroine's it, or how you were able to alchemize the situation into a positive, like sharing that with other people and not withholding that information. I mean, I feel like the word, the word has a negative impact on a lot of people, or a negative, icky feeling on a lot of people or a negative icky feeling on a lot of people.
Speaker 1:It's kind of like the word narcissist, like everybody over the word that's overused and misunderstood and misused and and so, yeah, we had, when we did ayahuasca and our shaman, like people were really agitated that he called himself a shaman and but I'm like, but I see him as a shaman, Like it doesn't bother me, that's what he goes by. I mean, it wasn't like his name, but you know what I mean. Yeah.
Speaker 3:No, it's true, it's true and it's like you know it's a complicated topic, but essentially it's a path that you walk and I bring this up because it's true that everybody has this within them. Anybody can really like walk that path to understanding themselves, understanding others, helping other people. But not everybody can be a shaman and not everybody has what it takes to be a shaman. And in a lot of indigenous communities I'm using this term broadly because I'm thinking now of Mazatak and Shipibo Like people actually don't really want to be shamans, Like it's not an exciting thing because it's really fucking hard.
Speaker 3:Like it's a hard path to walk. So at the end of the day, like different people feel a different way about that term. But you go into training for shamanism, you learn how to walk that path. You're given sacred tools like tobacco pipe or popo shikomi, which is like an incense holder for kopal, and you're given initiation to like really learn how to use these tools. But again, it's at the end of the day, it's always up to you to create the relationship that really enables the healing that comes from these plants.
Speaker 2:I am glad that you elaborated on that, and I was totally joking earlier. I do not want that responsibility.
Speaker 1:No, no, well, I mean, it's kind of like the way that I'm saying it. Like you know, people will call me a healer, call you a healer, and I'm like oh, I don't like that word.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Like I know that I am because I've done these things. You know, like I'm a healer in a different way. I'm not like a healer in the tradition. I mean, I guess it is a tradition, I don't know.
Speaker 3:No, but it's like you know. As we've said, there's healing that can take place in so many different ways and, while I do believe that the person who had the MDMA and the heart opening experience and immediately wanted to start leading MDMA sessions and they're doing really good work it's very different than the plant shamanism, where you're literally fasting for multiple weeks alone in the jungle just to be able to have experience with one plant plants, you know.
Speaker 2:So we're talking a lot about psilocybin specifically. Do you help facilitate with other?
Speaker 3:plant medicine and if so, what is that? So I mostly facilitate with psilocybin because that's what I've been called to work with and it's in my ancestry and it just feels right, you know. But I also work with cacao, but cacao is a great partner to psilocybin. Part of the path to initiation for psilocybin is working with cacao in the Mazatec lineage. So I see them as partners, these two plants, and recently I started working more with blue lotus.
Speaker 2:I know nothing about blue lotus.
Speaker 1:I've sent you articles about it before because what I have read about it it can really help with dream states, and maybe I'm wrong about that. That's just something that I have learned on my own, but can you elaborate on it? I would love to learn, like from you.
Speaker 3:Yes, of course, Definitely dream states that the blue Lotus is like the Egyptian psychedelic. It was like the psychedelic of the ancient Egyptians and they would take it for spiritual means. They would sometimes mix it in their wine for parties. It's really really beautiful herbal medicine and while you're not going to have a psychedelic trip unless you maybe drink a lot of blue lotus tea you're going to have a deep meditative state that sometimes can give you visuals, kind of like a sound bath.
Speaker 3:You know, when you're put into really deep meditative state, Definitely for communing with your dreams. So you'll have not just really vivid dreams, but the blue lotus helps you to remember more of your dreams so you can do a lot of dream work. It's a third eye herb so it really helps with your intuition, like trusting yourself when you feel a certain way, feeling more deeply connected to your heart and not so stuck in your head. It's really good for the nervous system, so great for people who have a lot of anxiety and also just generally good for sleep because of that dream state that it puts you in. So if you have insomnia and you drink Blue Lotus before going to bed, it's really good for you.
Speaker 1:Good to know. We haven't talked about this and I would love to have somebody on who does talk about this. But for a minute I was really focused and trying to figure out how to lucid dream. That's why I was looking into the Blue Lotus in the first place. Yeah, you go through a lot of phases I go through. Yeah, I'm a manifestor, that's what I do. So I'm like how can I learn how to lucid dream? And I literally for weeks, was working on practicing remembering my dreams and that started working. And every time it shocked me. I would wake up and be like, oh my God, the fact that I remember every detail of my dream, like what just happened. So I stopped halfway through because it's kind of started to freak me out a little bit. Nothing negative happened, but it was very powerful that I had the ability to do even what I did. But I was like, okay, this is a little much. I don't know if I want to like lucid dream yet I may need to like work on this a little bit.
Speaker 3:Well, you manifested this conversation about blue lotus.
Speaker 1:For real. Okay, so maybe I need to like go back into that. That was my sign.
Speaker 3:Yes, no, it's a very, she's a very beautiful medicine.
Speaker 1:Wow, and is is blue lotus. I feel like that's legal. It is, it's not Okay. That's what I thought too, cause you can. You can get that.
Speaker 2:Okay, good to know, so not to bring it down. Um, uh, I, on both my mom and dad's side, have, um, there's a lot of addiction, um, and substance abuse and um, again, bringing up plant medicine, bringing up psilocybin, bringing it up that these medicines can treat addiction has been something where I've been met with, like using a drug to treat alcohol addiction. That doesn't, that doesn't make any sense. Like how can you take a drug to then treat an addiction to a different substance? Um, that's hard to explain. Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. So can you explain it?
Speaker 2:Cause it is, it's, it's, it's. It's hard to explain to someone who has never used the medicine to understand why that would be. And also, I am somebody who used to be bulimic and I feel like you know, at the core of it is trauma, but it's like then this person uses alcohol to cope. I use bulimia, you use Xenorex. You know everyone has their different coping strategies. It's not necessarily the substance. But yeah, can you elaborate on that? For sure, for sure.
Speaker 3:I think one of the easiest ways that I've been able to tap into that conversation is to remind people that these are things that we can find on the earth. They're natural, right, like taking away the conversation from this being a drug and this literally being not just a plant medicine. But mushrooms are actually a superfood. Like this is actually just a part of your diet at this point, especially when somebody is like microdosing, this is like a supplement that you're taking. My family also.
Speaker 3:I have addiction on both sides of my family and that was part of the struggle to coming out about what I do, because it was going to be seen as a drug. But I was able to have that conversation with my parents that like no, actually this is a gift from the earth and thankfully, my parents had that holistic understanding so they were able to go like, oh, that's true, why do we see that as a drug? Because we can literally just pick this from the mountains, or the same as lavender, the same as like lavender, or whatever. So helping people to remember that, I think, is really, really helpful. And what you're saying about this thing that everything stems from the trauma, right, if somebody that you're speaking to has that understanding already, then what you can help explain is that psilocybin doesn't shun you from the trauma. That's what all of these other drugs do, things that we abuse are shunning us from the trauma.
Speaker 3:It actually puts a spotlight on the trauma, so it's just very different.
Speaker 2:Sometimes you're like I don't want to feel all this. This is a lot and it's heavy and I was down for a reason. But yeah, no, I'm glad you elaborated on that, Thank you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. And also just the idea that psychedelics in general will help you to explore the subconscious and bring things to your awareness, and that's so different than, like you said, suppressing something. It actually just like holds your hand as you walk the journey of your mind.
Speaker 2:Which I think it's interesting how we've been conditioned to demonize going into our own subconscious Right.
Speaker 1:I guess my head Do what I want with it.
Speaker 3:Right Even what you're saying, Leah, about like dream work and how that kind of gets overwhelming sometimes Like there's a lot of people that believe dream work is demonic about. Like dream work and how that kind of gets overwhelming sometimes Like there's a lot of people that believe dream work is demonic, but dream work is just the exploration of your mind. Talk about literally demonizing the mind.
Speaker 2:I never thought about it that way, which is again why these interviews are such great.
Speaker 1:How are you going to make my dreams illegal?
Speaker 2:Yes, so you live in Mexico and you facilitate retreats.
Speaker 3:I do, yes, I facilitate ceremonies and retreats.
Speaker 2:Yes, I would love to talk about that. We're obviously in the US. Do you do them only in Mexico? Like, tell us all of the things.
Speaker 3:Tell our listeners. I would love to do them in the U S, particularly because these retreats are a lot of lands work we work a lot with like healing the land and just ancestral traditions, and I think the U? S could use a lot of that love. But just because of the legality issue, I'm doing these in Mexico because Mexico were protected by indigenous law to continue these practices.
Speaker 2:Okay, okay. So where can people find you? When is your next retreat? Give us all of the details of that as well, please. Yes, of course.
Speaker 3:So we do our retreats right now in San Miguel de Allende, which is in Guanajuato, and it's just this beautiful little village and it's considered the heart of Mexico. So it was also very intentionally chosen for the energy that that land holds us with, and the retreats are typically a week long because I really like to give people that space to integrate. I feel like it's really harsh to just come into an experience and go home right. This is why I also don't like to do one-off ceremonies or even weekend experiences. We really need that space to also be in relationship with the land, with the peoples and with the medicine itself. So we'll have like a lot of integration and preparation activities throughout the week yoga, meditation I do like psychological preparation with people as well. We'll typically have a microdose day and we'll use that day as like an offering to the earth.
Speaker 3:Before the ceremony We'll go into this beautiful nature reserve. We have like a guided spirit walk and then it's also a nice way for people to experience the subtlety of the medicine, especially people who have not yet taken psilocybin. It's nice for them to take the smaller amount and see what it's like before stepping into the ceremony. And then, of course, we'll have the ceremony things throughout the week, like a cow ceremony.
Speaker 3:I mean, I've said it, but we do so many land offerings and just really like trying to make this process sustainable so that when you leave the retreat center you're not done or you don't feel like, okay, I'm home and I don't know what to do now, like you really are handheld throughout that process. But yeah, you can find it on my website, which is vibrationalhealingme, because we're all about self-healing and being your own personal healer. And the next one is in June, which is super soon. That one is for the summer solstice and also an offering to Tlaloc, which is the Aztec deity for rain, because it's the beginning of our rainy season. And then the next one we'll have is going to be in September with the equinox.
Speaker 2:Wow, I've done cacao and I've obviously done psilocybin, but I've never done them together, so I would love to try that.
Speaker 3:They're great friends. I mean, the cacao teaches you a lot about the spirit of the mushroom.
Speaker 2:Are they good together? Because it's like the cacao helps open.
Speaker 3:Well, they're both heart openers, for sure, but we actually don't. Well, we'll take the mushrooms with cacao seed, but the cacao ceremony happens days before the mushroom ceremony. Okay, so that the spirit is working with somebody before they consume the mushroom medicine okay, can uh people find you on social media?
Speaker 2:yes, okay, what's that? My well included in our show notes.
Speaker 3:Perfect. My handle on Instagram is at. I'm going to say it in an English accent because it's in Spanish, so sorry, to the Spanish listeners this is going to sound horrible. Yes, we'll do both. It's Azalea de Tierra, but Azalea de Tierra, yeah, which means in Spanish like azalea of the earth.
Speaker 1:I love that. I love that. Okay, I'm going to do one more thing, because I texted you late last night. This is what we do, like in the middle of the night. I'm like I'm texting you just now so I don't forget.
Speaker 1:But I think we need to start asking our guests this question. Oh, I didn't see that. It was at like yeah, you were probably asleep. I was sleeping. I said this is something I want to start asking anyone who has had psychedelic experience. Um, and the reason I wanted to start asking this is because we have a lot of people interested in doing journeys or microdosing, but they are afraid of something and that's the thing that's holding them back. I'm thinking of a couple of people in particular who have been putting off a journey for years because they're so afraid of what would come up. And so my question that I want to start asking people who have experienced this medicine work and who have, who are years out of it and it's not like super fresh on your mind, because I think sometimes super fresh, you're like don't do it. But my question is what were you most afraid of going into your first ceremony and what did you least expect to happen?
Speaker 3:Wow, good question. That's such a good question. Wow Oof.
Speaker 2:Let's see.
Speaker 3:Take your time.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I have to really think about that, to be honest, with my first mushroom experience I wasn't really afraid. I felt really safe. I did a little bit of research, I was in a good mindset my friend had done mushrooms many times so I felt really safe, like comforted by that, knowing I was going to do this with her. But there was more of this like the fear of the unknown right, like I couldn't say that I was afraid I was going to see dragons or I was afraid that like I was going to lose my mind. It was more just like I'm stepping into like truly unknown territory, and that comes with, maybe like the energy of a little bit of fear in terms of like I don't know what I'm stepping into, but I remember this, this quote making me think of this quote. It says courage is not the absence of fear, rather that something else is more important than the fear itself.
Speaker 1:That was perfect.
Speaker 3:Because the fear is there and it's natural, but you have to make the decision like how much you want that fear to stop you.
Speaker 1:You're exactly right. I think we were terrified with our first journeys and we did it anyway, and I would be lying if I said there wasn't a little bit of fear every time after that oh yeah, there's always that always fear. I think it's. I think it's like we're not not afraid.
Speaker 2:It's a little new because it you really don't know. You don't know what's gonna come up, you don't know. You know, I had one journey where it was the most beautiful connection with my ancestors and rainbows and butterflies, and I came out and I was just so happy. And then another journey where it was about my ancestors, but it was like experiencing all of the generational trauma and and and that was incredibly painful and took me a minute to really sit with it, right.
Speaker 1:So, the fear of the unknown. The fear of the unknown Is healthy. If you weren't afraid, I would be like that's a little psycho.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, that's always there. You know, I've sat in so many ceremonies, I've led so many and still you never know what's going to happen. But that's why I use this language of like long term sustainability path, because it's a practice. You just get better at like being okay with the fear.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that is exactly. You just explained it in a way that I couldn't like. You just be okay. You're just okay with the fear at some point.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you for taking the time today to talk with us, and I am so glad we reconnect like we were able to connect after this you know we were very excited to talk with you today. We're also both incredibly nervous, I know. I don't know why we just were, but I'm I'm incredibly grateful that we had this conversation with you and got to connect.
Speaker 3:I'm so grateful. Thank you so much for even just making room for these conversations. You know there's not a lot of indigenous voices that get to be heard in this space too, so I really appreciate you bringing lineage into your podcast.
Speaker 1:Yes, and maybe one day we'll meet you on retreat. I was just going to say I would love that. Yes, what's happening in the universe? Yeah, All right. And to our listeners stay curious, be open and we will see you guys on the other side.
