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
93 | From Ancestral Wisdom to Modern Healing (with Micah Stover)
Imagine connecting with your ancestral gifts through psychedelic experiences. In this episode we sit down with Micah Stover, a psychedelic somatic therapist and trauma midwife, who shares her personal journey of uncovering a lineage of midwifery and integrating spiritual awareness with somatic experiences. Micah's story of rediscovering her roots and using psychedelic therapy as a tool for healing is both awe-inspiring and deeply insightful.
We explore how psychedelics can be powerful catalysts for healing birth trauma and fertility wounds, emphasizing the profound emotional and psychological aspects of pregnancy and motherhood. Micah's unique perspective reveals the mystical design of the woman's body and the importance of reclaiming its power. We also discuss the challenges of postpartum experiences and the limitations of traditional pharmacological approaches, highlighting the need for a broader conversation around these transformative experiences.
This episode isn't just about personal healing—it's about community and ethical practices in psychedelic therapy. Micah discusses the importance of consent, safe practices, and the role of self-responsibility in therapeutic settings. We touch on the wisdom of ancestors, the challenges of moving to a place with fewer conveniences, and the empowerment that comes from self-awareness and autonomy. Join us for a heartfelt and organic conversation that fuses the mystical with the practical, offering a holistic approach to trauma recovery and personal growth.
You can connect with Micah here: http://www.micahstoverconsulting.com/
And here: www.instagram.com/micahsugarfoot
Order her book Healing Psychedelics here: https://amzn.to/3MJK4Qn
1:1 Discovery Calls
Are psychedelics right for you on your healing journey? Book a discovery call to ask us anything.
Colors
Use code OTHERSIDE15 for 15% off
Microdosify
Use code SYOTOS for 10% off
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1982724/support
Our Website:
https://linktr.ee/seeyouontheothersidepodcast
Okay, everyone, welcome back to another episode of See you on the Other Side. We have got Micah Stover here with us today and I'm so excited to talk to her. So, micah Stover, you are a psychedelic somatic therapist and a trauma midwife. So I just want to like get out the gate and ask this question what is a trauma midwife? So I just want to like get out the gate and ask this question what is a trauma midwife? Good question.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is a good question and let me unpack it, because it's not like a thing that I went to school and got some sort of certification that says trauma midwife. I think that the language of the medicine is all symbol and metaphor, and when I say the language of the medicine I mean obviously psychedelic earth medicines. And so in one of my early ceremonies, when I was on my own, starting my own healing path, I was at that point pretty acutely aware that I had a lot of intergenerational trauma that had not been unpacked. And it was actually birth and pregnancy that brought me into awareness of that. And there's that expression that people often talk about it in indigenous worlds that wherever there's trauma that we inherit also there are gifts, and sometimes the trauma and the pain can eclipse our capacity to see the gifts that are there. So in this particular ceremony, one of the intentions that I went in with is like help me see, on the other side of all this pain, what was going on with my ancestors that I want to cultivate, that I want to also tap into.
Speaker 2:And one of the first things that really came into my third eye consciousness clarity was that I am a descendant of a long line of midwives on my father's side and you know, at that time there's so many fascinating parallel parallels here, because at that time midwifery was, you know, a kind of witchcraft. It was forbidden, illegal and also saving a lot of people's lives. And so my ancestors, who were in like the back backwoods of Appalachian Mountains in Tennessee were, depending on who you're talking to like the people who saved people or the people who needed to be locked up. And so I just started realizing like, oh, the women in my lineage have always been in like this midwifery place and there's always been trauma everywhere around. And so my iteration of that is to be also in a birth space, albeit not necessarily bringing them for the fresh, brand new babies, but like the rebirthing of spirits through this psychedelic birth from pain into potential, into purpose, into alchemy. So that's really where that title comes from is from a lineage of being in midwifery and working with trauma.
Speaker 1:Wow. Wow, I've been watching you over there, I'm like clipping away.
Speaker 2:And I also want to just I wanted to say that I'm so happy to be here. I've loved finding your podcast and listening to it, and so just also want to acknowledge, as we start the conversation I'm really excited to be here and I'm so just also want to acknowledge, as we start the conversation I'm really excited to be here and I'm excited that you want to talk about these sorts of things, because I think women really need to hear these things.
Speaker 1:Well, and we're really excited to have you here, because this is like we talk a lot about psychedelics. We are both mothers, but we have not really talked about it in the way that I think we're going to talk about it today, and so I'm I'm really looking forward to kind of like diving into this, this new territory. I guess the other thing I want to ask is how how would you define a psychedelic somatic therapist? That's also something I think maybe a lot of our listeners are unfamiliar with.
Speaker 2:Sure, so yeah, it's a good question. So I think one of the things that I try to bring to this world of psychedelic work is like the interstice, where spirit and science can meet and not fight each other for somebody to win and be most right, but commingle and compliment one another. So when I think about my work as a facilitator, as a therapist, I am like, in spirit form I am mother, I am a trauma midwife. I'm like like I read somewhere once for those of people who don't know, Ina May Gaskin. Check her out. She's like the mother of midwifery. She's amazing. No idea who that is. I just-. Oh, my God.
Speaker 2:We talk a whole show about that. She's amazing Bookmark, that woman. But she said something like a good midwife is everywhere and nowhere in the room, and so I always think about that. When I'm with people in the psychedelic space it's like, oh, I'm everywhere up in that room and also it ain't got nothing to do with me, Right? So a good midwife is helping the labor process to not stall out, to flow, to be empowering, but also she's not inserting herself, because it's like divinity within the spirit that's going through this passage.
Speaker 2:So that's kind of the spiritual expression that I bring to the work. And then I also I'm totally like a nerd and I love to learn and I love to train, and so the psychedelic somatic therapist part is definitely my clinical training. It is a whole training. There's a school called the Psychedelic Somatic Institute, which is based out of Denver, and I'm trained through that school. And it's not the only modality of therapy that I'm trained in, but it's one that I have found to be incredibly powerful and yielding of lasting results. And I think the main thing that I'll say, just to keep it succinct the reason why I think it's so effective is because it really works with intention to ground out these kind of ephemeral spiritual awarenesses that can emerge from psychedelic spaces and conduit them through the somatic body. So we're always working in a psychedelic somatic session to say, okay, so this is the thought, this is the idea, what's happening in the body? Can we connect what's up here with what's down here? Oh wow, maybe if those things are moving in tandem we feel more whole right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Christine, you've talked about your last journey, feeling very embodied in it, in that being the first time that that ever really happened for you.
Speaker 1:So, that's that's interesting is connecting those two, that and the other thing I wanted to add the journey that I had before that. It was about all of my ancestral trauma and experiencing my ancestors trauma, not even my own. And part of that journey was experiencing the trauma of birth, so it was like me, literally like being burned out and that being a traumatic experience. And that was crazy in itself, so yeah, and I've, I've done.
Speaker 1:I've done somatic, um, I've done a somatic therapy session, um, and it was wonderful, but I've never done it with psychedelics, yeah, so yeah.
Speaker 2:So it's like you know, the, the. I always tell folks like the, the meds aren't the cure, they're a catalyst. We say that too, and same with somatic work, like, okay, so provocative things are happening, things are moving. If we add in the right set and setting, this elixir of a powerful medicine, then the depth and scope of what we can get to and how we can, like, reconsolidate it inside ourselves, inside our psyche, is just amplified.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So with with psychedelics, how do they assist in healing like birth trauma and a fertility wound, like what like? Can you give like a more? Uh, can you give like an example of what like a session would even look like, because I feel like this is such a foreign topic to everyone.
Speaker 2:I could talk to y'all till the cows come home, because it is just. I mean, I came to psychedelics because my first pregnancy was fraught with kind of catastrophic incidents. I had two placental abruptions, a vanishing twin, I ended up with preeclampsia, my son who made it. We spent six weeks on bed rest in the hospital, which is not a very good for the nervous system place, even if people are trying to take good care of you and then he spent his first three weeks in the NICU and it was after that experience that I was like, oh shit, I have a lot of unresolved trauma and also, from a clinical perspective, was diagnosed with postpartum psychosis. It's interesting.
Speaker 2:Again, I want to bring balance to what science says and how, like a more indigenous curandera might approach it, which is to say, oh, I don't think you were so psychotic, so psychotic. I think you like tapped into the ancestral cave and you were hearing what all the women in your lineage have been screaming for years, which is like somebody come save us from this shit. And so you know, I'm humbled and honored to show up to that. Yeah, can I ask you?
Speaker 3:I wanted to get into that, like how you even got into this space to begin with, and that's like a that's a crazy entry point Not crazy, but that's like an interesting entry entry point because we were talking a little bit before we started talking to you and she mentioned earlier I struggled with postpartum depression, with my third child not having a clue what was going on and I ended up being medicated about for probably a year and afterwards, when I started really digging in and healing and doing the inner work, I had a completely different perspective on what my postpartum depression was and where it stemmed from.
Speaker 3:And I think that that gets a lot of pushback, because so many people are like well, no, your chemicals and your hormones are just off balance and so it's normal. And I was like for me, I had a daughter and I had a lot of mother wounds and it triggered so much of that because I had kids before, but it didn't really hit the same way.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, I definitely think that it's kind of on point with what you're saying. Like so many women are like diagnosed postpartum depression, postpartum anxiety, postpartum psychosis and I just think it's a little bit deeper than that and it's a hard thing to swallow.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I think it's like. I want to be clear, because I think sometimes I don't think there's any like. I don't think it. I think it's too reductionistic to be like there's good guys and there's bad guys in terms of doctors, clinicians and also medicines, right, like I think there's a. There was a period, in order to stabilize, in which pharmacological meds helped me stabilize, which was I'm not ashamed to say it and I do think it helped.
Speaker 2:But man, no freaking way was that going to get to the root of what was there? No way, no way, no way, no way. So I guess I just want any listeners who are like oh God, I'm taking pharmacological meds. Does this mean I'm not looking at my ancestral shit? No, honey, you do what makes you feel like you can show up until you feel like you have it in you to look deeper, and then you go, and nobody knows that timeline better than the mother in her own body, right?
Speaker 2:But the other thing that I want to say and I get real fiery about this is that these experts and a lot of times they're men who don't, I'm sorry to say, but they don't know shit. They may have a lot of training, but their body has never delivered a baby, will will never deliver a baby doesn't know what it's like to menstruate, and they're trying to control the uncontrollable, which is the great mystical design of the woman's body Our capacity to bring a soul from some other place, where souls come from, into this earth. It's like it has been catastrophized by the medical model and that's like so many people in psychedelic spaces recall birth trauma. Why? Because they're being pulled out by forceps, because they're being induced before baby is ready to come out, like.
Speaker 2:I could go on and on, and on, and on and on, but I won't because it's too much of a rabbit hole. I think we have to. This is one of the biggest things I think, as women healing, we have to do is reclaim birth, reclaim birth, reclaim our cycle, reclaim our darkness, reclaim all that Because, guess what?
Speaker 1:That's where our power is, our power and our pleasure, and we deserve both and, if you really think about it, I feel like women are the closest thing to God, because the fact that women can carry life and create life like that's a fucking.
Speaker 2:That's crazy If you just really think about it in itself.
Speaker 1:And I feel like when women are pregnant, it's like there's a lot of focus on am I having a boy or a girl? There's diapers and sleepless nights, but we don't talk about the deeper things that are going to come with having a child and bringing a child into this world, and those are things we just don't even talk about. Bringing a child into this world, and it's like those are things we just don't even talk about. So then it's like this woman gives birth and it's supposed to be the happiest moment of her life, but then she's struggling with depression and it's like, well, I shouldn't be struggling with depression. I have this child and I just gave birth to this child and it's beautiful and it is, but there's often not support.
Speaker 1:There's often not these conversations about having these types of feelings or your body changing or your hormones changing and all of this. It's just like diapers and kind of the stuff. Yeah, it matters, it's all surface. Yeah, it doesn't really matter. Yeah, so it's. I think a lot of women struggle and then there's a lot of shame that they're struggling.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, yeah, there's no village. Like, where'd the village go? You know like women are lucky if they get what six weeks off work, and then you know they've got. You know a couple of good friends who are available. But when, especially if you have intergenerational trauma, and you know they've got, you know a couple of good friends who are available, but when, especially if you have intergenerational trauma and you know, most of us in like a collection of a couple of generations, I believe, were raised by women who who became, technically became mothers but never ascended to motherhood, they remain maidens. So they raised us as maidens. So we can't really go to the maiden for advice on how to mother. So, yeah, we're going to feel some rage about that, because it's like, oh shit, like you didn't mother me. No wonder I'm feeling all kinds of confused right now, right here.
Speaker 1:Holy shit, that makes so much sense. I did not birth my son, but when he came into our lives I owned a business.
Speaker 1:I had two weeks off with him and those two weeks they weren't off and I didn't feel like I had a village. And I'm very grateful because him coming into my life is the reason why I closed my business down and started on my healing journey. And started on my healing journey, but also it's been a very big challenge because it's like you're raising this human and then, while you're raising this human and on your healing journey, you're like, oh shit, like this is really challenging for me. I love to give these things that my child needs, but it's almost like pouring from an empty cup because you're giving them things that you never got. And so it's this. I love to do that and I'm gonna do that and I'm gonna break that cycle.
Speaker 1:But also I don't have support. I don't have a village. I didn't get mothered in that way. I didn't get fathered in the way that I. You know, my father wasn't there, like. So a lot of things have shown up for me and there's been a lot of grief that has come with being a mother. That has been really challenging and it's something that it's a daily struggle something that it's a daily struggle.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a really meta, because you're like trying to do all of these things that you don't have like a, you don't have necessarily a felt sense because you didn't experience it yourself. So you're, you know, kind of building the plane while you're flying it and then also grieving for the child inside yourself. That's like 25 different jobs to be doing at the same time. And then also this is another theme that I have experienced and I see it with so many of the mothers in my care, mothers in my care is that then, feeling this kind of epigenetic load and burden of needing to be so compensatory, and what I mean by that is I got to do so much better so that my kids don't have all the things that I had. So it's almost like doing triple time.
Speaker 2:And I think that this is a real opportunity, because what I would say is that our kids don't need the absence of adversity to be good, they need the presence of repair. So we didn't. We're not so wounded because the stuff was hard. Hard is actually what cultivates grit and tenacity and resilience, but hard, in the absence of unconditional love and repair, is crushing Right. So for moms listening like give yourself a break, because even if we be telling our kids all the right things and trying to do all the right things perfect, they feel if we don't treat ourselves with that same grace and compassion that we're telling them to treat themselves with.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Right that makes a lot of sense I have a friend who is a self-proclaimed perfectionist and is almost like I don't want to say proud of it. She knows it's like not a great thing, but she's like yeah that's just how I am, and that's how my parents taught me to be, but I don't want my children to be that way. I only expect perfection perfection from myself, not my children, and I'm just sitting here thinking well, but that's what they're going to emulate.
Speaker 3:That's what they're going to see Like because you have to heal that part of you that feels like you have to be perfect before your kids are ever going to be able to see that and realize, oh, I don't have to be perfect before your kids are ever going to be able to see that and realize, oh, I don't have to be perfect either. Totally.
Speaker 2:And eventually they'll start mirroring it to you, like saying but you don't do that, mommy, you know? And then you're like oh point, the dissonance can exist, or we end up certainly improving upon what we experience, but still perpetuating some new version of it.
Speaker 3:Get rid of that old saying. I swear I feel like it's been used for generations the do as I say, not as I do. I don't know a situation where that has ever worked out, because that very much confuses a little child's mind Like well then, why are you doing?
Speaker 2:it. No, it's so confusing.
Speaker 3:You're saying to do this, but you're doing that. So, like I'm trying to emulate you, you're the parental figure you know.
Speaker 2:When the other thing that comes to mind is like good old Mr Rogers, what is that quote from him? Something like kids never remember what you tell them. They remember how, how they felt with you, right? So I think that's the other thing, is like another quote that comes to mind. Not to do a bunch of quote dropping, but this is one of the things I think is most important to think about. As parents, carl Young said, the greatest detriment to the child is the unfulfilled life of the parents.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right. So for us, if we want our kids so many, if so many parents I don't think just moms, moms and dads, but definitely moms are like sacrificing things that they want to. I don't think just moms, moms and dads, but definitely moms are like sacrificing things that they want to. I got to do all these things for my kid Meanwhile. There's a message wrapped up in there that I think is definitely not intended, but felt all the same Mom sacrificed everything for me.
Speaker 2:I have now child has guilt, mom's unfulfilled and child feels responsible somehow for that. So it's really important, even if it means we have to take time away. You know like, for example I'll use myself as an example we have a new baby that just appeared. This miracle in our life that we've been looking for and there's a little girl just showed up, disappeared. This miracle in our life that we've been looking for and there's a little girl just showed up and I'm supposed to fly tomorrow to Denver for an interview for my book and part of me has had to really have big back and forth with other parts of me about you need to cancel that. You have this miracle that showed up. Meanwhile the other part of me is like you wrote this book for your kids. You really not going to see that through. Uh-uh, girl, you're going to get on that plane and you're going to trust that the world doesn't hinge on you being the glue that holds everything in place all the time, because that might actually give other people a chance to show up.
Speaker 3:Because that might actually give other people a chance to show up. That's what the village is supposed to be for?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so what is your advice then to mothers who are listening, who relate to not feeling like they have a village or feeling like they're parenting, but they didn't get that type of parenting when they grew up. Um, and.
Speaker 1:I guess, like how to just navigate that without completely losing yourself, cause it's like there, you do want to heal, you do want to do the work, you do want to hold yourself accountable, but it's it's, it's a lot when you don't have the support, and there are many moms who just don't have that support Like cause it is it's, it's like it's it's giving, but it's giving from like you have to fill your own cup, but it's also, you know, giving from kind of an empty cup because you're not getting the support from maybe the people who should be there and they're just not.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think this is a really good question because I do see it come up a lot that people almost feel like personal shame about the fact that they don't have a village, Like, what did I do wrong? And there's one of my all-time favorite books is called the Wild Edge of Sorrow by Francis Weller. One of the passages in that book says it is our greatest grief that the village did not appear. So I'm sharing that quote because I want people who are listening to know this is not something that you did wrong. The village should be there. You didn't. You didn't send them away.
Speaker 2:We are like capitalist. Greedy culture has deep, has corroded the village. It's made us hyperividuated and put that like as a priority at the cost of the village. So the village is something we have to come back home to and your village can start small with like two people who are conscious. That's great, that's a great start, and then it will grow from there. You know, like when we moved here to I live in Mexico when we moved here, we know a person and now we have a village. But we've also been here five years and it took time to cultivate that village.
Speaker 2:So I think I would also just say remember that the village doesn't have to be huge and then it can start one person at a time. And also this is really important the person in your village that has always been there and will never forsake you is the earth. So when I first got here, one of the Coranderas that I love and treasure said to me. That I love and treasure said to me honey, one of your biggest problems is that you think this whole secure attachment injury started with your biological mom. It started with being made to forget that your original attachment injury is not knowing the earth as mother. She's home Entry is not knowing the earth as mother. She's home, she's mom and she is always like here for you. So I think that that's really important for every person I've seen actually change their life with psychedelics, through healing, They've cultivated a relationship with the earth and let that be like a pillar in your village.
Speaker 1:I love that answer Not something that I was expecting.
Speaker 3:No, I was telling Christine, you know, I think a lot of great gifts skipped a generation. I, my mamaw, just passed away last month and she left before. I was like curious enough, and she had dementia. So like even in the past several years I haven't really been able to like talk to her about the things that I really wanted nothing to do with as a teenager and as a young adult, like I didn't want to know how to raise chickens, I didn't want to know how to make bread, I didn't want to know how to live off the land. Like that was like so unappealing to me. And then, since, like this healing journey, like I'm, like I'm, I want to learn how to make bread and I want to learn how to garden, and she had such a beautiful green thumb and could do anything and I am like mad that I wasn't curious enough, you know.
Speaker 3:But again, like that's like kind of the earth being your mother, like that wasn't instilled in me, that was not something that was taught to me Like my mom kind of went away from that too, like oh my God, ew, we're not raising chickens, we're not living on a farm, we're going to live in the city, where everything's convenient. And I just learned that.
Speaker 2:Right, that's that whole modern movement, and it took us away from this idea that evolving is about remembering, going forward is about going back, and I also just want to say to you that, like you're epigenetically, have all that stuff your grandma had, like the eggs of you, existed inside her body. Even if your mom didn't teach you, it lives in your dna. So if you want to know it, just just open it up that's interesting.
Speaker 3:I'm like getting all emotional now because, um, I have like reconnected with my mom in the past few years and she does garden now and she never did this when I was a kid, like I had to tell my husband this the other day, cause I'm like this is not the mom I knew, by the way, like my mom didn't make food from scratch, my mom didn't have a garden, my mom didn't live off the land, like that was not what we did. But I like she's coming next week to stay and I'm like can you help me learn how to?
Speaker 2:garden, so it's just it's.
Speaker 3:I know that's like a little off subject, but it's like. You know, I I think we've been so far removed from all of that, so it's just it feels good to like go back to it, and I feel like some people would probably think I was going crazy, because I did not used to be this way.
Speaker 2:I mean, I think sometimes when we break away from the myth of normal you know Gabor Mate's book then people who aren't, when we unsubscribe to that myth of normal mass consciousness, may say oh god, what's going on with her? And I'm sort of like peace out, yeah, you guys keep keep paying your fees to to be part of that club.
Speaker 3:Just not looking so happy over there, yeah how do you go back to the real world though, Like genuine question, Like when you're working with, with people who who kind of start to feel this like pull back to what our ancestors did and and the way that they lived, and and I'm not even talking about like just farming, I'm just saying in general when we start to go back to that. And then you see the world around you and you're like, oh, it's just me, okay, all right, and it's not. I know that.
Speaker 3:But a lot of people feel alone in that.
Speaker 2:Totally, totally, I mean okay, so concurrent themes like the village, like as we cultivate our village, even though we look around and the world is like sick I would say there's a lot of dis-ease in the world. We got like our growing village and our connection at our root chakra to the earth as our like umbilical cord to source and it's like, okay, you know, this is, this is hard and I feel like on the margins, but I feel somehow still better on the margins than I did when I was in the center of that myth. Right, yeah, and I do think it's also like a detox process, like if in, if anyone has ever gone through addiction or love someone who goes through addiction, that that detox process is gnarly. You know, like when we moved to Mexico, we lived in Portland Oregon before and in those first six months of being here I felt like I was detoxing the myth of normal.
Speaker 2:There's no mail, there's no Amazon Prime here. There is, but Amazon Prime is like a week, you know. It's like normal shipping. It's not. There's no Whole Foods with like 45 different supplements for every possible thing. There's like and I'm not too proud to own that. That felt really uncomfortable for me in the beginning and parts of me were like what the F have you done, girl, with your two babies? Where are you? What are you doing? Why did you do it? This is whack, and over time, I've come to see that that decision saved my life.
Speaker 3:That's huge.
Speaker 1:So for people who can't move to Mexico, which it's funny because it's crossed our, it's crossed my mind. Yeah, me too. My partner and I have talked about like, about like. Well, what if we just like?
Speaker 3:move out of the country. Like how does that look like?
Speaker 1:we don't have, we don't feel like we have support anyways, but people who are? Here and just yeah, you know how our society is like. What does session work with you look like? Like what types? Of psychedelics do you use Like, what like? Fill me in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean and and that's a totally fair question Cause a lot of I mean a lot of my clients are not leaving the States to get these countries, you know.
Speaker 2:But I do think that really, um, unsubscribing to the myth of normal and all the myriad ways that we're consciously and unconsciously subscribed to that, and starting to cultivate a village and a garden literal and metaphorical, it's like you know, we plant the seeds in the spring, we don't have, the garden is at lush until the summer, so really also like shifting our mindset from this immediacy to at things have to harvest, they have to. There's a seasonality to it, right, and I talk a lot with my clients about nature because, like I can't stress that enough, every single person I've worked with who's not only felt better but stayed better has cultivated some form of like a relational space with nature, and it looks different for different people. Uh, ongoing support, because it is, it is isolating, especially if we're breaking generational cycles and we can't talk with our, our family of origins about the stuff, because often we can't, because often we get gas lit or various things happen, and I think that community is really important. So there are lots of ways that we can tap into community. There are, you know, I think, more and more emerging like local communities of consciousness where, like you guys have made this podcast to bring consciousness, to bring a conversation to life that was otherwise happening, you know, behind closed doors, don't tell so. Good job. Like every time we talk about these things, we create opportunities for people to feel less alone.
Speaker 2:Now to answer your question about medicine. So I it is like my, my philosophy, I guess if we could say it that way on medicines is like part of the. In indigenous culture they talk about right relationship with sacred medicines, right? So part of that right relationship comes from being invited to work with a medicine. What? What does that mean? This is like to receive a call in your spirit. So for me personally, my spirit call was to work with psilocybin. So that is the plant spirit that I work with. I have studied it deeply with many people and spent more hours now than I can count in that space, so it's one I feel very intimately acquainted with.
Speaker 2:The other medicines that I'm studied and trained to work with are ketamine, mdma and also cannabis, and one of the ways that I think about it is like plants are spirits, they're sentient, they have like a higher intelligence of their own because they're living creatures. Where, say, ketamine or MDMA are medicines? Spirits can be medicinal, but they don't necessarily in and of themselves have a higher intelligence. However, as medicinal tools, when they come into our brain and create neurogenetic activity, they can help to unlock our own higher intelligence. So they're medicines that help us to tap deeper into ourself, as opposed to say plant spirits that are like bringing us into relation with bigger spirits.
Speaker 2:And so you can maybe deduce just from that explanation there are times when I really recommend people don't start their first experience with a spirit outside of themselves. Like if someone comes to me and I can tell that they're like not even necessarily in touch with their own spirit self because of trauma and no fault of their own, I'm maybe probably not going to say let's do psilocybin right out the gate. Because why? Because before we start making relations with other spirits, we need to know the spirit that lives in the house that's our body.
Speaker 3:I love that. That makes sense, yes, cause I have been. Um, we've talked about this like wanting to have somebody come on to speak on MDMA, and here is our opportunity. Like this might go a little bit different than what you tangent but, um, I love the medicine, Like it's something that I have said personally saved my marriage and I have always said psilocybin was for me and MDMA was for my marriage.
Speaker 3:I've never done it solo but I can absolutely. Just knowing the medicine and the way that it works, I can see how doing that work solo would be so powerful and beneficial for connecting with yourself. Um what is? What does that look like? Who would you have maybe start working with MDMA, and do you also work with couples with MDMA? Or is it just solo work?
Speaker 2:So primarily my work, I focus on individual work, and that's not because I also agree that MDMA is great for couples work. I don't necessarily do couples work. I have before and I started having very strong like event memory echoes of being in my family of origins. I was very much the therapist between my two parents who were always fighting, and so couples therapy is a really charged dynamic for me because it brings up a lot of old stuff. So I primarily work one-on-one with people. But now I'm going to really talk to you about MDMA.
Speaker 2:So MDMA, like LSD, like ketamine, these medicines that were kind of discovered accidentally and and or their original application was for something else and then it was like oh what, wait, hold on. So MDMA falls into this category and people don't realize this. But one of my mentors told me this years ago. He said you know, when they first realized what this molecule could do, the name that they were using to talk about it was empathy, not ecstasy empathy. So this is yes, this is so important because when I think about MDMA, this is its superpower is that it evokes empathy, and so certainly we can, we can understand how that would be relevant within the context of couples, right, because the inner kids are fighting with each other.
Speaker 2:So then we have empathy. Oh, I can see your inner kid. Well, we also need that with ourselves, because there's so much judgment that we feel right around Like if we have perfectionist tendencies or if we felt like we had to be perfect in order to be loved, in order to be accepted, then we're often going to be out myself so hard on ourselves. So for someone like me, or someone who resonates with that, mdma is such a powerful medicine of actually helping you see yourself through that lens of like wow, not so much judgment, but let me just empathically look at who I am. Um, which is powerful.
Speaker 1:Uh, so my last journey.
Speaker 3:I did mushrooms with MDMA, which we should probably say we do not recommend for anybody who is like just beginning and doing this on your own. Please don't do that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this is, this is uh, um, yeah, I'm we're. This is uh, um, yeah, I'm we're, we're three, fives, we're experimenters and uh.
Speaker 1:So, yes, I, I did this, um, and I grew up with an absent father and my other parent was um, a single parent, and so I've had a lot of compassion for her because of that, but she was incredibly neglectful and I internalize that and would try to do things to be seen and overachieve to be seen, and so now it's been, I'm now realizing like 36 years of being incredibly hard on myself and putting a lot of pressure on myself.
Speaker 1:And so, with this experience, this journey with mushrooms and MDMA, like my ancestors showed up and it was all about Like my ancestors showed up and it was all about you don't have to do to be seen, you just need to be and and and work on that. But the MDMA part that came in was it was it was like okay, so here's this lesson that I just gave you, and. But now you're actually going to like, embody it and you're going to be in your bed and you're going to, you're going to feel what it means to really love yourself and and embody that. And it was very wonderful, it was incredibly profound. Like I came out of it and I was like laughing and smiling. I've really struggled with integration, integrating that, because that's a lot of years of conditioning and the concept of you don't have to do, you just have to be. That's a hard concept for me to like. Okay, what does that mean?
Speaker 1:You know, I don't know like I feel still feel like okay. So what do I need to do so I can be?
Speaker 3:what do I do to be yeah? How do I?
Speaker 1:do what are the steps that I need to do to be so that that's. That's been a little bit harder for me and I don't even know where I was going with that, but I guess where I was going is the MDMA part, was I really got to like embody that empathy and that compassion for myself and just being okay with who I am in that moment is something where outside of MDMA. It's been a little bit harder for me, for sure.
Speaker 1:So that was the first time I had ever done MDMA solo and I can only imagine like doing solo work with that, how how one could really develop some empathy and and love for oneself. So maybe I'll be calling you later, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, and I also appreciate what you said about the struggle to integrate, because I do think that this is one of the like every for everything that has a superpower, there's also like a challenge. That's part of the balance, the two sides of one coin. So MDMA, like part of the science, of how it's working and achieving the effects, is that it like is like putting a salve on your amygdala and our amygdala is our fight or flight response and so we don't just go to the response you know reacts, place, so in that calmer state we can see all of these things, but as the medicine wears off, the amygdala is like I'm back, I'm ready to do my usual deployment, so do, do, do, do, do. And so I think I mean you know it's worth mentioning, cause there's a really big thing happening with MDMA right now.
Speaker 2:In the psychedelic world where the FDA we were on a, everybody was like this is going to be the year, this is the year like uh, and they just tapped on the brakes and it's like I don't want to go too far into that rabbit hole, but I just really want to encourage people who are listening that you don't have to be scared of this medicine. It is highly effective at helping people with complex trauma and PTSD. We've seen that with veterans. The other study group that was really the most astounding transformative results and this isn't talked about as much were victims of sexual abuse and sexual trauma, which I think is just. Let's think for a minute. One is a war on the outside of our body and another is a war inside our body for a minute. One is a war on the outside of our body and another is a war inside our body. So in both cases MDMA it was a really helpful medicine for people dealing with a kind of war inside or out.
Speaker 2:Now what is going on with the FDA putting the brakes? Oh, there's so many things, but it's not necessarily about the medicine itself not being safe. I think what we need to be really careful and intentional about is making sure that anyone entering into an MDMA experience understands that the experience itself is likely to be pretty darn good, but coming out is going to be like when a plane lands. You know it's often bumpy because you've gone from this place where all of the fight or flight responses of the amygdala are sort of restraint, and then they're going to come back. The medicine is not going to make that stop happening. It's going to put it on pause so that you can start to build a felt sense of what it's like.
Speaker 2:If you're not in that rigor and that is really important because we can't replicate something we have no felt sense of. So like if I tell you, oh, christine, you need to do more human being, less human doing, you would be like, oh, that sounds really good in theory but okay. But if we have a feeling of like, oh, I felt that then we can like any muscle, we can exercise it, we can work it, we can build it, we can develop it. But I think part of the kind of challenge that's happening now with MDMA is that it was talked about in such like bravado, promising terms because it helps but it doesn't make things go away. So I think listeners really need to. I feel an integrity to say that the integration can be hard because the heart opening is like, you know, somebody took crowbars and pulled it open and then it feels really good when we've been guarded for a long, long time. But the guards aren't going away. But now we have a felt sense that we have to continue to work with yeah, I sorry.
Speaker 3:I heard someone say this once that it feels like open heart surgery, like in your heart, is just like out on the table and then without proper integration. It just feels like you've just been left out in the open and it can be very debilitating if there isn't that work that comes after Um. So and and I I do feel like, even though we're talking about MDMA, I feel like that's a little bit with all of the medicines that we talk about on this podcast Like this is not a.
Speaker 3:You do it and you feel better. There is work and it is heavy and deep and dark sometimes and it is an integral part of the process of getting to that other side. Like you can't just come out of it and be like, oh wow, that was beautiful, like it's going to get a little heavy and it's going to test you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, totally Well.
Speaker 3:I was going to go often.
Speaker 2:No, no, you go ahead.
Speaker 1:Well, I was. I was just going to say that, um, that I have struggled to integrate this journey. I have struggled to integrate this journey. I did this journey in June and the integration has been harder than other journeys that I've integrated. Like I felt like before things clicked, this it clicks, but again, embodying it and like that, that's been a little bit more challenging. Um, but like I am okay with it and I, I've, I've, I've been like giving myself some grace that this one is going to take some time and some work and also some like, like a lot of the things, a lot of the journeys. Before I was like, okay, this is what I need to do, this is what I need to do, this is what I need to do. Or now I'm like, yeah, I'm going to kind of not commit to anything.
Speaker 1:And if something feels good, I'm going to do it, and if it doesn't, I'm going to allow myself to have a rest. So I think a lot of like how my brain works was like okay, this is a problem, this is what I need to do for the solution. Where this one has been like, you don't really have to do anything for the solution. I think you just need to work on, you know, being conscious of loving yourself and giving yourself compassion, giving yourself grace, giving yourself like permission to have like, a high day and a low day, and there are days where you may feel motivated to do things, but there are maybe days where, like, rest is part of that day, and that is OK, and that is okay.
Speaker 1:So, I think it just has looked a little bit different because it's been more of a place of less doing and giving myself more love and just compassion.
Speaker 2:Whatever step I'm taking or if I'm not doing anything at all, totally I mean. So if the message or the lesson, how everyone think of it, was human being, not human doing, then I would say your integration. If you're doing more, being less doing, do do. It's a lot of human doing, and so it's going to be like disorienting to suddenly not have like an action plan?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it feels uncomfortable.
Speaker 2:It does. That's part of the healing, I think is like deconstructing that whole mindset. That whole mindset Again. That's part of the remembering how to just be, how do I be and not do, do, do. And I always tell people, the bigger the lesson, like you know folks, when they have a, really, because all ceremonies, I think, are magical and important and if we've had enough ceremonies, we know that every now and then there comes one and it's like just a doozy.
Speaker 2:It's like 10 ceremonies and more and we learn a lot of stuff and people are like often will feel, oh, this is going to be the one that everything's different after and I'm like careful with that, be the one that everything's different after and I'm like careful with that. This is going to be the one where integration feels like a holy shit because there's so much you have to kind of carry back Like, and part of me wants to go back to the, the like original theme of birth, you know. So it's like how much it's like labor, right, Like how much effort is it to bring a spirit through and also does not even have to be through the channel of our body, like adopting a child is a different kind of bringing a spirit through, like integration is like this, like the ceremony, this information comes through from the other side and then the labor is like learning to live. It make it walk in our life.
Speaker 3:Another thing that I've heard a little bit about from some of the older MDMA trials People who and maybe I should add a trigger warning to this people who have struggled with sexual assault or rape or something similar. It can be incredibly difficult for them to put themselves in a state of vulnerability, especially with these types of medicines. What would be something you would recommend? Because I'm just going to say for me personally, if that was something that I struggled with, I would have a very hard time sitting with um, sitting with a man I, I feel like there would have to be a lot of trust built before that ever happened.
Speaker 3:And so you know, christine, and I like I really only work with women for that reason you know so anyway, my, I guess my question is like how would you work with someone who struggled with something like that and the consent and the vulnerability? What does that look like?
Speaker 2:Very carefully and as a survivor of sexual trauma, I like have a really intimate understanding of this, not only from a like training, theoretical place, but from a like I know this inside myself and you know I didn't work with a male therapist until five years ago and I was well into my psychedelic journey before. That even felt like a viable option and then it felt like, oh God, if I I'm a mother now, I'm a mother of two sons and a daughter, but at that point I had two sons and I was acutely aware of how their physicality, which is totally a normal expression of their boyhood, was triggering for parts of me because of a history of physical violence with men, of a history of physical violence with men. And so it came to me like I need to be, I need to find a male therapist to work on this with. But that was okay. So I'm 45 now. I was 40. And I've been what I've been on this path already a long time before that. So I think you move into that slowly and when you feel ready, and then you vet the shit out of that person to make sure that you feel like this person, just because the person has a title, just because they are a shaman, just because they're, I don't care and like it doesn't matter. It's how your nervous system feels when you're in the same space with that person, right, like for me, the person who I ended up working with. He's a host of a well-known podcast, and so I had spent, you know, three years listening to every episode of his podcast, and it wasn't even really clear to me until I sat with him in person that, oh, I've been betting you this whole time. I've been checking you out to see what you're all about. So by the time I got to be there with him in person, my nervous system already had done a lot of assessment of him. So I think that this is really important for survivors is a lot of assessment.
Speaker 2:Well, before you go into medicine, work with anyone, and when I'm working as a therapist with people who have this in their history, we don't start with medicine too soon, because there's this thing that we haven't talked about. In clinical terms, we call it transference, and transference means like the externalization of all the trauma wounds onto the canvas of the therapeutic container in order to have a corrective experience, right. So if we go, it's like any relationship. If we go from you go from zero to home base right away. That's going to yield so many problems, even if in the short term of the ceremony it feels like good stuff's happening. The vulnerability hangover, the vulnerability remorse all of that can undermine the efficacy of everything that came up. So go slow.
Speaker 2:The other two things I want to mention here because it's a really important topic that you're raising, is that sadly, tragically, there is a lot of violating behavior happening in psychedelic spaces and we need to not shy away from talking about this, because people can get really hurt here because they're in altered states of consciousness. So there's a great resource called the Wheel of Consent, which is written by Betty Martin. There are classes on this and certainly people who are practitioners to familiarize themselves with this work, because it has so much to do with how we navigate touch within altered states of consciousness. I'm of the belief that we really shouldn't be putting our hands on anybody Like if I'm looking at someone and they look like they're struggling, my maternal impetus might be to want to be like oh, honey, no, no, ma'am, that's my shit and I need to remember everywhere and nowhere in the room. So, instead of defaulting to touching them because I don't know if that's really what they want, and they might not even have the the like cultivation of their voice to say no if they don't like it.
Speaker 2:So the first step is to acknowledge. It looks to me like you're having a hard time. Am I reading that right? How can I be of support to you now? Like I might say, I'm going to put my hand out and if it feels like it might be a comfort, you can reach for it. I'm not putting my hands on anybody because we have to be so, so careful. There are people out there who are instructing patients and clients to explore reparative touch. This is whack, wrong, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 3:That's kind of why I started going down that road. I listened to a podcast that was very much the dark side of this space and how it can absolutely like re-traumatize and it's not always you know. It's like exposure therapy is what they call it, but it's for sexual trauma, but it's not like. It's like let me put my arm around you and how safety you know, stuff like that where. And in this, in this podcast, it didn't do the clients or the patients any good. It it honestly like made him, made it worse, made it worse.
Speaker 2:In my mind, exposure therapy is real Jeez, louise, like baby steps, like so. Exposure therapy, I exposure therapy. I have a client who this isn't just one client. I've had many clients who, when the medicine comes on, because of the nature of their trauma, they're like I can't handle this vulnerability. Can you leave? Okay, so I cannot leave. No, I cannot leave you. You're in an altered state of consciousness and it's a moral imperative that I stay here to ensure your safety. However, I want you to have the corrective experience of feeling like your boundaries are listened to, honored and respected. So let's figure out how we can achieve that without me abandoning you in a vulnerable state.
Speaker 2:Sometimes that's looked like I've had clients say will you turn your chair so you're not staring at me? Absolutely can do that. So I had one person who said I want you to go all the way to the door. Can you just sit your chair in the doorway? Absolutely can do that. And exposure therapy is then like with them leading. I think it feels safe for you to come closer now. Or, if I have the sense that they're trusting me more, I can ask what do you think it would feel like if I got a little closer. Are you open to try? Okay, I'm going to scoot two inches closer. Sometimes people are like I like that. Will you come closer? Yes, I will. Yes, I can. Sometimes people are like get your energy away from me? Great, I'll do that. This is actually corrective therapeutic care and exposure therapy, therapy, therapy, where we're letting people find their yes and no inside their own body.
Speaker 3:Yeah, like they're leading, they're leading it.
Speaker 1:Yes, it's been hard because we have learned, and I'm grateful because I think a lot of people message us because we're a safe space for them to just talk and ask questions. But a lot of people have messaged us saying that there are male and female facilitators that are local who have had sexual behaviors with the people that they have been guiding. And I, like I'm also somebody who, you know, grew up with a physically abusive father who has also been raped and has trauma with that, and so I can't imagine someone taking advantage of me while I'm under the medicine and what kind of damage that can do, which is why we have this podcast, because we really want to, you know, bring education and harm reduction to our listeners, so these things don't happen, and I hate that we have to have these conversations, but unfortunately we do. So it yeah, it really is so important, like who got to highlight the good and the bad?
Speaker 1:Yeah, like who you are doing this medicine with and and making sure they really really are a safe space and you are having these types of conversations with them. Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2:I think it's two, two things just to recap is like really trusting one's intuition. How do you feel when you're sitting with the person, Cause they could have all the credentials they could come from 20 generations of healers. How do you feel when you're sitting with the person? Because they could have all the credentials they could come from 20 generations of healers. But if the person doesn't feel a yes in that relational space, then it's enough. It doesn't mean the person's bad, it's just we have to listen to our intuition, right.
Speaker 2:And then the other piece is to go so slow, like no hurrying to the medicine experience, like really taking your time to see if that initial sense of yes or no does it hold up. And also, last thing is I always encourage people to ask practitioners when you're like trying to find the person you want to work with. Talk to me about how you handle touch. Talk to me about the hardest medicine session or client experience you've had and how did you handle that? How did you navigate repair? You know these are really important questions for people to feel empowered to ask.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, no, I I agree.
Speaker 3:I'm glad we touched on that it didn't mean to, but it went where it was supposed to go. Can you tell us a little bit about your book that's coming out? By the way, it's in my Amazon cart already. I know it's out in November, but yeah, let our listeners know what that's about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's called Healing Psychedelics and, you know, the topic that we were just on is actually a large impetus as to why I officially decided to write the book. I started writing the book after my son was born and when it began it was mostly like I need to write that. Like I said, I was having postpartum psychosis or talking to my ancestors and I was hearing all of these stories from women in my lineage, from my grandmothers and my aunts, and I was like I need to write this down. I need to write it down for myself. I need to write it down. Maybe my kids will want to know this history someday. And it evolved over time, like this is no longer my story. I mean, my story is part of it, but it became a story of the work. And what does it mean to heal with psychedelics? Like to actually heal, not spiritual bypass, but also to heal the stigma around psychedelics, which is like part of the psychedelic legacy that we're trying to heal, part of the psychedelic legacy that we're trying to heal that they're bad and dangerous. And the moment when it was like, okay, micah, no more hemming and hawing about this anymore.
Speaker 2:There was a young woman who I had known years before and in a totally different capacity. I wasn't even a psychedelic therapist at that time and she was a mutual friend of some some. We a mutual friend and our mutual friend reached out to me and said you know this, she's something really bad has happened to her and I don't totally understand what it is or what it was, and I think it's. My friend was a man and the she was a young woman and he was like I think it's sexual and it involves something psychedelic. And at that time I was starting to work with psychedelics and he was like I'm really scared, something is not going to be okay with her. So I reached out to her and she was not okay, very much not okay. And so she had gone to a retreat in which she'd been served a cocktail of medicine didn't know what, all meds or what doses and, yeah, instructed by a male facilitator to to explore reparative touch. And she doesn't remember anything, like after he started rubbing her shoulders. She just doesn't remember anything.
Speaker 2:So this is like right before COVID, when she and I came back into contact, and so we didn't live in the same place. She didn't have the financial means to come to Mexico. I also wanted her to have someone who could support her like regularly. So we I was trying to help her really build a care team in California where she lived and then COVID happened and everything started shutting down. This is like the worst case scenario. And so a few weeks had passed and I got a message from her partner at the time saying you know, she's, she's, we've taken her to a care facility because she was unstable and they've diagnosed her as bipolar and she's on all kinds of meds, and it was a disaster.
Speaker 2:And, to not go into all of the gory details of this story, that young woman ended up committing suicide and I don't feel responsible for her leaving, but also I feel a commitment to her and to the integrity of this work, because she's not the only story like that and people need to know that this goes on. We don't need to just sit around all day talking about the magic. We cannot just be love and light. We have to look at the shadows with equal commitment.
Speaker 2:And so when that happened, I committed to myself and her that I would finish this effing book, and most of the book was going to be about harm reduction and her story is a chapter in the book. So the book is many things. It's not just that story. It's a story of all sorts of different kinds of traumatic wounds, from pre verbal trauma to this kind of inappropriate violation within the psychedelic space, to complex trauma. And the idea is that you have like a companion guide as you read the book, who goes with you through the whole psychedelic arc, from preparation through ceremony or altered states of consciousness and then into integration and each chapter has some kind of like therapeutic.
Speaker 2:This is how it goes, this is what to think, and then there's a vignette of a client or could be my personal experience to illustrate this is kind of what I mean and all these theoretical concepts. And each chapter concludes with exercises and activities. So that you know, in this glorious world myth of normal, where we're making things more accessible, we're also inflating prices and there are going to be many people who need this work, who aren't going to be able to afford it. And I want to be explicitly clear in saying that a book can never be a replacement for a guide or a facilitator or a therapist. However, if someone is going to choose between doing it all by themselves or having like a companion guide through a book, I'm going to feel a lot better when I sleep at night that they at least have this book in any way that it can be helpful. So that's a little bit about the book and, yes, it will be released in November and yeah, this is the book we wish we had.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:We will.
Speaker 1:We will be sure to share the book, and I want to just say thank you so much for the work that you are doing in this space, like.
Speaker 2:I said earlier.
Speaker 1:We've had a lot of people reach out to us with just experiences and people say things like, yeah, I went to this retreat. I don't know what I took. I think I took ayahuasca, it was this fruity drink. And you know, we're sitting there and we're like, oh, it wasn't ayahuasca. You know we're sitting there and we're like, oh, it wasn't ayahuasca. You know, they should have told you what the medicine was, how much you're taking. There was somebody who went and didn't know that there was even medicine to be had. There was somebody who went to a retreat and I think she, she had, like, what was it? She, she ended up having to go to the hospital. Yeah, um, oh, my God, so it's, it's.
Speaker 1:We hear these stories and they're they're they're gut wrenching and and we really want people to be able to, um, have a little education about the medicine that they're taking, who they're working with. We want people to advocate for themselves and we even tell people, like, don't just listen to what I say, don't just listen to what Leah says, like, do your own research. Um, if this doesn't feel right for you, there is no, there is not pressure. Like, do not do it, this is not a rush thing.
Speaker 1:Um, you know, we want you to feel. We want you to feel safe. We want you to feel like you can advocate for yourself. We want you to feel safe. We want you to feel like you can advocate for yourself. We want you to feel like you can ask any question that you want to ask. This is not a pressure situation, but you have to go into these things and be aware that these things unfortunately happen and I absolutely hate that, because the medicine is really so can be such a beautiful experience and so healing for so many people, and I hate that this is even something that we have to talk about, but it is.
Speaker 2:I know, yeah, it's a 100%. I hate that. It's something that we have to talk about. And also it's imperative that we do because it is a real risk and sadly. Imperative that we do because it is a real risk and sadly, yeah. So we have a moral imperative, I think, to bring consciousness, and I agree with everything you've said, like it is really.
Speaker 2:I made a post about this on social media yesterday. Like we're in. There's this really weird psychedelic deja vu thing happening because you know we oh, you know it's because we've been here before People like does anything about this feel familiar? And it's like knowledge is power. We have to educate ourselves to feel empowered and our sovereignty is defined not through like, oh well, micah told me, or Christine or Leah told me, or I read this in this place. It's like, no, we go and we like ask around and we read around until we feel like in our body, I've got a sense of this. That's sovereignty, and I think these medicines are sovereign tools, so we have to come to them not with a hungry, bleeding heart. I mean, maybe our heart is bleeding, but we also need to match that with right reverence, which is doing our sovereign homework so that we're coming ready.
Speaker 3:Well, and I just read something the other day that responsibility is what breeds empowerment, and so we do say that often is be your own advocate. But like also, you know, we say this too, like you know, to the people who are like, well, I did it in college and I had a bad trip, and then you start asking questions and you're like how much did you have? Well, I don't know. Well, who were you with? I don't remember you know it's like.
Speaker 3:Well, you, that's your responsibility to know what you're doing and who you're doing it with, and how to do it safely.
Speaker 2:And you know that's why you felt disempowered in that situation you know.
Speaker 3:So I think that there is a level of responsibility to be had individually as well, and we aren't taught that either. We are taught. You don't know anything about this, I do, and you need to trust me.
Speaker 2:So yeah, it's similar to the birth scene. Right, we'll circle back to that Like let me tell you how you should birth feet up, laying back. Actually, no man, I'm going to stand up because gravity might help here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what's that saying? Like, don't confuse your Google search with my medical degree. And it's and it's like well, don't confuse my body Like I know my body best, right and like. I like and, but I think I'm the expert here, yeah. We're so conditioned to, from such an early age, to not trust our body because, it's like go hug this person. You don't want to hug this person, but I'm going to make you hug this person, Right?
Speaker 1:Go do this, and you know you don't want to do this, but you have to listen to them, cause that's your teacher, that's your coach, that's this, that's that, and it's's it's. I even have to catch myself with parenting, like not doing that with my son and letting him have his own autonomy and trusting himself and he, if he doesn't feel like doing that, not pressuring him and letting him, letting his body speak and and yeah, so Totally.
Speaker 3:This was such a good talk.
Speaker 1:I know, we had, we had a whole list of questions and. We do that, we. We have a whole list of questions, but we really have realized that we like speaking organically from the heart and yes, we have ideas of what we want to talk about, but we also want the conversation to just flow and it be really authentic.
Speaker 3:So we talked a lot about a lot of things that we've never touched on before.
Speaker 1:So that's, I think, what exactly what was needed but the problem is is like we could talk to you for probably two hours I think I could do.
Speaker 3:Yeah, All right. Well, group chat later. You're going to help us move to Mexico.
Speaker 1:And solo.
Speaker 3:MDMA yes, so we will link your your up and coming book in our bio and the show notes and how to find you on Instagram and we hope all our listeners can connect with you in some way, because today was beautiful, so thank you for everything that you're doing and for the conversation All right.
Speaker 2:So honored to be here. Thank you both for sharing the space and letting it flow and just be beautiful.
Speaker 3:And to all of our listeners stay curious, be open and we'll see you on the other side.
