Episode 52 Dr. Shelly Persad (Psychedelic Plant Medicines – Full Transcript)

Find it, find it, find it, find it, find it, find it, find it. Welcome to Medicine with the Metals. It’s a metal today.

 

Michelle is out, out in an excursion for the weekend and she’ll be back next week to join us. But today we have Dr. Shelley Prasad, the cannabis chiropractor. I’m going to let her go ahead and introduce herself.

 

Good morning, Shelley. How are you? I’m wonderful, Marc. How are you? It’s a pleasure to be here.

 

Good. I’m really good. and I’m very interested in a dive in this conversation.

 

Well, let’s tell us a little bit about yourself. You know, you often describe yourself as a seeker of more, you know? Could you explain how you got into this journey? What started you here? Get people involved, get to know you a little bit. Absolutely, and yes, you’re spot on.

 

Always been a seeker of more, have known there’s more possible, but what is it? Me too, yeah. You know, it’s like there was an energetic knowing and intuitive calling, and throughout my life, I had stepping stones that, when they came into my life, I just had that inner compass that lit up and said this, this is it, follow this path, whatever it is, and each one led me to where I’m at today, with chiropractic being the major stepping stone that led me to where I am today, but even as a chiropractor, and that’s where, there were three pillars in my life where I experienced burnout. Burnout as a chiropractor, burnout as a sex and relationship coach, and then burnout in my own healing journey, and the real burnout, the root cause of it was because I was a seeker.

 

I knew more was possible, and I wasn’t willing to settle for the less that I was experiencing in my practice. I started seeing patients coming in with the same pain because I couldn’t get them to the root cause of their sciatica or their neck pain, and I didn’t want to be a chiropractor just to have them give me their power, which I saw a lot of patients do. Well, doc, I’m in pain, fix me.

 

I can’t fix you. I can align you, and then you can commit to a self-care plan and do all these things and make lifestyle changes, but I saw that people didn’t want to, so there was that, and then in my sex and relationship coaching practice, I saw a lot of women returning with the same traumas and the same triggers and womb pain and womb symptoms, so same pattern, and then in my own healing journey as well, I had tried almost every modality known to man. A lot of them were the mental-based modality, subconscious reprogramming, quantum physics, energy work, things like that, but I wasn’t really getting into my body and doing the real healing there, so I was also reverting.

 

The same triggers and traumas kept showing up that I thought I had dealt with, and I’m like, if I’m doing all this healing work, why are they still showing up? What am I missing here? So me being the seeker of the more at the height of my burnout, Bufo, 5-MeO-DMT, Sonoran Desert Toad, my absolute favorite medicine on this planet, showed up. I would say it is the source, right? That is the source medicine, for sure. Connected me straight to source, rebirthed me and said, okay, what are you doing, Shelley? What are you doing? Do you want to keep going down this path of meeting burnout? Because after having four practices in three different countries, yes, I corrected some of the burnout, like not having to deal with the system and Medicare and insurance, living in Mexico and having a practice there.

 

It was a cash practice, so that took away a lot of the burden of dealing with the system. But then burnout showed up again. So thanks to Bufo, Bufo came along and rebirthed me, and a week later, my shaman never told me that cannabis would reactivate Bufo.

 

Sure enough, it did. And needless to say, Bufo rebirthed my relationship with cannabis, and long story short, guided me to the more that I was looking for, which was awaiting me in my womb all along. Well, let’s dive into this a little bit more, because a lot of people use cannabis as, say, more of a recreational, more of a fun.

 

They don’t really see it as a medicine. You know, and I’ve been using cannabis for a long time. So I didn’t see it as a medicine, too, for maybe until I really started diving into this path.

 

Definitely a medicine, but it definitely, I think, isn’t an over-abused medicine for all kinds of certain things. So have you learned how to, tell us how you’ve learned to work with cannabis and how others could guide into that work, you know? Because I think it’s a really important medicine. Absolutely, and without any rites of passage, without any education before the first time consuming cannabis, that’s why we are at where we are at, where we see humanity misusing and abusing and overusing her.

 

And she actually taught me how to work with her in this way. So when Bufo reactivated her, I’m in my ceremony, I mean, I was in the kitchen and my husband mouth-bumped me because I, at the time, was not a smoker. She made me cough, and I didn’t like the coughing, so I preferred him mouth-bumping me, and I’m making dinner, and I feel the Bufo ceremony coming on, and I’m like, okay, if I’m gonna journey, I’m gonna fall back, hit my head on the concrete floor.

 

That’s not gonna be good. Let me go lay down in the living room. And that’s when her higher self appeared, and she’s like, Shelly, I know that you’re burnt out, you’re frustrated, you’re looking for more, you don’t know what the more is, you don’t know how to get there.

 

If you trust me, and if you revere me as sacred, if you revere me as sacred in ceremony with these nine divine passcodes, which I shared in my book that she helped me birth, she’s like, I will guide you to the more that you’re looking for. Interesting. Okay, sign me up, whatever you ask me to do, absolutely, because I was looking for that more.

 

So she basically shared with me to work with her in ceremony, to use an intention, and that intention is to check in instead of check out, to drop into the body to feel the root cause of those traumas that were blocking me from the more. And the more, let me put it like this, we all have a treasure chest inside of us that’s covered in dust, and we forgot that we have the key to unlock it. And when we go and unlock it, inside of it, we will find a map, and that map is the map to our higher consciousness.

 

And that map is how we unravel the pathway to our higher consciousness, which is in our body, which is in our fascia. So that is where she guided me in working with her with these somatic practices in ceremony, with the intention to check in, to feel, to heal, and it was through my daily practice, not necessarily with her every day, started out once a week, and then twice a week, my husband and I would work on each other, chiropractic, massage, whatever, and we really started unraveling this inner map that we had within us, and that’s where my book came from. That’s really cool.

 

You know, I like how you use the expression burnout, because you’re really resonating with where I’m at right now, and maybe where some people are at in this, like, medicine path. I think we get burnt out. I think we, you know, I can only speak for myself, but, you know, we dive into this path really early.

 

For me, it’s been about six years of working with these medicines, and the bliss and all that kind of seems to disintegrate the more you do the medicine, you know? It’s more of inner work, and the burnout, that aha moments don’t come as so aha anymore, at least to me, the medicine just kind of, I think that’s a great terminology, the burnout. So, how do we get out of this? I mean, I just, you know, I don’t think we continue to use more medicine, but, you know, these bufo moments could, these bufo moments could definitely awaken you. And that is exactly what cannabis, we had a long conversation in that bufo reactivation ceremony, where she was like, okay, so bufo, and I did no research.

 

I knew nothing about bufo. It showed up, a patient was on my table, and said, Shirley, I went to Sayulita this weekend, I had a bufo ceremony, and my fear of death was gone. Ding, ding, ding, whatever that is, I want that.

 

Sign me up. I did no research, nothing. Two weeks later, my husband comes home, and he’s like, hey, this woman I work with, her husband is a shaman, and she told me I need to see him and talk with him because he serves bufo.

 

So that’s how we found bufo, and like you said, bufo is source, so it reconnected me to source instantly. I mean, complete, the catapulted through the black tunnel, rebirth, and cannabis was like, okay, so bufo gives you the glimpse of source, gives you the glimpse of your higher consciousness. Instead of chasing after your higher consciousness and going bufo ceremony after bufo ceremony, getting that glimpse, she’s like, where I’m gonna guide you is to how you can access your higher consciousness and embody it in your body so you can live from that space every single day.

 

Because I quickly saw what you just said there, Mark, it’s so true, and I saw it in the plant medicine community immediately, and I didn’t wanna fall back into that trap of burnout. So that’s where cannabis is like, okay, go into your body and plant medicine ceremony. So even in our Ayahuasca and Yahe ceremonies, wherever we’re at, we were just in Columbia in November, we went to the hardware store, and we got PVC pipes to act as our foam rollers, and we got shovel wooden sticks to act as our bamboo sticks.

 

There you go, Yahe, that’s a different one. You know, we just, what did you see? Now, we talk about Ayahuasca and Yahe, Yahe’s a really, Yahe’s a different form of Ayahuasca, for sure. For me, I think it’s a lot stronger.

 

It’s a lot more visual, and the purge is just so much more. So I think that’s how they brew those two medicines is what makes it so much more potent, but it’s different than just a regular Ayahuasca, Peruvian Ayahuasca, for sure, so. Absolutely, well, the Taita that we work with in Columbia, he brews it even longer than how it typically is brewed, and it’s- What is his name? Can you mention his name, or no? Yeah, Mauricio, Mauricio, his last name’s not coming to me right now.

 

Gotcha, okay. But I can share information with you afterwards. No problem, no problem, we’d love to hear that.

 

That’s one of the things to prevent the burnout, cannabis used in somatic ceremonies like this, and my book is a great, it’s a self-healing manual, it’s a sacred cannabis ceremony, every chapter has its own intention and how to work with it and breath work to include, but we have to go into our body, and that will help us keep tapping into those bliss moments, because on the other side of the traumas is the pleasure, the trauma is the pain, and the pleasure we feel that humanity knows is pleasure, that’s a superficial, minute amount of pleasure, and that bliss that you talked about that people enjoy in plant medicine ceremonies, we can’t access that every single day, and the key is in our body, and that is how we prevent the burnout, that’s how we don’t revert or misuse the medicine, and think we need to drink ayahuasca 25 times a year, I’ve drunk an ayahuasca once, and the integration period was three years, and that’s where cannabis- Very similar to my wife, yeah, very similar, I think we all jump into this space, because I don’t like to, especially in this space, I don’t like to say anything’s wrong or right, I think we all are in the same, we’re on a path to find happiness, so I don’t think there’s a wrong way or right way to do these medicines, but that one person that does it once and finds that bliss for three years is no different than that guy searching every weekend, because eventually I think you’ll get it, but eventually you do, you really get it, and you know that the medicine isn’t everything, it’s really that integration, it’s that work, it’s that really diving deeper and deeper, and for me, I think hitting those medicine journeys less often, but going deeper is so much more of a blessing now. Well, and that’s just it, because what, and there is no judgment in the different paths, but there is the looking at how am I using the medicine, because when the medicine is not revered as sacred, and that’s one of the big messages from cannabis about any medicines, when the medicines aren’t revered as sacred, their higher consciousness is not going to show up and guide you in that massive, amazing journey, because the higher consciousness of the plant feels like, okay, well, now I’m being misused or abused, so I’m just gonna give you a little tiny instead of showing you my whole potential, and that we can really see between recreational use and ceremonial use of cannabis. I’ve never had that experience with cannabis, but I’d like to, I understand a lot of people do, and one day I’ll hope to have that relationship, because what I’ve seen more recently, diving into more of the space, and especially in the ayahuasca community, you know, cannabis has been, before a ceremony, has been really shunned upon, but what I see now, really diving in with tribes and other people and really like seeing how it works, cannabis is part of what they do in the ceremonies, and it’s kind of, it kind of really was a blessing to be able to do that during a ceremony, because it kind of gave me some relief of anxiety after the ceremony, if that makes sense.

 

It was more after that I liked that cannabis use, but that was the first time I felt really embodied by cannabis, is after an ayahuasca ceremony. And what you said there is key, because that truly is her sole purpose, is to help us become more embodied. We have an endocannabinoid system in our body, came built in, so because we have receptors in both the mind and the body, imbibing her activates both the mind and body.

 

So as I say, she likes to turn on our observer mind so we can get the higher perspective, and she likes just to get us into our body so we can feel embodied. So then we can connect, let’s say, the pain of the trauma in the body with the story of the trauma in the mind. And once we heal that in both the body and the mind, the integration period of a medicine ceremony becomes a lot shorter.

 

And because she can mimic any medicine, she works well with psilocybin, with any medicine. After ayahuasca, like you said, she, for me, is my integration medicine. She helps me piece the dots together and feel and heal in my body and mind what the medicine showed me, but was a lot.

 

Like, okay, where do I even begin to integrate that? Working with her, and then in my daily practice, it’s like, oh, this is the integration, because all of their higher consciousness, just, they work together so beautifully. Absolutely. So the endocannabinoid system, we can really, do you know a little bit about that? Can we touch on that? Because I think it’s really important.

 

And I think, you know, for a lot of, for some of us that really dive into cannabis, we can really destroy that system. And can we, can you destroy it and bring it back to normal again, you think, ever? Well, absolutely, because we don’t even have to wait until it’s destroyed, so to say. A lot of people are endocannabinoid deficient.

 

So in fight, flight, freeze, that sympathetic, go, go, go, living in fear, tensed up state that we live in, that actually prevents our endocannabinoid system from functioning optimally, which can then cause us to be endocannabinoid deficient. Well, our endocannabinoid system, its sole purpose is to bring us back into a state of balance, and it does that for all of our body systems. So it brings us back into a state of balance with sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system between our masculine and feminine energies, between our mind and body, hormonal balance, all of our inner chemistry.

 

So her sole purpose with the endocannabinoid system is to bring us back into that state of homeostasis, or I like to call it divine union, because everything is in harmony. So what happens is when we are stuck in that fight, flight, freeze, stay, all those traumas are stored in our body that are unhealed, unseen, unheard, we’re literally destroying our endocannabinoid system and preventing it from being able to work to bring us back into a state of balance. So now when we imbibe, or when we consume cannabis recreationally, endocannabinoid system will get activated.

 

It’s like, okay, we’re alive, we’re alive, engine’s starting, and it starts to work to bring us back into that state of balance. But then once that recreational high wears off, so does that balance because the root cause of the imbalance is still in the body, keeping those messages of fight, flight, freeze flowing through the nervous system. So now in sacred ceremony, dropping into the body, checking in, healing whatever the pain of those traumas are, which is the source of the imbalance, now we’re assisting our endocannabinoid system to move more into that permanent state of balance because we’re uprooting the source of the imbalance.

 

So we’re assisting our endocannabinoid system to actually turning on and working again, co-creating with us divine union. So I call her the divine union plant. I love that.

 

I just keep chasing that. That’s pretty funny. So I see you work with so many healing modalities.

 

And we talk about Bufo and stuff like this on this call so far, on this podcast so far. So let’s dive into a little bit about Bufo because I feel, you know, it was one of these medicines really in the beginning for me that was the catapult. It was it.

 

It was like, that’s it, that’s source. Let’s dive into explaining to people, and you can do this, what it’s like to have a Bufo experience. How do I begin to explain it? There are no words.

 

Let’s just start there. There are no words. So my first Bufo experience, knowing nothing going into it, and I recommend it that way.

 

So there’s no preconceived ideas or notions, expectations, fear. Honestly, with all medicines, I would say that. I would say, you know, don’t read too much into all these medicines.

 

Like we read too much. You know, there’s a lot of, everybody’s different too, you know, especially with psilocybin. Don’t read too much into psilocybin.

 

Yeah, we can’t read into these medicines because they’re not gonna show you what they’re gonna show you. So with Bufo, for me, my first experience, it was that complete and utter jolt out of my body, straight into the cosmic womb of the divine mother, blackout, I don’t know how long I was gone for. It was on the beach at seven in the morning.

 

And when I came out of my Bufo, I mean, I’m covered in sand. So I don’t know, I’m looking around going, what just happened? And according to our brother and my husband, I was rolling around in the sand and it would just look like the most ecstatic dance, but I had no recollection, no memory, nothing. So with Bufo, Bufo shows you, you.

 

Just like cannabis, she mirrors and reveals you to you. So for me, it really revealed to me this fear of death that I wanted to overcome, that I did overcome. And there was this moment of feeling like, did I die? I noticed when my ego came back online, because it’s the ego death.

 

The ego is the one that dies. And because I didn’t know anything going into it, I surrendered before I even exhaled. I was seeing the fractals and poof, just like that, gone.

 

So I didn’t hold on. I didn’t fight the surrender. And that is what I’ve experienced in serving Bufo.

 

People hold on, they’re right there on the ledge, but they just can’t let go to actually receive Bufo. And even in that, we’ve had sisters or brothers who get frustrated with Bufo, well, why can’t I surrender? Then they get frustrated and beat themselves up. And it’s like, but even in the not surrendering, there’s healing in that.

 

Bufo revealed something to you to now work with, to heal. To meet. How do you know if somebody doesn’t surrender though? How do you actually know? They know.

 

With that medicine, yeah, they know. Because I’ve never not. I’ve never really not not surrendered.

 

So I just never know that feeling. I’ve seen people, you know, and it’s a fight for life, it seems like for them, but you know, I just, it’s such a hard medicine too, too. It is.

 

And how they know is their ego is so active. They’re still thinking or they’re still questioning. Am I feeling it? Am I not? As long as the ego is online, you haven’t surrendered to the medicine.

 

And it’s an experience that, again, because there’s no words to describe it, you have to feel it. It truly is a jolt into your higher self, into your higher consciousness. And the difference, and this is where cannabis has also helped me rebirth how I dance with bufo, how I experience bufo and how my husband and I serve it.

 

We guide people into their body first, and really as they’re receiving bufo and surrendering to bufo, descend into their body and then make the ascent journey, where for me in my first bufo experience, it was straight from my ego to the ascent journey without coming into my body. So as I began descending back and becoming conscious of my body, that’s when my ego kicked in. And my ego’s like, did you die? You should have researched.

 

You should have gone on YouTube and you should have looked into this. Did you smoke too much? What happened? Because I still wasn’t conscious of my body. I couldn’t move my body or control it how I normally can.

 

But I was hovering above my body and it was just vibrating. And I’m like, did I die? Oh my God. What about my husband, my dog, my practice? The ego just came in with all of these worries, so to say.

 

But every bufo experience is different because bufo recognizes where you’re at and it will show you exactly what you need to see for where you’re at in that moment in time. It is the closest thing to death. I think it is death at the source because it shoots so much of that DMT to your pineal gland that it, how could that not be? I mean, you think of the stories, you think of what people say when they die.

 

It’s the same almost actual vision you see on a bufo experience. Like that white light, that bliss, that you don’t want to come home, that it’s just amazing. It is, I think, out of all the medicines and I’ve done them all, I think it’s the closest thing to death for sure.

 

It absolutely is. But it’s a beautiful death. It’s the strongest medicine on the planet, so of course it’s the- Well, I have to say aboga.

 

Aboga was second, really, really close. But I’d say those two are really, I think one’s really different. I mean, aboga’s really, to me, was a lot of a mystic, like more of a darkness, more of like my souls and my grandparents.

 

It was really crazy. Bufo is you. I mean, there’s nothing, it’s just you.

 

It’s you, you, you, it’s just all of us. So it’s pretty amazing. So let’s dive into a little bit about like how we integrate all these medicines, you know? Because a lot of people don’t.

 

You know, we go to these and we have these experiences and we come out of these experiences and we think life’s gonna just change for us. It really doesn’t. It really, you really have to start searching.

 

You know, this isn’t like these chemical medicines that we serve in the Western world. I mean, plant medicines will really help you. Psilocybin, Bufo, any of these.

 

But we have to really search inside us. So let’s talk a little bit about integration. Absolutely, and one of the things you said there is that these medicines help us.

 

And what we also see is that there’s a lot of dependency on the medicines that this medicine healed me of this or this medicine healed me of that. And that’s what leads to the lack of integration because we jump to the conclusion that, oh, I intellectually had the awareness during ayahuasca that this is why I have the not enough wound or poverty consciousness or abandonment or whatever the story is. And then we think, okay, well, I’m healed.

 

It’s magically gone just like that. And then we go back into our life and we start repeating those same defense systems and coping mechanisms and trauma responses that are attached to that wound or that trauma. So the integration, and this is where merging the plant medicine with the somatic work, it’s all in one.

 

There isn’t necessarily a need for integration because you’re integrating in the moment because you’re connected to the pain of the trauma in the body. And while you’re journeying through the body with the medicine, you’re connecting to the story. And then you’re seeing, oh, when I get triggered, this person triggers me, this is my trauma response or this is why I use this coping mechanism for that.

 

Okay, so as you’re healing the trauma, okay, this is how I’m going to be different. This is how I’m not going to behave that way anymore. This is how I’m going to hold myself accountable.

 

And that’s one of the biggest words that I’m reiterating with my tribe all the time, accountability. No one can hold us accountable but us. So when we have those ahas and insights and awarenesses, where’s the accountability when we come back into our everyday life? And as I always say, if we haven’t healed the trauma in the body, all of those stories, coping mechanisms, trauma responses, defense systems that the ego has created to keep us safe because the trauma is still in our body, they are still going to show up unconsciously because they’re still there.

 

They’re in the filing cabinet of our minds. Well, unconsciously, but they show up consciously too because they’re all your child that’s showing up. You know, that wounded child keeps up.

 

I thought I got rid of him, but there he is again. You know, it’s kind of crazy, Albert. You always think you get rid of him, but he shows up, you know? Well, he stops showing up.

 

He or she stops showing up when the trauma has gone in the body. And that truly, for me, like, because I had done so much work and I was skeptical and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, when I really began working with the practices that my body started unraveling, I birthed this one practice with resistance bands because I was getting ready to do yoga one day and cannabis is like, and I hadn’t even imbibed cannabis. Her higher self was just like, okay, grab those resistance bands.

 

I’m gonna guide you in. This is a part of like an integration from one of my ceremonies with her. So I’m like, well, I’m doing yoga.

 

I don’t feel like doing a resistance band workout because that’s all I could see. My tunnel vision was resistance bands are for like a resistance band workout. So I’m just listening between her and my body.

 

Okay, I put them around my body. My body starts getting the hang of it. And then the journey came and it literally was like, I felt like I had imbibed cannabis, even though I didn’t because her higher self was working with me.

 

And it took me about two years of dancing with this practice to grasp all the moving parts of it. That our pathway of consciousness is in the body, resistance bands are causing us to expand and stretch the body. And one of my favorite analogies that came to me while I was giving birth to this practice is our fascia is like a frequency prison.

 

All of the stored unhealed traumas in our fascia that create restrictions and distortions, that’s what creates inflexibility, pain, symptoms, dis-ease in the body. And all of those traumas have us feeling like we’re living in a straitjacket. So then I use the resistance bands and I put them around my body to mimic the straitjacket so then I can dance and breathe and move and push into the band, stretching my fascia, popping those blockages out of my pathway to my higher consciousness, which is then how I anchor in my higher consciousness and retrieve my higher self from that trauma that was let’s say stored here if I’m working here, retrieving my soul that I lost in connection to during the trauma that got stored here.

 

So what’s your fascia? Can you explain what the fascia is? Yes, it is like a saran wrap connective tissue that covers your body from head to toe and it’s elastic. It’s a liquid crystalline matrix and it literally is multiple dimensional fractals and it’s so interesting because again, thanks to cannabis and Bufo and how they work together, the fractals that we see in plant medicine journeys, oftentimes those are our fractals because our fascia is a liquid crystalline matrix of multidimensional fractals. Kind of like- You mean the fractals, all the dimensions we see, all the people, all the prisms, those are made up of us is what you’re saying? Well, when we journey through the body, the fascia, those are fractals.

 

So when we have certain visions in medicine ceremonies, oftentimes those visions are coming from the memories stored in our fascia and the fractals of our fascia create the vision. So it’s a membrane over your skin, basically. Over your skin, over every bone, tissue, organ, nerve, every molecule in your body has fascia that encases it.

 

And every- So we need to shake that fascia out. Gotta shake it loose. We gotta shake the fascia out, babe.

 

Exactly, because if you look at it, trauma, pain, symptoms, it all boils down to one thing, stuck energy. Nothing is different in the body between cancer, diabetes, and arthritis, and a knee injury. It’s all the same, it’s just stuck energy physically manifesting as something different that we then label as a specific disease.

 

So how childhood trauma is labeled as that? Is that what you’re saying? So fascia could be- Well, it physically manifests into it. God, that’s a great answer. You’re absolutely right, doesn’t it? So, I mean, you’re definitely clear about one thing.

 

You’re not a healer and you’re a guide. We are, I mean, I think that’s, I don’t think all people are just healers in themselves. You’re your own guru.

 

I mean, nobody can heal you. I mean, we can guide you to the right practices, we can guide you to the right tools, but you’re your own healer. So explain how you do that, how you work with people in that way.

 

You embody that? So, absolutely. So, and that’s what I always say, we are all our own healers. And that’s where this journey is really about severing our dependency on anyone and anything external to heal us.

 

So I guide people, well, let me back up a little bit. As a chiropractor, I used to remove interference in people’s nervous systems by aligning their spine so their nervous system energy, their life force energy could flow without interference from two vertebra being out of alignment, creating a jam in their highway. Now I guide people into their womb, or for men, men have a womb as well, it’s called hara.

 

And in all ancient Eastern traditions, the womb for men, hara, was honored, but it’s the center of our life force. It’s the energy that- Can I stop you there? Because that’s interesting though. Where’s the hara? Yes.

 

I like this. Where is the hara? Literally, it’s your womb. So just as if you had a womb like a woman, so your lingam, which is the Sanskrit word for penis, that is equivalent to the female clitoris.

 

Your scrotum and your testicles, that’s the equivalent of the female ovaries. And when you were in your mother’s womb, you began as a female up until day 49 when your soul decided, you know what? No, I want to have a male body in this lifetime. So then your womb, your womb organs, they descended into a penis and testicles.

 

But the energetic space of the womb right above your pubic bone, right there in your pelvic center, that is your hara. That’s the center of your life force energy, which is the energy that keeps you alive. It’s the energy that creates everything in your reality.

 

It’s the energy that gives birth to the next generation. So is that like your root? Would we consider that of our root chakra more so? So your root chakra is the floor of your womb, or your hara. Just as your diaphragm, which is a mirror of your root chakra, the diaphragm is the floor of your heart.

 

And then the roof of your mouth is the floor of your third eye. So in temple body architecture, we’ve got three floors, which are in the masculine chakras, root chakra, solar plexus chakra, and throat chakra. And then we have the throne for our higher self in each of our chambers.

 

So we have a womb chamber, a heart chamber, and a third eye chamber. So the floor of each chamber is the gateway or the entryway into that chamber. So womb chamber or hara chamber is the lower garden of Eden.

 

Heart chamber, middle garden of Eden. And then third eye chamber is the higher garden of Eden. Do you think, do you feel that’s where we hold a lot, most of our really traumas is in that root or that chamber? I mean, because I can say just, I like to speak only for myself, but when I was really beginning on this path, that would hurt so much.

 

That would be like the area that would be like, God, if I could just fucking clear this out. Once I cleared that and it took time, it like went through my solar plexus. But once I cleared that root, it was like stuck.

 

It felt like a cement brick. It doesn’t feel like nowhere. That thing’s clear as a bell now, but it’s like, I think there’s so much truth to that.

 

Like it sits in there and it just manifests. I don’t know what it is. I think our medicine journeys get it out of us.

 

Our movement gets it out of us. I think those are just traumas and I don’t know what they are. They’re bricks, they’re what they are, but there’s something that holds you down and it’s pretty wild when you release it.

 

Well, and that’s our foundation, root chakra, womb, pelvis, that is our foundation. So whatever is going on in the foundation, the rest of the structure of our body is going to be aligned with that foundation. So if our foundation is faulty and stuck and restricted, the rest of our body is also going to be misaligned and restricted and stuck.

 

And if we look at this concept that, and epigenetics proves it, that traumas get passed on generation after generation. There’s no doubt. Where do they get passed on from? The womb, the hara.

 

You know, it is the truth. I mean, there’s no doubt about how that works. Traumas are passed on.

 

I mean, science doesn’t even have to prove it. You can see it. You see it when you do this work.

 

You see it in everyday people. I mean, it’s just wild and mind-boggling how it goes from DNA to DNA to DNA. And I don’t know if it gets worse or better, but it’s there, you know? If you pick it up, you’re going to pick it up.

 

It’s just wild, crazy how it works. Because it is something. I mean, we are a source somewhere, so.

 

Well, and we are the ones who are choosing to heal it. Because it does. It gets worse until someone goes, okay, you know what? This ends with me.

 

And this is why we are all drawn to this healing journey. So then coming- So there are, go ahead. Well, I was just going to, I’m holding that thought.

 

So coming back, so I guide people in dropping all the way down, the descent. We got to descend all the way to our foundation, our womb, our hara, and then wake up our life force energy. So there’s seven different ways to activate Shakti or life force.

 

Breath, sound, movement, tapping, pumping, visualization. Is there one I’m missing? Affirmations. So once we wake up our life force energy, there’s a whole process of how to use our mind to direct our life force into those stuck energies in the body, in the fascia, while you’re in positions or working with a foam roller or one of my bamboo sticks here behind me to really feel and meet the restriction and then use your life force to pump through the restriction, shaking it loose because it’s just stuck energy.

 

So all of the Shakti activators are rhythmic. The whole point is we got to get that stuck energy moving again. So, do you have any tools there you could show us what you use, what were you just showing? So- Let me take out my headphones real quick.

 

Yeah, let’s do something. Let’s show like the audience some things like how we, how, like something easy they could do at home. Absolutely, and this is something easy for just embodiment.

 

So if you have a stick, whether it’s a broomstick, a bamboo stick, we live here in the jungle so we have lots of bamboo, but just holding it over your heart, bringing your arms in front of it, either relaxing your hands, bringing your hands into prayer mudra and then breathing slowly, but directing your breath into your heart to feel your heart expanding into the stick. And then at the top of your inhale, can you push your heart into the stick more, feeling your ribs and sternum as though you’re inside your heart, pushing out, breaking free through that restriction, through the stuckness. And you can keep expanding, keep holding, keep pushing out from the inside out.

 

And you may get a nice little fascial alignment, a little pop or a crack, or you feel like, oh, right there. And then you can move your head from side to side, feeling the stretching in your fascia, pulling from your heart up through your neck and jaw. And just that movement alone can bring you into your heart to feel, wow, I’ve never felt my heart like that.

 

People have felt, I can feel my heart beating just by focusing my breath into my heart as though I’m inside my heart, expanding from the inside out. And that’s why- So how long do you do that for? How about? This practice alone or a daily practice? This practice alone, just to start somebody off beginning. So it depends.

 

There’s a lot of different ways to work with the stick. Just a few breaths there in that one practice can be a minute or a couple of minutes. When I guide people, I really empower them to listen to their body so that when they’re in their practice, they can stay there for as long as they desire until they feel like they have reached a breakthrough.

 

That, okay, I’ve transmuted whatever stuckness I was feeling. My body wants to move on into a different position. Maybe I’ll bring the stick behind my back now and rotate as I breathe and open up the fluidity in my spine.

 

So it’s really all about listening to the body. And moving, moving all those areas. Exactly.

 

Now my daily practice, on the other hand, when you asked, I’m like, well, that’s another answer. My husband and I, we spend anywhere between three to five hours in our daily practice every day. So about two hours in the morning and either an hour and a half, two hours in the evening.

 

So is that working with all these different modalities? So our daily practice, it’s kind of one modality together. Because what we do is we multitask all these different shock deactivators. So for example, I’ll give you, let’s see.

 

If I’m working with the stick here in front of my heart, so my mind is going to be in my body, holding me accountable of how am I breathing? Where’s my awareness in my body? Am I squeezing my pelvic floor? Am I circling my eyes? Am I circling my tongue? So we multitask a lot of different somatic movements and practices to strengthen the mind so that the mind becomes stronger in being embodied. And that truly is, it’s our secret to activating all those dormant brain cells. It’s kind of like, remember when you were a child and your mother or father, hey, can you do circles on your stomach as you tap your head? And initially it was a little hard because we hadn’t created that neural network yet.

 

So in our daily practice, we will find a position, whatever that position is, and we’ll work through many different positions over that two hour time period. Find a position and then okay, so how am I gonna breathe here? What’s my first portion of that container, which is breath? Okay, what else am I gonna add in to make it even more difficult to keep my mind and my body? Okay, now I’m gonna circle my tongue on the roof of my mouth. Now I’m gonna circle my eyes.

 

And you can feel the neural networks being activated as we call it, as we’re popping through the pain portal of whatever pain we’re working with in our body. That’s really cool. That’s really cool you dedicate that much time a day too.

 

Pretty awesome. So let’s, pretty much gonna end here, but let’s ask some things. The misconceptions in this medicine space, you know what I mean? What you’ve encountered with plant medicines, what have you seen for healing traumas and how we address these plant medicines moving forward? You know, there being, because we all see the benefits in them.

 

So what do you see the obstacles as right now? The fear, the programming, there is a lot of obstacles just with the legalities, the system, all of, the war on drugs has done such a good job of really etching that programming in the psyche of humanity. So making these medicines accessible for people, they have to first get over that hump of the fear of what they’ve been programmed or what they’ve heard, or the whole fear of having a bad trip or a bad experience. And then that ties into the next layer, which is truly finding a guide who is authentic.

 

Finding a safe and sacred space where it’s not about, my husband and I were just talking about this last night of how much greed and how much inauthenticity is in the plant medicine world. And it’s all about money, even with what appears to be indigenous shamans. Well, living in Central and South America, we have seen the insides of that.

 

And it’s like, wait, this is all about money. Can I interrupt there for one second? Yes. Yeah, because, I mean, we work with some tribes and we’ve been in this space for quite a while.

 

And I think if anybody is calling themselves a shaman to begin with, I would probably stay very far away because if you’re a healer in this space, or if you’re a medicine man, if you are connected, you are not calling yourself a shaman. You’re just the furthest thing you are. That’s almost an embarrassment to you because that’s not you.

 

I mean, that’s a teacher so high above you. That’s just an egotistical way to say it. That’s just an Americanized way.

 

And another thing you’ve touched on really strongly is what the war on drugs did, because the war on drugs fucked us. Our heads, our minds, and our bodies. Because these medicines, you know, pharmaceuticals are allowed to kill a half a million people a year.

 

The pharmaceutical industry can kill a half a million people a year without being sued. You know how many, if you look at psilocybin, psilocybin is never, there’s not one reported death of psilocybin ever. And you’re putting it in with these, with these class of drugs of heroin, cocaine.

 

It’s just bizarre to me. Cannabis, never a single death from cannabis. I mean, we could talk about ayahuasca and bufone.

 

I mean, there are some that have happened, but it’s few and far in between. You could drink gallons of ayahuasca and you can never die. It’s just the medicines that we’re taking in the Western world that will kill you.

 

So we’ve really done ourself a disjustice, and we really have to inform and information. I think, you know, I don’t like to get into politics too much, but Kennedy, I think Kennedy’s gonna do a really big justice for us. You know, this man has been through some ayahuasca experience himself.

 

He’s been through the ringers with these medicines. He’s seen the true purpose. I think, I think there’s a hope.

 

I really feel there’s hope coming up for us. I really do. And I think, especially psilocybin, it’s so, it’s so effective and it could be so used in the Western world in such positive ways.

 

The stigma’s gotta go. It really does. It’s gotta go away.

 

These medicines have grown on mother earth’s body way longer than we’ve been here. Who are we to come along and say, that grows out of mother earth, that’s illegal. You’re gonna go to jail if you pick that mushroom.

 

Wait, what? It’s so true. What are you, crazy? And then we give our power to the propaganda and the beliefs without questioning. And that’s where humanity has given their power to this false system of authority and believing whatever they say as true.

 

And wait, wait, wait, what? It’s rethink everything you were taught. Rethink almost every single thing you were taught. Everything.

 

Everything. And you know, we live pretty good lives. You love, you, I mean, I do, my wife does.

 

We’ve, we’ve like, hmm, we were living in a darkness. I don’t live there no more. Do you? Not at all.

 

That’s pretty cool. So tell us where we can find you. Where people can find you at, what they, where you’re located and we’ll go from there.

 

So across all social media channels, you can find me at Dr. Shelly Persaud, just my full name. And then my website, same, drshellypersaud.com. Tell a little bit about people what you do. Well, so monthly I offer a guided somatic cannabis meditation and breathwork ceremony, a womb steam cannabis and microdose ceremony for women, that cannabis breathwork and meditation ceremonies co-ed.

 

And then every week, those womb kriya resistance band practices I talked about, I offer a weekly ceremony on Saturdays for women. My husband offers a hara kriya ceremony for men to drop into their hara once a month, the first Sunday of every month. So in these somatic cannabis ceremonies, which the first womb kriya and hara kriya ceremony is free.

 

It’s our gift to humanity. And then once a month, we also do a ceremonial book reading to meet my book, to feel the practice that actually gave birth to my book. That ceremony is also free as well.

 

So all of these ceremonies are on Zoom. You can do it enjoying from the comfort of your own home and with cannabis being accessible and with her mimicking any plant medicine, this is really my sole purpose with helping people remember that she’s sacred and she can help you integrate any plant medicine. She can be just as powerful as bufo, which I’ve had bufo level intensity experiences with her, reactivating bufo, of course, but she can do that with any plant medicine.

 

So when she’s revered as sacred, she will become your healing ally, your divine guide to everything you’re looking for. That more that she guided me to, I’m sure she’ll guide you there too. That’s my next purpose.

 

So I’d like to dive in. I’d like to jump on one of your husband’s calls. Those sound really interesting.

 

I’d like to talk to him too one day. So really great conversation today, Shelly. I really miss my other part of Medicine with the Metals, my wife.

 

It makes it so much more interactive and fun, but great conversation today. Thank you very much. It’s my pleasure.

 

And next time we’ll have to do it with her because there’s so much more we could talk about, I’m sure. So much more, so much more. Well, thank you very much.

 

Have a great day. It’s my pleasure. You too, Mark.