Medicine With The Medals Episode 51 – Sheree Goddessai (psychedelic integration -Full Transcript)

Good morning, we have a special guest today on Medicine with a Medal because Michelle is not joining us today as we are in beautiful Costa Rica making a little adventure move. This morning we have Sheree Goddessai. Good morning, Sheree.

 

Pura Vida, Mark. Pura Vida, Pura Vida, my friend. Thanks so much for having me, fellow Costa Rican neighbor.

 

How are you today? Can you go ahead and introduce yourself? So I’m Sheree. I’ve been involved in the psychedelic space for about a decade now. I serve in many different roles.

 

I would say primarily I’m a student of consciousness, first and foremost, and a mother. And beyond that, I’ve worked a lot in the realms of harm reduction, creating ecosystems and structures to help people have safer and deeper journeys, and helping them specifically with the integration bit, but I really see the whole harm reduction philosophy as psychedelic integration, and that’s been my forte for about a decade now. So I’m a shamanic psychedelic therapist and community builder, I work one-on-one with individuals and also teach in my coaching certification school that I created a few years back, and enjoying life on the beach.

 

Well, let’s go and dive right into this conversation because it’s, you know, it’s our biggest, it’s our biggest, what we like to, what we like to promote the most to people when you jump into psychedelics. It’s just not, let’s go have an adventure and come out and let’s go relive our life. Let’s go have an adventure.

 

Let’s integrate our life of what we just learned through this process. You be on this path for about 10 years now, I mean, me being on this for about seven, my wife about seven. You know, I think we all have gone through these, this learning phase in the beginning of psychedelics because, you know, I think a lot of people aren’t really, you know, that we’ve heard about psychedelics, they know about psychedelics, but the fear still surrounds around psychedelics.

 

And for us, this is what we want to eliminate, you know, we want to get this stigma away. And we think this is a beautiful way to find yourself, a beautiful way to heal, but first and foremost, I think integration is the most important part about a psychedelic journey. So let’s, let’s dive into first, what got you started on this path? How did you find it? And then what brought you to do the next step? Let’s start off with there.

 

Yeah, thanks. So as, as most of people that serve in this field, I stepped into this path because I myself was communicating and engaging with psychedelic plant medicines and synthetic psychedelic compounds, and found myself really, really drawn to this world and wanting to be of service in this world. And I heard the word integration for the first time when I attended a very small grassroots plant medicine conference in Los Angeles called plant teachers and, and from the, from the mouth of Dr. Susana Bustos, who’s affiliated with, was affiliated with CIIS.

 

And I remember sitting in the audience and hearing that word for the first time. And it made so much sense to me, understanding that they’re the embodiment of the insights and the supportive structures around what we call the peak experience that plant medicines and psychedelics can provide. So it’s the context in which this peak experience is formed that really is what needs to be taken into consideration for the embodiment of the wisdom of the experience.

 

And when I say the context, the context, the structure, the ecosystem, for me, integration starts from the moment that the idea to partake in ceremony is planted, that seed of an idea is planted in our, in our conscious mind. So that’s for me when integration begins. And so I got into this path because I was myself, again, as mentioned, engaging with psychedelics and just didn’t have that support system, didn’t have the structure, didn’t have that ecosystem, didn’t not have the community.

 

And something clicked, again, when hearing that word for the first time. And I just knew at that moment, I literally took my notebook and I wrote the word integration and circled it at the top of my notepad. And I was like, this is my zone.

 

And just everything just was like, had just a domino effect from that moment. So, so that’s how I got started. And I think for like a lot of people in this field that just have been really been inspired and helped by and grown so much from this engagement and just wanting to support others on the path.

 

You know, right now there are, we know that we are going through a very transformative opportunity period on the planet. And a lot of people are, have a lot of questions about life and about their purpose and what does all this mean? And they’re looking for answers. And you know, when a student seeks, then the teachers arrive and maybe the teachers also have always been there.

 

Right. But when the student is more open to receiving than everything, just everything happens. Because you say, I’ve mentioned a couple of important things, you know, community, community something that I think, you know, I like to talk beginning, beginning of the stages when people first enter this path, because it’s really confusing.

 

You know, first ayahuasca experience, somebody comes off that, you know, it’s can be very confusing for a lot of people, life changing. But if you don’t know how to navigate that, man, you know, it was just tough. And my biggest thing, like yours, like when I first did my psychedelic experience, my big ayahuasca experience, maybe seven years ago in a church in Florida, you know, I got out of that church and a couple of times of sitting with that medicine, all these people kept leaving.

 

And I kept saying to myself, man, you’re feeding these people to the wolves, they’re not learning nothing. They’re going out there and just going and doing the same thing. So that’s how I picked up that integration, you know, and that integration just started becoming a daily practice, working with others and just seeing others and how I can go and transform myself by looking inside of myself and not outside.

 

And that community was also such a big part of it because people, you know, they understood not fully, but they understood a little bit what I was going through. So very important aspects right there. Community and integration.

 

Very much so. Because, you know, let me ask you this, when we come off, say a first ayahuasca journey, say somebody sits with that medicine two, three times over the weekend and they go home, what do you recommend to them the first thing they do? What I would recommend to any person that’s feeling drawn to sit with ayahuasca is to begin preparing from the moment that they think about signing up for ceremony. And what I mean by that is don’t wait for until after the ceremony ends to start planning of what your integration process would look like.

 

As mentioned, integration begins when we begin thinking about, again, participating in ceremony. The idea, it goes from an idea to a real tangible thing. So we begin thinking and doing the research, okay, where would be the best place for me to sit? What do I need to do to get there? How much time do I need to be able to sit with the insights afterwards for just recovery, not even processing quite yet? So all these things, you know, the planning and, you know, what to take to the ceremony, during that time already is an opportune time to begin the dialogue with any medicine, but specifically since you asked about ayahuasca, you know, we know that ayahuasca, particularly that plant medicine, has a very specific technology, an ancient technology, where that dialogue, that relationship begins and is deepened through the preliminary dieta, the prerequisite dieta, where we begin eliminating certain foods, certain practices like media, like sexual conduct, any type of distraction that can penetrate our energetic field, and we begin cleansing that and clearing that from our system.

 

So the deeper we get into the dialogue and that relationship with that particular brew, that particular spirit of ayahuasca beforehand, then the more prepared that we arrive to sit in ceremony, the safer the experience will be, the deeper it will be, the more seamless it will be, and then in the aftermath of it, once the ceremony is done, the facilitator has sealed the ceremony, and then you step out of, yeah, the Moloka, the church, the home in the Hollywood Hills, you know, all the places where ayahuasca is served right now, okay, the moment that you take your first step, this is a moment to understand or to just accept that now is the moment where I have an opportunity to begin walking the wisdom that was gained in ceremony, and that walk, you know, it can be confusing, and again, I think the word integration right now is, like, it’s very hype, but also sorely misunderstood, sorely misunderstood. A lot of people attribute, okay, start journaling, start, you know, doing yoga, do breath work, and that’s how you integrate. The truth is, is that it’s really, the way that I see it, it’s more of a, is a, first of all, integration, the post-ceremonial integration stage has two stages.

 

So I look at, like, the first few days as the recovery stage, and that’s the immediate integration stage, and then the long-term integration stage, which I would say, depending on the medicine, depending on the, how deep the experience was, how maybe challenging the experience was, then I would say, typically, maybe at 48 hours, sometimes a couple of weeks later, once the recovery stage is done, that’s when we step into the long-term phase. That’s interesting. I never really quite heard that.

 

Let’s go back over that again, a recovery phase, recovery phase, because definitely that’s, that’s, that’s a great word to use, because that’s what you’re doing in a little bit, maybe that two, three-week time period, maybe less for some people, but you are actually recovering from something, and that’s a really good way to put it, because you’re very vulnerable during that first couple weeks after any ceremony experience, let it be cambo, that’s not psychedelic, let it be ayahuasca, 5-MeO, let’s talk about any of these plants, but you can also get these experiences through meditation, but that, that little week there, that little few weeks is really, really detrimental and important, so I like the way you put that. And it’s really, yeah, thanks, Mark, and then, you know, I want to put an emphasis on that, the way that I see it, you know, one, one way to look at it is, I see the recovery stage as the, the, the off-ramp, right, from the peak experience, right, so this is the descent stage from, okay, once we went flying, now we’re coming down and we’re on the runway rolling back to a halt, and basically that recovery stage is going to include more physical nurturing practices, emotional nurturing practices, rest, hydration, eating wholesome foods, again, still keeping away from social media, keeping away from people who can, or who are not familiar with this modality or not respective of this modality, just keeping, being in stillness as much as possible, regaining the neuro, the levels in the neurochemistry, balancing neurochemistry, and then in that phase, what I would really recommend on, and to do as far as your question, okay, what do people, what’s the first thing people do, so first of all, create that off-ramp for yourself, and then within that period, I do recommend to, what I call to do kind of like a stream of consciousness brain dump into, I don’t like that word, but just like, yeah, basically like you want to purge whatever memories or insights that you felt or saw or sensed or tapped into in ceremony, just put it all either in a, I like to voice record, or put it in a notebook, but don’t, yeah, try to understand what it means, don’t write any essays, don’t try to put it in any type of linear story, because as soon as you fashion a story, then you’re putting your own limitations on it, right, so just put it all in a notebook, you’ll get back to it later, and then focus solely on recovery, and then when it’s time to move further to processing and move into the long-term integration stage, then you will know when to do that, and that’s a whole different strategy, but that’s as far as what to do immediately after a ceremony. That’s a pretty cool way to look at it, you know, because that first, like I say, that first couple weeks is so vulnerable after any medicine experience, because, you know, I don’t think you’ll ever forget, but, you know, we tend to not remember, you know, so we go back to our old habits, so we have old ways, because, you know, we always try to find happiness through habits, and we can never do that, it will never happen, because as soon as we get older and older and older, all those habits that we’ve infiltrated are always bad habits, so what’s really good? So sitting in that fresh, new space, and, you know, it’s so difficult, especially in the beginning, like, so many things are going on, what’s good, what’s real, what was not, and that’s a great thing, you know, a lot of people want to journal, they want to create their own new story, man, let things just flow, especially for that first year or so, let things flow, and I just don’t know if anything is more important than that, just let it flow, and whatever you do is going to be, I guess, you know, it’s just, it all comes together after a while, but, you know, all this dogma about writing notes and putting things in here, I think you do, I think you nailed it by, I think we start creating our own story when we do that, and I think, you know, we got to notate something, we got to put something down, but, you know, letting things flow in the beginning, I think is a so important message, very important.

 

And also, you know, I do feel that there has to be very specific mindfulness around it, right, so like you put it as, okay, letting things flow, where I see it as, I’m completely seeing this, even this initial period, as part of this strategy, because I know that when I dedicate time, again, specifically for recovery, emotional, physical, spiritual, neurochemical recovery, that I’m freeing myself from the potential emotional burden and the psychological burden of needing to make decisions, needing to get into action where it’s not the season for that quite yet, you know, my energetic reserves are not quite there yet, so it’ll be kind of muddling the effect and removing me from the experience, where what my aim is, is really to create more order around it, so actually, when it is time to get to the action phase, the more masculine phase of the long-term, okay, now we process these insights, we understand what they mean, we go through the trauma work, then that is much cleaner and then also goes by much faster. But in that initial phase, the whole idea of mindfulness, you really want to think about, you know, there are some insights that I would definitely recommend, like the bigger insights, take at least a month before you make huge decisions, like, you know, leaving a relationship, leaving that job, going on a plant diet, you know, moving to the jungle, wait for at least a month before you take action, because these insights, sometimes, you know, there is a massive amplification in the ceremony, but then when you land back and again fully recovered, there, we suddenly see how deeply connected it is to other parts in life and the impact that these decisions would make on our lives and our own ecosystem, and then things look different, right? So I would really recommend to hold off on taking action on the bigger insights, however, if you receive insights that, okay, it will be in your best interest to quit eating sugar because you see how poisonous to the body, to stop with tobacco, to start walking more in nature, for whatever reason, then those are definitely the practices that I would recommend, yes, immediately, whatever insights or wisdom or sense that you have about increasing your wellness and daily habits, definitely begin practicing that, because that will create that new pattern, that new groove in your mind to build that new habit, so you really want to leverage that, right? So again, there is a difference between better habits to life-changing insights, meaning like breakthrough life-changing insights, breakthrough level, because even the habits are going to obviously change your life, right? Yeah. Absolutely, for sure.

 

You mentioned a couple of things a few times, too, and I really, you know, I’m a firm believer of a lot of this food, our food, you know, and food, especially in these states, is just, like food is such an important part of our, like our chemistry, how we think, how our thought process, our food in America is poisoned, and I think you’ve said this a few times since just in our little short 15-minute conversation, you’ve mentioned food a few times, and the importance of food and what we put in our body, like I really didn’t understand that really on this path until about three years ago, and then it’s just so important, I mean, the way we eat, the way, and you don’t have to be so conscious about it all, but we just, especially in the states, our unhealthy eating habits just, they take a toll on us mentally, I mean, they really do, because that physical toll is, no matter what, that physical and mental are always part of one, so just want to make that apparent, make that out there to people, how important our daily food habits are, because they really are. And you know, one thing that you’re saying that is really true for me, you know, as far as the way that I understand integration, and that, again, I feel it’s potentially misunderstood, is that people put a lot of weight on, okay, what do the insights mean, how can I cultivate and make the visions bigger, and again, integrate them into my daily life, whatever that means, right? And, you know, I want to heal my trauma by taking this vision that I saw and taking action on that, whereas, you know, a person that is depressed, has anxiety, stress, trauma, all these mental health issues, and just is living an imbalanced life with a mental dis-ease, the first thing that I would ask them, before they step into ceremony, is how are you sleeping, how are you eating, and how are you moving? And I will say, you know, after, like, years of being in the fields, and I can’t even count how many ceremonies, definitely in the three digits, I’ve supported thousands of clients, and if I had to choose the three most basic integration, quote-unquote, practices, before you sit in ceremony, if you want to improve your mental health, your daily life, bringing more balance into your life, before you step into ayahuasca, work on your sleep, nutrition, and your movement. Without these three things, no visions are going to help, no medicine will help, I mean, they will, you know, they’re not going to, you’re not going to leverage the value that they can bring into your life if you don’t have these three basic things dialed down.

 

And those are the three tools, they really are. Those are the three components that really can bless you, I mean, and it’s really simple, you know, I mean, like I said, our food in the States is poison, and, I mean, you come to places like Costa Rica, and you just see the difference in how we eat, and, you know, most Americans would say, oh, God, I can’t eat that, are you kidding me, it’s just, it’s unbelievable what we put in our body in the States, so I’m glad we touched on that. So let’s do touch on trauma, because trauma is, I think, a big part of why people come to this medicine, don’t you? For sure, and, you know, I would even go further than that to say that even people that don’t step into this work for healing trauma, they end up discovering how deeply informed they are by trauma as a whole, you know, what is trauma really, let’s define that.

 

So trauma is an event that was subject, an event that was subjectively experienced by a person as a, an event that, where this person’s sovereignty was violated, right, so whether it’s their emotional sovereignty, their psychological sovereignty, their physical sovereignty has been violated, and it’s the way that the person experienced it, and this is key, because for some people, they would go through a very similar event, and they will not experience it as a traumatic event, okay? So whatever is real for this person and the way they experienced it, this is how trauma will be formed in their psyche, and then, of course, there are many, we can get into like hours-long conversations about how trauma manifests in the body and, you know, mental state and, of course, in daily life, but to focus on our topic, because we live in a world that is literally built upon trauma. Our leaders have had trauma, there’s war in the world, there’s famine, there’s a shortage of resources, so even if we believe that, you know, we ourselves were, did not directly experience a traumatic experience, right, which most people believe that, okay, traumatic experience, again, can be an accident, a loss, something big and detrimental like that, but the truth is that trauma can show up in many ways. A lot of the psychological trauma that people hold is very directly related to early childhood development, where a traumatic experience can be an ongoing and nuanced relationship between a caregiver and a child, where the child did not have their very specific needs met in a very certain way, and then because it’s a chronic, ongoing, year-long relationship, then the trauma response builds in the body, so relational trauma is a big thing, and then even if, again, you don’t believe that you have that, a lot of people step into ceremony and actually discover that, well, maybe I didn’t have it, but my neighbor has it, I live in a society that is programmed on that, our leaders have that, my community is, again, there is war, there’s all these things, and literally there is collective trauma that I feel like in our, specifically our generation, people that were born in the 70s, 80s, definitely not our, I think our parents’ generation, they suffered a lot of trauma, but they didn’t have the tools to deal with it or the language, right, but we do, right, and we are basically the first generation that is beginning to bring voice to all of that and allow more healing, and we’re aware that trauma can basically show up in different ways, so what I’m suggesting is that even if a person does not believe that they have trauma, there is a very high likelihood that they will face some type of a traumatic energy event, a situation that will evoke that understanding of what trauma is, to see how actually we all share in trauma as a built-in foundational part of the human experience.

 

I mean, you cannot minimize somebody’s trauma, you just can’t, I don’t, you know, me and my wife always say, like, what’s trauma, like, and you just nailed it again, you said, like, when you’re younger, and say if you stub your toe and 10 people laugh at you, that could be trauma, but the same trauma of, say, a child getting molested by their parents is trauma to some people, but, you know, all in all, it’s the same trauma, it affects, it violates something of your inner, your inner child, you know, it’s violating that, and I think, I feel, on this path and how we integrate this is we have to go back and visit those childhood traumas, to relive those childhood traumas, to expose them and to relieve them, because if we don’t, they’re going to sit there, and people come to this medicine, like you say, and they don’t realize they have traumas, but then they discover them, and you’ve got to dig, you’ve got to dig deep, because sometimes you forget, and you bury them, and those are the worst ones, the ones that are buried, and sometimes they never come up, sometimes they never will, but holding on to these traumas, and everybody’s trauma’s different, it’s pretty, you just can’t judge other people’s traumas. Yeah, and I think it’s important also to remember, and this is where, you know, we want to talk about integration in the context, again, of psychedelic support, right, so oftentimes people will say, well, you know, I don’t need an integration therapist, coach, specialist, because the medicine is going to teach me everything I know, and while I have very deep respect for, again, the wisdom of the medicine, and of course, the facilitators, the ancient technologies, we have to understand that we live in a world that most of us, basically, like anyone that’s pretty much listening to this podcast, even us that live in Costa Rica, we are Westerners, we did not grow up in the jungle, we grew up in the West, where we have the psychological, clinical structures, with a DSM, with a work stressors, we have a lot to unlearn from our bodies, from our psyche, and we have to take into account that, yeah, while in the jungle, of course, you don’t need an integration therapist, because their whole community is an integration support system, right, they sit in council every night and drink together and dance together all night long with the children, they do combo, they do hape, this is their integration journey, this is their life, whereas for us, these experiences, these retreats, you know, going to the church in Florida, they’re like, isolated from our regular day-to-day environment, and people need to understand that, and that’s why integration is really the onset bridge and the offset bridge, okay, this is kind of how I see it, and we have to give respect to, again, basically, the integration compensates for, again, the lack of ecosystem that can make this whole peak experience a very healthy space that can just, like, land in our world without completely distorting it, so, yeah, I think that’s just really important to understand, is just looking at integration as a system that doesn’t come in, you know, a session before your ceremony or it ends a session after, it’s a path that’s meant to really help you embody the wisdom, embody the insights, and an integration therapist, okay, going back to that, oftentimes, yeah, we may get repressed, like, really stark repressed trauma memories just, like, show up, right, memories of sexual abuse, memories of things that happen in the family, that is one way how trauma can be revealed, and one thing that I’ve seen over the years, and also something that has been really true for me, you know, a lot of the relational trauma that I spoke about earlier, about, you know, this insidious enmeshment or emotional neglect that really impacts a child, even if they grew up in a normative family, you know, with two working parents, and, you know, had a home, had shelter, like, went to school, everything normal, quote-unquote, but again, as far as, like, how the parents modeled well-being to the child, or how, more specifically, how they did not, and then, basically, the way that a person behaves, right, and this is where we step more into the realm of how shadow, how the unconscious maybe doesn’t show up through, like, a psychological vision, but more of as a behavior, okay, so how a person behaves, whether in the ceremony, or, like, again, in the aftermath, in relationship with other people, projecting a lot of deep relational dynamics, toxic behaviors, toxic patterns, all these things show up between an integration facilitator to the person, so in that sense, it becomes a relational therapeutic container, and of course, it’s psychedelically informed, because we’re psychedelic people, but there’s a lot of trauma and healing work that is, can be done in a trauma, with a trauma-informed integration therapist, and again, it all shows up through the behavior between the client, and the coach, or the therapist, and that’s a whole other layer of trauma work in the psychedelic space that I don’t think a lot of people talk about at all. What is trauma? What’s that? Can you, can you tell people, can you tell people what trauma-informed is? Well, yes.

 

What people know, what is trauma-informed? I mean, trauma-informed is basically, like, if you look at any type of profession, right, so let’s say that, yes, there are integration coaches. What are integration coaches? People that maybe have been trained in psychedelic support, they were trained in sex setting and skill set, they were trained in dosing, maybe they were even trained in facilitation, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that they have the relational training, again, the relational dynamic training that I was talking about earlier, where we can see relational dynamics such as projection, transference, counter-transference, these are very, these are psychological, psychological dynamics that people study mostly in psychology school, right, when they become therapists, and then, of course, so there’s that, and then there’s the trauma-informed is a whole other skill set of understanding what trauma is, how it manifests in a person’s body, psyche, spirit, and life, and then having very specific interventions to support that, right, and we have to also be careful because, you know, up until now, you know, being trauma-informed usually meant that you have to be a licensed clinician to be able to treat trauma, and that is, by the way, still the case. To treat anyone, you have to be a licensed medical professional, but you can be an integration coach that didn’t go to psychology school, but hopefully, in their training, it was trauma-informed, they talked about trauma, what trauma is, how it manifests, and what are interventions to support that, so the integration coach or facilitator can support the trauma if and when it shows up, so it’s basically a professional skill set that supports people who have trauma, and to be very honest, Mark, I cannot, for the life of me right now, imagine that there could be any type of, like, highly skilled integration or psychedelic support person that is not trauma-informed.

 

We can’t afford to have that. It’s such, it’s like a part of the deal. It really is, and like, let’s get real here, and let’s talk really how can, do you think this could ever work in the Western world, like this whole structure of you have a clinical psychologist, then you have a psychedelic integration coach, and they’re both working together with this one patient, I don’t like to even use that term, but there’s one human to get them in a better place in life, do you think you could ever see that working without it being underground? Do you? Do we really see this working, or is it always going to be just like it is right now on the surface? I mean, because our world’s broken, and like, every day we see how many people are reaching out, how many people, like, the internet’s there.

 

People see there’s other ways to heal out there. We’re a broken society. We’re a broken culture, you know.

 

I come down here, and I see, like, it’s just so baffling to me how these families are so, you know, I’m going to babble a little bit here, but these families down here in Costa Rica or South America, wherever I am, I’ve never seen a kid really yell or scream or go out of control. Maybe it does happen, but I don’t see it, you know, and I see these broken little societies we have, especially in America, so I wonder, you know, because I think everybody, like, knows about psychedelics and knows about the wonders and the blissful and just the true healing powers of these medicines if you use, if you navigate this in the right way, but do you ever see it really working, or do you think it’s always going to be this underground sort of thing? No, of course I see it working. I mean, it’s working now.

 

I mean, definitely we still have a lot to navigate and reimagine because we are literally reimagining a new, what the way that I’ve seen it over the years, you know, when I started the integration circles in Los Angeles back in 2016, you know, as far as I was concerned, we were literally building a grassroots community health support system because there were tons of people sitting with medicines in Los Angeles, whether the government agreed with it or not. Research shows that millions of people use psychedelics and these numbers keep growing every year and these people do not have their psychological, emotional, physical health needs met where they’re at. You know, we do understand the harm reduction system to support people who are addicted to cocaine or to heroin, that is in place, right? But at the same time, people that use psychedelics are completely disregarded in that respect.

 

And of course, these are two different classes of medicines, you know, it’s totally apples and oranges, however, you know, we need to remember that this is… But we classify them, we classify them the same though, that’s the scary part. We put them in the same group, which… The government, the government does, yes, the government does, that is correct. The government.

 

The U.S. government. Yeah, we put them in the same classification when they’re merely, they don’t even mirror each other, they are apples and oranges. So they will show you that cocaine is not good for you.

 

Psychedelics will show you that that path is not good for you. It’s just, it’s really bothersome sometimes to us that I wish more and more people would dive into this and understand it more. You know, I think we do have to leave our government out of this right now, because I think our government in general is not, not for us, or not for, especially in America, and I don’t think any government, I don’t think they’re for this healing property or this healing power, and these healing capabilities of psychedelics.

 

So… I honestly, I think… Yeah, I guess my question… If I can answer your question from earlier, you know, I hear, and you know, I know that we have this opinion, a lot of people that, you know, are kind of have been fed up and disappointed and let down by the conventional social health systems in the United States and in other, you know, advanced countries, advanced quote-unquote countries of the world, more modern countries, and there is definitely a huge rebellion right now against that, especially with people who are stepping into the psychedelic implant medicine world for the first time. My opinion is, is that, yes, has the system failed us? Sure. Do we need to completely throw the baby out with the bath water? No.

 

We still need to understand that there are very specific techniques, intervention systems that, again, because we live and grew up in the West, we’re children of the West, we’re not children of the jungle, so we still need and can utilize a lot of the knowledge that has been synthesized over the last century, right? Science has its place, medical systems do have their place. There is a reason why people, you know, sit for licensure when they become therapists for 3,000 hours of frontal client care, because in that way, this is how you can really understand and embody relational dynamics. There’s ethical care that we need to take into consideration, right? So, you know, we really, you know, my approach is more about, okay, let’s study the rules of this game to see how it works, and let’s take the good rules and employ them and then rig the system and build a whole new game, but I don’t believe in completely disregarding or, you know, throwing out what has been built in the last century.

 

I think it’s on the opposite spectrum. It’s combining, learning how to combine the best of both worlds, synthesize the best of both worlds, and to answer your question, can a clinician and an integration person work together? Absolutely. I do this all, you know, and this is something that I do.

 

I did study psychology, by the way, but I never became clinically licensed because, for personal reasons, I wanted to have more freedom in the field to experiment more with the underground so I can build something new, right? But that was my personal choice. However, you know, a lot of my clients, you know, they’re, yes, they have suicidal ideations, they work with psychiatrists, they have medications, and we worked together with all of that, and I teach, and one thing I teach my students as well, even though my program is absolutely trauma-informed, always advocate for, if you have, first of all, you have to decide and understand if you’re ready to work with people that have PTSD, and in case that you do choose that, then I would highly recommend to make sure that they also are working with a clinician tandem, a clinician that is aware of their psychedelic adventures, and that can help provide that very specific clinical support when needed. So, yes, it’s all about working with teams, it’s a multidisciplinary approach that we’re looking at right now in psychedelic support, okay? It’s, you know, I definitely, I bring in the nutritionist, I bring in the breath work person, there’s the shaman, there’s the fitness coach, it’s an all-in modality, right? And we don’t need to, you know, aim to basically, like, be the one, you know, one-stop shop for, you know, people that are coming in to heal.

 

That’s a pretty powerful way to do this, you know? I mean, that’s the way it should be done, just how you said it. I mean, but you’ve been doing this for 10-15 years, you’re pretty connected there, so that makes so much sense, because you’ve seen a lot of this stuff happen, and it’s really, that’s the way that we really saw this going in the future, you know? I don’t think you could ever just go sit with this medicine, come home on the weekend, and go live your life. It’s just not how this works.

 

It just doesn’t work that way. You don’t take a couple mushrooms and say, okay, nothing happened. You gotta have whole lifestyle changes, you gotta do something.

 

So, let’s dive into what, a couple other things. Let’s dive into, somebody gets off their experience, they come, and they book, they sit with you. What does something like that look like? When they come to sit, when they come for the integration coaching, when they come and sit with you for integration, and you also do, what else? I’m sorry.

 

Yeah, so I work with, my client profile is very diverse. So, as mentioned, I work with, and I train people who want to be psychedelic support providers, so there’s a professional aspect. I teach groups, I hold retreats, and I also see people one-on-one, providing them consultation to help them strategize what their psychedelic therapy journey could look like.

 

So, basically, a client that is interested in healing, for example, their depression, and they want to understand which medicines are best for them, how to take them, when to take them, what are the options, so I help them build a strategy towards that. And then, other clients come in, and they go through the whole journey with me, including, you know, they come in with an issue that they have, and they heard that psychedelics are right for them, and in that case, I would walk them through the entire journey, help them prepare, create the strategy, facilitate, and, of course, do the integration work with them, and this is typically a period of about six months or so. I’m a full believer of long-term integration.

 

I already mentioned this, integration doesn’t happen in one session with your coach after a ceremony. It’s got to be a season. You have to look at it as a season of transformation, and it’s all about habit-building, unlearning, processing trauma, learning to relate with others, and diving deeper into your goals, and also, you know, we create goals together.

 

We do a midway check of the goals. We create new goals. We work on, okay, what life do they actually want to live, and we work towards that, but one thing that I’m really big on, Mark, is I’m less about the breakthrough peak experience and more about, okay, like, we utilize the psychedelic compounds for sure as needed, but they’re not the main event, right, so it’s more about it’s going to be there.

 

You know, we work together week to week with a client, and then suddenly, like, if it seems like there is some type of a story or a block that has, like, really deep roots that I feel could stand to be reprogrammed, that’s when we decide to go into ceremony. We decide exactly which compound to use, and I do work with a variety of different compounds, and I’m really huge on combinations. I love that.

 

That’s my forte. Talk a little. Can you talk a little bit about that? I don’t mind that at all.

 

Let’s talk about, like, a forte of medicine. Let’s mixing medicines together, like ayahuasca. It’s just like a mixologist that mixes alcohol.

 

I call myself a cosmic mixologist. Because a lot of people would say that’s dangerous, but, you know, and even in the beginning, I thought that was a little weird, but now, as I’ve dove into this path, I see it is not. Is it dangerous? It absolutely can be, you know, I mean, but at the same time, aspirin can be dangerous when it is taken and not according to direction.

 

You know, you have to obviously understand how each medicine works. What are the contraindications? What are the strengths? What are the weaknesses? And how, basically, to take the best out of each medicine, to combine them together, and most importantly, combining them with the person and their specific chemistry, their resources, their mind, their brain, and what they’re bringing into the room. That’s the key.

 

So it’s not that, okay, there is a cocktail that is just given to any person. It’s about taking the very specific conditions of this human being that comes to me and everything they bring to the table, their history, their mental health, their medical conditions, their pharmaceuticals, their goals, their time capacity. You know, people have children, they have jobs.

 

You know, we want to really, the way that I design the transformational experience for clients is taking into account the total and complete person and the way that they live, and then, again, integrate the psychedelic transformation into where they’re at, stretching them a little bit, but always keeping them at a well level, meaning they’re going to wake up the next day. If they need to go to work, they will. If they need to go get their child from school, they will.

 

But they still keep growing. So I’m less about, let’s get the breakthrough, and then you need to recover for two weeks, and whatever, and more about, you’re going to keep functioning, you’re going to keep walking, you’re going to embody the psychedelic wisdom as you brush your teeth, as you make breakfast, as you go and meet your friend. It’s just like, this is, to me, what integration is.

 

Have you seen a very successful way to do that? Have you seen it very successful for people to do it this way? Yeah, I have a very high level of success rate, if I do say so myself. I’ve noticed recently, you know, Mark, I had this, like, epiphany, you know, looking at my current client profile, and I was like, wow, you know, I’ve been noticing how a big part of my work is a lot, it seems to be a lot about repairing previous experiences that people have had with other facilitators, or even ketamine clinics. Like, I’ve worked, I can’t even tell you how many clients that I’ve worked with that went through the ketamine clinic protocol in the States, and even in other countries, like very high level clinics, New York, Los Angeles, and went through the protocol, and either it didn’t do anything for them, or the results were completely lost as soon as they stepped out of the clinic, or like two weeks after, right, there was nothing was sustained, or on the other side of it, maybe they were re-traumatized trying to heal through these clinics, because these clinics and some facilitators, because they’re not relationally informed, trauma informed, psychedelically informed, integration informed, they don’t provide the proper context in which these medicines can excel and thrive and sustain the results.

 

So, you know, I work with ketamine, I’ve had incredible success with ketamine, again, clients that have tried multiple clinics and nothing worked for them, and now they’re living their best life, and you know, I have my own protocols and my own support system that I created over the years, and it, my clients will say it works, how about that? Yeah, I just, I like different options, you know, I think people are really searching, people are really searching to get out of their traumas, and I think different options and different ways, I’m a firm believer is do whatever makes you happy, do whatever is going to bring you joy, because if you don’t, it’s never going to happen, you know, I love what you’re doing, I think different options can be possible, I don’t, I never, especially in this space, you know, I was really scared of all these medicines in the beginning, I was like, oh, I’m never going to do that, never going to do that, iboga, oh my god, I’ve sat with every one of these medicines except biopo, so I don’t, there’s nothing, to me, there’s a beauty in these medicines, and I think, sometimes I’ll tear up, but what you say is, like, I think after that two or three week, we forget, and I think that’s what the most important part about integration is, is that unforgetting, you know, and because when we forget, is when we lose ourself again, you know, so when we don’t forget, because we’re all going to forget, you know, I mean, I’ll just speak for myself, I can’t say we all are, but you know, for that, that first two or three weeks after an experience is beautiful, but we do forget, and if we don’t keep, if we don’t keep doing good things, we’re going to lose it, I mean, we’re just going to lose what we’ve, I’ve never had, like, I’ve had one, like, I’ve sat with ayahuasca maybe 40, 50 times, I’ve only had really one huge breakthrough, you know, all the other ones were really great learning experiences, they’re just, they’re feelings, and I know something’s happening, and you know, when I get off those experiences, I do, I go through that two-week hiatus, I don’t know what it is, but it’s, it’s, it’s a revamping of whatever it is, so I think it’s just so, so important to, like, integrate all this, find a coach like yourself, or find somebody, find the community, you know, just to go out there blind, and continue to do what you’re doing, and jump on these experiences, it’s just an experience, that’s all it is then, because these are life-changing medicines, they really are. Yeah, thank you, and you know, I think a big part of maybe the grief that you’re, you know, experiencing now, Mark, which I think is like, you know, I think you’re providing a voice to a lot of people that feel the same as, okay, these two weeks afterwards, when the neuroplasticity levels in the brain are so high, and this is such a great opportunity to restyle yourself, right, according to the new codes that you received in ceremony, but then, you know, one of the biggest pieces in the psych, what some people call the psychedelic movement, or the psychedelic renaissance right now, that I’m working to reframe, is the lack of education and understanding in facilitators, and again, in churches, and in retreat centers, and guides about what happens in the integration process, and really, a lot of them, again, they’re, maybe they’re like, they can be like the best medicine facilitators, hold impeccable space, super trustworthy, right, clean, clean energy, and at the same time, as soon as the ceremony is done, they just kind of like dump the client, because they don’t understand, again, the importance of the relational aspect, and how detrimental it is for the person’s wellness, with any experience, really, because life is all about relationships, and then the clients end up getting re-traumatized, so I’m really working, not just by myself, but also with one of the, an organization that I work with, Nectara, where I’m the director of integration for them, and we’re literally trying to reframe, again, the narrative in psychedelic spaces, and help them understand, basically, everything that I shared today, that integration is a harm reduction ecosystem, it has to include the aspect of community, at the end of the day, people, you know, if we take every single person that’s ever sat in medicine, right, and actually, really, even every single person in the world, I’m going to, I’m going to go as far as that, and this is going to be, maybe, an extreme statement for some people, but as far as I see it, right now, the wounding of our time, right now, collectively, on the planet, is that people are so lonely, they’re so stuck in the illusion of separation, and they’re looking to belong again, why? Because every single human on the planet, as soon as they left their mother’s womb, was separated from unity, from consciousness, from unity consciousness, separation, and this is where the wounding begins, this is basically that, think if you were a male, and I’ll throw a male on there, and they circumcise you, then your sexual trauma starts, so then you got males, that sexual trauma starts so early at a young age, and then you’re separated from your mother, and men don’t have childhood traumas, it’s the biggest childhood trauma, yeah, and of course, there are aspects like that, of like, you know, rituals that we have in the collective, and communities, and anyhow, you know, I really feel like, what I’m trying to say, is that ultimately, all of us are looking to belong, right, we want to feel that sense of belonging, and returning, and that aspect of community, of relational wellness, that’s really where the, this is the ultimate lesson of the medicine, right, everyone will say, it’s all love, we’re all one, what does that mean, we’re all one, we all want to be returned to singular, to the singular, non-dual experience, and you know, if I just have to like, again, extract the essence of everything that we’re doing, that’s what it’s about, so yes, find your community, find your people, so your community could be, again, people that you stand in ceremony with, if you google on meetup, psychedelic integration circle, no matter where you are, probably almost in the world, you will find your people, okay, google psychedelic society, insert your town’s name, of course, there are many online offerings now, and of course, if you want to go deeper in your integration process, and really make a change, like real acute change in your life, that not only you feel, but other people can see, as far as like, the new person that you’ve become, the way that you present yourself, what you’re able to create, the way that you’re able to transmute, and manipulate time and space, to really make a huge difference in the world, that’s through integration therapy and coaching. I really do feel that that aspect literally collapses the linear time aspect of psychedelic healing, so basically, you’re gonna regenerate yourself, reinvent yourself much quicker, with a lot less suffering, and like, with much more powerful tools, and yeah, just step into your new daily life, like, I want to say the word warrior, but I don’t fully believe in that, just the new embodied wisdom that you want to be, right, whatever avatar you see yourself becoming, right, integration therapy, this is what I see.

 

I love it, I love it so much, well, thank you for a great conversation today, why don’t you just tell people where we could find you at? So you can find me on a number of websites, so first of all, the psychedsoul.com, psychedsoul.com, also psychedelicintegrationcoach.com, if you’re looking for an integration circle online, or other educational classes, you can check out psychedeliaintegration.org, that’s a non-profit, I founded in Los Angeles in 2017, and of course, you can reach out to me for a private coaching, and I do hold group and private retreats, so if anyone is looking for a safe and deep and transformative journey in a short amount of time, that’s what I love to do more than anything, is just have that one-on-one time with people, and help them rise like that, so. Yeah, I love that, we’ll definitely be sharing all your links all around, I really appreciate what you do, I appreciate your time in this space so much, so it’s really powerful, really good stuff, thank you Sheree, thanks so much Mark, Pura Vida everyone.

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