#24: Psychedelic Integration with Susan Scharf and Rebecca Hendrix

July 7, 2019 00:59:26

Psychedelic experiences can be quite powerful and life-changing, but there are also other forms of consciousness-expanding experiences that may challenge one’s old paradigm. Sometimes even taking a big leap with a significant life-decision can challenge one’s psyche.

So what is integration? It may well be the act of weaving together new levels of understanding that arise with new experiences into our evolving life stories. It is to provide the framework for ourselves so that we may benefit from new insights, something like a psychedelic experience can be a fleeting moment or a new milestone. Without integration, our psyche may be susceptible to so many things, be it splitting from one’s reality or ego inflation. The path of consciousness expansion beckons us to harness wisdom and discernment.

On this episode, we explore psychedelic harm reduction, preparation, and integration with Dr. Susan Scharf and Rebecca Hendrix. Dr. Scharf and Rebecca founded One Integration to raise awareness around the mindful and safe use of psychedelics for the purposes of personal growth and healing. They offer individual as well as group integration for in NYC.

Dr. Scharf is a Board Certified Internal Medicine Physician and has also received advanced trained in Functional Medicine and Mind-Body Medicine. She has completed the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) therapist training and is the study physician for the phase 3 clinical trials for MDMA therapy for PTSD in New York. She has also trained with the Psychedelic Education and Continuing Care Program and the Integrative Harm Reduction Psychotherapy Program from the Center for Optimal Living.

Rebecca is a licensed marriage and family therapist. She completed her Master of Spiritual Psychology and her Master of Counseling Psychology from the University of Santa Monica She has a coaching degree from The Coaches Training Institute (CTI). She is a certified Imago Therapist and has advanced training in Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT). She is trained in Energy Psychology by Henry Grayson. She has completed the Center for Optimal Living’s Psychedelic Education Program’s 101/102 workshops and is in a clinician group for harm reduction and psychedelic integration.

Highlights:

Psychedelic Harm Reduction and Preparation
Role of Community Integration
Ketamine Therapy, MDMA-Assisted Couples Therapy

Resources:

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Full Transcript

Thal:

Welcome Susan and Rebecca to Soulspace Podcast.

Susan Scharf:

Thank you. We are happy to be here!

Rebecca Hendrix:

Yeah. Thank you for having us. We’re so excited.

Thal:

Thank you for coming on. I guess a place where we want to start from is what got you interested in psychedelic psychotherapy and why?

Susan Scharf:

Oh, should I start?

Rebecca Hendrix:

Well, do you want me to start?

Susan Scharf:

Go ahead.

Rebecca Hendrix:

Okay. Um, I’m a traditionally trained psychotherapist, but within that I also have a specialization in spiritual psychology, which is helping people to look at their unfilled issues as a means of growing spiritually. And in doing that, um, I’ve noticed over the past few years, especially with my clients that are on medication and taking the traditional medications, they don’t always work for everybody. For the people that they work with they are a godsend. But for the people that, um, don’t find success, it’s really, really hard. And some people that are going on them have a lot of side effects even in increased thoughts of suicide going on them and coming off of them can be a lot harder than expected for some people. And I guess it was (?) years ago or so, um, I’ve been a fan of Gabor Maté for a long time with the work that he’s done with addiction and looking at all addiction as rooted in trauma. And in following him and going to some of his talks, he talks about, uh, sometimes doing Ayahuasca and leading some Ayahuasca trips. And so, um, an opportunity came up in New York where I work to do a training for clinicians called Psychedelics101 and 102 with the Center for Optimal Living. And so I did that last year and was just fascinated by all the information that they provided about how these medicines can be used and are being used in clinical trials to help people heal from things like OCD and depression and PTSD in ways that the psychopharmacological industry just aren’t. Often by using them once or twice or three times. So, um, that’s how I became interested just by kind of seeing what’s going on in my practice. Having some personal experience. One of my best friends committed suicide a number a number of years ago right when she was coming off some psychiatric medications. Um, so I’ve always just been kind of had a feeling inside that we just don’t have enough to offer and that our mental health system is a bit broke. We need mass mental health and we need more options for people that are in pain. And so that’s kind of what got me interested.

Adrian:

And just for listeners, I wanted to point out that that was Rebecca because we haven’t done a four way conversation. So people are only hearing your voices. I want it to match the voice with a name. So that was Rebecca and thank you.

Rebecca Hendrix:

Thank you. I’m Rebecca and I’m a holistic psychotherapist.

Susan Scharf:

And you guys can hear okay. Yes. Okay, good. So I’m Susan and how I got interested… I really just the process of my… it’s a longer process because I trained in internal medicine and really somehow had an awareness of other ways that we can heal, which is not really being offered to us in our traditional training, whether that’s psychological training, um, psychiatric training, medical training. And I just started exploring these other ways of approaching things and I learned about functional medicine and I was like, oh, great. Okay. That feels right. Let me go to that as fast as I can and see what that offers me, in terms of helping people. And it really opened my eyes to other ways of healing and thinking about our body, our system, and the connectedness of all of our parts and systems and how they affect each other. So I’ve kind of been approaching ever since I started medical school, just approaching everything from that. It’s all connected. So, uh, so I do practice holistic medicine as well and it’s really the mind, body, spirit, soul. It is all connected and it might sound a bit cheesy, but all these parts affect each other and things that we go through and just thinking that, um, especially the things like stress and anxiety and trauma and, um, these are not just things you take a pill for and expect it to fix a problem that has affected your life in all these areas. And although, you know, natural and holistic medicine might be geared toward non-medicine type things, a lot of these substances medicines we talk about are plants. And even then there’s, it’s just, um, it really touches upon all the aspects of a whole person to me. And that allows that person true healing, deep, healing, connected healing, and support. And when you see people getting better, you can be with people getting better from these modalities, it’s just undeniable, the help that it offers.

Thal:

Absolutely. I mean, it’s like you have this amazing role, um, of like bridging between sort of western medicine and holistic medicine. And in many ways too Rebecca, you shared like, you know, as a spiritual psychotherapist, mainstream psychotherapy tends to maybe not look at the spiritual aspects of things, but, you know, it’s like there has to be more bridging more conversation between different parts of sort of medicine, psychology, psychiatry, psychotherapy and holistic approaches to things. So, you know, that’s, um, an interesting space that you both occupy.

Rebecca Hendrix:

Thank you.

Susan Scharf:

Yeah. Thank you.

Adrian:

Can you guys share with us the, maybe the origin story for One Integration, that you guys both founded this company and it seems like you’re now offering services that are within the psychedelic integration space. Can you talk about what inspired that and tell us a little bit about One Integration?

Rebecca Hendrix:

Sure. Actually, we met in a clinician’s group, a clinicians consultation group for other therapists that have had some advanced training in working with patients who are interested in psychedelic healing through the use of psychedelics, um, through that Center for Optimal Living training. And so when we met we started chatting and we realize that, well, a lot of what we do in our clinician group is talk about integrating these experiences and different clinicians will bring forward case studies about, um, patients that are having challenges in integrating. And we will all brainstorm about the best way to help that patient to maybe integrate the experience into their life. And so we realized that, um, that there’s a real need to have a service available for people to integrate. There’s a lot of integration, well, within specialized communities. There’s some integration circles.

Susan Scharf:

There are some.

Rebecca Hendrix:

There are some that exist, but we didn’t, um, we didn’t know of another group per se that is formulated by a psychotherapist and a doctor that, because there’s a little bit of like a middle ground, the integration circles, um, the ones that I’ve been to anyway tend to have a lot of people that are quite experienced in psychedelics. Um, and that have used a good many of them. And, um, it didn’t seem like there’s a lot available for people that were curious or who might have had a recent experience in Costa Rica or someplace, people that were experimenting on their own. I started to see in my practice, um, people that are flying to different countries to use Ayahuasca or things like that, um, but weren’t necessarily integrating when they came back. And so jointly we just decided it would be a great add on to our existing businesses to make something like that available. And so we just, it was, it’s also fun and exciting because we both have a passion for this work. And so we wanted to figure out a way that we could work together and also help people.

Susan Scharf:

Yes. That was Rebecca. And this is Susan, just to keep with that. Um, I also want to add to that because that’s exactly right, that, um, two things we both I think really want to provide this, uh, service to people as a real safe place to really, uh, expand upon either these experiences or, we also talk about peak experiences. It doesn’t have to be with a specific substance, but a peak experience and really bring whatever shows up to the light and learn from it and grow from it. Um, but also, uh, as in many communities, there’s not always therapeutically, and I’m not saying there’s only one way and I’m not saying, um, I’ll finish my sentence and I’m not, there’s not always therapeutically trained people there available to support people through difficult times. And not that you have to have a certain type of training or that you need to, you know, have a psychoanalysis background, but some people that are going through these underground communities may need a lot more support than that community can provide. And, and, and we do have the training to provide that kind of support.

Rebecca Hendrix:

And I think we also feel like, you know, fingers crossed, this is the future. This, this could happen, you know, in the next five years.

Susan Scharf:

This is happening!

Rebecca Hendrix:

This is happening! And so we want to be prepared and there’s still so much stigma attached to, um, the use of psychedelics for healing. Um, even with ketamine, which is perfectly legal, there’s stigma attached. And so we wanted to, you know, kind of even proactively start to educate people or talk about it in a normal way so that people will start to see this as a possibility to help their loved ones or just to suggest to a loved one that really needs help and is struggling.

Thal:

Hmm. I mean clearly we are talking about very powerful substances and people might go through, you know, powerful experiences. And so what does integration mean? How can we integrate? Like if someone goes through something that’s so, um, either traumatic or you know, something from the past, how does integration look like?

Rebecca Hendrix:

Integration. I mean, basically what it is, is using the information you’ve learned and consciously incorporating it into your life to make changes to help you create your best life. Um, but integration in general is being really mindful of your use of it and then inquiry afterwards and doing anything that you can do to make your life better because of it. Um, you know, for people that just use these medicines recreationally, they may laugh about the fact that, you know, they saw a dinosaur, you know, in one night when they were out partying. Um, but if you’re trying to integrate an experience, you’re more being curious about that dinosaur or what that dinosaur means to you or you know, how that dinosaur, what it represents, you know, may help to heal something that is keeping you stuck in a place in your life. So it’s, it’s using, um, the experience and any information you got to be really curious and ask yourself questions and give yourself time and space and patience in order for any answers or help to come through you and to use certain tools that may assist you to do that.

Susan Scharf:

And again, I think it’s bringing mindfulness, mindful awareness to the process. Consciousness to more consciousness. Giving more space for consciousness, more consciousness to happen. Um, and of course that’s going to be still defined by the person going through it. So, uh, for example, if someone has, I mean, I’m just going to use Ayahuasca for an example because it’s one of the most powerful, um, mind expanders or consciousness expanders out there, um, in on our planet as a natural product. Um, but there are people that, um, have ceremonies with Ayahuasca that are legal when they go abroad, um, in certain areas. But some people, it could be months before they’re even able to begin the processing and maybe even a year or longer before there’s even some awareness of some of the subtleties from the experience. So every, every person’s experience is different with these medicines. And the processing of that experience can be very different as well. So it’s very much guided by the person going through the experience. And um, and like Rebecca was saying, taking the time, even finding the ability to, to allow for time and processing and openness to the process.

Rebecca Hendrix:

Yeah. It’s really just giving, you’re giving yourself the gift of time, um, and intention to get as much out of this type of experience that you, that you can and that doing the actual experience is just the beginning of it.

Susan Scharf:

Yes!

Rebecca Hendrix:

It’s the journey that you take afterwards. Um, and how you can make your life better, to be a better person, to be more loving, to heal whatever it is that you know, may be keeping you stuck.

Adrian:

Yeah. I wanted to ask, uh, perhaps what does dis-integration look like in your experience working with people? What might be some signs that, oh, someone might not be integrating? Well, what would that look like? Um, in a real case scenario,

Rebecca Hendrix:

A sign that somebody may not be integrating well, um, maybe not being able to function in their daily life. I’m finding it really hard to, you know, go back into their job, go back into their life, go back into their relationships, um, showing some signs of depression or increased anxiety..

Susan Scharf:

Isolation.

Rebecca Hendrix:

…isolation, you know, but to the extent that it really interferes with their peace and serenity. Um, and then going back to maybe old coping mechanisms, you know, which could be self medicating in one form or another. Um, isolating, shutting down, um, or throwing themselves into work or exercise or just something where they’re just, you know, instead of being with what might need to come up or getting support, they just kind of go into…

Susan Scharf:

Filling the time.

Rebecca Hendrix:

Autopilot to fill in the time, or become affected in such a way that a really can’t go about their day to day. Does that make sense?

Thal:

Yes. Yeah. It’s an interesting way to think about integration to think about dis-integration because also, um, we do have discussions around integration ourselves as psychotherapy students also interested in the work of psychedelics. And just, you know, I’m thinking about ego inflation or ego deflation. That can happen too with, um, with psychedelics and within the psychedelic community as well.

Susan Scharf:

Yeah, that’s a good point.

Adrian:

What’s coming to my mind is just that there’s such a huge potential for people to experience spiritual emergence right? Or you can even call a spiritual emergency depending on how rapid the changes are happening and that, that coincides with this potential for inflation possibly for somebody to come out of a peak experience thinking they’ve had more insight than they really had or more more healing than, than what actually happened. And so I think at one point you mentioned, you know, it could take a long time, it could be months perhaps for some folks after peak experience to begin to notice even that things are starting to shift. And, you know, um, I wanted to ask you about the role of practice, you know, because the thing, you know, most people when they seek these experiences are not doing it every day. And so they’re filling most of their life with just the regular, mundane activities. So what’s the role of having daily practices perhaps to come back to?

Susan Scharf:

Yeah, that’s good. Because that’s what we would talk about anyway. So that’s excellent way to segway into that. Um, yeah, I think even just when we talk about creating space and time and space in your life, it’s that, that’s the way to do that is to have that daily time for time with yourself, time for processing, whether that’s sitting and not actually processing, but just being quiet or time for meditation, um, or being out in nature. Um, that beingness with what is, is actually some of the ripest time for processing to happen on its own without efforting even. Um, that is the best time. Um, and we even have, we even created a little list here, we have our little notes in front of us of some of the things that people could do.

Rebecca Hendrix:

So we have a long list of integration tools that we find that we’ve compiled just from talking to a lot of people that have integrated successfully. Um, but things on it are things like working with the psychedelic friendly therapists and in terms of what you’re talking about a minute ago it, it’s really important I think to work with somebody before you go and then after you go, because before you go you can talk about what you want to get out of the experience? Why you’re thinking about doing it now? You know, for example, if you are somebody that’s working on um, a core issue of not feeling good enough and then you set that as your attention when you go into your experience and you come out of it thinking like, “wow, I’m done with that. I’m totally done with that. I know it now! I feel it in every cell of my body”. But maybe the therapist that’s working with you could help point out that. Like I know that got a lot of information on that in your experience, but maybe you still are struggling with it a little bit because you just told me about how you acted or felt when you didn’t get the promotion that you wanted. So, you know, having that continuation with somebody that knows you before and after, um, could be really supportive in terms of maybe helping to manage expectations or even point out possible realities about what has actually occurred versus what their real world experience is. Um, but we have found and encourage everybody to find the right modality that works for them to intentionally carve out time and space so that anything that can come up, you know, has a space to do so. You know, as Susan was saying earlier, doing a plant medicine or a psychedelic is not at all the only means to grow spiritually or to get information that can help you move along a path. It tends to be something that makes some of these things happen a good bit quicker, um, for some people. Um, but slowing down your life in general. For most people, especially people that we know, living in New York City is a really good idea because it is often when we’re running or when we’re meditating or when we’re communing with nature that we do get insights or information or downloads, so to speak, the same type of information that people report getting when having these experiences. So if you can have a spiritual practice that you’re practicing, preferably before you go, um, meditation, or breath work, um, journaling, um, you know, any of those, chi gong. Um, just being in nature, chanting any of those types of things, just yoga would be good because then you have that to get back to. Um, it’s almost like you’ve started it and then it’s like, ah, yes, those are my things that helped me to expand my mind. Or you know, when I do those things I tend to get information. So doing those things after a ceremony might also be that way that your, you know, inner counselor, your inner self can make a connection with you to give you that information that’s somehow been stored back away as you come back online to real life.

Susan Scharf:

And on that, just on that same note, even though we’re not, it’s not really what you brought up. You know, there’s the talk about, um, is it the medicine? Is it you? And I know we both feel quite strongly that all that information is in there. And in fact, some say these medicines help you remember yourself, get back in touch with yourself and, um, we do feel that it’s, it’s all you and it’s enhancing you. It’s helping you find those parts of yourself or remember those parts of yourself or reconnect to those parts of yourself.

Thal:

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That is important to mention because, you know, um, you know, some people might hear this, especially people who haven’t tried psychedelics and like, “Oh, really? Like, really psychedelics is going to solve everything?” But just knowing that it’s just a tool or an amplifier of your own consciousness is an important reminder. Yeah.

Rebecca Hendrix:

Yeah. I mean, they tend to be, you know, I was listening to somebody talk the other day and they were saying, they interviewed somebody, I think it was Michael Pollan said that he interviewed somebody that had been in the smoking cessation trial using psilocybin. And the woman said that she got this very kind of banal, you know, information, which is like, “wow, I should really stop smoking. It’s not good for you and I shouldn’t kill myself that way. And there’s a lot of other things to see in the world”. And it’s, those are the types of information that you get and you know, this kind of going into it, but coming out of an experience, you know, it in a really authoritative type of way. And so then it’s, you know, okay, now that I know this, not just thought it, I like have, feel it almost in a lot of the cells in my body. What tools would support me to anchor it in and live from that place.

Thal:

Yeah, yeah.

Adrian:

Yeah. What I also notice is that there’s a real hunger for community, you know, for people who have come out of these experiences and not knowing where to turn to because perhaps their friend group isn’t friendly, you know, to talk about this stuff or their family, um, can you maybe touch on that because I see that’s one of the goals you have for One Integration is to build community and to do sort of group processing.

Rebecca Hendrix:

Yeah. Yeah.

Susan Scharf:

She’s a good talker. She should talk [laughing].

Rebecca Hendrix:

That’s a great point because that is one of the reasons why we got together to do this because especially living in a city like New York, community is just becoming more and more important with everything that’s going on in the world. Um, with everything that’s going on politically, like people need a place to call home. The biggest gift you can ever give anybody is the gift of attention. Yeah. So being able to, um, provide a space for people to talk about these experiences, um, to feel safe. Um, to know that that’s something that they can get back to. I mean, if you just take psychotherapy alone, a lot of the reasons why it works is because somebody has a safe space, um, to be listened to. And most of the time people in life, when we’re speaking, we’re thinking about the next thing we’re going to say when the other person stops. And so, in so doing, we’re not necessarily listening and being there for somebody else, giving them that gift of attention and to do it in community, um, in a group is just, it just makes it for the people that are open and benefit from that just makes it so much more supportive and can help their process, exponentially.

Susan Scharf:

Yes, completely agree. And um, I think also one of those important aspects of integration and integration in groups is being able to hear other people that may be going through similar but different things. Or hearing someone express something about themselves that really resonates with you and you feel a kinship there or that you’re all souls searching for things and, and creating, I will say it, a loving and safe place and we, I think we really all do want that and need that in our society has not been constructed around those values. So we do need to find a way to create them for ourselves. And I think, again, safe is key. You know, you can still have a community of people like in these underground settings that are trying to do that and they’re not always creating the safest place either. So it’s again, being mindful of safety and um, yeah, having that community is key because to try to do this on one zone, um, that’s just, it’s really difficult.

Thal:

Yeah. Um, I mean, speaking of safety, um, another thing that we’d like to know about, and I, I don’t know if you guys do work around that, is the harm reduction model.

Susan Scharf:

Yeah.

Rebecca Hendrix:

Could you speak to that, please?

Rebecca Hendrix:

Yeah. Yeah. Love to speak to that. Other than integration, that’s one of the things that we love to talk about, that we think everybody could benefit by knowing about.

Susan Scharf:

I actually think that the, um, there, I mean, there’s a harm reduction model. Well, the Center for Optimal Living is one of the places near us that takes this approach, um, for the integrative harm reduction psychotherapy. And I think that can really be applied to everything in every aspect of your life. It’s not just putting things in boxes, it’s considering the whole picture. Um, so I mean, we’re calling it Mindful Engagement, as an easier way to kind of make it make sense when we’re talking about it because not everybody wants to hear about integrative harm reduction as a term, but you know, it’s starting, uh, I hope this makes sense. But, you know, when we start to talk with people about, um, you know, even why, if they’ve never had a psychedelic experience or a peak experience, you know, start from the beginning. What are your motivations? We have actually a whole process that we’ve thought about through, of understanding one thing is, um, understanding your motivation, um, choosing a facilitator, a guide, thinking about the environment you’re going to be in, the people that you’re going to be around you. Um, your own… You guys paused, you’re still good… Your own physical and mental health. Um, it’s thinking way in advance of, well, first of all, what do I, what do I want to get out of this? If I do get out of this, what I want to get out of this, what is that going to mean for my life? How will that feel? And if I don’t, what will that mean? Or how will that feel? Um, and that’s just even the beginning. Rebecca, do you want to continue? Yeah.

Rebecca Hendrix:

Um, so I think one thing that we like to tell people is that there’s a, there’s a lot of positive talk that is going on around using these substances. Um, and it can get, it can get really easy to just get wrapped up on that and say, oh, I want to do it too.

Thal:

Absolutely.

Rebecca Hendrix:

But one of our main messages is like, stop and pause and think and focus and ask yourself why it’s not. It’s not for everybody any more than going on psychiatric medication is for everybody. Um, but you know, you have to know yourself well enough to know that you’re doing it for the right reasons and to know and to do your homework. And in terms of, you know, what could happen, considering your set and your setting, your mindset is so important. What you’re feeling as you’re going into an experience and knowing, um, you know, for example, if you’ve recently gone through a longterm relationship breakup and you’re at that stage in the very beginning where you’re just flooded with emotions and you’re crying and you’re even having trouble, like knowing which emotions you’re feeling, it may not be the best time to do one of these experiences. If you’re somebody that had been grieving your relationship for quite a while. And, you know, were not being flooded with emotions and it actually could be a good time to get some information that would help you heal. And and move forward. But it’s the process of just slowing down, doing research. There’s a lot of amazing resources online. We have a great comprehensive list on our website at www.one-integration.com, to be able to just look at all the different scenarios, look at, you know, things to consider about medication interactions, which Dr. Scharf can speak to a little bit, but there’s just a lot to consider. And harm reduction is about just that, like it considering all these possible things to reduce harm as much as possible.

Thal:

Hmm. Um, speaking of medications, like if someone is on anxiety medication or you know, depression medication and they really want to try psychedelics, what kind of advice would you give them, Susan?

Susan Scharf:

Well, of course it depends on the um, medicine that they’re using in the medicine that they want to take. Um, many of the psychedelics are not compatible with antidepressants and can be quite dangerous if combined with, uh, with antidepressants. Ketamine can be combined with antidepressants. And although I mean, Ketamine is a different, it’s very different from Ayahuasca or MDMA. Um, it is something that is legal and it’s able to be monitored. You’re able to be safely monitored by a doctor. Um, and it does provide support and relief for many people for depression. And it’s being used for some other things. It’s been studied the most in depression, but, so that is a possibility. Um, but in terms of advice, uh, we always say, you know, find a psychedelic literate practitioner who can really help you tease through the details before you go off and consider something. Because of course it is not without risk to use any of these substances or medicines that they, although they’re, they are heavy, beautiful place for healing. For many people, they, they have risks and things can happen and have happened and for various different reasons. And, um, and those, all those aspects need to, I mean, you have to consider for as a person yourself, all the aspects of what you need to know know know. You have to have the knowledge and be very judicious and aware before you participate in anything like this.

Rebecca Hendrix:

And because ketamine is already legal, it’s prescribed by a doctor. And so you could potentially even meet with a doctor that prescribes ketamine in order to talk about how you may be effected if Ketamine’s for you or they could even be knowledgeable about the other medicines perhaps. Perhaps. I mean, it’s no guarantee, but you know, yeah.

Adrian:

Because you brought up ketamine, I wanted to ask because, so it’s legal and supervised under medical context. I noticed you guys offer integration for Ketamine therapy. So there’s a group coming up on your website. Can you talk about what that would look like, the structure of it, I’m just curious, you know, to get a glimpse of, um, other forms of integration groups that might be drug-specific or experience-specific.

Susan Scharf:

Yeah, we really wanted to make this kind of, uh, modeled after a group therapy experience. We want it to be a closed group that everyone has. Uh, we’ve spoken with each person individually, um, before they enter this group. And it’s not just for people that are already involved with ketamine therapy, but even people who are interested in want to learn more. And, um, as you say, psychedelic curious. Um, so that by having this closed group of people that are committed to a certain period of time and a certain number of sessions that in fact that has its own container and safety to it so that everybody there we know is committed and, um, as much as possible. Right, to be present and hold space for each other.

Rebecca Hendrix:

And, uh, in terms of structure, what we plan to do is to have like each session somebody, will be part of the time focused on them and so they can share what they want to about their experience. And again, everybody that experiences ketamine just like the other medications may have a different experience. Some people don’t really remember much of their experience at all. Some people, you know, have a lot of of memory. So, and a lot of people that are going to see psychiatrist or the anaesthesiologist or the ER doctors that have set up ketamine clinics might not also have a psychotherapist or you know, they may just have a psychiatrist. And so it’s a space for them to add that piece of it in as well. And so as for structure, it’ll, you know, it would be everybody sharing a little bit, but each time there’s one person in particular that we can go deeper with during the eight week process and then that person also can get input from the group. Um, reflective listening, um, you know, that kind of thing.

Susan Scharf:

Yeah. About what Rebecca is saying. We’ve, we’ve found that ketamine is definitely, it’s happening in a lot of places now and it’s being, it’s very helpful for a lot of people, but it’s not generally provided, uh, from those practitioners who provide ketamine with any or very little space for any kind of integration. Although that might be with someone’s private psychotherapist, uh, we’re not finding that’s being combined often, if at all with the ketamine therapy.

Rebecca Hendrix:

Yeah, we’ve even spoke to a doctor recently who said that he feels that a lot of people are looking at it as just another drug. You know, you go into the office, you said you get your IV, the doctor could leave the room often no music, no blind fold, I mean no mask. And so that can, you know, that can affect somebody’s experience.

Susan Scharf:

Even the depth of their experience. Yeah.

Rebecca Hendrix:

Yeah. So, so making sure that, you know, providing a space that if somebody is considering using this, that they have as much information as possible on how to make that experience a good one for them. And if they have had one but they’re not quite sure how else they could be anchoring it in or even what happened to them, providing space for them to do that.

Susan Scharf:

And giving more space for transformation to occur.

Thal:

Yes.

Susan Scharf:

Transformation rather than just a receptor drug phenomenon.

Thal:

Hmm. I mean just you mentioning that I would think like what a waste to go and take, you know, and sit in a place and go through the experience and not be able to, um, go deep. It would be a shame. So yeah. Thank you for raising awareness.

Rebecca Hendrix:

Exactly. Yeah. And especially like, cause I know you guys are in the field and studying to do more of this, but, um, maybe a lot and I think a lot of the people that, I don’t know, some people anyway that are going to do ketamine may never even had a therapy experience. So, and I don’t know, Dr. Scharf or Susan, tell me what you think, but I think of the psychedelics, it might be one that, um, some people could have more of a dissociative reaction to then a, um, maybe classic psychedelic experience. And so for, for, for those people that could be even more challenging, but even maybe even more necessary, I don’t know about more necessary, but definitely, um, a tool that they could use to try to, you know, just how does it feel to have taken it? What was that like for you? What does, what does it like if it isn’t, or what if it, like what is it like if it is working, right. Um, just to have a place to talk about the experience. Just as if somebody were taking, uh, getting a prescription for Zoloft. You unpack that with your therapist, you know, what are the side effects and how are you feeling and what are you do?

Susan Scharf:

You know, honestly, we know that that doesn’t happen a lot either. We want it to, but yeah.

Thal:

Ideally.

Susan Scharf:

Yeah. Right. And setting expectations and moving through those and being with them. Yeah. Being with those feelings. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that ideally with, even as Rebecca was saying, um, an SSRI, you might start a Zoloft medication and ideally you would process how you’re doing on that medication with your therapist or maybe even your psychiatrist, and how you’re feeling and what that’s like as much as we’d like to think that’s happening and would like that to be happening. That’s not necessarily happening everywhere either.

Thal:

I think I, yes, I think, um, I’ll see you guys brought up an important point that not a lot of people that experienced psychedelics have had a therapy session or don’t know how a therapy session looks like. And that’s important because sometimes that whole psychedelic experiences literally like five hours of therapy, it has that potential. So yeah.

Rebecca Hendrix:

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean the more that we are doing talks just to try to, you know, kind of psychedelic literacy talks just to help people to understand what these medications are. Yes. Um, the more that we’re realizing that a lot of people don’t really know much about them at all, a lot of times we have to even say what a shaman is or what a shaman does or you know, why, who would be a candidate for this type of medication and why would they ever do it and how to explain that it’s not, they’re not addictive medications. I mean, anything could be addictive, but they’re not normally after you have one of these experiences, you don’t wake up saying, where can I get more? I want to do it again because it’s just such a powerful experience that that doesn’t happen. But a lot of it, a lot of just some real, you know, amazingly smart, well educated, successful people just, it’s nothing is in their awareness about it.

Susan Scharf:

And also this, I don’t know how this will land, so you’re welcome to um, cut this out. But I was just thinking how, you know, integration, just like therapy, you know, therapy is practicing practicing how you think about things and practice and practice and integration also provides some of that practice and it’s a practice to, it’s a, it’s a practice to find ourselves again after whatever this growing up in our society or going through trauma or whatnot. But it’s a practice just as mindfulness is, it’s all kind of one in the same as is giving yourself time and space, giving yourself time to be with things, looking, being a, hopefully a nonjudgmental observer of your experience and being with that. And it’s all a place for practice.

Thal:

Yeah. I can see where the name One Integration comes from. Love it. Also another thing that I’m curious about is the relational aspect of psychedelics to like, even during the experience of Psychedelic, like, um, Rebecca, I think you’re an Imago, certified therapist and um, I’ve heard about couples therapy and ketamine. Like can you talk about that? Like what’s the potential?

Adrian:

And I just want to throw in there also, um, cause I know Susan you are, you’re involved with the MDMA trials, phase three, and some of those studies were conducted with couples. Yeah. I mean, so by design they had couples go through experiences. And this is something I actually last night I was, I was thinking about is, is realizing how potentially how useful that can be for integration that your partner, your perhaps your spouse, your life partner actually goes and does it with you. Yeah. So you don’t have to go home and actually feel…

Susan Scharf:

Explain it to them.

Adrian:

Be disconnected. Yeah.

Rebecca Hendrix:

Explain as if you could.

Thal:

Yes. Hello, stranger! [laughing]

Rebecca Hendrix:

Um, I mean, I would love, I mean, I can’t wait to get to the point where, um, we can do MDMA assisted psychotherapy for couples because so, oh, many of the couples that I work with, you know, either, you know, mostly one is more of a pursuer and very open with their feelings and wanting to talk and poke at the other person, they’re much more shut down and withdraws, you know, when there’s an argument. And so to have, um, a psychedelic assisted psychotherapy session, you know, and the more trauma a couple has either one or both of them, everything gets exponentially harder to the thousandth degree because they’re also feeling issues around emotional safety that often it has nothing to do with their partner, but it’s very hard for them to block and to not act out on, in ways that make them feel very disconnected to their partner. So, you know, having a situation where MDMA could be used to basically get everybody in their loving essence, which is my main goal anyway, but when I’m working with individuals or with couples is to get them into their heart-centered self and then to speak to your partner from that place and feeling the emotions from that place versus the hard side of, you know, most of the time people might be speaking in the more defensive hard side of a feeling like anger, but underneath that there’s hurt and to get them to speak from that place. Okay. It’s in that place, that a corrective emotional experience could happen that they then could start to do at home. And that’s where healing occurs when people are relating from that space versus just the surface. I’m so upset because you’re five minutes late to our movie and you don’t care about my time and all of that. So I would love that. I’m not familiar with the ketamine assisted couple’s therapy. Um, I’ve been more familiar in and or imagining what it would look like with the MDMA. Do you know anything? Have you heard anything about..

Susan Scharf:

I know of people that have tried things, but I actually haven’t heard much on that. I would love to hear about it. Um, yeah. What’s happening with that? I know about the couple’s study I think isn’t Anne [Wagner] even part of that? Um, yeah. Or was part of that, but I don’t know the actual findings, although, um

Thal:

I guess my question was more like, it’s not about the actual medicine, but the potential of psychedelics and..

Susan Scharf:

Oh, my intuition and yeah. I mean I have a dream of also providing this to perhaps adult families, um, for, you know, for healing, all of those things that happen. Oh, such a place for, I mean, just, just even with the PTSD study. I think what it allows that, that layer to be peeled off of having to react of the, of such, the, what comes up with all the, the PTSD symptoms and experiences and flashbacks and the gamut of things. It allows the system to almost like take that layer off off and not have to be constantly reacting and protecting so that the inner, the feelings, the knowledge, the other things are gone. Just like Rebecca is talking about instead of being that defensive mode, um, from the feeling hurt by being defensive and see me and you’re just being able to be in that place, feeling those, those hurt feelings or, I mean, there’s so many different things that can happen in those instances, but, um, I think of course the study in order to move things forward in our society had to be focused on a thing. So PTSD was chosen and I think it’s a very good choice, but the implications of MDMA use for so many things are very obvious to the both of us. Yeah. It sounds like to you guys as well, and we feel that it can be beneficial in so many different areas for healing. No doubt. Absolutely. With, with the couples, with families, with, um, yeah, so many places.

Rebecca Hendrix:

Mother, daughter…

Thal:

Yeah. I was just thinking mother, daughter, father son. Siblings, right. Yeah. There’ll be no wars in the world!

Rebecca Hendrix:

Can you imagine?

Adrian:

It’s amazing, reimagine “family trips” and take it to a whole other definition.

Susan Scharf:

Like a new Disney. Yeah. Okay. I didn’t mean to make it into.. it’s not a toy! But yeah, that’s kind of something in my heart that I think about is being able to do these for sure. Relational connective experiences.

Thal:

Yeah. Sort of coming from that heart space versus Ego space.

Adrian:

Just as we, as we bring things to a close, could you guys share resources that might be helpful for people who are listening? Either they are curious. Uh, pre-experience, we mentioned maybe peri-experience, they’re really close to doing something or, post, they’re still integrating. Any helpful resources you can point to?

Rebecca Hendrix:

Gosh, um..

Susan Scharf:

Well you think, well of course Michael Pollan’s book is very helpful. Um, he’s, he’s so good at what he does and so we definitely, that is a, a place for resources. Um, we refer to that a lot. Rebecca mentioned our website for resources. I mean there are, um…

Rebecca Hendrix:

There’s one called Erowid.

Susan Scharf:

I was going to say, Erowid.

Rebecca Hendrix:

Another amazing one, just chockfull of information.

Susan Scharf:

The one thing about Erowid is that you know, you, it’s a, it’s, it’s anything, right? So you have to know that you’re coming to it. Um, that one person’s experience again may not be yours and that this is information gathered from a number of people and is not, it can’t be taken one piece at a time. It’s kind of looking at the whole so you’re not getting… I guess they kind of do have a a lot of good resources in there, but it’s not been combined into one little nugget that you can just bite. It’s a larger if that makes sense.

Rebecca Hendrix:

Yeah Chacruna.net is an amazing one and started by Bia Labate. Psychedelics Today. Um, all the Center for Optimal Living. They have a psychedelicprogram.com. MAPS.org which is one of the nonprofits that is doing a lot of the MDMA research, you know, these nonprofits are the ones that are moving these drugs forward into getting them license because they’re not being funded by the FDA or you know, a lot of bigger companies aren’t necessarily interested in getting involved in something that you’re going to take once or twice or three times. Traditionally the bigger companies are invested in something you’re going to take every day for the rest of your life. So all of the reasons why these are moving forward is because of, um, private donations and then the, um, trials that are being done by MAPS by the Hefner Haffner Institute by um, or, um, yeah.

Adrian:

Awesome. Amazing. Thank you so much for your time ladies. That was a lot of fun.

Thal:

Thank you.

Susan Scharf:

Thank you so much. Such a pleasure.

Rebecca Hendrix:

Thank you for having us. It was great to meet both of you and we will look forward to continuing to follow you as well and see where you go on this journey as you become professionals in the industry.

Thal:

Awesome.

Susan Scharf:

We broadened our community.

Thal:

Ah, yeah.

Adrian:

Definitely.

#18: Life After Ayahuasca with Laura Lockhart

May 26, 2019 01:07:23

“Not why the addiction, but why the pain?“

-Dr. Gabor Maté

The work of healing our trauma can be daunting, non-linear and complex. It is a path that conjures in us courage and resilience. On this episode, we have the honour of sharing an inspiring story of healing, transformation and wisdom. From an early age, Laura Lockhart has been struggling with mental health problems that included trauma, depression, panic attacks and multiple suicide attempts. Laura was diagnosed with so many disorders that many psychiatrists refused to take her on as a patient. Just when she thought she had exhausted all of her options, Laura met Dr. Gabor Maté, a world renowned author and trauma specialist. Dr. Maté believes that the mind and body cannot be separated and that disease is often an expression of deeper unresolved emotional stress. In 2014, Laura attended an Ayahuasca retreat with Dr. Maté and for the first time in her life, she was able to begin working with the deeper issues beneath her suffering. We hope you enjoy her story!

Laura is currently an intern psychotherapist in Toronto. She can be contacted at lauradlockhart@gmail.com

Highlights:

Childhood Trauma and Suicidality
Ayahuasca Retreat with Dr. Gabor Maté
Working with Emotional Pain

Resources:

Beyond Addiction, The Yogic Path to Recovery
In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, by Dr. Gabor Maté
Nature of Things: The Jungle Prescription
Landmark Forum

Listen:

Poem Inspired by This Episode

Full Transcripts

Thal

Welcome Laura to the show.

Laura Lockhart

Thank you for having me.

Thal

Thank you. Um, Laura, you know, I just, I’m very interested in transformative experiences and what that means in our lives. Um, maybe we can start with that. Like what was a transformative experience in your life?

Laura Lockhart

Okay, so a transformative experience in my life. Um, that would have to be my journey with Ayahuasca. So I had been severely depressed and um, panic attacks and a whole gamut of diagnoses from different psychiatrists. Um, doctor after doctor, couldn’t get the help that I needed treatment program after treatment program and I remained this emotionally disregulated, anxious, depressed person that the medical community was telling me that there was no hope. My doctor was like, I don’t know who else to send you to anymore. Um, I’d had psychiatrists see to me that I was so multifaceted that people wouldn’t want to work with me. I’d been told that I was going to be on medication for the rest of my life. So to treat it like I would if I was diabetic and just accept that this is the way it was. Um, and then I found Dr. Gabor Maté through Beyond Addictions Kundalini Yoga program. And I attended his seminar and he spoke about Ayahusca. And though I’d heard about it before it had gone in one ear and right out the other didn’t resonate with me at all. And then when Gabor spoke about it, it really resonated with me. And there was a, uh, knowing that I had to do this and um, because there was about 300 people at the seminar, getting up to him was impossible. I would have had to stand there for well over an hour probably. So I chose to go home and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. And so I just opted to send him an email. Either he would get back to me or it would get lost in the millions of emails that he receives. And he responded to me later that night and just invited me to come back and talk to him. And so I did. And then about nine months later I was at his retreat. And, that was five years ago now. And I have not been on medication since. And although I still experience depression and anxiety, in no way, shape or form, is it anywhere near what it was.

Adrian

I’m curious what, what was in the email that you feel like really resonated with Gabor to respond to you?

Laura Lockhart

Um, it probably wasn’t the email. What had happened was during his seminar, it was his addiction seminar. So his Beyond his in the Realm of Hungry Ghosts seminar. And I wrote, I raised my hand and I told him, I said, I’m addicted to try and kill myself, which was true because that was the way that I had learned to cope with my pain started when I was about 14. Um, and there had been multiple attempts throughout my life and at the time I was meeting Gabor I was 38, so we were in my, in double digits by that point in time. Um, and he basically, he was very gentle with me and he asked if he could touch me and he’s like, what’s this feel like? And he just touched me very, very lightly. I was like, that’s hot. Like it feels, he said, yes, you’re a highly sensitive person and things impact you on a very deep level. And just that his invitation to me if I was willing to accept it, was to learn to suffer. So in other words, learn to feel my pain and learn to be with it as opposed to trying to escape it, which is what I was trying to do. Um, so I think it was that conversation that resonated with him. And then when I emailed him I said, I don’t know if you’re going to remember me, who wouldn’t remember that, but, okay. Um, and I just basically said that you had spoken about Ayahusca, but you spoke about it in regards to addiction. I didn’t consider myself somebody with a formal addiction because I don’t do drugs. Don’t do, I mean I’ll have a beer, but I’m not a drinker. Um, so I didn’t know if it was appropriate for me or if it was strictly for addiction. And, um, I just let them know that, you know, I had done so much in the medical system and I just didn’t feel I was getting anywhere. And he wrote back probably within hours and just said that he’d been thinking about me. So I think that that seed was planted in the seminar.

Adrian

Wow. Yeah. We’d love to go into the Ayahusca experience, but I think maybe if we can backtrack and hear about your life leading up to the, the invitation give you, if you can describe to us a little bit about the background perhaps growing up and, and what it was like as your pre-Ayahusca experience.

Laura Lockhart

Okay. So growing up I was the second child, um, six years apart, two very stressed out parents. My dad was a police officer, my mom was home with the children. Um, so dad’s working 12, 14, 16 hour days. Mom’s trying to raise a six year old and pregnant with me. There’s stress in the family. Um, and by the time I come around, I am what they described as an inconsolable infant. Um, what I’ve learned is, is that it was because nobody was attuned to me, so they couldn’t console me because they couldn’t attune to me because they were so stressed out. Um, it’s not about bad parenting.

Thal

They were not attuned to themselves.

Laura Lockhart

Right. Yeah. Um, so in that, I think what would also happen is because you have this screaming baby that’s heightening your stress and then you leave the baby. Like, I can’t do this anymore and you kind of leave the baby. Um, so there’s abandonment for me, lack of attunement, unintentional neglect, um, and some physical abuse. So I would get, I would, I was hit. Um, and then because my sister is six years older, she resents me. I’m causing all this problem in the family. So I’m the target of a great deal of resentment. Um, so growing up in that, I could see like the looking back, I can see the mis-attunement in my parents. By all means. I had, I had a good home. I was well clothed. I was well fed. Um, I was never left alone alone, but dad was down doing his artwork, mom was up reading the newspaper, I was alone. Um, and it, it goes throughout my whole family too. I see it in my whole family and I think it’s intergenerational. So, um, I have, I have memories of, um, parents flying into a rage and striking me. Um, and then as I get older, I’m unable, I’m less and less able to cope. Um, it’s, I see, I see relational issues starting at a very young age where probably, I can probably, the earliest I can trace it to is like six or eight where I can’t wait until it’s 10 o’clock in the morning, which is an appropriate time to make a phone call so that I can phone my friend because I’m so desperate for connection and so desperate to just be with somebody. And what does that cause on the other end? She’s needy. She’s, like clingy. Um, so people don’t like that and they disconnect from me. It’s too much for people. Um, so a lot of relational issues. Um, then get into middle school, high school and it’s just, uh, a hot house of loneliness, depression, anxiety. I wouldn’t go to school if I didn’t know.. If I didn’t have somebody to eat lunch with, um, because that loneliness was so deeply painful. Also experienced a lot of stomach upset, a lot of, um, intestinal issues. And my parents would take me to doctor after doctor after doctor. Nobody could find anything wrong. Okay. Well, finally one doctor says it’s stress. I think she’s stressed out. It’s the 70s who wants to believe that their infant is stressed out. We don’t have all this information yet. Um, so, um, by the time I get to high school, I’m so paralyzed with anxiety that the stomach upset is a daily thing. I’m missing 35 days in a semester. At one point in time they had asked me to leave school because what’s the point? Um, I didn’t end up leaving school. Fortunately for me, I became very physically ill at the school and was vomiting. So they saw that it was real. Um, like I wasn’t just some lackey, so they didn’t end up kicking me out of school. But I certainly didn’t get the education that I needed. Um, and nobody at the school was attuned to me. Like nobody stopped and said, why is this young woman who is clearly very bright and very articulate, not doing, not performing? Why is she missing so much school? Why is she isolated? Because I wasn’t a problem maker. I was that quiet child that never caused any trouble. I was very polite, very soft spoken, well spoken, so I wasn’t the “problem child”. So I get missed just okay, not performing up to her capabilities and passed onto the next one. Um, at that point in time, I didn’t know I had mental illness. I didn’t even know what mental illness was at the time. Um, there were times where my family physician had tried to put me on medication for depression, but telling me that it would help my stomach issues. Um, then at 16, so my first, my first suicide attempt was at 14, but I didn’t know how to do it. So I took like 10 Tylenol and it had no effect. Couldn’t figure out why it didn’t work, but it didn’t work. Um, and then at 16 was the, the, the Big One. And, um, my parents rushed me to the hospital, so small town, my dad drove me to the hospital. They had to call ahead to make sure the doctor was going to be there. They pumped my stomach, um, and admitted me overnight, but then released me the next day with no follow-up. Nothing.

Thal

Wow.

Laura Lockhart

Yeah.

Adrian

At this point I want to ask, because you mentioned your parents were, so dis-attuned to you. Was this the first time for them too, as a wake up call or were they sort of, you know, noticing that you weren’t well before that?

Laura Lockhart

Um, I think they were noticing I wasn’t well, but for them it was that I was just being difficult. So my not getting out of bed for them was just me being stubborn. Maybe asking for attention. Yeah, yeah. Me being a problem teenager. So the way they dealt with it was to try and force me out of bed, yell at me, get out of bed, um, force me to go to school. Yeah. It wasn’t, it wasn’t treated as maybe we should look at what this, what’s causing this.

Thal

And nothing at the school, like no counseling. No… Wow.

Laura Lockhart

Yeah. None.

Adrian

And so after that, the Big One, you were sent back home after one day… What was it like, like coming back, realizing it didn’t work? Or you know, what was going on in your mind at the time?

Laura Lockhart

Um, for me that it was life. Um, what was going on for me was a lot of shame because there were friends that had been there that night, so there was a lot of shame and embarrassment and, um, my dad talked to, uh, the one friend that was there for the whole thing and just ask that it be kept confidential. Um, but other than that, nobody spoke to me about it. My friends didn’t speak to me about it. I didn’t speak to my friends about it. We just went on like nothing had happened.

Thal

Yeah. It’s like the shame was experienced on multiple levels. It’s like you’re experiencing shame. Your parents are probably experiencing it, your friends as well. And it’s like nobody’s talking about it. It’s like, as you said, it’s like misattunement on so many levels.

Laura Lockhart

Yeah. Yeah. So, um, life just carried on as per usual. And um, by the end of my first year of college, that’s when I started to realize, realize that there was something wrong. Um, that’s when the panic attacks started. So that hyperventilating, the shaking, the crying, the, um, the, the cold sweats of full blown panic attack to the point where it would last for hours. And I remember going to my mother’s and she, she brought me into her bad to like stay the night with her and at some point in time she realized that maybe she should take me to the hospital because that’s how bad it was. Um, so she took me to emergency, they put you in a separate room. Um, and the doctor came in and he was a very kind man. Um, but the first thing he did was prescribe, um, a bunch of medication and then sent me to a psychiatric outpatient program the next day. Um, and when I went to that, um, I went alone and I saw a social worker and she did my intake and assessment and then, um, she brought in the psychiatrist and he didn’t ask me many questions at all. Um, but together they decided that I was bipolar and put me on lithium and a bunch of other medications. And the lithium made me crazy person. Like I was a walking Zombie, but I had tremors all the time and every time I went back and I was telling them that, you know, my symptoms are getting worse, they’re not getting better or they’d would just up the medication. I’ve since had multiple doctors say, there’s, you’re not bipolar. There is like, I don’t even, I don’t have any symptoms of mania.

Thal

Yeah I was about to say like, it doesn’t sound like there was any manic episodes during your childhood or during your struggles.

Laura Lockhart

No, but I’ve since seen the report that they sent my doctor and in it she writes that, um, that my mother reports a year long manic episode when I was 11. She didn’t speak to my mother. I was there alone. And then she also reported that I reported a year long manic episode, my first year of college. That isn’t what I said. What I said was that I felt good about myself my first year of college because I was getting straight A’s and it was the first time in my life.

Thal

And so that was manic?

Laura Lockhart

That was my mania.

Adrian

You’re too happy.

Laura Lockhart

I was too happy. Yeah. I enjoyed those days a little too much.

Thal

You loved yourself a little bit too much.

Laura Lockhart

Yeah. But I think she also factored in like a shopping addiction. And um, at the time I didn’t know that euphoria meant manic. I just thought it meant felt good. So when she asked me if I ever felt euphoric, I, I think that was the sticking point is that I said yes. You know, my first year of college I felt really good that I was getting straight A’s.

Thal

It’s in the wording.

Laura Lockhart

Yeah. So, um, I hadn’t studied psychology yet. I didn’t know the connection. Um, so they just kept upping the medication, upping the medication. And I’m becoming more and more zombified. Um, I’m a mess at work. Work is starting to notice. Um, people are pulling me aside and saying, Laura, like something’s changed. This is not, you look at your writing, it’s like, this isn’t you. Something’s wrong. That was a catalyst to another suicide attempt. But this time I had a bunch of psychiatric medications to use. And I was rushed to emergency, um, where they didn’t, they didn’t pump my stomach. Now they just let you drink the charcoal, which is gross but better. Um, so they admitted me overnight into a psychiatric unit, um, which I fought tooth and nail, didn’t want to be on a psychiatric unit. They take away everything. They take away all your personal goods. Um, you’re in with other people. It’s just not a comfortable place to be when you’re feeling terrible. So at one point in time, I think I stayed two nights. Um, cause yeah, cause it happened on a weekend. So I had to stay Saturday night and Sunday night because the psychiatrist wasn’t in until Monday. So on the second night, a nurse pulled me aside on the ward and she said to me, I’m not supposed to tell you this, but I don’t think you’re bipolar and I don’t think you should be on all this medication, especially the high dosages that you’re on, especially at your age. I was 21.

Thal

Wow. So how many years since the first diagnosis?

Laura Lockhart

That was, that was probably like… it probably wasn’t even a full year since that first diagnosis. So I was still on the lithium and everything. Um, I can’t even remember what she looks like, but thank goodness she came into my life. So she told mw you’re over 18, you can refuse your medication. I don’t recommend you refuse it all. I suggest you go with half tonight. And then we’ll wean you from there. So that’s what I did. I immediately found a new psychiatrist who did all the testing. No, I’m not bipolar. However, it was still just more drugs, more drugs, more drugs, more drugs. Yeah. So that continued for the next 20-23 years.

Thal

Wow. Okay.

Laura Lockhart

So yeah. Okay.

Adrian

Yeah. At this point, it sounds like there’s awareness and even like a desire to get better, like, because you were seeking help so that wasn’t there early in your life. Um, what did you try? So in those 20 years, I imagine you must have tried many things, tried different modalities or techniques. What were some of the stuff that you were trying?

Laura Lockhart

Um, there was always a strong urge to get better. I was always jealous. Like I remember being in grade two or grade three and finding out that one of the kids at school saw a therapist and I was immensely jealous, but I never had the nerve to ask my parents. Um, I never thought they’d, they’d let me for some reason. I don’t know why. Um, and so when I finally started seeking help, um, I went the route that I knew. So I went the medical route. I went to my doctor who sent me to a psychiatrist. Um, I tried, so I tried many different, um, I tried CBT, DBT. Um, I did two inpatient programs, one through a psychiatric out in Oshawa and then one out in Guelph. Um, both inpatient one was eight weeks and one was 12 weeks where I lived there the entire time. Several different outpatient programs through the hospital. I tried a suicide program through a day program through a hospital. Yeah. I was seeing a psychotherapist, but probably I hadn’t tapped into any of the psychotherapy modalities, um, just all that, all the psychiatric stuff. And it wasn’t working for me. Um, yeah. But I knew there was something in me that could not accept that this was going to be my life, that I was not meant to be more than what I was at the time, which was a mess.

Thal

And, um, and so then you met Gabor?

Laura Lockhart

Yeah.

Thal

Okay. And what changed?

Laura Lockhart

Um, so in order to go to the retreat, I had to come off all my medication, um, which he cautioned me about. He did say, now, based on your history of suicide, you really want to have a discussion with your doctor about it, um, because you can’t do Ayahuasca on these meds. So my doctor was very open to it and very supportive. Um, he didn’t necessarily believe in Ayahusca. Um, but he was more inclined to let me go to a warm country where it would be sunny where I’d be in therapy circles. Um, so he was very open and he gave me a weaning schedule and I came off my meds.

Thal

And that’s amazing because you’ve just been doing the sort of mainstream psychotherapy modalities and the medical, um, circles. And so, and then you went from that to right away Ayahuasca.

Laura Lockhart

Yeah, it was a true calling. Like it was like I, I had to get there. Financially I didn’t know how I was going to do it. Um, my mother didn’t like the idea. She didn’t, A psychedelic in a strange country with a doctor, didn’t sound reputable to her. My dad was actually very supportive and said, what have you got to lose? And it was actually, um, they’re divorced now, but the two of them came up with the funds to help me get there. Um, so that’s how I got there.

Adrian

Could you describe the program a little bit and when we’re perhaps even your experience flying in, what was that journey like? I mean, it must’ve been… that alone, probably we could dive into an entire episode, I imagine.

Thal

Yeah like, you know, your inner feelings.

Laura Lockhart

Um, so I was scared. I was thinking, what am I doing? Am I a crazy person. So I didn’t follow the weaning schedule that my doctor gave me. I decided that, oh, I’ve missed these medications before many a times, you know, when you couldn’t get to the drug store or whatever. Oh yeah, I’m good. I don’t need to wean. And I went cold Turkey. Never do that. So I ended up violently ill for many weeks. Um, I landed in the hospital twice for IV because like for IV fluids, because I was so violently ill, they had to put me on a drug that they give chemo patients for the nausea. And at the time I’m not putting two and two together because it’s been a couple of weeks since I’d come off the medication. So I’m not telling them, oh, I’ve come off all this medication. I’m just telling them I’m not on any medications, so they’re not able, because I’m not giving them the pieces. They’re not able to put the pieces together. Um, so having been violently ill for several weeks, the thought of going into the jungle and vomiting was not appealing. It’s like, no, I’ve done that. Thank you. Um, and I was going alone with people I didn’t know I’d never met them. Um, I had only really talked to Gabor twice, so I didn’t even know him at the time. Um, I knew I knew about his, um, his episode on the Nature of Things with Dr. David Suzuki, A Jungle Prescription. So I had watched that, but I didn’t even delve into the research on Ayahusca or get to know much about it because the more I learned, the more nervous I became. So in order to do it, I had to like not investigate it. I had to just go blind.

Adrian

A leap of faith.

Laura Lockhart

Leap of faith. Um, the journey, the journey was chaotic. Um, so I left Toronto. They had to de-ice the plane, uh, because of the, when the plane was late getting to my connection, um, I might’ve missed the, the connecting flight. I meeting people on the connecting flight that are going to the same retreat so that we can travel in the other country together. So at least I don’t have to travel in a strange country completely alone, but I might miss my connection. So we land at the exact same time that my connecting flight is supposed to be taking off. And the flight attendant tells me they’re not holding the plane. They’ve already started booking the hotel rooms. So now I’m starting to like, okay. So I connect with one of the women that I’m supposed to meet. She’s already on the other plane. She’s asking them, uh, she can’t get any information. I get off my plane feeling somewhat defeated and um, somebody turns to me and says they’re holding the flight. Run! So I book it.

Thal

Wow.

Laura Lockhart

And I’m not very fast. [Laughing]

Adrian

In slow motion.

Laura Lockhart

I slow motion book it. And I’m rounding the corner in the terminal only to learn that I have to get on one of those trains to take you to another terminal, which you know, just like this is not booking it in any way, shape or form. But I’m booking it. The second I land my butt in that seat, the plane takes off. Like there is no time. It’s like land take off. So I made my flight, my luggage did not.

Thal

Wow.

Laura Lockhart

So I land in this very tropical country in very humid weather in my jeans and sweatshirt because I’ve come from Toronto where it’s snowing and my luggage hasn’t made it. Then we have to take a water taxi to the actual location that we’re going in. Getting off the water taxi, I fall into the ocean in my jeans and sweatshirt with nothing to change into.

Adrian

Welcome! [laughing]

Laura Lockhart

Welcome. Welcome to your Ayahuasca journey. Um, my luggage doesn’t come till the next day. It comes the next day. Thank goodness I didn’t have to wait a couple of days. Um, but I arrive at this Ayahuasca retreat center, which is very remote. Um, I remember walking the dirt path with donkey poop and having to take your shoes off and like crossing a river. And I just start to cry. I’m like, what am I doing? What have I come for? I want to go home and I want to go home now. Thank goodness the people at the retreat are very kind and very loving souls and they find me raggedy clothing to wear so that I can get out of my wet jeans. And uh, the woman I actually bunk with was able to provide me some clothing so that I could, you know, be comfortable. Um, but at this point in time I’m thinking, what have I done? Like I’ve left my comfort, my home, my friends, my family, everything to come here to this strange place that’s… And it was the most life changing experience I’ve had.

Thal

Amazing. Yeah.

Adrian

For people who might not be familiar with the Ayahuasca tradition, the plant medicine, could you share a little bit of background?

Laura Lockhart

Yeah. It’s not for everyone, but for those that are feeling the call, it can be helpful. I also didn’t just do Ayahuasca. I returned from my Ayahuasca journey and went into intense therapy.

Thal

So maybe we can, yeah. Integration.

Laura Lockhart

So, um, so what was the question again?

Thal

Um, so for our listeners who don’t know, what Ayahuasca is, can you, can you say about it?

Laura Lockhart

So it’s a plant medicine that’s been used in the Amazon for centuries for healing. Traditionally, just the Shaman would drink it and then work on the, the people, but it’s transitioned somehow that now the people and the Shaman drink it. Um, I had ensured that I was doing it in a very safe space because there are unreputable Ayahuasca retreats out there. There are unsafe Ayahuasca retreats out there. I made sure that I was going to a very reputable and very safe place to do this. It is a psychedelic, um, so you are vulnerable. Um, I did it. The lineage that I worked in, um, my Shaman works in is the Shipibo lineage and ceremony was kept very traditional. Um, the chants aren’t just, so it’s a whole ceremony. It’s a six hour ceremony. It’s done with intention. Um, every chant that comes out of their mouth is done for a specific reason to help move the energy to help in the healing process. It’s not a random, these people are highly skilled and know what they’re doing. Um, what else can I say?

Thal

How many, like how many times did you drink it, if you want to go into that?

Laura Lockhart

So my first retreat, which was highly transformative for me was three ceremonies. However, the difference between my retreat and a lot of other retreats, um, is that I had processing with Dr. Gabor Maté. So there were 25 or 26 participants and every day for hours on end, we would sit in a circle and process. And when one person works, everybody in the circle works. Yeah. That’s how powerful the circle is. Um, so there were nights where it had gotten dark and we had to do processing by flashlight because that’s how long we had been sitting in the circle. So from right after breakfast until bedtime, we were in that circle with the exception of a few breaks here and there for lunch and dinner. Um, a very regimented diet. Um, you can only eat specific foods. Um, in respect for the plant. Um, the way that’s been described to me is that you wouldn’t pour salt and sugar on your garden. So in respect for the plant, you treat your body with that same respect. Um, ceremonies were six hours long done at night in the dark. Um, very powerful, very painful. Um, some very difficult moments. Some times I didn’t think I was going to make it through to the other side. Um, and so very grateful when I did and the difference even after just the three ceremonies. The small things, very small things, which are actually big things. Um, for example, my dentist had been trying to get me to floss for 40 some years. Well now I was 38 at the time, so probably like 30 some years. And I came back from my Ayahuasca journey and I just started flossing every day. Like why? I don’t know. But I did. Um, things like I started wearing makeup again, um, because I had gone into such a depression where all I did was just wear sweatpants and didn’t do my hair. I didn’t do anything. I just throw on my sweats and left and I started taking care of myself again. Um, there’s still some self care that needs to come into place. I’ve still got some difficulty in that area, but, uh, immensely different. Um, but like I said, I didn’t just do ceremony and come home and go back to life as it was. I did ceremony and came home and the first thing I did was the Landmark Forum, um, which was also very powerful. Um, there some complications with it and the sales pitch, but the material itself I found very powerful. Um, and then following that I went into a trauma treatment center. Um, so not a western medicine, a holistic trauma treatment center. Unfortunately no longer exists, um, where I was there for four or five sessions a week for quite some time, um, where I had different modalities. So I had psychotherapy, I had massage, I had acupuncture. Um, where it wasn’t just like, okay, let’s look at your thoughts. Let’s look at the energy in your body. Let’s look at where you’re carrying things. Let’s look at where you’re holding this trauma. Um, yeah.

Thal

And, and so you were open to trying all these things after Ayahuasca like, it’s, it truly is a transformation considering that prior to Ayahuasca, it was, you know, mainstream, nothing holistic. And now it’s like there’s this openness.

Laura Lockhart

Some of the difficulty prior to the Ayahuasca journey was that I didn’t have the funds to try the holistic modalities, which I was starting to feel drawn to. I didn’t quite know that I believed in it yet. Um, but now I’m a firm believer.

Thal

Wait, no, that’s a good point too. Right? That the funds for the, like the fact that it is expensive. Yeah. Like some people are turned away because of the not having funds.

Laura Lockhart

Yeah. So, um, I had looked into psychotherapists before, but I simply couldn’t afford it. Um, and I had, I also have fibromyalgia, so I had explored, um, just about everything I could at that point in time with regards to fibromyalgia. And what I was really getting was that I needed massage and I needed acupuncture and I needed things that I just couldn’t afford.

Thal

Which would make sense if it’s OHIP covered. But that’s a different conversation.

Laura Lockhart

Yeah, we could have a whole other episode.

Adrian

I wanted to go back, you mentioned the intensive integration circles, the processing with Gabor, for like entire day. What does that look like? What is processing? And because you had experience of psychotherapy, it’d be nice if you can maybe draw comparisons of the Ayahuasca experience to what traditional psychotherapy sessions are like, how are they different?

Laura Lockhart

Okay. Um, so, okay. But when you come out of an Ayahuasca ceremony, because it’s a psychedelic, there’s a lot of funky things that have happened in the night and it’s very easy to get lost in the, the visions and the experience and forget that there is very pertinent messages in those visions.

Thal

Um, especially when they’re negative and you know, they take you back to the specific experiences in childhood or whatever.

Laura Lockhart

Yeah. So, um, what that looked like was often Gabor interrupting us and stopping the story. Um, and bring us back to our bodies and bringing us back to the emotion. Okay. So what was the emotion when you were seeing that? What were you experiencing in that time? And essentially bringing us back to the emotion that that whole experience was inviting us to feel, which would have been repressed at the time of the trauma. So it may have looked like somebody re-experiencing their trauma in the ceremony or it may have looked like something completely different that just brought up the same emotional state. But there was a lot of, you know, anger and fear and shame that people were given a safe place to go into and feel the things that they’d repressed in their bodies.

Thal

So he, so he was engaged during the ceremony as well? Like, or this is after the ceremony?

Laura Lockhart

This is after the ceremony. Yeah. So, um, after ceremony we all go to bed. It’s like three, four in the morning. Um, and then we wake up the next day and that’s when we do the processing. So each person speaks. So all 25 or 26 of us speak to our experience the night before.

Thal

Just speaking about the ceremony itself because there are two different perspectives, like some people see it as, so this is the contents of my psyche that are amplified during the ceremony or some people see it as this is the medicine, you know, teaching us and um, giving me stuff that I need at that moment. And maybe it’s combination of both. Um, I don’t know, but it’s just something that, you know, I was thinking about.

Adrian

What do you think it is? In terms of your experience.

Laura Lockhart

In terms of my experience, I would say it’s both. So it would show me things that my psyche was doing. Um, so I would often get stuck in and it was excruciatingly painful and this is my life, but where I would have the same three sentences repeat over and over and over and over and over, over and it was intense and it was rapid and I couldn’t stop it. That’s my rumination. That’s my negative self talk, rumination. And it was on full blast. Like it was intense. There were times where I thought I was going crazy. Um, it also showed me my anger and unfortunately at the time I wasn’t ready and I repressed it within ceremony. So I had this vision that came up and it was like black silhouettes and then flashes of red, like a very violent red. And I had no idea what it meant. And then I spent the next six hours in shear excruciating sub- humanlike pain that I’d never experienced before. And I was calling for them to get me charcoal because I wanted this medicine out of my system. Um, and unfortunately that got miscommunicated in the ceremony and they thought I was asking for tobacco. Um, but it was Gabor the next day that said that I didn’t want to do the work. He said that was you wanting somebody else to do the work for you. Very much my experience in life.

Thal

Wow.

Laura Lockhart

Yeah. Um, yeah. So, and it wasn’t until my seventh ceremony that that lesson came back to me and I got, I very much got that I was resisting my anger and that’s why my pain came up and that the more that I resist feeling what I needed to feel, the more I was going to experience my pain.

Thal

And, and so then your pain or your anger was strong enough or your resisting mechanism was strong enough that it was still overriding the ma, the medicine basically.

Laura Lockhart

Uh-huh. Yeah. Oh yeah. It was a, and they kept telling me not to resist. Like that was, I mean, what else can you tell somebody? There is nothing else to tell somebody other than stop resisting and they’re telling me in a very gentle way. Um, but I was annoyed. I was like, what do you mean stop resisting? Like how do I stop resisting? I don’t know how to stop resisting. What am I? So I thought that I was resisting the pain, so I would lay there in ceremony and try and like breathe and like, okay, allow the pain, allow the pain, allow the pain. Well, no, I had to allow the anger and that’s what I wasn’t allowing. And I had no idea. I had no idea.

Thal

I mean, I definitely relate. They’re like, you know, when someone tells the old just like, go or stop resisting and like, what do you mean? Yeah. You’re like holding, holding on tight with your body.

Laura Lockhart

Yeah. Yeah. But at no point in time, in any of my previous therapy had anybody addressed the fact that I wasn’t allowing my anger. I had no idea it was new found information to me that, oh, you mean I have to feel this? Yeah.

Thal

And so then the processing with Gabor helped you deepen that.

Laura Lockhart

Yeah. So, yeah. So the next morning I had no idea it was anger even. When I told him about the vision and then I had no idea what it meant, he’s like, that sounds like anger. And I did the classic repression and denial and like dismissive. No, I wasn’t that angry as a child because, you know, we all had happy childhoods. Um, and he said he, he may have said, bullshit. I can’t remember exactly, but basically he said, that’s not true. Um, and he said, you can’t tell me. He said, how did you feel when your mother was hitting you? And that’s when it occurred to me that I had a murderous rage in me and that I was suppressing that. Not that you go out and murder people.

Thal

No, absolutely.

Laura Lockhart

But that you kept in touch with, with that so that it’s not stuck in you anymore. The feeling that you felt as a child and you were not able to express or..

Adrian

This first experience you had it sounded like a lot came up, a lot of insights, perhaps experiences. What did you do with all that new stuff? Coming back from that trip? You mentioned you started flossing, there were some behavior changes. What else could you add in terms of the experience re-entering back to your life?

Laura Lockhart

I really just had to learn to learn, to feel what I hadn’t been feeling and that took a lot, a lot of work. Um, it sounds so simple and really it is, but it’s so complicated. Um, I remember laying on the table with the act, my acupuncturist, and he was, and I could feel the mechanism happen where it’s like I was feeling it, feeling it, feeling, and then I was like, oh, I’ve just repressed it. I don’t have control over that, but I was doing it. And so bringing that awareness into my, into my body, not just into my logic but into my body was very important and that took a lot of work and a lot of safety. I needed a lot of safety and..

Thal

And trusting yourself.

Laura Lockhart

Trusting myself, trusting those around me that they might be giving me some difficulty information, but they’re doing it from a very loving place. Yeah.

Adrian

How did your relationship with Gabor continued to evolve after the first ceremony?

Laura Lockhart

Um, he really became a mentor. Um, he doesn’t like the word therapist. Um, but he became a, I don’t even have the words for it. Um, he just became like the catalyst for my seeing what I needed to see, which I wasn’t seeing. And there were times where he wouldn’t talk to me unless I had gone and felt what I was feeling. So he would say, you’ve asked for help, I will help you. But what I want you to do first is to identify the emotion, sit with it, allow it, have compassion for it, hold it and then we’ll talk. Which was frustrating but important because my way of not being with emotion was to reach out for help.

Thal

How did that look like? Did you have like a specific practice that you were doing or just…?

Laura Lockhart

Um, I didn’t know I was, I was winging it. Um, they don’t tell you how to feel your emotion. They just tell you that you have to feel it.

Adrian

Go look it up.

Laura Lockhart

Yeah, go, go look it up.

Thal

Cause I do that too. That’s why I’m asking you. I’m like, how do I feel this? I just Google it. [laughing]

Laura Lockhart

Yeah. Um, yeah, so I didn’t know. I was really just winging it and um, what it would look like for me was to just sit quietly and be with whatever was there. Um, and in actual fact, I got a lot of training in my therapy on how to do that, which was like identifying the sensation in the body, allowing the sensation to be there. Um, even inviting it to get bigger, a lot of meditation around, around my pain. So instead of trying to suppress my pain, trying to numb my pain, inviting it, welcoming it, and letting it be there and learning that it was, it was actually a lesson that I had been trying to numb for decades.

Adrian

You mentioned landmark forum as one of the things that seem to kind of immediately proceed the, your experience. Uh, what did you get out of that, that training?

Laura Lockhart

That I was creating a lot of my own suffering and I was doing it with the, the, the, the story in my head, the, the dialogue that was going on in my brain. Projecting a lot of my own stuff onto people. Um, making meaning out of things that didn’t mean anything. Um, and living my life as though what I believed about myself was true when in no shape or form was it?

Thal

Yeah. That it’s like static and rigid, that it does not change that, you know, oftentimes we see ourselves and our personalities as these things that I’m this or I’m that.

Laura Lockhart

Yeah. And that in order to, in order to excel in life at whatever it was that I wanted to do, that I had to step out of the fear and that I had to act anyways. And that really showed up in a lot of my, um, my therapy because like I said, I couldn’t afford this therapy. So I had to find ways to get it, and that meant showing up and just trusting the process that I was in the right space and that if it was meant to happen, it was going to happen. And if it didn’t, then it wasn’t the right, the right path for me. Um, it also showed up in school. I couldn’t afford school. I, I hadn’t worked in years. Um, and, but as long as I stayed, stuck in the story of I can’t afford this, I was never going to do it. So I stayed stuck in that for many years. Um, and then I really, that teaching really stuck with me that like, just make it happen. Don’t, you may not know how you’re going to make it happen, but just make it happen. And so that’s what I did is that I applied to the school with no idea of how I was going to pay for it. And I even got the first bill. Please deposit this amount of money by such and such a date and still had no idea how I was going to pay for it. But I, I took the risk and I threw my hat over the wall cause I had to go get my hat then. And just, um, if, if I wanted it bad enough, it was going to happen and that I would work extra hard to make it happen.

Thal

And so, okay. So when will come in and you, you did the first retreat and then landmark and then you went again and did another retreat?

Laura Lockhart

So, um, yeah, so the first retreat, landmark, um a Trauma Treatment Center in Toronto. Um, and then another retreat and then.

Thal

How was it different then from the first one? How is it different than going back to the plants again?

Laura Lockhart

Um it was, it was different in that I was different. Um, the resistance was still there, but it wasn’t as strong and it wasn’t as potent. Um, so I was able to allow a lot more than I had the first time. Um, which meant I got a lot more out of each ceremony because I was allowed, I allowed the medicine to work more than I had prior.

Thal

You let go.

Laura Lockhart

I let go in some, in some cases. Um, there were times where, um, I was in excruciating pain again, um, both emotional and physical. And I remember the helper on the retreat telling me, you know, ask the plant to teach you in a gentler way. And I did. And it amplified. Um, so that was the lesson that I needed at that point in time for whatever reason. Um, yeah. So after that second retreat, um, I went to another retreat that wasn’t a medicine retreat. Um, but it was all about like the ego constructs that we live in. And, um, and I spent a month at this retreat, I’m learning to let go of the beliefs and projections and things that I put on myself and other people and then back to Toronto for more therapy. And then, um, so school came about two and a half years on the journey.

Adrian

This is training to become a psychotherapist?

Laura Lockhart

Yes.

Adrian

What, what inspired you to make that decision to become a therapist for others?

Laura Lockhart

Um, I had always wanted to be, um, I remember probably when I first started at universities that was my goal. It was that I wanted to become a psychologist, a PhD psychologist, and have my own private practice. Um, thank goodness that didn’t happen because I wouldn’t have known how to help anybody at the time. Um, but because my mental health derailed, I was able to get my undergrad, but there was no way I was going to be able to do a Masters or a PhD. I mean, I couldn’t even function hardly at all. Um, so it was really a dying dream. Um, and then it wasn’t until I met, um, the psychologist at the Trauma Treatment Center, Jesse Hanson, and he was the one that suggested to me, well, there’s other routes. Um, how about have you looked into psychotherapy training because that might be more up your alley, um, where you have to do your own work in order to learn to become a psychotherapist. And that really appealed to me, but again, I was stuck with the, that construct if I can’t afford it. So couldn’t make it happen. And it wasn’t until about two years later that it finally clicked in that I’m not going to make it happen if I just stay stuck in this story of I can’t afford it. Yeah.

Adrian

So, so what, what happened the last minute you said you didn’t have the funds and the due date was coming?

Laura Lockhart

Yeah, I had an anonymous donor. Um, I still don’t know who, um, they approached Jesse at the, the Trauma Treatment Center and decided to donate the money, but they did that based on what they were seeing in me, in my growth.

Thal

That’s amazing. So yeah, it’s amazing. Then what happens when we drop the stories that are not serving us.

Laura Lockhart

Yeah. And when we’re on our right path.

Thal

Absolutely.

Laura Lockhart

Yeah.

Thal

Soul path.

Laura Lockhart

Yeah.

Adrian

Yeah. I mean it’s, it’s, it’s such an inspiring story. I imagine you hear that often when you, when you share with others, but at the same time, I’m careful not to paint overly, you know, a rosy picture because this is reality. I want to ask you, what are some challenges you still face today on the path of healing?

Laura Lockhart

Um, so I still, I still struggle with relational difficulties. Um, I still isolate a lot. Um, I still struggle with self care around food. I still have a tendency to binge eat and binge eat junk food. Um, getting my eating under control has been very difficult. Um, I still struggle with my body. Um, so I still have a weight issue. Um, I still have difficulty, um, getting into my body in movement, any kind of movement is still very, very difficult and very painful for me. So yeah, it really does. Like hearing me speak really sounds like I’ve turned the other page and everything’s glowing, but it’s not. Um, but it is immensely different than what it was. So I no longer trying to kill myself. I’m no longer, um, the thoughts still come up, but I no longer attach to them. Um, so now I know that I don’t want to do that. Um, before I used to think that I really truly wanted to die, but now I just, the thought will come up and I just think, and I don’t want to do that. Like I respect myself now.

Thal

So it’s this, you know, very deep level of self compassion that you’ve accessed through healing.

Laura Lockhart

Yeah. Yeah.

Thal

And it’s important then to understand that healing is not a rosy path, but it’s one worth taking. And you know, I’m also touched by your story and it’s, you know, it requires a lot of courage.

Laura Lockhart

Yeah. And healing isn’t linear. Like as long as I heal, I will still go back into those old patterns every once in a while and expand and contract and then, but my contractions get a lot smaller. And my expansion, it’s got a lot bigger and I mean I’m able to function.

Adrian

Laura what’s your vision for, for your, I mean one, one the one hand for the future of psychotherapy but, but also at a personal level for yourself?

Laura Lockhart

So my vision for, um, psychotherapy is that more of the people start to recognize these alternatives. Um, and psychedelics obviously in safe places with proper assistance, um, that we really open up to just new ways of doing old ways of doing things that are becoming new again.

Thal

Yeah. Thanks for mentioning that.

Laura Lockhart

Yeah. Um, yeah. And for myself, my vision is to, um, work with people that are me. That are very much like me. Um, yeah. People that have tried everything are determined to get better, won’t stop at anything to get better because that was me. I was going to knock on every door in the city.

Thal

And I think one of the really important things to understand is someone listening to this and struggling through the same issues feel like they’re the only ones going through that at that moment. And it’s just knowing that that’s not true is helpful too.

Laura Lockhart

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s not true. Um, there’s so many people out there like, yeah. So, yeah.

Adrian

Thank you so much, Laura. What an incredible story and thank you. I also want to mention for people that might be interested in reaching out, um, personally, uh, they can, they can contact us on the podcast and we can definitely direct them to you. Yeah. And there might be some inkling to reach out to Gabor as as well, but he doesn’t take client s and he’s not doing his retreats anymore, so, yeah.

Thal

Thank you. Thank you, Laura, for sharing your story with us today.

Laura Lockhart

Thank you.

#16: Depth Hypnosis with Isa Gucciardi

May 12, 2019 01:12:19

Relying on our human will can only take us so far. There comes a time in our life when we have to surrender the mind and allow the soul’s path to unfold naturally. On this episode, we explore the unseen powers of nature with Isa Gucciardi. Isa has spent over 30 years studying spiritual, therapeutic, and meditative techniques from around the world. She has worked with master teachers of Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism and Sufism, as well as expert Shamanic practitioners from the indigenous traditions of Hawaii, North and South America, Siberia, and Nepal. Isa is the creator of Depth Hypnosis, a therapeutic modality that integrates elements of Shamanic journeying and Buddhist meditation. She guides us through a live Depth Hypnosis journey during the interview *please don’t follow this part while driving, for obvious reasons*. She is the co-founder of the Foundation of the Sacred Stream, a school for consciousness studies in California. They offer courses like Depth Hypnosis, Applied Shamanism, Buddhist Psychology and Integrated Energy Medicine. Isa is the author of two books, Return to the Great Mother and Coming to Peace.

Highlights:

Experiencing Altered States at an Early Age
Live Depth Hypnosis: Guided Power Retrieval
Working with Plant Medicines in a Modern World

Resources:

Listen:

Poem Inspired by This Episode

Full Transcript:

Thal

Welcome to the show.

Isa Gucciardi

Thank you. So nice to be here.

Thal

Thank you. Yes.

Adrian

To start things off, we’d love to hear how your spiritual journey began. Um, any sort of particular orientation that you were brought up with that you might want to share with our listeners?

Isa Gucciardi

Well, I think my spiritual journey began as soon as I met trees. Um, I um, was very involved with nature when I was little. I lived in Hawaii and, um, you know, nature there is kind of in your face all the time, you know, you can’t kind of look away from it the way you can when you’re living in a place like New York City or something. And, um, you know, I spent a lot of time outside. I spent a lot of time, you know, with the birds, with the crabs, you know, with the wind. And you know, there was a real solace that I felt in nature. I felt, uh, you know, a real sense of connectedness that I didn’t feel necessarily with human beings. And I think that the question in my mind, arose very, very young, um, you know, how do we bring this peace that’s here in nature into the affairs of humans? You know, like from me, that was such a huge difference between the two worlds that I, you know, it was, it was really a question early on, how do we, how do we bridge these two worlds? So I think, um, you know, in terms of a spiritual tradition, it was definitely nature. That was my first set that offered my first set of teachings. I did, um, because I was in Hawaii and I had a lot of Japanese Hawaiian friends. Um, there were, um, of course the Buddhist temples that you find everywhere in Hawaii. And I used to, you know, try to arrive at my friend’s house just before I knew they were going to temple, so they would invite me. And I like the smell of the tatami mats and I, uh, you know, just love the smell of the incense and I didn’t really receive any particular teachings. They were, it was pure-land Buddhism, which is, you know, a pretty, um, you know, evangelical kind of Buddhism. But, you know, I didn’t know, I didn’t feel exposed necessarily to the teachings that were being offered there. It was more the Zeitgeist of the place, you know, the, the, just the, just the beauty and the, um, and the sort of energy around the Buddhist statues and the altar. The Altars were fascinating to me. And, um, and then the interesting, another interesting spiritual, but not, you know, again, not as powerful as nature was that I was sent to a missionary school. Um, and, and it was a Lutheran school. And the teachings there centered on Jesus as a healer. And, you know, this nice man who took care of the sheep, you know, it was like, you know, like you seem like such a nice guy, you know,I was, you know, and I love the idea that he could, he could heal people. Like that was like this amazing thing that he could put his hands.

Adrian

Sorry Isa we’re missing a little bit of the connection there. Um..

Isa Gucciardi

I don’t know, maybe I moved, are you there?

Adrian

Yes, yes. Yeah. Just the part about, um, uh, Jesus as a healer.

Isa Gucciardi

Yeah he could put his hands on someone and heal them. And it was, that was enthralling to me that, that, you know, that miracles could happen, you know, and that kind of gave me hope, you know, from my idea that, you know, maybe there was going to be some kind of a bridge between nature and human activity that, um, could help people. So those are sort of my early influences. Um, all of them kind of, you know, very independent and, you know, I didn’t have like, again, a lot of proselytization or anything like that. There was no kind of orthodoxy that I had to adhere to or anything like that.

Thal

And so from your earlier experiences with um, uh, nature and this sort of open state of spirituality, how did you first get interested in altered state and shamanic journeying?

Isa Gucciardi

Well, you know, the whole thing about altered states was, um, there was something that was started happening when I was quite young, where I would suddenly kind of be in another reality, you know, and I didn’t talk about this with anyone because I really didn’t know how to talk about it. And I thought that it was normal. Um, and you know, things would kind of slow down. The different light would come and then I would be in sort of connected through nature, you know, it would always happen in nature where there would just kind of be this expansion of awareness, um, this deepening of the peace that I already ….and the thing that I started realizing is that I seem to be more aware of things that other people weren’t aware of. You know, and it wasn’t really until, um, I encountered the theosophists, which I encountered pretty early on, probably around age 10 or 11, I found a book by, um, Blavatsky and, um, she was a channel and I started realizing, oh, maybe this is that, you know, and, and then there was this whole tradition of seances, um, that, that the theosophists were connected to and I thought, oh, that’s interesting. You know, like the, you know, so here’s this, here’s this, uh, sort of container that this thing is happening in. And then I remember, I, um, I had moved all around the world and, um, I came back to go to high school in New Jersey and the, there was really big thing back then. I don’t know if this still happens now, but everyone was always having slumber parties. And in the slumber parties they started doing seances. And I’m like, “Oh, I’m in!” You know, like, you know, it’s, uh, it’s so everyone would go around and, you know, they would, they would say, you know, like they would channel something or, you know, like, you know, and, and I just went ahead and did what I’d been doing in nature by myself for a long time. And there was, everybody started freaking out and I’m like, what’s going on? What’s wrong? You know? And, and I didn’t realize that everybody else was not really tuning into anything. And what I was tuning into was like super accurate for everyone. Like I remember this one girl asked me about her grandmother who had died and wanted to talk to her grandmother. And so I just kind of tuned in and found the grandmother and said all these things. And she started crying and freaking out. And I’m like, uh-oh, what did I do? You know? And, and then I realized, wait a minute, there’s something that other people can’t do, like other people can’t do this and there’s something that I am doing. And, um, and, uh, I, well, the good thing of that, I mean, she was freaked out. We had to calm her down, but the good thing was I became a hot ticket on the slumber party. Yeah.

Adrian

Do me do me! Do me next! [laughing]

Isa Gucciardi

I’d be like, yeah, you know, so, but, but it took me a while. I mean, that was kind of, you know, you know, not the most sacred set and setting for this sort of thing, you know, and, and, um, but my interest in altered states was, was always strong because of this early experience. And my interest in altered states increased over time as I really felt a further disconnection from the way in which people were expressing themselves and what they were saying and what they were actually thinking. You know, like, that was like really obvious to me, you know? And, and it was, um, you know, it was very disorienting. Like, it wasn’t comfortable. Like I didn’t, it made me feel really wary, you know, like that people could lie so much about something, you know, there’d be saying something that wasn’t true. And then thinking this other thing. And it made me feel, you know, like I really didn’t know what to do with all that and it was happening all around me and you know, I, and I didn’t really wound up spending, I mean I’m a very social person on one level, you know, like I like being with people. I think they’re interesting, I like helping people. Um, but I really had to spend a lot of time alone because there that disconnect was something that I was really trying to metabolize. And so I started really getting serious about exploring altered states of awareness. And I started meditating early on, you know, my Buddhist experience early on brought me back to zen and, um, you know, as a teenager and you know, exploring the altered state through meditation was, um, you know, of course very nourishing and yet there was always, um, this experience there I felt was a little stark, especially in Zen. Zen is quite stark. And I mean, I understand why they want to kind of have this kind of flat aesthetic so that you’re not distracted by external things. Like, I understand that the reason for it, but, um, it, you know, I, um, I had spent so much time with nature and with the beauty of nature and all of the changing forms internally of nature and I didn’t really buy into this idea that you shouldn’t have a lot of color and form and sound and light that could be part of the teaching. Right. And I, again, I understand the idea of having this stillness, this spaciousness, this depth of experience that does not contain a lot of other elements to it. And I certainly to this day, I have a practice of shamata, which is the essence of zen meditation where you’re really just focusing into the stillness and spaciousness. But I found it difficult to receive teachings actually. Like I could receive the teachings of the stillness, but if I had specific questions, I, you know, when I went into, when I was in nature as a child, I could ask the trees anything. I mean, they would give me all kinds of information and all kinds of teachings. And some of the most profound teachings I’ve ever received are from plants. And, um, so when I encountered shamanism, which I encountered actually because had moved around so much growing up, I first encountered it, um, it among the wechel ranch hands that took care of this ranch that I got sent to, um, when I wasn’t in school, uh, when we were living in Texas. So I spent a lot of time with those people and you know, they, they were really kind and they would show me, you know, what kinds of plants would you know, be needed for a specific, like if I had a cold or something, they would go out and pick plants with me and show me how to prepare them. And they taught me how to ride horses and they were just generally really kind. And I, and I started realizing these people are making the bridge between humans and nature. Like they were very integrated with nature and um, and the kindness and the sweetness of nature was within them. And that was a big deal for me. And, uh, you know, I tried to understand, you know, where’s this coming from? And they didn’t give me specific teachings in Shamanism, but there was always, you know, a wise, a wise man who would arrive and do ceremonies on the edge of the Mesa. And so I got very intrigued with that. You know, I was like, what is going on here? You know, and, um, and uh, and you know, there was, um, you know, just a real inoculation there. And later, I mean, just a few years later, I started studying pottery techniques. I was really fascinated with pit firing and, uh, the Pueblo Indians just north of that sort of in southern New Mexico, just north of northern Mexico where I’d been, um, that those people were very similar in some ways. Um, in terms of the potters were very connected to nature. You know, we would, we would dig the clay and, you know, we were making offerings to the land, thanking them for the clay. And I’ve got really drawn into shamanic practice like that. That was where it really started, you know, like through art, you know, through, through the exploration of the elements through pottery. I really got drawn into shamanic practice and started studying, you know, I had started studying a lot of different cultures already because I lived all over the world and I was really interested in the way that different cultures brought forward, different aspects of experience. And I really got interested in the way in which shamanic practice correlated with artistic practice in different cultures. And I started studying them more academically and actually got my first degree in cultural and linguistic anthropology and that, you know, cultural anthropology is really an academic study of shamanism. And, um, so I became exposed to the concept of the journey, the way of altering the state of awareness with song, with dance and with sound. And from me, the shamanic journey was just the most natural thing in the world. You know, like, I mean, I had already been doing it, you know, from, since I was two, you know. And I was really enthralled and I worked, um, you know, as a, you know, I mean, you know, I had been doing more and more work with my kind of quote unquote psychic capacities. I worked as a ground, for this pretty famous psychic and, you know, started doing a little bit of channeling on my own. And Michael Harner found out that I was a medium and asked me to do, I was a medium for him for many years and, um, wound up studying with him and he helped formalize some of the knowledge that I had received from working with all these different native Americans, um, in, you know, more of an artistic context but within shamanic practice and, um, that, you know, and then, but there was a way in which Michael was working with the journey, which I thought was, I thought it was great. You know, Michael is amazing person and we have to, we all owe him a great deal of respect because he was an anthropologist that wasn’t looking down on these little brown people that he was studying, which was the main thing that was happening in anthropology even, you know, up into the 70s. Yeah. So, um, uh, you know, I think, you know, the, you know, he was one of the first people who really, truly respected the people he was studying I think. And, or he said he did. You know, a lot of people didn’t say that. And um, so through, um, you know, so, so he, you know, he would teach the journey and you know, and it was interesting the way he was working with it. But in traditional shamanic practice, the journey is designed to establish a relationship with the unseen powers of nature. That’s what the journey is about. It’s a way of opening the worlds so that you can learn how to connect with the unseen forms of nature and then learn how to work with them in order to do things like divination or healing or a ceremony or conflict resolution. These are the kinds of uses that you might find with the journey in a traditional setting. But, um, you know, over time, you know, there was a lot that happened in between that experience and where I’m getting ready to go right now. But I, when I started teaching the journey, I really felt that we needed to work with the tools of the journey in a more modern way. Modern in that the modern psyche, you know, you’re talking about this crisis of meaning, you know, and I think it’s so wonderful that you’re focusing there. And I would love to talk about that forever, but, but one of the big issues with modern people is this crisis of meaning. And you know, you, you there, there is not within western culture, any kind of paradigm about spiritual evolution that is non dogmatic in nature. And, and you know, the real big problem with the spiritual education in the West is, you know, a big part of it is mediated by men who are hurting little boys and little girls. You know, like, so that’s a big issue. You know, there’s like the, the places where people might have gone for some kind of spiritual evolution, you know, really, you know, people could not trust anymore. And, um, and then you go to science with psychotherapy and there’s no discussion. You’re not allowed to talk about spirit. So people are coming with these issues, these crisis of meaning, the spiritual emergencies. And there’s nowhere to go. And, you know, I thought we should be working with the journey to help people understand how to deal with these issues, this sense of betrayal, the sense of loss, this sense of emptiness, this sense of abandonment that people feel, um, as a result of the families and the social structures breaking down that are supposed to support those kinds of inquiries to help people feel connected, whole, uh, useful, able to bring forward their gifts and have them received in a coherent way. You know, like that’s just not happening. So I had been studying Buddhism, you know, since a very young age and within Buddhist practice there is a very powerful form of the Vipassana Meditation that is sort of the next phase of meditation after Shamata where you have this focused inward, uh, attention into this stillness and the spaciousness. And once you attain that, you can then, if you choose, use that space of stillness and s and, and, and quiet to begin to use your mind in a form of inquiry into the nature of something. And this is Vipassana where you bring, this is one form of the Vipassana where you bring a particular issue in to that space that you’ve created and you allow your mind to open it through inquiry. And, um, I thought, let’s use the journey for that. Let’s ask questions that have to do with helping people come back to a sense of wholeness to a sense of meaning. And so we, I started developing this method of questioning that was more Buddhist in nature. Like what is, what is the nature of my creative source for instance, or what, what do I need to know about the relationship with my father in order to be able to form relationships with other men, right. In a whole way. Or, um, you know, what are the circumstances under which this fear that I have in the dark developed, right? So, so those kinds of questions are not the kinds of questions that are typically asked in a traditional shamanic practice, but they are the kinds of questions that might be addressed in a more kind of a broad minded Buddhist practice. So I combined the two. And so when we were teaching the shamanic journey within applied shamanism, it is designed toward personal evolution rather than toward only understanding the forces of nature and asking them to participate in the affairs of humans in a way that is beneficial, which of course I still teach that as well. That’s a big part of the applied shamanism program. But this use of the journey within applied shamanism is unique and I think it’s uniquely suited to the crisis that what you’re calling the crisis of meaning that we’re experiencing in the modern time. So that’s a really long answer to your question, how I become involved with the Shamanic journey. But there you go.

Thal

That was actually amazing. You just answered a few questions that we actually had lined up too in a linear fashion. So it’s just like, thank you. That was an amazing answer.

Isa Gucciardi

Oh, good. I’m glad. It’s helpful.

Adrian

Yeah. And just to see the combination of the, your exposure to Shush Shamanic culture and your Buddhist practice and that merging, you know, which is what I sense was the genesis of your depth hypnosis methodology. Um, could you share a little bit about what depth hypnosis is and perhaps what it’s not and what are some misconceptions people have when they first encounter that?

Isa Gucciardi

Well, the first misconception that people have is that it is not death hypnosis. People often think it’s D-E-A-T-H. It’s D-E-P-T-H hypnosis. And depth hypnosis is not stage hypnosis. Um, it’s not, one of the big issues with hypnosis is actually justified in that, um, people use hypnosis and a kind of performance kind of way to subjugate the will of another person as entertainment. And I mean, this could not be further from the purposes of depth hypnosis. And you find this even in clinical practice, you find hypnotists are drawn to hypnosis because they like the idea that they’re going to have power over someone’s capacity to move in and out of the different states of awareness. And I see this still, I see it frequently. Um, like at conferences, people get off on that idea and um, you know, if I’ve only had a couple of people come through my classes, I guess they didn’t read the fine print well enough thought they could do that kind of thing. And they lasted about an hour in class. Um, so, um, the, uh, the, the point of depth hypnosis is quite different in terms of alignment, which is that the depth hypnosis practitioner aligns with the will of the higher self of the person. They are serving, right? And so there’s this idea of service and it’s this idea of alignment with the highest good of the person that you’re working with. So you really are entering into a very sacred space when you’re entering into the inner world of another person. And with depth hypnosis, we really recognize and honor the privilege that we’ve been granted and work very hard to leave no traces. Uh, you know, I always say you never want to leave any footprints behind when you’ve been working with someone in an altered state. You want whatever their experiences to be felt by them to be arising from them and you want them to be engaged in such a way that they are empowered in the process and not passive. So that’s a big difference with depth hypnosis and other forms of hypnotherapy is that the clients are often passive and in depth hypnosis we seek to involve everyone in their process so that they are more empowered so that they are not depending on someone else ultimately to provide them with meaning about their experience, that they are discovering the meaning of their experience themselves. So this is, this is a very, very basic part of depth hypnosis in terms of orientation and how it is different from other forms of hypnosis. And other forms of hypnotherapy. Um, and then of course within depth hypnosis, there’s a hundred other things that make it different from other forms of hypnosis and hypnotherapy, which is Shamanism in Buddhism. Right? And also the integration of energy medicine, which is at the heart of both shamanic and Buddhist practice. And um, you know, it all takes its seat within the Western clinical practice in transpersonal psychology rather than in clinical psychology because in clinical psychology there really is not this idea that the participation of spirit is part of the therapeutic process. And of course in transpersonal psychology there is definitely the invitation toward the transcendent to participate in the therapeutic experience. And so depth hypnosis takes its place within that seat of western therapeutic practice because we are definitely always working with the transcendent and helping the person try to understand what their relationship is to this deeper place within them, where their deeper experience is held and that deeper experience is going to have the solution to whatever the symptom they are trying to address with the therapeutic process and working with depth hypnosis, helping a person move into an altered state of awareness generally through suggestions for relaxation helps them access that transcendent aspect of themselves that in Buddhism is called Buddha-nature. This aspect of the self that is compassionate kind wise or in Shamanic practice would be referred to as core power, the part of them that is connected to their creative sources in a powerful way. And um, and in through the connection with that part of the self, then the issues that lie in the symptoms that are creating problems such as fear of flying or binge eating or too much alcohol consumption or anxiety or kind of obsessive kinds of mental processes or chronic fatigue or any of the different layers or layers of experience that the symptoms might be manifesting on. They are assisted and brought to resolution by helping the person move into this altered state of awareness where they encounter this transcendent part of themselves. And then they also encounter the roots and sources of the symptoms that they have come into the therapeutic process to heal.

Thal

Um, so speaking of the experiential and practical side of things, um, I don’t know, are you open to maybe take us and our listeners through a live journey of depth hypnosis or a sample? A taste?

Isa Gucciardi

Sure.

Thal

Okay. Cool.

Isa Gucciardi

Do you want to do that now?

Adrian

Yeah that would be great!

Isa Gucciardi

Let’s, um, let’s do that process that I talked about where you’re connecting with your Buddha nature or in depth hypnosis, we call it the part of yourself that has only your highest good as its sole intent. And the reason we use that phraseology is because it’s neutral, right? It’s like if somebody hears Buddha nature, they’re like, oh no, somebody is trying to proselytize me.

Thal

Yes, yes.

Isa Gucciardi

Or if they hear helping spirit, which is the words that are often used in Shamanic practice and connecting with Shamanic teachers through the journey, then they hear the word spirit and they get really allergic. Really fast.

Thal

Spooked out.

Isa Gucciardi

Right. Exactly. It’s good. Right. So we use this, this phrase, the part of yourself that has only your highest good as its sole intent because that allows anyone to access the transcendent within them in a way that has meaning for them, right? So that’s what we’ll be doing right now. So just allowing yourself to get settled, noticing all the places where the surface do you meets different parts of your body. And as you do, just noticing where your breath is, noticing as you breathe in, where your breath goes. And noticing as you breathe out where your breath goes. And just becoming aware of the way in which your breath is like a bridge between your outer world and your inner world. And just allowing yourself with each breath to draw a bit closer into your inner world, into that place where everything that you’ve ever known or felt or sensed or dreamed or imagined is recorded. And as you come into this place, just knowing that we’re here today to connect with a part of yourself that has only your highest good as its sole intent and which you may experience through any of your senses, or you may sense, for instance, hearing this part of yourself, you may see this part of yourself. You may feel this part of yourself and just knowing that it may take any form that has meaning to you, such as an animal or a plant, or a person, or a light or a sound, or a mythic or angelic being. And just allowing yourself for now, however, to just return to your breath and as you do, just allowing yourself to sense or feel or imagine that as you breathe in that you can draw a sense of relaxation that you may have noticed is a rising all around you and just allowing yourself on your next breath to bring that sense of relaxation up into your head and face. Just letting the muscles, your eyes and jaw let go of any tension they might be carrying and feeling that same relaxation flowing down into your neck and throat, down into your shoulders, your arms and hands. And on your next breath I’m wondering if you can sense or feel or imagine that same relaxation filling your lungs and just noticing how your heart feels is that relaxation flows throughout your chest, down into your belly, bathing all of your organs of digestion and elimination and reproduction in a soothing bath of relaxing energy and just feeling that same relaxation flowing down through your hips, down to your legs, all the way down to your feet. And on your next breath, I’m wondering if you can sense or feel or imagine that that relaxation has created a star or Sun at the base of your skull. And I’m wondering if you can sense or feel or imagine that star or Sun radiating throughout your mind, harmonizing your brainwaves and just noticing that is your mind. Relax. Your body feels even more relaxed and that as your body relaxes, your mind feels even more relaxed. And just noticing the connection between your mind and your body as you allow that relaxation to flow down your spine, vertebra by vertebra, relaxing all the nerves and muscles in your back, all the way down to the base of your skull, down through your bottom and down through the back of your legs, all the way to your feet again. And I’m wondering if you might notice now that you’re so filled with this relaxation that it could actually be coming out of the pores of your skin and surrounding you in a cocoon or a cloud of soothing, relaxing energy and as you feel supported in this way. I’m wondering if you can sense or feel or imagine there’s a staircase here before you and that staircase leads to the place within you where you’ll encounter this part of yourself that has only your highest good as its sole intent and which you may experience through any of your senses in any form that has meaning to you. So just allowing yourself now as I count from 10 to one to travel along the staircase knowing that when we reach one you’ll be in the place where you’ll be very close or in the presence of this part of yourself that has only your highest good as its sole intent. So 10 just finding your feet on the stair, noticing if the stairs made of wood or stone or some other material. Nine feeling your hand on something like a guard rail and a knowing that you have complete control over this process and that you can come back to the surface at any time if you’re uncomfortable for any reason, but seven knowing that you can actually go quite deeply because you do want to understand this part of yourself that has only your highest good as its sole intent better. Six, just allowing all of your inner senses to open quite widely. Now five, your inner sense of taste, touch and smell, your inner sense of sight and hearing that especially that sixth sense of just knowing, allowing them all to open quite widely for as you focus now on a place perhaps in nature where you have felt comfortable and at peace. Three, knowing that you can trust the impressions that you’re receiving as you focus even more intently on this place, perhaps in nature where you felt comfortable and at peace. Two, knowing that you can allow your conscious mind with any doubt or fear to simply rest as you focus even more intently on this place. Perhaps in nature where you have felt comfortable and at and one, just allowing yourself now as you get to the end of the stair to step out into this place, this place perhaps in nature where you have felt comfortable and at peace and as you do just taking a deep breath and noticing the particular odour of this place and allowing that smell to bring you into even deeper contact with it. Noticing the quality of the light, listening for any sounds and just noticing if the wind is still on your cheek or if there’s a breeze and just letting yourself rest here. Noticing perhaps for the first time in a long time how much this place is a part of you and how much you’re apart of this place. Just finding yourself in that connection, resting, noticing all of the different qualities of this place. Just noticing with all of your senses, if there’s any particular aspect of this place that’s drawing your attention more strongly than others and just allowing your attention to be drawn to the place that’s drawing your attention most strongly and allowing all of your senses to move to that place. You may be being drawn to a plant or an animal or a light or a sound, or perhaps even a mythic or angelic being, or perhaps even a person or some other form that has meaning for you here and as your attention is drawn to that place, focus all of your senses there and ask this question, would you be willing to guide me and protect me? Would you be willing to guide me and protect me and listening knowing that you may receive that answer with any of your senses. You may hear the answer as a verbal message. You may experience the answer is a telepathic message. There may be a knowing or there may be some action on the part of this potential guide for you or there may be a change in the environment that would indicate the answer to this question. Would you be willing to guide me and protect me and as you receive this answer, if the answer is yes, you can simply become aware of the different qualities of this guide, the nature of its power, its personality, and if the answer is no, don’t worry. There’ll be another opportunity to connect. Just allowing yourself now to rest in this answer and just bringing this answer, this connection back with you. Now as you come back gently to the surface, I’ll count from one to 10 and as I do one, just allowing yourself to return along the same path that you came. Two, knowing that you can return here at any time. Three, and feeling the connection with this part of yourself that has only your highest good as its sole intent, growing stronger. Four, and deep. Five, with each number. Six, as you come back closer to the surface. Seven, feeling this surface under you. Again, Eight. And when you’re ready, just stretching a bit. Nine. And when you’re ready, just opening your eyes and 10 you’ll be back in the room remembering everything.

Thal

Wow. That was amazing. Thank you.

Isa Gucciardi

You’re welcome. And maybe just take a minute to review your experience so you can kind of integrated a bit and you know, your listeners may want to go ahead and write down their experience while it’s fresh.

Thal

Mm hmm. The thing that stands out for me is, um, for a moment I felt like different pieces of my life sort of came together and I, you know, I mean, I don’t want to interpret or anything, but just, just wanted to share that.

Isa Gucciardi

That’s wonderful. You might want to really explore that further. Yes, yes. And what the meaning of that might be. Um, because you know, one of the things that, um, you know, this is actually a Shamanic process. It’s an adaptation of the Shamanic journey. And you know, this is typical of depth hypnosis. What it does is it brings Shamanic and Buddhist and energy medicine and hypno-therapeutic processes into an everyday conversation so that people can access, um, deeper parts of themselves in order to heal more deeply. And what you just described, different parts of yourself coming together or different parts of your experience coming together. This, from a Shamanic perspective would be, an expected effect of a power retrieval and the shamanic journey is a power retrieval in that it is helping the person connect with power within themselves in order to be able to feel more whole. So you kind of just had that experience. Yeah.

Adrian

Yeah. Thank you. That was such a beautiful journey. I want to ask, because you mentioned, you know, even for listeners if they want to pause and take notes, what would you advise to do after an experience like that? Or maybe what would you advise against? Um, can you do it wrong? What, what, when, you know, in terms of beginner mistakes that when one starts to journey this way.

Isa Gucciardi

Um, well if you follow the, the, the process that I prescribed is this very hard to like do something wrong. Um, but one of the things that can happen, um, is that sometimes when people start to go inward for the first time, they may encounter issues that they had kind of been keeping it at arm’s length. And so sometimes people will feel a little anxious or something like that. And I always recommend when people start feeling that at the beginning of the process. If that happens for you, then you would, you know, one thing that I would say is let that anxiousness just rest for a little while because we are going to connect with a form of power that’s going to help you with that anxiousness. If you can just let it rest, you’re going to get some help with it. So if that happened for someone, you know, there’s a little bit of advice. And then in terms of, um, what would be the next, the next steps, you know, you probably need a little bit of guidance but you can connect back with that teacher. You can follow the same path that you took and you can ask a question. And, um, this is one of the things that we focus on extensively in the shamanic journey class is how to form questions and how to interpret answers. And, but for now, just try to stay with a one part question and that doesn’t begin with why. And, um, just go ahead and follow that same path back to this teacher. Ask Your question and then again, allow for the emerging of the answer in a variety of ways. Again, there may be a telepathic or verbal message. There may be a visceral experience. There may be an action on the part of the teacher and you may have to interpret it. Um, and I, you know, there is on the, on the website there’s going to be a class coming up specifically for distance learners. Um, we have time zone experiences that are suited for everyone around the world now and, um, that’ll be coming up in August, but we’ll also be teaching the Shamanic journey on Pacific time. Um, so if that’s not too onerous for someone living life, for instance in Toronto, that’s not too hard. Um, you can tune in distance learning to the live class and you can get more instruction and guidance on posing questions and interpreting answers. And also I’ll be teaching a class on dreams coming up very shortly, um, online and in that class I spend a lot of time helping people understand how to interpret their dreams, which is a very similar process to interpreting the experience in the shamanic journey. So that would be a place where people could also get some insight on interpretation. So, um, you know, I think that the other thing that I think is really important, um, is to really like as you’re falling asleep at night or waking up in the morning to just connect with this part of yourself just as a, as a way of deepening the bond with it and becoming aware of it in your daily life. Um, a lot of times what I like to do after doing a power retrieval for someone is to give them a little present, like a stone or you know, um, you know, a leaf or some other form of nature that they can kind of just keep in their pocket. Um, and then when they touch it in their pocket, they remember the connection and that helps integrate this sense of guidance and protection into your everyday life and it changes the way you are in the world, you know. Um, and one last thing that I would say not to do is I wouldn’t like when you’re working in this way, um, it’s important to know who you’re talking to before you talk about your experience. You know, in Buddhism there’s this concept, you know, having the ears to hear and eyes to see, you know, I wouldn’t like, you know, talk about this deep connection that you have with your guide, you know, to a bunch of drunk people, you know, I get why they probably wouldn’t be able to appreciate it and it might drain the power, you know? So here’s a thought.

Thal

Yeah. And along those lines too, like, um, I was thinking, um, you know, you had mentioned that sometimes these types of journeying brings up, um, uh, things that people have kept in the shadows, sort of. So maybe to have self compassion and not to have lots of expectations when doing these steps of journeying and maybe if someone needs to seek a therapist or a counsellor or even a friend to process that, that’s important too.

Isa Gucciardi

Great idea. Excellent idea. And you know, there’s a lot of depth hypnosis practitioners that work on the phone and you can find them at a DepthHypnosisPractitioners.org If you find like you want more help, you know, there’s, and there’s also applied shamonic practitioners that are available as well at AppliedShamanism.org.

Thal

Amazing. Okay. Um, there’s this question that have been sitting with really even before the interview. Um, I know you touched upon it a little bit earlier when you mentioned, um, the connection between Buddhism, Shamanism, anthropology, modernity, academia. Um, the question of what shamanism means has been coming up a lot lately, I’ve noticed. There’s a lot of discussion on the Internet, um, you know, uh, issues of cultural appropriation and what not. So, um, uh, what are your thoughts around that issue?

Isa Gucciardi

Um, well, the definition of Shamanism, the basic thing about Shamanic practice is that it is a method for understanding the wisdom of the earth and for bringing the unseen powers that are contained in the forms of nature into the affairs of humans. That is the essential definition of Shamanism. The word ‘Shaman’ is actually a Mongolian language the Tongas word, which means “he or she who knows”. And of course what the person knows is how the world of the unseen affect the world of the scene and how the world of the seen affects the world of the unseen. And so that the Shaman is always moving back and forth across what most people experience as a kind of divide. But, um, from the Shaman, those kinds of divides the, the veil between the seen and the unseen is very thin and, um, you know, the veil between life and death is very thin. You know, these. Um, so there’s this, you’re working constantly with the forces of nature to deepen your own understanding of these forces and to understand how to work with them again, to serve the community and things like divination or conflict-mediation or healing. And, um, this is what I’ve just described is true of all Shamanic practices across the world.

Thal

Yes.

Isa Gucciardi

And, um, you might find different kinds of cultural settings because of the climate. Or the nature of the land where the practice is, is done. Um, uh, or, um, you know, there may be certain types of rituals or ceremonies that are different in one place than another, but the actual underlying energetic experience is similar across the globe. And this is because the earth is the teacher and all Shamanic practitioners are learning from the earth in their own particular setting and their own particular way. But the teachings are very similar that emerge in different parts of the earth. And yet there are some areas of the earth that provide specific types of teachings. Like, you know, there may be some areas on the earth that where there’s a lot of teaching about the intelligence of plants and there may be another place on the earth where the earth is teaching about life and death. You know there’s many different courses that the earth offers in terms of..

Thal

Contextual courses.

Isa Gucciardi

Right, right, exactly. So, and you know, in terms of cultural appropriation, you know, the earth belongs to all beings and all beings have not only the right, but the responsibility to learn to listen to the earth and to bring the earth into their hearts and to allow the earth to bring her into the her heart in order to learn. And, you know, there’s different, um, again, cultural settings that you could access like a cultural ceremony, like a Sundance where you can access the teachings of the earth through that ceremony that is particular to that particular cultural setting. Um, but, you know, you would need to be invited in order to use that access point, you would need to have the permission of the peoples who have set up that access point.

Thal

An initiation of sorts?

Isa Gucciardi

Well, you know, to be brought through an initiation or just, you know, have permission to be nearby, right? And I think that if, you know, I think that, um, you know, it’s important to respect different access points that are held in different cultures. Um, and you know, certainly it’s important for a person who’s interested in Shamanic practice to develop their own relationship with the helping spirits of nature and to, and to understand why they are doing that and how they’re doing that in their own way. It doesn’t have to be through a cultural context. And certainly in applied shamanism, I’m quite specific about stripping cultural trappings from the practices. And the reason that I do that is because I’m trying to bring these practices into the modern time and make them as relevant as possible to the problems of modern people. But I’m also very careful not to try to use any kind of practice that is part of a cultural setting that I don’t have the permission to use. So I’m never worried about cultural appropriation because I’m very clean in the way that I work, um, you know, I have a respect for all Shamanic practices that are working within the light. And, um, I think that, uh, um, I certainly understand how people in certain cultural environments would be upset to have people coming in from the outside and trying to kind of consume their spiritual practices. And I do think that’s inappropriate, but I, at the same time, I think it’s important for people to understand that the earth belongs to all of us and we do have that responsibility to respect and honor her. And what better way to learn how to do that than to learn from the unseen powers that she holds within her and Shamanic practice is offers a pathway to that learning.

Adrian

Isa, it’s been such a rich conversation. I want to bring this to a close with sort of a two part question. Um, on the one hand, we’re experiencing this renaissance of the psychedelic interest in exploration and healing. I want to hear your thoughts and what you’re excited about and perhaps what you’re concerned about with this trend. And maybe just to along with that question is what is your vision of the future of consciousness exploration and healing?

Isa Gucciardi

Well I think that the, you know, in terms of the renewed interest in psychedelics, I think it’s a wonderful, um, and I also think that again, it comes with responsibilities and, um, I think that it’s important, um, to not approach a psychedelic plants or psychotropic plants with the kind of consumer attitude. Like what can you do for me kind of attitude. I think it’s important to enter into the realm of the plants from a place of respect and to remember that within Shamanic practice, the work with plants is very broad. It doesn’t only focus on psychotropic plants, the, the use of plants in all Shamanic cultures for healing is a specialized area of study for Shamanic practitioners. And understanding the broader intelligence of plants from that context is very important before you even begin to think about the realms of being that the psychotropic plants open to the practitioner or, and so I think we have to keep it, you know, the exploration of psychotropic plants well seated within traditional Shamanic practice that includes the broader intelligence of plants. So this is very, very important. Um, and I think that, uh, uh, of course the pitfalls are many because you have people who are facilitating plant circles that may not have this deeper understanding, may not have their intentionality as clear as it might be. But I think, you know, if you, if you do due diligence and you understand that the nature of the facilitator, the kind of education and intention they have, excuse me. Um, and let me just get a little drink of water. Thank you. Um, and if you are sincere in your own seeking, like I wouldn’t just drop into a plant circle off the street. I would make it part of a larger spiritual inquiry, to be very clear on what your intentionality is in engaging with the plants and to set an intention to receive teachings and to a particular area of your life that needs healing or clarity and, to set your intention in that way. I mean, the plants will do what they’re going to do, but by, by having the discipline to open yourself to places where the plant might best assist you is important. And also, I think it’s important after the experience to spend some time integrating what you have learned and to really not engage with psychotropic plants until again, until you have integrated what you have learned. And you know, in the plant medicine insight integrations program that we have as part of our Applied Shamanism program here at the sacred stream, we teach people how to facilitate, uh, you know, sessions beforehand that are Depth Hypnosis or Shamanic counselling in nature to help people focus and sessions afterwards to help people integrate. And I think this is really key and really fundamental to working with the plants to be working in this larger, larger context. Um, and you know, I think, you know, for me, I’m always concerned about the depletion of the plants and I think that we need to create farms. We need to create sustainable practices of harvesting and we need to keep front and center how incredibly lucky we are to be able to have access to this wisdom and to protect it’s access with our respect and, um, with our practice.

Thal

It’s like we need more wisdom to actually access wisdom traditions in some ways.

Isa Gucciardi

In some ways, that’s true. Yeah, and actually that’s, you just said what I do [laughing]. Here’s the tools. Like let’s try them on, let’s use them. Where did they take us? What did we learn?

Thal

Right, right, right.

Isa Gucciardi

Yes. Very important. Very, very insightful comment there.

Thal

Thank you.

Adrian

Thank you so much for today. We’re going to provide all those links for listeners to access the programs, Sacred Stream, and thanks for the guided journey. That was wonderful.

Thal

Yes. That was amazing. Thank you.

Isa Gucciardi

You’re so welcome. It’s such a pleasure. I’m so inspired by your dedication to the work. Congratulations.

Thal

Thank you so much. Thank you.

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