Kyle Kingsbury Podcast - #185 Dan Cleland

Episode Date: January 20, 2021

Dan Cleland, founder of Soltara, and dear brother has been around the world on a roller coaster of life. We get to hear his entire story and so much more in this incredible conversation, which is a bit of a continuation of one we shared on his new podcast, Daniel Cleland Podcast. You can find Dan and the culmination of his life’s work, Soltara, at any of the link below as well as reaching out to Soltara’s infrastructure directly via the phone number and email below. Otherwise, just sit back and enjoy.   Contact Soltara: 1(800)397-1730        [e-mail] Connect with Dan:   Website: danielcleland.com                soltara.co Instagram: @danielccleland - @soltarahealingcenter Twitter: @soltaracenter Facebook: facebook.com/soltarahealingcenter Podcasts: Daniel Cleland Podcast                  Spotify - iTunes YouTube: Soltara Show Notes:     Sponsors: Dryfarm Wines Go to www.dryfarmwines.com/Kyle for your wine subscription PLUS an extra bottle for a penny ($.01) PowerDot is an incredible company used by top athletes across all major sports, but it’s not just for elite athletes. Their app has great interface and even gives tips to help you take your game to the next level. Enter code KKP at checkout to receive $25 and an additional 20% off their Pro-Bundle - powerdot.com/kkp  There are TWO spots left for the Sacred Hunt I’m facilitating with my brother Mansal Denton Feb 11-14. You’ll learn the basics of hunting from stalking and killing to field dressing. An amazing aspect to this experience will be Mike Salemi facilitating Kambo in congruence with the ceremony of the hunt. Check this opportunity out at sacredhunting.com/kyle Sports Betting Dime Is your one stop shop for insight into odds on all your favorite events. They’re basically the Obscure Sports Quarterly for betting odds, covering all major leagues, politics and beyond. Just go to www.sportsbettingdime.com Bioptimizers has a great new pre/pro-biotic for you to add to your Arsenal. P3-OM will help you optimize your gut health, boosting you immune system as well as reducing stress in your system. Click the link below and use code word KINGSBU10 will get you 10% off at checkout, with even more savings based on your order amount. Go stock up at... https://bioptimizers.com/kingsbu Connect with Kyle:   Instagram: @livingwiththekingsburys   Youtube: Kyle Kingbury Podcast  Kyles website: www.kingsbu.com    Like and subscribe to the podcast anywhere you can find podcasts. Leave a 5-star review and let me know what resonates or doesn’t.

Welcome back. Welcome back, everybody. We've got my buddy, Dan Cleland, CEO and founder of Sultara, which many of you have heard me speak about as perhaps my favorite place to sit with ayahuasca on the planet. If you've ever been curious about it, or even if you've been to other places and you love the place that you go to, still worth taking a deep dive into this one and much more. Because Dan is not just a healing center. Dan is the man, the human being that has done a lot of cool shit, traveled the world, and really gleaned a lot of beautiful insight and information that I'm sure you guys are going to dig. There are a number of ways that you guys can support this podcast. Number one, click subscribe. Don't miss a single episode. Number two, leave us a five-star rating with one or two ways the show has helped you out in life. And three, support our amazing sponsors. This episode is brought to

you by Dry Farm Wines. Dry Farm Wines makes extraordinary natural wines. They are 100% organically grown and biodynamically farmed, lab tested for purity. They have a lower alcohol percentage. That means you can drink more and get away with it. Each bottle is under 12.5% per volume, keto and paleo friendly and sugar-free, 0 to 0.15 grams per glass. That's pretty remarkable. And you can get an extra penny bottle. That's one extra bottle in your subscription for a penny simply by going to dryfarmwines.com slash Kyle. That's dryfarmwines.com slash Kyle. We are also brought to you today by PowerDot.

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literally two spots left. This isn't some weird marketing ploy. I've taken some different courses on that, believe it or not. And this has nothing to do with, oh guys, look, we've only got two spots left. But I talked with, I think once on this podcast, actually a couple of weeks back about the sacred hunting experience that we've got going on with my buddy, Mansell Denton, who's been on the podcast before. The sacred hunting experience is going to be between February 11th and 14th, just outside of Austin, Texas. We're probably going to go to West Texas and we will be collaborating to create a space to both learn the basics of how to track, stalk and kill, as well as field dress, wild game and animals. And my brother, Mike Salemi,

who's been on the podcast a couple of times is going to be providing combo, which is a completely legal frog medicine and some really, really cool ceremonial practices that we'll do out there along with indigenous ceremonies to make this a truly transformative rite of passage. We're really keeping this down to a minimum number of people due to the fact that the combo ceremony does take some time and we go individually. So not going to be a ton of people here. We will be able to dive deep into these practices as well as really get to know each other.

So it's an excellent way to get to know like-minded individuals and have a very hands-on real world experience in nature. There's gonna be nothing like this one. So if you want more details, you are going to head over to sacredhunting.com to sign up. And then you'll have a phone call, which will explain and answer any and all questions with Monzel. So that's S-A-C-R-E-D-H-U-N-T-I-N-G.com.

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T-I-M-I-Z-E-R-S.com forward slash kingsboo and use promo code KINGSBOO10 in all caps. K-I-N-G-S-B-U 10, the number, and you'll get 10% off your next order. Two things to remember, bioptimizer.com slash Kingsboo and promo code Kingsboo10. And guys, all this is in the show notes. So if you're going to listen to this episode, maybe you're driving your car like I do want to listen to podcasts. You don't want to write this shit down. Do not worry. You can go over there and one click it. Just remember or scroll back to get that promo code in. All right. Lots of love to you all. Welcome my dude, Dan Cleland. All right. Second clap. Dan Cleland, thanks for joining the show, brother.

It's so good to have you. My absolute pleasure. Thank you for making the time and for inviting me on. Well, we just crushed a good one on your podcast. What's the name of your podcast? Daniel Cleland Podcast, man. Oh, I love it. Keep it simple, just like me. Well, I will link to us in the show notes of this podcast, unless you're releasing that one later. Either way, I'll send people your way by linking one of those podcasts. Maybe you can text me one of your favorites to link in there. Absolutely. Dude, it's so good having you on. We got to meet in Fit for Service in our freshman year.

And first year running, got to get to know you and what you've done. You're an entrepreneur, a Canadian. You're into heavy metal and all sorts of good shit like that. And then found plant medicines, created Sultara down in Costa Rica, which is my absolute favorite place I've ever done ayahuasca at, working with Shipibo shaman and bringing them there. So much good stuff to talk about, but let's talk about your trajectory. What was life like growing up for you? When did you find this path that kind of shifted your reality? Well, good question. It's a bit of a winding journey, but I guess starting off in kind of two tracks, growing up in Canada,

fairly normal upbringing with the kind of standard traumas that everybody acquires growing up, some more than others. But I found myself following the typical path, high school, college, get a job, start working. I didn't actually graduate college. I circled through a few different programs and then basically just quit and wanted to get out in the working world. So I ended up getting into the sales industry. So I started working in sales, started off at residential, and then climbed the ladder to commercial, and then climbed the ladder a little bit more to industrial. And I found myself in what would be considered like a pretty good job, like the kind of job where like, hey, dad, look at me. I've got a real job. I've got my car. I've got my car payments. And I'm a real man now, right? And lived that for maybe two or three years and just got to a point where I was like, I was kind of like 25 years old and, you know, still hanging

out with all the same guys that I grew up with high school, college and everything, living together, all of us in Calgary, kind of doing the same shit over and over and over weekend, week out this kind of, you know, unconscious lifestyle, I guess you can say, just going to work, paying the bills, going out in the weekend, getting smashed, trying to find a female companionship, waking up on Sunday with a hangover, going to work on Monday with a hangover, and just doing the same routine week in and week out. And I found myself thinking at that time, that's not what I want to be doing for the rest of my life. And I'm not feeling like, well, at that time, I was getting some pressure from my dad, who's an important figure in my life, to settle down, get a long-term

girlfriend and wife and have a family like a lot of my peers were doing at that time you know growing up in a small Canadian town very uh blue collar and very uh uninventive let's say when it comes to life paths so at that point I wanted to explore the world and start traveling and start uh start having some adventure in my life and do something different and make something kind of big in myself. So that's when I started traveling South America. I did a trip, my first trip to Brazil in 2006, planned it all out, executed it all myself, learned some Portuguese, went in and just made a ton of friends and connections and had this amazing time. And then I get back to Canada in the middle of January in 2007.

And I don't know if you've ever been to Canada, but it is damn cold in Calgary in the middle of January. So I was just coming up from the summer in Brazil, get to Calgary. It's absolutely freezing. Didn't like winter to begin with, but then I'd had a glimpse of what something different could be like. I had never lived outside of Canada until then. So that got me into the world of travel. I started traveling a few months after I got back to Canada. I quit my life in Canada and I took a job working as a tour leader for a company called G Adventures. It was then called Gap Adventures. And my goal was to get back down to Brazil, but they had an interim station for me in Costa Rica and Panama because my Spanish wasn't so good.

So they stationed me there. I ended up working for the better part of a year in Costa Rica and Panama guiding groups around. So I got involved in tourism. I got involved in group dynamics and learning Spanish and learning how to execute a plan with a group of people. And the sales and the interpersonal skills and everything was practiced there and came into play. So I did that. I ended up eventually transferring back down to Brazil. That was my initial goal at the end of that year. So I started running this trip down in Brazil, a 42-day massive journey over land and over water from Caracas, Venezuela, all the way down through the Brazilian Amazon,

all the way down the Brazilian coast, stopping in Rio de Janeiro and then going in reverse. So that was kind of like the one track of how I got involved in tourism. And after I quit that job, I wanted to do something bigger with my life. I mentioned that I didn't really do anything in high school or college. I had terrible marks. I didn't really apply myself. I was partying the whole time.

And so I quit that job to go and further my education and actually go to university. So I was about like 27 at the time. I go back to Canada, I enroll in some university courses and I had to spend the first year just upgrading courses because my marks were piss poor before. And that was in 2008. Yeah, 2008. So different time, different era, you know, it was right when the financial crisis was happening. And, you know, at that time there was more of a promise to having a degree, you know, it was more of a big thing to have a degree back like, you know, 12 years ago,

13 years ago. So I felt kind of naked without it. And I didn't even really know anything about entrepreneurship. It was always like trying to find the job that I like, trying to find the path that I like. And I felt like the higher education was an important part of that. So I go back to school, spend a year. And at the end of that year, one of my environmental issues professors was doing a trip to Australia, like a month-long trip to Australia to do some kind of a conservation study with a group of students. So my sense of adventure got the best of me. I took that trip and my mind started, you know, kind of going off in different directions when I decided to take that trip. And I thought, well, maybe I want to continue this higher education in Australia. So I applied for university in Australia

with that year's marks that I had just gotten and go to Australia, undergo this field trip with the students. And once I get there, I find out I get accepted. So I decided to stay in Australia and just try to work and pay for this tuition. But of course, being the financial crisis, the Canadian government loans were part of the subsidy for my education. And my dad was also helping me out. But he just retired. And he just put all of his pension into an investment, which he just lost like 25% of because of the financial crisis. So he was not helping me out anymore.

And I was paying international student fees in Australia. And because of the kind of protectionism aspect of the economy there after the big financial crisis, it was very difficult for me to work. So I ended up going totally off track of that education, which I felt at the time was of paramount importance. And I ended up having to work like door-to-door sales jobs in Australia, barely making enough to get by. Everything went totally off track. I got really depressed, got really hard on myself. I couldn't get a decent job because everybody only wanted Australia or New Zealand residents because there are fewer jobs because of the crisis

And I forfeit my ticket homes. I had no money to do anything. It was just a real kind of Dismal depressing situation for me at the time, you know, I made some friends at a good time But that's not what I was there for. I was not there for a vacation. I was not there to work a sales job I was there for, I was not there for a vacation. I was not there to work a sales job. I was there to further my education and make something of myself and do something big with my life. I felt I was destined to do. So just about a year into that stay,

maybe nine months into that stay, I actually had a big accident. I was out partying and drinking one night, drinking a lot of whiskey, Jim Beam. And I went rock climbing, for lack of a better term, down in South Bank Park in Kangaroo Point. I ended up scaling this 20-meter cliff and couldn't quite get to the top. I tried to get to the top, but I ran into an overhang that was impassable. And I fell 20 meters off of this cliff in the middle of the night.

It was at like one in the morning. I was by myself wearing dress shoes and like bar clothes and hit the ground, shattered my femur, compound fracture. The femur breaks out the side of my leg, just barely misses my femoral artery, degloves my whole thigh, pulls all the skin up my thigh. Pelvis breaks in half like that, like they call it a shear fracture. So just like the pelvis just, so I landed, half my pelvis goes up into my diaphragm. The femur breaks and splits out the side of my leg. So highly traumatic injury. I had to call the ambulance who came and took me to the Wollongabba Hospital where I spent the next 40 days and 40 nights laying in a hospital bed. The first week I was there, I had this big exoskeleton on top of me, screwed into my bones, kind of holding me together. Then they eventually did a big surgery, put a bunch of titanium in me, put a rod from knee to hip and a big plate across my pelvis. I spent over a month just sitting there

on morphine drip and taking Oxycontin all day, every day, like nurses wiping my ass, lost all the feeling in my member. And it know is like is you know they nerve damage they said you know i don't you know they didn't know if it was going to come back or not like they never know with nerve damage and so that was really the ultimate rock bottom in my life it was like i'd already gotten off track you know from a career perspective and from a financial perspective i had no relationships i was getting shut down by the ladies left right right, and center. And then I fell off this cliff and shattered my whole body and literally in the hospital, broken and broke and depressed and borderline suicidal. So then while I was in the hospital, I'm like, I need some help.

And I started researching ayahuasca in a very serious way. This was back in 2009, 2010. And that was really when I first started to seriously consider it. And basically, long story short, once I got better and able to walk around, I spent a little bit of time in a wheelchair, spent a little bit of time on crutches. And then when I was able to kind of walk around, I got up and essentially left Australia. I quit. I go back to Canada, back to my parents' house, like, you know, into my mother's arms kind of thing, like just basic life recovery and kind of had to start all over again. I had to get another sales job in Canada and start working for my dad selling solar panels and eventually found a job in environmental management out in BC. So I go out to BC and then during that training program,

a friend of mine invited me down to New Mexico to drink medicine. So I traveled on New Mexico, take three days off, literally in the middle of the training program, told them I had a wedding to go to. I take a ferry from Victoria down to Seattle, fly from Seattle to Albuquerque, spend a night in Albuquerque, drive out five hours through the mountains of New Mexico to Gila, New Mexico. Rocked a massive ceremony there. Did a double dose. And fortunately, I did because I only had that one ceremony. And that ceremony basically just shattered me.

Like, it just brought me to my knees. It was, you know, at that point, I had worked with psychedelics two or 300 times with mushrooms and with LSD, many ceremonies. And it was already a sacrament for me. I'd already experienced many spiritual experiences with mushrooms or with LSD, but that was unlike anything I'd ever experienced before. It got deeper. It was way more intense. It was way more overpowering and profound than any other experience I'd ever had in my life. And after that massive ceremony, for me, it really opened up the channels of healing for me. It allowed me to grieve for some things that I had been holding onto. It allowed me to begin healing a relationship with my father, which I think also played a role for you and your journeys. It showed me that I actually did love myself and that I should forgive myself for my mistakes and for getting off track and for doing all the things that in my past that were kind of just residual traumas in my being that were just basically overpowering any of the good in my life. It was preventing me from living up to my potential, from finding my path. It was just self-sabotage all the time. Anytime something good was going to happen,

I would self-sabotage because fundamentally, I didn't believe that I deserved any of it. So that ceremony helped me to really start to forgive myself and really start to allow myself to heal. So it set me on, it was a very profound inflection point in my life. It showed me the power of the medicine, showed me that the medicine is something very, very special. And it causes profound interest in me to start walking the path of the medicine. The very next day, I wrote up a very detailed description of that whole profound experience. I mean, it was brutal. I vomited all over myself inside the ceremonial space, hands and knees. it was really gruesome. But it was exactly what I needed. And I purged this, like, you know, the previous 10 or 15 years of toxic lifestyle. And from there, you know, I just started walking the path. Six months later,

I was doing a dieta in Peru. I did a month-long dieta at a place in Peru, did a bunch more ceremonies, did some San Pedro. And then six months after that, I moved down to Brazil and I started working with the Santo Daime and the União da Vegetal and learning their traditions as well. And then six months or a year after that, I was back in Peru working with the Shipibo tradition and started running my own tours.

And the reason I told you that whole long story is because I had that existing foundation in tourism and that experience in South America, working with groups and with the languages and everything, I was able to just kind of immediately, once I started getting into the medicine, a lot of people in my orbit who knew that I already had this base of experience in South America. And I was like this adventure guy. As soon as I started getting into the medicine and publicizing my work with the medicine, people started asking me to help them have the same experience. So then just naturally, I started organizing small group tours to South America

to work with the medicine. And over a couple of years of doing that, it really helped to reaffirm that path for me because every time... I would still be working a sales job in Canada, but then coming down a couple times a year with a group, a couple times a year with a group down to Colombia, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, these different places in South America to do ceremonies. And every time I did, even if I might forget about the power of the medicine for the six months I just spent in Canada, every time I go down, it would really reaffirm that path. And the kind of effects that it would have on people would really reaffirm to me that I need to keep doing this. And it would just make me want to do one more. And then I do that one. Then it would make me want to do one more.

And eventually, I met a partner, Tatiana, in 2013. And she wanted to join me in both a romantic and a business context. So that became my number two. She became my number two. And then I, a couple months later, quit my sales job in Canada in 2013. And I haven't had a job since. I started that probably for about a year. After that, we were just running small group tours going to other centers. And then in 2014, we commissioned our first center, the Pulse Tour Center, which is now under a different name in Peru, but the center is still operating. Built that. And that was in Neriquitos in Peru in the Amazon jungle. Ran that for a few years,

had many amazing experiences there and saw thousands of people come through there with super profound, life-changing experiences. And then in 2017, I sold that and decided to move up to Costa Rica with some of my team, like Melissa from that place. Tatiana decided not to join me after we broke up. But some of the others from my team came up and joined me. A lot of people from the community came to visit us here and still do. And since 2017, man, I've been here in Costa Rica rocking it up at Sultara. And that's the story. That's incredible, brother. Yeah. Super informative too. I hadn't realized, I think I'd heard loosely about the fall in rock climbing,

but didn't understand the full context or exactly how bad you got your ass kicked there. So you were drunk when you fell. Yeah. That means that blood clots were pretty much non-existent. So there's probably a lot of internal bleeding. And man, I just think about that. I've had friends and family die from opiate addiction and opiate overdoses. And ayahuasca, obviously, aboga is one that's maybe not better known, but known for opiate addiction. But ayahuasca can be just as effective. I imagine that those that go to those, you know, really, I don't want to say hardcore, but, you know,

the medicines that have a forced surrender at points, you know, that really do a good job of cleaning you out and wringing you out with La Perga and with the squeezing that can take place. I imagine not only after the alcohol and self-abuse, and I got my hand raised too, man. I mean, the first several of my experiences with ayahuasca were very hard ceremonies cleaning that out. But I can just imagine the medical use of opiates that you had at such a high amount must have taken, you know, some, some real squeezing to get your body clean of that medicine. That's a, that's a, that's a wild, wild story, brother.

That was the hardest thing I've ever experienced in terms of a drug withdrawal. I remember, I remember the weekend I ran out of OxyContin. Eventually they stopped prescribing me them in Australia. I was taking them a lot faster than what I should have been. And I was at this blues festival in Byron Bay with my friends in Australia. And it was on a weekend. And I ran out of OxyContin during that day. And about 12 hours later, I started going through withdrawals, cramps and pains in my stomach, my back spasming and tightening up. I couldn't sleep. I just couldn't stay still. I couldn't be comfortable. All my

muscles were hurting and screaming. And that lasted for a few days. I tried to go back to work the following Monday or Tuesday, whenever it was. And I recall driving to a sales appointment. At that point, I was working for a solar panel company selling solar panels. So I'm on the way to a sales appointment trying to drive my car and I just couldn't even drive my car. I parked, got out in a pharmacy. And fortunately there in Australia, you're able to buy codeine pills over the counter, like acetaminophen with codeine or paracetamol with codeine. So I went in, I got that and I took those and that got rid of my withdrawal symptoms. So I ended up taking codeine pills just for the duration of my stay the next month or two in Australia.

And then I ran out of codeine pills after I left Australia and still some withdrawal, but it was much more tempered than what it was. Man, getting off of OxyContin, anytime people talk about OxyContin addiction, I'm like, I understand what they're talking about, man. It's some really nice stuff, right? It makes you feel really good laying down at night to go to bed when you're feeling that

really warm, happy, comfortable, all is good in the world kind of buzz. That's great. But when you stop taking those things, it's hard. Yeah, I can imagine. I've had, I mean, my college career, I tried just about everything. For whatever reason, genetically, the pain medicine didn't sit well with me. I've snorted Oxycontin, I've keistered them before. That's in the poop shoot for those that don't know the lingo. And I'd always feel fantastic for an hour or two and

then I'd get sick. And it's just like a violent reaction where I'd start throwing up and I'd just feel like I was spinning. Even Kratom will do that to me if I have too much. Kratom at a low dose feels really good for me, like an energetic buzz, some mild pain management, things like that. But I like Kratom for a little bit of energy. But if I have too much, it feels just the same, like a heavy dose of a painkiller where I get really nauseous. And so I'm super grateful for that, that my body just reacts that way because no doubt, you know, that is a tremendous and amazing high. And it's clear, you know, we, we talked about it a lot on, on the podcast that I just did with you about when you look out to the external world and you see the lack of happiness,

the abysmal outlook around the powers that be in the structures of what's actually running the world and all the shit. I mean, yeah, you just do from time to time, you want to fucking check out. And if you had something that was reliable at making you feel all the bliss, joy, painlessness and warmth and love that you do with that, I could see how that'd be a real issue. At least with the plants, there's a built-in mechanism. Anybody who's tried to take multiple rounds of psilocybin or LSD at Burning Man knows that you can burn that candle out real quick. And ketamine might work, but that might be why ketamine is the only addictive psychedelic.

I do pretty well right now. I take Kratom regularly. It helps me with a lot of the residual pain that I get from these injuries. My body's twisted up now. My pelvis didn't heal in the right way. So when I sit, I'm sitting off to the side and one leg shorter than the other. And I still have a plate in my pelvis and a rod in my leg. And I've had a couple of shoulder separations as well. So my body's just not in very good shape. So I take Kratom regularly. That helps with the pain. And it also provides a little bit of that sense of well-being. And you're totally right. If you take too much Kratom, it doesn't matter who you are. You take too much Kratom, it'll make you feel nauseous. It'll make you feel like total ass. So you got to really measure your dose with kratom and then um yeah i mean i'll have a little uh mdma you know once every six months or something like that have a have one of those nights

where you kind of check out and go all lovey-dovey with the mdma and and hang out with some friends and um i find that's enough for me you know I don't really need anything beyond that, especially when you got responsibilities and stuff like that. You can't be recovering for three days after a big night anymore, nor do you really. keep your body healthy because nature holds us accountable. So if you let your body get run down by polluting it and overextending yourself, that's when things like COVID creep in and do some damage, right? Yeah. It reminds me of Tim Corcoran, who I mentioned on your show. He's been a guest on this podcast twice now. He talks about the Native American spirit wheel, which I'll very quickly mention. The four directions, the North being represented the winter and returning to source. It's also the land of responsibility.

So that's our job. That's parenting. If you have kids, things like that. And it's our general responsibilities that most of us do a pretty good job of spending time in. The East, we plant new seeds, the springtime, new beginnings. What is it that we wish to cultivate in our lives?

The West, the shadow work, weeding the garden. what is it that we wish to remove in our life? Well, the South is the love of the body. That's the summertime, that's play. And MDMA fits fucking perfectly in the South, right? It's an excellent way to connect to people. It's an excellent way to hold space, communicating, you know, relationship-wise. That's what it was studied for in the 80s in couples therapy. And it's absolutely brilliant

there. All the studies with PTSD that Rick Doblin's doing with MAPS, phenomenal. But let's not forget, this was one of the best tools in couples therapy with the right set and setting and the container held around that. But it's also just fantastic for play, especially if it's pure MDMA and not something loaded up with amphetamines and other shit that's going to keep you up all night. It can be really good. But again, no different than anything else, medicine is only medicine within the dose range. You go past that, it's going to be a problem. That's when it becomes poison. So lots of good stuff there. Talk a bit about, it's curious to me, all of your travels, everywhere you went prior to Australia, you went all through the Amazon.

You were all throughout the Brazilian rainforest, and you hadn't touched ayahuasca then. Once you were introduced to it, and you worked with Santo Daime out in Brazil, and you worked with the Shipibo out in Peru, what helped you form the picture of what you wanted to create with Sultara? Because you guys primarily work with Shipibo shaman and curanderos, curanderas. You have, you know, it sounds like I'm just fucking bowing down and blowing smoke up of your ass every time I talk about Sultara, but I've been to a lot of places and ayahuasca is hard enough. Something Aubrey talks about, like the medicine itself, whether you're doing it in your living

room or preferably with a black belt guiding you, or whether you're down in the Amazon, it's hard enough. The fact that you have air conditioning in your rooms, organic food, and all the other amenities that come with that, and then the level of care that you have at your facility really blew me away. But talk a bit about what helped you formulate everything that went into Sultara because it truly is. I mean, I can't recommend it enough to people who are interested in diving into one of the more transformational forms of plant medicine.

Sure, man. So interesting you asked that question. So I actually learned about ayahuasca the first time when I was on a five-day riverboat from Manaus to Belém, Brazil, going down the whole length of the Amazon River to the mouth before cutting down the coast. I was reading a book called 2012, The Return of Quetzalcoatl by Daniel Pinchbeck. This is back in 2008, right? So I was, I was very much a believer in the Mayan calendar.

And it was, I always thought that something was going to happen in 2012, which is why I was living so frivolously by, you know, quitting my life in Canada, going traveling, stuff like that. But because back in those days,

everybody's descriptions of ayahuasca were so frightening. It was just so intense, so sensational. This crazy medicine that gave you all these visions and caused these big purges. I actually was afraid of it. I heard about it. And actually, when I was on that riverboat, confirmation that it existed,

on that riverboat, you go from Manaus to Belang, but in the middle, there's a place called Santarang. And then the boat stops there, people get off and people get on. So about two and a half days into the trip. And one dude that I was made friends with on the route from Manaus was getting off in Santarang to go and work with a chief there and work with Ayahuasca. So I was like, oh shit, I'm reading about this in this book. And there's a dude getting off the boat here to go do it in Brazil. But I didn't think about it again until I was

basically laid up in a hospital bed with nowhere to go but up. So how did Sultara come about? Well, my very first vision, I guess, came when I went to Peru. The second time I did ayahuasca, I went to do a dieta in Peru at a place called Chimbre, which is no longer in operation because somebody died there and the shaman covered it up and was arrested. But yeah, so I was there and I did a few ceremonies and then I started kind of getting visions about something that I wanted to create. And I started drawing sketches in my notebook of something I wanted to create.

And I came up with a concept. And then I went back to Canada and went back to my job. I was working on commercial fishing vessels out in the Pacific Ocean. And about six months later, this desire to build my vision spurred me to move to Brazil. So originally, I wanted to build my vision out near Manaus in Brazil. So I moved down there. I took a job as an English teacher. And my objective was to go looking for property. I went out looking for property there. I built a PowerPoint presentation with the kind of place I wanted to build.

And I thought it would be easy to raise money from some of the people I knew, my parents and their peers and stuff like that. But what I quickly realized was that nobody was going to give me money. I had no business experience. I had, as I said, not completed any higher education. I hadn't had a job for more than a year at a time at all ever. I jumped from job to job. So basically my resume just showed that I couldn't stick with one thing for more than a year. And I was not good at school. And I was just not applying myself really or committed. So I went there to Brazil with the intention of building that vision there and it didn't work out. I only ended up staying there for three months, went home with my tail between my legs, back to Canada, working for my dad again, living at my parents' house again. That was in 2011. And just at the start of 2011.

Then I still had that vision with me. And that's when I started my first company, Pulse Tours, just running these group tours. When I went down to Peru and started working down there, and basically the first center that we built, I pulled the trigger on that because we started running out of space working with other centers because the ayahuasca industry or field was picking up steam and it was getting more and more difficult for me to book space and places to bring my groups and they wanted money up front and then I would have to go sell the seats. And if I didn't sell them, I would lose the money, et cetera. So I pulled the trigger on that based on a need. And that one, I just drew, I drew the vision on MS Paint. I drew the whole site map on MS Paint on my like, you know,

on my Windows laptop and went out to the village and just like showed the picture I drew to the villagers and said, Hey, do you guys want to help me build this? And like 30 dudes from the village went out, you know, on canoes with chainsaws, cut down a couple of trees, made some two by fours and made some planks and came and built the thing. And that, so I had just recently gotten into the Shipibo tradition. So when I went to Chimbre, that was working with the Chavin. And then when I went to Brazil, it was with the Uniao de Vegetal and Santo Daime. So I had worked with those three traditions. And then in 2012, I started working with the Shipibo tradition.

And that tradition really got a hold of me. I like the layout. I like the setup where you're in a dark maloca. You're really going on an internal, very introspective journey. No one bothers you. Someone's there to help if you need it. but nobody's asking you, how you doing? How you doing? You okay? Do you want to get up and dance around or play a guitar or something like that?

You know, no lights. You're just there. You're going on your own journey. It's very psychedelic and very internal and very vision quest oriented. So that really, to me, became the paradigm to work with for my own tastes. So aside from that, when I started working at this other place, Niue Rao in Peru, that's where I met my main healer who worked with me at the Pulse Center that I built in Peru. So it became that Shipibo became the tradition and I really became affiliated and accustomed to and affectionate toward that tradition.

And when we came to Sultara, so we ran that center in Peru and field was kind of going through a birth, a really coming into its own of how things were going to be regarded going forward. There's a lot of charlatanism. There was a lot of Wild West mentality back there. There were a lot of competition between emerging centers. There was a lot of competition between emerging centers. There was a lot of competition between shamans. And there wasn't a lot of emphasis on integration. There wasn't a lot of emphasis on intakes.

It was more like, hey, about the experience. Everybody was selling the experience. And every magazine article and every documentary, it was all this kind of sensational big ayahuasca experience that people sought. So there was more of a focus on experience in that era. When we moved to Costa Rica, in collaboration with our advisors, we became more conscious of the fact that what was missing in the ayahuasca equation was the focus on healing and integration, not so much just the experience. Because the experience is fleeting.

You can come and have the experience and it's this profound life-changing experience. But if you don't put any effort into integrating that experience, you can go back into your regular day-to-day life. And then a month later, two months later, you're back on the bottle. You're back doing the same behaviors that you're doing before. You haven't really made the most of that life-changing experience because there hasn't been a structure to really carry that forward. There hasn't been a methodology to really ingrain that. So we saw that big opportunity and big need and big hole in the marketplace for that when we decided to build

Sultara. So we carried over the Shipibo tradition, but we added a lot of emphasis on developing this integration program. And relating to what you said earlier about the comfort aspect of it, as I said earlier, when I was in my 20s, I was very adventure focused. I really wanted to get down and experience the raw, the crude, the down to earth, the dangerous, the risky, the backpacker lifestyle.

And I went around the world and I got beat up. I went around the world, got my nose busted in Panama, spent a night in jail in Panama. I had to get my nose broken back into place, went to Australia, separated my shoulder and fell off a cliff in Australia. And I came back and at the end of my 20s, I'm like, dude, I'm beat up. I don't want any more accidents. I just want to be chill. But because I had such a basis of experience and adventure, that's where we took my first company, Pulse Tours. So we actually called that place the Ayahuasca Adventure Center.

We built it out four hours away from Iquitos, right in the jungle tour hotspot, the jungle lodge hotspot. So you could only get there by boat. You had to travel two hours by road to Nauta and then two hours by boat to the center. So it was right in the middle of thousands of kilometers of jungle. Very amazing, very awesome place. Super awe-inspiring, a lot of animals, a lot of wildlife, anacondas and dolphins and monkeys and sloths and eagles and parrots. And like, I mean, just everything you can think of. Iconic Amazon wildlife was right at our doorstep, right at our fingertips. And that sense of adventure was awesome for me for the first few years of my thirties. But over time, the inconvenience and the challenge of living in the middle of the amazon in peru as i got older as a person as i got more mature as a person as my body aged more

as the injuries i had aged more and started causing more problems i i i got less and less interested in maintaining that real crude adventurous backpacker lifestyle in the middle of the Amazon. Communications was a big issue for me. The cell phone signal was never working. The internet was never working. Very difficult for me to spend any time out in the mountains and have space. I like a good five kilometers or 10 kilometers. But in the Amazon, you can't really go walking through the jungle because it's fucking dangerous. It will fucking eat you. Disappear, right?

The jungle is alive exactly so um so you know that was a big problem for me so i'd end up sitting out at the center and it was awesome but after like a week or two you know i would get stir crazy and i wouldn't be able to communicate so so then my decision to leave there was was somewhat based on on the lifestyle aspect of of just living in the middle of the amazon and me getting older i just didn't really want to do that anymore. And then coming to Costa Rica, in contrast, Costa Rica is at the other end of the spectrum, really, in terms of Latin America. It's got half-decent roads. It's got good services. The cell phone signals work. There's good internet. People are educated and

trustworthy and do relatively good work here. The climate's perfect. And I found this property that is like beachfront and it's forest and it's mountain all in one. So I can go for my hikes here. The climate's great. I can go for a swim in the ocean if I want. There's all kinds of places. Just driving down the road for a couple of hours, I can go to all different kinds of weekend getaways, whether that's hot springs or whether that's cloud forest or whether that's beachfront surfing. I don't surf, but if I did, there's all kinds of surfing spots. There's bio reserves. There's nature hikes. There's national parks everywhere. And there's also a city a few hours away from Sultara. I've got our Sultara HQs in a beautiful penthouse overlooking the whole city up on a big ridge. It's just incredible. So you've got all the amenities, plus you've got the rugged nature. And I just found that that was the kind of lifestyle that I was going to be interested in for the next 10, 15, 20 years of my life.

So Costa Rica was the place and we put everything together. We took the Shipibo tradition, we added in the integration program, and we wanted to make sure it was a really nice, comfortable spot that we were all going to feel comfortable. We were all going to be happy and willing to, you know, thinking of it more of a long-term sustainability kind of aspect, you know, for us personally, because it's hard work. And again, like you said, it's hard work. You think doing ceremonies is hard work? Imagine running a center, man, you know, running a center is hard work and you don't need additional inconveniences and pressures from the environment to add to on top of that yeah brother well you've done uh an absolutely

excellent job you know i i joked about this in the past how how you know and it's not it's not that i i think i'm you know some type of veteran when it comes to this medicine dennis McKenna, who I believe is one of your advisors, he says he still feels like a rookie and he's done hundreds of ceremonies. Garbo Mate says the same thing. But I had come for 23 through 26 and they had this three-hour orientation. I remember telling my wife, Natasha, I was like, I don't want to fucking sit through three hours of orientation. I've done this 22 times.

What kind of shit is that? And then I thought, if I don't show up, everyone's going to see that I'm the only guy that didn't show up and I'll be the asshole who thinks the shit doesn't stink. So I was like, all right, I have to go. And 40 minutes into it, I look at my wife and I was like, if we had come here first, every experience we've ever had with ayahuasca and otherwise would have improved because it was teaching us further how to work with the medicine. It was showing us so much that I really, really sat back and understood that, how important that is to understand. And then of course,

as you talked about integration, every week an email coming in with a different focus point on how to integrate that because it will become just a story, like a distant dream, a distant memory. If we don't ground that and use that to change our lives in 3D reality, it's just a memory. And so that integration piece, not just saying the word integration, but actually how you guys piece that together week by week is one of the best programs I've ever been a part of. And I can't, I don't got a jam, but I really can't speak highly enough about Sultara. Where can people find you? Where can people learn more about Sultara and where can people listen to your podcast? Well, I guess the easiest answer is danielcleland.com.

We've got the new website up. It's got our podcast and audio and video on it. It's got links to Sultara. It's got a few documentaries. I've made a couple documentaries. One's called Drinking the Jungle. That was made in Peru in the Amazon in my first place. The other one was called The Plant Teacher,

which features interviews with Dennis McKenna, Gabor Matze, Ken Tupper, a variety of other people, Jim Fadiman, the microdosing king. And it's also got Reconnect, the London Real documentary, which was actually filmed at Sultara. So really good few hours of documentaries on there. I got my first book, Pulse of the Jungle is available on there. I'm working on a new book called 12 Laws of the Jungle. We're still working on a subtitle, but it might be how to become a

lethal entrepreneur, something along those lines. Yeah. So it's all there, man. Podcast is called the Daniel Cleland podcast. I'm on Instagram at Daniel C Cleland and Sultara. You can connect with Sultara at Sultara.co and 1-800-397-1730. Or hit us up on email at letgoatsultara.co. And of course, we're on Instagram at Sultara Healing Center. So big smorgasbord of possible avenues there. I'll have my boy Jose throw all that in the show notes to make it simple for everybody. Thank you so much, brother.

I really look forward to the next time we get to connect and certainly look forward to the next time my wife and I get down to Sultara to sit with you, brother. I love you, Dan. Speaking of, tell Natasha I said hello and the rest of the fam there. I will, brother. All right, my man. Be good. Thanks, homie. Thank you.