Kyle Kingsbury Podcast - #361 The Science of Miracles w/ Anna Yusim

Episode Date: July 4, 2024

Dr. Anna Yusim is an internationally-recognized, award-winning, Board-Certified, Stanford- and Yale-educated Psychiatrist & Executive Coach with a Private Practice in New York City, Connecticut, California and Florida. With clients including Forbes 500 CEOs, Olympic athletes, A-list actors and actresses, and the Chairs of academic departments at top universities, Dr. Anna Yusim helps influential people achieve greater impact, purpose, and joy in their life and work.   She came on to join us today and talk about her book from 2017, "Fulfilled: How the Science of Spirituality Can Help You Live a Happier, More Meaningful Life" -Anna Yusim. She talks about some of her experiences that brought her from her “strictly” academic background to incorporating some more modalities from beyond the known, measurable reality.    Here is a link to Conscious Health Center, the company for which Anna is the Chief Medical Officer that bridges state of the art modern science and technology for mental health (like EMBP, ketamine therapy and neurofeedback) and ancient psychospiritual wisdom.   Fit For Service Trimester One was the best program I’ve personally put together so far. We had 40 folks come with honesty and commitment. We went through cleanses, workout overhauls, working-in practices, optimized our diets and sleep. Then topped it all off with a gathering at the feet of Montana Mountains. Come join me to get on track to the best shape of your life and kick it out in Sedona this fall for Trimester 2. Connect with Dr Anna: Website: AnnaYusim.com - Conscious Health Center  Instagram: @annayusim    Show Notes: KKP #297 Performance While Fasting w/ Geoff Woo of HVMNSpotify Apple    Sponsors: KetoneIQ You can save 30% off your first subscription order of Ketone-IQ at Ketone.com/KKP Paleovalley Some of the best and highest quality goodies I personally get into are available at paleovalley.com, punch in code “KYLE” at checkout and get 15% off everything! Bioptimizers To get the ’Magnesium Breakthrough‘ deal exclusively for fans of the podcast, click the link below and use code word “KINGSBU10” for an additional 10% off. magbreakthrough.com/kingsbu  Go now to magbreakthrough.com/kingsbufree  and get your bottle of Magnesium Breakthrough for FREE today! Organifi Go to organifi.com/kkp to get my favorite way to easily get the most potent blend of high vibration fruits, veggies and other goodies into your diet! Click that link and use code “KKP” at checkout for 20% off your order! To Work With Kyle Kingsbury Podcast   Connect with Kyle: Twitter: @KINGSBU  Fit For Service Academy App: Fit For Service App  Instagram: @livingwiththekingsburys - @gardenersofeden.earth  Odysee: odysee.com/@KyleKingsburypod  Youtube: Kyle Kingbury Podcast  Kyles website: www.kingsbu.com - Gardeners of Eden site    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 to the show, everybody. Today's guest is a very special guest, Dr. Anna Youssef. Dr. Anna is a Yale graduate, and she's got just about every academic thing you could think of. She's a medical doctor, a practicing psychiatrist, but perhaps most importantly to me and my audience, she's a world traveler, a seeker of ancient religions and tools. And of course, that has led her to the experience and the yoga of plant medicine experiences. She's also on the board for Rhythmia, and she's doing really, really cool things in the world.

She's an author. She's got a new book coming out as well, which we dive into. But I was really pumped with this one. It's a short one, but a very good one. I'm going to have her back out for a longer one here, live face-to-face at the farm. And we plan on doing some of these practices, which she goes over at the end here, very, very together. We're going to do these practices together once she gets out here.

And I'm so stoked to have her on this podcast. And I'm so stoked to get to meet her in person. She's an amazing person. There are very few people like her. Dr. Dan Engel comes to mind. And of course, everyone's their own person, but I just don't know many licensed psychiatrists that are practicing Western medicine and also practicing South American medicine amongst other medicine tools.

So very cool. She has some great takes on creating miracles, which I think is fantastic. And she does a great job of outlining the definition of that, how it differs from a course in miracles. And it really aligns. I'm not going to give it away here, but it really does align with my definition of miracles. And then how do we step into a space where that becomes a regular thing? How do we make ourselves available for miracles? I absolutely love it. I can't wait to dive into a new book. I can't wait to have you here in person.

Share this podcast far and wide. Leave us a five-star review with one or two ways the show has helped you out in life and support our sponsors. But before we get into today's sponsors, I want to tell you about Fit for Service. This is the last week you can sign up for Fit for Service. Physically fit, I'm teaching, and it is a holistic health and wellness class. It teaches everything I've learned from all the great masters, from masters like Paul Cech, people I've had on this podcast, Dr. Michael Ruscio, the holistic OBGYN, Dr. Nathan Riley, and so many more are folded into this class. The teaching is distilled in a way that's palpable for everybody. And I'm a guy who's got two kids, a wife, a podcast, a farm, and another full-time

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And without further ado, Dr. Anna Youssef, welcome to the podcast. Well, I've heard about you in different circles within my community. And you've been on my radar for some time. And I love this stuff. And I've got a good friend who's a psychiatrist who also spent about a year and a half in the Amazon. His name is Dr. Dan Engel. And it seems like y'all are just cut from a different cloth. There's very few of you that stay in the field, deeply embedded in academia and Western medicine, but also have such an expansive

view of reality that definitely isn't what you're taught in school. So I'd love to get your background. What was life like growing up? Your parents, all that good stuff. And then we'll dive into your education and then we'll dive into worldly travels and all the fun stuff that shaped you and the person that you are today. Beautiful. Thank you, Kyle.

And yes, I think you're exactly right that there aren't that many people who are maybe so spiritually left of center as I am, and also, you know, very much in the academic world as a professor at Yale, as a psychiatrist, etc. And, but the funny part is, had you told me 25 years ago that I would be a spiritual person, and that spirituality would be like the direction my life would go, I would have left. It was the furthest thing from my mind. And you asked how I grew up. I was born in Russia. And my mom was actually always quite spiritual. My dad was not as spiritual. We were Jewish. We grew up in a Jewish family. For my dad, Judaism was much more cultural than it was spiritual.

But my mom was a seeker. And even from an early age, was seeking things outside of Judaism. She was reading about Hare Krishna, about Buddhism, about meditation when we were in Russia. But I've always been a lot more like my father, very rational, scientific. My dad, a biomedical engineer, a physics professor now, and thought about the world very rationally. And so I continued about my path. I went to Stanford, studied biology. I worked in the neurobiology lab of Dr. Robert Sapolsky, studied the effects of stress on the brain, decided I would eventually go to medical school, took some time off, became a management consultant. That was very fun. That taught me professionalism. And then after that, went to Yale Medical School.

And it was actually after Yale, when I was doing my residency at NYU, that interesting and unusual experiences started happening in my life that led me to question how I had always seen the world. And that's how spirituality entered. So case in point, I had just gone to, it was a time in my life also, it was my dark night of the soul, right? This is a time when I was open to a paradigm shift in my way of seeing the world. It was a time when I think we're most vulnerable to actually our consciousness being raised in unanticipated ways. And so that's what was happening. I ended a relationship. There was a new relationship that was starting that wasn't working. And I wasn't even sure that I wanted to be a psychiatry resident anymore.

So there's a lot of just uncertainty in many aspects of my life. And in the course of that, I started going to some lectures. I didn't know, you know, and here I am a psychiatrist. I'm supposed to have the tools to help people through these kinds of things. And I was doing therapy. I was doing all that, but it wasn't really helping me. It wasn't helping me solve my problems. So I started to look elsewhere. I'm like, well, maybe I'll go to this lecture at a synagogue about the soul and about soulmates. Maybe that will give me insight into something. So I go to this lecture and then the lecture was very interesting. And it was, I was eating an ice cream on the way back at a little ice cream store.

And that's when this interesting event happened. A psychic with a young child came in and said to me, Anna, I have some messages for you. I don't think she said Anna. She said, I have some messages for you. Can I give you a message? And so this woman with a child looks rather innocuous. I said, sure, what's the message? And this woman who I'd never met before, who certainly didn't know me, sat down next to me and started telling me all these deep truths about my life, including the name of the guy who things

weren't working out with, who she had no way of knowing, and certain things that I've never even written in my diaries before. Certainly they weren't on Facebook, and she just knew. And that experience was, how did this person know about the inner contents of my mind? I thought my mind was separate and discreet from other minds. But here is a person who's somehow starting to penetrate aspects of me that nobody knows without my telling them. What does that say about the nature of reality? And so it was that and how I was trained as a psychiatrist.

We think about the mind in a scientific way, and then something crazy like this happens. And then you're like, how does reality really work? And that's what got me into this whole spiritual thing and into trying to understand telepathy, the nature of reality, vibrational medicine, and all those things. That's such a cool event. I think of the synchronicities that lead us to down certain paths and how that gets expanded upon. And, you know, the dark night of the soul can't be overlooked. It's a term, you know, for someone who hasn't gone through it, it's a term for me that I was just like, yeah, hard times, you know, and then like you have it and you're like, that's the lowest of the low. There's no way out. And so much comes from it,

having gone through that at which point did you start traveling and studying um uh kabbalah and things of that nature where did where did you start traveling how did that kick off and you're unfolding yeah it was it was all around the same period and this is like the dark night of the soul trying to find answers and the answers were um the thought process was here i am a psychiatrist i'm getting excellent training i'm in my own therapy and i'm still feeling really stuck and like I can't move past this dark night of the soul. I feel very, very, in a way, contracted. And the answers of my therapy weren't moving me in the direction I needed. And so that's when I started looking for answers outside of my

profession. And that took me to ashrams in India and learning Buddhist meditation in Thailand and studying Kabbalah in Israel first, and then ultimately in New York City and working with different shaman in South Africa, South America, and really understanding what's the nature of healing. How does healing really work? And what is this thing we call soul? You know, as a psychiatrist, one of the translations of psyche is actually soul soul so i'm supposed to be a doctor of the soul but in none of my training at stanford at yale at nyu is the soul ever really mentioned so what is this mysterious thing called soul how do i heal other people's souls and how do i heal my own soul right now so that was what you know led to all that. I like that in your, and you can, you can just

decline the answer if you don't want to say it because of the academic background, but when you're in South Africa or South America, did you partake in any medicine journeys? Yes. Well, at that time I didn't, I had since then, since then I have, but you know, in places where it's medically legal, et cetera. And I'm actually on the board of Rhythmia. Rhythmia is a place in, yeah, in Costa Rica where they have medically legal ayahuasca journeys. And so I'm helping them to try to, you know, ensure that the standards are really high of the experiences people have had. And I have been there. But this was, you know, many years later. And what they tout at Rhythmia is that you have a miracle during your four-day

journey experience. And I've certainly had some miracles there, some things. And when I say miracle, for me, what that means is a shift in my perception and perspective that I almost thought was impossible. And that's what often these plants could do. They just take us to a different level and you just feel like you're on one vibration and then you come out and you're a different person and you're forever changed. And it's the most amazing thing. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I mean, that was certainly, I think the biggest part of my trajectory was having that brought

to me. My boxing coach, when I was fighting professionally, was a medicine man. And eventually, you know, we learned of different tools, but we started with sweat lodges and things at the reservation and eventually brought in psilocybin. And then he brought us some curanderos to work with ayahuasca. And that was like, wow, there's, I had no, didn't know that existed. Didn't know that could exist. And I haven't been to Rhythmia yet, but I've been to Sultara down in Costa Rica and they're fantastic as well. And I just, I just really appreciate the thought that goes into

creating a container that that's, that is that safe, you know, and comfortable because, because it's, it's deep work. Like Dr. Dan says, somebody who's doing psychic surgery, you want them to have a steady hand, you know, and it's the before and the after that really makes it complete. And I think they do such a great job of that. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I love that. And I think you're exactly right. That like the experience is one thing, but it's the before and after. It's the preparation, setting the intentionality. And it's not to say that your intentions are always going to match what happens because

you're given what you need and not what you want. But then whatever you're given is usually very potent and powerful, but then it's about integrating into your life. And it's like, how do we make this not just an isolated experience, but something that really does change you forever so that you almost don't even remember the person that you were prior to coming. I like that. Yeah. You're so in the now of your new being that the old worries fade. None of that's nothing on the trajectory anymore. Talk a bit about what, you know, so you hit your world travels, you come back. When does all this start to click for you and settle in? And of course you're an author,

a real end diamond in your book. And I really want to unpack it because I'm going to read it in between this podcast and the next when we get to go face to face but where did things start to translate into you know now I've got feet on the ground I have an idea of what I'm going to do with my life I have an idea of what to share with people and some of the practices that you're into now yeah absolutely so um so finished up my residency and then I um I wasn't filled with an academic institution. I didn't want to get on faculty because I was already starting to think about things spiritually. I was thinking about writing a book about my experience, trying to integrate psychiatry with

spirituality. And my thought was, well, if I'm at Yale, if I'm at Harvard, if I'm at a place where it's very academically rigorous, maybe that will actually constrain my own, like what I'm going to say, what I'm going to do. I'm going to feel as though I have to kowtow to the establishment or to the dominant paradigm. And so I very deliberately was not on any faculty appointments. And my book came out in 2017. And then I went around the country presenting my book and also doing workshops at Kripalu, at Omega, places like that. And I was doing it at Yale. And I have many professors from my medical school days who I really love. And Dr. Robert Rohrabach, after my presentation, invited me to come onto faculty at Yale. And it was then that we started talking about the possibility of my starting a mental

health and spirituality center there. And I was thrilled. I was like, well, rather than being discredited for my ideas, they actually want me to come to be a professor. Yeah. And they like what I put and they want to even start a center. This is fantastic. Yes. So I was thrilled about that. And so, you know, we've been in process for that since. And I think it's really about, you know, integrating these two worlds and figuring out how to help people through spirituality, spiritual practices, through beliefs, through for some people, spirituality could be a religious thing for some people, secular spirituality, meditation, yoga, et cetera, but helping them to elevate their

consciousness through that and reduce their suffering. I love that. And it's so cool to see, you know, like the new paradigm shift of kind of the old guard, the ivory towers, as Jack Cruz calls them, also saying, hey, there's something here. Let's bring this in and at least learn, right? Rather than just scoffing. If it's not in a textbook, it doesn't exist kind of deal. And I appreciate that. It's been a nice twist in how the modern world is shaping. Absolutely. And what they actually are saying is, okay, yeah, we do see that there is some scientific effect. Let's study this very

rigorously and scientifically. Yes, it does appear that there's something here, but how do we subject it to the same scientific study and inquiry that we do every other scientific medication or, you know, intervention that we have? And it's a really interesting question because science is always looking for that, which is repeatable, subject to experimentation, double-blind placebo-controlled trials. Spirituality is very difficult to study in that way because it's so subjective, transcendent, not always something that you could, you know, see with your eyes or hear with your ears. It could be a deeply personal experience. So it's a very interesting question as to how to subject the spiritual world to scientific inquiry. Yeah, I'm thinking of the Good Friday experiment, you know, and just how they can make, they can

take a subjective, you know, a series of questions before and after with different people and see how that applies. Because you can still apply it kind of the science of two, the science of subjectivity, you know, like the science of someone's personal experience, you know, in a large enough group, then you can actually start to tease out results that are pretty consistent. Absolutely. Absolutely. And so with also the center at Yale that I'm starting, which is going to be a bridge between Yale Divinity School and Yale Medical School, the Divinity School is a deeply academic, very academically rigorous place, but they use completely different methods. They use qualitative methods of, you know, study and inquiry. methods and how to then combine them with our more scientific quantitative methods to come together to use the best of both worlds and really create powerful studies that answer important questions. That's awesome. Talk about your book. Your book came out in 2017. So I feel like

you've had enough life experience to bring you to the place where you're like, all right, I can put this out now. And there's been plenty of time since then to unpack that and to really, you know, to tour it, to do all the things with it. What are some of the key things that you put in that book that you think people would translate, that would translate to people right now on the podcast? Definitely. Yeah. So the book is divided into three sections and with four chapters each. The first section is authenticity and authenticity is really, who are you? How do you tell the truth to yourself? And unless we are actively doing that, most likely we're living in some form of self-deception. It's just a reality, right?

And so it's four chapters on how to do that. And what that also means is, how do you separate your own voice from all the other voices in your head? The voice of society, of your mother, of your wife, of your father, of your child. How do you know who you really are and what you most deeply want,

separate from what everybody else wants of you? So there's a lot of experiential exercises to get you there, but also a lot of theory, philosophy from many different disciplines as to what that actually means and why it's important. So that's the first part, authenticity. The second part is soul corrections. And a soul correction is basically what your soul has come into this world to correct. And you could know your soul correction by asking, what is the most difficult and painful thing in your life? What is the thing that you keep coming back to again and again and again, often much to your chagrin and dismay and despite your best efforts to change it?

And so soul corrections are specific to an individual. And the four that are covered in my book are harnessing personal power, overcoming fear, improving relationships, and releasing addictions. And addictions mean many, many different things, right? Addictions could be drug and alcohol addictions. They can be behavioral addictions, iPhone addiction, sex addiction, or it can be psychological addictions. Those things that are often covert addictions, those things that in moderation are really good, like money, status, power, fame, et cetera. But then it becomes an addiction when the more of it we have, the emptier we feel. And so that's the second part of the book, which is about how to overcome these addictions and also how to identify your own soul correction and what that means and how

to move beyond that. And the third part of the book is connecting to part of something greater. So that's the most spiritual part of the book. And the sections there are interconnectedness, immortality, consciousness, and synchronicity. So it's about those concepts and how they relate to the world and how to harness synchronicity, how to elevate our consciousness, what the nature of interconnectedness, telepathy is, and how we can improve. So telepathy is essentially a glorified form of intuition. People who are highly intuitive can become telepathic. And this is our interconnectedness with each other.

And this is what I described to you as the psychic coming into the ice cream shop and telepathically being able to read my mind. What in the world happened? How did she have that capacity? Do we all have that capacity? If so, how do we harness it? What's the implications of us all having such a capacity? And then immortality, it's this idea of, well, immortality means so many different things. The fact that loved ones live on near-death experiences, the fact that all matter gets

recycled in some way, shape, or form. And so it talks about that and accessing and connecting to your spirit guides. And so that's a little bit about my book. That sounds like such an amazing book. I can't wait to dive into it. I love the way that you broke that down too, because authenticity is a word that gets tossed around in a lot of new age communities and circles and, you know, my truth and this kind of, that kind of jargon. It's just a different lexicon, right? But the way that you're, the way that you're pointing to that is, is very practical. You know, I'm, I'm in physical fitness, you know, and have been for a while and teaching people about health and wellness.

And that's one of the, one of my favorite coaches, Paul Cech, you know, he'd say, stop bullshitting yourself. And that's what he meant. Like, don't bullshit about when you go to bed. Don't bullshit about how much TV you watch watch don't bullshit about what you have in your pantry you know what's your favorite snack like that's all okay just be honest right and i think that's such a critical piece and the other piece that i that i that i was hoping you'd bring up because it's one of the things that i was for me personally on my plant medicine journey was like so confrontational was the living of other people's choices, you know, and even if I didn't exact on that, it was the pressure and the weight of not doing other

people's choices, of not doing what I was supposed to do societally and not doing what my parents wanted to do. And that's such a massive one for all of us. You know, even if you have great parents, I mean, everyone means well, you know, they want their best for their kids. And I get all that being a dad now. And it's such a sticky thing, you know, that we all have to overcome. Um, and many of us don't even realize that that's so embedded in us, right? It's like in the inner workings of our, of our body and our mind. And, um, unless we give that real focus and

attention, it's just, it's like, it's like a background app just operating constantly, you know, and taking up space. So, and that's the thing I love about plant medicines is, you know, what you've got hidden behind the curtain often is revealed. And so there's, there's something I need to take a look at that I've been kind of refusing on a conscious level. It's going to pop up for me, but yeah, that was such a big piece in the early on in those journeys was really coming to terms with, with what had I been taught? What do they want me to do? And does that matter to me? And what do I actually want? And really getting true, being true to myself on which path I want to take. Yeah, it's so powerful. And it takes so

much courage, right? Because especially the majority of people who were imbuing you with ideas and who had certain expectations for people who loved you deeply, who wanted all the best for you, who still probably do. And to break away from some of those people, it's painful. It's difficult for them. If they're more evolved, they get it that that's part of the normal order of things. But oftentimes people could be like, what? You don't want to live the life that we're living. You want a different life. You want to make different choices. And then they're hurt. And then you're hurt. And then there's guilt. And then there's's shame and there's all of those things to overcome. And then on the other side of that is freedom, is recognizing that you are, you know, your first relationship isn't actually even with the people in your life. It's with you

and the divine. And if you can harness and honor that relationship, which is really about honoring your own soul because the divine, it could be a white man in a beard on a cloud, but it could also be a deep heart within yourself, right? We all have divinity within us. And so our first relationship is with that and to be in alignment with that and to be honest with ourselves in that way. And also to be able to get guidance from that part of ourselves, our higher self, the divinity within us, that changes our life. And then suddenly we're not beholden to others' expectations or societal expectations.

We have our own mission and purpose. and that's why we're here. That's so beautifully stated. I think of that too, like the power to access our own intuition or to access the knowledge of the high self or the soul or great spirit, God itself, whatever you want to call those things, the higher plane of consciousness that's watching at all times, that can tap in. And it seems like there's things that we can do, many of which you're unpacking. First, be honest with yourself. Second, get clear on what you want to do and what are the influences that you've lived with thus far. Once we're able to kind of move through that noise, it feels like we're more receptive then. It's opening up our ability to receive the downloads, the intuitions, and the little pings. Yeah, that's exactly right,

because that's the whole thing. The divine part of us or our soul, we have access to it at all times, but there's so many things obscuring that, and that is all the different voices from all the different impacts or the people who impact our lives, our families, societies, et cetera. And it's also all of our own baggage. It's our fear. It's our shame. It's our contracted nature.

It's who would I be if I chose to do something that maybe isn't the most financially gainful thing, but actually aligns with my soul and is a more creative endeavor? Who would I be if I left this marriage? Who would I be if I decided not to have children? Who would I be if I did something that was different from what the rest of society expects and wants? Yeah, it's big, big questions. And big questions. Absolutely. Absolutely. What are some, I mean, what are some of your favorite practices having, you know, been around the world and, and, um, you know, I went to Thailand years ago with my dad and it was mostly just to train Muay Thai, which is their amazing martial art.

But we did go to one of the Buddhist temples and we were blessed because they're a warrior culture. And so it was really cool to be honored in that way. I didn't know much about Buddhism until much later in my life after retiring. But it seems like you've taken so many great lineages and paths to learn more. What are some of your favorite ways to connect to the divine? And what are some of your favorite practices that you have? Yeah, you know, I am always looking to learn from different people from different traditions. That's kind of my thing.

I love novelty. I love newness. And then I have my age old practices that I really love. And some of them are just regular, simple meditation, daily meditation, 20 minutes a day. I watch my thoughts. When a thought comes in, put it on a cloud, watch it float away, create a vacuum in my mind for the next thought to be able to come in. So that's one. And I also love, there's a Kabbalistic practice called the Mikvah, which is essentially like a spiritual cleansing bath. And it's best to be done in a spring water or any

body of water that's like a natural body of water you could do it in a pool sometimes i could do it in a big bathtub if there's no pool and you essentially um say a little prayer and you dunk yourself first with your eyes and mouth wide open which is like a return to the womb so it's a complete like rebirth so every time you do it it's a rebirth and then you dunk yourself 10 more times with your eyes closed one for each of the um energy centers of the tree of life and then you say those and for me i always feel so refreshed and amazing after this it's like a five minute practice but i just love it and that is why i love to be i'm right now in my home in woodbury connecticut and i do not have a body of water here so here i'm relegated to my bathtub, but I'm going to be in the Hamptons very soon. And so I cannot wait to

be able to actually be on the water and to be able to start dunking for real. So those are two of my favorites. That's so cool. We have a sculpture here on our farm with, on the outside, it's from the Chavin culture, which worked with primarily with Wachuma in the Andes. And so they have the big lanson, these four lansons, which are phallic, these giant antenna that connect you from heaven to earth, and they're your guide points through the journey. On the interior, that is the tree of life. And at the very top of it is the flower of life. I think you'll enjoy checking that out when you come here. I love it.

I am so excited to check out your amazing 100-acre regenerative farm. Oh, my goodness. I cannot wait. Yeah, you'll like the statues. We got ponds, too. So I want to do that practice in the pond for sure. Oh, that would be amazing. And I'll lead you through it.

I'll tell you the little part. If it's the first time you've ever done it, you will definitely feel a spiritual elevation because I take so many people through this practice and everybody feels it. So we'll get you. We'll get your family. It'll be so special. Awesome. I'm super excited. That's so good. So what are your plans now? It's been a while since you've written a book. You are doing a lot of education talks. Obviously you're still working with Yale. Talk about what's going on

in your life right now. Yeah. So I am starting, we're still in the process of fundraising right now for the Yale Mental Health and Spirituality Center. So this is a big project right now. And then the second thing is I'm writing my next book, which, so the first one was on the science of spirituality. This book is on the science of miracles with a miracle being defined as something highly beneficial, yet statistically improbable. And the question of the book is what can we do to welcome miracles into our life? So that's been a project. And I'm right now a author, a speaker, a coach. So I have a lot of clients that I'm working with on one-on-one and also workshops, et cetera. So life is busy.

Life is rich. Life is full. That sounds amazing. Oh, that sounds really good. Yeah, I'm curious about your next book too, because of the just like thinking of A Course in Miracles and like, you know, as you mentioned, synchronicities towards the end of your book, it feels like when we start on our path, the things that work that we gravitate towards and we start to add the tools to the toolbox, that it's almost like a synchronicity generator. You know, like if we're living in our dharma,

that these things start to line up in a way where there's, you know, I call them God nods. There's like a God nod in every corner where there's the aha, okay, cool. I'm heading the right direction. Love that. Love the God nod idea. Love that. So yeah, I think that's incredible with miracles because it's such a big piece that I don't, I mean, there are even fundamentalist people that I knew or grew up with feel like miracles are outside of themselves.

Like that only happens to the handicapped kid who learns how to walk. Like they don't see their everyday miracles or the miracle that's possible for them. But it almost seems like similarly to the synchronicities that if we bring in the right practices and we do come into a place where miracles are possible. I totally agree. And I love what you said on so many levels, like number one, the Course in Miracles, right? According to to the course in miracles, a miracle is a shift in perception. And so we were talking about plant medicine. Plant medicine can create miracles by allowing you to shift perceptions. And sometimes I have clients, patients come to me and they're so set in their ways, can only see things in one perspective. Like there was a woman

whose husband cheated on her and she could not get over it at all. Tried everything, tried and then did some plant medicine and lo and behold, that's what moved the needle. And so it's like, so one definition of miracles is a shift in perception. My definition of miracles is actually a secular definition, which is miracle being defined as something highly beneficial, yet statistically improbable. By that definition, miracles happen all the time because there's always something on this side of the bell curve, right? There's always an outlier. And so the question is, you study the outliers and you understand what is happening. And outliers could be spontaneous remissions from cancer or cures from incurable diseases or a person walking who shouldn't walk. And yet these things happen all the time. And there are communities that harness that. Like Joe Dispenza, a meditation teacher, there's a lot of miracles there. People come there looking for a miracle. And what is he peddling? He's peddling meditation. This man is not peddling anything crazy. He's peddling meditation and the science behind meditation, which is so beautiful. And then people in this very, very elevated community of

people who are all meditating together and create such a powerful field, people have their miracles. And I've met so many people in that community who've had these miracles. So it's like learning where these communities exist, all the different practices that different cultures and different religions have to create miracles. And then also that fine line between our deliberate action to create the miracle and surrender, which for many people, because all of us are control freaks a little bit, right? Surrender is the hardest, hardest part because then we have to release control and we have to be comfortable with uncertainty. And for many of us,

that is just anathema in a place where like, God forbid, what happens then? Yeah, that's such an important piece. I've been a fan of Joe for years and have worked through a series of his meditations and manifested, I mean, this fucking house, my relationship with my wife, like so much of that came into harnessing those practices very early on when they enter into these states. But something that he, you know, something I was thinking about too, that's kind of counter, it's more into what you are bringing to the table now is that belief is such an important piece of the structure, right? Now, Robert Anton Wilson, he was such a great author and a great guy. He wrote Cosmic Trigger and Prometheus Rising. He said, I don't believe in reality, but I believe in realities, plural, as in everyone has their own reality tunnel. And within that tunnel, they're mirroring back to them their own belief system. And scientifically, that doesn't make sense, right? We want an objective reality. But at the same time, the more I begin to operate with that

as an understanding of our reality, the greater degree my life changes rapidly, you know, and the more people I see adopt that and take responsibility for how their understanding of consciousness and their participation in it, the greater their ability to change what's happening in their life. I love that. I think that's absolutely true. On so many levels, we do all live in our own reality and our reality creates an echo chamber for our life. And we are constantly by virtue of our reality, drawing in and magnetizing into our life, people that reflect back our life. And we are constantly by virtue, by reality, drawing in and magnetizing into our life, people that reflect back our reality. And that includes the beauty of our life. And that also includes the challenges of our lives, right? If we live in a, if we live very scared,

we're going to have a lot of experiences come in to reinforce our fears. And so that's how it's so powerful, as you said, that as we go in and if we can identify what our blockages are by seeing what kinds of challenges have been coming up and showing up, by seeing what kind of people have been coming up, what works, what doesn't work, we can identify that and say, how do I need to change myself to change my vibration to then start magnetizing in a different reality? And this is the two different kinds, two different ways of manifesting in the world right there is the more i would call it masculine way of manifesting which is work really hard deliberate intent here's my goal i'm going to make it happen and then there is the more feminine way of

manifesting which is more about receiving and becoming a magnet for that which you want to attract and working not by doing as you would in the masculine way but more on being and being the best version of yourself being in joy being in fulfillment and doing whatever you would in the masculine way, but more on being and being the best version of yourself, being in joy, being in fulfillment and doing whatever you need to elevate your vibrational frequency to become a match for whatever it is that you're drawing in. I love that. There's a couple of really good points there. When I think of it, I think of through all indigenous cultures, there's a thousand different ways you can look at an animal totem and say, this is what that animal means. But one of the things that I've loved when I think of the spider is that it sets its web and it waits.

It's the ultimate patience, the ultimate receiver, the ultimate in femininity. It sets the net and it just hangs out and then it draws in what's going to come to it. And I think of that as the feminine receptivity. Surrender is such an important piece. And I've heard Dr. Joe talk about that in various ways, because you have to set your intention, but then how do you balance that with surrender? You know, and he says, you surrender the how and the when. You surrender the how and the when, which leaves the infinite capacity of the quantum or of God to actually bring you the best thing possible. And I think that's such an important piece. I don't think I ever could surrender prior to ayahuasca.

Like there's almost like a gentle yet firm hand that helps that take place, right? Oh my goodness. I could not agree with you more. And that's exactly, actually. So my second miracle in Rhythmia was the physical embodiment of surrender in a way that I never, ever had

experienced in my life. Exactly what you're describing, which is, it was, it was such a crazy story. Actually, I could tell you the story, but, um, yes, I'll tell you the story. Um, and so it was the second day, um, of the AYA, um, my second time there. And, um, so usually, um, when I drink AYA, I start with a little bit more because I know my body metabolizes it quite quickly. So I usually start with two cups to start. And so I went to the guy and I said, I usually start with two cups. And he's like, you know, our brew's kind of strong. I think you should start with one and a half cups. And I'm like, okay, that's fine. But you know, usually I start with two. So if you want to, you know, fine. So thank God this guy gave me only one and a half cups. This is,

this Aya sent me like flying to, I don't even like, God knows. And so, and what happened then is I just, you know, for me with Aya, sometimes I can start to feel unsafe in my body, which is a very unusual feeling for me because I'm super healthy and I generally feel super safe in my body. I'm sure that you as well feel that. And with Aya, so this, like you start to feel like I'm about to have a heart attack. I'm about to die. You're like, like what is happening to me? And then I just remember feeling like I have no control here. I can call out for help, which I've done in the past with Aya, but I can call out for help and no one's going to help me because this is between Aya and my body. This really isn't something, you know? And so what I do is I go and I lie prostrate

on the earth, just like completely like headfirst, just like completely connect to the earth and surrender. And it was like this in the midst of fear and having no control whatsoever, feeling like you're going to die, lying flat on the earth and surrender. And then it was from that place that I felt myself being lifted up with divinity and being taken to a place I'd never been taken and actually being shown that when I surrendered, all the things that I wanted came to me and that it was not through my doing. And then I was like, Oh my God, that's what surrender is. And all these other times I was just like, okay, I, you know, you say I surrender, I surrender. It's like a word, but you don't

really know what it is until you're like on the verge of death. You think that you're about to die. You're prostrate on the earth. And then you're shown here's what surrender is. Duh. And I'm like, it was, it was one of the most powerful experiences of my life. And certainly one of the two most powerful experiences of Aya for me. Oh, that's so incredible. Yeah. And it's, it is funny because it's, it's, you know, it's not always the same. It's, it's, uh, that's one of the things when you think scientifically, it's why I think they want like a synthetic version of DMT and a synthetic version of some of the different plant alkaloids in the vine, because then you actually can quantify better because when they harvested, where they got it from, all these things make such a big

difference, how they brewed it, you know, that technology changes each time. But yeah, surrender, it's funny because there's so many times where it's like, I think like, because I've surrendered in the past, if I'm going to experience this really challenging, I'll say the same thing. Like, okay, I get it. I surrender. All right. I give up. You know?

And it's like, it's just a masculine way of like trying to like patch the thing. This is going out of control. Let me just surrender right now. And it's not actually surrendering. It's not actually just giving in and allowing. But when you get to that point, it's like such a visceral understanding of it. It's, it's, it's, you know, it's in every cell, the surrender. And it's an unforgettable experience.

Exactly. Exactly. And that's the thing. It's almost like I didn't know how to surrender. I've always wanted to surrender. But we're not given any courses on surrender. We're not really even taught what it is. It's a word.

We kind of get theoretically, philosophically what it is. But until you're at a place where you have no choice but to surrender, it's like that rock bottom. And, you know, I thought I'd reach rock bottom. I thought I'd been in my dark night of the soul, but never like this, never like where you feel unsafe in your body and about to die. You're at a journey with, um, siluoska as Terrence McKenna, the McKenna brothers coined it, that it's Syrian rue, which is a beautiful little shrub that kind of grows from all over the world. India, the Hindu Kush mountains in Afghanistan does really well in Texas. Um, and that carries the same alkaloids as the vine of ayahuasca. So it's got haramine, harmaline, uh, beta carboline. It's got a lot of the good stuff that helps us as a MAO inhibitor.

And it's very grounding technology. And then you can stack that with a tryptamine. So that stack of psilowaskas with psilocybin. And I felt like if I purged that I was going to turn my body inside out. Like that was the point where I was like, this is where I actually flip. And my body purges so hard that I come out of my mouth as an inside out person. That's what I was like. And yeah, that was a very hard surrender, you know, but ultimately, I think we're brought to those places too, because I too feel super secure in my body. I feel great about it.

And one of the things that I find that's kind of normal, or there's a consistent thread through a lot of those journeys that are that challenging, is the not wanting to be taken care of, not wanting to be the person that requires help. You know, like I've done this 30 times. I don't want to be the guy that raises my hand for the shaman. I don't want to be the guy that's making a lot of noise or flopping around.

You know, like I'm the guy that holds that energy next to the person who's flopping around. And then when it's you, it's like there's really, you know, only two choices, either sit in misery or actually let it move through, you know? Totally.

That's exactly it. That's exactly it. That's exactly it. It becomes bigger than you. And I so understand what you're describing, what you hold. I hold that as well for people. I'm always the one taking care of everybody else, right? We're healers. That's what we do.

We hold space for that. And so to be on the other side of that. And so I was describing to you my crazy eye experience. So after I had this surrender thing, some floodgates opened in me and I started uncontrollably crying and just could not stop. But it wasn't just cries. It was these like guttural sobs that like I was, I was outside as far as you can be from like the Maloka where everybody else was.

But apparently they were so loud that everybody could hear me. And so there's people running out and saying, um, could you wail just a little softer? We know that you suck something really hard. But like there's other people as well over there. Is it possible for you to just, and then I would stop. And then it would happen again and I couldn't stop. It was crazy. And five times I had to have these people come

and tell me to shut up. So this is what happens, Jess, you know? Yeah, I call that the sock puppet, you know, when you just basically, you become a sock puppet and there's nothing you can do to stop that. Exactly, exactly. And then there's this really nice guy. He's like, I get it. I've been where you are.

He's like one of the people watching. I know where you are. Just let it all out. I was like, thank you. At least someone understands. That's so cool. And so do you make frequent trips down there? Or is this something where now you just do from like a board standpoint?

Is there like an annual meetup that you guys have as directors and people that help out with that or kind of just as it calls to you? Yeah, it's right now basically. So I came on to help them open up a facility in the Bahamas, which they were working on. So God willing, that's going to move forward. And the last time I was there was about a year ago. So I hope to go again soon. There isn't a plan at present, but it's a really, really special place. That's super cool. And you work with people. Talk a bit about that. Is that mostly one-on-ones? Is there small group training? What are you doing in your private training to

help people? Yeah. So I'm both a psychiatrist and a coach. So I do a lot of work with, and usually the people who I work with are, because I'm also an executive coach, I work with a lot of C-suite executives, either in a coaching capacity or in a capacity as a psychiatrist. I'm part of this coaching group, MG100 or the 100 Coaches Agency. And so they're some of the top coaches in the world and they often will refer their patients to me who are like C-suite executives, et cetera. And so I'm their psychiatrist, so I do like these tag team things. And then also I do my own coaching with a lot of different individuals in a lot of different industries. A lot of people in academia, actually, chairs of departments, some hedge funds, venture capital folks, a lot of startups and founders. And we do all kinds,

all kinds of work. And the work is one-on-one. It could be once a week, twice a week. And oftentimes we also will do intensives. And I also do intensives for couples. So we can do, like I had a client of mine, we did a five-day intensive for him and his partner in Cabo recently. And that was really powerful and amazing. And then sometimes with the people that I coach, we'll do the coaching plus a three-day intensive for them or them and their significant other. And then the other thing is I do a lot of workshops. We have a workshop with some women in Darien, Connecticut that we're planning for next month for myself and two of my colleagues. And I do workshops at Kripalu, at Omega, at Esalon, at Copper Beach Institute, all over. And I love working with amazing people,

working with good friends and doing these things together. I just did a Costa Rica retreat with some friends called Frequency about two months ago. So all kinds of fun things. That's so cool. And are the workshops open to the public? Yeah, for sure, for sure.

For sure. I can, uh, yeah, I can let you know about this one that's coming up in, uh, I think we're going to cap it probably at about 40 people. So it's not like a humongous workshop, but absolutely. I'll, I'll let you know about that. I love those. We do. I mean, I work with, with Aubrey Marcus, you know, you're going to podcast with, and, and, um, I've been working with him for eight years now, first at Onnit and then in Fit for Service, which is our kind of year-long mastermind. And we take people through a number of practices online, but we have three big meetups. And that's generally between 150 to 250 people. But we also do the immersives. You know, like we're all fast with a group of 30 people for five days doing the fasting mimicking diet.

And we'll do sauna and ice bath each day. And my brother, Eric Godsey, will break down some of the Jungian psychology and dream analysis and help them see how symbols to their dreams or the psyche speaking to them or different symbols in the plant medicine journeys can be unpacked and looked at differently. So I love the immersives too. It's such a cool, it's an intimate group, right?

And I appreciate all the time that that's like that. We'll link to that in the show notes for everybody so they can check that out because this will release, I think next week. So it should be a few weeks beforehand. And then, yeah, it's nice that you go to the West coast too. I've loved Esalon. You know, I'm a big fan of Paul Selig and all the books that he's done there. And just so many other great people have come through that space. That's really cool that you're doing work there as well. Absolutely. Absolutely. And, um, I also looked up Eric's work.

I'm actually Dustin who connected us, Dustin Swartz, sent me a lot of Eric's work. And I love that he incorporates the dream work and work with the subconscious and the Dharma artists. And I just love the content that you're creating. And it's so exciting. So I think it's just beautiful. That's super cool. Well, one last question I'll leave you with.

Where do you think, you know, being in psychiatry, which for the large part, the best way to put it, for the large part has been mostly chemically based understanding of the brain, chemically understanding the mind and genetics, but also deficiencies, I guess you'd say, from a neurochemical balance standpoint, as opposed to everything that you're into now, which is literally beyond just lifestyle change. Like I could say lifestyle change is going to bet on time, you know, getting the right food in your body, these kinds of things, who you're surrounding yourself with, what kind of company do you keep? What kind of, what are you ingesting, you know, from your screen, you know, is that that's going to matter

too for lifestyle. But beyond that, in the spiritual, there's so many practices that you talk about, it's really just a's so many practices that you talk about. It's really just a whole different world than what you came from to what you're doing now. What are your thoughts on psychiatry as a whole starting to shift and adopt some of these practices? I think it's a great question. This is really also my life's work. And I feel as though my profession, psychiatry, has two primary modalities, psychotherapy,

which addresses the mind, and psychopharmacology, which addresses the brain. And although that is very helpful for many people, and I've certainly seen those modalities change lives, and I am a part of this profession, so I'm a huge fan of helping people in that way, it also, for many people, is quite limited. And what I think we're moving towards is mind-body-spirit medicine. And the mind is what we already have with the psychopharmacology and the psychotherapy and many other aspects of mind. The body is those parts of our human experience often overlooked by psychiatry, which includes nutritional psychiatry, exercise psychology, connection to nature, longevity, fertility,

healthy sexuality, and pleasure. Super, super super important often overlooked by psychiatry and then the spirit is all the aspects of our connection to something greater than ourself and to our own soul also often overlooked so i think that the psychiatric paradigm although powerful and helpful to so many people and i want to take the best of that i think it's limited and so my work is to integrate all these other things, mind, body, spirit, medicine, into psychiatry to make it whole and to give people tools that are more natural, holistic, to elevate their consciousness. Oh, that's so grand slam. That's amazing. I did want to leave it there, but I do have one more question that just popped up

if we have time here. Understanding the pharmacology of ayahuasca, especially, you know, there's so many SSRIs and things that are contraindicated, you know, you can't be on these things before you do this, this other thing. And it seems like some, some of the people would be the first to say, you know, like people that are, that are blood relatives of mine would be the first to say, Hey, I want to try that, but I can't because I'm taking these things and they're contraindicated. How long is generally the length of time one would want to taper and be off completely before entering into a plant

medicine journey with something like ayahuasca? Yeah, I would say to really run it by the ayahuasca shaman, they're probably going to have much better guidance than I have. But I would say to be safe a month, a month completely free and clean of everything before you go. I think at Rhythmia, they even say two weeks, but I would just say to be safe a month. And to, you know, if you're on psychiatric medication and you want to do ayahuasca, I mean, I think it's a wonderful goal. And I would certainly support a patient in wanting to do that if they are healthy and stable. And I think that they could safely get off their medication. And people often come to me to get off medication. So we come up with all sorts of alternative,

holistic ways to get them off. We put them on supplements. We do exercise, diet. We do all sorts of other things, spiritual practices. But getting off medications isn't for everyone. And there are some people whose ailments are primarily biological and they therefore need a biological treatment and ongoing medications. If you have something more serious, if there's strong family history, if there's a very strong genetic propensity. And so you have to be very careful. So I think it's so important to be evaluated by the right person, to talk to the right people, not to be haphazard because with a lot of plant medicines, including ayahuasca, if you have a predisposition to bipolar, you can get manic, you can get psychotic. There's all sorts of things

that could happen. So it's not for everybody. And it's so important that you be screened properly. That's beautifully stated. And I have seen the not so great side of that, you know, where it takes somebody six months to find themselves again. And it causes more harm than good, you know, so just being really, you know, really, really diligent on that and honest with ourselves too. You know, like, do I want this for myself? And if I truly do, I can wait for the right time to do it. Absolutely. Absolutely. That's beautiful. Do no harm. Well, Dr. Anna, I'm so excited to get to know you. I'm super excited to have you at the farm and I'll read your book in between podcasts and we'll run it back live. It's going to be amazing. That's amazing. I'm going to send you a copy of my book. So give me your address. That's perfect. And then I'll talk to Jose and we'll figure out back live. It's going to be amazing. That's amazing, Kyle. I'm going to send you a copy of my book.

So give me your address. That's perfect. And then I'll talk to Jose and we'll figure out a date. I can't wait. Perfect. Look forward to it. Thank you, Kyle. Thank you.