The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Unlocking Trauma and Transformation with Plant Medicine Retreats with Austin Mao

Starting point is 00:00:00 You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. I'm O.C. Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, that makes it official. Welcome to the big show. For 16 years, we've been bringing the smartest people on the planet, the CEOs, the billionaires,

Starting point is 00:00:49 the White House presidential advisors, the Pulitzer Prize winners, all the people that bring you their amazing stories, their journeys, their lessons of life, their cathartic moments they survived to help you know that you're not alone. And also, they might have resources or knowledge that can help you improve the quality of your life and get through it all. Isn't that what we're all trying to do? Life. Just trying to fucking get through it.

Starting point is 00:01:12 Austin Mao joins us on the show today. We're going to be talking to him about his amazing insight, his experience, and his work in what he does and all that good stuff. And so we'll be getting into that with him. But before that, refer the show to your family, friends, and relatives. Tell them to go to goodreads.com, Fortunes Christmas, LinkedIn.com, Fortunes Christmas, and all those crazy places on the Internet. He is the co-founder of Ceremonia.

Starting point is 00:01:39 Austin Mao joins us. He is a serial entrepreneur, author, poet, community builder, and keynote speaker renowned for his expertise at the intersection of science and spirituality, psychology, and shamanism. As the co-founder of Ceremonia, a legal and non-profit spiritual sanctuary in Denver, Colorado, Austin has dedicated his career to facilitating deep transformative experiences with psychosilvin and ayahuasca. Am I saying that right?

Starting point is 00:02:09 Psilocybin mushrooms and ayahuasca. Psilocybin mushrooms. I'm still learning. I'm high right now. No, I'm just kidding. Alongside his wife and co-founder, he's got over 500 individuals, including Fortune 500 executives, Silicon Valley unicorn founders, and major blockchain leaders, helping them achieve profound breakthroughs in creativity unicorn founders, and major blockchain leaders helping them achieve

Starting point is 00:02:25 profound breakthroughs in creativity, purpose, and peace. If you lost money on Bitcoin, you probably need some peace. Anyway, Bitcoin joke there. Austin, welcome to the show. How are you, sir? Thanks, Chris. Feeling really great. Excited to be here. Excited to have you as well, sir. Give us your dot coms wherever you want people to find you on the interwebs to get to know you better. You can find us at ceremoniacircle.org or ceremoniacircle on Instagram. And my personal Instagram is austinmao, M-A-O. So give us a 30,000 overview of what you do there. Ceremonia is the leading center in the United States for transformative experiences with plant medicine,

Starting point is 00:03:14 specifically psilocybin and ayahuasca. We operate under Colorado state law, so we're legal and non-profit. We're also a spiritual sanctuary that is serving these sacraments as, well, serving these medicines as sacrament. And what we do is we run retreats and we have a microdosing course that support people to get unstuck and transform their lives. We began with founders and entrepreneurs, but now cater to everybody. So we've worked with doctors and teachers and combat veterans and starving artists, you name it.

Starting point is 00:03:42 With combat veterans to help with their PTSD and stuff like that? Absolutely. We have about a 96% rate of success of people having a life-changing transformation. So when people come in, we ask them on video, what would a life-changing transformation look like for you? So they define it themselves. And then before they leave on video again, we ask them,

Starting point is 00:04:03 did you experience, what did you experience and did it meet your expectations? And 96% of the time, people exceed those expectations, which is extraordinary. I mean, it's, you know, people are finding that these, you know, like in states like I think Oregon and Denver and stuff, they've kind of decriminalized a lot of these things that were originally criminalized. And I think it's made for, you know, these police plants maybe are just so much better for us than maybe some of the, you know, the drugs that we've been taking that have been manufactured by man, right? The science shows that psilocybin mushrooms and psychedelic therapy is orders of magnitude better than the very best psychiatric care out there, which is a combination of therapy and antidepressants. And on the scale of medicines available, it is one of the safest medicines on the planet. There is not a single incidence of a recorded death

Starting point is 00:04:59 in the history of mushrooms, which are thousands of years. And it's far, far safer than anything that can possibly be prescribed. Wow. And do you hold retreats? Do you do individual work? You know, like some coaches do individual work over the internet. Do people have to come to you and meet you or go to events to partake in the thing? We do retreats.

Starting point is 00:05:23 We also have online courses and online coaching. But really, people are coming here for a three or six day experience where they're ready to change their lives. And usually when people come, they come in with some hope, right? For example, I would say at least half the people that come are on some form of antidepressant or some psychiatric medication. And, you know, first I just need to say I am not medical staff, so I'm not giving medical advice. But something like 80% of the people that leave our center never take their pharmaceuticals again, never need to take their pharmaceuticals again. Wow. I'm taking antidepressant right now.

Starting point is 00:06:03 It's coffee. Can you get me off my coffee? Actually, yes. Really? That's an idea. I need all the help I can get at 56 going on 57 here in another month or two. One of the things you guarantee on your website, how to get unstuck or basically unstuck in five days guaranteed. That's a tall order tall order yes we've had over 240 alumni come through our program and only one person ever has ever exercised that money-back guarantee oh wow and so it just goes to show you again the success rate that we have in in people having a life-changing transformation yeah they probably just showed up for the drugs and so people can call you and book you through a call find out more about it and how it works.

Starting point is 00:06:47 Now, you guys also have a podcast as well. Tell us about that. Yes, we have a podcast called Modern Enlightenment, where we have luminaries from psychedelic healing, spirituality, mindfulness that come on this podcast. We've had Rick Doblin, the founder of MAPS, Alex Gray, visionary artist. We've had Stanford professors, neuroscientists, so on and so forth. And the idea is that 100 years ago, if you wanted to follow the path of spiritual enlightenment, or in modern terms, awakening and healing, you would have to become a horny monk on a mountaintop. And now we have so many more tools available.

Starting point is 00:07:24 People often equate to horny monk on a mountaintop people often equate to this practice of psychedelic healing as 40 years of therapy and you know four hours and it really really feels like that for a lot of people and so you guys focus on the mushrooms and the ayahuasca. Do you guys ever get into any of the other variants? I think there's some people use, what's that thing everyone likes to use nowadays? It's the one guy died of it from the show, TV show Friends. Ketamine. Do you guys get into that or do you stick to what you have right now?

Starting point is 00:07:59 We don't personally work with ketamine. That is an FDA approved, the fda approved psychedelic that was approved in 2019 partially because it's used as an anesthetic in in you know medical scenarios for example if you've gone into surgery it's highly likely that you've had ketamine the the reason why we use psilocybin ayahuasca is it provides a substantially different experience that is more about meeting your own emotions and your own felt sense of yourself. Whereas ketamine is dissociative, it brings you out of your body. And so the value of ketamine is, let's say you're a combat veteran with PTSD, and we had an individual come and he was dealing with trauma in watching his friend blown up by an IED.

Starting point is 00:08:50 Wow. I mean, that's an extraordinary thing to witness and to live with. In his scenario, ketamine was helpful because the dissociative property of it allowed him to observe that memory without being in it. Does that make sense? Right? So it's like watching it happen. Exactly. You disassociate the emotion from the reality, I guess.

Starting point is 00:09:15 Yeah. The problem with that is that that can be addictive in itself, right? Because we can dissociate so much from pain and from reality that we actually lose touch with how to be with pain. And our philosophy and what we believe to be the truly healing process is not to get out of pain, but to go deeper into it, to embrace it, right? Because when you go home, life is going to continue to life. Buddhism says that everyone and everything that you love, you will lose, right? We will lose our parents. We will lose our dogs.

Starting point is 00:09:49 We will lose our best friends to time, right? We'll lose our own life. Yes. What? No one told me about this part. What? No, I'm just kidding. Yeah. And so what happens is if, you know, undergoing a process where you're prepared to meet that challenge with the fullness of embracing it and not pushing it away, that helps you lead life with greater peace and openness.

Starting point is 00:10:16 Most definitely. Momentum ori. I mean, what does Marcus Aurelius say about death? Death smiles at us. The best we can do is smile back. Beautiful. I like that. Yeah, it really helped me recently. We lost a dog a few months ago.

Starting point is 00:10:31 And being focused on memento mori and stoicism really helped me square it in my brain. And it really helped the grieving process where it was like, you know, this is natural. This is a part of life, you know, it's going to happen. I think, I think a lot of bullshit that we do in life is kind of to, to kind of, you know, make ourselves feel better or cope with the fact that, you know, we don't know what goes on after you die. We, or at least in my opinion, you, you know, we, we do fear of death. Um, I think there was a great book written

Starting point is 00:11:06 about the denial of death. And, you know, I mean, a lot of people do a lot of weird things in life because they're freaked out over death and not knowing what's on the other side, specifically, you know. And so they do a lot of weird stuff to try and cope with it.

Starting point is 00:11:23 You know, give money to, you money to some religion, hope that works. But, you know, you never know. It could be like that South Park episode where all the religions and people die and go to heaven. And they declare that Mormons were the only true religion. Everyone has to go to hell, which will be ironic if it happens, given I'm in Utah. Tell us about your journey through life what got you focused in this industry this area your life's journey were you like into heavy metal before this and you became a monk tell us about your life's journey once upon a time i was

Starting point is 00:11:58 into punk rock so you're not super far off all the problems are caused by punk rock. You know, my journey's, I think, kind of interesting. And, you know, I'm a keynote speaker. I was just telling this story on the TED stage. When I did my first plant medicine ceremony with, and in that case, it was with Ayahuasca in 2020, I had the largest Airbnb operation in Las Vegas. We were hosting 2000 guests a month. So you could just imagine, you know, I'm in the jungles of Mexico and Costa Rica, drinking ayahuasca. And afterwards, I'm fielding phone calls from my team saying, what do we do? The police are at the door. People are firing guns in the air or someone's filming a hip hop video or people are texting me asking me how do they book strippers

Starting point is 00:12:46 you know that might have been me i don't know i lived today i've lived in vegas for over 20 years i love the town ah okay so yeah you know what the party you're talking about you know the seed yes oh yeah if people come to vegas they party hard saying if've got an Airbnb, they're going to party hard in your Airbnb. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So when I went on that trip, I thought I was going for a networking event. It was 50 people drinking ayahuasca together. They're all high-level founders.

Starting point is 00:13:19 And by that time, I already had done psychedelics over 100 times over many years of Burning Man, festivals, camping with friends, et cetera. So I went in with a chip on my shoulder thinking- Wait, there's drugs at Burning Man? What? You're waking me up to all sorts of truthisms. Is there people who are not on drugs at Burning Man? Anyway, to your story so the you know the first time i drank the the medicine i had this vision of my father who had passed four years prior and at that time introducing my then wife to him which is something that i didn't even know i was missing in my life you know like we learn in school this grieving process, right? First there's denial,

Starting point is 00:14:06 then there's anger, and then finally there's acceptance. I thought I got all the way through to acceptance, but I didn't realize I was missing the lost opportunities I would never have again. Yeah. Yeah. So for those of your listeners that have lost somebody, maybe they can resonate. Yeah. But it was really the second ceremony that was that was completely life-changing for me because after the first one i thought hallelujah i'm healed call me an uber i'm ready to go home but we had two more ceremonies left and the second ceremony i went in with this curiosity around my memory do you have a good

Starting point is 00:14:44 memory of your childhood, Chris? Yeah, pretty good. Pretty good. I mean, it's not as good as it used to be, but now that I'm 56, but it used to be pretty good. It's getting there. If I sit down and think about it,

Starting point is 00:14:54 it'll come to me. I didn't. It was a complete blur. Really? For most of your childhood? Like up to what age? We had an exercise. We were asked to pull out your most fond memory as a child. For most of your childhood? Like up to what age? We had an exercise.

Starting point is 00:15:09 We were asked to pull out your most fond memory as a child. I couldn't even think of one. Wow. And it was just a total blank. And then even a few years or a few months back was hazy. But that was my normal. That's the life that I led, and I didn't know that there was anything different. I mean, did you have a good childhood?

Starting point is 00:15:27 You just don't remember it? Or was there bad parts? I think I had a great childhood. Maybe. Okay. No, I had a good childhood, a loving, a loving childhood. That's unfortunate. So when I drank the medicine, I started.

Starting point is 00:15:45 You really got to have a bad childhood to really enjoy your ride through life these days. Yeah, I mean, we see all sorts of configurations. I started reliving my memories in vivid detail, including turning my locker combination in high school, like reading chapters in a book in middle school. And I was going back and back and back in time until I was a child under sheets. And then for a moment, I felt horny. And I popped up, I'm on a yoga mat in the middle of jungle. There's 49 other people on ayahuasca. One of my friends is running around half naked screaming. It's wild up there. And I'm like, what could this possibly be so i go back into the experience closing my eyes and then i and then it hits me at the age of four i was touched by my mother's boyfriend at the time oh wow and i had no idea exactly and that's why you're probably blocking it. Exactly. So I had this knowledge, this newfound knowledge that I had sexual trauma and I repressed memory.

Starting point is 00:16:49 I started going forward in time in this vision and reliving my memories with this new information. I was a bully as a kid, sexually confused as a teenager, couldn't hold down relationships, couldn't hold down hobbies, because I simply just forget the passion that I had for them, you know, all the way to the present moment, where again, I was in that lying on that yoga mat. I woke with tears in my eyes. And I told the shaman. And she said, Oh, my God, I'm so sorry. And I said to her, No to her no no no you don't understand i feel like i was cured of alzheimer's wow like i regained my memory the next day i wrote a poem called thank you expressing this extraordinary gratitude for life and for all the pain that i've gone through too because it all led me to that present moment that revelation that wow like i am who i am because of all led me to that present moment, that revelation that, wow, like I am who I am because of all the things that happened to me, for me, through me,

Starting point is 00:17:56 that including all the stumbles and falls, including the times I felt betrayed, including times I hurt other people, and including all the loves I've made and the passions I've explored and the places I've traveled, all of it made me who I was at that moment. And that was like the beginning, you know? Pete And now you help other people through that journey. Jared And that's the crazy thing, Chris. Like, my story is not unique. In fact, we hold two retreats a month. And every single retreat, the majority of people have a life changing experience as big as mine.

Starting point is 00:18:28 Now it's different and unique for every single individual based on their lives. But here's the interesting thing. Like I've worked with billionaires and I've worked with homeless people. Okay. And everybody comes in for a different reason, right? Let's say you're a combat veteran, you want to get over some PTSD. Let's say you're a billionaire and you want to find what's next in your life. All of it, everybody comes in for a different reason, but their journey takes the

Starting point is 00:18:55 same pathway. It all funnels to the very same place, which is, do I love myself? Can I be present with what is happening for me right now, with my feelings right now? When you ask somebody, how do you feel? What's the typical answer you get, Chris? I tell them I don't feel, I think. But I think most people just give a default fine, don't they? Yeah. Fine. Good. Okay. But have you ever been fine one moment in your life? Probably a majority of time people ask me that question. I'm just kind of putting it off. I'm good okay but have you ever been fine one moment in your life probably a majority of time people ask me that question I'm just kind of putting it off I'm just yeah I'm fine I mean I'm it's a flesh wound but it'll exactly it's like it's you know I've been pissed off I've been joyous I've been horny I've been

Starting point is 00:19:38 like anything but fine and that's because we've lost the or maybe we never had the capacity to actually feel our feelings in great detail because as a kid mommy and daddy would say don't cry put a smile on your face don't be angry this is probably very exceptional for men you know because we're kind of told totally of our feelings as well totally women love to exercise it and you know every feeling must be must be felt and exercise but you know men struggle i think with some of that but the feminine is also often denied their feelings too you shouldn't feel this way why are you feeling this way gaslit and ultimately you know what we're training for is to feel ourselves. And not only feel ourselves, but to love our feelings.

Starting point is 00:20:28 That if you feel angry, if you feel shame, if you feel guilt, if you feel love, if you feel joy, it's all okay. It's all perfect. It's all part of the human experience. You know, it's interesting that memory came back to you. We've had psychologists on the show that have talked about what happens when we have trauma that happens to us in youth. Our brains can't handle it. We can't square it. We don't, you know, it's too much. It's overload.

Starting point is 00:20:55 And so we do that repression of memories where we bury them and hide them. And then later in life, you know, at some time or other, the brain goes, I think this person can handle it now. They're growing up a little bit more. Let's unveil the curtain. And it's a real thing, what people go through, where they repress memories. And sometimes they need more help to unlock those, I guess. Totally. But it's a tricky thing because we repress those memories for a reason, right? We had someone come in here who was having a tough ceremony and she wanted to go outside. So I let her outside. I came in back in to get a blanket. And when I came out again, I accidentally let the door slammed shut. Okay. In that moment, she relived an experience of her best friend at the age of 10,

Starting point is 00:21:48 getting blown up by a missile in front of her in Iran. And it was, I mean, terrifying for her to, to not just remember it, but to relive it. We experienced it, but here's what,

Starting point is 00:22:03 here's the extraordinary thing. A lot of people might think to themselves, like, why the hell would I put myself through an experience of reliving that? And the reason why is the only way out is through. It's because that was repressed and not met, that it got stuck in her body she was clinically treatment resistant depression for 20 years you know taking pills every day and it's because that was locked up underneath having health issues you know having physical ailments and afterwards being able to meet that memory right led to the opening of joyousness, like true joyousness in her life, you know, because that was freed up. You know, I was watching, years ago, I was watching Leaving Neverland, which is a story of two men who said that they were molested by Michael Jackson.

Starting point is 00:23:02 And I remember there was an after show with oprah and there was a real key moment to it one of the guys stood up and he'd been a i believe an nfl football player big guy and as a child he'd been molested by the local police officer quite a bit and for most of his life he'd repressed it and it had you know caused him to lead to some probably some bad choices maybe drinking drugs I don't know but he gave his testimony at the at the after Oprah show and he basically said that one of the important things that he realized was all that all that experience that he'd had and he was hiding it in shame from other people he hadn't

Starting point is 00:23:45 told anyone all of his life he just kept it inside and he he made a comment that you know secrets like this they fester and they're like poison and it's kind of like a snake bite when you get poison in you you know you got to bleed it out you got to kind of open the wound up and try and suck out the poison and get that out of your system. Otherwise, you know, it's just going to, it's going to fester in there. And, and, you know, he basically said, you know, the poison is you keep it inside. You don't tell anyone, you don't let it out. And I've seen a lot of people that have been helped that have childhood trauma by just, you know, making the announcement and telling, you know, maybe friends and family that, hey, this happened to me.

Starting point is 00:24:27 And then you can start to really kind of address the issues therein. But sometimes just finally talking to people about it and not hiding it in shame and hiding it as a secret that you're worried whether people judge you. That can make all the difference in starting to overcome that trauma and be healed. Absolutely. You know, there's really good science around this. There is a seminal book in psychotherapy called The Body Keeps the Score by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk. Tons of research that shows that when we experience trauma, whether it's a trauma with a capital T, or just trauma with the lowercase T where you grew up in an unhappy environment that gets stored in the body when it's not met. And if you really think about

Starting point is 00:25:11 it, it's really quite simple. Let's say our ancestors were chased down by a saber-toothed tiger, right? Then years later, they relive that experience or they remember that experience, right? Or ruminated on it. The same neurochemicals fire in the brain, right? The dopamine, the cortisol, the adrenaline, when you remember a past memory. And that's because the body thinks that everything is happening now. If we just take a moment, close our eyes, take a breath and remember, let's say the greatest sex we've ever had, your body's going to react to that, right? Or if you remember the greatest pain you've ever had, your body's going to react to that now. So what happens when the subconscious is storing this content

Starting point is 00:26:00 that is not ever actually released? Can you imagine if your body is pumping adrenaline and cortisol for years on end? The toll it takes on the body, right? Oh, I can imagine. I had recently had this ceremony where a participant, he comes in, and during the ceremony, so just for context, ceremonies are held in the dark. People take the medicine, the sacrament, drinking psilocybin, and they're lying there with eye masks. And music is playing.

Starting point is 00:26:33 We're playing music digitally and analog. And they're kind of in their own experience, right? So this participant, he goes to the bathroom and he steps in what he thinks is my dog's pee. And he's convinced of it. So when he gets back, he asks me for a wet towel so he can clean his feet. Some wet towel and some soap. So I get it for him. And he proceeds to spend the next hour just like massaging his feet right then he asked

Starting point is 00:27:08 me for lotion and i get him lotion and for the next hour i see him giving himself the most awesome pedicure blindfolded in you know on a psychedelic and i'm just so curious what's happening for him. After the ceremony concludes, I ask him, hey, Judd, how was your journey? He lifts up his foot, he wiggles his toes, and he says, Austin, look at this. And I say,

Starting point is 00:27:38 wow, that's great. How was it for you? And he says, Austin, for more than 20 years, I could not uncurl my toes without excruciating pain wow in just a few weeks i was about to go to the doc a surgeon to get surgery for rheumatoid arthritis which was the only diagnosis they could possibly figure out and this is guy in his 40s healthy guy you know with a four pack, like very healthy guy, you know. And it turns out his father was a boxing coach and he's this high powered attorney.

Starting point is 00:28:16 And, you know, in boxing, I don't know if you've ever tried it, but you're always pushing off your feet, right? You're pushing off your toes. And there was this connection between his feet, his toes, pushing off and running away from his father. And he was able to confront that, his relationship with his father, as he's becoming a father himself, and have this generational healing where he realized his opportunity to be a better father than his was to him. Oh, wow. And all of that unlocked this tremendous physical healing.

Starting point is 00:28:55 He's never, his feet and his toes have been great ever since. Sometimes I check in with him like, hey, how's your feet? He's perfect. Isn't it amazing how all that connects? There's so much stuff that comes from childhood and the imprints and the blueprints that you're given in childhood. I mean, it's just, it's really interesting.

Starting point is 00:29:14 Totally. And yeah, it's crazy how all that stuff works out and how it plays. So tell us about, I'm looking over your website. You've got a lot of courses, retreats. Talk to us about some of the offerings you have there that people can find on your website. Yep.

Starting point is 00:29:34 We have a few things. And it's really on this spectrum of convenience, getting unstuck to life-changing transformation. Our flagship program is a six-day retreat with psilocybin, right? And you're coming in for three psilocybin ceremonies with a group. And we begin with mindfulness training, aka meditation into group connection exercises. So within four hours,

Starting point is 00:30:01 the people in this group that came in as strangers are so connected and deep with each other that they feel closer to each other than family. And by the conclusion of it, of the retreat, there is no one in their lives that they have developed such depth and closeness to, including for many of them, their spouses, their family, you know, etc. I should go. I hate my family. No, I'm just kidding. Just think they're wonderful. We have a three-day program, which is over a weekend, and it's a single ceremony. You come to that and you get unstuck.

Starting point is 00:30:37 Totally. But it's also an intro and a setup for you to explore the six-day program where your life completely changes, right? So, one of our alumni shared that they came to the three-day open program and it showed him that he can live his life, right? And then the six-day program showed him how to live his life. It created the intention for the future. We're about to release an online program called Awaken at Home, which is a three-month course that you're going to go with live coaching calls and do microdosing. Microdosing is where you take pills of psilocybin mushrooms at home, and it's subliminal. A.k.a. maybe if you close your eyes and tune in you can feel it a little bit otherwise

Starting point is 00:31:26 it feels like a shot of espresso you know just a little boost of energy my mom used microdosing to get off of her antidepressants which she was taking for 25 years you know holy crap yeah that's a big that's a big deal yeah yeah so the the microdosing course is the Awaken at Home program is convenient and can help build up like that safety and comfort for you to then come and have a bigger experience. And we package in with our bigger retreats, the microdosing program as well. I noticed you have something open transformation with AI in your courses, foundation of psychedelic healing as well. Yeah, these are some free programs for people to try out. I'm a technologist at heart. I used to be a tech entrepreneur and a CTO before doing the Vegas business. And we do some really interesting things with AI where you're able to create your own AI coach.

Starting point is 00:32:26 And that's because coaches and therapists, they're expensive and they're not always available. But I use ChatGPT all the time and ask it for advice. And it's pretty spot on. You can even have conversations with it. Yeah, it's kind of fun to talk to it. And it makes great pictures. Like being able to create very simply, you know, because I'm not really a creative person. I'm really logical.

Starting point is 00:32:50 If I need a picture or graphic or some sort of logo or something, being able to say, hey, give me a logo of XYZ. And it makes it in seconds. I don't have to pay anybody for it. I mean, I found that playing around with it mid journey and a few others kind of juices my creative sense is all the help you can get, obviously. And then you guys have the podcast as well. So as we go out, give people a final pitch on having them reach out to you,

Starting point is 00:33:24 how to book a call all that sort of good stuff yeah so look if you're feeling stuck in your life you don't need psychedelics right you can go to therapy you can go you can pursue meditation and my mom tried each of those things like therapy was expensive and didn't really work so well. Meditation, turns out, sitting still for any period of time is really hard. Or you can take a look at our website and investigate looking into psychedelic healing. And what we've found, A, it's legal, it's safe, we're a non-profit, tax-deductible, and it feels like 40 years of therapy. Tax-deductible too? Wow. Yeah. And we run two retreats a month. You can also start in from the convenience of your home come and book a call join a webinar and just check it

Starting point is 00:34:26 out because what this is hundreds of people have now gone through our program we have such an extraordinary rate and one of the cool things is that part of the onboarding process is you get paired with an alumnus so you get paired with someone who is maybe around your age group you know if you're feminine maybe identify as feminine with someone who is maybe around your age group, you know, if you're feminine, maybe identify as feminine with someone else, feminine, masculine, masculine, if you're an entrepreneur paired with an entrepreneur, so on and so forth. And you really get to be ushered into this process by someone who's gone through it themselves, had the same level of anxiety or curiosity or struggle and come out the other side. So thank you very much for coming on. Give us the.com

Starting point is 00:35:06 one more time. Yes, it's ceremoniacircle.org. Yeah. So you can also just Google psilocybin or ayahuasca Colorado, and we're number one search result. A lot of this stuff needs to be legalized. It's kind of a joke how it's been you know it's been made illegal um when in reality it's very natural for you you know i i i drank vodka pretty hard for 20 years and and my friends who took marijuana would always be like oh yeah it helps the pain it helps my ptsd and everything else and i'm like yeah sure it does okay yeah. Yeah. So is my vodka. All right. Yeah, sure. But then when pot became legal in Vegas in 2017, I think it was, I'm getting old, is

Starting point is 00:35:52 it's amazing. It's been seven years and it's still not legal nationwide. But I started taking edibles in Vegas when it became legal and I was blown away. I'm like, holy crap. It really does deal with pain. It really does deal with a lot of issues. I mean, this is way better than booze. I don't have a hangover. I'm not bloated. I'm dehydrated. I wake up feeling really amazing. And so I kept taking it. And one day I walked into my bathroom and i had this bottle of tylenol that i used to live on that i hadn't touched in six months i was like i see why i see why they make pot illegal and you know the natural stuff because they can't regulate it and then you know this the

Starting point is 00:36:38 medical companies can't make their money the pharmaceutical companies can't make their money selling me tylenol which is awful for your system and liver and stuff. But that's when I kind of went, oh, you know, there's something to this natural plant stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And the best part is it's now legal in Colorado, you know, and we're one of legal everywhere. Totally. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:37:01 You know, Colorado. Look, I moved from L.A LA to Colorado and obviously was in Vegas where you were too. And it's beautiful here, you know, and it's in the middle of the country. It's easy to access. We're only 40 minutes from the airport. You know, a lot of, we've actually had a lot of people move here after coming to our retreats. Yeah. It turned, it's kind of turned to legal, legalizing drugs kind of turned you or Denver into, I think it amped up the real estate up there. It was driving them. Oh, totally.

Starting point is 00:37:27 People like, I'm going where I can get high and relax and some peace. And, you know, people need peace. But thank you very much for coming to the show. We really appreciate it. Thank you, Chris. This is great. Thank you. And thanks to all of us for tuning in.

Starting point is 00:37:41 Go to Goodreads.com, 4chesschrisfast, LinkedIn.com, 4chesschrisfast, chrisfast1, the TikTokity, and all those crazy places on the Internet you can find us. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time.

The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Unlocking Trauma and Transformation with Plant Medicine Retreats with Austin Mao

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