The One You Feed - Spring Washam: Meditation, Ayahuasca, Trauma and Depression

Episode Date: August 16, 2017

This week we talk to Spring Washam Spring Washam is a well-known meditation and dharma teacher based in Oakland, California. She is a founding member and core teacher at the East Bay Meditation Center located in downtown Oakland. She is the founder of Lotus Vine Journeys an organization that blends indigenous healing practices with Buddhist wisdom. In addition to being a teacher, she is also a healer, facilitator, spiritual activist, and writer. Her upcoming book entitled, A Fierce Heart: Finding Strength, Courage, and Wisdom in Any Moment, will be available in stores on November 7th, 2017. She has studied numerous meditation practices and Buddhist philosophy since 1997. She has practiced and studied under some of the most preeminent meditation masters in both the Theravada and Tibetan schools of Buddhism. She has studied indigenous healing practices and works with students individually from around the world. She has completed a six -year teacher-training program under the guidance of Jack Kornfield and is now on the teacher’s council at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, California. Spring is considered a pioneer in bringing mindfulness based healing practices into diverse communities and is committed to enriching the lives of disenfranchised people everywhere. She currently travels and teaches workshops, classes, and retreats worldwide.   In This Interview, Spring Washam and I Discuss... The Wolf Parable His book, A Fierce Heart: Finding Strength, Courage, and Wisdom in Any Moment How she became a meditation teacher How self-compassion is at the heart of Buddhist teachings How being with ourselves in difficult times is an act of mercy How a synonym for mindfulness is remembering How we are always trying to change consciousness Her controversial Peru ayahuasca retreats How meditation and mindfulness was not enough to deal with her trauma Her first ayahuasca ceremony What ayahuasca is The risks of using entheogens The debate in the Buddhist community about this approach Whether you need to go to the jungle for this How we often need multiple approaches to healing ourselves How feeling like you are innately good changes the whole path       Please Support The Show with a DonationSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mindfulness, being present with ourselves is an act of mercy. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, or you are what you think ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.

But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Hey, y'all. I'm Dr. Joy Harden-Bradford, host of Therapy for Black Girls. This January, join me for our third annual January Jumpstart series. Starting January 1st, we'll have inspiring conversations to give you a hand in kickstarting your personal growth. If you've been holding back or playing small, this is your all-access pass to step fully into the possibilities of the new year.

Listen to Therapy for Black Girls starting on January 1st on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this interview is Spring Washam, a well-known meditation and dharma teacher based in Oakland, California. She is a founding member and core teacher at the East Bay Meditation Center located in downtown Oakland. Spring is also the founder of Lotus Vine Journeys, an organization that blends indigenous healing practices with Buddhist wisdom. Spring is considered a pioneer in bringing mindfulness-based healing practices into diverse communities. Her new book is A Fierce Heart, Finding Strength,

Courage, and Wisdom in Any Moment. If you're getting value out of this show, please go to oneufeed.net slash support and make a donation. This will ensure that all 185 episodes that are in the archive will remain free and that the show is here for other people who need it. Some other ways that you can support us is if you're interested in the book that we're discussing on today's episode, go to OneYouFeed.net and find the episode that we're talking about. There will be links to all of the author's books, and if you buy them through there, it's the same price to you, but we get a small amount. Also, you can go to OneYouFeed.net slash book, and I have a reading list there. OneYouFeed.net slash shop, and you can buy t-shirts, mugs, and other things. And finally, OneYouFeed.net slash Facebook, which is where our Facebook group is, and you can interact with other listeners of the show and get support in feeding your good wolf. Thanks again for listening. And here's the interview with Spring Washam.

Hi, Spring. Welcome to the show. Hi, thank you for having me. It's my pleasure. As we were talking before we got started, we've had a couple challenges getting this recorded, mainly on my end. So thank you for your patience. It works perfectly. Today's the day. All right. So our podcast is based on the parable of the two wolves. And in it, there's a grandmother who's talking with her granddaughter and she says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear.

And the granddaughter stops and she thinks about it for a second and looks up at her grandmother. She says, well, grandmother, which one wins? And the grandmother says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Yeah, what's so interesting is before I even heard about your podcast, I used to use that poem in different ways. It was like, I think, attributed to a Lakota elder and I've heard it in various ways. But yeah, I, yeah, but I think the message is really important. What do we feed and how do we live our lives? What are the seeds that

we're planting? And I think for myself, living a spiritually based life and service and practicing compassion and mindfulness and trying very hard not to act from greed, hatred, delusion. I mean, of course we do in some various, you know, unconscious ways, but I try very hard to, you know, be, um, an inspiration to others and to help them not to create harm. Yeah. The parable does very closely sort of follow basic Buddhist teachings, right? You know, that, that where, where you put your mind to a certain degree is, is what you get. And it talks about greed and delusion and hatred and all that. So you are a Buddhist teacher in the East Bay area, correct? Yes, I was trained by Jack Kornfield,

and I'm on the teacher's council at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. So I've been teaching there for many years, but we started a center in downtown Oakland 10 years ago. So I'm there a lot. I have two different worlds. Spirit Rock in downtown Oakland, huh? Yeah, they couldn't be farther apart, but you know, that's life. Yeah, well, and you've got a third world, which we'll talk about later, but it's the trips and retreats you lead in Peru. Right, yeah, that is the third one. That's the best one, I think. Excellent. So let's start off. You have a fairly interesting story about how you got to Buddhism. So maybe you could

just share your story about what led you to becoming a teacher. Well, I mean, I think, you know, 20 years ago, actually, it's so funny to think that it's been so many years, but I was practicing meditation. And as everybody, my life was horrible. You know, many people, I was depressed. I was working at, I was living with a man that we fought all the time and this really bad neighborhood in East Oakland. And I was confused and I had a job that was bad. And so I was trying to practice meditation during that time and I realized I needed a teacher. And so I heard about these retreats, these 10 day courses. At the time, I didn't even know. All they said was they are in silence and there's vegetarian food and they will teach you how to meditate. I knew I wasn't doing it properly. You know, I would sit there and

basically think about my problems and not feel that much better when I got up. So I was like, this, I don't think I'm doing meditation the way it's being spoken about by these great Hindu masters. I was reading books like that. So I went to the retreat and it was very life-changing for me. And I basically just started, um, kind of living like a Dharma bum, they call it just going from retreats and practicing and traveling. And I did that for many years. And the teaching came out of that I actually had no aspiration. I was just trying to feel better. Yeah, you know, I was just looking at my own mind. I was a full time job for a long many years. It still is. But you know, I was just looking at my own mind. That was a full-time job for many years. It still is, but, you know. Yeah, I agree. Looking after our mind is kind of a full-time job. So you found your way into Buddhism and really kind of went for it, you know, very, very aggressively. And then you became a teacher.

talk to me a little bit about what some of the things that you think are most important when you're teaching you know the basics of meditation or the basics of buddhism like what is it the heart for you of those teachings i think for me what's the heart of the teaching that i've come to in my own understanding is self-compassion. That somehow mindfulness, being present with ourselves is an act of mercy. I guess that's the word that's coming is to spend time to be with ourselves when we're sad or angry or we're confused or we're triggered to learn how to kind of come in and meet that experience with compassion, to remember to do that. One of the synonyms for mindfulness is remembering,

right? It's like remembering what to do in those moments, right? And so I think to be able to be present and then to evoke that loving awareness, that some kind of compassion for the moment when it hurts, you know, and a lot of our lives are filled with moments that are painful. And how do we meet them? So I got very interested in compassion. That's really what drew me in was how do I how do I do this? How do I live this life? It is a catastrophe on some level, you know, our daily experience, you know, and it's like, wow, how do I do this? Well, I can't imagine anything more

important than developing sort of the loving awareness or compassionate mind state for ourselves first. And then of course, that carries out to others. But at first, it has to become from us. We have to know that feeling from the inside and practice that. Yeah, it's amazing to me how hard sometimes it is to remember these things. I find myself spiraling off for a while and then I'm like, and then I just remember a couple basic teachings. I'm like, oh, okay, I'm good. So it is remembering is a big piece of it. And I like what you're saying about self-compassion. I think the thing that a lot of people get into, and I did, you know, for years in a 12-step program and in learning meditation and mindfulness is to really be judgmental of how well I'm doing. It becomes a, I don't want to say a contest, but I'm being, you know, I'm grading myself on how spiritual am I and

how mindful am I and all that. And I think for me, mindfulness and meditation changed a whole lot when that kind of dropped away for me. And I really stopped thinking there was a particular result I was supposed to be getting. I think, as you said earlier, there are ways to do it that are more useful and skillful than others. But I stopped expecting a result out of myself or expecting myself always to be happy or be compassionate or joyous. Yeah, I would agree with you. You know, I think sometimes we do a disservice.

I always tease the Spirit Rock community that we paint this beautiful picture of a blissed out woman and sitting on a hill and full of light and smile. That is actually, I just ended a nine day retreat at Spirit Rock teaching it. Most of the people walked around with old sweatpants on crying tissues everywhere. I mean, that's the real retreat, right? In our mess, in our confusion, in our reactivity, you know, at the end, yes, we get to this sense of feeling, you know, euphoria, but the process, it's not that. And somehow I think we're, you know, we're dreamers here, like, oh, this new thing

is going to give me the ultimate happiness, you know? Yep. Oh, I think we all chase that to a certain degree. What's the, what's the next thing, the next type of meditation, the next spiritual teacher, the right way to pose. If I put my fingers this way, then maybe, you know, and, and I think it is all to a certain extent, trying to change consciousness, right? We're always trying to change consciousness. And I think it's just built into us. Um, I don't think there's any like getting away from that. However, the more I'm aware that I'm doing that, and allow the consciousness that's actually present to be okay,

I'm just in much better shape. Yeah, I agree with you. Let's talk a little bit about your Peru retreats. So you are branching out from, you're certainly branching out from the Spirit Rock community in some of what you're doing there. So tell me about the Peru retreats and what you are trying to do and accomplish there. Yeah, I've definitely have become a little controversial. You know, it's like, yeah, I would say that in a controversial in a good way, you know, it's kind of opened up a whole talk about where are we in our society? What do we mean by plant-based medicine?

So I'll explain a little bit about sort of the origins of Lotusvine Journeys and why I like to talk about it and why I like to share about it and the work that happens there. I started going to Peru eight years ago, and I was already teaching many retreats. I started East Bay Meditation Center and was there all the time. And I went on a three month course meditation retreat and I kind of fell apart. And I realized I had all this unresolved trauma, really difficult childhood and all kinds of things happen. And I have a book coming out about that and people can read

about it there but I realized that I couldn't address it in that form being in a silent retreat seeing a teacher every couple of days very contained that I needed something different and so the thought of like wow I think whatever's going on was so disorienting I actually could not for the first time really be mindful of something it was just mind states of just complete desolation and hopelessness and despair and oceans of tears and I was very overwhelmed so I left and went back to California and I was on the east coast doing the retreat And I met with a friend of mine who was a psychologist who I told her, I said, all this trauma is coming up as it always does for people who are serious meditators. They can get blocked by this, like old, unresolved traumatic wounds.

So she told me about ayahuasca and she had been working with this plant called ayahuasca and they were doing a ceremony a very small group of psychologists and I really highly respected this person she was someone I admired and wasn't flaky or she was just just amazing human being and so she invited me and I went that night and I had nothing to lose at that point you know when you're in that state you're just rock bottom I was willing to try anything I had had nothing to lose at that point. You know, when you're in that state, you're just rock bottom. I was willing to try anything. I had been trying everything up to that point, you know.

And so I had an amazing night and I felt in that one night I understood more about myself than I had the whole three month retreat that I had just went on. It was such an amazing experience for me. So I immediately knew I would go to Peru and I would kind of study it in its most direct way at the roots. And so that's what I did for several years. I started going, doing retreats there, sometimes spending one month, sometimes two months. Then I decided to live there for a year in the Amazon with a Shipibo community and really study what is this that's happening. I saw people being healed from all kinds of things and I'd always felt like I was

an intuitive healer. So it resonated. I came back from that trip and I realized that I wanted to offer something to the spiritual communities and my Buddhist communities for people that also felt stuck because there's a kind of a plateauing that happens that I've seen over and over. You have all these openings in the beginning of your spiritual path, right? People go, oh, when I was in India in the seventies with Baba, so-and-so I felt, but then they come home and they're like kind of plateaued they don't feel their heart opening they go to retreat after retreat and something's just not shifting and there's like a stuckness and so that's what happened to me and that's what I have been seeing for years in spiritual communities with people going 40 retreats all over the world

and they said they're still struggling with the same issue, maybe self-hatred, maybe, you know, the same behaviors. Or they're just not happy and they don't understand. There's something blocking them. So that's kind of the demographic I was looking to serve. Like, why are we getting blocked? How do we move past these traumas? And this is something I felt to be extraordinarily helpful, incredibly helpful.

So that's kind of the storyline of the idea where it started. Hey, y'all. I'm Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, host of Therapy for Black Girls. And I'm thrilled to invite you to our January Jumpstart series for the third year running. All January, I'll be joined by inspiring guests who will help you kickstart your personal growth with actionable ideas and real conversations. We're talking about topics like building community

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referred to by the indigenous for thousands of years, hundreds of years. I think they found a cup recently in Ecuador, in the jungle in Ecuador of an ayahuasca residue in a cup that they estimated to be 2,000 years old. So it's a medicine. And you partake in this medicine in a ceremony, in a safe place. Ideally, you have healers, a group of supportive people. And then you take it and it helps you. It's like a spirit doctor. And that's also probably a new concept for some people.

A doctor of spirit, what do you mean? It's hard to explain. When you take ayahuasca for those hours, you go into a hospital setting and it cleanses your body on multiple levels. So from a Western point of view, it's considered a hallucinogenic, right? So from a Western point of view, it's considered a hallucinogenic, right? It's considered something that causes a pretty dramatic alteration of consciousness. And it is also considered and more and clear lots of old trauma? Like what, what's happening to you during that period? Some of it sounds physically unpleasant. I don't think it's a, you know, I don't think you describe it as a party drug, right? It sounds like it's a pretty intense, the period of time you're on it is,

is pretty hardcore. So what's happening in that window? Well, that's a great question. So hallucinogenic, yeah, that's kind of a Western word. Entheogen, I think is a better description of ayahuasca, a more modern, you know, definitely for people who have taken ayahuasca, they would only describe it as medicine at that point. So what happens? It's so different for everybody, the experience, but what ayahuasca is trying to do or what happens is that, you know, there's four levels of the human system. We have the physical level, mental, emotional, and then I would say vibrational level in the level of chi or energy, just pure energy. So what ayahuasca does is it cleanses all

four of those levels of our system. So sometimes people come and they don't know why they're depressed. Some people come and they don't understand why they have chronic pain that they've been all over the world. And there's just debilitated by a back pain and can't walk, but there's no medical cause for it. Or people feel suicidal and they don't understand. They're happily married. They have children. What could be causing me to feel so awful? Or they have different illnesses or they have cancer or they have just all kinds of reasons why people seek out to work with ayahuasca. So what ayahuasca does is the nickname of ayahuasca, which scares people, the indigenous call it la purja, right?

So it's meant to cleanse your system of energies that are causing harm. And so that could be energies from abuse for me it was you know experiences that were very abusive once i was attacked as a teenager all those things leave imprints on your body and your spirit and it's like it's aspects of post-traumatic stress we carry them and if we're not aware of them they actually have a very huge effect on our everyday life. They color the lens of how we view reality. We get afraid, we act from fear, we get more afraid, or we get very sad, we don't understand that we're feeding that sadness. And so what ayahuasca does is it helps us to understand the roots of the suffering. It goes down into that level.

How it works, it's a mysterious process. I myself have been amazed for eight years. I've participated in over 300 ayahuasca ceremonies. I've facilitated at least 150. And every time I'm always amazed. I don't know how to describe it. It's a gift from Gaia. That's what I've been saying now. It's Gaia. It's the earth trying to help. That's what I truly do believe now. So this is something that you do it once and you get pretty substantial results, it sounds like.

It also sounds like this is something for you that's been ongoing kind of year after year after year. Help me understand if it's so quick in healing, why the ongoing process and I'm not trying to be difficult. I'm just really trying to understand. No, those are really great questions. It's not like one ayahuasca experience is going to heal somebody. It can be very eye opening, it can be very healing. But like any kind of treatment plan, it's not instant just like you know our one retreat you know people come to my seven-day retreat am i am i done it's like well no you're you're the you know we're just starting here yep what ayahuasca can provide and

why i keep working with ayahuasca is that it's an acceleration of consciousness it it opens something in our awareness and helps us to see the truth of the way things are so rather you have insights into interconnectedness you understand the nature of reality you understand emptiness you actually see these spiritual insights not so much in an intellectual way, but they become body based wisdom, right? You feel it so deeply, you're one with the entire jungle, you never forget that experience. And it shapes how you then perceive your world, right? You have such a powerful shift in those moments that it slowly changes you. Now, is it going to enlighten you? No, because that's not its job. Its job is to help us wake up. And for those who are ready,

it's a wonderful tool. Is it right for everybody? No, it's not. It could be too intense. It's not good for people with extreme levels of mental illness. It's not good for certain types, but those who are ready, able, and open, I think that's the big thing, open to something else, understanding more to this reality than what we perceive daily, then it can be a very valuable tool as it has been with indigenous for hundreds of years. They've used it in many ways. Is there any history of abuse with it in indigenous cultures? Yes. As in all things, the abuse really comes from people who become powerful and shamans who become

then predatory. So you have the whole myth of the dark shaman, you know, who becomes, you know, and that is a big problem in Peru. I call Peru the new India. Everybody is going to South America, backpackers, seekers in the forest, in the jungle, looking for a guru. It's the same thing that happened in the 60s, right? You have all these gurus, some good, some fake yeah right some having sex with everybody is part of their it's the same kind of scene that gets a little bit set up down there you have people coming and they're think the shaman is going to save them from everything and they have powerful experiences and then maybe the shaman's like hey

do you have a few hundred dollars i could have or Or, Hey, you want to get married or Hey, you want to, you know, so that's where things get complicated. Is there any history of substance abuse with it? Is it a substance that becomes like, you know, alcohol or other substances? I know it's incredibly intense. I'm just curious in the indigenous population, if it's population if that is a risk. No, because ayahuasca doesn't let you. And that's why it's honestly because it's intelligent. So ayahuasca is considered, even though gender has no bearing in these states of consciousness, it appears in like a feminine, they call it the grandmother.

Yeah. And other plants they refer to as the grandfather. Peyote and San Pedro, the great cactus up in the Sacred Valley, they refer to that. It appears in the form of masculine energy. Getting addicted to ayahuasca would be very, very difficult because the nature of it is to wake you up. So it has a built-in intelligence. Sometimes it doesn't work. You could drink a huge amount and it doesn't come on.

Sometimes it will make you purge that desire out to use it, to be manipulative. So maybe you're sick for 10 hours purging. And if that's something that you can manipulate in that, you know, it's like beyond our grasp. You don't get a consistent effect. Like if you'd have a couple of drinks or you, you smoke a joint and even other, how did you say it?

Entheogens. Entheogens. So are mushrooms considered an entheogen? Is LSD considered an entheogen? What falls into that category? I think LSD and mushrooms would fall into that category. It's basically, you know, something that reconnects you to your divine nature. I think one of the challenges with LSD is people often get hurt because of all the issues

with set and setting and people who are not maybe ready for that kind of experience. There's no guide. The thing I really like about ayahuasca was it's always been held in a sacred ceremony. It's not something you would drink and wander around town. I mean, it would be, I just can't even imagine it. I don't know. And somebody who did that, it wouldn't be a fun night. It's not like that. Yeah, I'm fascinated by all the research that's happening on entheogens and their ability to heal.

I find it fascinating. I'm also a recovering drug addict and alcoholic. So I look at those things and I think to myself, it's very fascinating to me. I'm very interested in it. And then I look at it. What's my what's my risk profile look like with those things? Because you do hear people using those sort of things to cure addiction in certain cases. And so, you know, it's just for me, it's one of those things that I'm evaluating from the outside. And I can't tell if my fascination is a genuine interest in the healing, or if there's some little part of me that's like, I'm going to get high again somehow, right. And again, I'm not saying that's at all how most people use it. I just know for me,

you know, I did I did psychedelics or entheogens back in my day, and I did them sort of in a recreational way, I can look back and see how those could have been transformative, positive experiences if I had done it in a different way. You know, I can look back and see how those could have been transformative, positive experiences if I had done it in a different way. You know, I still see those as very powerful moments in my life, but my intent was very different. Right. And I so appreciate you bringing this up because this is the debate with Buddhism.

You know, it's like, is this, you know, as we know that in the Dharma, there's these precepts that we follow, non-killing, non-stealing, being aware of our sexual conduct, our speech. The fifth precept is around intoxicants. Right. And that is at the very core. Is this an intoxicant? Is this a sacred medicine? Does this lead people down the path to addiction or does this liberate them from addiction?

You know, and people don't know and it's being debated all i can say is in my experience working with people and i've met people from all walks of life who have come on retreats not only with me at other healing centers where i was there learning and working you know from alcohol to drugs that there was like a significant reduction in that. The desire to use became less. The desire to escape became less. Yeah. Isn't that really what we're talking about? That is what we're talking about. Because we don't want to be in the present moment.

That's right. Yeah. So we don't want to be here. So to work with a plan, suddenly it's like you come more into contact with your true nature, so to speak, your goodness, your wholeness, your interconnectedness. And we're getting out some of these other forces in us. Our demons wrassle around with them in the jungle for a while. And we sort of start to allow them to move.

We suddenly want to be here. So there are a lot of ayahuasca treatment places. want to be here. So there are a lot of ayahuasca treatment places. There's a place right near where I host my retreats called Takiwasi that has excellent results working with hardcore addicts. Yeah, I've certainly seen it with heroin abuse. I mean, that was my drug way, way back when. I've been off that for a long time and I've been sober. I've been sober a decade now and a long time before that. And it's just, it's an interest to me in that way because I see it as treating addiction. And yet to your point, is it a intoxicant? Yeah. And it's worthy to think about that. It's a very important conversation that I

deeply respect at Spirit Rock. I understand the complexity and I understand the confusion and I understand the fear fully. Hey, y'all. I'm Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, host of Therapy for Black Girls. And I'm thrilled to invite you to our January Jumpstart series for the third year running. All January, I'll be joined by inspiring guests who will help you kickstart your personal growth with actionable ideas and real conversations. We're talking about topics like building community and creating an inner and outer glow. I always tell people that when you buy a handbag, it doesn't cover a childhood scar. You know, when you buy a jacket, it doesn't reaffirm what you love about the hair you were

told not to love. So when I think about beauty, it's so emotional because it starts to go back into the archives of who we were, how we want to see ourselves, and who we know ourselves to be, and who we can be. It's a little bit of past, present, and future, all in one idea, soothing something from the past. And it doesn't have to be always an insecurity. It can be something that you love. All to help you start 2025 feeling empowered and ready. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls starting on January 1st on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Is the reason that most of this happens in Peru because the jungle is so important,

or is a lot of it because of legality and law? So if you, for example, could use ayahuasca to heal here in America, would there be more of that, or is it really important that you're there and in the jungle? Well, I think there's two things to that. First of all, South America, it's legal, almost all of South America, Ecuador, Brazil just called ayahuasca national treasure. There are ayahuasca churches there that mix Christianity with, you know, they have church services and drink ayahuasca in urban areas. And they found that

this was really wonderful. They're even administering it in prisons in Brazil. Yeah, yeah. You can look that up. I have some links to it on my Facebook page for Lotus Vine Journeys. And I've been also very interested in all the research and huge amounts of research around healing all kinds of things. So the jungle is interesting because it provides a backdrop. The vine grows in the heart of the Amazon. It comes out of this indigenous, the Shipibo people

are sort of the medicine carriers. They're an ethnic group that lives around the Yucca-Lawley River, about 100,000 of them. You often see their artwork associated with ayahuasca. It's been stolen a lot, their art and their imagery. They don't seem to mind, the ones I talk to. They like their art on the internet, and people are wearing bikinis made out of their artwork. So there's something really beautiful. One can do it here, yes,

but there is something really beautiful about doing it in the wild, in its natural element. You know, we're so used to like propagating things, stealing it out, taking it. There's something very interesting about doing it in that setting. Now, that does not mean that people couldn't do it in the U.S. In fact, many people do. But it's sad because it takes some of the magic out of it. And people maybe are leading circles that aren't, they don't have this lineage of hundreds of years. They

don't really have the sort of the power that a lot of these amazing people have that are doctors. I work with a beautiful maestro on my retreat. He is a doctor and very powerful one. So you may have people doing it here and they might be playing music and other things, but there's something about the roots and the lineage and having that experience of being in the natural world with it. It's a different experience in a home in New York City than being in the forest. However, it can be helpful. And there is people getting a lot of help from going to circles here. It's just different. So for me, what I like to offer people

is something very authentic because I love that authenticity and I feel that it's very powerful. And it kind of reconnects people to the earth. And unless we do that, we're going to destroy ourselves unless we realize we are connected, not just mentally, not just a good idea, but you feel it in your bones. Yeah. It's funny that that sort of mirrors the discussion that has happened around Buddhism

and mindfulness to a certain degree where, you know, are you pulling mindfulness out of Buddhism? Are you losing the authenticity? Are you losing the lineage? You know, as you were saying that, I was like, I think I've heard this discussion before. And I think just like that discussion, there's nuanced points. It's like, is a little bit of something that's really good for you better than none of it? Or is, you know, it's kind of like the meditation or mindfulness debate. Like, well, if you're not going to be in the lineage, you're not going to go all the way, still meditating for five minutes a day better for you, probably. And so it's just, I don't think there's right answers. I just think it's interesting. And I'm sure that the debates at

Spirit Rock are very interesting. And it's funny, because I would imagine most of those people, there was a period in time where they were experimenting in similar ways. Yes. And on any group of a council, you have people who got exactly half of them maybe experimented, and those were some of the most profound. The other half is saying, what about the lineage? The thing where the complexity is about me being there on the teacher's council is that I so agree with both perspectives. They don't know what to do with me right now. I mean, we love you so much. And as I totally understand this, this preset, maybe this isn't Theravada Buddhism that I'm doing down

there, maybe this, but yet I'm going to keep offering it. So your perspective then would be, this is not an intoxicant. As you said before, it's a... Entheogen. It's an entheogen. I stumble over that word, but I think you also called it a doctor, right? So it's not an intoxicant in the sense of, I think the Buddhist precept against intoxicants has something along the lines of it's clouding your brain and it's making it harder for you to see the truth. And what you're saying is that you believe in this case, that it actually makes it easier for you to see the truth. And what you're saying is that you believe in this case that it actually makes it easier for you to see the truth. Yes, actually, because we, you know, the thing about lotus vine was that I named it that because it's the lotus of the Buddha

and the vine of ayahuasca is this amazing vine. And then the journey is coming to Peru and doing the inner work. But that's exactly it. I tell our groups are amazing. A lot of meditators, yoga teachers, doctors. And I say, okay, here we are. We're going to sit in a circle.

And this is ultimate meditation. Can we be present for the next six hours? And, of course, I'm here and our team is here. We have a maestro and healers going and they're singing and all this stuff is going on. But basically, I said, let's be here. Let's be with whatever arises for these hours, no matter how intense, whatever's happening. So I treat it like an ultimate meditation.

If one can learn to embody those experiences, be present for that, there's some kind of very profound acceleration, Eric, happening there. Even if we take ayahuasca out of it, I think the general point, which is that sitting on a cushion mindfully is a wonderful, I found it to be an incredibly useful tool in my life. It's not the only tool. And often we need different things. I mean, my, if I call it healing process over the years has been a lot of different things. Meditation and mindfulness and the Buddhist tradition has been a big part of it. 12 step programs were a part of it, you know, some degree of trauma work and really getting into that stuff was part of it. I think that taking care of my body in certain ways has been part of it. And so I think it really is, even if you look at ayahuasca, I don't, you know, that wasn't true for me. And and I think you can see that in in

mindfulness and meditation and Buddhism. I think anywhere you go, you can see that like, if you just do this, right. And my experience has been that, you know, one tool isn't always the right thing for all situations. I 100% agree with you. I mean, when I came back from living in the jungle for a year, I went into therapy. You know, I got into a relationship and then I was like, oh, wait, all this other stuff. I thought I got rid of it. Nothing like a relationship to remind you of where you've got work to do. Exactly. And then I went, oh my God, I'm at the beginning again. It was just another facet of my psyche, you know. And now I'm back doing early childhood attachment work with a very profound therapist, you know.

And I grew so much. And, you know, I integrated that. It's always like I wholeheartedly agree. It's not a one tool operation. We need many and we need them at different times. And there's different teachers at different times that resonate and we feel inspired by. Then we move on from that, you know. So this is just one tool that I feel like in my heart, I feel like the planet is offering us.

It's not only the rise in this particular medicine. It's actually all of them. the rise in this particular medicine, it's actually all of them. Rather, it's the Native American church of winning the right to use peyote and healing their tribes and from their own addictions. There's also a very big cultural bias against it, too, that this is a legitimate path of healthcare. There certainly is. And I think, you know, without going into U.S. drug policy discussions, which are, you know, take us, you know, take us way off track. I think, yeah, you're right. I mean, I do think there is definitely a bias against it. I have a question for you, because I wrestle with this a lot. And

listeners of the show will have heard it 50 times at this point. But it's really about, on one hand, what you're describing is this attempt to, in certain ways, change who we are, right? We're trying to evolve and become different things. So there's that, there's that direction on one hand. And then on the other hand, is the, I'm fine just the way I am. How can I accept the moment I'm in? How can I be okay with who I am, where I am? Those things to me feel like, at least in my life, they feel like there's a little bit of tension there. And I'm just curious how you think about that. very inspired having grown up around mostly christian philosophy and when i heard sort of this teaching about your buddha nature right that you already are enlightened you just forgot

basically that was very hopeful i found that to be very inspiring you know it's like versus you're flawed forever and you better walk across the desert on your knees and maybe at the end of 30 years of that you'll you know i thought wow i'm already awake but i just forgot so for me it's more of uncovering the jewel that's how i look at myself there's this innate perfection there and it's often obscured yes if there is that innate, it is definitely obscured for sure in a lot of us. Well, yeah, that's the painful part. I find it interesting because I tend to land sort of like on the middle of everything. It's like if I take any personality test, it's like, is there a dead center?

It seems to be where I am. And that's where I look at original sin versus, you know, perfect Buddha nature. I feel like it seems to me that we've got all that inside of us. And it's back to the parable. It's, you know, what are we feeding? Where are we focusing? What plants within ourselves are we choosing to grow? And which weeds are we choosing to pull out? But I do definitely think for me, it was a big change to hear the Buddhist idea of perfection was so different it's a very interesting perspective and was very helpful to me in a lot of ways oh i agree i think when you if you have the perspective that in you are innately good and beautiful and and and wise and compassionate but that it's just

at your core you are that that that you you set your life in a different direction if you believe that that actually that belief itself i believe changes the whole path i do because if you believe at your core something is very bad and wicked and wrong and disturbed that's a belief that sort of i believe undercuts all that you try to do. It's like a poison, a very deep poison in the well, right? But our lives are different when we think that. It gives us some kind of confidence in our goodness, and we'll want to reveal that more. If we believe that's there, we will naturally, I think, feed that side. Yep. Well, Spring, thank you so much for coming on the show. I've enjoyed this conversation a lot. I'm going to be very interested to see what I get from our listeners on this one, because it's been a little bit different, but it's a topic I've wanted to talk about for a while. So

I'm glad we got the chance to do it. I will have links on the website to your website, to all the different things that you're involved in. So if folks want to learn more about you, it will all be right there and they can find you. Oh, thank you so much for having me. It was really fun. And I love this conversation as well. And I love what you're doing and how you're inspiring people. So I'm honored.

All right. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Bye. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a donation to the One You Feed podcast. Head over to oneyoufeed.net slash support.