Live Like a Girl with Dr. Mindy Pelz - The Power of Psychedelics in Overcoming Trauma - With Chase Chewning

Episode Date: April 4, 2022

For full show notes, resources mentioned, and transcripts go to: www.drmindypelz.com/ep115/   To enroll in Dr. Mindy's Fasting membership go to: resetacademy.drmindypelz.com   This episode is all about how we can use some really unique tools, like psychedelics, to overcome mental health challenges.    A Virginia native and Army veteran, Chase is a Virginia Commonwealth University alum, graduating from their Health, Physical Education and Exercise Science undergraduate program in 2013. Having completed his MS in Health Promotion from American University in Washington, DC he also holds the following credentials: ACE Certified Health Coach and TRX Certified Suspension Trainer. Living a life of wellness has always been a part of him - since growing up eating fresh food from his grandparents' garden, playing baseball throughout school and enjoying time in the mountains surrounding his family's southwest VA home. After six years of active duty, Chase was medically discharged from the military due a string of injuries that ultimately required him to have bilateral reconstructive hip surgeries. After learning how to walk again, twice, exercise as medicine and healthy lifestyle modifications became his passion. Please see our medical disclaimer.

We want to at least maintain the level of health, the level of well-being, the level of emotional intelligence, mental, emotional, spiritual, physical, strength, wellness that we already have. Because that in and in of itself is a choice, but also it takes work. Maintenance of what you have still takes work. Resetters, Dr. Mindy here. And I am on a mission to teach you just how powerful your body was built to be. This podcast is about giving you the power back and helping you believe in yourself. again. Let's jump in. On this episode of the Resetter podcast, I bring you Chase tuning.

Now, Chase is the host of a really incredible podcast. And how I found him is he actually brought me onto his podcast. And I enjoyed the man so much that, and his story around PTSD is so profound that I wanted to bring him on to the Resetter podcast to not only share his story, but also to give us some insight on how we can use some really unique tools to overcome mental health. And what you'll learn in this conversation is that he had to overcome mental health in the process of overcoming physical health challenges, which is so common. And the 25 years I've been in practice, I've seen this over and over again where our physical and mental health are so intertwined. and often we have to work on both pieces to be able to live the healthy life that we deserve to live.

So I wanted to bring Chase on to talk about his journey. I wanted to have him talk about some of the things he's done to unwind his past traumas and really give us a unique approach to not only PTSD but overall mental health, especially when it comes to our health journey. So let me tell you about what you're going to hear in this conversation because it's no doubt a unique one for the Resetter podcast. We dove in to understanding the steps he took when his health hit a wall. And he was in the military, so you'll hear that,

and unable to do his job because of physical challenges. And so he had to start to unwind his chronic condition. And so he shares what he did. And there are some very clear steps that you will gleam inspiration from. So if you are struggling and feeling stuck with your health, this is a phenomenal podcast for you to understand how to slowly move yourself in a positive direction. We then went into mental health specifically and how do you go about dealing with traumas that you may have pushed down and are causing you. to be not only not holding hold your life back and your happiness back, but might actually be holding your healing back because that's what happened with Chase as he was really left to have to deal

with these suppressed traumas. So we dove into a couple of different things. We dove into psychedelics. We dove into plant medicine. So if you're interested in hearing about ketamine-assisted therapy, if you're interested in understanding more about why everybody's excited about psilocybin. in, you, and how to use it in a very safe and controlled way. I think that Chase's story is one of the best that I have heard in a really long time. Now, I want to say one more thing before I unleash you to this podcast interview. Last summer, and you'll hear it in here, I had two profound conversations with two doctors that I respect, highly, highly respect. Dr. Sarah Godfried, Dr. Austin Pohlmutter.

Both MDs, Austin is a neurologist. Sarah is an OB, Harvard trained OB. And they both, in our conversation, it came up about plant medicine, psychedelics, ketamine, all those things that fall into that category. And I was skeptical like you might be, and I didn't really understand it. And both of them at the time, when I told them about my skepticism, They stopped the conversation pretty, not abruptly, but they like paused my thought and said, hey, I want you to rethink this because the science is showing us that these types of therapies

can be really helpful for overcoming traumas. So Chase is a living example of it. He is inspiring. He is going to give you steps out of any chronic condition. And I think if you are dealing with any kind of PTSD, any mental health challenge, you are going to find. some really unique solutions in this conversation. So as I hope with all of my podcast interviews, that this information moves you forward, opens your mind, and make your world a better place.

Enjoy. You know, with what I really want, I think we can learn so much from each other's stories. So I really want to bring this concept of PTSD into more conversations for humans of all backgrounds. And I think when we hear your story and we hear what you've been through, we actually see ourselves in that process. So why don't we start with that? Tell us a little bit about your background, how you became so passionate about health and wellness and especially the mental health aspect. How did I become so passionate about health and wellness? Interesting question to start off with, you know, I really feel that it kind of found me. It found me is really part two,

part one. I really feel like I was born into it, Mindy. I, I, there's a big debate of nature versus nurture, you know, how well we are, are groomed or raised. I kind of was born into it. I feel very fortunate and lucky. I had a very strong foundation of quite literally being rooted. I grew up with my grandparents, with relatively medium-sized family, grew up in literally the middle of nowhere, huge land, big farm, garden. So we ate a lot of the food that we grew ourselves and sourced locally. And I was always outside playing, running in the mountains with my brother and sister in the woods and in the crick, as we like to say, Virginia. Moving, playing sports. So living an active lifestyle, a well lifestyle was kind of how I just.

started off life. But then the part two I was telling about was when life kind of knocked me down. Life knocked me down in a big way right around the ages, really 19 when I lost my father to a terminal illness. And that was kind of, which we're sure we're going to get into with the mental health aspect. That was kind of the big significant traumatic event in my life that I endured for 10, 12 years later. And then about two years later, I suffered career ending injuries in the military in preparation for deployment. And while I'm getting medically discharged, in fact, the nature of my injuries were so severe, I was medically retired, meaning the military deemed me, hey, not only are you broke,

but you are beyond rehabilitation for our needs, our purposes here. Wow. And so I, long story short, went through bilateral, reconstructive hip surgeries, had to learn how to walk again twice. I spent almost my last year and a half in the military. a patient just in and out of rehab, the doctor's office at home, just surgery rehab, surgery rehab, then they kind of kicked me out quite literally. And it was during that time, I realized that this can't be it. I don't want to accept the cards. I don't want to accept these injuries. I don't want to

accept this life that life has given me. And so I began to just study the human body a lot more. When I got out of the military, I studied exercise science, went to school, got some of my education benefits, and I fell in love with it. And so, So I say that wellness really kind of found me. It found me by me being born into it. But then in my 1921, 22 year old self, I was really broken by it, mentally, emotionally, and physically. And that kind of began the next chapter of my life. You know, I resonate with your story.

In college, I was a competitive tennis player. I played on a scholarship and I was injured. And it was, I don't know if you had this experience. but I felt very much tossed aside because I was not physically able to do the job that they were literally paying me for because they were paying for my college. And that is a really, really tough place to be. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because the same thing for me is that it really opened my eyes to see that our physical health and our mental health are really intertwined. and when your physical health goes away, it plays tricks on the mental health, especially when you have something like the military or like I had, you know, coaches telling me you're not good enough anymore.

That's really what they're saying. Yeah. You know, it's funny. The more and more I talk about this and the more and more I'm asked about this story and I reflect back on it. It, the trauma of that experience and the weight of that experience, I realized more and more and more. And so it was something that honestly, I didn't fully process at the time because I was just, I was still so young. I was 20, 21 years old when my initial injuries happened.

And I was very locked in. I had been in the military activity for three, four years of that time. And so I was just locked in on, okay, what's my, what's my order? What are the orders? What's my mission? Okay, I can't do this. I can't do that. I can do this. I can do that. I was just so falling in line that even when I was broken and they pulled me out of any deployment opportunity, pulled me out of my unit entirely, transplanted me units. Luckily, I was still stationed in the same city. I didn't have to

go too far, but they pulled me from my unit, from my team, from my everything, put me over here with, you know, air quote here, special populations. And not to downplay that, not at all. I mean, we, that unit, the medical unit served a lot of burn victims, a lot of amputee victims, a lot of, a lot of soldiers that were in dire need of rehabilitation to maybe get back into their job, but just to get back into life. And I say all that because that's a lot to handle when you're going through it. And when you're going through it, you're just so focused on, in your case, the coaches, the team, the people saying, hey, this is what you need to do, this is what you have to do,

this is what you should do. In my case, it was that, but it was quite literally orders. I had no choice. But then after the fact, you're like, wait a second, I, I, you pulled me out of my team. You pulled me out of my world. I was put on hold. My entire life, everything was put on hold. That has a lot of weight to it.

And then not only after that, you told me I wasn't good enough. And so much so that you ended my career and like, thank you for your service, but move on to the next thing, soldier. And I've been out now. I got out in 2009. I've been out now for, what, 12 years or so? And honestly, I'm still kind of unpacking what that meant and the toll that it left because I didn't have the skill set it and have the emotional intelligence. I didn't have a lot of things at the time to process that during. Yeah.

It's your identity. That's the one thing that I really realized. And I had to come up with a new identity because my identity was I'm a collegiate tennis player. And now I'm not. And so I think that is probably what you. went through and what a lot of people go through when all of a sudden their physical hurdles affect other aspects of their life that are making life more difficult than they need to be because they're so physically depleted or they have a chronic health problem.

So what part of recreating your identity and finding the new version of Chase and maybe you're still doing it? But how long did that take? and what kind of mental procedure did you go through to be able to step into a different life? You know, I definitely think that I am still on the journey of discovering who is Chase. It's this constant journey of going inward. Now I'm realizing more and more, it's going inward and less just reaching out for this thing is going to help me, this thing's going to serve me, this promotion, this relationship,

this, that, that, and the other. It's more and more nowadays, and I can say this with hindsight, you know, Yeah. You know, over a decade later, it's just I've been here all along. The next steps, the next questions, the next answers have been here all along. It's just now I'm making time and space to go inward on that. But at first, I realize that if I rest here and now, odds are I'm going to continue resting. odds are I'm going to be these versions of myself that I saw in the not too distant future.

And by that, I mean, particularly soldiers in my case, military members in my case, broken people in my case who were broken on the job, basically. We do get certain benefits, education, housing, pension, certain things like that. And I saw that, okay, I could have a life. Like I could have a roof over my head, food in my belly, and live an adequate life. But I still saw a lot of these people physically and emotionally, spiritually even broken. And I saw what that looked like and I didn't want that for myself. More importantly, I felt like my father and what he wanted for me in my life and what we wanted together for my life, that didn't fall into accordance with our mantra of this family phrase of,

you know, move forward, ever forward. And so when I separated, I gave myself, I was out for about like three weeks. I had about three weeks of downtime or so before I enrolled in school. And then I just started right away because I knew that I needed maybe was still the soldier in me, probably it was. What's the next mission? What's the next objective? What's the next task?

And so I started in school and I did it as a way, honestly, selfishly, I studied, like I said, exercise science. I got my bachelor's science, exercise science. Let me learn the body. Let me truly learn the body to help myself. And then along the way, I realized that I just freaking love it. I found ways to just rehabilitate myself faster. I found ways to modify daily living, nutrition, training, anatomy, physiology, exercise programming, all these things. I was like, wait a minute, not only is it a choice now that I don't want to have to accept this life that the doctors told me that I couldn't have, but I can build a whole new one. And so I kind of fell in love. with health and fitness as an industry, as a profession. And that's how I got into coaching and

training and, you know, then went to grad school and then, you know, worked in concierge medicine and then, you know, kind of got into the whole health, fitness, wellness, creator space. Yeah, it's been one hell of a journey. You know what it reminds me of? Because I see a lot, I mean, obviously different backgrounds being in the military and being a competitive athlete, totally different, but same kind of type A following orders. I had to follow orders from the coaches. I just did whatever they told me to do it. You know, no doubt. Yeah. You had no choice. They're like, we're paying your tuition. This is what you'll do. But what's interesting that I hear in your story, and I think so many people

resonate with this, is that when we're in a stuck place with our health, the way we have been taught as a society is to go find the answer outside of us. So we dock shop. We go from doc to doc to doc, or we go to Dr. Google and we start looking up all the explanations for why we're feeling the way we are and how can we fix it. But what I heard that you did, and this is exactly what I did, is go within and not go without and go, okay, what do I need to fuel myself with right now? what kind of knowledge do I need to be able to pull my own self out of this current crisis? One of my favorite new quotes is, knowledge is your fuel. And it's something I've been using in the fasting world because as I find people are more empowered

on what is actually happening in their body, the more certainty they have with their health. So talk a little bit about your journey with understanding. how to heal yourself and how can we help the person that's chronically stuck right now and what kind of steps can that person take to be able to empower themselves on their own healing journey? You know, I think you kind of said it there many. First and foremost, it has to be a choice. We have to choose.

We have to decide that we want to at least maintain the level of health, the level of well-being, the level of emotional intelligence, mental, emotional, spiritual, physical, strength, wellness that we already have because that in and in of itself is a choice, but also it takes work. Maintenance of what you have still takes work. How many times have you been in an air quote here, maintenance phase, maybe with your health, your physique, your training, I certainly have. And maintenance doesn't mean you just get to rest on your alleles.

Maintenance means, okay, I got to make sure that as many of these variables that are keeping me where I'm at, stay consistent. And that isn't just by luck or happenstance. So even if you're just choosing to maintain what you have, or maybe what you've worked for up into that point, it's a choice. And when you decide, that opens up your blinders, I think, to, okay, if I'm choosing to keep this, what has gotten me here? I need to work on these things to maintain.

And then beyond that, it's, like I said, a couple times, you know, it's, I didn't want to accept the cards that I were dealt. It's not accepting. No. No, because when you felt good and you've moved your best and you've had a good night's sleep and you've shown up to work, you've shown up to your relationship, you've shown up to your life, your gym, or whatever, if your kids, your family, at that level of being energized and happy and fulfilled. And then when that's taken away from you, it hurts, it hits home on a different level. And so instead of staying down there and accepting that, it also, has to be a choice of I'm going to get back to that and I'm going to then blow that out of the water because now it's I need to get back to what I know I can feel like and what I know I can do. But you know what? Life boss, girlfriend, boyfriend, job, you know, doctors, whoever, that kind of said, hey, no, you need to chill, you need to sit down. This is your new norm. Or maybe

that's even yourself. How often do we kind of say that to ourselves? I'm not worthy. I'm undeserving. I messed up. You know, I've fallen from grace, so to speak. But we don't have to accept that. You have to first choose. You have to decide that you're not going to accept that. And when you say that out loud, when you write it down, when you think it, and then just that first little part becomes a reality, because then your brain, your consciousness,

your heart, your soul is already imagining, okay, well, if I don't accept this, what do I accept. What does that look like? What does that feel like? Then you're putting yourself on the path to kind of like finding the next stepping stone, finding the next stepping stone. And that's, that's exactly what I did. That's exactly what I did. I put myself in the environment, the collegiate educational environment, but also around other people and resources. And every day was a choice for me. And every day it needs to be a choice for the person listening because the world, our people, our pets, our friends, our family, our coworkers, a lot of them aren't always in support of that. So every day it's a choice. But when you choose you every day, you're choosing

tomorrow. Really, you're choosing tomorrow of the life of your design as well. So well said. The only challenge to that, and I 100% agree with you. And the only challenge to that that I find is when you are really stuck, it's almost like you're too close to your own situation. So it's, and this is, I see this with people that I coach as well. It's like they, they, they have the desire to be well, but they're so close to their symptoms. They're so close. They have all the words that every doctor told them they couldn't do something or all the fancy diagnoses that they've been given, all the prognoses they've been given, that it's like they're in quicksand and they can't get out. So talk a little bit about, I love that you immersed yourself in

knowledge, but what's that first momentum switch that needs to happen? for people to be able to unwind that identity of being a chronically sick person. You know, I'll answer that in the way I think that I experienced it. And I'm wondering if someone else can relate. There is always someone else who has it worse than you. When I was in that med hold unit, and I give myself credit, I have now over the last few years, I have begun to finally give myself credit for what I endured and what I went through, losing the career that I had set out for myself, losing the ability to walk for months on end,

losing a lot in my life. I looked around at the men and women that were seated, standing, wheeling up next to me in this medical hold unit, whenever we did have a formation, it was a very unique situation. And what I went through sucked and it hurt and it was miserable and it was not my plan at all. But when I would look to the left and to the right of me and I would see other soldiers coming up in crutches, in wheelchairs, head-toe burns, missing arms and limbs, I was like, you know what?

Like this sucks chase, but that has probably got to sting a little bit more. And I just, I get so emotional because I get so grateful for what, what those soldiers and what all those other people went through clearly physically was more horrendous than my own, I'm assuming. But by them showing up empowered me to choose to show up and to just accept the fact that I didn't have to accept this, you know? Like what I'm going through is not fun. It's not ideal.

But there is someone who has it worse and they're still showing up. So what I don't know, maybe someone's going through. We've got a new diagnosis of Hashimoto's. maybe you're diabetic, maybe you're insulin resistant, maybe what insert any acute or chronic illness disease injury here, take five minutes out of the pity party you're giving yourself right now and go online, go to Google, look at a magazine, find someone with that exact same diagnosis, that exact same injury, who is at least doing what you want to do, what you're doing now, if not even more.

Look at Paralympic athletes. Look at all these people out there who are not choosing to. to keep the cards they were dealt, but to rather make the obstacle the way. And impediment to action is advancing action. And they're just, they're not accepting it. There is a way around it. There's a way through it. I love that.

And what I've gleamed so far from everything you've said is the first step, if you're stuck with your health, is to accept that there is a different way. You got to take responsibility and find a different way. And then be grateful that. And I think gratitude shows up. That's actually the theme of our podcast this year. And it's so common for us to look at somebody else and see that they look perfect and we're not.

And gratitude gets, especially in 2020 and 2021, I felt like gratitude was completely lost off this planet. So I love that that gratitude was part of your healing journey. Yeah. And then the third step, I would say, and I'm curious if this is what you did. is then you probably created action steps, and that's what happened in the knowledge. And so can you talk a little bit about, okay, you didn't accept, you created gratitude, and then you went to work.

And my guess is you probably had to do physical work on your health and you had to do mental work on your health. Talk to us a little bit about what that looked like. Well, the physical aspect for my health, again, unique to my situation, I kind of was taken care of. I had mandatory, but I had multiple physical therapy rehabilitation, pull therapy sessions to go to each

week. And if someone's going through an illness or injury, I'm sure you have something similar or I would at least recommend it. But when it comes to the mental aspect, I just dove into the books. Honestly, I mean, I was stuck at home

for a long time. And I was like, you know, if I'm not going to accept this, And I want to change it, it being my body, it being my health, my wellness. What is going on in my body? What is physiology? What is nutrition? And so I'll never forget the very first book I ever got that kind of was the Pandora's box for me was you, the owner's manual by Dr.

Oz and he had a co-author, I believe. And it was just this incredible high level understanding of here's all, here are all the systems in your body. Here's how digestion works. metabolism, you know, physiology, here, here's anatomy, here are things you can do to understand it and apply it. And then so in order to change anything with my body, my situation, I needed to understand my body and my situation. And this can be a slippery slope for a lot of people, you know, diving into WebMD or Google University. It can be so true. There are so much out there. There's a lot of misinformation, you know, dive into you, understand you, but through credible resources,

do your due diligence. But no matter what, I mean, just gathering information to start is a really, really good place. And what that did, for me, a couple different things, it gave me, it showed me what I could do. There wasn't really hardly anything for a long time I could do physically other than rehab and, you know, lay in bed and recover. But I could do something. And so I could read.

I could study the internet. I could take these online courses. I could do a lot of things. and that was just using my upper body and then my brain. And so what that does is that helps give you momentum and confidence of something that you can do. Instead of focusing on what you can't do or what you've lost or coulda shoulda woulda. And that also allowed a lot of time with myself. And I hadn't been just with myself in a very long time.

And I think especially when going through an illness or an injury, we find ourselves with ourselves more often because we're thinking. more, we're feeling more, or maybe, like I did for a long time, these thoughts and emotions come up and then we actively suppress them. I don't have time for this pain. I don't have time for that. I don't want to feel sad. I don't want to feel depressed. And so we just, instead of enduring it and processing it or even getting help, we suppress it. We shove it down. And I did that for a very, very long time. I'm here to tell you, personally speaking, after about a decade, it radically reared its ugly head, changed my health for the worst. PTSD popped up, suffered panic attacks, almost to the point of back into the hospital. And so that suppression, while I thought I was

focusing more in my rehabilitation physically and I was over it, it was only a matter of time before it came back up. And so the initial work that I did mentally and emotionally showed me that it wasn't enough. And so I was quite literally forced to have to face it again. So all the work that I did initially to understand the body and to focus on what I could do, well, I missed the mark a little bit. I was only focusing on one part of me. And of course, I don't think anybody would blame me. Why wouldn't you study the body?

Chase, your body was broken. Right. But my mind, my heart, my soul went through significant traumas as well. Loss of identity, losing the career I'd set out, bearing my father at age 19, having just all of these large life events hit me. And while it didn't show up or didn't look as obvious as my physical scars, they were still there. And it was only a matter of time before they came back up again. And I wound up having to really face them, get professional help, open back up to myself,

open back up to my friends, my family, and to finally, honestly, grieve and to finally process that trauma and to make my mental and emotional health as much of a priority as I had been my physical self for the last decade. Yeah. Again, I'm just going to say I resonate with what you're saying so much because I see this as I've been working to help people back on to their healing journey that when their health comes back on track, their physical body, they're left to deal with the mental part. And that is, I'm going to say, much harder than the physical part.

Would you not agree? It's the less obvious. it's the less obvious. It's the less sexy. It's the less norm, which, you know, maybe to a certain degree, I do think this type of work is becoming more of the norm. I think a lot of people like yourself are prioritizing this work in yourself and with your clients and your content. But it's, it's not as obvious in the beginning. And it's not as fun because, you know, we can. It's definitely not as fun. It hurts even just it. It's like, you know this is going to hurt to go through it, to make the hurt stop. But it's the same thing in rehabilitation, same thing when enduring an injury

or an illness. Oftentimes it's going to get worse before it gets better. You need to become, and if you think about this, that what you're enduring now is to help you get strong at the broken places. A bone when you break it, when you properly rehabilitate, it comes back even stronger than what it was before because it has rehabilitated, the muscles, the ligaments, the body, everything around it has become reinforced. It's like this repetitive cycle with the body, but also the mental, the emotional self are just the same. If we focus on the parts of us that have been traumatized, that, you know, we have suffered a mental, emotional, spiritual, anguish, pain, suffering, trauma, big T, little T, whatever, live through it and endure it. Honestly, if I could boil it all down

to why my mental, emotional health wasn't as successful then as my physical self and why it is now is because then when I was going through it all, I didn't allow myself the time, the space to feel. It was suppression. It was suppression. It was suppression. I'm not, I don't want to feel these things. I'm not allowed to feel these things. I'm not supposed to feel these things.

I'm not supposed to talk about it. I'm not supposed to share it. But these emotions are there for a reason. They're not just flukes. They're not just random things. Just like if you go to touch something, you reach out for something and it's piping hot, you have sensors on your body to tell you, hey, don't do that. The same thing with emotions. These are our less obvious sensors. It is still an input mechanism for us to like process it in our brain of, hey, something here is a trigger for me. Something here is hot. Something here is cold. And so if we can just instead of shutting it off,

and just allow it to run its course. Is this pain? Is this sorrow? Like, where in my body? Where am I throw it in my stomach? And where is this showing up in my life? What does it actually feel like? Is this a happy sad, a sad sad, am I crying?

Is there a memory associated to this? There are all lessons and clues embedded into the emotions that come up that are just more often than not too uncomfortable and too painful. So we shut them down. Yeah. But we're also shutting down these clues and these hints. to better mental health, to better emotional health, to better process it. And now I can honestly say, I get through it so much quicker.

When something upsets me or I have a trigger that takes me back to the death of my father or back to the traumatic event of my injuries or back to any painful, sorrowful time, I can just, okay, let me just go through it. I can go through it. Okay, here's the lesson. Here's the memory. Here's what I need to work on. And it's just over that much quicker.

Now, again, this is many, many years of work. But still, I think emotions when they first pop up were too quick to suppress them and too quick to shun them. When in reality, we should be, I don't know if welcoming is the right word, but just more accepting of being in their presence so that we can learn with them what we need to learn to make our mental self better. And even to make our physical self better, I can also tell you a lot of times when I've gone through a lot of the work myself with a therapist, even going through some. psychedelic system psychotherapies. When I have a mental and emotional breakthrough, several times I have felt this tremendous release for my body, just this energy leave my body. I kid you not, the next day I go into the gym and I'm moving quicker, I'm stronger, these areas in my body that I used to think were major weaknesses. I'm no longer concerned about to a certain degree. But, you know, the body keeps

the score, like they say. And when we can work on both the body and the body. the heart and the soul, the physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and get all of these parts of our wellness working in synchronicity together, they will all come back in service together, I believe, and that's what I found. Yeah, yeah, so beautifully said. A little bit about what you've done. You talked about psychedelic assisted therapy that has showed up on several of my podcasts. I'm actually quite fascinated by it right now because two of my podcast guests, Sarah Godfried, who's Harvard-trained OB, Austin Pearlmutter, who's a, you know, neurologist. When I brought up the idea of using either plant medicine or psychedelics for processing traumas,

they both were like, absolutely, it is the way. And we need to start to embrace it. And it was a whack on the side of the head. So talk a little bit about how you use that and other tools so that as people are listening, if they're resonating with what you're saying, what do we have? I mean, we have everything from go to your clinical psychologist to psychedelic-assisted therapy, to EFT, to EMDR. I mean, there's a lot you can do.

And maybe you did more than just one thing. So talk a little bit about how you engaged in that process of healing. Yeah, I have done quite a few things. I still say I'm relatively new to the plant medicine psychedelic therapy, psychedelics in general space. About a year and a half now, I've been using recreationally, but very intentionally in a lot of therapeutic experiences. But let me caveat first by saying, at its core, me personally, what I feel what is going on, besides, there's a lot of biochemistry with certain plant medicines, certain psychedelics. But at its core, what I believe is happening

that is this incredible unlocking experience of the mind and the body, is the ability to detach, from the self is the ability to introduce some form of altered state of consciousness, because consciousness is first and foremost out to protect us, to keep us safe and away from any harm, both physical or mental and emotional. And so you don't have to just first go to plant medicine. You were sharing a lot of other modalities. I first had my very, my very first out-of-body experience, significant altered state of conscious and experience that helped my mental health just by breathwork.

I was attending a breathwork class and was about 10, 12 minutes in, long story short, had an out of body experience. I was with my dying father in the hospital and finally got that last goodbye that I never got because he was unable to say it. Just through the power of breath and changing my own biochemistry, changing the oxygenation in my blood, just through changing my breathing pattern. Amazing. And then since then I've gone through multiple ketamine-assisted psychotherapy sessions.

So going to a clinic, getting back, working with a therapist. We do therapy first, integration period, and then ketamine therapy. I've had three sessions, all life-changing, profound experience is just completely ineffable. And anybody listening maybe who has had a psychedelic experience like this or particularly ketamine, it's like, you know. And it just, it helps you detach from yourself. I've had multiple ego deaths in terms of quite, I literally. died separated from my body. And then you become much more at peace with death. You recognize the oneness and connectedness to all and everything and everyone. So there's just this complete sense

of all in love that I think if I had a little bit of it before, I have a lot of it now. And just helping me understand so much more that I feel like in our normal day-to-day consciousness, we can understand or we choose not to understand or it's just too much to sit and think about ketamine has helped me profoundly. I've had multiple reconnections with my father. It has opened me up. Honestly, my intention going into ketamine-assisted psychotherapy was to really work through the trauma and to go through my diagnosed PTSD around his death because it had

been 17 years since he passed away, Andy. And I still feel felt like I have not grieved. I'm stuck in that just unaccepting in kind of anger and sadness. And in three sessions, I can honestly tell you, 17 years later of watching my father die a horrible terminal illness, I am now finally into the acceptance phase of grief. Amazing. And how powerful is that? Just in three sessions, I feel like I've gotten so much of my life back.

And anybody who has gone through a traumatic loss to know that you can get into acceptance phase of grief, you get so much of your life back. You just get so much worry gone. You're able to look at the past as the past and not stay so painfully tethered, or at least that's my experience. And then beyond that, I've used MDMA and psilocybin. Cilocybin is probably, I would say, the plant medicine that has given me the most therapeutic benefits in terms of that experience I was telling me about earlier before, of having this mental and emotional realization during a session. And, and, you know, And then feeling that energy leave my body, all of my prior injuries, all in my midsection, my back, my hamstring, my hips in about a three gram session, I was just thinking about it.

And I was reliving that trauma. And I was finally just letting that version of me, letting that young soldier chase let go of that identity loss and just say, you know what, it's okay. You had a plan, but this is your life now. It's all served you. You are here. You're loved. You are safe.

you can let that go. And as I did, I was thinking about it, I felt just this energy, just this force from my hips, my entire midsection, just leave my body. It's almost, it just became like this beam of light that just kind of like just like, it's like my body finally took this breath of air. It exhaled. Like it had been inhaling, holding its breath for 20 years. And that was the time the next day.

I literally went to the gym and I'm repping out weight that I normally only, able used to do for like one set, one rep. And I just felt free. My body was moving and just there was something to it. Um, psilocybin for me has been my absolute favorite. I've had profound physical benefits. Uh, I've had multiple experiences revisiting conversations and revisiting past versions of myself and visiting my father. And then at the end of that experience, the end of that two, three hour experience, I personally feel like I have gotten two, three years of therapy. Um, because. there's so much that goes on in there with ketamine and psilocybin that gets you out of ego,

that gets you out of your current state of consciousness. But there's a lot of unique biochemistry. It leads to new neurons firing. It leads to neural genesis. I was just going to say, you have all these things happening. Exactly. And it's not a one and done. So you are literally going through brain changing experiences that help you see and process things

then and there in a powerful, unique light. But then you get to keep. that new version of yourself when you walk away. Yeah, which is so different than traditional therapy where you're kind of beaten the dead horse. I'm not saying that like that is not good, but I have found just in studying mindset for so many years that I don't want to sit and talk about it over and over and over again. And what I just came to on psilocybin specifically, but microdosing, plant medicine,

And ketamine fascinates me. Like, I'm opening my mind to this more, but I have to go to the science to help me understand why does this work. And what I found is exactly what you just said is it's creating new neurons. I like to call them baby neurons. They're like baby neurons that get formed. And then you have a fresh start. You have a way of seeing things differently.

The challenge that we have right now is that we tend to think of these things as we kind a trip back into the 70s and we're like, oh, no, this is what the hippies did. Or we worry that there's going to be. Yeah, we worry there's going to be some, I'm going to go crazy, the Timothy Leary kind of ideas. But I feel like plant medicine and psychedelics for traumas and overcoming mental hurdles is absolutely on the forefront of solving so many mental health problems. I'm with you. I think I personally think psychedelic and particularly psychedelic, and particularly

psychedelic assisted psychotherapy, psychedelic assisted therapies. And me personally, psilocybin, the tip of the spear when it comes to treating, and I think we're not far off from, I'm going to say my words here, curing certain mental health illnesses. So many studies coming out of John Hopkins, the Veterans Affairs Department, of using particularly psilocybin, but also MDMA and ketamine and soldiers, sailors, airmen, veterans, people who just suffered major, major traumas in their life are going through these modalities. And not only because that experience is so unique, but because of the unique neurons firing and the neurogenesis being created, they're now able to go back into a new baseline.

They're getting their life back. And many, many are even reporting that it's no longer even a diagnosis of PTSD. Yeah. And what's so unique. or two is when we're talking neurogenesis, increasing the neuroplasticity of your brain, that has a lot of other unique long-term benefits that I think we're now beginning to look at as correlation, but pay attention to the science for many years. I think we're going to be seeing. What happens we know when you have more neurons firing or old neurons finally firing again,

reduce inflammation in the brain? What does that lead to? Well, we know increased inflammation in the brain is the root cause or the root correlation when we're looking at Alzheimer's to mention other neurological diseases. So a lot of these things like psilocybin, even functional mushrooms like lions may and things that can still cross a blood-brain barrier lead to neurogenesis are being looked at and studied for prevention and even slowing down and reversing things such as Alzheimer's and dementia. So not only you're doing the emotional work, but you're actually increasing your brain's health and possibly thwarting off even future disease.

Yeah. I think it's fascinating that you can have the aha experience in the middle of actually taking psychedelic. And it's not like alcohol or other drugs where the next day you're going to have to suffer the consequence. It's actually the opposite because now you have all these, again, I'm going to lovingly call them baby neurons. You have all these baby neurons that just like all the center there for you to start to think new thoughts. Whereas without those, to your point, neurogenesis, without that, you're having to try to undo the old thought. And that's hard. It's possible and it's hard. But I mean, why not use, why not at least consider, why not look at the efficacy of these modalities of these substances? And particularly, I mean,

we've been using ketamine for for decades now it's FDA approved it's federally legal in the clinical environment of course and it's honestly if you've had any kind of surgery you've gone under anesthesia you've been on ketamine um you just didn't know it yeah and you know and then look at psilocybin again i mean over 60% of the DNA of psilocybin we share so over 60% of the DNA between a fungi something that occurs naturally in mother nature and us over half is the same DNA make up. So no wonder there's this unique lock and key mechanism going on. We've been living symbiotically with this stuff for eons, you know, but we've, because of history, because of stigma, because of a lot of things, we've had this hard separation for many decades now, but

thankfully, through conversations such like this and people who are brave enough to do the work themselves through these unique modalities and then share it, I mean, that's the only reason I'm here, because of studying it from afar, talking to trusted resources and talking to people who I feel have a similar story like mine so that I can see myself in them. More importantly, I can see myself in their pain, but now I can see myself in their healing. And I would much rather be on the other side with them in healing than the pain. Yeah. Again, I went down and started researching this because my science brain really wanted to understand

it. And what I found was that, and you may already know this, that they're one of the ways that psilocybin creates this neurogenesis is by tapping into a very specific serotonin receptor site on neurons. And once it goes in through that receptor site, it actually upregulates BDNF, which is brain fertilizer. And now you have all these new neurons form. Well, then my functional brain went to, well, gosh, so many people are serotonin depleted. I mean, this is why we have so many people on SSRIs.

Look at so many people with clinical diagnosed depression. What's going on there? Significantly lowered serotonin levels. Right. And but then you go, okay, well, where's serotonin made? Serotonin's made in the gut. Okay, well, what's going on with everybody's gut? Well, too many antibiotics, too much crappy food, too much stress.

Like the poor microbiome of the gut, it has no chance to make enough serotonin. And then if without enough serotonin, you're not fulfilling this receptor site. You're low in BDNF, leading to anxiety, leading to depression and you go into a plant medicine experience or a psychedelic experience like you did in a very assisted way and you have now accessed the brain in a chemical way that is almost near impossible to access unless you've got yourself the perfect microbiome of the guy. Which if you do, please let us know. I would love to know what you're doing.

I mean, I'm working on mine constantly, but yeah, absolutely. And that's one little caveat there. It's unique you say about the gut and serotonin. Some people were report. I've had this sometimes, not regularly, have mild nausea when you're using psilocybe or even MDMA because that's what's going on. You have this massive influx of creation and stimulation of serotonin. That's all going down in your gut.

So quick little caveat there for people just to be mindful of should you choose to go down that path. So how do you find some of these places? because that's the other unfortunate part is that we villainized it. So, you know, and then also, you know, how do we do it in a setting, a controlled setting that is helpful to us? I know there are clinics here in America that are popping up that will, you can just make an appointment and go in. But how did you start that journey? Was it in your home? Was it through a therapist?

It was like all the above. But to answer chronologically how I started my journey, I was in a very safe container, we'll say. I was at an event with friends, peers, family members, people that I knew and trusted. And it was a recreational experience. And MDMA was there and I was offered it and I took it. And container being the key words, safe, trusted container, safe, trusted space, set and setting. You're going to always hear the more you look into psychedelic use and had a very profound

experience. And then after that, it was really looking at, okay, sourcing it, but also where, when am I going to use it? How am I going to use it? Because that was really the big disclaimer, I'll say, in really all psychedelic literature, studies or even personal experiences where you want to be somewhere you know, be with people, you know, be very safe. You don't, you want to basically, you want to stack conditions in your favor as much as

possible. So unique to ketamine, I've never, I've never done ketamine recreationally or outside of a clinic. There's, they got them all over the U.S. now, Canada and I think Amsterdam as well. I chose to go through field trip health, field trip health. Yeah, that's, I've heard that. I heard that one. Okay, go for it. That's where I went with ketamine. I've been following them for quite some time. And full disclosure, now my wife actually is the LA clinic manager and family nurse practitioner for Philtrip Health here. But I had been in pursuit in studying field trip health long before she ever worked there. Now it's just cool.

So she actually was the one that injected me with ketamine. She was, I have a nice trip, baby. And so it's pretty cool. About a better person. It's pretty cool to have that experience with my wife. So for me, there's no other, more trusted setting than being there with my wife. Yeah. But so I was looking to like who was pioneering the researcher, who's just providing education

and research? and who do I know is going to these other facilities. So kind of word of mouth, but also looking at the science. Due diligence is huge. You know, anytime you're going to change anything in your diet or nutrition or medication, especially now with looking at psychedelics, it needs to be right. It needs to be safe and you owe it to yourself to do that due diligence. Like I said, ketamine is FDA approved.

It's legal. You can go to these clinics. I use field trip health. You can go to other ketamine clinics. I would recommend someone to go to the ketamine. Acetylene-assisted or psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy route. So you get therapy, you get integration, you get the container. There are a lot of ketamine clinics opening up now to where it's literally just walk in.

They stick you with an IV. They walk out. You do your thing. You have your trip. And I'm not saying that you can't have a profound or unique or even enjoyable experience that way. But it's like you're leaving so much on the table. Yeah.

The therapy, the integration, the whole experience or surrounding that, the mental and emotional and spiritual work surrounding that is going to truly maximize the efficacy and maximize your time on your journey. Here in the United States, there are now many cities and states becoming more and more decriminalized in terms of psilocybin and MDMA. Seattle, I believe, now is the first in the United States. I believe that it's legal for 21 and up. Washington State is, excuse me, Oregon, I believe, in Washington State as a whole are

looking at making it legal as well. I think they're going to be the first states. But, I mean, when we're talking about technically federally illegal substances in some of these cases, to say it correctly, you got to know a guy. Yeah, right. You got to know somebody who knows somebody. And that's where the scary part comes in, which is why I love what field trip health is doing. Because I think if we can do it in a contained way, I think it will make everybody feel a little bit safer and it will feel a little more like it is therapeutic. It's not just some LSD trip you take and then all of a sudden, you know, your life changes. I think that's hard for people to wrap their head around.

Yeah, but there are a couple platforms like them. If you're just looking for research and looking for anywhere that I would recommend to go to look to study, to find resources, to find even application. Field trip health, I love the information they put out. I think it's just fieldchiphealth.com. I've got clinics all over. Also, I'm a big fan of Maps. It's the, I always forget the acronym. Multidisciplinary A something of psychedelic sciences.

I'm butchering that as much as I love Maps. But they're just a really, really great trusted resource of current scientific and personal evidence of what's going on in a psychedelic space, where it's becoming decriminalized, legalized, you know, nationally, internationally, all that. stuff. The other one that I started researching is third wave.com. Yes. Yes. Yeah. He's got really good information on on his website as well. Yeah. I just figured it out. I looked at real quick. I cheated multidisciplinary association for psychedelic studies is Maps. It's Maps. It's Maps. And we'll put, we'll put the links in our notes. So I mean, and just so you all know, like Chase and I

have no investment other than I guess your wife is the clinic director. But I was, I was a fan long before she ever was working there. I just think it's really exciting. And I feel like there's paradigms breaking apart from the pandemic. There's the paradigm that we had to work at home or work in a brick and mortar sort or in an office setting. And now everybody's like, I can go wherever I want. I can move to any place I want to go, which is really cool.

I feel like, I don't know if you feel like this, but I feel like there's a paradigm of I'm living in my own world and this is my stuff. And that has been broken apart to, I don't want to be isolated. I want relationships to be at the forefront of building myself a happy life. And then I also feel like the paradigm of health is breaking apart. We have that, gosh, take the pill and everything goes away. And we realize maybe that's not the answer. So would you say that things like ketamine clinics and what we're understanding about psilocybin,

that this is really at the beginning of a paradigm that has been broken. and a new paradigm is forming. So well said. Absolutely yes. And I think anybody that chooses to go down this route and has even just the smallest little psychedelic experience of this oneness that we, so many of us talk about that we experience, you realize that we are creatures.

We are individual small little tiny component creatures to a much bigger system. And the system must work together, i.e. we must be contributing to it. There is this experience that you will have, most likely, of oneness, of connectedness, that makes you realize we are not meant to be isolated. We are not meant to be alone. In fact, if we are isolated, if we are alone long enough, we will suffer physically, we will suffer mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and the big picture begins to slow down as well. It's this connection that once you have, will never leave you.

It has awarded me after these experiences such higher levels of empathy, of dropping judgment. Hell, of even dropping road rage. It sounds so cliche, but when someone cut me off. You do live in L.A. I grew up in L.A. I know how easy it is to get road rage. But now it's just, there's so much more empathy and sympathy involved with these other experiences because we just drop judgment.

You drop ego. and you're much more quickly able to see other people as another human being, instead of just somebody or something, you know, affecting my day, which, you know, you're right and entitled to feel that way, but, you know, it makes you realize, it helps you understand really what matters. And also at the end of that, like, we all matter. And we all need to be here working together.

And these experiences, even through, you know, altered states of consciousness, such as breath work and, in other modalities, it can happen. It can happen pretty quickly. So beautifully said. I had a conversation for another time, but I had a near-death experience in my early 30s that gave me that same awareness. And I...

It's been said that as well, yeah. Yeah, the two weeks after that experience were some of the most profound weeks of my life because I had that sense of oneness, the sense of purpose. the sense of gratitude that, oh my gosh, I almost wasn't here. And then life alters it, you know, and all of a sudden you lose it. And you can't grasp it as much. So I'm really excited about because it was like a window into like what was possible for my brain and heart to feel. And I didn't, if I could go back and recreate the gratitude I had at that moment, that would be really cool.

it just, it just life got in the way and I lost it. And that's it, Mindy, what you just said, the brain and the heart, for me, psychedelics and this type of work and this type of integration around psychedelic and plant medicine for therapeutic benefit, even recreational, honestly. It is the connection piece. It is the tool there to help finally connect the head and the heart. It connects the head and the heart in ways I personally have never experienced. But now there is a permanent bridge more than just the vagus nerve, right? connecting the head and the gut there. But there is this connection where I feel the two are finally working for each other with each other. So many times we think we need to live and act and work out

of logic and reason to be head driven and suppress and ignore the gut or suppress it, ignore the heart or intuition. But now I've a much, much clear understanding of when I need to let the head or the heart drive. More often than not, I need to let them help them come back together. And that's what psychedelics have really done. It's bridge the connection between the head the heart. That's beautiful. I love it. Well, thank you for sharing your story. I think a lot of us as we're starting to understand more on psychedelics, more on on microdosing. It's, it's so taboo that it's kind of hard to share. And I think the more we share it and we explain the science behind it, it opens people, no no pun intended, but you're opening people's mind to be able to see this as an incredible tool for

healing. And one other thing I'll say to the healing and science, You said microdosing there last year. I actually went through a month-long microdosing psilocybin protocol and did a lot of things. Memory, cognition, energy focus, but beyond that, no, tracking on whoop, I've been using my whoop for two and a half years. I'd used it about two years, almost two years before that experience during that month and now ever since, that psilocybin microdose increased my HRV 40% and has stayed elevated. So not only did I have mental and emotional benefits, but physiological ones as well, psilocybin quite literally changed my body. And again, like the neurogenesis.

It didn't happen just one off and done. My HRV, my biomarkers of this thing tracks now 40% higher than before. Yeah. And when we can see that statistic? Hard data. That's hard data. That's amazing. Wow.

Well, again, this is my new fascination. Every year I have like one or two things I want to study. Love it. And this year, it was plant medicine, psychedelics, because Sarah Godfrey and Austin Perlmutter, I have to give them both the credit. they really opened my eyes to want to look at this differently. So I just love it. And I could talk for hours on it. We'll have to go offline at some point. Yeah. But let's finish up with this. So we decided this year, this is our third season of the Resetter podcast. And we usually ask a question at the end.

And each year it's a little different. So this year, it's gratitude. We're really focused on gratitude. So two questions I have for you. One, what is a daily gratitude? practice look like for you. And two, what is something today in 2021 that you are massively grateful for? My daily gratitude practice is besides maybe when certain things come up, new unique things that I absolutely need to be grateful for right then and there. Actually, for a while now, I've had this little quick phrase that I say to myself at the end of every night right before I close my eyes and I'm a big sleep health fanatic. So I put on my sleep, my eye mask, hit my white noise machine. I simply just say out loud or I think internally, thank you for today. And I ask for the

gift of tomorrow. Call it a mantra, call it a prayer, whatever. It just puts me in that gratitude mindset going to bed. And then I'm automatically aware of gratitude when I wake up the next day as well. Yeah. And then forgive me. The second question. The second was something specific that you're grateful, whether it's in your life or in the world, that you're really grateful for in this moment. To kind of put a big bow on our entire conversation and talking about the power of, and the power and necessity of prioritizing your mental health, working through emotional traumas and my experience PTSD, this year, I have finally wholeheartedly gotten to a place of gratitude for all of my loss of the physical traumas I went through at a young age. I am,

grateful for the gifts that I received from my father dying, which sounds very, very weird to say out loud. But anybody who is struggling in your mental health struggling with PTSD, I can tell you, I can promise you on the other side of this work is gratitude and is gratitude for these things that are possibly wreaking havoc on your life, that are deviating you from where you want to go and what you want to do with your life. there is gratitude for these events on the other side of it. I am grateful for the loss of my father and the gifts that it has given me. I'm grateful for the physical traumas I went through in the military and the life that it took for me and the life that it gave me. I'm fully in a place of gratitude

for all these things that kept me shackled to the past for so long. Amazing. It's so interesting to me how when we're going through the pain of it, gratitude. It's, I mean, rarely do we show up. here we go, oh, this is so horrible. I'm going to be so much better when I come out of it. But when we look back, we realize that those were catalysts for change. Those were opportunities to grow us into different people. And without them, we would not be the people that we are today. They were necessary.

Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we'd love to know about it. so please leave us a review, share it with your friends, and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.