TrueLife - Dr. Corina Romo - Bloodlines, Botanicals, and Breakthroughs

Episode Date: June 22, 2025

One on One Video Call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US🚨🚨Curious about the future of psychedelics? Imagine if Alan Watts started a secret society with Ram Dass and Hunter S. Thompson… now open the door. Use Promocode TRUELIFE for Get 25% off monthly or 30% off the annual plan For the first yearhttps://www.district216.com/🌺🌀 Dr. Corina Romo, M.D. is a medicine woman cloaked in credentials — a modern-day curandera whose roots reach deep into the soil of Andean ancestral medicine, and whose branches touch the psychedelic skies of altered states and expanded consciousness.She is not here to treat symptoms.She is here to awaken souls.A daughter of the divine feminine and a guardian of sacred plants, Dr. Romo moves through the worlds of psychedelic therapy, medicinal cannabis, and transpersonal psychology like a jaguar in the jungle — precise, powerful, and unafraid. Her protocols in microdosing, risk reduction, and psychedelic integration are not sterile clinical interventions — they are rituals of remembrance, guiding people back to the wisdom encoded in their own bones.As a founding mother of the Psychedelic Society of Ecuador, her presence is both a flame and a mirror — igniting others while reflecting the truth they’ve been taught to forget: that healing is sacred, and the feminine is the original pharmacopeia.She’s not part of the wellness industry.She’s part of the Earth’s immune system.Affiliated with FEMCA, TerCann, Endocannamed, and Psychedelic.Support, Dr. Romo is at the forefront of a rising matriarchal intelligence — one that doesn’t ask for permission from patriarchal science, but commands reverence through evidence, embodiment, and ancestral knowing.Her work through the CannaTherapy Center is not simply therapeutic — it’s alchemical. With one hand in the clinic and the other in the cosmos, she reminds us: The body is a temple. The plant is a priestess. And healing is holy.http://linkedin.com/in/[e-mail] One on One Video call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_USCheck out our YouTube:https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPzfOaFtA1hF8UhnuvOQnTgKcIYPI9Ni9&si=Jgg9ATGwzhzdmjkg

Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark, fumbling, fear. furious through ruins maze, lights my war cry, born from the blaze.

The poem is Angels with Rifles, the track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Kodak Serafini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Aloha, everybody. Welcome back to Psychedelic Science 2025. We've got some incredible speakers and some incredible guests that have been changing the world of psychedelics and helping everybody to see the world in a different way. the awareness and changing the landscape. And I was hopeful that my next guest here would be so kind to introduce herself.

Hey, everybody. My name's Corina Romo. I'm a medical doctor from Equito, Ecuador, located in South America. I work with different plants and mushrooms from the Andian territory because it's actually illegal in my country. Very nice. And so you're up here today at psychedelic science,

obviously, enjoying the company. But you just came fresh off of a talk up there. And I was curious if perhaps you could, fill the audience in that may not be fortunate enough to be here what you guys were talking about in there sure i was talking about the legality status of andian medicine uh andian medicine is actually a career pathway that you can take in my country uh it's a 3,200 academic program that you have to undergo different trainings with different communities i am actually training with a salasaka community a ketchasal salasaka community and we are actually able to work with different forms of plants, you know, dry herbs, ointments, cataplasms, oils can be in either topical

or oral form, you know. The people who actually wrote the document are really smart because they did not mention any plant in specific and obviously not mention any active principle. So we kind of have a legal void that we can use on our favor in order to work. Right? How do you feel about coming up here? It seems to me that with your background in both Western medicine and where you're from, indigenously, there's two different worlds happening here. You come up here and there's all this different science happening and the Western model

doesn't really have that big of a background in spirituality. Can you tell us a little bit about the difference, like coming up here and talking to the people? Yeah, well, I would say it's not that different from what's happening in my country, actually, because the current paradigm in Ecuador is pretty much the same as the entire world. They value science over anything. Right. And so the reductionist model is what is priming, actually. The advantage in Ecuador is actually that we have a lot of communities

and our government protects it. I would say that here I've encountered a combination of both. You know, I know it's different this year. It's the first time that they have Latin American panelists. I understand. First time that Ecuadorian people are. invited to the conference you know as panelists and i've seen different people from different communities i think it's a more open this year yeah there's a lot of people here sometimes i get like one of the

words i love the most is initiation like i love that word it carries such like weight to it and so much community and rights of passage and in the western model i see like an absence of initiation in some ways i think like certification is trying to take over initiation i've kind of blown up on a few people talking about the certification process. But when I say the word initiation, what does that mean to you? Okay. I definitely think about different rites of passage that you have to undergo to learn how to relate to Mother Earth and different spiritual concepts for sure. Like going to the mountain, going to the waterfall at night taking a really cold shower in the waterfall, you know. That's what actually comes to my mind. Different rituals where you actually acquire different.

different tools to be able to hold the space in a more balanced way. Yeah. That's actually initiation for me. I love it. The idea of being out in nature and just communing, it opens up like a whole new awareness. And I think especially in the Western model, we get sort of cut off from spirit. Maybe it's like a lack of nature or being outside, but we get so caught up in it. What are some of the biggest, when you gave your talk today, what were some of the points that you really wanted to drive home and have the community come away with?

Well, a key point I would like to share, I guess, would be, don't forget, we're all earthlings, you know. Totally. We're part of the ecosystem. We all have our role in this ecosystem. To me, we're just as important as ants, as bees, as a plant, you know, as a mountain, as the air, as the fire. We're always, I guess that's the message I'd like to get across. Don't forget, we're all one. It's a beautiful message. I always admire people that can speak multiple languages. It seems like you're able to navigate the world through different lenses. Like different languages mean different lenses to me. And so I'm curious to get your opinion on. Another thing, an issue that I kind of see in the West is like the labeling of stuff. We have like the DSM up here with all of these, you're sick, you're depressed, you have anxiety. And I think when we put these labels on people, we really get away from helping them and helping them understand.

understand who they are. Instead, we trap them in these words and these labels. What is your thoughts on like the whole labeling process? I'm not a big fan at all. In my clinical practice, I actually tell my patients, we're not going to use those labels. We're going to try and understand the underlying issues, the imbalances that are going on in your body, and we're going to forget those name texts, you know, try to understand the root cause of what's causing and, learn to identify themselves as a human being and human experience is actually really hard and we're all going through it together, you know, so I'm not a big fan at all. It's a good language for different healthcare professionals to communicate, you know, but that's it. Yeah, you bring up

experience. Like, I think the language of experience trumps almost anything else. It's very interesting to see sometimes a practitioner who may have no experience with the medicine, and trying to help someone else go through there. But the language of experience, maybe you can tell people about some of the experiences that you've been through that have helped transform your life. Well, I have actually an autism diagnosis, so that's how it all started for me. The first time I actually tried cannabis, everything changed, and I had a really scary experience. It was a psychedelic experience, that's why I know cannabis is also a psychedelic, used properly.

And I started researching about it, and I found that there were decades of research. And then I started trying all these different other plants that I could find around my house. And, you know, I ended up here. Nice. Very nice. I think that not only experience, but experimentation. Like that is something that kind of gets in the way when we have these labels on us. Like once you get that label, all of a sudden it's like you're given a prescription and a pill. But the experimenting and trying new things, how do you feel about these plant medicines being a birthright?

Of course, that's actually what I think, because we're humans. You know, we belong to a planet that gives us our own food. It gives us our own medicine. It gives us our own housing. We've got everything we need. So we need to begin to treat it with the same respect and the same reciprocity. You know, that's a very key important concept in Andean cosmor region, reciprocity. So we need to better take care of Mother Earth because we're one with it.

You know, we're just the tiny part of that huge ecosystem. It's such a great way to say it. Thank you for that. You know, one of the things that I love about the psychedelic experience, and the way I see it is this communion was something greater than me. And I don't know how to explain it. I guess that's where the word ineffable comes from. But it seems to me that you are, like there's this divine spirit that you speak with,

or maybe you get to see yourself in a different way. Have you found a good way to figure out what that is? Like, what is that divinity that we feel when we're in these high, those states? Well, first of all, I wouldn't say you can only feel that divinity when you're in a non-ordinary consciousness. I guess that's a bridge when you're starting to understand that the divinity is inside of you, you know, but you can learn to feel that experience on a daily basis. Like, I mean, I feel it every single second, every breath you take because that's it, you know, it's everywhere, it's inside of all of us. It's the same thing that makes waves going,

Orchrane, plants grow, and atoms, you know, move and entire planetary systems move. So I wouldn't say it's necessary to have a psychedelic experience to feel that. I mean, it's a breach for people who've never felt it. Like, for example, me, I was an atheist before. You know, I grew up in a Catholic environment. I didn't quite understand that religious concept of divinity. But when I tried plant medicine, everything changed. Yeah.

Yeah, I think for me, I felt it the same way too. And I love the way you describe that as a bridge because once you feel it for the first time, then you can go back and cross it and you can go out and see the trees or the plants or the way the ecosystem underneath the plants. And you're like, oh, there it is. It's interesting to feel that aspect of it. One, I get kind of curious sometimes. Like, we have seen psychedelics rise to the top and plant medicine rise to the top before, like back in the kind of 60s when there was like a last wave of them. I'm curious to get your thoughts.

Do you see the awareness we're building now moving into something bigger this time? Or is it you think it might fall back into the underground? I don't think it's possible for it to fall back underground. Because we're living in different times. Everything's globalized now. We have internet. We have communication. We have information available, no?

And everybody's looking for something more profound, even if they don't find it in different plant medicines. Right. It's something global. And I think because the way we have access to information now, it's really, really hard that even if all the governments in the world try to enforce law, to suppress it, people are not going to allow it. It's happening in different countries where it's not legal. Yeah. I see it happening all over the world. And there's one word that comes to mind in its relationships. Like the relationships that we're beginning to form, not only with each other, but with the different medicines, seem to give us a different lens to the world. I know when I started my journey with plant medicines, like it changed not only my relationship

with myself but with my family. I was curious if you could talk a little bit about the idea of relationships and how your path has been. Yeah, like relationships is a key concept in Indian Cosmovision. The way you relate to your thoughts, the way you relate to your feelings, the way you relate to your bodily sensations, the way to you relate with food, the way you relate with other people, the way you relate with Mother Earth, the way you relate with water, with fire, with every single thing. I think relationship is the basis. And that's a very important principle I talk about with my patients.

The way they relate to these medicines is not medication at all. I prefer the term sacred technology, graphian terminology. And of course, relationship is the way to heal. All of your relationships in order to heal your relationship with yourself. I love it, answer. Thank you for that. A lot of people have different techniques. And some people use plant medicine with breathwork or sometimes they use plant medicine.

in different ways. What are some of the techniques that you use? Okay. I use a non-directive approach almost always unless somebody asks for something specific and I have to know them very well, you know, because I really don't want to interrupt with different techniques. It's to me creating this safe space for the person in order to allow themselves to get in contact with their most profound self. I do teach them breathing techniques if they want to lower the experience and if they want to raise the experience, but it's their own will if they wish to do so during the macro dose session. I want to keep it that way. I use a lot of exercises before and after, but not during the experience. I love that answer. You know,

integration is sort of like a hot button word. A lot of people talk about it and it's rarely defined in the same way. Sometimes I think we've got to be careful with integration because sometimes talking right after a ceremony or during it, like in print or you have transference, transference or counter transference. What is your thoughts on integration and how can we use it? Okay, so my model is a very Grofyan model. So I actually use art mandala's at first. Oh, nice. That's beautiful. And then I use certain oracles, not as a form of a divination, but you know, archetypes. And then we go to the talk. So first art, because it's easier to express with your business.

body, it's really difficult to put words about inevitable experience. Yes. So let the body speak for itself. I love it. The concept of using artwork, and it brings up another brilliant point. For me and a lot of other people, there's these incredible images sometimes, sometimes open-eyed, but sometimes close-eyed, and you see all these mandala's. And it seems to me like it's another language happening there, like all these incredible things

in front of you. For me, it helps me understand connection. But what do you think? Is it possible that some of these mandolas or some of these 3D geometrical images we're seeing are, in fact, a language? Yeah, for sure. A language of the unconscious mind, I guess. Totally. Yeah. Like a way to project what's stored in your cellular memory. Yeah, for sure. What are you have shared some awesome stuff about what you got going on. But one point you brought up was the Andean cosmology. Maybe you could, I'm not sure a whole lot of people understand that. And I was curious if maybe you could share some more details about that.

Yeah, sure. Okay, so we're talking about Cosmovision, the way you see things, but also Cosmovience. I don't have a little word translation for that. I guess it's Cosmo Living, the relationships we were talking about, the way you live. So the entire Andian Cosmovision is based on a geometrical shape called a Chakana, which acts as a bridge. It's a bridge between worlds. If you want to talk about the geometry, there are different. types of chakanas, a solar chakana, a lunar chakana, it acts as a calendar, you know, like it shows

the equinoxes and the solstices. It's the way that the territory is also based, it's the way that the therapies are also based because the chakana is a portal between those worlds and the entire structure of how you relate to everything around you is based on the chakana. That's why it's also a diagnostic tool, you know. And so there are certain principles, very important principles, you know, Moonite, love. But how do you say reciprocity? Aini, sorry, I forgot the word.

Reciprocity is called I need, you know. And Mother Earth has the capacity to give us food and medicine. same and a home we need to treat it with respect that's like one of the most key principles in andian cosmovision we're the same you know we're all one and of course there are different traditions used around different communities like each community has their own way of relating you know to the food to nature but they all share these reciprocity principle so you are always give offerings when you're doing therapies you're

know and the idea that we're not doing these holding these spaces alone but we're holding it with different spirits you know plant spirits grunting spirits waterfall spirits so yeah that's the ambient cosmo vision it's a beautiful vision thank you for sharing with us today awesome let's say some people are out there watching right now and they're like i would love to talk more and learn about what you're doing where can people find you what you got coming up what are you excited about Sure. Okay, so they can find me on my website. It's www. Corina Romo MD Medicaldoctor.com. You can find all my different social networks there. You can find me on Instagram, Dr. Corina Romo. You can send me a WhatsApp. I'm really a very open person. I love talking to a lot of people who want to know and learn more about the things we're doing. So yeah. Fantastic. Ladies and gentlemen, go down to the show notes and please check out her information down there. I hope you have a beautiful day. That's all we got. Aloha. Thank you. Bye. Nice.