TrueLife - Heather A. Lee - Intention, Exploration, & Discovery

Episode Date: July 26, 2023

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/www.medicinewomanretreats.comHeather is uniquely qualified in the intersection of transformational travel, psychedelic wellness and integrative mental health. Heather is Certified in Psychedelic Assisted Psychotherapy and is a skilled behavior change specialist. She has training in Mind/Body Medicine from the Harvard Mind/ Body Medical Institute and is the past Director of Women's Health Education at the University of Virginia Medical Center, She has taught courses on stress physiology and mind/body health at the University of Virginia Medical School. Heather is a recognized wellness industry consultant and retreat facilitator leading psilocybin retreats in Mexico and Jamaica. She is skilled in Psychedelic Psychotherapy as an exciting and effective path for clients seeking relief from depression and anxiety and exploring personal growth.Excited for psilocybin applications with eco-anxiety, cancer and end of life distress.Currently developing first to market psychedelic palliative care programs and retreats for women with breast cancer.Past clients include the Four Seasons Hualalai, Golden Door Spa and the One & Only Maldives. Leading consultant for healthcare, travel and spa industry seeking to elevate their ability to respond safely and effectively to the growing consumer demand for psychedelic wellness experiences 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, Fearist 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 Codex Serafini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the True Life podcast. I hope everybody's having a beautiful day. I hope that you're able to sit down and hold whatever confrontation is in front of you and you can cradle it and see how beautiful and what an opportunity it is to have.

I've got an incredible show for you today with an incredible guest. The one and only Heather Ailey. She's a licensed clinical social worker. She is the founder of Medicine Woman retreats. She has a ton of experience in psychedelic wellness from retreats in Mexico to Jamaica. She has been schooled in the mind and the body.

And we're going to get into all kinds of conversations today about the world of psychedelics and what's happening in there. So, Heather, thank you so much for being here today. How are you? I am good and glad to be here. And thanks so much for inviting me. I'm so excited to chat with you. Yeah, well, I appreciate it.

One of the things that really drew me to you was this recent sort of pharmaceutical PSA that's out there. And I started laughing and I was smiling. And I was wondering if you could maybe tell people a little bit about that. Yeah, I did a little PSA where it says, astrotherapist of psilocybin might be right for you. Side effects may include elevated mood, increased creativity, decreased depression. Basically could make you a better human being.

So, you know, I just think it's, I just couldn't help but want to play around with that, you know, because we listen to all these pharmaceutical ads and the side effects are like, you know, may cause death, may make things really worse for you, may give you a whole new problem, you didn't already have. And truly, you know, working with psilocybin with clients, I tell them side effects may include, you know, elevated mood, less depression, you know, feeling more present. So it's it's the truth, isn't it? It really is the truth. And it's, I always got hung up on the idea of side effects. Aren't they just all effects? The fact that we try to call them side effects means like

we're minimizing them, but they're all effects, you know? Right, right. Well, you know, and I have some training from, you know, I did a training at the Harvard Mind Body Medical Institute in Mind Body Medicine. And basically working on the premise, mind body medicine, working on the premise of the placebo effect. I am the biggest fan of the placebo effect. I often say I'm a cheap date. You know, you just give me to something. Tell me how it's going to make me feel. I'm going to feel that. Like the power of our mind and body. So, you know, it's just really amazing. And some of those side effects can be really positive. especially if that's what we are setting as intention and putting out there for ourselves. I love it. I love the way in which you're speaking with lived experience. And this brings up, I was going to wait for this, but it brings up the idea of maybe we can, let's just jump into this idea of medicine woman retreats. Like what does it like to build a place where people are going to have experiences that can change their life. It seems to me, like, there's a lot going on

there. There's a lot going on there. I, you know, I've been a therapist for over 30 years, you know, and always interested in non-ordinary states of consciousness. That has always been really appealing to me. So I, you know, in my practice, I've always worked with mindfulness, guided imagery, trying to get people into sort of other levels of awareness and consciousness. And so when this opportunity to become one of the nation's first certified psychedelic assisted psychotherapist at 60, I'm like, yeah, sign me up. That's so right up my alley. And now I truly say I work in service of the mushroom. I mean, working with psilocybin, I hold the space, ask people to lean in and trust the medicine and can say having journeyed, you know, well over 100 people that every time I don't.

know. They don't know exactly often what it is that needs to be healed or is the thing that's hiding in the shadows. But the mushroom has a way of bringing to the surface and finding what needs to be looked at and recalibrated and, you know, released. The mushroom seems to know what needs to come to the surface for healing. It's, it's amazing. That is amazing. I guess it, I think maybe one of the reasons why you're really good at what you do is, is the background that you have. How do you think that what you learned at the Mind and Body Institute is in relationship with psychedelic therapy? Yeah, I think, you know, I think all of this now is more of this paradigm that has been around for a while in alternative and complementary in mind,

body, body, body, mind, and spirit are intricately related. You know, we can't just go with a medical model of I just need to know what the physical thing is and I'm going to give you a pill for the physical thing. You know, illness manifests, dis-ease manifests because of our emotional states, our psychological states. So much of that has profound impact on our physiological states. So, you know, one of my favorite big words is psychoneuroimmunology. I just love that word. Psycho-neuroimmunology. It's the branch of medicine. It's the study of how our emotional states impact our immune system. This is like, this is the stuff.

This is the stuff that, you know, working with plant medicine, I say is really it's psychospiritual medicine. It seems to me. And for some, like you've been working and helping people for quite some time. And you had mentioned that at the age of 60, you are already moving forward in a field that's kind of emerging. Do you think that this is the first time we're really beginning to experiment with out in the open anyway with these ideas of emotions and the states we're in it being okay. It seems like there's been a stigma to it for so long, this idea of spirituality in combination with science.

Do you see that as a newer, at least something we can embrace nowadays? Yeah, I do. I mean, I think it's been there, but I think somehow with psychedelics and plant medicine, somehow it's kind of re-emerging in a way that's maybe just, it's the conversation coming up again, but it can never come up too many times. And if we need it repackaged or to look at it from a new perspective, great. But we do need to, as part of our evolution, as a species, become really gain a different. deeper embodied way that we live with that knowledge that we are intricately connected,

not only to ourselves, but to the planet, to the energies, to the emotion, you know, that all of that is so interconnected. So I think these medicines are bringing that conversation back up in maybe a new dialogue. I mean, there's, there's a place where this crosses over with quantum physics and all that good stuff too. Yeah. You have me try to explain that to. No, it's enough to just pause where we are and think about the world waking up to the tragedies that have happened. I think it was in James Joyce's book Ulysses where he spoke about Stephen Dedalus's, I think the last line in there is something along the lines of history is the nightmare from which I'm trying to awaken. Right. And I think it speaks volumes of the PTSD and the generational trauma that's been happening.

for so long of people just putting their heads down, going to work for 80 hours a week, putting your kids somewhere, taking your parents somewhere, and you're just focusing on making money and living this kind of sterile, unforgiving lifestyle for a while, right? Right, right.

Right. Well, you know, it's also I, so I do a lot of work with people that have end-of-life distress and eco-anxiety, right? I'm seeing a lot of people that have this eco-distress and eco-anxiety, which is so akin to end-of-life anxiety. People who are looking like, I think we might be at end of days. Like things are not good on planet Earth.

And that is creating a lot of anxiety and distress. And I am just so moved by the power of plant medicine at bringing us into this different state of awareness and like somehow comfort in the midst of that discomfort with like these little glimpses of insight. awareness about something that we can't really even tangibly touch or no. So I'll give you, if that sounds really, let me give you a quick example. So I was my own experience of a lot of eco-distress, like really being sad. Can you define that term real fast? So deep, deep existential distress and grief around the state of the planetary help. Okay. So a lot of climate scientists are suffering from serious PTSD and eco-anxiety. People who look at their screens all day long and can see, you know, these awful things, the ice caps shrinking and the pot, you know, all the things

going on. So I was having my own sort of bout of some pretty serious eco-anxiety and distress. And I went to Bryce Canyon, which if you've traveled in Utah, you know, Bryce. It's where all those fabulous little hoodoo stick up. There was some light snow. We were the only people there. my husband and I got there, it just sort of was about to be sunset. And we hiked in, went our own separate ways. I was in a little bit of psilocybin and a full super moon was rising. And I was looking around. And in one moment, I was just so sad and grief-stricken about this,

God, this is the most beautiful planet. And we've done so much. I can't believe that like we fucked it up so bad. And I was just devastated. And that same moment, this sort of knowing came to me. And this is how on psilocybin, Sometimes we get these like this knowing. You don't, you know, it's not a knowing.

It's a knowing. And this knowing as I looked around was almost like the hoodoo speaking to me. And they said, Heather, look around. We are billions of years old. Things might change and not be as they appear now, but things will go on in a different way, shape, or form. Everything will be a right. It just might not be the way it appears right now.

And that gave me this great sense of, oh, yeah, things are billions of years old. The dinosaurs were here. They went away. Then things, you know, came back. So it gave me this sense of, it's not like it's going to change the world. Like I have an answer for people that I work with people that have fatal illness. I'm not saying that doing a deep dive and a plant medicine experience is going to cure your cancer. No, but it's going to help cure that existential distress and give you a different sense of inner peace,

while you're dealing with some really grave existential situations. Wow. It's really well said. Sometimes it makes me think as if, you know, it's almost like it's been left out of our diet. Because once you have like a heightened state of awareness, some people can do it through breathwork, some people do it through psilocybin,

and I'm sure there's other ways to attain this particular insight. But we've really forgotten that we're part of the earth. It seems like we're so separate. And that's what just, it makes you cringe up and be in your box and be angry at things. But once you realize, like, you come into, maybe you, maybe you come out of, instead of coming into this, where you come out of it and you're part of it. So much more harmonious that way, right? Yeah.

Yeah. Nicely said. Absolutely. What, you know, first off, thank you for doing what you do. It must bring you both peace and a little bit of anxiety, sit with people who could be taking their last breath or maybe, or maybe. are seeing some unrealized dreams before they go out. What is that like?

Yeah. Well, you know, I came to working in a hospice in a circuitous route. I wasn't looking to work for hospice. I didn't think, you know, I went through, I mean, truth be told, I went through like a really bad divorce. I had been traveling the world doing women's wellness retreats at like luxury level spas and resorts all over the world. It was rather cush.

And then I got a divorce and it was like, no, you've got to get like a nine to five job with health benefits and blah, blah, blah. And the first job that I found was working for hospice. And I thought, oh, my God, I don't like old people. I don't dying, like dying. You got to be kidding, right? And I'll tell you what, within one month, I was like, I can't believe that I'm getting paid to do this.

This is about the most sacred, spiritual honor of a work that I can do to sit at the bedside with people at end of life and just be present and bear witness. And it is, it has been, I mean, I no longer work in that space, but I now work with people with cancer with psilocybin. And it is just a profound honor to sit with people as they come to the end of their life journey. It is a really sacred special space. And I have to say that I think people that work in the hospice and palliative space are really ideally suited for the work in the psychedelic space because it's not about doing something to fix something. It's about holding that space and being attuned and being fully present and just there connecting

and having somebody be seen and heard and present, being present with somebody in that space. Yeah, it's, it reminds me a little bit of like the Elyucinian mysteries, not in a performative way, but in like a ceremonial way. You know, in the West, it seems we're void of ceremonies and rituals. You know, and it saddens me because it's an incredible transition, right? And like, this should be celebrated or at least have a ceremony around it. Yeah, absolutely. And I think there's a lot of good work going on in the death and dying space to try to shift some of those paradigms.

There's a lot of, you know, conscious dying and death doulas. And I think there's a lot of good work going on in that space because it is. I mean, we should, boy, it's exactly. That is a space to celebrate. Like, you know, I mean, depending. I mean, we all, people go out at different times and in different ways. But I think bringing ceremony and ritual to it in a way that we don't do, does it a disservice. After being in this position and, you know, working with psilocybe, do you think that people's fear of death, even at an earlier age, is something that affects them throughout their whole life?

I think what I'm seeing as a side effect of working with psilocybe. is that people have a hugely decreased fear of death. People are now able to live more present, more fully, because that fear is diminished. So this speaks to the idea of generational trauma. You know, if we look back in our lives and we can see people, you know, just back to World War II, so many people were afraid of dying.

Like maybe some of us today are still carrying that trauma with us. That's why we're so laser-foam. focused on like, we got to get more. Yeah. Well, and it speaks to our, you know, lack of, like, a sense of what is our spirit and what is our, what is, is beyond this shell that is our physical self, right? I mean, if we had, like, embodied knowing and believing and trusting if we are more than just this physical self in an isolated capacity, that would diminish the fear. And that's what psilocybin and psychedelic medicine does, right? It makes us a lot. recognize that we are more than just your shell, that we are connected to everything, that it's not,

you know, it's not really bound by space and time. So all of those things alleviate some of that clinging fear. Yeah. What do you think is, I know that I've had some really deep insights on psilocybin. What do you think is a relationship between fear and forgiveness? Wow. That's a good. That's always right. They'll still aside and high five. Wow. Fear and forgiveness.

Yeah. You know, I don't have a quick answer to that one. Yeah, it's a thinker. It's a thinker. It's a thinker, you know, and I think we probably don't forgive out of, there's probably an element of fear related to like not what, I can't let go of that thing. Yep.

That's keeping me engaged, but why? So one of my, as a therapist, one of my favorite questions to ask clients is often, if you would, if you would. to wake up tomorrow and that what is your problem is magically fixed, how would your life be? Well, how would things, what would, how would it feel? How would your life look? How would it be? And so that's almost a question if somebody came to me really clinging to something they couldn't forgive, I would say, let's say you woke up tomorrow and that you had forgiven. How would that be? So that in that lies the little seeds of why are we hanging on to the things. Yeah.

Yeah. That's well said. It's spoken from someone with living. experience and in trying to get people to discover their authentic self, which speaks to the, you know, at Medicine Woman retreats, like, how did you go about founding that? Like, was that just something you were called to do? Or is it like because of the, the experience you've had? Or how did that come to be? So, again, I've been a therapist forever and led lots and lots of, I, you know, put together lots of retreats, women's wellness retreats, my sort of niche was stress management, stress physiology. So I did a lot of, you know, women's stress and inner peace. That was my little name of my retreats. So doing that. And then when the psychedelic

piece came in, I just thought, well, now I'm going to do the same beautiful, lovely, immersive women's wellness retreats with nature immersion, gourmet food, set in beautiful places, you know, really an opportunity to step off and drop in. But now we're going to add psilocybin. And I'm going to create really safe and soulful opportunities for women to explore the psychedelic space. A lot of, you know, it's fascinating. My client demographic is women's 60 and over. I love it. I joke that my partner and I who do the retreats were like the frankie and grace of

midlife psychedelics. We are not like little hippie chicks doing this. We are, you know, mature, middle-aged women leading lovely. retreats with, you know, a chef and luxury accommodations and doing psychedelics. So it's kind of a fun intersection of transformational travel, psychedelics, mental health, you know, personal growth and development. Now, I have to just tell you, because you probably will have listeners who are thinking this because I keep getting this, okay, in our very politically correct time. And believe me, I'm a social worker and I have fought for every underprivileged group, and that is at my core, right?

But when I named, I thought it was so clever medicine woman retreats and I was so excited to get the URL and like all this. And I have been getting crap from people because they're like, you're a white middle age middle class woman. Like who are you to be calling? So I joke that I might rebrand to middle age, middle class, white cis. I bet you that domain's open. I try to, I'm sure it is. So I'm looking at a little, that's my, yeah, that's what did I say? Yeah, you know, people should really judge the outcome instead of the label.

You know, I think if we did that, we would all be a little bit. But in some ways, it automatically excludes the people that you don't want to be there, you know. And in some ways, maybe it opens up a really cool conversation you could have with somebody, you know. So it's a positive and a negative there. You know, first off, I think. it's awesome. I love that the people with whom you're working are at their own crossroads. They're moving over into a new state of life. We're right back to a ceremony. Like there should be a celebration of life right there. Absolutely. Absolutely. It's like think about in our culture,

right? Adolescence. What do you do when you become like, you know, 21? You go and you drink 21 shots. That's our ritual. That's our ceremony for becoming an adult in this country. So, Yes, we need more ritual and ceremony. And I'm grooving on like the midlife women and the women moving into that next piece. Like, you know, being the wiser elders and just like embracing like the next phase of life where you don't have to be, you know, this, that or the other thing. You could just kind of really drop some things away and be fully present and really look at what's your passions and your path and your purpose. So yeah, it's a really cool niche. That is my sort of my sweet spot is, you know, the.

Middle-aged women exploring psychedelics. Yeah, well, this brings up, God, there's so many directions. Like, why I could see in the future having like a mentorship program where you could bring younger women in that were like, it's kind of amazing to have mentors in life, right? And especially, you know, men go through certain changes, women go through certain changes. And I'm sure that there's things only a woman can tell a younger woman. And why not have the spiritual help of psilocybin to kind of hold both your hands. hands as you walk through that change.

Like there's so much knowledge there. So were you spying on me this morning? Because I just finalized details for my intergenerational ancestral ancestral awakenings retreat in Spain in March. And it's going to be grandmothers and mothers and daughters with a nod to plant medicine, you know, probably doing it more in just a ceremonial kind of a way to acknowledge women's connections to earth-based medicine and healing. but it is an intergenerational plant medicine ancestral awakenings retreat.

So you read my mind. Well, I think that we probably both do a lot of psilocybin and we speak to a lot of similar people and we can see the areas that would be really beneficial. And in some ways, the best way to predict the future is to create it. You know, I love it. Yeah, I could see the classes of generational trauma there and celebrating women, which brings me to this idea of, first, First off, that's a great idea.

I'm super stoked for you. I'm super stoked for you. I'm super stoked what you have going on. And I love the energy and I love the wisdom and the background that you have and the curiosity. But one thing that I hope to see emerge out of this is a real deep connection between women and psilocybin. I hope it happens for men too. But I see this new avenue. Like I see this vine beginning to open up in a way that is blooming.

And like there are different experiences. It's like, you know, I wrote down a few of them here. Let's just maybe go through them and you can see what you think about it. I think that women's relationship to psilocybin and emotional processing is something different than men. What do you think about emotional processing? Yeah, I think what I love about psilocybin, and I think this goes for men and for women, is that it gets us out of our little talky-talk cognitive brain, right, which is just us using sort of intellect and reason and default mode. And it drops us into this different way of being with knowledge and with our emotions and our emotions as knowledge.

So I think we, I think for both men and women, psilocybin lets us do this deeper processing in more of a really integrated sort of physiological, you know, and somatic way, which is a way that we should be accessing knowledge. But we've gotten so like up here that we don't. Yeah. It's it's I love the way you reference language because so often the language we use in our relationships is signifies the language we have in our own mind. You know, and we're so, it seems to me that in a world where we're so afraid to offend anybody that we've gotten away from passion. Passion is something that drives us, whether it's in a relationship or whether it's telling so much singing to your woman from below the balcony and serenating her or, you know, like there's. so much passion that I think is removed from a sterile environment, which gets us back to the weird relationship between science and spirituality. If we can't measure this thing, let's just put it over here. I kind of went off on a tangent right there. That's right.

I love tangents. That's good. Yeah, I love it. I'm a big fan of language, and I really think that there's something to be said about the relationship between psilocybin, psychedelics, and language. What is your take on that? Well, I think when we are using language,

I think it activates our brain in such a way that it does take us away from some deeper kinds of wisdom. So I know when I'm working with clients and when I'm doing integration, I don't, you know, if somebody's coming out of their journey around 4 or 5 o'clock in the afternoon, I don't want to do a lot of talking with them then. I'm like, I want you to go just do grounding stuff, you know, take an aromatherap bath, take a walk in nature, get your bare feet on the ground, you know, eat something that's like really earth. based, healthy stuff. Like, do things that ground you.

Don't do a lot of talking. I don't need you to write. I don't need you to get into language written or verbal. Don't watch TV. Just be. And then the next morning, we can go into it. But I think things can get lost when we try to use words and language and writing. I think it's an amazing tool for us to all.

But I think there are other ways that we connect that we can't even put words to. It's the ineffable, right? Yeah. Yeah. That's, I love it. And this is one of my favorite subjects. And I was, I have this weird, well, it's not weird. I have this idea and I want to run it by you.

This idea that psilocybin and psychedelics, they change our sense ratio. You know, like, just think about for a moment. Like it seems on the face like, hmm, sense ratios. But what would happen if we just. changed the way we consumed information. I had an interesting chat with a chat GPT of all people, and I had asked them this question because it seems to me like that's what's happening in heightened states of awareness, whether it's isolation, whether it is breathwork, psychedelics.

You know, when we're changing our state, what we're really doing is we're changing the ratio, our senses work together. When you do that, you hear different things. You can hear your heartbeat. You can hear that voice in your heart, or you can see something on the periphery, that you might not understand. You could see something in your relationship that you didn't understand.

Psychedelics present us with these opportunities to see ourselves in ways we've never seen them before. And sometimes it's with your eyes closed, you're listening. Yes. But it's a beautiful idea, this idea of sense ratios. And I wanted to give it to you because I want more people to think about it.

I love that. I love that. And another part of what I do, you know, I'm a clinical ecotherapist. I do nature immersion with people. You know, I incorporate that into everything. And psychedelics aside, one of the exercises that I do with all my clients, I've got tons of clients with anxiety, who doesn't have anxiety, right?

But I tell people, you know, to get out in nature and I say, you know, find a place just walk and then find a place and stop and just close your eyes and just notice what you hear close and then let your expand out a little further until a little further. And when you close your eyes and just tune in to your sense of hearing and you're out in nature. And, you know, first thing you hear maybe is you hear your own heartbeat. And then you maybe hear the rustling of leaves or a bug fly by. But it's interesting to play around with starting very close, expanding it out to the plane and the sky. And when you open your eyes after doing that for a mere five minutes, all of a sudden, you have this heightened sense.

Your visuals are more acute too. So you notice textures and colors. And you just have this different, you're in a relaxation state. I mean, it's amazing. So, yes, there's things that we can do by playing around with which of our sense. and perceptions we're using that can completely change the way we're experiencing reality, like completely. I love it.

It's almost like we're carrying. I heard a great quote that said we're all born with a medicine pouch. Like what's in your medicine pouch? Right? And we forget, like we're carrying around this set of tools or a medicine pouch and we just forgot that we have it. And all it takes sometimes is just a moment of silence just to reflect. And that's another great question.

What do you think is the relationship nowadays between people and silence? Oh, I think most people don't know anything about silence. I think we're in a culture that is terrified of silence and we fill it in with stuff every minute, right? People don't know how to do silence. My God, I mean, I don't even, I can't even, I have nothing to say to that except that nobody knows how to hell to do silence. Everybody's constantly on their phones, right? So I can do, I can do, I love, and I never get bored. My husband, so my husband and I lived in Portugal.

We went way down to the oligarve. And I found this teeny little town that is like off the map. There's basically like nothing going on. I was in heaven because all I did every day was like walk the hillsides, looking at the ocean and sit and like breathe and stare out to the sea and being. And my husband said to me, aren't you getting a little bored? And I was like, bored. Like, I don't think I've ever been bored.

Like, I am so, my little brain just entertains me. Like, but, you know, brought up this interesting conversation for us because he was needing more stimulus. But I think we live in a stimulus overload culture. And I think as a species, we are like stimulus addicted. And we don't know how to slow down. We don't know how to be quiet. We don't know how to be just present with ourselves and the moment.

And yeah, I think that's a shame. And it's such a beautiful thing to help bring people back into some understanding and alignment with because it makes me really sad how busy everybody is for no reason. And with my clients and as a therapist, I often tell people, you know what? It's not about our therapy isn't going to be about all these things you need to do. It's about all these things you need to stop doing. Yeah, that's well said. I just got to think about that for a minute.

That's beautiful. It's maybe, yeah, maybe it's not so much about getting things as it is letting go of things. And you can probably see that firsthand when you're working with people that are that are about to fully embrace the mortality experience. Yeah. Yeah. And just in general, less is more. We got fed this bill of goods telling us more is better. No, less is more.

Less is more. Yeah. It's fascinating to think about when I, sometimes I can see it. Maybe it's because of all the people that I'm talking to. And maybe I have similar conversations. However, you know, the idea of like legacy changing, you know, maybe instead of legacy being,

what you leave your kids or you leave all these treasures, you know, maybe changing the definition of legacy to how people feel about you when you leave is a better, is a better definition of legacy, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It blows my mind to think of. It's how, as someone who has traveled around and you've done retreats in different

parts of the world, how does culture affect the psychedelic experience in different cultures? does it? I think it can profoundly. I probably, to be very honest and authentic with you, you know, I'm not going into really deeply different cultural spaces. I mean, you know, when I'm in Spain, I'm in a beautiful little Finca on a hillside outside Valencia. So I don't know that, you know, I want to be authentic. Right. Sure. Tell you that I'm doing some deep dive into some cultural emerge, because I'm not. I'm not. Right. Maybe that will come, but yeah. Yeah. I still think it speaks volumes of the spiritual and mystical influence that can happen in different parts of the world. You know, maybe it's all in the language. Like when you go on a psychedelic journey, it doesn't matter

if you're at your house or in Spain. You're on this journey. But something happens even when you're not on a psychedelic journey, but you just travel. Like your senses are renewed in a way because things are new, right? It's kind of similar. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, travel is a great teacher in that way and It lets us unplug from our ordinary and be, you know, have different sensory experiences of, you know, the food and the location and the energy of a place and the smell of the, you know, the landscape and all of that. So yes, I mean, those are definitely, you know, elements that that I seek out more of like a natural nature environment where people are immersed in something that is not their ordinary and what's in their backyard. So here's an interesting question that if you're working with women that are at the midlife, I can only imagine. Like I have women, I have lots of women in my life that I love.

And I can see them go through changes. Like my mother-in-law, you know, she went through menopause. My wife is in her. She looks like she's 25, but she's a little older than that. And so, but she watches her mom. And she watched some of her mentors going through menopause. And like that must be something that's different. different for women. And I think Silesadma could probably help that relationship, right? Or am I just

speaking out of turn here? Well, I think what it helps, and it really, it creates this more like self-acceptance and a different way of being in your body that's, you know, changing and aging. And it brings this like increased level of acceptance and self-compassion. And so that is, you know, a beautiful application of psychedelics for the midlife experience. do you think you know do you in your opinion is it

is going through that stage of life have like a negative connotation to it well in our culture in our culture yeah right you got to be young you got to be fit you got to be you know that's shifting I like to think

that's shifting a bit but there's a lot of that messaging that you know the shoulds you should be this and you should be that and everybody you know that represents you know, on TV as, you know, young and beautiful and whatever. So, yeah, I mean, there's a lot of that messaging that comes through that I think,

you know, I see with a lot of the, you know, and that's where, you know, my retreats having when it's like a group of women that are all 50 and over, if not 60 and over, there's this lovely just opportunity to sort of share our lived experience and talk about some of those things and how these medicines change are being. able to be self-accepting and love ourselves and be graceful in our aging bodies and really recognize what a privilege and honor it is to be able to get old. You know, I think that that comes through a lot in this work. And the other piece that I work with quite frequently is women who have had breast cancer

or have breast cancer. And, you know, there's a whole lot that goes with that about how we're living in our bodies and trusting our bodies and yeah. Yeah, that speaks to my heart. You know, I think that there's something also very graceful about women, men, or just people who are finding themselves becoming older and going somewhere with other groups of people that are their age, and then coming back to the family with a renewed wisdom. I think there's something beautiful and graceful about that.

And I hope that we move much more towards that instead of this Western model where, okay, mom and dad are getting old. We're going to put it home. You know what I mean? It's disturbing in ways. Well, and so, you know, this is what I love. So my next retreat, I've got a medicine woman retreat. And I also, my husband and some of my colleagues put together medicine man retreats.

We've got a men's retreat as well. Imagine that. And both of these retreats have several of the guests are in their 70s. And they're these like, so this is your great, this is your grandparents on drugs. Right? I love it. Like these guys that are coming on the men's retreat and also the women of mine are like, you know, I often ask because when I interview people, I say, well, you know, who in your

circle is supportive of you doing this kind of an experience? I like to know if you're in a support. And they're all like, oh, my kids think this is greater. My grandkids are really excited for me. And I think that is so cool. This is like people come on in my retreats who their kids and grandkids are cheering them on to be going on a psychedelic retreat. That is a huge paradigm shift.

that is a huge paradigm shift, right? Yeah, are you kidding me? It's like, in my mind, I have this vision of like a dad in his 50s sitting in his room with his doorlock smoking weed. Like, how do I bond with my son? And right next door is his son smoke and some weed in the other room. Like, how do I bond with my dad? Yeah.

But like, yeah, like that should be rites of passage. I mean, all we need to do is look back at some of the indigenous wisdom that was handed out to us. Like, there are these ceremonies. And let's talk about this idea of. of rituals. I'm a huge fan of Joseph Campbell and like, yeah, yeah. Different mythologies in there. And like, their answers are right there. Yeah. If we think about the idea of a ceremony, you get to like participate it in three different ways. And that,

it's such a sacred time because let me give you an example. Yeah. Let's say that in a ceremony, it's a right of passage for a man becoming an adult. So the young, as a young man, I get to watch my older brother or my, my cousins go through this ceremony and look up to it. But I get to stand off and participate in that way. Maybe I'm standing in line or, but I'm participating in it. And then when it becomes my time to be the man becoming adult, I get to actually be in the ceremony, the one that's being recognized. And then after that, maybe as a father or as an uncle, now I get to play the role of the leader. Like, so we're all participating in this thing together synonymous. We are one organism moving through at different

times, playing different positions. And we don't have that. Like, it's just, well, maybe, you I think that what you guys are doing is sort of a return to the oneness, which is also, you know, something that we see in psychedelics, like this non-duality. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And we love, I mean, I love creating ritual and ceremony on all of my retreats. And sort of to the thing you mentioned earlier about, like being women reclaiming plant medicine. Like there's a part of this that I feel like, I mean, I'm calling on like, you know,

ancestral witchy was, like, this is like women reclaiming their connection. into like earth-based medicine and plant medicine. So I feel the energy of that. So we create, yeah. I mean, we create lots of ritual and ceremony in the use of this plant medicine. And, you know, the retreat, I've got to retreat this weekend coming up.

And we're doing, you know, a whole full moon ritual and talking about the power of the moon and how to tie that in with intention. I mean, there's so much like groovy cool magic that we could all be tapping into and living in like, you know, magical awareness. but we, you know, we've bought hook, line, and sinker into this reality.

But really everything is magical. Everything is amazing. Like, mind-blowingly amazing. So I remember when I was training to become a therapist when I was in graduate school, and they were talking about magical thinking. And magical thinking was something that you had to be on the lookout for, and that was a bad thing. And it was a sign of like some, like, you know, not a good thing.

And I was like, you are not going to dismantle my magical thinking. I don't care if it's a thing. it's in the DSM and it's bad tap magical thinking. I'm just fucking hanging on to my magical. Yeah, well, it shows. I mean, like, how can you have any sort of imagination or creativity without magical thinking? You know, you get productivity without magical thinking. And productivity is creativity stripped of all its beauty.

Wow. That was right. It just seems like, you know, it's another point that you touched on, too, when we talk about magic and psychedelic. and psychedelics and ceremony is that once you go through it, once you see it, you can't unsee it. So you always get a little bit of that magic back with every sort of journey. It's beautiful.

What do you think about not being able to unsee it again? I love that. That's such a good way to put that. And some of my clients are women who just, they're saying, I just don't feel that little spark anymore. Like I know that life is so special and magical, but I just, everything feels sort of flat and dull. And I want to remember.

I want to remember that this is all so amazing. So yeah, I think it's really helpful in that regard to kind of bring us back into, like, open our eyes up so that we can see and then not be able to unsee that it is all magical, right? Yeah. So I've, I heard somewhere along the lines, I, picked up this beautiful idea. And it's the idea that the unity we feel, the non-duality we feel in heightened states of awareness is a memory of when we were connected to our mother via the umbilical cord. And it seems to me, like, that's why I think, you know, women are clearly so important and

they are the givers of life and they are the holy vessel and the holy grail. And I think that that's one thing. It's a beautiful idea to hold on to when you're a heightened state of awareness. awareness and you feel connected to the earth. Like maybe that is the connection we're feeling. And if it is, isn't it like a fractal thing? We're like, yeah, we were connected to our mother. We're still connected to the earth.

And like that's what we're re-experiencing is that connection, right? It's so important. Absolutely. And I think you do. That is the sense that many people get on a psychedelic journey is that like overwhelming feeling of love and interconnectedness. Yeah. You know?

And boy, don't we need to. more of that, like, in this world. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, there's so, like, one realization that I hear people say sometimes is that the heightened state of awareness or psychedelics has really allowed them to see themselves in other people. And that's a beautiful tool, tool, right? When you, when you see someone getting angry and you're like, hmm, that kind of reminds me of me. Maybe that's the problem. You know what I mean? So I don't know. I think it's fascinating.

What is your take on psychedelics helping people see themselves and other people? Well, I think it makes us more, I think, again, one of the side effects, right? Right, right. It's we become more pro-social. So we have, and I think that pro-social comes from having increased empathy, compassion, right? Yeah. And so I think that's where, I think that's where that comes in, that having that empathy and compassion is being able to see that somebody else is having similar hardships or things that you've experienced, that we all have that depth of the emotional range and that we can empathize and have compassion for our fellow humans who also, you know, suffer and have joy. But we can feel that we're connected in some of that, those emotional spaces.

What? So sometimes in psychedelic journeys, they can be difficult though, right? Like sometimes this idea of confrontation comes up. And it's usually a good thing after the fact. But in the moment, it can be frightening or something like that. How would you or how, how did, what is the protocol when you find yourself somewhere, working with someone, they're having a difficult time? Yeah. Yeah. Well, I recently had a client who, you know, it was interesting because her journey and her intention was that She had a lot of fear-based thinking. Her partner is somebody who does, like, extreme sports, stuff where you are risking life and limb to, you know, go base job and stuff like that.

I live in Colorado. So, you know, her journey was about I want to have less, I really want to face fear and I want to have less fear. Well, she had a very scary journey because the mushrooms were paying attention. And the mushrooms are like, she wants to work on fear. let's help her work on fear. So she had a very, very lot of fear, and it was a very scary journey for her.

But in that, there were also these lovely elements of people that had passed coming to her and telling her that they were okay and not to be, you know, giving her some different insights. And on the flip side, you know, the processing is, this is why integration is so essential.

The experience itself, she came out and was like, I would never recommend this for anyone. This was so scary. And I said, well, let's work. with what was scared. Let's work with that. And given then several weeks of integration, she was able to see how what she got was the opportunity to be in fear in a state of neuroplasticity.

So to then start to create some different pathways around how she sits with that fear and how she could bring some different kinds of ways to lean into versus away from and recognize that she could kind of be present with fear without it completely taking her over because the fear was that their fear was that she'd get just completely lost in the fear and decompensate. And I think she got the experience of, oh, I can sit with fear and it passes. And just having that experience literally while your brain is in that neuroplastic state, create a new relationship and wiring around fear. But I think the thing with the neuroplastic state and what we want to be careful with with people and especially when maybe

this challenging experiences is it's so important to keep that connection on the flip side and do that integration because I believe when we're in that neuroplastic state, you can also easily fall back into sort of like deepening the grooves if you just go back into what is your fault mode. So you really need somebody skilled to be working with you to make sure that you're changing those patterns, not just deepening them. Yeah, it's a, first off, I love the way we use metaphors to describe what's happening new in our life. Like we always reverse. to, I guess you can't really have a new thought without referencing some sort of an old thought, right? Some weird sort of dichotomy. It's so beautiful. I love the way you described like,

oh, you've got to lean into that. We're going to sit with this. They're beautiful metaphors, and it probably speaks volumes to how successful you are in helping people's that you can get them to see things when you talk to them. But on the topic of integration, it's a slippery slope sometimes because don't we have to stay away from priming? Like, we don't want to solve people's problems for them, right? Like some people can slip into it. that. Yeah. No, this is really true. And I mean, I think, you know, I always use the language, and this is the language of the psychedelic space as well, is, you know, I'm just helping you tap into your own inner wisdom and to language. I mean, people have such different language and experiences

of reality, right? So I don't know what that is for that person and their relationship to that experience. What I know is how can I keep helping and guiding them back to their insights? Tell me about how that, what is your insight around that? But you're really right. And I think this is where, you know, in this new space, you know, I am cautious of who's coming into the space and what their training and expertise is because people are in a fairly vulnerable state where you don't want to be influencing some of those kinds of, you know, this is not a place where therapists need to be using their tool chest of like, these are my special interventions and I'm going to solve and fix your problem. There's a lot of.

needing to like let go, trust, and help tease out somebody's own insights in inner wisdom so that they speak to and make sense for them. And that's not easy for everybody. And I, you know, clinical social workers. So I happen to think that us social workers are sort of well versed for psychedelic space because we're a lot about starting just where the client is at. Whatever is their reality is, you know, how is that for you? How can I make your experience of your reality, you know, not putting clinical diagnosis and labels. And it's more about how do I help you be comfortable in the reality that you want as your reality? Yeah, it's beautiful. There's something, there's something amazing about getting to see

the way other people model reality. I think there's so much learning in there, right? Yeah. I mean, none of us are living in the way. the same amount. I know. Yeah. Just to participate in someone else's dream. And that's, I think that that's part of the connections that happen in, in a group setting with psychedelics is that you really get the opportunity to just be in someone else's reality for a minute. And it's mind-blowing. Like, I never, I lived for 50 years. I never thought of that. How come what a beautiful thing. Or like, holy cow, I never, why don't you think about like this, you know? And I get, maybe it speaks volumes to

the ways maybe there's pluses and minuses about group settings versus individual settings. You've spoken a little bit about at a certain point in times people find themselves on their own. But maybe you could speak a little bit more about what are some positive things that happen in group settings that can't happen in individual settings? Don't get me started. I love the group setting. I love the group setting. You know, we create a mini community. It's like for the weekend that we're on retreat or the week, it's like, you know, people come together and just hold space for each other. We like, you know, you're seen, you're heard, you're valued.

You know, it's this amazing container of like respect and compassion and empathy and all those good things. But it and it's also this little mini community for a weekend. We're a little tribe for the weekend. And there's so much, that's another thing that's missing in our culture. We're so me, me, me, like little isolated me, right? So I love really letting people just. come into the space where we're really going to be together and create flow amongst ourselves.

And, you know, it's like a slumber party with psilocybin with a bunch of middle-aged women. I mean, it's fabulous. It's fabulous. But we need that. You know, and it's funny because I am at my core, I'm an introvert and you probably wouldn't even think this. No. But I, so I go, I lead these retreats and I love it. and I'm on fire and I'm passionate and I'm engaged. But boy, then I need to just be like sort of like just off and alone and like sit and staring at the ocean or being in the mountains and having my quiet time in nature. And that's another thing that's just kind of a beautiful side effect again of plant medicine

is like I'm okay with all those facets of who I am and how I am. And, you know, I used to think I had to like hide my introverted side and pretend to be more extroverted. And now I'm just like, no, the truth is, I enjoyed you people. It was lovely. And now I'm going to go whole up for a while. Nothing personal. Yeah. Yeah, I think it speaks volumes of how we live our life and the cycles of life.

And you get information, you process it. And it takes a little while to get through it, right? Yeah. It was interesting during COVID, you know. Yeah. I had this weird guilt. And I saw it with some of my introverted clients that we were, afraid and ashamed to say that we were loving lockdown, right? Because the whole world was like saying,

oh, this is so awful. This is my God. I'm going crazy. I need people. The extroverts were struggling. The introverts were kind of like, oh, this isn't so bad. I just came home. So I had like just gotten married just before lockdown. My husband and I had eloped in Santa Fe. We had this lovely weekend and when we came back, that was when like COVID lockdown. And I literally turned to him and I said, oh my God, this is like my dream come true. You can't go anywhere. We get to be together all the time. Oh, it's classic. Yeah, I think COVID changed everyone's life on some level. Like it was such a massive. And if we're honest with ourselves, the last four or five years have really shifted the conscience of the planet, I think in some ways.

Do you think that, too? I do. Listen, there's so much going on on the planet right now that I can't get my head around. So I just keep like, you know, taking my mushroom journeys, looking for the calm, looking for the insight, you know, trusting because there's so much going on on the planet right now that can cause angst, you know, and you have to, unfortunately, the way our media is, you have to dig and look to find the really happy good stories. But I wish there was more of that out there.

Because when we see that and we hear that, it changes the way we feel about the plant and ourselves and the universe and what's going on. Little case and point, you know, that Sunday morning show, I think it's called Sunday morning. CBS Sunday morning, whatever. I think that's what it's called. But they had a story about like this guy who had this hundreds of acres somewhere in the UK. And he was like just struggling trying to keep it up with, you know, everything mowed and landscaped and some farming. And then he was like, oh, my God, I can't screw it. how about we do this rewilding thing?

And they let it all just go back. And nature reclaimed all of it. And the animals came back and the plants came back. It's now like this little like biosphere that's got like endangered species. And that story gave me like so much peace and happiness because it was like the hoodoo's talking to me in Bryce. And it was like, ah, that's right. There's an intelligence and there's a wisdom. There's this whole other thing going on outside of the humans that maybe we'll take care of things if we screwed up.

Yeah. Talk about going down a tangent right there. Sorry about that. It's beautiful. No, I love it. On some level, I think that that's what's happening to us. I believe that you can see a lot about your life by sitting out on your garden. You can learn a lot about what's going on in your life by hearing stories about things like rewilding.

And that does seem to be a theme, at least in my life. Like maybe that's what's happening. If that's what's happening to our planet, like, why wouldn't that be happening to us? Maybe this idea of us getting in touch with mushrooms and psychedelic is a rewilding of us, right? It just gave me goosebumps. I love that so much. Did you just come up with that? I love that.

I did. Yeah. It took your story to do it. We're working together here, Heather. It's you and I, right? And I know there are people that lead retreats then they do call them rewilding. And it is about going. and being, but it's just so beautiful.

I love that metaphor that maybe yes. And maybe that's why the mushrooms at this time in history are coming back up, right? Like Paul Stanley says, it's the revolution from the underground. Yeah, it's true. And if you just step back, like, think about this the next time you're on mushrooms. Like, just ask the mushroom or ask the planet, like, are we rewilding? And the things that will run through your mind, like, I get goosebumps. Maybe they're contagious, you know, like, that must be what's happening.

And if I, we're both getting really communicating. It's because when you hit on something that's like this really cool truth, that's what goosebumps. It's like you're getting like a, ooh, yeah, that's a, that's right. Yeah, like that's a sign of true communication when we're getting through. Or like you said, it's a sign from God or the, it is. It must be on some level what's happening. Yeah. Yeah.

And I am so thrilled to be part of it. And to have my career be taking people, creating safe, soulful, psychedelic opportunity. for them. I always say it and I mean it, mean it, mean it. I work in service of the mushroom. I think the people when they find what they love to do get the feeling that you have right now. Like you love being a facilitator and helping people see these things. And I hope everybody that's listening to this gets the opportunity to experience the relationship and get goosebumps and love what they do. And if they're willing to have courage, they can find it. It may not be easy. You may have to walk away from things that are very comfortable, maybe some change involved.

But I want the message to be to people. Find authenticity. Like find that song in your soul that's singing and sing along with it. And there'll be harmony, right? Yeah. Yeah. Heather, this is amazing. I love talking to you.

Really fun to talk to. Yeah. I'm so glad that we found our way to each other and had this conversation. I really enjoyed it. Yeah. But, you know, before I let you go, maybe you can share with people where they can find you, what you have coming up and what you're excited about? Oh, I'm excited about everything I do. But yeah, so I lead beautiful women's psychedelic wellness retreats here in Colorado, where psychedelics

psilocybin is legal. And I also am going to be leading a bunch of three different psychedelic wellness retreats in Spain start in March. One of them is called what is a radiant renewal. And it's for women that are thrivers and survivors of cancer. So that's going to be a beautiful week at this fabulous little Finka outside Valencia. It's like an eco-cheque, beautiful little place. So we've got that one. And then I'm doing the ancestral awakenings, which is going to be this amazing intergenerational women's retreat with plant medicine. And then we're going to be doing a couple's retreat in Spain.

So three retreats in March in Spain. You can keep an eye out for those. And then I always have different things going on here in Colorado. So people can find me at medicinewoman retreats.com. Some of these aren't totally up there yet, but there's like inklings of them. And you can also follow my Instagram, which is at Medicine Woman Retreats. It's really well done. I would urge everybody who is with an earshot of this to reach out to Heather.

She would probably be ecstatic for you to participate in her dream. And she would love to help participate in your dream. And it's a beautiful time and really thankful that you got to come and talk. And I love what you're doing. I love the insights. I love that you have the background to help people in lots of different dimensions. And I see it moving forward and so thankful that you're out helping people. It's a great thing.

Hang on for one second. I'm going to hang up with the people, but I want to talk to you briefly after this. Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, go to the show notes, check it out. I hope you have a beautiful day. Aloha.