TrueLife - Jo Dice - The Art of Problem Solving

Episode Date: March 2, 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/https://jodicetherapy.co.uk/With a deep reverence for both ancient and modern wisdom, Jo Dice invites us to engage on a therapy journey that utilises knowledge, science, body, soul and spirit for holistic healing on a deep and cellular level.We can utilise logic, understanding, self-exploration, life stories and narratives. We can incorporate meditation, bodywork, breathing exercises and visualisations if that feels right for you. We can work in a myriad of ways that suit your personality and needs. Sometimes you will just need to offload, be heard, witnessed and vent, and that is welcome too.This is a conversation that everyone will be able to take away something from!! 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. Hears 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. We've got a great show for you today. We have a very lovely individual and integrative and psychedelic integration psychotherapist. modern forward-thinking open-hearted, Mrs. Joe Dice, how are you today? Hello.

Lovely to see you, George. I'm good today, and I'm aware it's quite early over your side, isn't it? It is, yeah. It's seven in the morning. I normally get up around five, get my kid ready for school, pack a lunch and all that kind of stuff. So I'm kind of an early riser. I've found that kind of helps you prepare for your day and get everything set in motion

right there. How about you? Are you an early riser? Do you know what? As I've got older, I have got more of an early riser. I think it is something associated with getting older, isn't it? So yeah, but it's, we're at 5pm over here. So yeah, I'm still a bit sprightly. Yeah, yeah, I've noticed that that's a, that's a good thing to be. It's usually a sign of a happy person as someone who usually wears a smile. Although sometimes some people, they put a big mask on, right? Masks are kind of, of a big thing when it comes to different kinds of therapies. They certainly are. Yeah, we all have our masks, don't we? Our persona, I think Freud called it. Yeah. Yeah, I always think of the world. Agreed. I always think of Joseph Campbell when I think of masks. I think of people, and then myself, too,

you know, happiness, sadness, but as we're talking about masks and therapy, maybe you can tell us a little bit about what started you on the journey that you're on? Like, how does one become an integrative psychedelic integration psychotherapist? Mm, now, that is, you know, this is a long story. Perfect. I love them. And it, and it starts back in childhood, as most of our stories do. And I mean, without going into the full details of my childhood, I've been through trauma in my life and I've had difficult childhood. And then in my adult life, I've experienced loss. I lost my mum when I was 19.

And then when I was 30, I lost my first child very traumatically. And I was a nurse at that time. And it was that experience which I had my own personal counselling and psychotherapy and that made me start to think about counselling and therapy as a career which is often the case I think with therapists it's the wounded healer thing that you you know you have your own you your own traumas and after doing your own personal work you want to use that experience to help others and I think it often gives you a real of empathy and understanding from from life experience so that was the catalyst for me

thinking about training to become a therapist and that took several years and that's a journey in itself really of personal exploration and change you change so much in the process of training so but my son's death was the catalyst for that and I've I've found that with my experience of loss actually, is that I lost my mum, my son and my dad. And each of those experiences really propelled me into a different direction in my own life journey of healing. So that was what started the journey and then that was quite a long process of training and doing my own personal work along the way. so yeah does that answer your question i could absolutely go into that question for like a full hour

but that's keeping it brief i would say it's been my my own experiences of trauma and healing through therapy that has made me want to train and help others in this field. I'm sorry to hear about your son and your in your mom and the loss on one level, on another level, and I mean this in a, as someone who has also lost to son, I mean this in a way that like I'm thankful that it happened to you.

There's a lot of people that if it did happen to them, it ruins their lives forever. And I feel a kinship in that when we, we lose somebody we love be it a son a daughter a mom or a dad in some ways that can be the beginning of our new life in some ways that can be the greatest gift we've ever been given which sounds so crazy but when they die part of you dies and something begins to grow back and I'm wondering if part of you wanting to become or part of you going through these tragedies how did you integrate those tragedies like what does that process like for you

Like, that's such a huge thing to happen. And so many people do find themselves in positions where they never make it back. And what were some of the things that you did in order to integrate that into your own soul? Sorry about that. That's okay. Yeah, well, I just want to acknowledge, I'm sorry for your loss as well. And what a synchronicity between us that we both lost a son. We didn't know that.

Yeah. So how do you integrate that? I mean, my gosh, it's certainly not a linear formula that you can explain to people. I think I left home when I was 15 and I was on my own since the age of 15 and that was part of my difficult childhood. But what that gave me was resilience and the ability to survive on my own. and I do believe that your traumas can really become your superpowers. So the sadness of it was that I had a lot of neglect and abandonment and that was painful. But I learned to cope on my own and to survive on my own.

And I had a real sort of tenacity to bounce back. and I think that drive is what has helped me to survive and not just get swamped and lost in grief. And I also think, I do sincerely believe that our loved ones want us to thrive again and be happy. Like, I don't think they would want us to also sacrifice our life. and I'm not meaning to take away from the pain of grief and just how debilitating that can be to people who are suffering.

But I think it was that drive to bounce back and to kind of make the most of my life. But this took years. It wasn't quick. Like my process of grief and processing loss and looking back and saying, oh, actually, I can see that that was a catalyst for great growth and healing in my life.

It took years before I was able to look back and see that. And obviously, you don't know. You know, when you start this process, you don't know where you're going to go. So I didn't know I was going to end up here. And who knows where I'll end up in another 10 years. That's the thing. So, yeah.

It's fascinating to me to hear and see and get to participate in the trauma that happens to all of us. And the more that I talk to people, the more that I've drawn this idea, and it's not necessarily my idea, but it's just something that I've found kind of floating out there in literature and different books and talking to people. And it is that the reason, the purpose. of traumatic experiences, regardless of what they are, is that there's some force, you know, call it God or Akua or Buddha or the spirit or the planet, whatever people want to label it. I believe that there's something out there that is shaping us. And you must go through. And it believes in you.

It thinks that you are strong enough to have this horrible thing happen to you and then come through the other side and then turn around and help the next person up. And when I was reading through your site and your bio and stuff, it seems to me that that's what you're doing. Like that was one of the reasons why I reached out to you is like, what made this person like become so enamored with helping people? Like you have this just laundry list of all these different things that you help people with. It's pretty amazing.

And I'm like, she has read a lot. She has done a lot of studying to have all these different areas of knowledge to do that. And then to put yourself out there in, in, allow people just a call on you like that. That to me is, it's beautiful. And that's why I was just trying to get to the idea. Like that must, is that one of the main spots it came from? Or what do you think about that idea of trauma or any of those questions that I kind of throw in there? What do you think? Hmm. Yeah, helping people. I think I'd spent 20 years as a nurse prior to becoming a therapist. So I think that kind of became part of my identity really. Well, after my mom died actually when I was

19. Yeah. Help helping others. And then there was quite a lot in there. Can you say another specific question and I'll try and answer that? Yeah, let me kind of, let me just take it back one more step and then I'll ask you. It seems to me there's a common thread that runs through different therapies. And part of it is influence.

And the other part is therapy. How do you think those two things are related? How is influence and therapy related? I mean, everything's influenced, right? Yeah. Everything that we are exposed to is influence from our external world and our internal world. When we turn inwards and we're influenced by our body

and the energy shifts in the body or any connection we have to our soul and our spirit, that's which a lot of us have never been taught to do because we're so stuck in our brains all the time. And learning to turn inwards is something that I have been working on and that I feel really passionate about, is learning to listen to your body and different things that come up from your unconscious mind,

be that images or explorations of the soul and the spirit. So that's an influence. Then you've got our external influence and that's everything that comes in and we have we have control over that which a lot of us don't take control over. You know, if you spend your whole time reading the news and comparing yourself to others on social media, then you're going to feel afraid and inadequate. So this is the control we can take over our external influence. Our relationships, are they nurturing relationships?

Are they people that make us feel bad about ourselves? Again, that's an influence. And relationships are important, our relationship to ourselves. And then, you know, influence is got to come back to our family and our roots and our story and our ancestors. What's passed down to us? Because that's what happens. It's the generational trauma and the ancestral stories that get passed down and passed down until someone starts looking at them. And another way of describing that may be epigenetics.

There is a scientific way of describing that. So those are some forms of influence. And then obviously what we read, we study, what we're passionate about. And then how that links, how does that link to therapy? So my instinct when I hear that is that therapy is about relationship ultimately. I don't get really hung up on, although I've read a lot about theory and I'm really interested in mental health and psychology. It's really about the relationship between the therapists and clients.

And I think that's genuine human connection. and I think that's where the wounds are healed, the old wounds. And it's about love. Learning to love yourself and to experience love from your therapist as well. So I think the influence of therapy really, and there's a lot of different things that therapy does. It's not just one thing. But I think at the core and research has proven this,

the biggest predictor of success in therapy is the relationship. So the rapport between yourself and the therapist, the trust, and being able to share all your dark and difficult parts of your therapist over time and bring those shadowy parts out and to learn to love yourself and to experience being loved. I like that. That was really well said, Joe. Thank you for that. You know, the word influence is such a monolith. Like, it's so big. And, you know, it's interesting to hear people tell me about it or talk to other people what they've learned about it. Because there are these external influences and there are these internal influences. And the truth is we're being influenced all day long by each other and by billboards and television.

It's really easy to lose who you are when you allow the external influences to tell you. you who you are. I think that people get lost in that stuff sometimes. It kind of brings me, you posted a little bit about the ethical considerations with psychotherapy and psychedelics. And I think I kind of, you know, I wanted to lead up to that by using the word influence, because you, everybody knows when we look back in history, whether it was Jonestown or, you know, maybe some people being taken advantage of in some, in some retreats or, you know, we always share these little whispers on the wind sometimes. And I was wondering, can you maybe expound or exploit, a little bit more of the idea of ethical considerations?

Yeah, so I've thought about the ethics of this work, and often with ethics, there is no black or white or right or wrong answer. There are different opinions. I think ultimately, people are working on the underground with these substances. there's the underground society, the guides, it's not regulated, and it can be very unsafe at times. There's the guides, the shamans are often doing a wonderful job, but they're just human beings, and they're subject to the same foibles of human beings, of greed. So there can be financial exploitation, sexual abuse of women,

a kind of lack of knowledge about medical conditions and physiology that can be dangerous. And so it casts a big shadow. I believe that which casts a big light often casts a big shadow. Beautiful. I'm going to write that down. And I think that that can be playing out. And so by pretending it doesn't exist and refusing to get involved, to support people with their experiences,

we're putting them at risk of getting admitted to hospital, getting admitted to psychiatric institutions, having problems with their relationships, being heavily medicated, getting mental health diagnoses for people who don't understand the process. So the way I liken it to you is it's like, intravenous drug users and creating needle exchanges to give them clean needles to use their drug. It's about reducing risk.

Anything that reduced the risk of harm is deemed, can be deemed a success. And that's where I feel the services of psychedelic integration, psychotherapy have a place because it's reducing risk of physical and mental harm, hospital admissions, psychiatric admissions, relationship destruction, family destruction, to enable people to do this in the safest way possible with the before and aftercare, which is so essential and which is totally overlooked. And I think one of the problems with the psychedelic world is that people are perpetuating in the medical mindset, in that they're looking into going into these experiences and getting a

quick fix. And it's the same as when they go into their doctor and they want to get a quick fix and pop a pill. And I think that's where it's going wrong is that, you know, the work is afterwards often, and that can take a long time. And that's in your daily practices and your self-care and your integration and your, you know, know, how you integrate your experience and bring it into the world and make meaning of it and how does it change your life on a day-to-day basis? And unfortunately, I think that's not getting enough airtime and sort of precedent in this world is the integration process.

Yeah, that's really well said. I'm glad you brought that up. I, it's like the wild West right now. There's so many things happening and there's so many different ideas and some of them are really good. Some of them, some of them maybe not so good. But it does allow for some freedom and it does allow for people who are potentially able to come up with great ideas. It allows them a spot on the field for now. And that being said, I'm wondering, do you have a system like when we look at microdosing, there's the stamens protocols, the phateman protocol. I know a lot of different. individuals who have developed like a personal technique where, okay, I'm going to take a large dose on day X and then usually it's about a month integration or some people will microdose for a week and then on the third week they'll take a larger dose. Is there a certain set of parameters that you have found to be that works pretty well with people or is there a certain set of parameters that you follow or are there parameters for different types of disorders or What do you think about these different potentials?

So firstly, I don't administer psychedelics. I can't recommend anyone where to go or what to take or doses. It's illegal and that's not my role. So I certainly am not able to recommend or prescribe or point people in the direction of what and how to take. Right. My approach to the integration process is my approach to everything in psychotherapy, really, is that everyone's individual and it's much more complex than, you know,

I've got this disorder, therefore it's going to take four weeks. Like this disorder is just the tip of an iceberg, you know, underneath there, is all of the generational trauma, that time I was bullied in school, you know, my experience of neglect of my parents, my experience of sexual assault, these decisions that I made that I can't feel, these decisions that I made that I'm not important. So people often come with, I've got this disorder, and I want to know what the prescription is to fix that.

But it's all the other stuff is, the unconscious stuff and it's like layers of an onion, you know, you peel one layer off and you think you think this is what you're coming into therapy for. And then underneath is a whole different layer that you didn't know was there. And so you really don't know what you don't know. And so I think it's impossible and not useful to be prescriptive. People are so much more complex than just one disorder and I think this is where we're going wrong like we're all completely complex individuals and we just have this real reductionist mindset that we reduce people down I don't even like the word disorder um so yeah so I don't have a formula I meet the person in all of their complexity

and beautiful uniqueness and they can bring whatever they want to bring to therapy, you know, everything is welcome. But I do understand that people have limits on their time, resources and money sometimes. And of course, I will, you know, factor that in. And if they want to work on a specific issue and a specific way, I will meet them with what they need from me. So I don't force people to go where they don't want to go. But Yeah, does that answer your question? Yeah, it opens up so many more. I love it.

I love it every second of it. I want to, I want to, would you like the word disorder if we used it in a different context? If I use the word disorder as a label, like there's something wrong with you, that's kind of problematic. But if I use the word disorder in that, in what it, like, it's disordered, like the way in which we live our life is disorder. Like, it's not, it's chaos in so many ways. would you like the word better if it was like it almost seems like it fits if we use it like that

instead of as a label like you have a disorder instead of like listen it's all disordered over here we got to put this stuff in order and then it'll be better well okay so i'm i'm a bit of a karl young fanatic and when i hear the words disorder and it's interesting you use the word chaos as well i i automatically go to a karl young quote and it is this in all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder, a secret order. Yeah. The message is there of there is, you know, what you call disorder probably actually makes a lot of sense as a reaction to what that person and the environment. So I just think don't discount the value of chaos sometimes.

and disorder, it's, you know, we've become very sort of normal. We want everything to be normal. And what normal often means is fit in a certain box. One person's idea of perfection. And often that idea of perfection is actually very patriarchal. It's, you know, from the white male, middle class, middle age, professor of psychology. And so, I, yeah.

Yeah. It seems to me that, you know, there, I heard her, I was talking to a young woman the other day. And I'm a big fan of Carl Young, too. And she had said something that I thought was fascinating. And this was just her journey. She was talking about she, she had undergone some severe childhood trauma. And she was trying to work through some problems and come to terms with who she was and what was going on in her life. And she had prepared herself to take some psychedelic medicine or some in theogens.

And she was preparing thinking about, you know what, okay, I'm going to go into the underworld. And, you know, there's to have to do some shadow work. And after taking the medicine, the message became clear to her like, what are you talking about dragons? What are you talking about facing demons and shadow? You love that place. You live there. You employ all those people. You know, what you have a problem with is joy.

What you have a problem with is the light. And it's interesting how we can get caught up in the ideas of others and find ourselves off in the shadow realm or off in this world of problems that we think we have. In some ways, that's a strategy to not solve the actual problems that we have. It's interesting. It seems to me psychedelics help you confront or at least begin to show you what can be true

instead of a Western style medicine there's more of a coping strategy it's like take this pill and you're okay or take this stuff and you'll probably still feel not that good but you can go do your day or the psychedelic medicine is like here it is take a good look

what do you think about those two styles I'm not quite sure I understand the question there might not have been one in there there may not have been one in there will I just freestyle a little bit in response to what you said okay so so one One response to that is, you know, what I heard was something about people just having

completely different experiences with psychedelics. They go in with one thing and they come out with something completely different. They didn't think was what they wanted to work, what they needed to work on. And that's the beauty and the power of the unconscious mind. You know, you don't know what you don't know. And the medicine that you're working with to a certain extent, some people believe there is a spirit of the medicine. that comes forth.

And what I like and value about that is variety and vitality of human experience. And really embracing that in the world is that we're all on different paths. There's no right or wrong. Like all of our roles and personalities and ways of being in the world and paths, life paths, I believe,

different and and what a beautiful world that could be if we embraced variety diversity um you know choice rather than this is the right way to be and i do believe to a certain extent that world is emerging now um so yeah wonderful some you know someone goes goes in and works with and comes up with something completely different than what they thought. So I'm all for that individuals finding their own life path and making their own decisions about who they are, what they believe, what their values are, how they want their relationships to play out, what their personality is based on them rather than others. Yeah.

And then the other side of that, I think you described the shadow part as being bad or something like that or difficult, painful. And my response to that was, you know, I believe our shadowy parts have a lot to teach us and learning to accept our dark parts as part of our humanity, I think is something that will create great healing in the world and in us as individuals. So I don't see our shadowy parts as being bad necessarily. So I don't link shadow automatically with it's bad. And I think perhaps learning, learning to accept and being those parts can facilitate great healing. And I believe that psychedelics are a really powerful way of doing that very viscerally of getting into contact with those parts.

And I remember reading one of Stanislav Graf's book, and he spoke about a woman who was suffering with addiction, who was really in contact with like a demonic type entity. And he said he felt he was sat with a very dark force, and he meditated on light. And when she made contact with that really dark, dark and evil, demonic part of her, she had suffered from abuse. After that experience, she healed and overcame addiction.

And so, yeah, I would say, don't discount the shadowy parts. What do you think, like, do you think that when we talk about maybe some of the shadow parts or some of the dark parts of our soul or however we want to describe it. Do you, is there a commonplace, is that repressed pain or is that something that we don't want to talk about or is that something we're ashamed of? Are those good ways to describe what the shadow can be? Yeah, I think there are those parts of us that we find unacceptable. So often they're the voices that you hear in your head, but you dance out loud.

you know, the mean parts, the rage. That's one part of your shadow, but then I think it goes deeper into sort of your ancestral traumas. I definitely that I think that sits in our shadow and also the collective unconscious, which is, you know, the archetypes and stories of all of humanity.

And light and dark forces show up throughout all of our human experience and evolution, all of the myths, all of the archetypes, all of the religions, they have the light and the dark. So to some extent, that shadow is in us too. And I think when people have been through abuse and have been victims of abuse, often that darkness of the abuse is somehow internalised in them and can be expressed because people often know that they, it is not okay to project that onto others.

It can be internalised as anxiety, as depression or as addiction, the kind of remnants of the abuse that they have been subjected to. And that's like a part of the shadow as well, I believe. Yeah, that makes me, that brings up the question. question of, at least to me, of like generational habits or generational cycles, because it seems that a lot of the parts that get repressed are, like, let's say abuse, like a little boy gets abused.

The guy that abused him was abused, and it seems like that was something that was pushed down, and then all of a sudden here's this little kid that's weak and right there, probably around the same age that happened to him, and then that person actually. out and it's almost like contagious in a weird sort of way like it's passed on almost like a weird ritual in a way and maybe coming maybe that's how the cycles are broken is becoming aware of oh my gosh I feel this weird imprint thing on me like maybe that's can you speak to the idea of generational trauma in that particular cycle that happens that way I think so much of the the mental and to a a certain extent physical health that people experience is the result of generational trauma.

I think it's at the root of so much. I think the Second World War has got a lot to answer for in terms of what a lot of us are dealing with mentally. You know, the way people fought in the Second World War, it was not the way us as human beings were designed to fight. And, you know, then, for example, the soldiers, and I know my grandfather was a pilot, a Spitfire pilot. And they go home and they weren't given the support and they were told to keep calm and carry on. And then they take their trauma out on their families. And then it just gets passed down and passed down. until someone stops and does their deep inner transformational work.

And that's hard. The shadow work is hard. And this is why people often don't do it and don't want to do it. You know, positive affirmations, gratitude journaling. That all feels great. Right. You know, looking in the mirror saying how great you are. And I'm not saying that doesn't have a place.

it does. But I think the real powerful healing is going, is, is finding a way to get to those really dark and gnarly parts. And I've heard the term before a hot potato in terms of generational trauma. It's like hot potato that gets passed down. The potato's too hot, so you throw it down. And often a child will carry the traumas of their family, the parents project it onto them. And they can either project it onto them. And they can either project it onto them in abusive way or in a smothering way. But often you will find that the child is carrying the traumas of their parents

as their parents carried the traumas of their parents. And so I think generational trauma is so at the core and the root cause of much of what we are experienced. in. And what I think is really powerful about psychedelics and particularly in the indigenous way of working is that much of the focus or the spiritual philosophy of the work is that you're working with your ancestors. And I think that is powerful for the generational trauma aspect. I like that.

As well said, here in Hawaii, there's a quote that says, we're all ancestors in training. It's a good way to think about your life on a generational level or think about your life in ways that you may not ordinarily think about it. Which brings up a question to psychedelics that I wanted to pose to you. And it's this idea of so often in the world we live in, especially in the English language, we're subject. to the subject-object relationship. And depending on what side you're on, it can be interesting. It can also be abusive.

And it's somewhat dehumanizing to be a subject or an object. I'm a person. I'm neither of those things, even though I'm both of those things. And I think on psychedelics, what it does sometimes, at least in my experience, is that it provides you with not only the idea of the subject and object, but also the idea of the observer.

In some ways, there's this weird thing that happens where you're able to observe yourself from almost a third person perspective. I'm wondering if you have noticed that. Yeah, okay. I just need to kind of just make sense. Yeah, absolutely. So something about being like, almost like outside of your process. Yeah. So my response to this is, I heard it once.

I went to a Buddhist meditation. And they said something to me once. They said, what if our dream world was the real world and this was just a construct and this was a dream? Just because this is more complex and coherent doesn't mean it makes it more real. True. And it blew my mind a little bit. And I try and stay away from sort of right or wrong thinking,

but it just gave me a bit of a curiosity, really. really, that this could all potentially be just a construct. They said in the Buddhist meditation, you know, the second you look away, everything could disappear. You could just be a construct of my imagination, George, and only be visible when I'm looking at you. And so that was quite interesting. So when you look at it at this way,

I've heard said before, I've forgotten the guy's name. Is it Al Meadow? He's a famous sort of philosopher. I might have got that wrong. But reality is just a construct. Our personalities are just a construct to survive the world. And so this, what we see,

the way we make sense of an understand reality is not necessarily real. Does that make sense? Is that a bit profound? So when you, when you, when you walk down the street and you see different people and you see people reacting in a certain way, very angry or overreacting, their construct, the way they look at the world is completely different. And one of the key things that I learned and realized about life is that all of our lenses through which we see the world are completely different.

And one of the biggest mistakes we can make is to think that everyone sees the same as us. It's all built up of all of our life experience, our epigenetics, our temperament. And so, relating this back to what you were saying, which I forgot. Something about object and subject and the observer. It didn't happen in observing others. Right. So I think with a psychedelic experience, and I have had an experience of working with psychedelics myself, that has been really powerful, transformative and healing in my life.

It can take you to a completely different stratosphere of experience that is nothing like the way you normally see the world. And that can give you just a real curiosity about, you know, this rigid, coherent is not the only way of seeing an experience in. Yeah, there can be a whole different sort of, lens through which we can experience the world, which is not necessarily any less real or valid. It's just very different. And one metaphor I like for this is I always like the idea of water, vast bodies of water and the sea.

And Freud's often spoken about vast bodies of water as the unconscious mind. And I remember the first time I went snorkeling and it was over a beautiful coral reef. and I remember looking under the sea for the first time and seeing these fishes and the corals and I remember thinking, this is like a different planet. I feel like I'm on Mars. This is not like the earth.

And then looking up and I was back on planet Earth again. And I liken that a little bit to sort of a psychedelic or a non-ordinary state of consciousness experience is that what you see can look really, really different from anything that you've ever seen before, but it doesn't mean it's not real or it's not there. It's just very different. I like that,

that's really well put. And I think that, I think if people can begin to see these big ideas, whether it's snorkeling and seeing one world and then popping your head up and being in the other world, or whether it is, you know, being in the dream world and then coming out into the regular world or whether it's under a psychedelic experience,

I think that that is, if you can learn to do, that on a conscious level, then you can pop yourself in and out of situations that may be detrimental to you. You could be going down this road of anger and being like, I can't, you know what always happens to me? You know what this guy always does to me? She always does. And then just pop your head out of the water and be like, wait a minute. What kind of story am I telling myself here? I'm the one telling the story. And that was the idea behind the subject, object, and observer. Like, if you can find yourself and be not only find yourself in that spot, but become comfortable

in that spot and then learn to be all three of those people. You can really begin to learn that life is a story and life is the story you tell yourself. And if you want to live a better life, start telling a better story. And it's, I know it's going to sound probably crazy, but it's kind of easy once you figure it out. It may not always work, but you can always tell yourself a story. You can be, you can be whatever you want to be. And if you think back to the way we spoke to our children, like, what do you want to be?

when you grow up. We're providing them with all these opportunities to tell a cool story. And it seems like especially when you become an adult, maybe you have bumped up against some unrealized dreams. All of a sudden, like this callus sets in and we stop imagining. We stop thinking. We stop telling ourselves stories that are positive. We stop telling ourselves what we can be and start deciding what someone else wants us to be. And I think that there's so much trauma at least it was for me. And I'm so happy that you brought that up because I really want people to be able to do that.

And I think so many people can benefit from it. And it's just it's a beautiful thing to think about whether it's going to a, you know, learning the Buddhist way or just learning to be a better person. This idea of narratives is a very important one, don't you think? Yeah, totally. The narrative, the stories we tell ourselves. And I think sometimes from my experience of working with psychedelics and breath work,

I have had a narrative in my head, my life. For example, I once had a narrative that all of my relationships were bad. And from working with psychedelics and breathwork, I would rewrite that narrative. I would bask in a different experience and connect with something different and connect with the love and the good. And so I think you can, it's like you can take the same story

and tell it in a different way. And I really like the fact that you've brought up stories actually because I think therapy is often about stories and I think stories can be medicine and I think there's something really powerful in stories. And I think within this world and the work that we do, we need more stories. I think research is really valid,

but I think people need to be moved emotionally with stories. I couldn't agree anymore. And I think there's been a lack of stories. And with a lack of stories comes lack of rituals and with lack of rituals comes lack of rites of passage. And if we look back to Joseph Campbell or, you know, anybody, you know, Whitehead or anybody on that tree of philosophy, we're really big into stories. We're really big into rituals and shared sacrifice.

And in today's world of materialism, it's everybody's the same. Everybody should buy this one green. You can have, you can have any flavor of bagel you want as long as it's blueberry or strawberry. Yeah. You know what I mean? There's just like these false choices everywhere. And you can see it. I think that that is something that constricts people.

people so much. It's like they're, I don't want to do this, but I don't have any choice, but you do. You do have choice. It's really, really hard to make that choice because it's scary. If you want to be who you, if you want to be someone you love, you want to, I heard a good quote that was if you want to leave the orchestra, you got to turn your back on the crowd. You have to be willing to let people laugh at you and people will laugh at you. And it's okay. Maybe you're funny. Maybe they're laughing at you, maybe they're laughing with you, but it happens. And once you just get over that and you go, well, maybe I'm funny looking or maybe I have a funny joke. Like, once you begin to feel that, I think it opens up a lot of doors for you to become who you want to be. What is your

take on the lack of rituals or the lack of rights of passage in today's society? It's a massive void. It really is. I think as we've lost our connection with religion, and there's a lot that's gone wrong with religion. And I think it's part of our flawed humanity is that we want to prove we get polarised and it becomes about my way is right, you're always wrong. And this is played out in religion. You know, my religion's right, your religion's wrong. everything's got to be exact and we lose our ability to hold complexity or to see the metaphor in religion. But as we've lost our connection with religion, we have lost our connection with the ceremony and the ritual that is so powerful for, again, it's getting out of the logical mind. it's getting into something else, it's being in connection with others.

It's the power that can happen in that in between space. It's the power of music, it's the power of drums, it's the power of intentions, the ceremonial rites of passage. It's been observed that I think Groff wrote about how many gangs as part of their initiation process, gang members are required to go out and kill someone. And Groff mentioned how similar that is to the initiation process within tribal communities,

a coming of age ceremony. And so when we don't find a safe and conscious way to express coming of age, rights of passage, with ceremony, they will play out unconsciously in a dangerous way and people will get hurt.

And, you know, one idea is that that is why these young men are going out and doing this in the gangs is that there's no conscious way for them to kind of express this need, this growing,

up this change. Death is another one. We have such an issue with death. We avoid it. We ignore it. We don't wash our dead. We don't spend time with our dead. They get carted away and the nurses do the wash,

which is such a significant ceremony. And that period when someone dies is so poignant. And I think these, you know, these are all parts of the processes of grief and change and transition in our lives, which are really hindering our ability to process and move through and grieve and grow. And as religion has gone, unfortunately, the ceremony and the ritual is also. So kind of gone. But within this world and within the holistic communities, and the spiritual communities,

it seems that people are starting to connect back in with this need, with this basic human need. Wow, that's, there's some painful stuff in there to think about. And it's painful because it's true. This disconnection we have with the people that die. what happens to their bodies? What do they go? What do they take them?

What do they do? You know, it's a, it saddens me to think about that connection is just severed and then supposed to be forgotten. And when, in a weird way, it's society telling, it's maybe that society's fear of death. But yeah, it's, it's tough. It's really tough to think about. I, um, I'm curious as it seems there's almost. a stigma against ceremonies.

You know, when we look at things happening, you know, people begin building something up and then all of a sudden these people are a cult and rightfully so sometimes. But in some ways, it's this stigma that is standing in the way of everybody coming together. You know, like, oh, this, like you said, this church is this or this church is good, but they're not as good as this church. But it seems like as soon as a ceremony or something begins to become building. up, there's all of a sudden spears around it to burst that bubble. Is there a stigma against ceremonies, do you think? I think many people in society have a negative idea around spirituality

and can often jump to the dark things that have happened in religion. for example, you know, child abuse within the Catholic Church. And so I think there's often a leap. And obviously the wars that have been over religion. And so I think many people leap and they hear spirituality and they leap to that because there is a darkness in that world. But there's darkness everywhere. and you know this this is the reality of being a human being and so it's a shame because i think

many positive aspects of spirituality and ceremony is often associated with spirituality um are therefore discounted and not i'm not given uh credit and airspace and and often i you know i just think it's getting out like I've said it several times but it's just getting out of logic. Like we all live too much in our heads. We're in our heads all the time. And with ceremony, you get out of your heads, you get into something else. And if you if you get away from the kind of dogmatic religious beliefs and you just stick with that, there's there's tremendous value in that and experiencing the world in a different way that's not thinking. So yeah, I mean, the obvious ones are, I suppose, that are still around

our marriage, but even that's fading, isn't it? But funerals, COVID times, we didn't, we didn't even have those. I mean, the COVID times when people died, was it really tragic the way that people died on their own and weren't commemorated with the funeral. But you look at the way some cultures treat their dead and celebrate their dead. And you look at Mexico and the day of the dead. And, you know, the way death is really acknowledged and celebrated. And the way people spend time with their dead and wash their dead. And I think that helps to facilitate grief and also remain in connection with your lost loved ones,

which is... quite important for grief. They speak nowadays about continuing bonds, so continue in a relationship with the one that you've lost in whatever way that is. Yeah. It seems in my lifetime, and maybe this happens to everybody in their lifetime.

Maybe this is just a thing that happens to you as you get older, but it seems in a lot of ways we've taken the dignity out of dying. And we've found a way to keep people alive, not so much because the person wants to continue to be, alive but because everybody else around them doesn't want them to die it's that it's like their fear of death and so you know a lot of the times you'll see the the nuclear family where you know the kids go to school parents go to work and then the grandparents get carted off to like an old folks home and just this whole idea of a family as an institution is becoming sort of you know apart and and

and pulled apart. And I'm hopeful that what we're seeing now, while tragic in a lot of ways, I'm excited for the future because I think we are beginning to see a new beginning in a way. And it's exciting to me because I think that we do have a real opportunity, much like psychedelics helps us confront the idea of what's happening. I think we are in a position right now where we are going to need to start confronting some pretty big things that are happening in the world. and with confrontation comes opportunity.

I'm wondering how do you feel about the future moving forward? The future of the world. Well, let's start off. We can get there, but let's start off with the future of medicine, like the future of therapy. Do you think that maybe what's happening with the idea of medicine, maybe in theogens and secondary medicine is playing apart, but maybe starting some sort of new ideas about confrontation instead of coping?

Confrontation instead of coping. Hmm. Hmm. Well, I think they both have a place, confrontation and coping. Yeah, okay. I think perhaps more the idea is, you know, the medical model is we get, we get caught up with fighting fires and symptom management. Yes. Rather than get into the root cause.

Well put. And the very superficial level stuff, you know, symptoms and disorders and we, we are in the brain. So, I mean, what's happening in the psychedelic world, from what I'm seeing, is really exciting at the moment. And I feel really hopeful for where we're going to go with this work, which is very different to the kind of traditional way of working with pharmaceuticals or, I don't know, it just seems much more powerful. at tackling the deep stuff, obviously it does, it still comes with its risks. And I think it's, I think it's quite interesting that it's, I'll describe it at its roots. It's quite sort of matriarchal qualities of the feminine, spirituality, creativity, the shaman in contact with the spirit world, the ancestors.

the indigenous way of working with psychedelics, I'll describe as quite a matriarchal one where the qualities of the feminine are valued. And yet it seems as it's hit in the mainstream, it's getting the patriarchal ways are coming in and it's losing those values and sort of logic, money, greed. are taking over.

So I'm not sure how that's going to go. And it does feel quite sad, actually, that that is what's happening to this work. But it may be that that's for this to meet the masses and to be recognised and to help people heal, that that's like we need to play the corporate game and fit into the world. I don't know, you know. So I think your question was around something about the world changing.

I think the world is changing. I think the world is changing at the moment. Yeah, I do. I like the idea of the psychedelics. I like what you said about how it seems to have a a feminine structure to it. And maybe in some ways we're seeing the integration of the feminine structure

and the overreaching patriarchal structure like kind of coming into balance with each other because I spoke into lots of people and it seems it seems there's a place for everyone. Like there is some avenues for the big pharmaceutical companies to come in and maybe add a hydrogen molecule

and patent that thing over there. Or there's room for the biohacker, the guy that wants to like, I'm going to figure out neuroplasticity and I'm going to figure out all this stuff. And then there's plenty of room for people that have childhood trauma. And then there's even room for the people that maybe the truck driver who counsels people every day at work. Maybe there's room for that guy to start working with people. And maybe there's this opening up of the, of the, the, the, the, institution like all right hey we can't do it alone we need all you guys to come in here you know

maybe that's kind of what's happened and then when i look at it from that angle it really makes me smile and it really makes me happy because i i do think there's so many good people out there with ideas that like i've never even begun to think of you're like whoa i never thought about it like that and hey that's going to lead to this and that's going to lead to this over here and when i talk about the world changing. I see psychedelics as sort of a fractal part of the bigger world. Like it's, and part of what I'm talking to you about, and this blows my mind, is we, we began our conversation on the idea of integration. And it seems to me, like, that's what, that's why I'm excited for the world right now. Like, although there's, there's conflict points, it seems we're

becoming more integrated in a way where we're beginning to see each other as each other. Does that kind of make sense? What do you think about that? Yeah, I totally hear you on that. And I really like the work of what you say about, you know, different people. And I'm with you. Like, I'm totally up for the nuanced and different ways of working. And ultimately, everyone's different.

You know, someone may be a really strong atheist and really not have any spiritual beliefs. And who are we to tell them what to believe? Who is anyone to tell them that they've got to believe in spirits and their ancestors? So for them, going and, you know, potentially working with psychedelics in a more medical way is going to be the right system for them. And that's absolutely valid. And, you know, yes, I'm passionate about. You know, my way is not, my beliefs are not the right beliefs and my way is not the right way. It's just my way.

And, you know, you come up with your way. You come up with your beliefs and you find what works for you. And yes, I think that's great. You know, let's just embrace it all with, you know, allow an individual to find their spot based on their own beliefs and what works for them. And that might change. People change. Absolutely. Yeah.

Jo, as I was reading through some of your website, and I came across this idea of transpersonal psychology. I don't know what that is. Can you explain that to me in my audience? What is transpersonal psychology? Transpersonal. So, I mean, I think it embraces Stanislavgross. Have you heard of Stanis Slavgarg?

Of course, yeah. Yeah. So he was one of the proponents of transperational. personal. And I think it really embraces a lot of what we've been, what I've been speaking about today is our relationships with the spiritual world. Our relationships are our ideas of past lives, religious deities, the collective unconscious, the archetypes, different experiences of consciousness. You know, some people, may experience being an inanimate object or an animal or re-experienced their birth.

True working with psychedelics or breathwork or meditation or altered consciousness states. And I think it's being open-minded to these spiritual experiences and what they can give people and how they can help people heal. And I think sometimes traditional psychology or medicine might describe someone as having psychosis. So for example, in the West, if someone was seeing spirits or describing their past lives, they may be diagnosed as having psychosis.

but from the transpersonal point of view, this can be described as a spiritual emergence, an important stage in spiritual awakening and personality change. So it's really valuing these spiritual experiences and what they can give people in their lives and their identity and how they can really help people mentally and find meaning in their lives and help them grieve and and help them find their place in the larger stratosphere of existence.

So it's really embracing and making space and welcoming these conversations around these subject matters. Yeah. It's beautiful to me. As you're explaining that, it makes me think of a couple of things. One is, you know, it's not uncommon for people to have auditory illusions or people to see things or think that they see things. But we label these people as crazy. And, you know, when we start labeling things, especially, it's one thing if I label somebody, but when a group or a society or a tribe begins to label someone is crazy, a person really begins to lose.

a lot of opportunities wherever they're at. And, you know, it doesn't, crazy is such a weird word anyway. Like, it doesn't really mean anything. But, you know, sometimes my best insights have been like an auditory illusion or an insight that if I told people about it, they'd be like, you're a wacko, you know. But some of those are the best insights. And it seems to me that on some level, if we could just begin to be okay with those types of things. We would relieve so much

stress and pressure on ourselves and the people around us. Have you found that to be true? Yeah, absolutely. Personally, as well, you know, like in my own breathwork experience, I often have visions, powerful visions,

I feel in contact with my own lost loved ones. But ultimately, they give me something positive. They often give me perspective of my problems, you know, that I've had visions that I've been floating out in the universe and I've come across the site of planet Earth when I've been doing breath work. And it has been absolutely awe-inspiring. It's taken my breath away. And it stayed with me.

And what it gives me as perspective is that when I'm worrying about the small things or someone who's annoying me in the car, you know, it really gives me perspective on my problems and my, when I feel in contact with my lost loved ones, I feel a connection with them still. It helps me with my decision-making process. So the question you have to ask yourself is, are these experiences adding value and meaning and positive direction in your life?

And if they are, then why are we demonising them and saying they're wrong and bad and crazy? I'm not crazy. I can tell you that. So there's a lot of people, like a lot of people that listen to this may be aware that there are different psychedelics one can take. But there's a lot of other ways to reach psychedelic states without taking any medicine. Can you tell some people about those? Yes, I'm so glad you asked that because I'm absolutely passionate about the other ways of evoking a psychedelic experience.

experience. Breathwork, so powerful. Holotropic breath work. So you can find a holotropic breathwork practitioner and holotropic breathwork is quite a simple process of breathing. It's not complicated and the practitioner will teach you through how to do the breathing. And it's just basically breathing in and out without pause in between. And there's a powerful, emotional evocative musical playlist. So music is so relevant within these experiences. And I have

heard before said music is the nearest thing we have on this earth to God. And that really resonates with me. Music's been a real powerful influence in my life and can really get

you in contact with some powerful emotions and some powerful experiences. And so the music is very key. And as you do the breath work, you can actually release DMT, which is the active ingredient of ayahuasca, so your own DMT in your brain. So you can have powerful psychedelic type experiences. People can relive their own birth or have images of past lives or ancestors or being out in the universe or having a different experience of consciousness. And the beauty of holotropic breathwork is that you can come out at any point and it's drug

free and substance free. So it's a really good great place to start. Meditation as well. If you develop a meditation practice, I do a kundalini meditation every day. It's an hour long meditation. And over time, I've been doing it for years now, I go into some quite deep states where I can have psychedelic type experiences from the meditation. Phipassan meditation retreats are supposed to be very powerful. I haven't been on one myself, but I've had they can be just as powerful, if not more, than taking a psychedelic substance. And then what is often not spoken about much is tantra and sexual intimacy with your partner. So tantra using touch, eye gazing, if you stare into someone's eyes for 20 minutes, you will probably start hallucinating slightly.

So these are ways that you can evoke non-ordinary states of consciousness that are substance-free. And the sexual intimacy with your partner is a really beautiful way to connect. So I would definitely invite people to read up and explore a bit about Tantra as a way of working with a deal. different state of consciousness as well. Yeah, that's important. I think especially today in a world that's just like littered with porn, it's like the opposite. Instead of having like a long, meaningful relationship, people are locking themselves in their bathrooms and you know what I mean? It's it's sad in so many ways. And I think that, I don't know, I think that it's, I don't know, I think that it's probably being done for specific reasons, but that's probably neither here nor

I think people should try to reconnect and have the most loving, sensual sexual relationship possible. What's your take on that? Absolutely. And I think we're very sexually repressed as a culture. We don't talk about it. We think it's naughty to boo. You know, it's a subject that we don't speak about it out in the open. So we're kind of going off secretly watching our porn, you know.

and it's become quite seedy. But the tantra philosophy is more of a natural exploration of sexuality, sensuality, touch, eye-gazing, connecting, heart-level connection. Do you think it's really rich and beautiful to explore? With yourself or with your partner. So, you know, you can learn to do this with yourself. You don't need a partner. Yeah. Do you think that it was a connection between, you remember back in the 60s,

there was like a sort of a heightened wave of psychedelics that happened around that time, 50s going into the 60s, and then there was this outbreak of free love. Do you think that those two things were related? Absolutely. Don't you think it's, you know, psychedelics are a really powerful Aphrodisiac. True. It's often not spoken about it much. It's enough, I don't think, is the powerful life force of sexual vitality and how we can work with that. And so you can work, so psychedelics evoke often strong feelings of sexuality within people. but then the flip of that is sexuality and sensuality and intimacy of your partner

can evoke strong experiences of different states of consciousness does that make sense so psychedelics so psychedelics can make you very sexually aroused but explorations of sex touch and intimacy with your partner without psychedelics, can evoke a non-ordinary state of consciousness. So often people during sex will have said that they feel in connection with something bigger, with their spirituality,

that sex is a spiritual experience, or they feel different, you know, they feel different than they normally do. And so that's another powerful way of working with expansive consciousness. through sex touch and intimacy and sensuality. Yeah, it's almost like a whole body psychedelic experience where sometimes with just, you know, if you ingest something,

you get into this total different state of consciousness, but a lot of it's cerebral, especially if you're alone or something like that. So I heard someone explain recently the idea of relationships is containers. And if you think about that model as a relationship as a container, and you put some psychedelics into that container, It seems like it can be an incredibly beautiful experience. To experience as a couple.

Yes. Yeah. Or a partnership. Yeah. So potentially you could have a beautiful sexual experience with psychedelics. Yeah. Yeah. It's awesome to me.

Yeah. Yeah. I like it. I guess I was thinking, I had another question that I kind of don't want to run by. What do you think is, you know, a lot of the times when we talk about therapy, we're doing a lot of learning in there. And maybe when you learned a lot about the thing in which you're trying to integrate, then you can begin to integrate. Is there a relationship between learning and healing or can you use them almost synonymously? Or when I say to you learning and healing, what's the relationship there?

I would say learning is just one element of healing and it's given, it's perhaps given too much precedence. But it is valid. The narrative making, the understanding, making sense of your story, why am I like this, what happened? You know, it's a valid part of therapy, but it's not the only part of therapy. You know, it's, as I've spoken about, it's the relational stuff between you and your therapist. You can work in that relationship. It's what's happening between you and I, like what's happening in the middle. Who do I represent to you? How can I respond differently to perhaps your parents to give you a different experience to heal old wounds?

So that's like the relational work. And then, of course, you've got the somatic work, you know, when you get into your body, And that's nothing about learning. That's something different. And so, yeah, learning is definitely one part and it's a really valid part, but it's not the only part. But then saying that, some people are really big thinkers, and that's just how they are and they show up in the world.

And so I think it's really important to meet, meet someone with where they're at. So if someone's really logical and they like to think, I'm not going to come in and say, right, you've got to get into your body because it's just like a real jolt for them. So, you know, I think it's important to attune to a person and meet them where they are. And then hopefully or maybe over time, they will start to experience differently

and to integrate the different parts of themselves and the different ways they can experience the world that are not about learning. Or there are different learning, like learning from yourself, from your body, or your intuition. Yeah. So maybe a different learning, different ways of learning. Yeah. It's fascinating to me.

I'm often curious about the word integration. I'm wondering if maybe you could share some. What does it mean to integrate a psychedelic experience? Are there techniques that you use? Or what is the goal of integration in a psychedelic experience? Like, what are you trying to do when you integrate it? Yeah. So, integration, making meaning of your experience and moving it forward, moving towards wholeness,

taking your differentiated parts and bringing them together into a functioning whole. So I know that kind of sounds quite profound and you might be wondering like on a practical level, what does that mean? So a psychedelic experience is often really spectacular, really profound, really mind-blowing, peak experience. And people say, you know, it's a big experience in your life. It's like giving birth. It's like losing a loved one. It's like getting married. These are really powerful, strong experiences.

And then you come back and you go into. a mundane world. And you're like, how do you take this spectacular experience and integrate it into a really mundane and boring world? And that's where the integration comes in. And everyone's integration process is different. I think one important factor is telling your story over and over again. You know, people need these these experiences are really spectacular sometimes they're terrifying sometimes they're really awe-inspiring people have like really magnificent insights and you need to be able to speak that you need to be able to get it out and to somebody who is open to hearing it and and to listen and is curious about your experience and it's not going to judge you or look at you

like you're crazy so telling your story over and over again. And then it's really important to not make any quick decisions. You know, you can come out of these experiences and think, right, that's it. I'm going to leave my job. I'm going to leave my marriage. I've had this insight. And you need to get grounded and settled back in the world. Like you need to take time to land. So it's really important to honour the process after the psychedelic experience, you know. Honor the medicine, honor the shaman, honour yourself, honour your process, honour your healing journey. And so, and this is what happens for a long time after the psychedelic experience.

So first of all, get grounded, look after yourself, look after your mind and your body, be conscious of what you're putting in. So post-psychedelic experience, your brain is very neuroplastic, so it's very adaptable to change. So you want to be very conscious about what you're reading and watching, if there's something really inspiring for you, it's a great time to be reading that. It's not a good time to be filling your brain with all the terror of the world

and all the stuff on social media, you know, to be conscious of what you put in because you can create a lot of change at this time. So now's a really great time to be thinking about how you want to change. And that can happen for a long time after the psychedelic experience. And you can, what people often don't realize is that your, your psychedelic experience can continue for weeks or even months afterwards to some extent.

You know, it doesn't necessarily just end after the night of your journey. And so, you know, you need time and you need to support to work through what comes up. And then eventually, over time, as you've landed, I do come back into the real world to think about, what changes am I going to make in my life? What meaning do I make from this? How am I going to change my life in response to this spectacular experience or terrifying experience?

And I think when you really honour the integration process, and I also just want to add in, into that the importance of finding a daily practice of meditation or breath work or creating or art. I think that's really important as well and that's that's where your work comes in. It's personal work. And then what you know, I think by honouring that integration process, you get the most benefit and healing from these experiences.

So I think integration is just so important. And then also what integration means for me and on a larger context is taking all of your traumas, life experiences, stories, and kind of reclaiming them, owning them, and turning them into your superpowers of what makes you beautifully unique. So really owning all those parts of yourself and your story and moving that forward as well. I like that. I like the idea of being beautifully unique. I think that we all are if we're willing to be honest about it. And there's something to be said about taking your ideas and just kind of holding them for a little bit.

I heard a good metaphor one time analogy that was this gentleman was talking about the thoughts that we think every day. And the way he said it is, you know, all day long, you have these thoughts running through your mind. And the way I like to do it is I like to think of this being inside my head that's a version of me sitting on a throne. And there's this long line of people, but their thoughts and they're all lined up and they're desperately jumping in line and waving their hands. Like, look at me. And so you let them in line. And one by one, you bring them up and you sit them on your lap like your Santa Claus. And you just hold them and you say, what do you got?

And they tell you, I'm hungry. Okay, I got you. Are you done? You got anything else? And you let that one go. And then the next one comes up and is like, I think you're handsome. And you're like,

yeah, I know. I like you. Get over here. You know, and then there's ones that are like, hey, you are lacking in your relationship.

You got to hold those thoughts for a little bit and just hold them. Mm-hmm. And then let them go. You know, but I really like that idea of taking time to integrate your thoughts and integrate what's going on because it's really easy just to let that line of thoughts, whether it's, whether it's a psychedelic experience and then you, you just fill your head with garbage or whether it's, it's a trauma in your life, or whether it's just you putting blinders on

and not holding your thoughts or allowing yourself, maybe you're afraid of your thoughts, but a lot of times it seems like that line can get really long and it becomes so long, we just stop doing it. And then we find ourselves in life, unhappy, unrewarded, and really not fun to be around. in them. It seems like integration is that process of of helping people become one with their thoughts. It's fascinating. I I love talking to you, Joe. It's fun. Yeah, I love talking to you too, George. Yeah. Yeah, I like that idea. And I think, you know, as human beings, we can have like multiple thoughts at the same time. And that's

part of being human. Multiple ideas, different, different of thinking, different thoughts. And an analogy I like, similar to your one, is it's like being in a boardroom and you're like the chief executive and you've got all of your employees sat around a table, you know, and they've all got a different role. You've got your accountant, you've got your ideas maker. You know, you've got your one who makes the tea.

Yeah. And they all have different ideas to chip in from a different angle. And you're the chief executive who takes these ideas and listens, listens to them and then goes off and makes your decision. You're the observing adult. One might be one way of thinking it. I like it. We've all got like this team in our head with different characters that are different strengths

and different ideas. Yeah. Is there is there something that, you know, for me, something that scares me is failing to become the purpose of person I should be. And I think that I've been able to see that one and to make strides into making sure that I do become the person I want to be. And I think that, you know, talking to people, psychedelics and holding that thought is something

that has helped me do that. I'm curious if there's something you can share that you have been scared about, that you have made progress on or that maybe something you saw in other people is there what's is there something that's scary to you that that you conquered yeah i mean i've i've definitely worked through a lot of stuff um since my work with with psychedelics it's been the most powerful work in my life and the integration and the breath work and the meditation um but but i think the thing that that that has scared me and that I have felt a particular void in in my life, which I don't anymore so much, is finding my sense of self. In that previously, I just didn't know myself. I was just floundering

trying to work out what I was supposed to do and what society said I should be and I didn't feel confident in my decisions and who I was and my identity, what my values were and what my personality was. And people are so different and everyone's ideas are so different. So it's like, which rules do I follow? I mean, you find this in mental health so much is that people are constantly telling you something different. Oh, you should do this. No, you should do that. And you, you know, you don't know what to do sometimes. And so for me, the most powerful fear that I've overcome is actually finding myself and learning to tune into and have a sense of my own identity, my own values and my own beliefs and my own voice and opinion and then finding

confidence to express that. And that's been the most powerful thing in my life is finding myself And that's, you know, that part often gets lost. And often some point after childhood, I think we can lose ourselves. Yeah, I think so. It's beautiful to rediscover it. And it's beautiful to rediscover it and begin doing something passionate with your life. And I think that that's, that's a big part. If we take it back to the beginning of the conversation,

where you would spoke about the relationship between the person that's integrating something and the person that wants to have stuff integrated. Like, I can see why so many people want to talk to you, Joe. You're really comfortable. And because you've been through some things and you're honest with them, like I feel like you care about what I have to say. I feel like you want to help people. And I love that.

I really enjoy moving through life and finding cool people that have standards of wanting to help other people. And what would you say, like, if you could accomplish, three things in life, what would those three things be? Good question. So I'm kind of acting from instincts a little bit. Absolutely. So one word that comes up for me is grief.

And I think, you know, life's like a continual cycle of things that we're grieving. And I think grief is so powerful. So grief. I don't know why that came up, but that came up for me because I think it's just something continuous, like continually finding time to grieve as part of the process of life. Being open to the flow of life,

one of the most powerful books that I've read, which was a Bible for me during my psychedelic work, was women who run with the wolves. which is about depathologising the feminine intuitive nature. And it is my Bible, the most powerful book that I've read in my life. And she speaks about the life-death life cycle of everything in the universe. And this concept has been one of the most powerful concepts for me. Is that, you know, nothing lasts forever.

It's not that what I'm doing, what I was doing then was wrong. It's just I was doing that then and I'm doing this now. And that enables me to just rest with the flow. You know, everything in universe is life, death, life, the seasons. You know, as women, we have our life, death, life cycle every month with our monthly cycles. And so you see it play out everywhere. So resting into the flow of life, death and life. That's that's another one. And that gives me tremendous peace, just riding,

you know, that flow is that that you kind of drop the battle. So I suppose those are sort of two personal values about how I live my life. And then there is, there is something for me about, about helping others who come my way. But I also need to be careful that I don't drain myself with that as well. So that's where my self-care is really important. I take self-care really seriously so that I can fill up my own tank so that I'm able to help others. But I think I naturally am, you know, someone who helps others. And what I really value about that is that I can use everything that I've been through in my life, which has been very, really difficult. I've experienced a lot of trauma and abuse, but I feel like I've moved through

it and I feel like I've healed and I can, where I am now in my life is that I want to kind of use all that to try and help other people on their journeys. That's kind of the big why of what I'm doing, what I'm doing and why I'm sat here with you today. I hope to help others heal as I've managed to heal. I'm always curious about the why. The why is always an interesting question for me. And I think there's so much fertile soil there that you could plant seeds in. Whenever you're fine yourself in a dilemma, I think if you just ask why, why am I in this dilemma?

Why did I get here? Why? Why me? Why me? why me? You know, you can go down some pretty interesting rabbit holes, but I think that there's a lot of, I love to ask people that, like, why do you do it? And I just, I really like enjoying hearing the answers of that. I'm thankful that you've shared that with me. I'm, I know we're getting close on my time here. And I'm so thankful that you spent time with it. Before we go, though,

is there anything else that you want to talk about before we leave? Or is there something that maybe we left out in the conversations you want to touch up on? There's nothing that springs immediately to mind. I think we've had a really great, complex, rich conversation that I've really enjoyed. And I've really enjoyed connecting with you as well as a human being. Yeah. Yeah, and connecting on that level and our shared experience. And, yeah, one hour and 40 minutes.

We've done well, haven't we? really well i would go if i'd have to go to work it could be a three-hour conversation easily i i really enjoy and it seems like the further you get into the conversation like we go through some stuff that we wanted to but then all of a sudden these doors start opening like hey let's go look in this room over here hey what's over here you want to take card my hand i'm going to show you this thing over here and i really like that so i think part two will be even a more richer conversation as we move into the future but before we land the plane here where can people find you. Do you have anything coming up and what are you excited about?

I mean, at the moment, I'm just working on a one-to-one basis with the psychedelic integration and also integrative psychotherapy. So I do psychotherapy as well that's not related to the psychedelics so people can find me via my website. And I'm just looking forward to becoming more involved in the community with regards to psychedelics and kind of speaking out and kind of becoming part of this new emerging world. I think it's really exciting. I really love the people in this world. I really feel like they're my sort of people. And so I'm really enjoying connecting with people and just yeah, just becoming part of this exciting world that's emerging. So yeah, that's where I am at the moment.

What's the name of the website again where people can find you? Joe Dice Therapy.com.uk. And I work online as well as in person so I can work internationally as well. So do you reach out if you'd like to work with me and we can celebrate all of your beautiful uniqueness. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for spending time with us today. I had a great time.

I wish I could have gotten to some more of the comments here. It's difficult for me sometimes to go through the comments as I'm trying to talk on the conversation. So for my friend, Rousse over there, my apologies, my friend. And that's what we got for today. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for hanging out with us today. Reach out to me, reach out to Mrs. Dice over here. All the links will be in the show notes. And I hope everyone has a beautiful day.

And that's all we got for today. Ladies and gentlemen, Aloha. Thank you, George. It's been lovely to meet you and have a lovely day. Nice. Hang on for one second. I'm going to end the broadcast for the people, but I want to talk to you for one more moment. Okay.