TrueLife - Microdosing Mindfully: A Journey of Peace and Presence with Lauren Alderfer, PhD

Episode Date: October 22, 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/Meet the remarkable Lauren Alderfer, PhD., a luminous figure in the world of mindfulness education and author of the groundbreaking book, ‘The Mindful Microdosing Journal.’ With a career spanning continents and an illustrious background, Lauren’s expertise is a fusion of mindfulness practices, microdosing wisdom, and a profound commitment to fostering well-being.Lauren’s unique perspective stems from her extensive experience as a mindfulness practitioner, educator, and global visionary. Her refreshing voice and approach to microdosing are informed by decades of dedicated practice and a passion for guiding both beginners and experienced microdosers on the path to optimal well-being through mindfulness integration.Beyond her literary contributions, Lauren’s wisdom extends into the realm of non-duality, enriching one’s presence and forging connections with the self, others, and the world in pursuit of greater peace.Lauren’s journey began as a Fulbright English Language Fellow in the Andean region, where she resided for over two decades. In 2015, her book ‘Teaching from the Heart of Mindfulness’ claimed the top spot in the INDIE awards for the best book in education. This work showcased her mindfulness-based approach to teaching, setting her apart with her unique blend of early meditation initiation and formative training at World Learning, an institution deeply committed to self-reflection and the creation of a more sustainable, peaceful, and just world.Lauren’s influence extends to academia, where she served as an adjunct faculty member at SIT Graduate Institute, World Learning, for more than 25 years. With her expertise, Lauren takes us on an enlightening journey toward inner peace, self-discovery, and holistic well-being. Welcome to the world of Lauren Alderfer, where mindfulness meets microdosing for a transformative adventure.https://www.laurenalderfer.com/ 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, furious through ruins

maze, lights my war cry Born from the blaze The poem is Angels with Rifles The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Codex Serafini Check out the entire song at the end of the cast Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen

I hope the sun is shining The birds are singing in the wind is at your back I hope everyone is being mindful of the beauty that surround you because there's so much of it around you. And I am here today with an incredible guest, an incredible show to help promote mindfulness. Ladies and gentlemen,

meet the remarkable Lauren Alderfer, PhD, a luminous figure in the world of mindfulness education and author of the groundbreaking book, The Mindful Microdosing Journal. With a career-spanning continents and an illustrious background, Lauren's expertise is a fusion of mindfulness practices, microdosing wisdom, and a profound commitment to fostering well-being.

Lauren's unique perspective stems from her extensive experience as a mindful practitioner, educator, and global visionary. Her refreshing voice and approach to microdosing are informed by decades of dedicated practice and a passion for guiding both beginners and experienced micro-dosers on the path to optimal well-being through mindfulness integration. Behind her literary contributions, Lauren's wisdom extends into the realm of non-duality, enriching one's presence and forging connections with the self, others, and the world in pursuit of greater peace. Lauren's journey began as a full bright English language fellow in the Andean region, where she resided for over two decades.

In 2015, her book, Teaching from the Heart of Mindfulness, claimed the top spot in the Indy Awards for the best book in education. This work showcased her mindfulness-based approach to teaching, setting her apart with the unique blend of early meditation, initiation, and formative training at world learning, an institution deeply committed to self-reflection and the creation of a more sustainable, peaceful, and just world. Lauren's influence extends to academia

where she served as an adjunct faculty member at SIT Graduate Institute, World Learning for more than 25 years. With her expertise, Lauren takes us on an enlightening journey toward interpeace, self-discovery, and holistic well-being. Welcome to the world of Lauren Aldifer, ladies and gentlemen, mindfulness meets microdosing for a transformative adventure. Thank you for being here today. How are you? Thank you for that wonderful introduction, George. The pleasure is all mine. And I love the idea of storytelling and the path we're on and meditation and microdose. And these are all fond, fond things that I like

to think about. Maybe you could begin with a story about how you got here. I mean, we've read a little bit in the introduction, but is there a certain spot you want to start at? I will. I'd love to do that. And I also realize that there are many, many stories for you to read that have that much about me. But actually, what I would really like us to invite in is really to experience, we can talk about mindfulness, but let's have an experience of experiencing mindfulness. And for the listeners out there, if they're driving, you know, I will ask, I'll invite you to close your eyes. But if you're driving or doing something that is when it's not safe to close your eyes, please just listen and keep your open. So let's just take a few moments before we enter into conversation. And if it feels comfortable,

I do invite you in to close your eyes gently, beginning to silence our mind as we go into a more interior space. And I invite you to focus on a sound in the room or perhaps the growing quietude But another focus of attention that is with us always is our breath. So I invite you to just gently bring an awareness of your breath, not changing anything, but maybe becoming more aware of the inhalation and the exhalation, perhaps feeling physically and expanding and contracting of the body, and gently resting your attention. As you breathe in,

and out in your own way, in your own pace, giving ourselves a pause from that busy monkey mind full of thoughts and analyzing and doing and being so much in the exterior world. Just enjoying another moment or so of this interior world. And in so doing, we give more space to the mind, more expansion to the heart. And now I invite you to slowly transition out, knowing that as you open your eyes in your own time and in your own way, we are connecting from that deeper sense of heart and mind, that deeper sense of growing connection through mindfulness, expanding our heart with greater spaciousness of mind in mindfulness. Thank you. I love it. It's a great way to begin any sort of communication is a little bit of respect for yourself and the other party.

And in a way, like I'll tell my story and I'm happy to share and you can ask me any questions. But in a way, that's the sharing, isn't it? That's the connecting. We don't need all the stories. We all have a lot of stories and we all have, we all share in our joys and our challenges and our suffering. but we can always connect through that heart space. It makes me feel, I guess the connection is symbolic of like the oneness. The fact that we are sharing the same space.

We're sharing the same breath. You know, in some ways it brings to the idea that we all have the same problems. We all want the same things in so many ways. You hit the nail on the head. And also like why I'm so interested in mindful microdose, I don't know if we want to jump there first or not, but you just brought it to the heart of the matter, you know. I think mindfulness and the practice of mindfulness brings that about, it has that potential. And I also believe that microdosing has that potential.

So, you know, we are suffering so much in this world and we're getting more and more disconnected. So the ways that we can get more connected to ourselves in an embodied way become so much more. more important and timely, if I may not add that too, you know. So to me, you just kind of hit the nail on the head of, you got to the heart of the matter. That's what it's all about. Yeah. Yeah. I couldn't agree more.

I know that in some mindful practices that I try to do, whether it's breathing or the use of psychedelics, it's fundamentally changed the way I see myself. And by that, I mean, it's given me the ability to see myself and other people. Oh, this person is really upset. Maybe I should be working on my anger. But whenever I see somebody and their reaction, it's usually, I found it very helpful to see that as a window into myself. Oh, I do that. That's how I recognize it.

Wait, is that a part of mindfulness? Or did you experience that as well? I think that's a really, for me, personally, that's a very fundamental part of it, that my mind is always like. that until I always joke though it's always like that until I'm like with my husband or when my kids were teenagers you know which is also I think we have to be authentic with ourselves you know we're not saints at least I'm not yet or I'm just an ordinary person but it's that idea of always having that mind of inquiry and then what you were just describing with that anger it's like sitting with that anger contemplating that anger what were the causes of that anger

where did that come from and then there becomes comes a moment of like, you're not that anger. And you just keep contemplating. You get to more layers and deeper layers. And it's like just sitting with it. And then it just dissolves. Or you might feel it coming up because you can feel the sensations in your body. But then you have the ability of, oh, it's about to happen.

How can I, you know, dissolve that or take a breath and make a choice rather than have that anger overcome me? It's well said. It takes work though, right? Like I know for a long period of my time, I would be triggered by something and then I would be acting out of emotion. And that's when you could start, that's when the suffering manifest itself. Like you never really get rid of the suffering, but you can't sit with it. But what are some tools for people beginning to use mindfulness? Like what are some ways they can kind of tiptoe up to it? Well, you know, sometimes I think people are so so busy and sometimes adding another layer is just adds more stress.

We're talking about Westerners, right? Right. And now if you, you know, if you have a family, you've got kids, you're doing everything, both people are working. It's like you want me to sit down for an hour to practice, meditation practice or my, it's like it's not so easy, right? And then you're telling me to do this. It's like, oh my gosh, the stress around even thinking about it is something that, you know,

we have to consider, right? Not to say that we shouldn't do it if it's something that feels right, but to me, I think adding a lot of stress around it is almost counterproductive. So then what are ways that we can integrate mindfulness seamlessly into our lives without adding that extra? And part of it is bringing awareness, what we're just discussing, you know, oh, I'm feeling like super emotional right now. And what I love is that kindergartners are now learning it, and they're teaching their parents. It's like, mom, you can just sit with your breath. Dad, you know, you can just do, you can just go at the five fingers.

It's like inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. You know, so it becomes something that you can do like on the spot to kind of just diffuse, calm down, inquire in your mind what's happening. Become aware of your sensations. Become aware of that reactivity that's physically in your body as well. So those are just, you know, I can't say that's like a mindfulness practice that will make you a monk or a none, but it is a mindfulness practice that can help us get more in touch with that layer that's beyond the sensations and the emotions and the reactivity. Yeah, I was at the dinner table a few years ago and we were sitting down having dinner and I got upset about something and my daughter was like, dad, you're climbing Anger Mountain right now. you see that's it like the kids are it's like in all the schools it's fantastic yeah yeah

yeah they're bringing it home right they are they are in some ways your child or your best teachers or the best reflection of who you are did it work absolutely it changed my state and it made me think and i just it fundamentally shifted all my folks focus from on this thing that was a nuisance to this bigger picture of like, that's an amazing insight from this girl that's five. Why don't you learn that? Am I, what, what is Anger Mountain? But I feel like I am climbing it. Like, that's a great metaphor, you know, and just, boom, there I was. I love it. I just love it. Yeah. It's fascinating to me to think about all the ways in which we perceive reality and mindfulness.

And, you know, at what point in time did you incorporate microdosing into mindfulness? Like, is there a story behind that? It's a big, long story in the sense that I dedicated myself to a spiritual practice at a very young age. And I committed my life to a spiritual practice. And I want to say, I didn't know what that meant. It wasn't like a guru or a specific group of people. I just knew that I wanted an interior life. And when I made that commitment,

and it's still my foremost commitment to this day. But my path was one of, I was out of the U.S. I left the U.S. when I was 16. Basically, I finished my last semester of high school in France. And then I did my undergraduate and graduate work between North America and Latin America. but then I started my career in the Andean region. And then I haven't come back to the States until last year to live as my, where I live most of the year now.

It's been one year, more or less. And so what I want to say about that is that my practice of mindfulness, we didn't have the access to the Internet or social media. And the practices that I followed were very strict in that the idea behind it was you can reach these states and you should never ingest intoxicants. You know, that was kind of like, I think in the, I hear a lot about what happened in the, of the war on drugs, but in my meditation practice, it was kind of a similar thing of like, these states can be attained on your own.

And so that's really what I did. It was hard work for many, many years. and I do feel a big sense of humility that the hard work paid off meditating day and night. My husband would still to this day, an hour in the morning, an hour at night. I can't stand as disciplined as him, but it's a constant in our lives. And so that in itself is such an embodied experience of non-duality that can be dipped into. and that was pre-psychedelics for me. And now coming back to the West and becoming more involved in microdosing specifically

and psychedelics in general, it just is like, if you can do this in a mindful, reverent way, you are embodying, and the descriptions of people with having macrodoses, you know, the descriptions are the same of people reaching high states of consciousness. And as we said in the beginning, there's so much. much suffering right now and people are disconnected that we need to have these ways of getting back in touch with ourselves. So I feel that microdosing is very similar to mindfulness in the sense that it's a subtle practice that you do in your daily life on a day-to-day basis or within your daily routine.

Of course, you take some breaks. But it's not something you have to go off to a mountain to or you could take. and you can take a deep dive with a higher dose perhaps, but that microdosing gives you that same sense, that orientation that I think mindful practice does. And frankly, I don't think people have 40 years to be practicing twice a day in a very disciplined way, you know? And I think my understanding of normalizing the idea

of using plant medicine, sacred earth medicine, because we know that fungi is not a plant, and psychedelics use right. reverently, it gives us that same, it has the potential of giving us so many similar benefits that we see in mindfulness practice or deep meditation practice. So, hey, this is 2023. Let's use these allies in a respectful way because we need the help. Yeah, it's really well said. There's an interesting relationship between taking time to get in touch with yourself and taking time to ingest some, you know, an ally or plant medicine to get in touch with nature.

And after you, like, on some level, it's the same thing. Like getting in touch with yourself is getting in touch with nature. And you can really begin to see yourself in nature or nature in the nature of you when you take these things. And they go really well together. It's almost like they magnify each other, mindfulness in microdosing or mindfulness in nature in some ways. Yeah, absolutely. I completely agree. And I think what you're getting at also is that when we feel connected from a non-dual sense, there is no outer inner. We're just, it's all whether we now that we're in discussion, we can say me, nature. But really, when we're in those deeper states, those boundaries don't really exist. And with microdosing, we get a sense of that, right? Or we have that potential of, of, oh, there's something more alive, more awake in me, in what I see, what I feel. And when we have that, you know, we can go into a conversation about the environment and our future.

But as an educator, I always talk, like, you have to love what you see in the world around you so that you would never want to damage anything. You know, you want the reverent use of plants and animals in our soil and our areas. So when we feel this as living and sentient energy, beings, you know, we're all one. And we're all completely connected. What happens to you is going to reverberate into the sky where I am in Vermont right now. You know, we might not see it, but it happens like that. It's so interesting to me, like the language we use. When we talk about mindfulness or microdosing, you know, micro sounds so small like a little baby,

something. But the truth is, a regular microdosing schedule can lead to profound changes in your life. You talk about loving the environment and not in this idea that we're one. I think one of the things that begins to happen when people begin a serious microdosing meditation or mindful journey that's in conjunction with each other is they begin maybe at first finding out things about themselves that they don't like. And you go down this rabbit hole. And it can be tough. I hate this about me. I don't like where I work. I don't like this relationship on it.

And some people stop there, but, you know, it's imperative that people understand. You've got to love who you are if you really want to love the environment. Because if you don't love what you're doing, if you don't love who you are, what kind of environment can you make for yourself? Like, and it just leads to this idea of the others. And you meet you hit the nail on the head when you said, we're all one. But it's difficult because we've been conditioned to see. the others. Everything is other. It's me, I, and the others. Can medical...

Well, I agree with you. And I think that especially in that Western mind, we're so individualistic in the Western world. But also, we can go on this conversation in so many different ways, but we can also talk about language, you know, because already there's a whole thing about language and the use of language and how we name things. But I think the issue you're really talking about is connecting to ourselves. is where it begins, you know, and also to have gratitude that, like, His Holiness of Dalai Lama talk so much about one of the phrases, the refrains I love is, we have this precious human life. Do you know, like in the Buddhist tradition, Tibetan Buddhist tradition, it's like the chances

of you to incarnate in this world is like, you know, trillions, you know, billions, whatever it is, it's a huge number to be able to land in this body, in this time, in this place with this mind and body. So it's a miracle. And not to waste this, the refrain is don't waste this precious human life. But unfortunately, as you point out, so many people are suffering. But how do we, and how do we peel away those layers? So there are different philosophies, but one of the philosophies I love to think about

are the kosha's, which are five layers of sheaths of what we're made of. And it starts with a physical and it ends up in a bliss body. Like we were talking about that oneness, that unity. You know, that's the Anandamaya Kosha. That is our essential nature. And in Buddhism, it would be called our Buddha nature, you know, that grounding that is just pure unconditional love, grounded in deep wisdom and loving compassion, loving kindness. That is who we are.

But we get layers of your mom and dad say this, your culture says this, your gender is that, this is where you're going to work, and this is what you're going to look like. And that is not the underlying nature of who we are, but then we get stuck in those other layers and then the trauma and then the emotional body. And then we get all the emotions and the trauma from that. And like that's where we, I say that that's where mostly where we interact. Would you say like in society? And from the viewpoint of the Kosha, which has been a really wonderful way for me to help understand it,

is like we can penetrate that. I'm not saying it's easy and I'm not saying it's a miracle cure. But we identify. And even in, you know, in Hinduism, that self-identifying eye is so strong in the Western culture and now in most cultures of the world, you know, and we're so attached to that. And I think that a lot of that we hear so much about the default mode network in scientific terms, you know, that it, that's what quiets down in these higher doses of psychedelics and plant medicine and psilocybin.

but that's what the Hindu philosophy isn't talking about for thousands of years, you know, is that sense of the ego, the eye, because there's so much suffering. And if we can't get beyond that, so I do believe that we hear people who have had those higher doses of psychedelic experiences, and we hear people have those microdosing experiences where there's that sense, you can touch that sense of that deeper being of who we really are. And then I just want to add that, you know, how you describe microdosing, I would also say that a lot of people are microdosing and it's just so easy to get information nowadays. But I would also say the experience you described probably wouldn't have happened if there was a really skilled microdosing coach or if someone were in a program. Because the container, as we know, the containers that we have these experiences in really do affect the set and setting.

So, you know, there is a big difference of people who kind of do it on their own and not so much with that reverence or the intentionality or container. And then those who seek out guides or coaches, facilitators or programs, even for microdosing. It makes a huge difference in my mind. Yeah, I've recently come to the idea that people find the method that works for them. You know, some people might need to pay 15 grand. Some people might want that. I don't know that I necessarily agree with that, but who am I to tell them they shouldn't do that? And some people have another teacher.

And on some level, I feel like there's just a bigger program at work. And the people find on some level the teacher that they're looking for, or at least they're pointed in the right direction. But maybe you can speak to the idea of how working with someone can really be beneficial to people, versus the two different methods that we're talking about. What do you think? Well, those are really great questions. And I think that one way to answer it is that, you know,

it doesn't have to be someone paid. It could be a friend. Yeah. But one of the things that I find with my clients is that they'll, it's very common for people to say, I didn't feel a thing. And then they start to tell. But then they start to tell me little changes.

And I'm like, wow, that sounds pretty. pretty dramatic to me or that sounds transformational. And then all of a sudden they're like, oh, yeah, well, maybe I will do it for another week. Yeah. Or another two weeks. And then, so I think part of it is that that mindfulness of like how we started out of that real mindful inquiry. If you have a mind that has that mindful inquiry, you're going to spot those things. But as we know, and as you said, it's like we're reflected in others. So, When we can share, even if it's with a friend that's not paid, but can ask those questions. But I will say that that is one of the reasons why I was motivated to write a journal on microdosing,

but from a mindfulness-based perspective of how do we just even approach microdosing from that place of how we started, you know, kind of going away from the mind, trying to not take it away, but also interesting. integrate the heart and have that sense of greater clarity of heart and mind in the experience. And when you do that, you change the experience. So the actual book is a journal, but with guidance. So that because I believe that so many people are microdosing without having anybody else involved, and I think that a journal like this is for those people. And it's only $20.

It's not $1,500. Because I think those containers are important in most cases. Yeah, it sounds like, in some ways it sounds like you created a friend for someone to talk to, like a mirror for themselves to look at it. What was that the intention behind the book to create a sort of resource for someone who's curious to go and learn and make some movement forward? I love that question. I don't know if I even thought about that question.

question, but it certainly answers that question. I just, when I decided, I had wanted to write a mindfulness journal for my last book on education and for educators. And my publisher kept asking me to write a mindfulness journal for that. And I kept saying, okay, okay, but I have to really have, it has to speak so clearly and it has to be like in me so that it was easier just to write it. And I said to her last summer, I said, well, what if I just, what if I do a mindful microdosing gym?

And she goes, I love it. Great idea. And so then I had the idea. And the reason why I said that is because there was last summer, there wasn't anything around mindfulness and microdosing together. I'm happy to say that now there are several things on the internet on Amazon that you can see that have come out since then. And I'm sure there are going to be many more.

And fantastic. I think the more the merrier because we need this. I think that, but my focus is very different than the other ones that are out there because the whole approach is one from that mind of inquiry. It's not let's do a breath practice or let's listen to the sound or let's just write about a thought. It's really, the whole approach is based on that sense of inquiry, that sense of equanimity, the sense of growing. compassion from the heart and deep wisdom. But having said that, I started the book because there wasn't

anything on mindfulness and microdosing, but also there wasn't a container for people. So I feel that I wanted to write it in a way that gave people that mirror. So I used a metaphor of a, it was an interesting process because it's not linear. I knew it couldn't be linear, but I didn't know how it could be until I saw this amazing artist in San Miguel Lende, a mural on a house. And her email was there. And I'm like, she could be anywhere in the world. But she was there in San Miguel,

and she agreed that she wanted to work on this project. And then she started creating these beautiful images. And I'm like, oh, my gosh, that's it. So, you know, it's an evolving process without a real clear goal or focus. But I knew what I wanted to express. And what I wanted to express is have people experience microdosing from a nonlinear perspective, but also with your linear mind, but not driven by your linear mind.

So we have images of gardens throughout. So the garden in preparation is just you're starting to prepare your garden. And then when you're actively microdosing, the garden is coming into fruition. And I don't want to do a spoiler alert, but then the integration is, this beautiful something else that the garden turns into. And because you have to feel from your heart. It can't be just something from your mind. So I really wanted to integrate that into this beautiful book.

It's really an art book with some guidance. Yeah. I love it. You know, it's a lot of the times you hear people that are familiar with psychedelics. They talk about the ineffability of the experience, that there's something that words can't quite capture. And I think that when people create in a space around psychedelics,

they're all in a way bringing a piece back. You know, when I hear you talk about it being an art form, I think it's a beautiful way to describe it, because you are bringing something back that's more than words and you're giving back to the experience so someone can take that tool with them and then probably add to that. It's a really powerful way to think about expression, the way we express ourselves, right?

And why do we want to put words to everything? Like that goes back to when I was saying before, you know, words confine. Yeah. And that's part of the dualistic mind. It's part of that linear, this, that mind. And so why are we trying to make those experiences that are ineffable or those experiences that touch on something greater into words when we can use art or other forms of expression.

So I did want to integrate that into the experience because the way you, the container also helps create the experience, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting. You know, when we think about words and language, like words are merely fragments of a language. So no wonder we can't communicate effectively.

You're just using a shard. You're using this sharp object to be, look at this. You know, it's like, I don't know what that means, especially people from, different cultures or raising different stuff. Like, does that mean that? Oh, well, I love talking about language. But at the same time, you know, a concept can sometimes be well communicated if there's a word that really matches it.

But we find that in those inevitable states throughout history, there's, why is it, it's not prose, it's poetry. Yeah. Right? Because we don't, it doesn't work. You know, it's not so fixed and linear. So I wanted to promote that understanding of like move with that sense of expansion of creativity and from your heart. Yeah.

Along with the mind, you know, there are guidelines. And then at the end, I did add some frameworks for references because I had this very, I really resisted putting in charts. and like people talk about protocol and which substance to take and how much is a dose and and it just felt like you were saying before about words it just felt so linear and I was but the whole thing I'm trying to do is not be linear but then I had some some really interesting discussions and people talked about harm reduction which I think is so important but I thought oh people can get that on the internet people can get help but information is harm reduction. By providing the information, I'm contributing to less harm. So then I felt

very obligated to put in some of these charts. And then I sat for quite a while contemplating really deep mindful inquiry is, well, why am I doing this? What's behind these charts? And I'm very happy to say that I came up with something, but I'm going to backtrack for a second. Within that inquiry, I heard a lot of controversy, and I'm sure you know more than I've had lots of, you know, you talk about something in the psychedelic world and there's a lot of controversy and it's like colonization and who came up with these terms of protocol and calibration and, you know, where did all that come from? And so even when I use the word mindfulness, you know, it's a really tough decision to use a word.

But at the end of the day, those are the words that are being used to bring people together and to communicate a concept. So I'm like, okay, I'll talk about calibration. I'll put a chart in. I'll put a chart in about protocol. But what I really am so happy about is I went behind that. Why am I choosing a substance? Is it matching my intention?

Which is the best ally to match my intention? and why am I going to start with a dose at X amount? Oh, how can I best ease into my dose to find out? And what's the protocol? It's not what's the protocol as much as, oh, what's a rhythm that works for me? So it's these mindful questions behind these charts that I've not seen yet. And I hope help people ask those deeper questions. and that's another example of how it's a mindfulness-based approach.

Because we don't just do something because it's out there and we can reference it. It's really start with yourself and start that inquiry, that mindful inquiry, which is like a pillar of mindfulness. Yeah, it reminds me. When hearing you talk about the way in which you've structured the book, it makes me see this evolving form of storytelling. If you look back at not too long ago, people would write a book that was a story. And it was usually a personal story or it was a story about something else.

But your book and others like it are inviting the person who gets it to write down their story. In some way, it's like you're co-creating with them, the same way psychedelics co-create with you. And in doing so, you establish a pattern. Here's this practice. Here's this book. What you're really doing is inviting people to co-create their own life. And like, you know, I kind of get goosebumps when I think about it because it's truly sharing between people. And you're not, even if you put in a table, you're allowing people to see a framework of which they can build on and create with.

It's really beautiful. I'm glad you're breaking it out this way. Thank you. And I actually use that word co-create. And not so much with me. I thank people for, you know, whoever, when you write something, you write in such solitude and you don't know if it's ever going to go anywhere. So really, I just feel gratitude. when it reaches people's hands and their hearts in ways that I don't even know yet.

But the actual product of this journal is the co-creation with them. And what I also love about it is written, a few people who've read it for reviews have said, you can just read it again and again and it'll have more meaning, you know? And even though it's very short, the text is like a 20-minute read. But the journal is a little, and the open pages for coloring or writing. are there. That's the crux of the book. But it's a short read, but you're just spiraling through the deeper meaning every time.

So it's not like, oh, I'm just going to use this for my first eight weeks. It's like, oh, no, then you can use it again or make photocopies of the diagrams or whatever, you know, or buy another copy. But, you know, it's not stagnant, you know. It's something that's because we're always evolving. So when we meet something again, we're different. Yeah. Yeah. So I wanted to make space for that as well. What do you think that says about meaning? You know, a lot of the times I hear people who begin down a more spiritual journey or begin building a relationship with psychedelics or in theogens is that they begin creating more meaningful experiences.

What role do you think meaning has in our life today? And is it how? I can't. It seems to me, at least in my life, I feel as if my life is more meaningful today than it was a year ago. Do you think that that is something that people are going through, or is that just an individual's experience about their life? I'm not quite sure what you mean by meaningful. It's a big, yeah. Like impact, it has more of an impact or it connects more or? I think that's a great word. I think being mindful and aware of who you are and the impact you're making results in a more meaningful life.

I think that that comes from being conscious about your decisions. What do you think? I love that. Can I quote that? Because I think that you just kind of define my life. Like everything has meaning. Yeah. Right.

There might be some experiences have more of an impact, but like with that mindful inquiry, like little tiny things can have such an impact and change our lives. And I'm not exactly sure what the question is, get is means, but perhaps what you're getting at is there's this richness of appreciation for what we experience. And when we're more awake and have those senses that when we're out of that, emotional thinking, judgmental, cultural, this and that, and more in that space of openheartedness and that deep wisdom and compassion, I think just naturally, everything feels more vibrant and has more meaning. I don't know if that's answering your question or not.

Yeah, I don't even know if I had a question in there as much as we're just talking a little bit. But everything has such deep meaning if we inquire. deeper. And I believe that even micro things are reflected in macro things in our life. And obviously there are experiences. Like if you go to a ceremony and you have a macrodozer or if you go to a psychedelic therapy session, you know, and it's a positive experience. That can completely can, not necessarily, have a big transformative effect on your life, as can microdosing. And I see it with my clients. It's amazing. You don't have to go for those big experience. You don't have to go for those big experiences to have the same kind of sustained impact in your life to transform your

life for that greater sense of meaning. It's interesting. It seems like so much of healing is coming to the realization that you can change the meaning of an event that happened previous to you. Like that's pretty powerful, right? Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I think part of that is we're, again, this is like this, this part of those layers

that we're stuck in and often do you find that people are stuck in a narrative? Yeah, conditioning. Yeah, but we also keep repeating it and repeating it and repeating it. And so in mind training, we are aware that we're repeating it. And we can say, oh, I'm repeating it. Oh, do I want to keep it? Why am I? Oh, should I?

Oh, wait. Oh, I have a choice. You know, so we can go through these. mental gyrations through that mindful inquiry, but it's still not so easy to get out of those narratives. Yeah, I think of pattern recognition. You know, life seems to be a series of patterns. And when you can recognize those patterns, only then can you change them. But for so many of us, for whatever reason, maybe it's a generational trauma. You know, if you start looking back on your life, that's a good way to begin recognizing patterns. Hey, I do this thing that my mom did the thing my

grandma did my grandma did the thing my sister was like oh oh oh the world trying to tell me to knock it off you know and now your five-year-old is no i'm only kidding without a doubt without a doubt unless you do it you know but the world's constantly trying to remind you and i feel like there's a language there like if you begin to see like oh the language is communicating to us through us so it's fantastic if you begin peel, like you said, peeling back those layers and looking at it. Yeah. I love what you just said about. You didn't say it this way.

I'm going to say it. But that's kind of what you said. But I'll use different words. The moment we observe something, it already has changed. Right? Yeah. Because the fact that we're observing gives us that pause. Oh.

Otherwise, we're just swimming in the water. you know, paddling ahead without the awareness. Now, observation doesn't make the change, but it's the beginning of big change. It has the potential. Yeah, you went, oh, yeah, like, you feel that. Does that resonate with you? Like that, that once you actually can observe,

already things are changed, does that resonate with you, George? Yeah, without a doubt. It really hit home for me. I automatically what came to my mind is like the Schrodinger's cat experiment. We're like, we can't figure out what's going on. Whenever someone is watching it, it changes. It's because you're part of the experiment. You know, but yeah, that does make sense.

Like the soon as you observe it, okay, I got you, you know. But in some ways, I can't change his tail over here. Yeah. I love your cat. It's true. I love, what is your cat's name? Anyhow. This is Freddie over here.

Freddie. Hey, Freddie. Okay. So when we observe. all of a sudden we have all these choices. Okay. If we observe with that sense of growing awareness, that if we bring some of the mindfulness practice in that moment

or every time we observe, we start to observe, let's just say we have a pattern and, oh, you recognize, oh, this is a pattern. That might be the very first time you observe. But then you observe it again and again and again. And as you keep observe, so once you observe it, you have the potential observing it many more times, right? And then it's like, oh, then you start asking you, I mean, this is one scenario.

There are so many, but you can say, oh, am I going to react the same way? Can I bring a sense of that going to mini? Can I just watch how I observe without reacting? Oh, this is, oh, this is what I usually, this is how I usually react. And this is how that person reacts. And oh, isn't that interesting? But hey, can I change my reaction? Oh, and now how does that person react?

Not that you're doing it for that person. you're doing it for you. Any change is really for you. Otherwise, you're still reacting to the situation. But that's another story. But the sense of observation with this growing sense of non-judgment, just watching, and that sense of non-judgment helps us to watch and look and understand better. And then to make choices.

And then come to this another beautiful principle of Buddhist practice that I really love and bring into microdosing. that sense of equanimity. If we can be in that place of equanimity, we can just watch. And then the melting away is even more profound. So observation, inquiry, non-judgment, equanimity, transformation. You know, all of it is transformation. But then it's like, oh, I have a choice. How can I react from this deeper sense of who I am? And patterns start to change. I also think that when you're in a pattern that's very difficult to be a super, if we can be in those super vulnerable places, the layers can kind of, it's a very difficult

thing to do, especially when there's more hurt or trauma. But when we can be in those places of, in a safe way and feel that, feel that sense of fragility, there's also more power for healing for that to to to melt away in a way that um like pema choden talks about when things fall apart in her book called it when things fall apart i love that title because when things fall apart it's like chaos and complexity theory and unifying theory is like when things are are shaken up we have the potential of building it back up and new and more whole ways and it starts with oftentimes it starts with observation that's it's really well said i never really thought about it from that deep of a level.

But yeah, how can you build something new and better if you don't break down the old system that was having problems, you know? Maybe this speaks to the idea of why suffering is often thought of as a gift in a lot of ways. Yeah. If we can, that is a really tough one. It's a really tough one. It's a really tough one. And we can talk about suffering.

I mean, right now there's so much suffering. you know, in the world. And I think all of us are feeling in different ways. But I also believe strongly that it's hard to hold suffering if we're not grounded in well-being. And I think a lot of people can feel suffering, but they react from anger or they react from suffering. And, you know, we're in this cycle.

But if we can be more grounded, knowing that we are a center of peace, knowing that we are beings of compassion, that we are beings that give out loving kindness, if we can come from that place while feeling the suffering. That I just posted on Instagram and LinkedIn, now that I'm back on social media on Tan Lin, which is a beautiful practice in Buddhism,

where the practice is getting to the place in yourself first and then holding that for others. Go back to the beginning of our conversation where we talked about we're all connected. If we are all connected and I can be in that place of deep, deep peace, then I have more of a potential of holding the suffering and letting, like I can feel it now as I talk about it and feel it. I have more that potential of reaching out to the suffering that is happening at this moment in so many places in this world.

Yeah. So it's not to disregard the suffering or disassociate ourselves from our own suffering or those of others, but to first ground ourselves, you know, in a deeper sense of well-being, of more peace and love. Do you feel that a good relationship with suffering leads to surrender? Oh, you know, George, I would like to say that, but I think so... But, I mean, we can see with addiction and depression, we can see that suffering can take over people. Yeah.

You know, they never get out of it. Yeah. You know, is there a potential to get in a way out of suffering? I mean, that's what Buddhism was based on. The fact, you know, the four noble truths there is suffering, but it's based on also that there's a way out of that. does everybody you know I'm not saying

people have to be Buddhist I think all religions have their understandings of it I just have such deep empathy where people want to get out of the suffering and and are and don't make it out but I would like to say that we have

more allies available to us now and I think that's where the psychedelic movement is so hopeful for a lot of people who you know they're suffering, a lot of people are suffering alone or really trying hard to get out of their suffering, but what's working isn't working for them. So how do we find community? How do we find, how can we change the narrative? How can we find those places in ourselves where we can feel

loved and awake and alive and not necessarily heal, but not overtaken by suffering? I don't know about in Hawaii, but in our little town, you know, We have people who are, you know, a lot of drug addiction, more homelessness every day. And, you know, it's just really coming back to the States after 40 years, it's really shocking. I mean, I've been coming back and forth, but to see, like, how things have changed in the last few years, his or, you know, decade or so, it's really sad. People are really suffering. Yeah. It's so your journey spans continents and cultures.

How was your international experience shaped your understanding of mindfulness and its role fostering well-being on a global scale? Hmm. Well, mindfulness is such a buzzword. And I just wrote a piece about how I think microdosing is now the new mindfulness. Because when I wrote my children's book, which was one of the very first children's books on mindfulness, it was barely a decade ago, about a dozen years ago. And it's like that wasn't really a word that was out there so much. And because of globalization, because of westernization, because of, you know, East

meets West, I am very happy that mindfulness is everywhere. You know, it's you hear the word and being used in all sorts of venues, you know, in the business world, the startup world, in five-year-old. classrooms when they shake your daughter come back and talk to you know dad about things so however what i will say about mindfulness is it's also just like yoga and and perhaps what's going to happen to microdosing and psychedelics is that you know it's so prevalent that it can also lose it can be very helpful in diffusing things and distressing i think that mindfulness has become really a way just being less stressed.

It's not necessarily the deeper practice of mindfulness to get to these deeper states of being. However, they're always going to be, it's still very effective and enhances people's well-being. So mindfulness can be a buzzword, but it's really a very deep, it has a potential to be a very, very deep practice.

And we can see that it's changed people's lives through retreat centers and 10-day viphasanas that are everywhere, you know, people can have the opportunity of at least knowing what that feels like and making the decision how they can integrate that into their lives. So on a global scale, I think mindfulness has been a really wonderful way of bringing some of these ancient practices

into a very secular culture. Yeah. Sometimes I've been thinking quite a bit about the absence of ceremony and rites of passage in the Western world. You know, and it seems like such a beautiful container when three generations, you know, whether it's a woman coming of age or a man coming of age or some sort of ceremony, whether there's an elder, an initiate, and maybe a younger child that's getting to watch. It's on some level, the observation is happening on all levels. And it's, you're aware that you get to play all these different parts. And sometimes I think in the West we lose that. Like we get lost because we don't know what role we're at.

We don't know what role we're playing. Maybe you can speak to the idea of the ceremonies or the absence of or what does your take on that? You know, and what you're just describing is usually done in community, right? It's not just one person or one family. Right. So first I say, where's your community? Have you made community? I remember when we, our children were born in Peru.

and they grew up in Peru and Ecuador, short time in El Salvador, a long time in India. And people said to us, you have to make your own rituals. Because we were outside like a culture where we had those rituals of, you know, when we would go to your, usually it's like when you go to your grandparents, you know, like did you have rituals when you went to your grandparents when you were a little kid? Just not, not any sort of structured ones. But yeah, we'd go for big holidays, we'd all go play and all the cousins would come over. And we looked forward to it.

So on some level, you know, we had these meetups that we would do from time to time. Yeah. So when someone said that to me, when our children were very young, it really meant a lot to me because we were a nuclear family that then tried to make our own rituals. So it wasn't the rituals like you speak of that were based in community because we, I mean, within the X-PAC community, we had certain rituals. like the Americans would, you know, celebrate July 4th or Thanksgiving and the Scandinavian with the, you know, summer, the midnight, midsummer's night.

You know, we would, you know, different cultures had their rituals, you could say. But I still think that the idea of ritual is so important. And I just want to say, I was listening to the BBC and they were interviewing someone who is now, it happened years ago, but he survived. with his family for something like six weeks out on the Pacific between England and Costa Rica. And he talked about that being the highlight, the highlight of his life because every moment was one of survival. And it really made me, like every day was organized around how are we going to survive today.

And I won't get into some of the details of what they had to do to survive and what part of the fish they had to eat and this and that. But they, but he talked about it in such a way that made me think similar to what you're saying is that the idea that we are so, we're living in so much comfort. You know, we aren't living in this, in a world where we are actually against the elements every day of our lives. like our forefathers in cavemen time, you know, that maybe, and with ceremony, like, yeah, maybe we've lost something, but I always believe that we're evolving and can always co-create something that works for where we're at right now. So even individual ceremony for families, I think, is so important to mark the seasons,

to mark our lives. Yeah, maybe we're missing that more and more. But more importantly, it's why do we need ceremony? It's really connection. Everything goes back to connection, you know, connecting to family, connecting to community, connecting to yourself. Like when they had to survive, I'm sure they connected to themselves as well as human beings on this earth having to, you know, survive. And they form this survival group, you know, that must have been so, so tight. because they sound like it worked really, like they survived and they got picked up and

they did a good job of surviving. But we need to survive with love. We need to survive with connection. So how can we, those are the deeper questions for me. Yeah, it's so much of, sometimes I think that a lot of mental illness comes from the need, that, the feeling that you're not needed, you know, if we look. at some people, they have this internal dialogue that is usually on a horrible song that's on repeat that they sing to themselves, you know, and it's like this alienating, lonely song.

And when you think back to, I could be romanticizing the past for all I know, but it seems to me that if you're needed, if you have a role to play and that role is needed and it's important, then you have this feeling of importance about you where, you know, I, I don't know, I didn't live as a hunter-gatherer anything, you know. I could just be romanticizing that. But I think it's nice to be needed in some way. And nature provides that need for us. If we're in a small group and we've got to survive, you're needed.

You've got to pick up the slack. You've got to pull up for the team. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and maybe that is part of where some of, you know, maybe what you're getting is some of it. The way we live in this world is so far removed from the hunter-gatherer. that maybe, you know, some of these other elements are coming to the surface and people are

in states of depression and greater suffering because there's this comfort that doesn't support that other way of being anymore. Yeah. I mean, that's a whole, yeah, it's a very interesting thing to contemplate, right? Yeah. But here we are. I mean, we're here and this is how we are. And I think that we talk about the need to be out in nature more and more and to feel part of this world that we are not separate from. And it starts with ourselves. It starts with our family. It starts with our natural environment wherever we live. Yeah. How does your work with mindfulness align with the goal of creating a more sustainable, peaceful, and just world? And what role can mindfulness play in addressing global challenges?

Well, it all starts from self. You're laughing. In the sense that we're all, that sense that we're all connected, right? We are all connected. And if we can be grounded in who we are, and also be aware of our actions. So one of my daughters started to study human rights.

And my husband worked as a humanitarian. worker for many years. And I said to her, just be careful because a lot of people who work in humanitarian work are very, very angry. And it's okay to be angry. It's just, are you using your anger with intention? And also, is your anger creating more anger? And so I'm not trying to judge any events.

I'm just talking about anger in general. And of course, Martin Luther King talks so much about this. Just check your intention. If you're coming from that state of love, feeling anger, you can feel, I'm not saying like another big pillar of mine is authenticity. Like we can't, and I saw this a lot in the mindfulness world as teachers when we were first starting to train teachers, they thought that they had to be like these perfect teachers that,

represented mindfulness. It's like, no, you have your struggles. We're trying our best. Like, I was joking that, like, I'm very mindful, but not around, like, when my kids were teenagers or with my husband. Like, when I get more emotionally charged, it's, like, harder to watch your emotions, right? So same with anger. It's like, you can feel the anger, but don't be the anger.

And so go back to naming things. This is unjust. This has been happening for generations. This is where we're at now. But how can I dig deep in my sense of loving kindness to use your anger or to use your voice, but to do it in a way that you think is going to contribute to a more just world? as I say I'm not here to judge how people do things but I do believe that anger begets anger so if we can go deeper into that sense of a more peaceful nature that it always resides inside of us

and then come from that place we will be more effective in changing the events of the world Yeah, it's well put. So often people get angry and they want to change the system. They want to change the people running it. But the only thing you can really change is yourself. You can change the way you act in the world. And that can have ripple effects. You know, obviously that's not an answer for everything.

Sometimes it's so corrupt that you have to change things. But a good starting place is to start with yourself and be like, okay, why do I feel this way? Is this a perception? Is this a procedure? or, but it's really, it's really helpful. And I think it brings clarity on what the next step might be is to have that change happen within you. And like it's a great starting point.

And I don't mean not to try to change people who are in power or be active. You have to do all those things. You know, activism is super important. Right. But just at the same time, keep nurturing more loving kindness in yourself. and I'm saying you have to be perfectly compassionate, loving, and kind. I'm saying just try to be more of it and to check your intention and to check your reactivity, you know?

And just every day a little bit more of, you know, it's just like microdosing or like mindfulness practice. It's just like building that awareness, building that self-compassion. And then, but still staying active. If we're not active in our communities. and in the world, you know, everybody has, everybody chooses in which way they want to be an activist. And sometimes you can be a very quiet activist. And yes, many people just, you know, will sit and practice in self-practice and send out prayers and do a tonlin practice.

And in the Christian tradition, you know, praying is very powerful. So everybody can have their way. But I think that in this day and age, we all got to get on board for this planet. And so, that original question is the more aware we are and the more we can be in touch with that deeper wisdom and grounding of loving kindness, the more we can contribute to a more just world. And the more we can be in conversation. So I had a lot of training at world learning at a very young age when I was 16 when I went to France through one of their programs.

and my whole life has been, what I love about living abroad is meeting people who don't vote like me, don't practice the same religion, don't eat like me, don't dress like me. And I always love connecting heart to heart because at the end of the day, that to me is the greatest sense of connection and gratitude and honoring of other people. So I think that communicating with people that don't look like us, don't vote like us, don't eat like us, you know, the more you, the whole premise of world learning is that you learn about other people by being in a family or being in another culture and becoming part of that culture. Because we see things only through our own eyes, but when we can experience things through other cultures and other eyes, we grow in. in our appreciation and when back to language, when we learn another language, we really begin to understand a worldview that might not be like ours and an appreciation for it as well.

Yeah, that's really well said. So often when you travel, you learn more about your home country than the country you visit. This is true. But traveling is different than really having an experience living and becoming part of another culture. Yeah, which I highly recommend to all young people, you know, if they have those gap years. You know, it's one of the richest experiences you can have, I believe. Yeah. Do you think that, you know, some people will start a microdosing program or maybe they have a macro dose or maybe they just have a relationship with it? Do you think it's something that stays with them once they see this thing a certain way or is it something that can wear off or is it both?

it could be any of the above. But what is mostly reported, and I've heard Paul Stamond's talk about it, is when people have that high dose, over time, over several months, I've heard him say that that's when microdosing would be a really great way of, like, you have your macrodose, and then you have the microdose. Because you want to keep it from when he spoke about it, he was talking about the neural connections. So you want to keep the neural connections growing.

From just a logical point of view, it's the same idea. You want to keep that if you look at the neural connections as a metaphor for staying connected to that sense of deeper peace or more unity or that boundlessness of being connected, the microdosing is can provide that after a big experience, not right after, but each person will feel it in their own way when they're like, oh, you know, it's feeling a little more distant. And then a microdosing regimen is, I think that's part of the future of where we're going to see psychedelics moving. Do you think that there's a potential pitfall for using it as a disassociative? You know, if I read Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, you know, in that book they speak about Soma as a disassociative.

and people use it as a way to escape instead of a way to confront, if that kind of makes sense. Do you think there's a danger there? I think there are always risks. So I think that the container of, you know, this situation is super important in terms of, you know, if you're going to a clinic or if you're going to, you know, there's so many options of if someone wants to have a macro experience. But are those facilitators schooled and skilled in understanding what the risks are for that client? Is that client going to tell the truth of what their conditions are? So I think there are always risks, which is another reason why I think that idea of mindfulness is so important,

is like even the person needs to discern if that's the right thing for them and if it's correct and who are they going to and where are they going and what are they taking and what's the container. Like all those questions should be asked ideally. So without all those questions and without a safe container, for sure, they're risks. And if certain, you know, there are definitely contraindications, even a few for microdosing. But those are the, and so, you know, the skillful use, even in meditation practice, it's like skillful use of these techniques. You know, the skillful use of your mind. You know, we can bring all those, a lot of those same principles into.

to the psychedelic space as well. Who's your teacher? You don't just go to anybody. You discern. You learn. You study. You decide. You don't just haphazardly do things.

Now, having said that, there are people that do haphazardly do a lot of things, and they report really great benefits. But you're asking if they're risks, and I do believe that there are. And we've seen that, and we hear about them and read about them. Yeah.

One area that I've noticed microdosing or even macro dosing and psychedelics work well in. And like you said, there's always risks. But one area that I think it makes a lot of headway in is this relationship to fear. And it seems like fear is something we deal with at all stages of life, whether you're a young kid becoming, growing into an adult, whether you're an adult worrying about your mortgage or maybe you're at the end of the mortality experience. Maybe you could speak to the relationship between microdosing psychedelics and fear. I'm so glad you asked that question because that gets to the crux of a lot of things, right?

How do we deal with fear, especially when we're in those situations? In ceremony with a macrodose or even in a microdose, which can amplify your feelings, but usually, you know, if it's too amplified, then it's not the right dose usually. but we can speak more on that later. But fear, we've talked about anger and just looking at your anger. So we can do the same thing with fear. But fear makes us feel a lot more vulnerable because we're much more, well, not necessarily more reactive to fear than we are to anger. But let's just say, like me just hearing the word, I already feel like I am more reactive, you know.

So I think fear is the big, F-E-A-R word. And we know from many reports that it's very common for people's fears to come up in these larger journeys, these deeper dives. So why do I think mindfulness is so helpful? And one of my motivations to be more public as a voice in this psychedelic landscape is that I don't think mindfulness has taken its place as a pillar or a foundation. piece in the narrative around psychedelic use and plant medicine and sacred earth medicine. And I think that the principles behind mindfulness are so helpful and to me almost essential in meeting my fears. And so when you have been steeped in this sense of equanimity, so when things pop up,

you can look at them, you can observe, but you're not reactive. you get to a place of in Tibetan Buddhism in terms, it's called calm abiding. You can abide calmly. And I mean, have you felt that at times where you can just like, you just watch, but you know that you're calm?

So when you can really, if you're trained to be in that place, when you end up going to a ceremony or have a macro experience, you're, that place is a familiar place to be. So when those big fears come up, which inevitably they seem to do, there's that sense of you can calmly abide, you can watch and observe. I'm like looking up because there's a distance.

There's already a distance. I'm not that fear. That fear is coming out, but I can watch it. And what usually happens when you can watch it without reacting? What usually happens to the fear? it dissipates there you go so if we can bring these mindfulness practices before you go into these experiences so that people can you know get more deeply have that more deeply embedded like even on a cellular level or can move that that that I think that it will only enhance those

experiences and also be a big part of harm reduction I have been told that meditators that have meditated for a very long time who have decided to have a psychedelic experience in their 60s and 70s tend to have all their lifetime practice affirmed in their psychedelic experience. And when someone who I really respect told me that, it was a big aha and something I can relate to. So the practices of mindfulness and meditation are so very useful as we approach our experiences in the psychedelic landscape.

And I really truly hope that the idea of mindfulness, not as just an extra practice, but as a whole way of being, can become more of a pillar and foundation piece for the narrative around the use of entheogens and psychedelics. Yeah, that's really well said. I'm hopeful that on some level it can change our relationship to death. You know, it seems to me like we have just this disrespect for it on some level where it's to be shunned and hidden away and to be the ultimate fear. And, you know, I had a friend of mine who is my friend, Eby, if you're listening, I love you, my friend. And he told me, he's part Cherokee. And he told me that a few years ago, his dad had called him. He lives here in Hawaii, but his dad had wanted him to come visit. And he went back and visited his dad.

And his dad said, I think it's my time. You know, I know, I love you. And they had a nice talk. And he went home. And his dad, a few days later, he found out that his dad went for a hike and went up to this special spot that he would always go to. And so they found him. And I remember thinking like, you know, I had recently had someone in my life

passed away at that time and they were on like a they had been like a not even home but they were in a hospital somewhere and plugged up this machine and on some level they had already died so long ago and to think about the way in which at sometimes in the west we can take the dignity out of dying i'm not saying it's an easy thing to do but just to hear those two different stories to me really made me stop and think like wow there's some real dignity and how we treat the last part of our life. Maybe psychedelos can play a part in that. You know, you touched on another really topic that I just love to talk about and I really feel a lot of it is part of my calling. And it's not just the dying, but also getting the aging process of, you know, but I'm also sorry for,

you know, your friend. And as you told the story, you know, I also give my sympathy to you because it also affects those that cared about the person, right? Yeah. Like, it sounds like your friend who went back to see his dad came back whole, but you feel more broken as you describe your friend's experience hooked up to machines. Like, it affects all of us. And I think that my practices, there are quite a few practices around, death and the idea of bardos in the in the Buddhist philosophy so so the practice of impermanence

the idea of like when we when we do these practices we're not it's not a morbid thing it's really more of a life-giving thing because every day is a precious human day you know every day is I just made that that up every day is precious every day is precious it's not just a human day but we're in this human body having this experience, and it can go in a second. We know that things can happen in just a flash. So that idea of impermanence is not part of our culture. You know, and I think that I remember reacting to being kind of blown away where everybody has their house, and their house is so important.

And my husband was involved in the tsunami relief that when it hit Thailand and Indonesia, it also hit the southern coast of India. And we went down to visit. And he went down way ahead. But when I went down, it was bizarre because there was like one street and there was nothing on one side and houses standing another. We went with some psychiatrists and trauma specialists. And we had a discussion in the many, many hours to get down there because there was

really very little access. And we talked about the difference between the east and the west. And we talked about what happened in New Orleans compared to what happened. and in South India where people were lost in the tsunami. And it was that idea that people are so attached to their material goods here in the West. And the house and the car are like paramount, right? Yeah. But there people knew that they're more affected by the elements.

And not to say that the loss was great and the sorrow and death, but there was more of a resilience is what the psychiatrist was. mentioning. And so what I want, why I'm saying this is that when we're attached to all these physical things, we think they're so real. And it, I believe it takes us away from the sense of impermanence. That really, so to contemplate impermanence and do practices around impermanence is really a practice of being alive. So what is the biggest place of impermanence is this physical human body. So we know. There's one thing we know in life. And that is, that we, our bodies will perish.

There's going to be an end. That is the one thing we know and it's the one thing that we fear the most. So instead of switching it around to say, I know this, wow, I really want to practice around this so that I can be at peace way before my time is coming. Because at that time, that's when the practice is like, just like the calm abiding and a macro experience to meet your fears, it's kind of the same. If death is the biggest fear, then we want to be in that place of more calm and more peace and grounded in more love and feeling that we are infinitely loved at that time of death.

Not to say, you know, no one can predict how people are going to die, but we have to, I want to practice doing that now. And I think with the baby boomer, I just did write a piece on why it is. Aging meditators are microdosing because I think the baby boomers are facing those spheres right now. They're facing dementia, which is huge. And so I believe, this is just my own personal belief, but I believe that if you think about the practices of impermanence and really being at peace with yourself is at death, if you have dementia, it's really practice that before you lose your cognition

so that you can be in this beautiful, safe place. before you really can't use your mind to control it. Because while we have our mind, we can do these practices. We can navigate where we want to put our energy and our time and our effort. Yeah, that's an important part of where we are. I think it kind of in some ways brings us back to the idea of like a superorganism. And it would explain why there's so much turmoil right now when like a large part of us, us as a human race, you know, the baby boomer generation is such a giant generation and so many of

them are knocking or coming up on this transformation or this, this new experience or death or how we want to describe it. On some level, we're feeling the unrealized dreams of a part of us that are slipping away. The memories are slowly the same way that a person's mind can go so to as a large part of us moving on. And I think that has echoes all the way through the rest of the generation. Does that sound plausible? I think that, yeah, I think that is. But I also think that that's an outcome of the causes and conditions of this like

attaching things to what's important. And that sense of ego of like in terms of what your job was, in terms of driving a car, which is probably the worst thing any American wants to give up, right? It's like always later than they usually have to be forced to take their license away because that's their independence. And even being attached to the idea that you're independent is so much a part of Western culture. And so but what's attached? It's the ego.

It's the identity. So I think a lot of what you're describing is an outcome of that deep attachment to that ego, which breaks down in a macro journey in Sarah. ceremony. And we see it, you know, we see it in the clinical trials as well. And so why is, why are those macro journeys giving relief to people at end of life? Because they can tap into that greater resource of, you know, that sense of unity, of our Buddha nature, our essential nature. That is it. So if we can do the practice in day to day life of, of disengaging, the importance of that attachment to all those things that make Western life so important.

I'm not saying not appreciate our friends and our family and our loved ones and our colleagues and our backyards and our house. But at the end of the day, we are going to leave all that. The physical body will leave all that. So it would do us well to appreciate it from a place of non-attachment. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. You know, we talked a little bit about storytelling, but as an author and an educator,

what do you see as the key role of storytelling in conveying the essence of mindfulness and microdosing to a broader audience? I always joke that I'm not the best storyteller, but I have a lot of stories. But I was thinking about storytelling and folk tales and sayings, and I think that all cultures are so rich in their storytelling.

And when we can appreciate some of those stories and even Proverbs, I think I grew to love language through my grandmother. You used to say all these little ditties and sayings. And I just, oh, wherever I was, I just wanted to eat them up in other cultures because they are a window through which you can understand a different world or different. And through these stories or through Proverbs and through folktales, you actually experience the world differently. You know, even when you speak a different language,

you actually experience things differently. You know, words that are concepts in one language might be different in another language, and so you experience it differently. So storytelling is extremely powerful, and I hope to be a better storyteller. Next time we get to speak out, do some storytelling. But what I do know is, in a way,

the microdosing journal is a story. through a garden. So the garden is a metaphor. So we could look at it that way, that our lives are a garden. And so before we even start the garden of our lives, if you're going to go out and start a garden, you're not just going to put seeds in.

You know, you're going to clear things out. You're going to be sure the soil is really rich with nutrients. You're going to decide what you're going to plant, where you're going to live, what's going to work well. You're going to decide how the garden is. I remember in northern Peru, we were in the desert, and we had to like make mounds. In Ecuador, you would put a seed in and literally everything would grow where we lived.

But, you know, so there are different ways of making your garden. And so that's the story of our lives for the mindful microdosing journal is that we are the garden and you are the garden. And even before you start to microdose, even before you prepare, you're already thinking and dreaming about the garden, you know, in your mind's eye, at night. and you're looking around. So with everything we do, there's like intention and there's this heartfelt nature of something that you want to do.

And then things start manifesting. I think oftentimes we talk about preparation and integration with like you want to see actionable things, which we do want to see. But I also want to integrate in my story that there's so many unseen things. And that's where a lot of the magic happens. So when we're preparing the garden,

you know, magic can happen as we start to prepare and dream. And in the integration phase, there are lots of things that are still going to rise up that we haven't even seen yet that are still deep inside under the ground. But then they will be coming up. And in the diagram, there's a little, I wanted a fairy to be in there. And there's a little fairy house, you know, because we have to make room for magic in our lives. And that is really the story. and how do we make room for magic and how can we make metaphors and storytelling be things that

inspire us and can ground us in a way give us a framework but but bring out that that deep sense of who we are as people from our the deepest sense of our of our kind hearts yeah i love it i think that's what the mindful microdosing journal does it's a it's a little bit of magic and it's It's a phenomenal way in which you can begin to understand that you create a wonderful story and your life should be a beautiful story. And it's wonderful. We have to come back. I think we just kind of scratch the surface here.

I think we could maybe have a panel and bring in more voices and have a symphony of storytelling and understanding. Before I let you go, where can people find you? What do you have coming up and what are you excited about? Well, people can find me on Instagram and Lauren Alderfer, also LinkedIn. website, Lauren Alderfer.com. And on Amazon, the mindful microdosing journal is available for pre-purchase. And coming up, I've been writing a few articles, some of which hopefully are in the pipeline to get published around mindfulness within the psychedelic landscape.

And what was the third question about inspiration? What are you excited about? I'm excited about something that is having my voice be more public. So I want to thank you, George, for my first ever podcast. I hope it met your expectations and the listeners because for me, I'm very, very happy in my quiet writing space all by myself. But being more active on social media has been a big jump for me and being interviewed. but I feel very compelled to have a voice to bring the narrative of mindfulness in a more,

I hope in a more foundational part of microdosing and in psychedelics in general. And so I'm excited to bring my voice to the public starting with you. So thank you very much for all the wonderful work you do and interviewing me today. The pleasure is all mine. And I love the way you're bringing your voice, not only in the written word, but in the spoken word. Because I think that the two complement each other

in a way that isn't really done as much as it should. And I think you have a beautiful voice in writing and speaking, and it should be amplified. So the pleasure is all mine. Hang on briefly. I'm going to talk you briefly afterwards. But to all of our friends listening today, go down, pre-order the book, go to the show notes,

check it out, go to her website, listen to this amazing mindful moment. That's all we got, ladies and gentlemen. Aloha.