TrueLife - Sophia Dagg - Two roads diverged in the woods, I took the one less traveled

Episode Date: July 13, 2023

One on One Video Call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US🚨🚨Curious about the future of psychedelics? Imagine if Alan Watts started a secret society with Ram Dass and Hunter S. Thompson… now open the door. Use Promocode TRUELIFE for Get 25% off monthly or 30% off the annual plan For the first yearhttps://www.district216.com/www.elementalempressmedicine.comSofia Dagg is a force of nature, the kind of person who makes you feel like you are standing at the edge of a vast and beautiful universe. As the founder of Elemental Empress Medicine, she is on a mission to support people to connect with the elements, and to understand how they can use those elemental energies to heal themselves and the world around them.With years of experience as a plant medicine integration guide and meditation practitioner, Sofia has honed her skills in creating safe and sacred spaces for people to explore their inner worlds.Sofia's passion for conscious community building has led her to embrace the latest technology, bringing the healing energy of her work into the digital world. She's a true visionary, always pushing the boundaries of what is possible, and inspiring others to do the same. Her recent book 'The Birth of Ben' shares just how powerful the process of integration is for the awakening journey. 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. I'm going to get ready. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the True Life podcast. I hope everybody's having a beautiful day. I hope the sun is shining and the birds are singing. Hope you got to wake up next to someone that you love.

that at least you're feeling great about yourself. And if you're not, I'm going to change that right now because I have a great show with a great guest, the one and only Sophia Dag. She's a force of nature. She's the kind of person who makes you feel like you are standing at the edge of a vast and beautiful universe. As the founder of Elemental Empress Medicine,

she's on a mission to support people to connect with the elements and to understand how they can use those elemental energies to heal themselves and the world around us. With years of experience as a plant medicine integration guide and meditation practitioner, Sophia has honed her skills in creating safe and sacred spaces for people to explore their inner worlds. Sophia's passion for conscious community building has led her to embrace the latest technology, bringing the healing energy of her work into the digital world. She's a true visionary, always pushing the boundaries of what is possible and inspiring others to do the same.

Her recent book, The Birth of Ben, shares just how powerful the process of integrating, is for an awakening journey. Sophia, I'm so stoked you're here today. How are you doing today? Thank you, George. So wonderful to hear that introduction. And yeah, I'm doing really good. I'm, yeah, loving the sunshine, the summer months.

I'm super excited to chat today. It's always amazing chatting with you and exploring different topics. So thank you. Of course. Thank you. You know, before we started up the show, you have this incredible thing that you do. And it's, it's like a, in some ways it seems like school. Like you're always challenging yourself.

Sometimes I talk to you when you're in South America. Sometimes I talk to you are in South Africa. Other times you're in Europe. And I think that this idea of moving around so much is forcing you to grow to become the most beautiful and most authentic version of yourself. Maybe you could tell people a little bit about that process and how you do it and why you do it. Great, great question. Yeah, it's a life school.

You know, it really looks like a life school in this context. this is actually yeah it's been something that's been coming up for me of releasing the segmentation of you know there's a lot of compartmentalization of like oh I went to school and then I got this and now I have a job and this is my personal life and this is my social you know and this is my career life like I don't have any of that because you know it's just I did definitely at one point but with the travel it just started merging and I it just makes so much sense you know but my ego doesn't always like it. It's always like, oh, I want to make lots of money and be able to pay for everything. And it's just like, well, what if we could just move things and bring them all

together? Like, you're learning while you're going and rather than spending, you know, $10,000 on a college degree. So it's challenging to, it's a different kind of journey. It's harder to communicate about it then because people always ask the same questions. We're to school and, you know, so it's, it's a storytelling type of thing where I've had to get really good at telling my story to actually be able to communicate clearly, you know, what I've experienced from where I've been. But each country, I mean, from an elemental perspective, teaching about the elements inside the body and outside the body, it's the same for each country, which has been a big teaching with all this travel. It's like, if there's a

drought in a country, it represents that the feminine energy is like gone, especially at that time. Like it's really, really struggling. Wildfire is crazy mass and energy. So the weather and the climate always reflects the people and all of their different energy. So it's just being this masterclass and energy. You know, what is energy? How does it work? This is how I see it.

Yeah. It's beautiful to me. And I, you know, I often think or I often hear this phrase and it seems to be part of my life. And I see it in my environment and the people I meet. But it's just this idea of as above so below. And so much of the environment we live in really affects who we are. And I think people take that for granted sometimes. You know, it's interesting to think about how those two things are really connected.

Yeah, and we can even bring it all the way down to biology, you know, like literally the gut microbiomes of people that have traveled the world are just really freaking strong. And we can even go further than that because I was reading. I did a breastfeeding course when I was in South Africa because I'm a jula. I work with birth as well. And she was sharing, she was like, yeah, the women who travel have, like, really diverse microbiomes in their breast milk, which helps their babies be super robust. I was like, my baby is going to be bulletproof. I mean, so many places.

But what an interesting piece of information. Like, there's a physical, physiological thing that happens that literally makes us more resilient from travel, you know, mirroring the whole psychological side to it. Yeah, it's fascinating to me. And it seems that not only is the microbiome robust, but it seems to me you get to have a very unique perspective on not only cultures, but the way in which the heightened states of awareness or the psychedelic ideas play out in different cultures. I was wondering maybe if you can shine some light on that. It seems to me in the world in the West, you know, we just had this big conference in Denver, and it seems that everyone has a mental illness and that we're really trying to shine a light. on the PTSD and in some ways fragility.

Is that the same way in different parts of the country? Are there different aspects to it depending on where you go? Yeah, it's a great way to think about it. I have a different focus, I guess. I mean, I did study psychology and I left the college course because I didn't like the DSM. I didn't like the focus. It just felt like it was off the mark.

Because my sole interest has been. just being how is reality constructed? You know, how is this whole thing made up? Like, what is the matrix of it? And how does, how do the energies work? That's always been my interest. And of course, you know, psychological imbalances and physical ailments like come into that play, but it's not really the focus.

And so, again, with the psychological disorder, it's like, that's why I've loved traveling Africa because, like, Namibia, Zimbabwe, South Africa, they, of course, have their imbalances, but they're just not constructing it. is such a big issue, you know, because there's bigger problems that they have to deal with. And I think the pivotal moment for me was Zimbabwe because I just, I got there and a couple weeks in, I was just really feeling almost like I was always on a psychedelic trip because nothing was as it seemed, you know, like in the U.S. it's like a table is a table. Summer is summer.

And, you know, there's all of these constructs that everyone has agreed to. And there's so many agreements, which makes the world so stable for people in the U.S. Zimbabwe, like they have not agreed on these things. There's like crazy black magic happening. There's chocon vodges going everywhere, throwing stones. And like you just never know what's going to happen. Like it's like living in the wild west. Like it's so, so crazy.

So that's like crazy. Okay. You know, it's a different perspective. Do you think, so if I shift gears for a minute, a lot of the times when people begin writing a book, people say that the first book is like an autobiographical story. But I think it speaks volumes of our cultures because you're right. In the West, we are locked into these social contract or these agreements, these things,

these ideas that may have been forced fed to us ever since we began school at a young age and we're conditioned to think a certain way. We're conditioned to see the world a certain way. And in some ways, we're handed the lens with which to see the world through. But as you've traveled around a little bit, maybe you can, talk about, was there a certain place that inspired what you wrote in the first book? Or was it an amalgamation of all the different places? Or maybe you can use that to begin to tell us about the foundation of your book? Yeah. I've never been asked this direction. Nice.

Nice. So yeah, that's 10 at 10. Definitely the country's played into it, for sure. Because the birth of Ben, obviously it's about a birth. So I was in, you know, Mama Africa. I was in the root chakra of the planet. Right. For for that whole experience. And, you know, that really inspired me to understand more. And I think it was super synchronized, you know, because once I gave birth, I wanted to understand what is birth, how does it work? And, you know, right on my doorstep was all the traditional midwives. There was the ability, like, super randomly to be able to train as a doula. and then go into a maternity hospital, which you just obviously can't do in the European Union or the U.S.

So it's just there basically being treated like a midwife, like delivering placentas and like, you know, catching babies. And those like massive baby conveyorables of a situation with all these different kinds of women, like of all different kinds of ages. So, you know, I got to really be immersed because I had that experience in Africa and that completely informed the book. Because African women, in my experience, they were just more connected to ritual and to their bodies.

And so when I gave birth and I was able to do a ritual and that's, you know, the whole orange tree and the side of, you know, that's a big, huge part of the book and the whole integration process that I share throughout it. But actually to process, before I started writing it, I had to go back to my home country. So I went back to Ireland. But then I had this crazy dream when I was there. I was pregnant in the dream. and I was running to all my childhood houses, really, really pregnant, and I needed to give birth,

but I couldn't get birth because all my family were around. And I was like, nope, can't give birth around you, can't give birth. And I was like literally in the dream, like panicking, like, you know, 10 centimeters dilated, kind of panicking. So I realized I had to leave. Okay. So, and then this is when Mama Ayahuasca started calling me again, also in my dreams, because, you know, I live by my dreams.

She started talking to me in my dreams. She was like, no, like, we need. to work together. So I was like, okay, flew to Costa Rica and I met with Mama Ayahuasca. And after I met with Mama Ayahuasca, the whole book came out. Costa Rica was actually the writing place. It's interesting to see where, you know, in some ways, ideas get born in places, right? The same way you go to have the same way your child is born in a certain area or designated in a certain area. So too do ideas become born in a certain area. Maybe you even get

pregnant with ideas in certain places. What do you think about that? Yeah, I like it. I think you got everything in terms of conception pregnancy. That's super cool. And I have this like memory about ideas that came through from people who've written books that, you know, these ideas are not ours, really. There's been experiences, especially with fictional books, where someone's gotten a download of the book and then they don't write it and then they actually someone else writes it and they read it. So I think, yeah, these ideas come and they're a gift, but we can accept or reject them. Yeah.

Yeah, it's interesting. I've heard that same scenario with business plans or products or services. It's almost, in some ways, it seems to me that the information is something that's revealed to you. In ways, we don't really learn things. I was thinking about this as well. A lot of the times in the West, we go to school for so. long to learn things. But I've had just as much learning given to me or unveiled to me or revealed to me as I've gone to schools. It seems like when you go to school, you just sit in front of someone

who gives you their opinion of something they learned from someone else's opinion who knew a guy who did a thing whose dad knew it. You know what I mean? It's like, how far down the line are you going to go before you get some lived experience? Yes. I mean, when you say it like that, it sounds ridiculously alarming. Whoa. Slightly disconnected. Yeah, right? So I don't know.

When it comes to writing books, did you feel that way? Did you feel as if something was writing through you? Well, it's more aligned with the methods that I teach with the elements of letting the body speak. And I was very disconnected with my body. like before that, like, you know, many years before that. And I wanted to reconnect. And the main way to reconnect, I find this through dialogue, like is through communication

of some form. And so this was basically like me, the cap that was on my body communication, I had to really fully let it off to let my whole body speak and write the book through me about like what was going on in my womb and what was going on in my, you know, all of my body. You know, how it was to integrate the information. So I think, yeah, it was a channeling, but just from my body. And this is what I do in sessions of people. We go into the body in a guided shamanic meditation.

They're like, I never think my body has anything to say. Just come back. And like everyone has like 17 books like inside their body. It's just so much information that they have access to. And it's so personal. And it's and it hits them so deep. And if people write books from them. those places, it of course hits other people, you know, in such a deep way.

So here's an interesting question that I think it's interesting, and I think the guests will, and I hope you will too. You know, as a mother who has a child and you're connected by this umbilical cord, and when my wife was pregnant, I got to feel our baby kicking and like you can see the changes happening. And at certain stages, you can see the baby moving. But for the mother, she can always feel the baby there. And it seems to, and as a man, obviously one time I was connected to my mother in that certain way, do you think that there's a lot of similarities, the way a child in the womb is connected to their mother, in the same way that we as individual people are connected to the planet?

Hmm. Yes, I do feel we are. And I feel like the umbilical cord is shown in birthing medicine is like a number. another chakra, you know, it's a whole, you know, thing of itself. And what I've seen with healing sessions over and over and over again, so I'm just seeing it as a collective issue, is that we do feel disconnected and oftentimes we feel like we're not ready and we feel rushed or we feel pressured. We don't feel welcomed and supported and held through the, the contractions of life, you know, to rebirth ourselves into adulthood.

We're really seeing this pressure point in the exchange between adolescence and adulthood. And when we trace that back to the birthing room, you know, to the labor ward, it's just, it's perfectly mirrored. You know, baby comes out. And bill corns cut straight away. It's like, I wasn't right. Like, no more earth medicine for you. Like, there's two liters of blood in there, but we're just going to keep it and we're going to dump it, you know? You know, we're even worse.

It's just like, well, this is taking a lot of time. Like, let's just cut it out, you know? And then that person feels like, am I meant to be here? Like, I wasn't ready. Like, I didn't tell you. I didn't give you the sign, you know, like, I want to come now. So the soul then has an issue with embodiment. And then there's, I mean, disembodiment is probably one of the main ailments.

So people just don't want to be here then. They actually, and that's all the mental health stuff. It's like, I don't want to be here. It's because they weren't actually, they didn't get to decide to be here. And that's a huge part of us actually, you know, dedicating to our life. mission is actually to decide to be here. So so many people go to plant medicine because you go through a rebirth, especially with ayahuasca, like my first ayahuasca experience, she asked me. She said, do you want to be here? And I just paused. I was like, okay, I get to think about this.

Where it's like, okay, yeah, no, I want to be here. Okay, cool. Let's go like, you know, and the change in life, you know, just from that one question. Because we need to ask that at birth, you know, like, how do you want to be birthed? And how can we welcome you onto this, onto this. planet so much so much healing in the labor award will help us will really really help us see this is why i love talking to you i'm sorry you know much about your birth story i don't i mean i i i know about i was born at 7-11 and i weighed 7-Eleven and i weighed a bunch of junk food because i was 7-11 you know but i don't i really don't know i i'm a little offended that I was circumcised.

No one ever asked me if I wanted that. You know what I mean? Like these could take me and cut this. Hey, what if I want that? You know, like it seems so barbaric to me. Like in some ways it's genital mutilation, right? Like, it's no different than other barbaric practices. But this gets me into this next question.

Like, there seems to be, just from my little quick birth story alone, there's a lack of ritual and birth in the West. But it's mirrored in death in the West. Like, there's no ceremony. There's no ritual. There's no real family around, and we fear both. In the West, we fear death so much that we take our dead and we bury them, we put them in a box, we get away from them.

And we don't ever, like, really spend time around them. And a lot of the times, at least in my life, I've seen people that I love die before they die without even knowing. And what I mean by that is they're hooked up to like this machine that breathes for them. The insurance companies are making like 10 grand a day from the hospitals. And like the only ritual around death and the world, West is commodification. And now talking to you, I'm like, oh, my God, birth is commodified. We've completely stripped out the ritual and ceremonial aspect from them.

I'm no wonder why we're so crazy. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. For sure. I went through an experience with my grandfather, and I was living in Africa at the time. And it was actually just after I'd lost my pregnancy. So I went through this whole full life circle, like the beginning of life.

and then like the feeling of death in my body and like releasing that pregnancy and then the end of life of like a 90 year old man and it was just it was so crazy so I flew like 40 hours from Africa to be there to say goodbye and I got there in time and I got to speak with him and that was just so so special um but that happened they kept going they just kept going he had a pacemaker put in and they got to the point where they were like we're going to drain his uh we're going to drain his lungs which is a very painful process. And the way that the family works, like there's certain people that can have an opinion. There's certain people that can't. So I spoke to the one of the people that could have an opinion and could have stayed. Yeah.

I can't let this happen. This is over. He's going and he's, you know, we need to accept this. And I was seen as like the most barbaric person. Because I was like, yeah,

if man is dying. Yeah. Let him go. But there has to be a line, you know, because it's pain. And it's just, I find that very, very, very difficult that situation. Very, very difficult. Yeah. It's easy. I guess it's easy for me to

talk about because I'm not on, I'm not on the gurney. I'm not in that position, you know, but in, but some ways, it feels selfish to me to keep people around that are in pain, you know, and I don't know. I just, I think that the world we live in, like, if we look at demographics and we see such a large swath of baby boomers, I can't help but think that it'll, a lot of the anxiety that is being played out around the world is like the unrealized dreams of people that are close to death. Interesting. Okay. So you feel their unrealized dreams are what tethered them to their physical bodies? Well, I feel like that as you move towards the end of your life, you begin reflecting. You know, some people have like what they call a midlife crisis. Some people

have different challenges as they move through their life. And as I've moved, as I move through my life, the challenges that I've had previously in my life become clear to me and they become, oh, that was necessary for me to be here. So if I say to myself, the best predictor of future behavior is past relevant behavior, and I play that forward, I imagine that there is lots of people in their 70s or 80s that are beginning to feel as if, oh, my God, I didn't accomplish the things in my life. Oh, my God, I spent all my life working instead of with my family. Oh, my God, I was tricked into this idea of success being monetary,

gain. And I can't imagine what that must feel like. But I have heard stories from death duelists that have been like, oh my gosh, I sat with these people and sometimes the look of agony on their face when they die, I can feel it. Like it's these unrealized dreams. And so when I see these, the point I'm making is that when we look at like the Ukraine war and we look at the people in government, like it seems to me that these are people that have lives have been very unfulfilling and they're desperately trying to play their last hand. And that's playing out across the world. These people are living in fear.

They want to go to war. They want to extract resources quickly and as efficiently as possible. Like, why? Like, this is the ideas of someone knocking on death door, begging to live one more day so they can have a little bit more. Like, it gets back to the idea of, I don't know, I think it gets back to the idea of anxiety and unrealized dreams and how it, how that plays out on the rest of us. Does that kind of make sense?

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, definitely. I feel there's an art to dying peacefully. Yeah. And it's an art that we should all learn. Like, how do you want to be at the end? Because, I mean, the truth always comes out. It just, it has to. Yeah. And even if it is in silence, like that's such a powerful experience for death deal is to see that agony because, you know, it does show a sense of justice that the people that show up and are courageous enough to fulfill their dreams. Like sometimes that can be a hard road to take, you know, but is it harder to die with regret? You know, it's a little bit, you can kind of actually get a bit of perspective of like, okay, well, what decision do I want to make here? Because I'm going to have to face it either way.

Yeah. That's a tough question to ask, right? How do I want to die? You know, and at what point in time in your life, I think it matters. At what point in time in your life do you ask yourself that question? Yeah. This was actually, this came up on a recent call. I was sharing how I built my online platform on heartbeat. And some people were asking about motivation and consistency. Because the biggest issue that people have with building online communities is like, that sounds like a great idea on Wednesday, but like two weeks later, I don't know, my baby needs me or, you know, I just decided I actually don't like that idea. You know, it's like, how do you maintain this? So I'm like nine, 10 months in now.

So I'm like really cozy with the situation. And one of the tips that I shared was that I don't think about it on a day-to-day basis. I think about, you know, my 80-year-old self and like her looking back and thinking, oh, well, that was really cool that she did that, you know, at this day. So I don't like to think about it in this current year what kind of impact it's going to have because realistically, it's not going to be there's only so much we can do in a year. So I think it's really helpful for people of old ages to just contemplate how they want to feel when they're 80 or they're 90 and then work back from there. Yeah, it's fascinating to me.

You know, you had said something earlier that it was kind of playing in the back of my mind. You said you lost your pregnancy. What does that mean? Yeah, so deeper, deeper story of my processing of the relationship between the masculine and the feminine, let's say. Yeah, I manifested something very, very difficult, which I feel is in my lineage, like it was in my body, something that I was attracting in. I really didn't know how to use my creativity. I had no clue. And as you can tell from chatting with me, like, I have a lot of energy.

So I was like, okay, well, what do we do with this? Okay, I don't know how to use creativity or my cycles or anything. So I'll just create a human because that's like the only thing I know how to do. So I manifested this. I was pretty unconscious about it. You know, I was super, super young and super, you know, I didn't have any kind of job. I just moved to Africa. I had no family support, nothing at all.

But it was just, it just manifested because I, you know, that's what I was thinking about. But the father of the pregnancy just gave it to me straight. He was just like, no, I'm not like ready for that. And I can't do it. So I was like, okay. What do I do then? you know because I clearly couldn't do it by myself. So I had to sit with that and we were in the middle of nowhere in a tiny farmhouse

and I just realized like the morning after I told him like I woke up in the morning and I realized what had to happen. And I just broke down. Like I never, ever in my wildest dreams thought I would be in that situation. Like I was so against making that kind of decision until I was actually in the situation myself and I realized I had to make that decision because I was such a teaching in my respect. responsibility as a woman as a creator because I was holding everyone's life in my in my decision making you know and I had to step out of my decision no matter what um but it just it was it just felt like

that that was the only way that I could deal with the situation and yeah so we move forward with that and the pregnancy ended very early after it started but I'm very empathic and very central person so I felt it so deeply I felt the experience deeply I felt the birth deeply and I went straight into shamanic mode. I mean, I was communicating with my ancestors and the whole process of birth I did at home. And I had a ritual with an orange tree. And there was a lot of energy clearing.

And the elements were speaking to me so strongly about how to deal with this kind of processing of difficult energies of death. How to process death. And so I was given a gift, you know, from the earth. You know, children are of the earth. And so it just made sense to give that, that give back to the earth after I gave birth.

And I processed a lot of this through ayahuasca. Like I went back into that experience and processed it. And now I feel it's a great way for me to share about how ayahuasca helps with women's medicine and with birthing trauma. So whenever I work with people with any kind of medicine, I always ask them about their birthing history, their physical birth, or even if they're male, like have your partners had stillborns, have your partners had miscarriages because it all starts to come out and start to work with these deeper realms of the psyche.

Wow. You know, it's, it really makes you look back at some of the most powerful stories in a light that was never possible. You know, if you look back at the way Abraham was supposed to sacrifice his son, all of a sudden you see these stories that are deeply written in the human code. in the majority of scriptures of sacred books of all cultures about losing a child or, you know, sacrificing a child. And I don't use that word lightly or as a pejorative.

I use it as losing a child, you know. And I, in some ways, it can be the ultimate gift because it's something you can't control. It's something that happens to you. But in doings, and when that happens to you, it fundamentally changes who you are as a person. person and it does bring you a connection to something bigger be it the planet or god or whatever that bigger thing is to you it creates a connection that can never be severed it creates a connection

that will be with you forever yeah and for me it's just being the biggest example of how even the darkest situations in life if it's just if we look at it as energy it's a huge amount of energy. And if it can be transmuted in a healthy, respectful way, it can transform, like you said, like people's lives. And so for many women, as I spoke with women after, this is the main reason why I wrote the book is because I just spoke to woman after woman. And they just suppressed it. There was no ritual. There was just tears. There was just floods of tears. And I was like, this is not right. These women are suffering. You know, they deserve to know these simple rituals. You know, it's so, so simple that can bring them healing and can bring them peace because nobody wants to make that decision.

It's not just something that's easy in any shape or form, you know. So it just upsets me then that people are shamed and they can't speak about it. It's like, no, those people deserve our utmost respect and support, like support for what they're going through, you know, because it needs to be heard and it needs to be seen. And, yeah, it's a deeper topic. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. I'm sorry. I don't think I don't think apologizing is the right thing to do. Like I'm so excited that you wrote about the way in which you found to deal with it in a way that's positive for other people. I think that's beautiful. And it brings me up this, it brings up this idea to me that I've been speaking to quite a few different people in the world of psychedelics and in Theagents.

And I'm beginning to see that finally, at least in the West, We're beginning to move towards, hey, these medicines are different for women than they are for men. And it seems so crazy. It's taken this long for us to begin moving in that field. You know, maybe you could speak to that a little bit. It seems that you have much more, that you have much more experience and understanding these medicines from a specific gender point of you. Yeah, it's a topic I do, I do love. Yeah, good. Yeah, because like we're going back.

back, you know, we're saying about the births and we were saying about parenting and all of these types of aspects, I really felt in that situation, like I needed more than what my family could offer me in regards to guidance and support. And what I felt like with ayahuasca was like she was the mother I was waiting for. I was looking for her. And I needed her support more than anything in the world. Like I just needed that kind of big holding type of support. And, you know, obviously men and women experience that differently, but, you know, particularly with ayahuasca, it's known for healing, birthing traumas. And I've had that experience because I, when I went into ayahuasca, one of my, one of my ceremonial trilogy days. And I was giving a lot of power away to her.

I wasn't, like, instructing her what to do. I was kind of just like, oh, you show me what I need and, you know, just me being super feminine and super, like, non-instructive and, like, really docile. And the shaman was like, no, you do know you can tell her what to do. Like you can tell her where to go and what to heal. And I was like, really? Okay. So that night she showed me how to do that. And yeah, the women were able to come into the center of the space and the men were replaced on the outside.

And we were basically instructing I was to do a womb cleansing. And I just, it's one of the most incredible experiences of my life, you know, to see so much releasing of spirit children and miscarriages and ancestral wounds and, you know, all of this shame. And the men just were there with shakers just holding the space. You know, you're safe, you're safe, you're safe, you're safe. It was basically just what they did for like two hours as women just. And what was so beautiful was that we were recognized as the portals between heaven and earth.

And we were recognized for, you know, there's beauty. and there's amazing beauty in that, and there's amazing suffering. You know, there's such huge suffering. And I felt so seen as a woman, you know, in that role, in that ceremony. And so, yeah, plant medicines have, have that power to remind us of what masculine is and what feminine is in a healthy way, you know? I love it.

It seems to me that when, and maybe this is just because I'm, I live and I am, I live in the, in the world of the West, a lot of the times, or at least a lot of the literature that I'm reading or a lot of the books that I'm reading are centered around this process. And when I speak to you, I really get to see a different ritual, a different modality. And let's just take, for example, the ceremony you're at where here are a group of women that are moving through a healing ceremony and the men are holding space outside a circle and the women are in the inner circle. That's so much different than almost every retreat that I hear about where four people go down, they get one day of ayahuasca, they get one day of mushrooms, they have an integration session,

and then they get a phone call three weeks later. You know, and it speaks volumes of we have the Fateman protocol and we have the Stamen's protocol. Here's two guys that are talking about microdust, genius on both of them, and I'm not taking anything away from them, but it's just, it speaks volumes of the way in which we are looking at this medicine in such a one-dimensional way. I love talking to you. I really enjoy learning about, you know, the long history of where, you know, the long history of women in the underground who have been providing this type of service who haven't really got any credit.

I think there's a lot of beauty there. Thank you for that. Maybe you could tell us a little bit more about some of that. Yeah, women in the underground. Yeah, right? My next book. It's a great title, by the way. It's a great title.

I will give you credit. Yeah, I suppose I feel connected with women in the underground because that's my, in my ancestry. Like my grandmother was a woman of the underground and, you know, she was a rebellious kind, super, super rebellious human and I have a lot of her spirit in me for sure. And she always wanted to do what I'm doing. She wanted to travel the world, but she got TB. So she got married and she didn't end up doing it.

But she was the one who was at the beginning of the Irish Revolution for contraceptive's woman. And so, you know, I really take a lot from her. And when I went through this healing with my birth, I went to my Irish shaman and she did some soul retrievals for me. And she went back into my ancestral lineage and she saw that there was a woman in my lineage that had actually performed abortions. And she had felt very guilty about it and she had been kind of shamed about it. And everyone after her who had had abortion in my lineage then felt this massive shame about it because it was like kind of going down through the line. And I do feel like that's very true for many women. Like there was previous women who worked in the underground and there's so much shame wrapped up in it.

So now even if now it's all out in the open or it's legal or whatever, there's these issues about it. So what I'm seeing is like there's a revolution of the legalization of things. And now there needs to be a revolution of, you know, women's medicine and women's ritualistic practices. Like these women need to start kind of speaking up. And that's why I love the elemental medicine school because it's like my go-to guide of like, share what you want to share because I want to go to your ritual. I want to go into your medicine. So I'll help and share how to do that because we need this deeper insight.

We need like in my opinion, it's better to come away from the 10 steps for success and stuff like that. Like there's deeper wisdom. That's so true. Yeah. And we have access to it. I mean, like you said, about school. Like it's not like there's no course in this.

It's it's only about going deep inside yourself. That's the whole thing. You know, just go deep inside and you'll find it. Yeah. This idea of lived experience as the ultimate teacher is it's it's something that I think is feared. You know, it seems that going to school and getting a piece of paper from a qualified institution. Like I can see, I get it. I understand the safety issue of that.

I understand the, the reasoning for it. But I also understand it promotes mediocrity. It's like, hey, if you have enough money, then you can go here and do this thing. But you're not really getting the lived experience. You're getting, like I said, you're just getting someone else's opinion of it. And in some ways, it makes the best people arise because there are people that are going out and going through the lived experience. And they are finding the lessons on their own

and they're learning for themselves. And those seem to be the people that can really help other people. The people that are doing, you know what I mean? There's like a difference between practicing and doing. I think if you go to school, you're practicing. And that's fine. You should practice. But someone who travels around or starts something from the very beginning

and has the teachers show up when they need. I'm like, that's doing. It's a, I don't know what. I really admire the process of it. And I hope that the people listening to this podcast are inspired by you and by me and by all the other people out there that are doing because everybody can be a doer. Everyone can start something on their own and become the best at it if they're willing to have the courage to do it, to believe in themselves.

And like, that's kind of where the healing comes from. You begin healing yourself by becoming your authentic self, by having a little bit of self-love and rewarding that and feeding it back into you. And then that feeds back into the world, right? Yeah, I love it. And it's just, it's true and it's hard to digest at the same time. Like, I understand the difficulty in the digester. Yeah.

It's hard. But it is, I feel, I don't want to say the only way forward, but I just don't think we can talk about like unification or one love or, you know, actually caring about each other unless we change the educational system because there's a deeper issue that comes with paying for education because then you only see the people that are of a certain level as teachers, like that person is a teacher because they are this or that. There's all these different reasons for that being teacher. But the homeless person that I just walked past it on the street, no, he's not a teacher.

Or the person in the barista, he's not, they're not a teacher. No, no, no, you did not train as a professor. And it's just like, no, everyone's your teacher. Yeah. You're your teacher. Everyone's a reflection of you. So it's just a different perspective. And I feel like when everyone open up, when people who do open up to the world and every single person being a teacher, I find them to be quite compassionate and receptive, like really, really receptive to life.

And that's, I mean, that's an evolutionary thing, but it's also a sensual thing. It means you actually get to sense life. You get to have every experience is so enriched and full because. there's not that much seeking. It's like, I actually don't know what's happening right now. So I really have to pay attention because this is kind of weird. I'm not sure. So, yeah, I love what you're sharing. It's definitely stimulating a lot of different thoughts. Yeah. You know, I think that there is a problem. I mean, obviously there's lots of problems. But one of the ones that seems to be a perpetuating cycle is the idea of education.

education and how we try to put the blinders on the situation. Maybe it's not blinders. Maybe it's our desperate need for control. Here's these medicines. Here's the ways we can use them. Here is the schools that you're going to go to. But I think in our previous podcast, you had mentioned that on some level, here you are in South Africa and you're providing this help to people and they're like, what school did you go to? Do you have a diploma that says that you can serve this medicine? Like that's got to be pretty frustrating, right? Yeah, I mean, no, I was thinking about this as well the other day. Like, it feels like to me the things that I feel cold to share, like they're not in, they're not in courses yet.

Like it's just feel like. They're like a million miles ahead of the course. That's why. No, I mean, it's not hard when it's like what someone heard, you know, from someone heard like 50 years ago. It's really hard to be ahead of the curve when you're. You're competing with that. So, you know, and people, I mean, at the end of the people just don't care. Like, it's so much about how we make people feel.

And I mean, because I'm not in that space, I make an extra, extra, extra effort to be incredibly organized and disciplined and, you know, show up as a professional. You know, that's kind of on the practitioners part if they're not in a certain kind of field or not trained in a certain kind of way. That's up to them. But I think, yeah, people actually really don't care if you're if you're giving them a feeling that they like and you're taking them somewhere where they want to go, which is basically only where I have been. I have the only thing I've really done is gone very deep inside myself. Figured out what was there.

And I have no idea what's inside other people, but they can sense that I've gone deep inside myself and therefore I can take them deep inside their selves. So I'm as curious as them. So what they're going to find. Let's go. Yeah. That's, that's, yeah, that's an incredible breakdown in the world of psychology. You know, the things you see in other people are only the things you recognize in yourself, being good or bad, right? And that's, people see that in you. I heard a great quote yesterday that was something along the lines of.

People may not remember what you say to them. People may not remember how you look, but they would definitely remember how you made them feel. Yeah, for sure. And this whole relationship reflection thing, I mean, I mean, I just think it's so interesting because again, we travel. I meet so many different people. And if someone sees me as like, people see me as all kinds of things. And some people see me as like a really good teacher, then I end up teaching or sharing a lot with them where I see them as a really good teacher and I receive so much from them.

Some people see me as like way too young or they see me as like white and female or like whatever. And then they only get from me what they see. So it's just like, yeah, it's, it's, I love. I really want more people to experience that because it's so free of judgment. It's so not about, you know, me. It's how people perceive us. That's beautiful set.

What a beautiful gift it is to get to see yourself the way other people see you, right? Yeah, and to watch the change. Like, if you start to love yourself, then people start to love you more. And it's just like, oh, okay, I can play this game. Yeah. You just got to click your Ruby Red Slippers three times. You had the power all along, right? And you can go home.

It's everywhere. The answers are everywhere. You just got to be in tune and look at them. And you'll read books in a different way. Once you begin to understand that you've chosen all these things in some weird way, I think Matt Zeman had another great article today where he spoke about, instead of saying this happened to me, just say, I chose this to happen or I chose this. And that shifts the way you look at yourself.

It shifts the way you see your relationships. It shifts. Maybe it takes us back to the beginning of this conversation and changes the ratios of your senses. And that changes everything. Yeah. Can you share more about what you mean by ratio of senses? Of course I can. And it's a great question.

Thank you for asking. So I think that the way, I've been reading quite a bit about sense ratios. And it started to me, it really started to weigh on me. Like, you know, when something is on your mind, you begin seeing it everywhere. And I like to think that that's the way the world is speaking to you, whether you're outside in your garden or whether you're reading a book or whether you're listening to a podcast. And this one little part of the podcast sounds louder to you. And for me, that happened with this word sense ratios.

was reading the book Gutenberg Galaxy by Marshall McLuhan, who had really begun to have an affinity for. And he begins his book talking about the printing press. And he says, the printing press fundamentally shifted the human condition because it changed the way we use our senses. And what he means by that is that it gave us the idea of exact repeatability. And I know that that's kind of a mouthful of word. So I'm going to say it two more times and then I'm going to pause for a minute because I want people to really understand this term. Exact repeatability. Exact repeatability.

Silence is so powerful. Exact repeatability. And so imagine what that means to everybody listening right now. That means that I could write something down in a book. Or Sophia's awesome new book, Birthing Ben, is written, and it's exactly the way she wrote it down. Now, that book can be passed down to five generations, and you get, the exact repeatability of what she said. And so that takes us into this idea of, you know,

this is what she said. No, this is what she said. But it's the first time, the printing press is the very first time we could do that. And so the same way that when you go to, okay, I'm going to move off this path, but I'm going to bring it right back. So let's say that when you're teaching a child about animals,

like they see a bird for the first time, My child sees a bird and is like, wow, look at this mystical beast flapping its wings in front of me. And the adult comes in and says, hey, George, that's a bird. That's a bird, George. All of a sudden, they've taken my definition of a magical beast flapping its wings right in front of me, maybe some demigod. They've taken that away from me and said, it's a bird. They've given me this label. That is exact repeatability.

The same thing with the books. Now we have someone else's interpretation. And so exact repeatability, Marshall McLuhan, they have. given birth to this idea of schools we've talked about. And you and I were just talking about people go to school now and they learn someone else's opinion about something that happened. That's the idea that it happened. This is sense ratios.

So the sense ratio we've had taken away from us is almost our imagination. It is our, the sense ratio of visualizing something, hearing something, and then creating our own model of it in our mind, was taken away from us and given us the phonetic alphabet. and it was given the exact repeatability to us. And in that translation, in that sense ratio of gears turning, we have lost a lot. And so in the heightened state of awareness,

in a psychedelic state or a state of infusions or psychedelics, you're given back a nuisance ratio. And people talk about this idea of, oh, my God, I felt like I was in the third person point of view. Oh, my God, I could see my life in the future. Oh, my God, I could see my life in the past. hey, congratulations. You have changed the ratio of senses. Now, you're now fundamentally shifting the sense ratio. And that gives you original ideas. It gives you back your imagination. It takes you

away from typography. It takes you away from the world of, I need a certificate from this person whose dad brought the school. Like, you don't need that. You need to shift your sense ratios. So, like, I just, I can't stop thinking about this because I've moved it into my life. And it's so beautiful because I can think differently and I feel differently and I feel like I have these different insights and it's so much fun and I want I want it to be I want it to be like a virus I want people to change their sense ratios so that everyone can see it like this so thank you for asking what do you think about sense ratios now that I broke it down that way I mean it was very very well explained I just love that that's like that's like a piece of the puzzle situation like I can get I can

understand it feels such a good excitement. Like, wow. I actually had a, I was thinking about it. And I'm like, wow, I wonder if I talked to chat GPT about this. And so I asked chat GPT, what would the world look like if human consciousness changed its sense ratios? And what it printed out to me was, I might have it right here. Like it printed out, in my opinion, it printed out what a psychedelic experience. I don't have it. I erased it. Wow. Yeah, I read it and I'm like, that is a psychedelic experience. I'll paraphrase kind of what it said.

It said if human consciousness were able to shift its sense ratios, the world would look fundamentally different, not only to the individual, but everybody around it. In fact, the changing of sense ratios may create a world which is foreign to us. And I was like, dude, that is a heightened state of awareness, be it an entheogen, be it a psychedelic trip, be it breathwork. Like that's the same insights you get. And so I just started connect.

Like I get goosebumps talking about this. And I'm like, that is exactly what's happening. It's like we are changing sense ratios. And maybe that's what's happening. You know, we talk about these terms like the Great Awakening or the psychedelic Renaissance. But I think that those terms are synonymous with the changing of sense ratios. How about a birth? When we're coming to the birth canal and we're showing this bright light, we're like, ah!

It's a sense ratio. We're changing, fundamentally changing. the ratio of our senses. Even in death, it's the same thing. And so I'm just banging on that drum because I think it's beautiful. And I want more people to explore it with me. Definitely. Definitely.

And that's such an approachable, like, simple way to see it as well. It's accessible. It's just like that makes sense. And it also, like, validates how scary it is and how difficult it is, you know, because it's your whole sense of security that you're just, you know, voluntarily giving away. here's everything I've ever thought about life okay like literally this is how I see the decision-making process that I observed with people like if they're going to take the psychedelic or not or that you know mind-altering plan it's just like oh I thought I was ready yesterday no not ready today

and some people are like what you're like ready so like it's a decision and it's a process and I love the way you shared it. It's in the lexicon already. Like if you just listen closely, you hear things like, oh, I'm going to look at it with fresh eyes or, you know what? I'm going to just, I'm going to sit alone in silent darkness and listen to it. Okay, well, you're just changing the sense ratios. And people that find themselves in a Buddhist temple meditating for three months at a quiet retreat, what are they doing? They're changing their sense ratios. And some of those particular exercises can change you forever. You know, so maybe, maybe, maybe. Maybe we should be really taking a deep dive into what is it about sense ratios.

You know what? Maybe you could do like a DNA test to see what your genetic code is and you could find out which senses you're using more. And I think it ties back into your ideas of traveling around the world. Like different parts of the world have different sense ratios. Maybe we could tie it into elemental empress and find out what sort of energies and what sort of elements are, are, um, are tied with that. Yeah, yeah, definitely.

And I'd love, if people want to share in the comments, like their modality for how they serve this, because I feel like every modality probably could have an input on this. Yeah, but this is one of my first favorite questions that I ask people is like, which element do you love? And then which element do you really dislike? And the one that they love is usually the one that they, the sense that they lean into the most, you know, so if it's water, they lean into their intuition. If it's, if it's air, they like the sound, they like their voice.

but the one that they don't like is usually kind of the sense that they've come here to learn more about. Like how do I, you know, lean into that? And there can be a lot of resistance and that. So I think there's a sense that we're naturally innately good at. And I also feel there's sense that we want to master. And of course, that can change through at different stages of life. But sometimes I feel with the personal development journey, there's so much focus on like what we need to improve on. and all of like traditional medicine points towards like,

we'll strengthen the person first, make them feel really good about themselves, and then start to like, you know, say what they're, what they're here to learn. So yeah. Do you see that? And in the work that you're doing, do you see like a demographic change?

Like, you know, because you work with different age groups and you travel so much, do you think that like these ideas of medicine are changing? Are we growing out of the old ideas of centralized pharmaceutical modes of addiction and moving into more of a healing space? Maybe we're moving back into a healing space, but what does your take on that? I would say the percentage is still pretty small, you know, of people that are completely separated from a pharmaceutical perspective. I'm like I've lost friends and like difficult family relationships and all because of the decisions that I've made. So I definitely think it runs, it runs very, very deep.

And it gets very emotional for people quite quickly. So yeah, it's just it's just something that people are going to have diverse opinions about for a long time, I feel. You know, and what I've come to with it, I mean, if someone's tuning in and they're, wanting to lean more into it. I mean, my, my own approach really is just to, like, live, live my best life and, like, be really happy with the way that I'm living my life, have really good energy. And I don't really need to say anything because, like, I'm just happy and enjoying my life and, like, smiling and, like, you know, eventually someone's going to ask, how did you do that? And this is, I mean, it's actually, we've circled back to this

so many times in this conversation, like, so much about choice. We like, we like, to have a choice, you know? And I think everyone deserves to have a choice about when they become aware of certain things or when they decide to take a certain life path or when they decide to come onto the planet, you know, everyone deserves these choice points. And this is where the power of question comes in. I mean, I got that message a couple years ago, which was super challenging for me because I was so excited about what I was doing. And then my guides were like, no, you have to wait until they ask you a question. I was like, oh my God, we're right. you just see why. And I'd wait and I'd wait and I'd sit and I'd wait and I'd wait.

And then eventually it'd ask a question and the whole situation would go so differently. You know, and I've saved so much energy since I've changed that little thing. Like wait for someone to ask a question because then what they're really saying is that I have space. I have space now information for this shift for this change. And I think that it's demeaning. It's disrespectful, you know, to enforce any kind of perspective on anyone without that invitation. Yeah, that's really well said. I wish more people would incorporate that.

And I should probably try to incorporate that in my life more. I think that's something everybody can do is try and maybe sit with silence in a way that is more comfortable. I think we have a problem with silence. At least I do sometimes. I'm trying to work hard on understanding how powerful silence can be. But I've noticed it in my life as I've been thinking about it. If you want to see this phenomenon in one of your conversations today, to everybody listening, when you're talking to someone, just pause for four seconds and watch the other person be like,

get a little bit uncomfortable. Like, oh, my God, are they going to say something bad about me? Or are they thinking? How come they didn't say something back? Like, all these things start running around in your mind. But if you start doing that in your conversations, it will really help you come up with a good answer to an honest question or it'll give you an honest answer to someone else's question. Is that something like, is there a different?

types of conversations or is there different relationships to silence in some of the places that you've traveled that you've experienced? Hmm. Yeah, definitely. I've never thought about it, but for sure. Because it directly correlates to honesty. People, like the countries where people are the most dishonest, I find them the most talkative.

That's so true. because there's always like it's like trying to see the center of a moving like phenomena where is the truth and they're like no I'm up here no no no you know and you're just like just still so we can actually have a conversation um so there's there's some of that going on where I find that people like the countries where they're not trying to hide like African countries like usually not trying to hide things they're pretty chilled like it's like oh Oh, cool. Okay. Bye. They're not coming. They're not in social media. And I think this whole silencing that you're sharing and the whole waiting for a question thing. I think the whole social media framework of people took that in for their channels, it changes the feel of the feed. You know, it really does because it's tiring. It's tiring. It's tiring, always reading posts of people saying, well, stop doing this and you should do that. It's like, you don't know what I'm doing in my day. How do you know I should stop doing this or start doing that?

That's just really left field, you know? It's like, if you want, you can give me a tool that I may use if I feel called. But like I just get the quotes, you know. And I stopped being on Facebook because I just thought like every second post was this thing of just like something someone had realized like on the toilet that morning and just decided that everyone should do this today. It's like, who, okay, this is a lot of pressure. Yeah, it's interesting. It's fascinating, too, to get to get different perspectives and understand the way we see the world and act in it. And let me ask you this.

What is your favorite element, Sophia? It's definitely the water. Yeah. I've had, it's been my favorite all along and I've really had to learn how to use it, you know, in a beneficial way because I loved it so much that I think it was my great. greatest weakness as well. I was just like, yeah, so empathic and like very feminine and it really led to a lot of emotional manipulation and like all like digestive issues even. Like it was very like intrinsic in my body.

So as I've, you know, gone deeper with the elements, I've learned how to have better boundaries. And now I have this really beautiful relationship with the water element where I can, like I was saying with the dreams, I can remember my dreams. I can have prophecies. And this is how I feel about the elements is like it's just like a relationship with a person. And the deeper I go with that relationship with water. Yeah, it just comes very naturally to me. It's just part of my sensory awareness since I was a child.

Like I think they're just gifts that I have to sense to sense other people's energy. And there's been a lot of healing, I feel, to step into my space as a healer and to say, to even say that sentence, I can sense energies in other people's bodies. Like I would not be able to say that like years ago before I connected with the elements. And it's just it's so, it's just like the way I am. Yeah. What's your favorite element? I would have to probably go water too.

Like I spend so much time in the water or on the water or being called to the water. My son's name is Ocean. My daughter's name is Sky. You know, and I didn't even really put that together until like someone was reading one of the, reading a book I wrote and they're like, I dedicate in the first part of that book, this is to my son, Ocean, my daughter's guy. And they were like, you have a son named Ocean, a daughter named Sky? And I was like, yeah. That's so cool. I never thought about that. I was like, oh, yeah. You know, it's, it is interesting. But as I look back on, on that, and I think about the way in which my wife and I

decided on those names, it wasn't like we were just deciding to name our children after some of the most powerful forces in the world. It was just like, this is a beautiful name. Yeah, I love it too. And like, but then you look back on it, you're like, wow, that's, that's, that's, it's, it's really a beautiful story that is unfolding. And I guess it gets back to the element. So yeah, that that's why I would, I would say the water. I've always lived close to the ocean. And, you know, I, I, I feel at home there. And I feel protected there. And I feel sometimes like the quote that Bruce Lee says, like be, be like water, you know, just move into it. You know, and on sometimes too, though, I feel the fire inside of me that is, that is burns in a way that is so hot that I can't, I have to act out. Like, and if I don't act up, I'll burn up inside. And, you know, I feel that I can draw on that fire in a way that, or I can wield that fire in a way that is a weapon.

You know, it scares me sometimes because I, I see it burn relationships sometimes. And I'm like, I got to control this because this is dangerous. And part of me is like, yeah, that's dangerous. That's how I am. Is that crazy or what? I love it. It's like your inner child. It's just like, wow.

Yeah. Yeah, I can burn things. Watch this. Yeah, you know, to me, I resonate with what you're saying for sure. And, you know, the earth element is the remedy for that. And the earth element helps us with, it's like the seal on a cable, you know, We need the protective seal around the cord that's live wire. And when that starts to fray, you know, we do get quite explosive.

And so like in the physical body, that can relate to just like putting the feet on the earth and oiling the skin, you know, and that really helps with earth, with water, sensuality. It helps with like sexuality. All of those types of things really get enhanced by having, you know, oil on the skin and having like oil in the hair. And then in life, like I feel the boundaries. That's where the earth element comes in. because the relationships just naturally become more respectful. And this is where there's so much of an interesting block where people are like, no, I just want to be me.

I don't want to like have responsibility or create like a book or create a business. But like all of these boundaries create all of this respect. And then the fire flows in a very safe way through a business. You know, if you imagine someone who's never created anything and they're like in their 50s, they're you know but if they've been building a business since they're you know in their 30s then naturally their creativity is well received it's like great also and I have something else to do and you know it's it has a natural flow to it elementally yeah when I look at I think Hawaii has changed me in ways because you can exactly what you're saying you can see lava flows and like lava is this

channel for fire to flow down and it has a beautiful grace to it that makes its way to the water And it's like you can see the way it interacts. And, you know, when I look at the elements and I look at the environment I live in, I feel like I can learn so much. You know, I sometimes, perhaps the best teacher is a battered coastline or a waterfall, vastly superior to any sort of Ivy League school that you can go to. You just sit there and watch or sit there and learn, especially if you've faced a big tragedy, if you go to a place that is sacred.

For me, it's the ocean or it's on a hike somewhere. You just sit there and listen. You can learn so much. All the questions that come to mind are somehow answered by a babbling brook. Isn't it weird that we use the term babbling brook? Like it's feeding you, it's talking to you. And if you listen to it, I think the answers are there. Or if you look at the way the coastline matches the mountaintops and the fractal nature of it,

you're like, oh, the mountains mirror the coastline because of the erosion. Oh, what does that mean for me? Well, maybe that means that I'm like this grain of sand that used to be a mountain and I'm being broken down and making my way back to the ocean so I can be reborn. You know what I mean? Like there's just so much in there. Yeah. And it doesn't have to be sad, which is so cool. Like things are decomp-if someone has passed or dealing with the loss of a loved one.

Like recently I was sharing this, I was sharing this method with someone who's just lost someone super, super close to them. I was like, it's natural to try and think our way through these things because the body's full. with all these emotions, but like the forest, like, has all the answers. And we can actually just, we can speak to nature. You know, we can actually share that. And we take it in. We see, oh, well, that tree is decomposing. That makes sense.

Mm-hmm. Like, it just all makes a lot more sense. Hmm. Yeah. Or, you know, I can't think there was a Pulitzer Prize winning author that wrote a book and it was about, gosh, dang, it was so beautifully written to. And maybe it's a good thing. I don't say the title because then I can say the spoiler.

So there's a little bit of spoiler. There's just talk of this giant tree that grows in a forest and it grows taller than all the other trees. And in a way, it's kind of sad because some of the other trees don't get the sunlight. But this giant tree grows up and it tells the story. But then at the end of the cycle, the tree falls and it takes out all these other trees. And it clears the way for the new trees to grow. And like, that's the ideas and the lessons and the language we can learn from looking in nature.

You know, another great one is, Jeremy Narby's book, The Cosmic Serpent, where they talk about these anthropologists go down to South America and they spend time with this tribe and the tribe tells them, oh yeah, you know, we talk to the plants and half the anthropologists at this point are like, okay, this guy's a lunatic, we're

out of here. But the few that stayed behind are like, what do you mean you talk to the plants? And he's like, oh, let me show you. This green snake right here is the most venomous snake in our area and it's got these two white diamonds on its ears. And we know that's a venomous snake. This plant right next to it,

The leaf on this plant is shaped in the exact same form as that snake's head. It's like the same ovate diamond shape. And look at these two white diamonds on the side of the leaf. That plant is clearly talking to us and telling us that it is the antidote for that snake bite. You know, when you look at it like that, you're like, oh, yeah, the plants totally talk to us. If you're willing to look, if you're willing to have, you know, the same thing with the guarana berry. You know, if you look at that the way that that particular vine grows, it grows up through all these trees. But when the berries bloom, they look like eyeballs, like wide open, like a crazy person's eyeballs.

And if, you know, there's, Guarana is like caffeine in a way. So if you take enough of those berries, that's what your eyes are going to look like. You know, that's not a coincidence. Like, that's nature talking to us. And in some ways, it takes us back to sense ratios because we've forgotten that. All we know now is the unlived experience that the lessons learned in school. But if you're out and having lived experience and you see these trees and you maybe you're in a heightened state of conscious when you're seeing these things in the forest or on the battered coastline or listening to the babbling brook, you get these insights. You get this education that's revealed to you. You know, it's fascinating to think about. Yeah. And it really, I love what you shared. It really can trickle down into our life choices. I mean, I had this realization yesterday. I've just arrived in this new apartment. And It's run by solar power and there's water coming from spring.

And that sounds really simple. But I was just thinking like there's a, I've been going through a lot of different transitions and a lot of different, you know, processing different things that have happened. And I realized that the people that are living off of solar power, they are the people that want to live off of the sun. Yeah.

Not off of the system. Like they're actually receiving their energy from the sun. And they're receiving their water from the well. And I was like elementally seeing this as like a way that we can translate all of this like symbolic stuff into our literal homes. It's just like getting the elements from their original sources. It feels like a sign that one is getting closer to their own original source. You know, and they're actually coming away from the systems and the reliance on them. Yeah.

I love that. Yeah, I never thought about it from that. but that's very true. Me neither. I was like, wow, that is so cool. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting to me.

Sophia, we're coming up on about of an hour right here, and I got to tell you, I love talking to you. I think that all of our conversations have been really rewarding for me, and I really enjoy them, and I feel like I get to walk away with some new ideas to think about it. And that's always a great parameter for me. Before I let you go, though, would you be so kind, would you be so kind, to tell people where they can find you and what you have coming up and what you're excited about? Yeah, well, thank you so much. Everyone who comes down here, I reach out to a lot of people who go on your podcast.

Nice. It's so nice. I get to, like, hear them in the podcast. And yeah, it's been such a blessing. So thank you, thank you for all of this, for this creation and for your stories. Yeah. So for reaching out, you can find all my information at elemental empressmedicenicen.com. I have some very exciting offers at the moment.

I have a shamanic meditation group where we go to all parts of the body and all parts of the soul in a group, which is super, super nice. And yeah, I have my short course to align with your higher self. If you want to get a taster for the elements, that's fantastic. And we have our deep dive course, the elemental medicine school. So if you're feeling cold to any of the medicine, you can check all of that out on my webpage. And if you are interested in tarot readings, card readings, you can check out my YouTube channel. And I've gone deeper into that because I'm now a little bit obsessed.

I love the card readings. I'm like channeling different elemental messages, different, you know, plant medicine, spirit messages. So definitely a place to follow my work. You know, on the topic of tarot reading, I often wonder, does it matter like what time of the day you do it? Like if you do it during a full moon versus like a crescent moon, does that factor into it? Yeah, definitely.

It all factors in. I try, like I do sometimes, like I do them on the portals as well or like particular like energy high days and, you know, I'll also depend on like which element I'm trying to tap into as well. Like water is helpful during the nighttime. Also like ancestry, I could do it during the night time with candles and things like that. And I find, yeah, the more attention to detail like anything in life, like the more powerful the reading. So if for anything, like I'll spend a few days like checking in and channeling and, you know,

connecting with whatever I'm going to read about. And I feel also because I've just like marked my, I've like put some weird spiritual flag up where I'm like, I do readings. Then I feel like these like different energies go to me and like, could you read about this? Because you read about that? And I'm like, cool. Like come give you give me your messages. I'll like translate them into this video thing and like you can just distribute it. So I feel I feel like I know sometimes why I read things and a lot of the time I don't. I'm just like cool. I'm just messenger. Yeah. It's awesome.

I love it. And I'm looking forward to checking out more of the site. It seems like the last time I went, you've had like a full upgrade on the site on the. So congratulations for that. Thank you. Yeah, I'm super excited about it. There's actually two sites now. There's Oracle card reading sites that people can book personal readings with me and my Oracle card generator.

If you want to get a free elemental reading. And then we have the whole upgrade of the website as well, reflective of, you know, the past while for me. So yeah, I put all the information there, and I just feel very cool to share it at this time. So yeah, super excited about it. And we also have the free Elemental Medicine community. There's a free aspect to it where we have expert calls and integration calls for plant medicine as well. So everything is really lighting up at this point for Elemental Empress Medicine, just great. Yeah, it is because you are lighting up the world with awesome information and trying to help people throughout the world.

I think that that's a mirror of what's happening in your life. I'm thankful for that. and I think people should check out the links. I think they should check out your new book, which is in the chat right there. And hang on one second because I'm going to hang up with the audience, but I want to talk to you briefly for a moment afterwards. So ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for hanging out with us today. Rachel, Bob, everybody in the chat.

Thank you so much for all the wishes and the ideas and talking with us today. That's all we got for today. Ladies and gentlemen, Aloha.