#151 The Power of Psychedelics: Recovering from Stress and Trauma

03/16/23 • 56 min

In today’s episode I am going to be sharing with you my experience and insights about recovering from stress and trauma by attending a shamanic journey in the Amazon in Peru.

I recently returned from my third trip to Peru in two years. I have attended numerous other retreats with a shaman in various locations outside of the United States mainly because the psychedelic medicine used in shamanism, called Ayahuasca, is not legal in the United States at this time.

Why would I choose to go all the way to Peru, away from my family and my practice to stay isolated in a remote location in a little cabin for 16 days with no electricity, WIFI, cellphone service, no running water or plumbing, with just a mesh separating me from the Amazon jungle?

To research the effects of spending time in nature, following a fasting mimicking diet, and taking several Amazonian herbs/plants, including psychedelic plant medicine.

For my own healing, of a chronic inflammatory condition, grief, and trauma.

To teach first aid in a shamanism apprenticeship and prepare to teach my colleagues in the use of psychedelics for recovery from stress and trauma.

I have so much to share – I filled an entire SelfC.A.R.E. notebook!

One of my insights is that there are ways for people to experience many of the benefits of a healing journey, such as this, without even having to go to the Amazon. That’s what I want to tell you more about in this episode. Of course, if you would like to go on an Amazon experience, and are drawn to that experience, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me and I would be happy to tell you more about it.

I’d like to start by saying that I’ve been researching how humans can recover from the effects of stress and trauma for over 25 years. In my research, I have identified effective ways that we can indeed restore balance in our body, mind and spirit. I developed a protocol – the Stress Recovery Protocol – and wrote about it in my most recent book, Master Your Stress Reset Your Health. In that book, I reviewed studies related to dietary choices, sleep optimization, and activities and natural substances known to promote restoration of optimal cortisol and adrenaline levels, including psychedelic medicines.

The Healing Power of a Psychedelic Medicine Retreat

When it comes to stress, what I’ve learned over the years is that it’s not about trying to get to zero stress. I saw this clearly in my experience in the Amazon. Stress is inevitable and even healthy at a certain level. There are always going to be challenges that we face every day or guidelines we need to follow. The goal is to live our lives and do what we love, pursue our purpose and our passion, and at the same time, support ourselves to recover from the stresses that we’re exposed to in our human life existence.

That’s exactly what happens in a psychedelic medicine retreat or what is referred to as a “dieta.” I realized one day that my one-room cabin with mesh walls was my healing clinic in nature. Each day, and with each Ayahuasca ceremony (8 ceremonies in 16 days), I experienced healing from stress and trauma. Physical and emotional pain melted away as I spent time surrounded by nature, listening to the sounds of nature, bathing in the creek, meditating, journaling, and listening to and playing music as I learned to play the charango. In some cases, stress and trauma involves what we’ve put ourselves through, and sometimes it’s what others have done to us. We get stuck in a state of stress – mentally and physically – with our cortisol and adrenaline quite literally in stress mode even once the stress has passed. In this state of stress, resentment, anger, criticism and negativity about what we’ve been through (traumas, abuse, substance abuse, addiction, toxicity, etc.) can prevent us from healing. To heal, we need to find a way to be present with our feelings and our body, and to feel and release. And in that process, we also learn to forgive and accept ourselves, and to give ourselves love and compassion.

From my research and experience, there are very few substances or techniques that have the ability to support this process. Yes, forms of therapy and meditation can make a significant difference, especially with time and consistency. Ayahausca, from my observation, has the ability to help humans heal from trauma in a more efficient manner, and for that reason, I am inspired to share my experience and to continue to research the use of Ayahuasca.

We heal from stress and trauma exposure not by dismissing it, and not by pushing it under the rug, but by pulling up the rug and saying yes, I have been exposed to stress and trauma and by being present with it, by feeling the feelings, by dropping our masks and dropping our protected selves and facing this stress and trauma so we can embrace it, accept it and heal.

If we keep going with these masks and trying to co...

In today’s episode I am going to be sharing with you my experience and insights about recovering from stress and trauma by attending a shamanic journey in the Amazon in Peru.

To research the effects of spending time in nature, following a fasting mimicking diet, and taking several Amazonian herbs/plants, including psychedelic plant medicine.

For my own healing, of a chronic inflammatory condition, grief, and trauma.

To teach first aid in a shamanism apprenticeship and prepare to teach my colleagues in the use of psychedelics for recovery from stress and trauma.

I have so much to share – I filled an entire SelfC.A.R.E. notebook!

The Healing Power of a Psychedelic Medicine Retreat

If we keep going with these masks and trying to co...

Previous Episode

#150 The Power of Our Life Stories and Their Impact on Our Health with Carrie Rowan

In today’s episode I interview Carrie Rowan. Carrie is a Certified Mindset Energy Coach and an International Best-Selling Author of Tell A New Story: 5 Simple Steps to Release Your Negative Stories and Bring Joy to Your Life. She is also an award-winning singer and songwriter, a Reiki Master and Host of the popular Podcast, Look for the Good.

Carrie specializes in coaching women who want more from life to go from humming a sad song about their situation to finding their voice and whistling a new upbeat tune as they skip along their journey with joy as the soundtrack of their lives.

From a very young age Carrie was a self-help junkie. She was surrounded by this growing up with her family and developed a profound interest for self-improvement. As she grew up she went into the corporate world for 10 years but found out that it did not fulfill her life. So, she went back to what was her passion as a kid, which is music. Now she finds it very fulfilling to help people find their passion, which in most cases is what we did as kids.

Her next natural step was to write her book, which is based on her deepest personal stories. All the tragedies, good times, trauma, and things that she wished did not happen but did happen are expressed in her book. Through her book she hopes to help people see how she went through all that and what she did to heal.

Accepting Our Stories

We do need to share our experiences and stories but often times we get stuck in repeating them and going through those feelings again and again, making you feel even worse. It’s important that we acknowledge that we can’t change the past or what happened to us, but we can choose to take control of our minds and the way we tell our stories because many times it’s these stories (and the way we tell them and feel about them) what holds us back from achieving what we want in life.

We might be seeing this impact in our physical health or maybe in not accomplishing a goal we have, and we tend to ask why is this happening to me? And many times, we don’t realize it could be these experiences and stories that we can’t let go of and allow ourselves to heal.

All these negative stories like the “woulda, coulda, shouldas” or the “if only” or “shame” type of stories definitely affect our mind, body and spirit because these stories contain a lot of our negative and limiting beliefs from things that happened a long time ago in our lives.

Releasing The Negative Impact of our Stories

Step one for this is get a notebook and start writing down your stories. Once you become aware of your stories you can’t go back. You will start realizing which stories are the ones that are holding you back.

The second step is using the acronym mentioned in the book Tell A New Story: S.T.O.R.Y. which are the 5 steps to follow to release the negative stories in your life:

S: State of Mind – Learn how to manage your state of mind so it doesn’t manage you.

T: True Intention – Understanding that all of our stories have an intention.

O: Outcome – Beginning with the end in mind. Realize how our stories impact others.

R: Reframe – Looking for the good even in your messiest and ugliest stories.

Y: You had the power all along – The power to change our minds has been within us since birth.

As you progress, those stories start to change themselves because you realize that these stories have been holding you back and that maybe you don’t want to keep telling them. And you’ll find yourself pulling back whenever you are telling those stories again, and that is progress right there.

If you really think about it, what is happening in our lives is essentially a repeat of our past experiences until we get enough awareness to realize that we want to change that pattern.

How Energy Balance and Creativity can Help

Spiritual and energetic activities, as well as creative ones can help because it’s all happening in our heads. When we use these tools, our bodies are more capable of releasing that stress related to our negative stories. Whether it’s reiki or meditation or a morning ritual, this will help with balancing your body’s energy and then the mind will follow.

Other activities like singing, journaling, or dancing are also necessary to release the negative impact of our stories. We must allow ourselves to do these and not hold back. When we engage in a creative activity a positive energy flows through our bodies and we get connected to the universe. We spend so much time in our minds worrying about everything, and we need to bring this down to our hearts and celebrate who we are as humans with some joy.

The Power of Gratitude

Our brains are pre-disposed to look for what’s wrong because that’s what has kept us safe through evolution. We need to stop for an upgrade now and start looking for what’s good in our lives. In order to d...

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#152 Dance and Movement to Heal: Transforming Your Life with Jenny Cohen

In today’s episode I interview Jenny Cohen. Jenny is an Outside In Recovery Coach, breast cancer survivor, competitive dancer, yoga instructor, and author.

Today we talk about how dance and movement can be healing for our bodies. I’m excited to talk with Jenny because I also love to dance and have found it to be so healing for me. She also shares about her healing journey and what she discovered about herself, and wrote in her book, along the way.

Definitely tune in to this episode if you have been dealing with a stress-filled busy life, infertility, cancer or risk of cancer, and/or a desire to heal from within.

Jenny is also a multifaceted and award-winning artist known for her award-winning autobiographical fusion performances about universal themes and life challenges. She offers instruction in yoga, Acting for Dancers, Aaliyah Jenny Transcultural Fusion, Rachel Brice's Datura Style, and Oreet's Sharqui Workout (Master Instructor). Jenny also launched Dance to Heal Wellness in 2021.

Jenny believes that the secret to dance is that it is this therapeutic modality and even though there’s only recently been more research about it, we actually are instinctively drawn to it because it puts you back into your body. It puts you in the present moment.

Dance as a Form of Meditation

When you’re dancing, you can only be focusing on that. It is hard to focus on anything else if you are really paying attention to your body position and your movement. You are really connecting with each part of your body and how it moves, and it gets you out of your head and into your body, like a movement meditation. We become aware of how life is precious and how we only have the present.

There is such intelligence and brilliance in the specific steps, rhythm, and patterns in various forms of dance. The movement patterns, for example in belly dance, salsa, or even yoga, were determined by people (women) who spent a lot of time using movement throughout their lives and during various forms of stress, including grief, loss and trauma. In this way, as we learn a form of dance, we are also learning the movements that help the human nervous system heal.

Dance is a form of medicine.

Finding Your Rhythm

Jenny shares that there is a whole branch of science called the neuroscience of dance. Any type of movement combined with music ignites your entire brain, it’s one of the few activities that can do this. Also, everyone’s perception of music is different because of our cultural and gender differences. And so, there is a movement discovery process in which you follow 3 steps:

Acknowledging with gratitude that you’re here now. Not in the past and not worried about the future.

Being present through tuning into your 5 senses (smell, taste, hearing, sight and touch).

Analyzing which type of sound or melodies does your body instinctively like to move to.

By following these three steps, you will start identifying the music and movement that is going to be most therapeutic for you individually. Everybody is different because everyone’s neurology is a little bit different. For example, there are people who don’t like music at all. Some prefer the sound of birds or sounds from nature.

You may want to try different types of dancing before you find your rhythm. This will inform you of what you want to learn more and what you want to say no to. It is also important to tailor your own journey with music and movement based on your setting, the stage of your life, and your love language, which can change over time.

The Discover Oneself Process

Jenny encourages listeners to get started. She sees that we often deny ourselves the healing we need by thinking that we need to make more money first or that we should just be grateful for the way things are. However, if we never give ourselves the support we need to heal, then we’ll never feel well enough to be more productive.

She reminds us that it is a miracle that we are alive today, and to celebrate each and every day.

Movement is essential. Everything that is alive moves, cells move, atoms vibrate. And for us to get better beyond the trauma that we are healing, we also need to move.

The D.I.S.C.O.V.E.R. system she describes in her book, “Outside in Recovery: Dancing My Way Back to My Self after Breast Cancer,” is a process you can follow to feel like yourself again and thrive in healing by following the path to self-love.

The acronym stands for:

D: Discover Yourself - Acknowledging your pain and trauma and face it to be able to release it.

I: I Move You Move - Movement is essential to healing.

S: Somatic Intelligence - Acknowledging how our bodies are intelligent systems.

C: Can I Self-Love? - Learning to be compassionate with ourselves and our healing process.

O: Organic Rage - Releasing the bottled...