[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:11] Speaker B: What'S worthwhile healing Mind, Body and spirit. I'm Ramsey Zimmerman. I choose peace of mind, vitality of body, and joy of spirit over stress, exhaustion, or overwhelm. Together, let's explore and pursue the many ways to build holistic health and wellness.
[00:00:33] Speaker A: Some people go to simply get physical healing. They're suffering from some ailment, a lot of these diseases like fibromyalgia and things like that. Ayahuasca has been shown to help with a lot of physical ailments. There's the folks who are just struggling with their life. They might have a lot of anxiety or depression or have post traumatic stress disorder, or they've hit all these walls in our Western model and they're trying to find something that will give them more peace in their life, basically. And it's been known to really, really help people.
[00:01:12] Speaker B: Hey there, it's Ramsay here. That was Michael Tierno. Michael is a transformational guide and relationship coach specializing in deep emotional healing and conscious personal growth.
We spoke mainly about the use of ayahuasca, a psychedelic plant medicine used in traditional ceremonies in Peru. I do not have any personal experience with ayahuasca and this episode is neither an endorsement nor an encouragement for you to try it. But I have heard a lot about it lately through friends and colleagues and other podcasts.
Michael has a lot of direct knowledge about ayahuasca and is affiliated with a well established provider in Peru. So I was excited to hear from him all about it, why people seek it out, what it's like while it's happening, and what lasting impact it has on people's lives.
After speaking with Michael, it's clear to me that it must be a powerful and moving experience.
Hear for yourself and see what you think.
[00:02:11] Speaker C: Hey Michael, how are you doing today?
[00:02:14] Speaker A: I'm doing great. Thanks for having me.
[00:02:16] Speaker C: Yes, absolutely.
I'm glad you came. I'm excited to talk to you. Kind of even jittery.
You lead groups that do ayahuasca ceremonies and that's something that I really don't know much of anything about. I know that it's psychedelic and it seems like there's been a resurgence or a peak in interest in its use and its effects. So it's kind of a fun, exciting thing to talk about. I don't know much about it.
I'm looking forward to learning all about it from you.
But why don't you give us some sort of context first? Tell us about about yourself.
When did you first try ayahuasca and what led you to that decision sure.
[00:03:08] Speaker A: Yeah. It's a long kind of tangled story about how I actually arrived to trying ayahuasca for the first time or experience having this experience.
I was married, kids, business, all this kind of stuff. Just like a regular American dream kind of life.
Was an atheist, very much non spiritual, non woo woo. I'm still not very woo woo but.
And my wife and I were seeing a life coach at the time and she. Our lives at that time were very much enmeshed. Like we worked together, we had the same friends group, did everything together all the time. And the coaching that we got was to do to individuate a little bit. So to do something separate. So my first, my first calling was to go learn how to kite surf in the Philippines. There was this beautiful place out there that had like 4ft of water, perfect winds and all this kind of stuff. And I was going to do that, but my wife was like, I want to do that too. Don't individuate there. Individuate somewhere else.
[00:04:09] Speaker C: Dibs. I call dibs out the kite surfing.
[00:04:11] Speaker A: Kite surfing sounds like so much fun. So through a long kind of tangle story I ended up learning about ayahuasca in Peru and ended up telling her, hey, I'm gonna try this stuff. And she was like, all right, I have no interest in that. Go, go to it. So off I go. This atheistic kind of materialistic guy, I didn't even, I was kind of like skeptical.
Not kind of, I was highly skeptical, but also open. So part of being skeptical, I think is a real good skeptic is to leave a little window of like, alright, I don't think this is going to be that powerful or that interesting or that thing, but I'm going to be open to the experience as it comes. And anyway, transformed my life. I realized that I hadn't been quite looking at my life in the wholeness that it could be.
And I ended up going for a couple more years and then they asked me to volunteer there. And then I just got more and more involved in the space and still affiliated and we have a retreat going on as we speak.
So kind of stumbled upon the whole thing.
Yeah, yeah.
[00:05:26] Speaker B: Well, what was that like?
[00:05:27] Speaker C: I mean that the early experiences must have been profound because you, you know, decided to pursue that. But what was that like early on for you?
[00:05:40] Speaker A: Well, at first it was, I mean, I like to come to Jesus moment was like, wow, I've been looking at this whole world and this whole life from a frame of reference that was sort of shallow and there's so much more to explore in terms of. And I'm not even speaking about psychedelics, of just like, wow, there's all these emotions I didn't even hadn't tapped into. And all this, like. Like, experiential awareness that I'd been dismissing.
And. And so just coming to terms with all that and a tremendous gratitude for the miracle that it is to be.
To be in existence right now. I mean, that's. It is a freaking miracle. If you don't believe in miracles, you can believe in one. Is that the fact that you're here right now is a miracle. So just like, recogn and having gratitude for that and like, and then changing and then. I mean, it's hard to, like, go back to what it was like 10 years ago, but it's just. It's just opened up a world of, like, more peace and joy and happiness. And things that I thought were important in the past are less important, things that I didn't pay much heed to are much more important in my life.
And I think the biggest key performance indicator as to whether someone's doing something well is how happy they are. And I've never been more happy in my entire life. And I haven't had, like, a uber challenging life. I've had challenges like everybody, but I haven't, you know, suffered great, terrible traumas that you can read about every day in any newspaper, but so fairly pleasant life.
But never been as happy as I am now and have been ever since I turned. Open that. Open that window into this expanded consciousness.
Good.
[00:07:32] Speaker C: Well, that's great.
All right, so what. What is ayahuasca exactly? I mean, what is it derived from? What form does it take?
How do you take it?
Let's start there.
[00:07:49] Speaker A: All right, so ayahuasca is. I mean, traditionally, it's a boiled tea of two plants, mixtures. One plant is the leaf of this plant that's called chakruna. And this plant has dimethyltryptamine, specifically nndmt.
And then the other plant is ayahuasca. It's a vine that grows in the Amazon. And they mash it up with.
They cut the vine, they mash it up, they put it into a pot of water, and they just boil it and boil it, boil it, these two plants, until it. Basically, they get all the alkaloids from these two plants, and together you get this, quite frankly, terrible tasting brew. It's very bitter. It's very.
When I'm in a ceremony, I see the people in front of me start to Drink it. And I just shudder every time I go because it's really unpleasant tasting. But it's not that bad. Anybody can get through that bit of it, these two alkaloids together. So nndmt, if you were to just ingest the chacruna plant, or nndmt, by itself, you would digest it. It would be broken up in your digestive system and you pass it out and you'd have no effects.
So you need the addition of something called a monoamine oxidase inhibitor to prevent the enzyme that's in your gut from breaking apart the dmt.
And ayahuasca happens to have this monoamine oxidase inhibitor, and it will prevent.
It'll inhibit the enzyme that you have in your gut from deactivating the DMT and allow you to have the visionary experience.
Now, for many years, people thought that ayahuasca was. That that was its only kind of feature, right, to allow the DMT to work. But research now in the past, like, 10 years really has shown that ayahuasca itself has these harming, harmline alkaloids that in and of themselves have sort of a psychedelic sort of impact as well. So together you get a unique sort of experience that really is more holistic than the other classic psychedelics like LSD or psilocybin. Psilocybin and dmt. Now, I'm getting a little bit into the weeds here, but psilocybin and dmt, the experience is nn, dmt, excuse me, is very, very, very similar. Like, the visions are similar, the experiences are similar. The only difference is the duration of how long it takes.
It works like mind, emotions, and a little bit of spirit, but not so much in the body. Ayahuasca has this additional somatic component where it really goes in and, like, you just feel it. It's hard to describe. It's like. It's like trying to describe sex to someone who's never had sex. Like, you can talk about it all you want, and then when you have, like, really wonderful connected sex with a. With a. With a loving partner, and it's like, whoa, this is way more than possibly could be expected. But in the same way, the way it sort of goes into your body in this intuitive way. Some people talk about ayahuasca as an actual spirit that has its own consciousness and its own sort of intelligence, and it feels that way. It's hard to explain the effects and how it actually works on what you.
Without using that intelligence as a model. So, okay, I remain a little skeptical, but my intuition is that there's something more going on there than.
It's not just taking a medicine like you would with a Western pill, and all of a sudden you have an effect, something else going on.
[00:11:33] Speaker C: Okay, so there's a lot to unpack there.
Why do people seek out this experience? Like, what are they hoping to sort of get from it?
[00:11:50] Speaker A: That's a huge question. And it's a question that we talk about a lot in these circles. So some people go to simply get physical healing. They're suffering from some ailment, and they've tried all kinds of western modalities, and they. They haven't been able to find anything that actually works with them. A lot of these diseases like fibromyalgia and things like that, where the Western medical model is kind of like, I don't know, maybe take a pain pill or do this or, I don't know, maybe it's this or that or the other thing. But they can't really narrow it down.
And ayahuasca has been shown to help with a lot of physical ailments.
And it's not. It's not like you can just go and ask for the healing, and all of a sudden you're going to get your physical ailments healed. There's usually a mind body connection that's related to ailment that gets healed. And by extension, the physical ailment will get healed.
So there's the physical ailment people, there's the folks who are just struggling with their life. They might have a lot of anxiety or depression or have post traumatic stress disorder or complex post traumatic stress disorder, all these sort of psychological diagnoses. And they're trying to.
They've hit all these walls in our Western model, and they're trying to find something that will give them more peace in their life, basically.
So maybe it's addiction. Addiction is a huge component. It's been researched very well.
You may be drinking too much or doing some sort of drugs that you wish to have a common grip on, on one that they wish they hadn't. They wouldn't do anymore. And it's been known to really, really help people. So the. And then I went just because I was, like, looking for some more, like, zest in life. Like, I was like, is this all it is? If this is all that life has to offer, okay, I'm fine with it, but I need to, like, explore to see if there's something more. And boy, was I, you know, happily surprised that there's so much more to this human existence. Than I had given credit to. So it could be all over the place. That's one of the hard things that so hard to talk about, like why would someone do this? Is because the envelope is huge.
[00:14:07] Speaker C: Okay. So that was a lot of potential reasons. And, you know, some of them are physical.
And you mentioned that even the physical reasons are often tied in with emotional and mental reasons. And we know that many physical symptoms are the manifestation of things that are going on inside your mind or in your spirit.
[00:14:30] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:14:31] Speaker C: And you also sort of talked about, you know, what I would say. You didn't say this, didn't use these words, but I'll use them like purpose related kinds of questions.
So how does ayahuasca address those things or impact those things? Like, what about. What about what happens during the experience that will impact any or all of those reasons that you gave that people go and look for this experience?
[00:15:08] Speaker A: That's a great question. Because there is a commonality to all these things.
[00:15:12] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:15:13] Speaker A: So throughout, through our growth process. Right. You know, trauma informed psychotherapists will talk about this. That you get traumas in childhood and adolescence and throughout life that sort of give you these kind of beliefs that you have that you hold true. These kind of like, expectations, assumptions that we make in life that we expect to be true even though they're not necessarily true. And we operate in the world as if they were true.
And we kind of, through confirmation bias and all this kind of stuff, we kind of look for all this confirming evidence. This belief I have is true. This belief I have is true. This way of being I have is true. I only do this way. I am only this way. I am this thing. I define myself in all these ways. And you constrain yourself into this box and you get lost in this kind of like, maze of your own construction based on, you know, trying to find cause and effect in the world. And we become very constricted. And sometimes these constrictions don't align with the external circumstances and it leads to, like, pain in the body or like physical ailments or like depression or anxiety or whatever these, whatever you want to call, whatever the actual symptom, manifestation is, is tied in with these kind of blockages.
So what ayahuasca does and what the classic psychedelics do oftentimes, or the way I like to think that they work, is they take all those structures away for the length of the experience.
And then you see how those structures have been operating and how they are not necessarily true. They put it into, like, really crystalline, like Oh, I do this because of that.
I do. Oh, this, this had to do with this thing that happened to me in fifth grade. This. And you start putting together these things, they're not. And you realize that these things are not necessarily true. And sometimes, and so often people just like once they connect the dots as to why they do some certain behavior, why they have some certain pain or why they have this, they connect the dots from what's actually going on in turn in terms of the organism and how it manifests in terms of the symptoms.
All of a sudden they just drop. That's why it's so uncanny to watch somebody give up, like drinking, for example, because they're drinking for a reason. Maybe there's some shame or discomfort in a social situation, all this kind of stuff. And they're, I don't know, I can't go out without having a couple, you know, pre party for a couple beers or whatever it is.
And all of a sudden they say, oh, this is because I have this belief that I'm not good enough or whatever it is. I'm just making an example and I'm trying to mask that with this alcohol. And that's why I have this poll. I've connected the dots and says, well, I'm really, there's nothing wrong with me. Like I'm perfectly fine. And really no one's paying that much attention to me anyway in the way that I think they are. And all of a sudden like the urge, now that you've connected the dots, the urge to continue on with the behavior just goes away. And that's why when people talk about leaving a habit, for example, because there's so many examples of things that you can kind of heal with this modality.
I'm talking about alcoholism right here now. But you connect the dots and you're like, oh, this doesn't make sense. And then I just don't have the impulse to drink anymore. Oh, why don't you drink? I don't know, I just kind of lost interest in it. But it's because they've made those underlying connections that the impulse to drink now is gone and they can't really explain it. So yeah, I went to prove. I kind of like realized that this whole thing wasn't serving me. And like, you know, I was like, I was realizing I was drinking for the wrong reasons. And like, I just don't, I, I don't have the desire anymore like that the impulse to like, need to pre party or go to a bar or have alcohol before a date or Whatever. Whatever those impulses might be are just like. They just dissipate because the underlying need has been, like, kind of like dissipated.
Yeah.
[00:19:15] Speaker C: So kind of what I hear you saying is that the ayahuasca experience gets to some of the psychological root causes of maybe behaviors or patterns that people have had, maybe had for a long time. Maybe they know or they don't know why or how they had them, but it sort of brings them to mind. So I guess my next question is, like, during the experience itself, are you or, you know, your team or people facilitating that experience? Like, do you have guides during that? Or, you know, what does.
What does that look like? So it's not just, you know, somebody sitting in a room and just staring at the wall? Or is it, you know, what, from a practical standpoint, what is that like?
[00:20:06] Speaker A: Okay, so traditionally, or how we do these things at heart Sanctuary. So we have a maloka, which is like basically like a yurt. You can think about it as a temple space.
And there's mats set around in a circle. So everybody's got their own mats. And then you have the.
You know, in the west, we call them shamans. I really don't like that word, but we'll use the word here. So you have the shaman. The curandero would be more technical, but people don't know what that means here. But that's the. Basically the healer who's serving the medicine and is the master of ceremonies.
Everybody sits around in the circle. They get calm, they get quiet.
Everybody drinks the tea one by one, sometimes saying their intentions, sometimes keeping it internal, whatever it is, to go back to their mat. And about 40 minutes later, you'll start to generally see these, like, geographic, sorry, geometric patterns.
And then what happens? You're in a dark room. Essentially, there is help. Like, we usually have, like, maximum of 10 people, and we'll have at least five to seven facilitators that can support on any ceremony in case people need it. For the most part, it's a solitary experience. Even though you're in a group, meaning that you're doing your own internal work. You're not interacting with the people on the mats next to you, for example. But the curandero or the shaman will, you know, either sing or have musical instruments. In our case, he's got a. The whole team actually has musical instruments. It's quite an orchestra that is being performed live in there.
I don't know how they do all these instruments in the dark, but they're masters, true masters.
And so they're playing These, they are also imbibing the. The medicine. And a true curandero actually has the capacity to.
And nachos are curandero. Nachos sounds kind of a silly name from the west, but it's Ignacio is his rather name. But nachos a normal name down there. So they have the power or the capability of calling in these other plants that they've dieted and they'll sit in front of you and they'll know what you're there to work on. And they'll sing something called an icaro, which is this co creative song between the medicine spirit, the ayahuasca spirit, the plant that is connected that they're calling up. So they've guided these plants, so they're connected to these additional plants in this toolbox. And I know I'm getting a little bit all over the place here, it's getting a little complicated. And they will sing a song directly to the person in that song actually has real effects that you can feel if you can pay attention and stay present in the experience. Some people can't stay present. There's so much going on visually and stuff like that they don't even know they're being sung to. But the ikaio is having its effect anyway. But after having done it many, many times, you can settle into the experience and see that something very distinct from the regular experience is happening that is purely focused on what this person is singing to you.
So this whole like technology background tradition that is well outside the scope of like western understanding of how these things work that actually is quite powerful.
Now in some other ayahuasca circles, the kurandero isn't really a curandero. They might be like a guide. So they might do one on ones and they'll kind of work with you through the experience, but they're not actually doing that direct interface with your psycho emotional spiritual body that a real curandero could do. It'll be like a guide and something that I do not with ayahuasca but with other sorts of expanded states. And then unfortunately there's a lot of people out there that at best could be called trip sitters. So this is why it's important to really vet the place you go to. Trip sitter is going to be someone who is going to sit with you while you have your experience and you're kind of left on your own to make sure you're safe and that you're not going to, you know, hurt yourself.
So those are kind of three levels I like to like Explain to people that, that are going on. Yeah.
And the experience can be quite intense. So my first experience, I was in the first two hours. I was like, certain I'm getting the hell out of here tomorrow. Because it was for a week. I came the first night they gave me the medicine. I was like freaking out for the first two hours. Like, not out, loudly freaking out. But I was like, this is crazy. You're gonna leave tomorrow. This is not for you. And then it changed and I had a really powerful, wonderful, magical experience.
And.
[00:25:03] Speaker C: How long does this experience take?
We're talking hours, days.
What is that?
[00:25:10] Speaker A: What does that look like? Hours. So it goes from like minimum two hours would be like somebody who metabolizes the experience very quickly.
On the outside, six hours, average about four. And during the ceremony there's traditionally there's an option to take more.
So the curandero will ask at some point in time if anybody would like to take some more. We're going to have the next two hours. Let's say you can basically come up as much as you want to kind of manage the effects of the, of the medicine and ingest what you want. So, so some people will, you know, continue until the, until the window is closed, in which case they're going to have a much longer experience.
And some people will just stick with the one cup and they'll have the experience based on the one cup.
[00:26:03] Speaker C: Right, right. Okay.
So yeah, so you describe different levels of folks that are sort of guiding the experience.
And you know, are there dangers, you know, do people have bad trips, you know, during that, like what, what is it that people need to sort of be cautious of and to protect against, for lack of a better phrase.
[00:26:36] Speaker A: So there's a lot of things to be cautious of. And yes, people can have bad experiences. So primarily is to make sure you're going to a place that is well regarded. What does that mean? Talk to people who have gone to the place and get the vibe for the facilitators and get an understanding of what that place is. What are their sort of operating principles?
There's, in terms of, in the ceremony, if someone's having a bad, bad time. There's a large group of people in the psychedelic community who, if someone's having a bad, a bad experience, an uncomfortable, really uncomfortable experience. Right. Like thought loops and all this kind of stuff. They're, they're of the, they're kind of a hands off approach, meaning not touching people, but they're non intervention approach or like, oh, they're having the experience. They need to have the medicine's doing the work. And it's all this kind of like loosey goosey kind of like BS in my opinion, where the person is being allowed to suffer to a level that is not helping them, right? They're just going on for two hours, just can't get out of the thought loop or whatnot. Then there's the other approach, which is the approach that I support and I agree with is if someone's having a bad experience, you allow them to have the bad experience and then you offer just enough support.
Maybe it's like, oh, maybe it's a frame of reference, like let's go outside and breathe some fresh air or maybe a little breathing exercise or something to kind of. Or talk for five minutes or like that kind of thing. So that to allow them to switch out of the challenging bit and go back to the healing bit. Because challenges are important. The most challenging experiences oftentimes are the most. The experiences. What's coming up is like stuff that you didn't want to think about, right? Those, those things like that have been out of mind, have been repressed cause of all these problems, right? This comes up sometimes it's uncomfortable.
So to work through them and to give comfort in that space I think is very important. But also to know when not to offer comfort, right? When to allow the person to work there, work their process.
And so that's very, very, very, very, very important.
If you read online on like the Ayahuasca forum on Facebook, for example, every week there's one or two people that went to some place, they were, you know, shopping, trying to get the cheapest Ayahuasca experience. Or they, and they come back and they're kind of a little fried. They don't know quite how to make a sense of reality because they weren't supported. And so, and they weren't, they didn't have the post experience. Sort of like integration to help make sense of the experience and really ground them back into their bodies, into their, into their being.
And so it's, it's a cautionary tale.
And it's one of the reasons like I'm involved in this is because people ask me all the time like where should I go? And so I can send people to a place that I know they're going to be great, great hands without, you know, reservation versus like, oh, you can try this place. I've heard of this place, that place. I can't really tell you from first person experience. And I know that a lot of places I don't even want to say most places. But there's a lot of places that don't screen participants well. Because a participant allows you to just pay and show up.
That should be like the first thing. Like, oh. Or they give you a casual conversation, oh, you're interested in coming. When would you like to come? And there's no questions about, like, what your health history is, what medications you are, what you're dealing with.
If there's an alignment between what the place is qualified to, like, deal with in terms of trauma and what you're dealing with in terms of a participant. Like, we don't do at heart sanctuary. We don't do hardcore, like drug addiction, like heroin and, you know, those hard drugs, we're like, alcohol is fine, those softer sort of things. But you might need medical intervention if you're. You're addicted to opioids, right? Like, you can't just cut that cold turkey. We're not the place for those sorts of things. Childhood trauma, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, physical abuse, all, you know, depression, anxiety, all those things are fine. But there's a lot of places I'll just take anybody is just pay us. And you show up, you have your experience, and, you know, hopefully it goes well for you. And I think that's a real travesty because it doesn't give honor to the. To the participant. It doesn't give honor to the medicine.
[00:31:13] Speaker C: So let's talk a little bit more about those good hands. You started to say something about the shaman.
I don't remember the exact phrase, but calling upon the spirits of the medicine and that he has some, perhaps some other ones on board.
I'm interested in what your thoughts are around sort of the spirituality of the experience. And that's something that no one can ever prove, right? Its faith and faith and beliefs. But. And I'm eager to hear kind of what role you think faith and beliefs have in this experience. Like, to what extent is this a spiritual experience? And how do you sort of describe the nature of that?
[00:32:10] Speaker A: It's a great question.
Fundamentally, it'd be very hard to have an ayahuasca experience or psilocybin experience.
I'm talking about a strong, powerful experience with your. With your eye shades or in a dark room and not feel connected to something greater than yourself. It would just be like, I don't know, it would just be very bizarre. How do you explain that in terms of words? I don't know.
There's a metaphysics called idealism that kind of has a explanatory power to explain how these things happen and actually has explanatory power and some other scientific kind of boundaries. But basically, we are.
We have the sense of separation. We define ourselves by all these labels. And we feel that we're separate from the world. But really everything is connected, right? And we can. We can talk about that in many ways. And many spiritual people have described how literally everything's connected.
There's no darkness without light. There's no light without darkness. There's no hot without cold. If you just. You can't describe it's hot today without knowing what cold is. So everything is related to everything. And we are part of that tapestry of all these different relationships.
But we have this sense of separation. And what these medicines do is they do dissolve that boundaried sense of separation, so that all of a sudden you feel a great sense of connection with, say, literally everything. And the depths to which this can go can be quite deep in terms of the experience of dissolution of self. That's what they call ego dissolution. And then there's kind of a deeper stage called ego death, which is much more intense.
And it's not part of ayahuasca generally, but it is involved in the yogic traditions. And ayahuasca is a way to get there. Psychedelics are a way to get to these dissociative sort of.
Not dissociation, like in a psychological sense, but dissociative experiences where you feel a disconnection from the labels, the beliefs, understandings that you have that define you as a separate from the rest of creation. And when those things dissolve, all of a sudden you realize that there is only one thing.
And that feeling is like the deepest kind of. Like most personal spirituality that one can have. In my opinion. It's not dependent on anything else, but a recognition that we're all tied together, that everything is tied together in one sort of tapestry.
So. And you get a really good sense of that in these altered experiences.
Most people do.
And I certainly did. Like I said before, I was taught I was. I'm this meat body walking around in this meat suit doing things. And one day I'll die and the lights will go out and that will be all. And now I'm not certain about what happens or I don't have. I have some inklings about what might happen after we pass away, after we move from this life. And I'm not certain about anything. But one thing I know is that there's a lot more to this existence than just atoms bouncing around with emergent consciousness. I don't know if that answers the question. Yeah.
[00:35:34] Speaker C: Well, it's one of those questions that never has a complete answer.
[00:35:38] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:35:40] Speaker C: I imagine that this is a life changing kind of experience for most everyone who does it. And how do you sort of interact with, work with people after the fact, after they have one or more of these experiences in terms of sort of, you know, living the next part of their life after this, but likely in a different way. How do you work with people after the fact?
[00:36:09] Speaker A: Yeah. So in at heart sanctuary, we have, you know, we continue to container afterwards online and then those folks that are in any one container will oftentimes communicate and become friendly with that. And if they need help, or not even help, but just support or like integrating experience, the facilitators are always available in terms of like connecting with them and making sure that they get a good landing. Going back home.
The hardest thing about coming back home is that coming back home after one of these experiences is that you have changed, but you look the same.
People have these sort of like expectations of you being a certain way and sometimes it's a little jarring and a little bit of a, of a resistance to, to connecting with who you kind of are at a more like comfortable, more mature sense of yourself.
[00:37:08] Speaker C: And they haven't changed, presumably.
[00:37:10] Speaker A: Like they haven't changed.
[00:37:11] Speaker C: Yeah, but.
[00:37:12] Speaker A: But you know what's crazy is that oftentimes they do change. Like there's so many.
If a story I like to tell is a friend of mine who went to Peru. On my second trip down there, I took two guys down there, two friends of mine, and he's in business with this, with his dad, and they're always like kind of arguing and fighting about the business processes. He went to Peru and he came back and said, well, what's different, man? And he was like, well, you know what?
My dad and I, you know, you know how we used to always kind of like fight about these business things? We don't fight anymore. And, and I was like, really? He's all, yeah. And I realized you're not supposed to swear here. But I realized I'm the asshole because I'm the one that went to Peru, right? I'm the one that did these changes and now these things. Now that's not technically true because there was a dynamic going on between father and son that was kind of like they're in a certain pattern. So they're. And then somebody disrupted the pattern. My friend disrupted the pattern. Now the pattern's new and different and they're, they're able to communicate in a certain way. It didn't mean that he was actually the asshole, even though that's how he pointed it out, like, I'm the guy that was to blame. And. But the dynamic was disrupted. And oftentimes, and you'll see other people, you soften and the other person softens. When we approach someone with a hard, like, hey, you know, aggressive sort of tone, they're going to come back at you, like in a threatening tone. And you soften, they soften. And so when we come back to engage with our friends, families, loved ones, employees, employers, all these people who are kind of softer and more open, more vulnerable, more connected, inadvertently, they will start changing also. So we're like sprinkling these seeds of people around the world who's soft and more connected with themselves and without needing to preach anything or even say, because some people don't like to say that they've gone to do these things because there's some, you know, people in the Midwest, for example, lots of times, kind of taboo. I don't know what you're doing. This is witchcraft or whatever. But they'll say, like, man, everybody says I'm different. They don't know that I just came back from Peru, right? Secret, Secret says. But everybody's saying I'm acting different, and I'm so much more relaxed. I'm so much more calm, and you know what I am, and that has a ripple effect. And then some people will get curious and say, like, hey, you were gone for that week. What were you doing? And then those are the people that really want to know what the secret sauce is. Then you tell them, and then they get excited about it and they'll come by.
[00:39:31] Speaker C: Well, it gets back to the point you were making earlier about everyone and everything being connected, because then when you get back and you're the people that you're connected with and now you are behaving differently, and so then they behave differently as a result of that connection. And that change, you know, whether that's.
And it's not just based on, I guess, actions, it's based on everything about us, about a person, you know, our vibe and about sort of how we show up and the things that we do. It's all of that stuff.
So that kind of makes sense to me.
So you've talked a lot about Peru, so I understand you sort of host trips down there. What do the trips look like that you and your company host down there?
[00:40:27] Speaker A: Yeah, so they're just called Heart Sanctuary. And the trip is very simple. It. It's kind of a drag to get down there from the United States because there's no direct flights to Cusco yet.
But you fly to Cusco on the dates that we set and, you know, and you, you know, after you're interviewed and vetted and making sure that this is all a good fit and a good match. It's super, super important. You won't find anybody who shows up to Heart Sanctuary without clean bill of health. They're there for the right reasons that they're. They're in our sort of type of folks that we want to work with and connect with.
You basically go there, you arrive the day before. We pick you up in a big van and take you to basically that's Machu Picchu here, which is the end of the valley, but we're in the beginning of the valley or middle of the valley, Sacred valley. It's just this gorgeous, beautiful place.
And take you to this place, give you your room, all the foods included, integrations included throughout the thing, one on ones, yoga. There's a bunch of ceremonies. And something that we also take very seriously is communicating a lot of the, what they call the Andean cosmo vision. So there's a, like a spiritual method or spiritual sort of way of understanding or metaphor, a spiritual metaphor that is this thing called the Chakana. So we teach about the Chicana and what it means and like these different parts that it can have to kind of experience the world. It's not like belief in a deity or anything like that. It's just basically a.
It's basically a metaphor. Like these are parts of self. And this is how it all works. It's a human system and the Earth and Pachamama and this kind of stuff. We teach those sort of cultural traditions and understandings to give sort of a foundation of like, you're not just coming here to take a medicine. You're coming here to learn a little bit about this technology and the spiritual system that is not in the kind of belief or proselytizing sense, but like, it gives you a little bit more flavor and interaction of what you're doing and why you're doing it and how this kind of like co happened in the Amazonian basin.
Food's really good.
[00:42:51] Speaker C: How long is that?
[00:42:53] Speaker A: It's really eight days.
So you gotta plan for 10 days. And I really encourage. If you're going to do this, you might as well make it 12 or two weeks total and go see Machu Picchu or go see some of the incredible historical archaeological sites that they have in that area, It'll blow.
[00:43:12] Speaker C: A nice alpaca sweater.
[00:43:14] Speaker A: Yeah, buy yourself a couple alpaca sweaters. Yeah, for sure. But, you know, it's pretty impressive what humans have done on this planet, how they've connected and how we've disconnected in the last 150 years from, you know, this, you know, from nature, basically.
[00:43:34] Speaker C: Well, it sounds incredible. It sounds like an absolutely incredible experience.
Where can people go online to learn more? And how do they get a hold of you?
[00:43:46] Speaker A: Yeah, so they can find
[email protected] and they could go. And there's connections to all the stuff I'm affiliated with on that website. And then if they want to specifically learn about Ayahuasca and learn about our retreats, it's heart sanctuary retreats.com and they'll connect with us, get you most of the things I do well.
[00:44:11] Speaker C: Fantastic. Thank you so much. I learned so much today, and I really just was, you know, very curious. I imagine lots of people have heard a little bit about it and thank you for the primer and. Sounds like a great experience.
[00:44:26] Speaker A: It is a great experience.
It's not for everybody, but for those people for whom it is. It is. It could be.
It's been described by many people as the singular most powerful and important experience of their lives.
More than their partner, more than their children, even. Just like this.
Which is crazy, right?
You'll know when you see it. Wow.
[00:44:52] Speaker C: Way to end an episode. Way to go, Michael.
[00:44:56] Speaker A: Thank you.
