Walk Together Fiercely
Walking Together Fiercely is a fun and bouncy podcast, hosted by Psychic Medium, Michelle Morrison and Naturopathic Doctor, Tara Drummond. Together, they bring forward numerous topics about well being, health, Spirituality and just being human in a diverse, busy and sometimes chaotic world. Celebrating our differences and the things we have in common, all with a sense of humor and compassion. With guest speakers bringing their amazing wisdom and talents forward, we are creating a safe space where we can talk about a variety of topics and learn and grow in positive and empowering ways. Being more in tune within, more intuitive and aware in all areas of life and living the best life you can live. Our intention is to create a beautiful community of amazing souls who want to hold one another up as we all walk our journey with kindness, laughter, compassion, love and joy. We are so glad you are here and we look forward to taking this journey with you!
Walk Together Fiercely
Emotional Breakthroughs with Psychedelic-Assisted Healing Journeys
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Embark on a transformative journey with us as Dr. Jenny Cundari shares her profound insights on the healing powers of psychedelics. Together, we navigate the landscape where emotional breakthroughs and therapeutic applications intertwine, offering hope for those grappling with the depths of depression and the echoes of trauma. Our conversation delves into the potential certain natural substances may be as an aid to emotional and traumatic healing, emphasizing their role in facilitating a deeper connection with one's authentic self and unlocking the door to personal growth.
As we traverse the realms of naturopathic medicine, we uncover the delicate balance between mind and body, illuminating the intricate dance of emotions, hormones, and overall health. Dr. Cundari, with her rich experience at Sage Integrative Health, brings to light the critical role of psychoneuroimmunology and psychoneuroendocrinology in our well-being. We explore how the ripples of chronic stress manifest physically and the ways in which addressing trauma stored in our bodies can lead to profound healing.
Closing out our session, we zero in on the paramount importance of safety, guidance, and integration post-psychedelic therapy. While sharing personal anecdotes from our own healing odysseys, we discuss the heightened neuroplasticity that paves the way for long-lasting change. From the preparation needed for such a journey to the indispensable support systems, we equip you with the knowledge to navigate the psychedelic path responsibly. Join us as we not only peer into the science and soul of psychedelics but also how they can be harnessed to foster a life of connection and wholeness.
This podcast is just a conversation and is not medical advice. This podcast is educational only and should not be used as medical advice, nor is it a substitute for any medical advice. Recreational Psychedelic use is illegal in Canada and in the US. We are in no way promoting the use of these substances outside of designated and approved clinics. Always seek professional medical advice with questions you have have regarding a medical condition or treatment and before undertaking a new health care regimen. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay seeking help when you need it.
For more on Dr. Jenny Cundari, you can find her on Instagram at: @drjennycundari
You can find all about Dr. Jenny on her website: DrJennyCundari.com
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Welcome to Walk Together Fiercely. We are just so glad to have you here. We invite and we also thank you for being a part of our community. Thank you for choosing to spend some of your precious time with us. We know how valuable it is. I am Michelle Morrison. I am a medium and an intuitive and I support people to make beautiful spiritual connections with loved ones on the other side, with angels and spirit guides, and I love helping people tune into their own amazing intuition.
Speaker 2:I am Dr Tara Drummond and I am a naturopathic doctor and I am passionate about empowering people in all aspects of health and well-being. Our intention is to create community and connection. We do that with open hearts, minds and a whole lot of love and laughter. The more we know ourselves, the deeper connection we can have within, which allows us to deepen connections around us.
Speaker 1:We feel so passionately about this, you matter, that you are so important and that you belong, and we are creating and connecting to the hearts and wisdom of our bodies, mind and spirits, nurturing and growing compassion, empathy and community. We know that we are so much better together, and so let's walk together fiercely through this beautiful, sometimes really challenging life as light warriors of love. Together, with open minds and hearts, we can create a community where we celebrate, play and thrive. Thank you for being here.
Speaker 2:Welcome back. Today we have an exciting episode. I've been looking forward to this one and I'm going to take a breath to calm my heart because today we get to sit with my friend and colleague, dr Jenny Kandari, and my heart has such a sweet spot for this woman and I'm excited for Michelle to be meeting her and for our listeners to hear and today I can feel that this will be a beautiful, illuminating episode. We're going to talk about psychedelics as a therapeutic agent and I'm excited to pick Jenny's brain and we're going to talk about oh okay, jenny, welcome.
Speaker 3:Thank you, michelle. Thank you for having me. I can feel the energy in the space already. It feels exciting. Yeah, just honored to be here having this conversation and, yeah, thank you for asking.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're just so happy to have you and inquiring minds. We want to know and talk more about this and for those, there may be people who are listening to this who are like psychedelics and they're like you know, what are they talking about? They're going to get high. No, not necessarily. That's not what we made it all do. Jenny, would you start us off with a little bit of information about what psychedelics are in the first place?
Speaker 3:For sure. Yeah, so it's a big topic. There's many different categories of psychedelics in terms of different psychedelic substances or drugs or medicines, however you want to call them, and basically you know how I see them is very much like a deconditioning agent. So I find that they create this opportunity to really soften the defensive structures that we have and really allow our minds to expand, allow us to tap into different parts of our minds, allow us to tap into different parts of our bodies and into different parts of the world, the universe in a way. And there's, you know, kind of the classic hallucinogenic psychedelics like psilocybin, mushrooms, ayahuasca, and then containing compounds like peyote and wachuma. There's also 5MEO, dmt, which is from a toad, actually a bufo, alvarius, I think, is the name of the toad. And then there's and I'm probably missing some others iboga as well, which is from Africa. And then there's another category that I don't I wouldn't classify as a psychedelic in terms of like a hallucinogenic psychedelic, but it gets kind of looped into these categories of deconditioning agents and those are endiogens. So, oh sorry, empathogens. So empathogens are what help us to feel more empathy and connect to our hearts more, so that's like MDMA or as what people would call ecstasy. And then there's the more pharmaceutical and a psychedelic that is more in the clinical space now has been used for years and years in the medical system as ketamine, and they've been able to find that ketamine can be used as a psychedelic so it can also soften these defensive structures and for some, can create visions and that kind of hallucinogenic experience.
Speaker 3:But really I find that they're just tools. They're, these tools, very powerful, very, very powerful tools and again, like they're not like a cure all for things, which I think that's definitely like a misconception that I'll see often is that it's going to fix everything, it's going to cure everything. That's not the truth. It's, it can for some people, but for a lot of people, most people, it's a tool and it creates this access point and we can expand more on that. But that's just kind of a general kind of explanation and I find that they help us to expand our consciousness, their consciousness expanders, and they help us to kind of see past where maybe our, our minds have been conditioned in terms of society, and it allows us to see beyond.
Speaker 3:And most importantly though, I find like once we decondition and we soften those defensive structures, our inner healing intelligence and our inner wisdom can come forward and this truth that I think a lot of people are longing to connect with and so many of us in our society here on earth are disconnected disconnected from our truth, disconnected from our bodies and I find that it really helps to create an access point to that truth and it's not, you know, the be all, end all. There's so many other ways to do this, like meditation and breath work, and I just find it's a very fast way and, again, not for everyone. I really want to emphasize, that is, these these tools are not for everyone. They have a lot of just capacity to cause harm and also they can be incredibly helpful and supportive and they've been incredibly helpful for me on my path and my journey, my healing journey. Thank you, jenny. Yeah, hopefully that gave you a good, fantastic.
Speaker 2:I want to ask a little bit more. Could you go in to maybe some examples or make this tangible for the listener? When you talk about dissolving our defenses, what does that look like for a person and what does it allow?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. So how I like to think about it is I think about, you know, as we're little kids and we're kind of moving out, moving along, trying to figure out the world, trying to figure out how we behave in the world, and you know, I find that Gabbermate he actually explains this really well the ways in which we will sacrifice our authenticity in order to get our, our attachment needs met. And I have a sense that that's where these defensive structures come online is when we're young kids and you know we really have these specific needs that we need to be met, other than like food and shelter, and, you know, safety. There's also these needs around love and belonging and connection. And if we're not getting those needs met, then we figure out ways how to get those needs met. And so we create these little structures that we kind of bring on to help us to get those needs met or to help us to feel more safe. Say, if there's a chaotic environment happening, we may figure out a way that helps us to feel more safe.
Speaker 3:And like an example, I'll just give an example for my own life I'm the youngest of three and I definitely found that in order for me to get that kind of love and attention. I really had to be like the pleaser and the entertainer and you know, just like the really the good girl, like really easy going, very pleasant to be around and like helpful, very helpful. And so there was a way in which I sacrificed a lot of my own needs in order to really, you know, help others around me to get their needs met, because then I would feel more safe, I'd feel more connected. And so, you know, then I carry that on into adulthood and I don't know who I am, I don't know that I even have needs and I'm completely disconnected from my body, I'm depressed, anxious and don't know why. And so that's an example of one of the defensive structures, and there's various ways that these can come online, you know, for some people, actually for myself, another one is dissociation. So I was like a master dissociator because I'm so sensitive and my environment, you know, there was a lot of intensity, and so I was feeling so much and had no idea how to like, understand or process that energy. So I would just kind of dissociate and disconnect, which was really helpful and skillful. And that's the thing is.
Speaker 3:I want to really emphasize that these defensive structures are not bad. They help us, they protect us, they help us to get through certain situations, and, however they do, or they can come with the cost, and so that's a question that I often emphasize to people I'm working with is like, okay, well, at what cost? Like, if you're dissociating all the time, what's the cost? Okay, I'm not present, I'm not present. In my life, you know, I have like chunks of like my teens and twenties where I just don't really even remember certain things and I just know that I wasn't fully present. And so that's what I mean by that defensive structure, and there's so many examples that we can, could go into, but I find that those are some that are definitely close to me. Does that makes? Did I make sense there? It makes perfect sense?
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, and so I think that one of the things that I just wanted to say, or just to confirm, is sometimes those defensive, like the way you're talking about it gives it to me, anyway, such a softness and such a sense of compassion as well and ways that I have done this in my life, and Tara and I are both the oldest of three in our families, so we're the absolute opposite of you, but I can absolutely, like my comfort came or.
Speaker 1:You know the way that I kept peace in the family was to be helpful to you know, always know in advance what people needed and then to do that out in advance ahead of them, like ahead of and to mitigate a future potential issue or something like that Responsibility. Yeah, for sure. So that's such a cool like I love hearing you say that, and to me it feels like also doing the best that you can with the tools that you have. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we all are just doing the best we can. We all are Exactly yeah.
Speaker 1:But this is way this is one of the many, many ways that anxieties and things can develop is what you're getting at. And so where did it come from? What is the cost is kind of getting more to some of those root causes. Is that right, yeah?
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly, and that's that's what led me to work.
Speaker 3:You must, psychedelics was really.
Speaker 3:You know, I think I've been on this quest and this path of trying to find the root cause of my own suffering, my own struggles, my own chronic health issues, my own Like depressed depression and anxiety, and I've been on this path and so that's what led me to naturopathic medicine, because there was this like one of the principles of naturopathic medicine is to treat the cause.
Speaker 3:But then, you know, and I got down certain layers, but then I was like no, there's still more, there's still more. And I was in talk therapy and it was helpful, but there was still more that was rooted in my body and these certain unconscious patterns and behaviors that we're playing out, that I couldn't access and I couldn't see, because you can't see what you can't see. And so, and maybe just naturally very curious and open and so diving in, and it definitely that's that's one of the I find one of the powers of these substances and medicines is that it has taken me to certain roots. You know, roots of my own, my own chronic stuff that goes on, and roots of like certain traumas and even like ancestral stuff. You know, like really seen the transgenerational trauma that gets passed down and it really they really do take you to some of these deeper roots, which I find is really just powerful and beneficial, and not for the faint of heart.
Speaker 1:How does it work that it's able to do that, so that we're coming back to the lowering of defenses? I know that's a big question because yeah, that's probably pretty layered, but yeah, totally.
Speaker 3:I think there's so much we don't know. Every time I take a psychedelic myself, I am deeply humbled in terms of I just realized how much we don't know. When I'm in that space in terms of it takes me to such an expansive space where I'm just like we, just I just feel so small as a human in terms of here on earth. However, you know, I think kind of back to what I was saying in terms of it lowering these defensive structures or these masks that we've like put on and created and gone about our day to day, these protective structures and, you know, lowering those really allows our truth and our authentic self, our deeper being, to really step forward and connect and we connect with that. And so, in my opinion, not like how we get to the root is like we're kind of lowering these defensive structures and these, these spaces where we actually are disconnected and we connect back in and we drop.
Speaker 3:It mean, my experience is I've dropped into my body and I've gotten to Maybe it's, maybe it's memories, maybe it's just sensations in my body that I've started to actually get in touch with and I've really gotten to like understand on an embodied and a somatic level of where things get stored in our body, you know, from conception, into, like, our birth and into our childhood, like how all these memories get stored in our bodies, and so the root is like it's taking us into this wisdom that I don't again.
Speaker 3:It's part of the mystery, it's part of the mystical realm of like I don't know how it does that, but it's incredible how it does it in terms of and I've watched it with people I've worked with to this like this coming forward, of this deeper intelligence that's within all of us. Just sometimes we're blocked from it and that's you know. You can call it your essence, your authentic self, however you want to call it, but I think it's a very felt experience and once you feel it, that's for me, that's what I was like. Oh, that makes sense to me Very cool.
Speaker 2:Okay, so I myself have not used psychedelics for therapy, but I'm very curious in your experience, how have you seen this work with people struggling with depression and anxiety?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I'm happy to speak to you know some of my own experiences. I've worked with a various range. If you have more specific questions about my experiences, I'm happy to answer them, but I can definitely speak to. When I was working, I was working at an integrative mental health clinic in Berkeley, california, called Sage Integrative Health, and I was actually one of their prescribers and I was prescribing ketamine and was doing ketamine assisted therapy with clients there, and so I learned a lot in that space about kind of this dissolving of the defensive structures and really bringing forward this inner intelligence and being able to work with the body in a different way.
Speaker 3:I'm also trained as a somatic experiencing practitioner and so that's definitely something I bring in another lens in addition to the naturopathic lens, and I find that that medicine in particular is really great for as like a first place to start for people. It's very gentle in terms of it's very. We're using like a tenth of like what they would give and like, say, a hospital setting. As like they use it as an anesthetic for a lot of different types of surgeries, especially with kids. So we're using like a tenth of the dose and so it's a very low dose and again, I preferred, actually when I was working to work with, to kind of sustain at a lower dose. There's some, some people, some clinicians will work with higher doses to where people are having this complete kind of dissolving, kind of ego dissolving, experiencing just kind of going into a space, outer space. I don't know, that's one of the ways that I've heard described, but I find at the lower doses it can also just kind of open the heart and creates this opportunity for us to do therapy in that space together and it also helps to like turn down the dial on the nervous system. It helps to slow things down. So if someone's really kind of jacked up from just being a human being here on earth and then having various types of traumas as well that create the dysregulation the nervous system and helps to slow that down. It's also there's a lot of research on it in terms of really helping to treat treatment resistant depression. So I was working with a number of people that qualified in that range of having treatment resistant depression and definitely would see a lift and a shift in symptoms. Again, it's not for everyone and it wouldn't work with everyone, so that's the thing it's like. You just never know.
Speaker 3:I find one of the drawbacks with ketamine is it can be a dissociative. So that's the thing, is this kind of like this line that you ride a little bit because it can in one edge of the spectrum it can soften someone's defenses and really get them into their bodies and then on the other side of the spectrum it can, like, fully dissociate them from their bodies. And so, in terms of like working with pretty severe dissociation, I was finding I work with a lot of women who've been through sexual assault, sexual violence, sexual abuse, and so there's a lot of disconnection from the body and I found that it was difficult sometimes to really get into the body with that medicine. And I think the medicine that really shines for that type of work is MDMA assisted therapy, and the multi disciplinary association of psychedelic studies is doing some really amazing research right now and I actually did my training with them, the MDMA assisted therapist training kind of the part one, because they haven't rolled out the clinical kind of expanded access yet in terms of being able to do it in the clinical setting, but they're preparing therapists to be able to do that and clinicians. But yeah, mdma assisted therapy, I think it was like they were. They were doing a lot of research on working with war veterans and people with PTSD and I can't remember now the exact number statistic, but I think it was 70% of people that were within their studies had had a complete like reduction of their PTSD symptoms, which is incredible. There's like nothing else that really touches that in terms of like antidepressants or talk therapy. It's been incredibly healing for my own journey in terms of connecting back with my body and it can be very powerful as well for like couples therapy as well. That was like when it was legal.
Speaker 3:That was one of the things that a lot of therapists were using it for was couples therapy, because it softens the defensive structure. It down, regulates the amygdala and the fear center in the brain, so there's a lot of safety that comes online and then the serotonin, the dopamine and the oxytocin that it's stimulating really opens the heart and creates this kind of undefended love connection so you can speak to someone you're in relationship in a very undefended way and they receive it in a very undefended way and so you can have very difficult conversations in that space and be able to really get to certain roots. Because, again, it's like truth serum. It's bringing the truth forward. And another reason why I think it's really great for people who've suffered from intense sexual abuse or sexual trauma is that you feel very safe in that space. So there's a way that it allows you to slow down and go back into certain memories in the body from those incidents and you can meet it with compassion, you can meet it with love and it helps you to release certain energies that have been stuck in your system for too long. So that's definitely. I find MDMA assisted therapy is really great for trauma, for PTSD, and then I think kind of indirectly really helps with depression and anxiety as well.
Speaker 3:And then another medicine I'm very familiar with is psilocybin mushrooms, and they're just good friends of mine. They're very wise teachers. This is part of the category of hallucinogenic psychedelics. So, yeah, I find that they have and I talk. I talk about these plants or fungi, like the plants, like ayahuasca and the more mescaline containing plants and then also the psilocybin mushrooms. The fungi talk about them as like almost entities, because I really have experienced them as spirits of you know. They have their own energy, they have their own quality, they have their own kind of signature that they will come. And I've just connected deeply with these different types of spirits spirits and fungi spirits, so spirits of the earth really and I find that, again, it's hard to put into words how these, these substances work, but I find they're very supportive, especially if someone's very defended and stuck.
Speaker 3:These substances can go in and kind of break up this kind of material and like metabolize energy. Think about mushrooms. They're like they're metabolizing in the soil, right, and like that's kind of what they do. They metabolize certain energy and like stuck places in the body. They can be very somatic, they can be visionary that's a whole other big topic. But yeah, they can, I find, just take you a little bit deeper and I would recommend, if anyone's listening to this, to start with something that is not one of these bigger hallucinogenic type medicines or to start with a smaller micro dose. Micro dose and again, I'm not recommending these substances, I'm just saying coming from a harm reduction lens, like because these medicines have the capability to really take you to a place that can amplify certain experiences that you've had in your life or certain sensations that you have in your body, and if someone's not ready for that, it can be quite scary and uncomfortable and if they're not in the right setting. It can really be very disorienting and cause a lot of harm.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you need a guidance of a professional or a medical.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes, yes, highly recommend, please, yeah.
Speaker 3:And not everybody's a professional, like, yeah, exactly, you got to go to and so that's a whole other topic around that we think we're going to get into at some point around harm reduction of like there's kind of the Wild West out there and there's a lot of people that are saying that they're facilitators of this work and they haven't really done their own kind of integrated healing in terms of, you know, integrating and coming back into their bodies and clearing and cleaning their own stuff. They're bringing in their stuff into that space, which I think can really cause harm in that space. But yeah, did I answer in terms of there's? So I feel like there's so much I could say about each one.
Speaker 1:I was just curious can you use psilocybins for anxiety as well, Like, is that a possibility for that? Yeah it, just I'm curious because it's just so much more accessible.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it depends on the person. I find, like you know, I've I've worked with people that are experimenting on their own and then they're coming to me for just support and integration work and I'm coming from that harm reduction lens with them. And you know some people they I was actually just working with someone recently and she tried a micro dose and she said it really calmed her anxiety down. Okay, she's super calm after, but then I've worked with other people that it's actually like made them more open and more sensitive. So you think about like, okay, well, what's at the root of the anxiety? And you know, if you're already open and sensitive and you're feeling everything around you, that's a lot that could be what's causing the anxiety.
Speaker 3:And so that's my experience and then so you take something that's going to open you even more, and so then the anxiety gets a little bit worse. So that's, I've had that experience myself and so, yeah, I think that you know, it's really it's person to person, like anything, it's like I don't think there's one, there's an. I don't think there's like one diet that's going to work for everyone, or like you know, I think that's another reason why like went into naturopathic medicine. Was this like individualized type of care, of like looking at the person and looking at the whole person and seeing like right, they're not the same as this other person. I'm going to like tailor this because they're this and you know, so it's very, I think it's very person to person. But, yes, there is.
Speaker 3:I think there are some studies that are going on right now around like working with micro dosing and anxiety and also working with it with depression. I've worked with a number of people that are experimenting on their own with psilocybin for depression instead of taking antidepressants, just as they were frustrated with the side effects from their antidepressants, and I've seen a lot of really amazing results from like just watching people experimenting on their own and just supporting them of like some of the stuff that comes up. I think, too, like one of the things like is especially like with psilocybin is it can. It can open you to allow you to connect with your emotions, allow you to connect with feeling in your body. And I think my perception and what I've seen with a lot of people and seen with myself, is, if you think about like what depression is or what anxiety is, you know it's like depression.
Speaker 3:It's often it can be like a suppression of emotions, a suppression of energy. I like to think of emotions as energy, so like anger is like it's more like hot and contracted, whereas like sadness is like kind of low and just like more dark and kind of sunken. And if you think about like emotions as like this energy especially, you think of like the analogy of a boiling pot of water and say if you were to put a lid on the water on the pot and like seal it down and you like turn up the heat and it's going to boil and boil, and then you know it's like if there's any sort of cracks, like it's going to start to like push the lid up and like that kind of energy is going to try to come out, and it's similar, I find, like if we're pushing and pushing our emotions down, it's like we're pushing this kind of energy down into our bodies and then it's going to come out in all sorts of ways. So it could come out as depression, like feeling just very, you know, not engaged with anything around you, feeling incredibly sad, and then it can also come out as anxiety. I find sometimes, like if we're suppressing anger, we don't even know we have anger, like that can also lead to.
Speaker 3:You know, that's just one example of one of the emotions that often I find in our society some of us, especially women, will stuff down and that can lead to this like kind of just yeah, energy of anxiety. But I also think it's important to talk about like, or just mention because this is a whole nother topic there's so many things that can contribute to depression and anxiety, like for women, hormone health that's like a huge area that I know that so many people aren't looking at. And then diet and the state of someone's like digestive system, you know, someone's environment that they're in, so there's. So again, these are such broad topics, but that, I think, is part of like how some of these lessons can help, as they get us in touch with these emotions that we've suppressed for so long and allows, like kind of, to lift the lid, the pot a little bit allows these emotions out, and then we feel a little bit more space and we have a little bit more presence and we can feel a little bit more calm and a little bit more relief.
Speaker 1:So it's not a magic wand. It's not going to suddenly erase all of the trouble or trauma or anxiety, but it is a tool that's going to help you work with it, maybe on a level that you've never experienced before.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and I wanted to highlight and actually ask you to expand on that, returning to the body, like when we can lower our defenses and soften into ourselves and into our heart and we return at that somatic level to our body. Can you elaborate on the healing there, like you've mentioned, chronic ailments and stuff. How do you see this? Once we've lowered these defenses, the physical body then respond.
Speaker 3:Yeah, again big topic, but I'll do my best to be concise. Yeah, so I find that again, I've learned a lot from gabo mate in his work and how he's accumulated from number of different people as well, and he was one of my teachers very early on in my path and really guided me actually in a lot of ways to various places I went along the way that, one of them being ayahuasca. But I really like how he really points to this conversation around how trauma lives in the body and how just the impact that nervous system dysregulation can have on the physiology. It's like one of my favorite kind of new areas of resurrection and I think it's that new. It's just like more popular now is psychoneuro endocrinology and psychoneuro immunology. So it's really looking at how the mind in the body is very connected, how the mind and the nervous system are very connected and how the mind and the immune system are very connected and the hormone system and so again, very complex topic, but it's all interconnected and so if we're in a state of complete dysregulation and our nervous system and we're in that state of fight or flight all the time, it's going to impact our adrenal glands which are going to impact it's going to impact the thyroid glands and if you're a woman, it's going to impact your ovaries and that's going to create this whole cascade of dysfunction with the hormone system and then ultimately this can lead to a lot of inflammation in the body too, and then that can lead to just different dysfunction with the immune system and dysfunction with the endocrine system too, and then that can lead to more on a physiological level. That's like where autoimmune illness is born or chronic illness of any sort comes alive in that space. Or you can look at it more from like this psychospiritual lens too, of like, and I liked how Gabor started to talk about this, or has been talking about this for a long time, and his first books was when the body says no.
Speaker 3:And looking at it from this perspective of like, oh, if we are completely dissociated and disconnected from our bodies and we're not in tune with these little whispers that come, come at us and we just ignore them and we keep carrying on, we ignore them, then they get louder and they get louder, and then they get louder and that can end up in a full blown out immune condition or cancer or, you know, chronic pain or whatever you know. The manifestation is for you and that's something I find like I've really taken a really like integrated approach with my own healing and that's how I'm working with other people too is it's very it's it's on the physiological, the scientific, the biochemical level and then also the psychospiritual, and I think it's important to address both. And I found, in terms of like my own healing, how that's helped is I've I've once I was, like you know, working on this Once I saw how disconnected I was. Then it was like this pathway of like, okay, shit, I got a lot of work to do to reconnect and like, wow, my nervous system is a mess and this is I'm going to have to really put in some time to work with my nervous system on going still working on it. But I've made a lot of progress. And you know, when you connect back, you get to see like, oh, wow, this is like I have really ignored myself. I've really ignored the signals. And okay, now I've got a lot of like repairing to do, where I have to repair the relationship with my body and I also have to repair just on a physiological, physiological level.
Speaker 3:And you know there's a lot of really interesting modalities out there around, like the limbic system repairment. I don't know if you know a lot about that, but there's some different kind of programs out there that you can work with. I think one of them is called DNRS, the Dynamic Neural Retraining System. There's another one called the GUPTA program. There's another one called Primal Trust and it's really it's working with helping to rewire the limbic system and rewire these like nervous system kind of dysregulated patterns, and that I find, like in combination with working with psychedelics, can really help, because psychedelics can help with neuroplasticity in terms of helping to rewire that limbic system repairment and helping to kind of create more of that regulation and the nervous system which eventually will help to downregulate inflammation, help to rebalance the hormones.
Speaker 3:But it's a, it's a, you know, it's a process and it's. It takes a lot of work and a lot of commitment and a lot of like being with discomfort and a lot of doing things you don't want to do. So not everyone will do this because they, yeah, they don't have that you know kind of drive or perseverance in them or they don't have the access to these tools. So you know, I'm speaking from a very privileged, privileged lens of like. I've had access to all these things, I've been very lucky and not everyone is in that position, so, which is makes me feel sad, but hopefully that answered your question around like how it answers it.
Speaker 2:So beautifully, jenny, and I know it's a huge question that I laid out and this is where my mind goes, kind of both Like it. It's so complicated Our body. I have such this awe and reverence at the complexity and you and I made it through med school together and, holy man, we broke it down into the biochemistry, we memorized it more than our brains can hold and I remember going through school and having all these tiny details of the magnificence of the body and how it works in all these ways. And you touch on this how like the power of one thought can change our entire physiology and have this huge effect on the entire body with something so simple and I love how you say like we can zoom out and it actually is like almost the simplicity to how the mind, body, spirit are connected. So we don't need to know the detailed biochemistry of what this cascade is going on in the body. We can feel it. If we can connect to our body, we can.
Speaker 2:That is such a great tool in itself and I know that we're talking about psychedelics as a therapy. I've had this hunch for the last couple of years that healing actually could be more simple and absolutely instantaneous. I have this hunch I haven't cracked this code yet, jenny, but I do have this hunch that the power like when we can have that mind, body, spirit, connected, grounded and present. And I think that this is where psychedelics are such a beautiful tool to tap into that, to soften these defenses that this human ego makes to keep us separate and disconnected. And you dissolve that.
Speaker 2:You get into there, you get into the heart, somebody sinks into their physical body. There is this beautiful simplicity to it as well, and softness. So we are humans with this beautiful ego that makes things challenging at times. So I would like to move into. Let's say we use this tool, we use a psychedelic medicine. It softens our defenses, it allows us to touch into our body. We get to feel these traumas, we get to feel these emotions stored in.
Speaker 3:Then what Can we talk about integration.
Speaker 2:I think that integration so often is missed in so many types of medicine where we think I pop this pill, then I'm better. That's not the case with psychedelics. It illuminates something, and I would like to talk more about what happens after.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, I think we thank you for bringing that in. I think this is very important. It's the most important part is what happens after. This is just a tool, right, these medicines are just tools, and I find a ceremony can be the classroom, and then you go and you're doing your homework after, when you're in the classroom, you're seeing all these things and you're having these access points and you're having these experiences physically, emotionally, spiritually and then it's over. Then the ceremony's over.
Speaker 3:Sometimes it can continue into the next days after in various ways, but it will fade, and so it's like okay, well, how do you take that into your day-to-day life? And we're humans, we came into a human body and so we're here on Earth, and so, okay, how do we integrate that into the human body and into the human life here on Earth? And this is something that I see a lot in the psychedelic space is there is a lot of spiritual bypassing happening in terms of people that are like they. Of course, they enjoy like that mystical space more than they enjoy being human, which I understand.
Speaker 1:You came here for the human experience, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3:And so it's like okay, how do you bring that back? How do you bring that back? How do you come back to the ground? Come back to the ground and I think that is through the body, and so whenever I'm working with someone around integration, I'm always bringing them back to their body, bringing them back to what are they feeling in their bodies, what are they feeling in terms of sensations. And I find that the somatic experiencing work is very helpful, a helpful lens for me to see out of there. So many different ones out there, like Hakomi and Integrated Body, psychotherapy and hypnotherapy.
Speaker 3:There's a lot of number of different like modalities out there around this, but I find having some sort of practitioner that's helping to support you to come back into your body over and over and over again can be helpful practice for integrating these experiences. And then it's like okay, so you've gotten these messages. So then how are you going to bring that into practice? So this is something I often talk about a lot, just part of my life, and then it's a lot of what I'm teaching people that I'm working with is like, okay, what kind of practices are you going to bring into your life now? Are you going to do like meditation for like five minutes a day? Are you going to do a yoga practice of like something where you're allowing yourself to be connected with your body and where your mind can start to soften? Or are you going to create some form of movement practice in terms of to like get you in your body? And again, I think I'm speaking to like, if someone has been disconnected and they're connecting now with your bodies, how do they take that? So, again, it's, you know, I find the integration process is very personal. It's very like, what were your experiences, what was your intention going into the space and what was your experience? And then, how are you going to integrate that into your day to day? So it really depends and I think it can be helpful to look at it on different layers of like mind, body, spirit, community and environment.
Speaker 3:So, really looking at like these different aspects of one's human life and where are the areas that are maybe you're living out of alignment with the truth that you accessed? So the alignment, I think, is a keyword of like. Okay, well, where are you out of alignment in this area? Like, maybe you're eating like a lot of junk food every day and that's making you not feel well and you really saw that in the journey. It's like, okay, so how are you going to take steps to not be eating all this junk food, you know? Are you going to do you need? Does this individual person need like a coach to help them, or do they have the will to just do it on their own? So that I find, like you know humans and Tara, I know you probably understand this very well, michelle I don't know you well enough yet, but I imagine you probably get it as well as humans don't want to change a lot of the time, yeah, and like a part of their head, but like a big part of them doesn't want to change.
Speaker 3:And I think I've thought about this a lot and I think part of it is very rooted in this like very real humaneness that we all have where we don't want to feel uncomfortable, and so we find all these ways to not feel uncomfortable, and our society has created so many avenues for us to create a bomb for that discomfort and to disconnect from the discomfort, and so for someone to change, they actually have to step into a space at first where there's some discomfort, and so I find that that can be sometimes a limitation for change, and it can just it can feel like sometimes like too much for some people. And again, I think there's so much I don't know in terms of like human behavior, but I think that that's definitely one of the pieces. And so, again, someone can go and have hundreds of ayahuasca ceremonies or psilocybin ceremonies and their life hasn't changed that much, because maybe they're just actually in this human realm not really wanting to put in that effort, and so, because it's hard, I definitely know myself in terms of certain practices that took me a lot longer to finally get to a place where I'm like, okay, I can finally do yoga more than once a month. I'm doing it almost every day now, which took me a long time to get there. And again, it's just like, and sometimes it's like the stories we tell in our heads that get us stuck from it, like, oh well, I just can't do this.
Speaker 3:I'm not a meditator, I'm not a yogi or I'm not someone who eats healthy, and so I think that it's also can be helpful to work with someone that can help to work with these like belief structures and these like thought patterns that we're kind of stuck in.
Speaker 3:Again, there's like neuroplasticity, and so the time after you work with a psychedelic is very important because that the neurons at that time are quite malleable in a sense. So you're more likely to be able to make the changes if you're starting kind of right away and then the neurons are able to kind of morph a little bit easier and you're able to create like new tracks in the pathways instead of these like kind of run over pathways that we're so used to. We can kind of veer off and it might feel a little uncomfortable but it can be a little bit easier after you work with psychedelics. Or it doesn't have to be psychedelics, it could be like a breathwork experience or, you know, silent meditation, retreat, or again, I really want to emphasize that, like psychedelics are not the end all be all. I think there's many ways to get there. This has just been an avenue that's been really helpful for me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we've really highlighted the importance of having a qualified guide or practitioner when entering the psychedelics and we just released an episode, actually today.
Speaker 2:It came out about power and pedestals. So when we step into a relationship where we have the practitioner as the expert and then the patient or client coming in, there's this innate vulnerability because of that power dynamic, and I want practitioners holding this reverence of that power that they have and now insert a substance that then softens their defenses. This is only going to increase that power disparity and that vulnerability that that patient's entering into and trusting this practitioner. So I can only imagine the possibility of harm if a practitioner is not skilled, and I'd really like to spend some time talking about this so that we aren't inspiring anyone to just go jump and try this. Like there's a real safety around this, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yes, thank you, tara. I really want to emphasize that I feel really passionate about this area. I feel passionate about harm reduction and I sometimes am appalled of what I'm seeing in the space right now, and what I mean by the space is the psychedelic space as a whole. There's a lot of people that are rushing because they see there's potential for financial gain and they're creating training programs, they're creating platforms, and yet they don't actually have a lot of experience themselves or they're not fully integrated themselves. I mean, I think it takes I don't know if anyone's fully integrated, but I think there's a spectrum and I think it's very important, I think, for people to listen, to remember to ask questions. So asking questions to who they may be sitting with, if they're going to seek out someone or seek out a clinic, asking questions around, where are they sourcing their medicine from? So that's, yeah, a couple of things to bring in is source set and setting. So sourcing is where did the medicine come from? Was it ethically harvested? Where did you get it from? Is it clean? Are there other things in it? You just never know? There's like the Wild West out there right now. And then asking questions about what their assessment protocols are how well are they assessing people that are coming to this work? That was something I did a lot of at the clinic I was working at. Was assessment Really thankful for our naturopathic training around this, because we learned how to very thoroughly access someone, and then I also learned a lot about psychiatric assessment as well, and because there's a lot of people that aren't just able to do this kind of work Say, if someone has had a psychotic episode before, or if they have again gray areas around, if someone has bipolar, or if someone's actively suicidal or if someone has schizophrenia. There's a lot of these kind of requirements and I wouldn't even recommend someone who would do this work if there is a lot of instability in their life, because these medicines can create instability in terms of, like if you've set up a whole life from this very disconnected place and then all of a sudden you connect back with your authentic self and you come back into your life and everything feels out of alignment, that can feel very destabilizing and so really, like, a clear support structure is very important and then also you know if there aren't any kinds of medications or supplements like it's very important to like really thoroughly assess someone.
Speaker 3:So asking these questions like what is your assessment protocol? Who do you have assessing? And do you have a medical provider that's also looking at the intake and then looking at the set? So like, where would they? Like? Where is this gonna take place? You know, what are the safety protocols?
Speaker 3:Also, being mindful, like if they're not mentioning like things around, like agreements in the space, like around no sexual contact, no violence. No, like leaving the space, like there's specific agreements that I think are very important, that if someone isn't aware of those, it can create a lack of safety in the space. So asking them like is this something they talk about? Also, like, what are their integration strategies? Like you know what's their, what's their like method in terms of are you just going and doing a ceremony or something and not talking to them again? So how I really appreciated how we did it at the clinic I was at was we always required to do at least two to three preparation sessions and at least two to three integration sessions. So there's a lot of holding, because I find with this work, if you're not feeling safe, you're not gonna really go in. That safety is key, and so that's something to really look out for.
Speaker 3:And then also looking at like asking them what their own experience is with these medicines. I think of like I probably wouldn't fly in a plane if with a pilot that's never flown a plane before or doesn't have like a lot of experience flying a plane. So there's a lot of debate about this in the space. You know I would. Yeah, I was in the maps training. There was a lot of people that had never had an experience with psychedelics before, that were training to become psychedelic assisted therapists, and again it's mixed.
Speaker 3:Like I understand you know you have to get experience at some point and there's curiosity out there, but I just like my system was like, oh, I don't think I would ever sit with someone who hadn't had a lot of experience themselves and didn't feel very embodied and integrated to me, and so I think something else that I'll say for people listening is really trusting your body, like trusting how you feel when you're talking to someone, and if you feel like something's off, something's probably off, and I know that you too have talked about this before on your podcast, and so I know that you get what I'm saying.
Speaker 3:But I think it's really important that people are trusting that. And then, yes, setting or setting. Sorry, I got that mixed up. So setting is like the space that you're in and also like who the practitioner is, and then the set is like the intention going into it and going in with respect and reverence and the right reasons. But yeah, I think that's the main things to look out for Any questions around that or like anything you want me to elaborate on.
Speaker 1:I think I would just you know, like to say, or hear you say, actually not me say, I think that if you're hearing this today and this is like just maybe tweaked your interest or there's something in it that has just maybe landed within you that there's some sense of resignation, you know, just to do your research, like you know, start looking into it. There's I don't know if you've seen this one, but there is a really great documentary on Netflix about all the different there's, I think they do four different types.
Speaker 1:It's like a deluxe how to change your mind. And I think that you know this work is really on the leading edge of somewhere phenomenal and that there's a lot of amazing potential here. And you know, my perspective is why not utilize different types of possibilities? And you're right, it may not be right for some people and it may be really great for others, and so it is a very personal thing, but I really do think that there's a lot of value here.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I do too, in terms of my own experience and again, not for everyone. And you know there's a lot of yeah, there's a lot of you know places that I find are doing things in a very integral way is in my experience. And so there's the Beckley Foundation is actually just popping into my mind. So there are a group that does retreats in Jamaica Mm-hmm, that's Amanda Fielding. She's kind of like the godmother of the psychedelic space. She's amazing. If you don't know her, check her out. And then there's also Kayumi is another organization Actually, a friend of mine started that and they're doing retreats in the Netherlands. So places where it's legal. And then there's a Canadian company called Numenis, and yeah, there's a number of different, like avenues where you can look.
Speaker 3:But, yeah, I think really important to trust your intuition around it as well and if it feels like too big and like kind of terror when you were like that kind of fear, like maybe it's not the right time or, you know, like really trusting that it like in my experience it's been I've always a very clear yes when I have been, you know, pulled towards a ceremony and I have some friends that you know have never worked with psychedelics and that's totally, totally okay. Like I want people to know that this is not something that you feel like you got to jump on the bandwagon because it's helping people. There's so many other ways and so many other avenues to get there in terms of, yeah, like what's been mentioned, breathwork and meditation and yoga, and yeah, so definitely want to emphasize that.
Speaker 2:We're going to put those resources in the show notes so people can find those there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and there's also another friend of mine has an organization called Tricruna. Tricruna, which is actually the name of one of the plants that's in the brew, the ayahuasca brew. But yeah, her name's Bia Labache and she's doing really great work with Tricruna, their nonprofit, and they produce a lot of really amazing articles and, yeah, I just have a lot of respect for them.
Speaker 2:I love that. Thank you for sitting with us, Jenny.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, thank you so very much. This has been incredibly eye-opening for me. I've loved it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I realized I haven't really I didn't address Michelle. You had asked about like chronic illness in the body and how psychedelics have helped with that. I don't know. If you have time to put it, oh yeah, let's.
Speaker 1:Before we end, let's just jump back into that because I know you know, it's one of the things that I hear from clients all the time is, you know, dealing with their chronic it's. Sometimes it's pain or discomfort or like it might be, like you said, you know, something that's autoimmune or just something that chronically comes back. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and there's always an emotional connection to those things right. So Of course of course.
Speaker 3:So yeah, with my own story. Like I have autoimmune conditions, I have celiac and Hashimoto's and an unknown like kind of arthritic. I still haven't figured out what that is. There's been some speculation that I might have Lyme, but I just I've tested negative so there's never been like a clear picture around it. My husband jokes that my body is very mysterious, like they're just I somaticize things Like very like it sounds like Michelle too.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, I somaticize things, like very just, like very loudly. And somaticize means that like I will, if I'm feeling something, then like all of a sudden something will happen in my body. Like if there's an emotional response, I'll manifest it in some sort of weird symptom in my body. So there's a lot of chronic pain that I manage on a day to day basis. I've also had a lot of injuries in the past. I had a bit of a reckless youth and so there is definitely a lot of just like physical damage that had happened. But then there's this whole like nervous system kind of emotional aspect as well and my sense is like I experienced some trauma pretty early on, some sexual abuse when I was younger, and then there was just various other things that kind of happened throughout my teens and early 20s that were big experience kind of the bigger T trauma and the ways that my nervous system responded to that and how that manifested in my physiology. So that's a lot of the kind of the pathway that led me to working with psychedelics and the healing journey. Again, my body's been my biggest teacher. I've learned so much from it in terms of how I work with people and I see like I see the whole kind of pathway of how it's all been kind of laid out in terms of this journey that I've been on, and it's taken a lot of courage to go into into the emotional body, into the sensations in the body, but I've definitely I think I'm in the best place physically. I've been in in years and I have gone through like I had like high doses of mercury in my system. I was like a hundred times what the normal amount should be. So I went through like a whole heavy metal detox and then I had a whole like mold issue in my system and so and I have some theories around like why? Cause this is kind of a common thread I see amongst very sensitive people that often have like heavy metal toxicity and mold toxicity and like autoimmunity, and usually it's like I notice it's people that are very sensitive and very open and they're picking up a lot on their environment and I think that's part of it is energetic.
Speaker 3:And then this like that whole aspect that I was talking about before of the psychoneuro and immunology and psychoneuro endocrinology in terms of the ways in which how the traumatic experiences changed my brain and how that changed my physiology, in how I overproduced certain hormones and I create more inflammation than, say, like an average person. And so psychedelics have really helped me to understand what's been going on and also like just physically healing certain parts of my body that I can't fully under, like I can't fully understand or explain what happens in those ceremonies, especially the ones with the plants. Like I've had some very wild, profound experiences with, especially ayahuasca and these like kind of visually entities like working on my body and helping like kind of clear stuff out of my system. That's the experience I had. And then just like the anti-inflammatory effects of those substances too, like ayahuasca has a lot of anti-inflammatory properties and antibacterial and so like, really like this, I think throughout my journey I've really developed just a deeper respect for nature in terms of like the profound depth of healing capabilities with these different types of plants and a lot of what Tara was talking about too, of like, yeah, if we can like get to a place where we can actually really see like that our mind is really like impacting our system and like can we actually heal ourselves.
Speaker 3:So this has been a question I've been sitting with for a long time and in each year I start to get more and more hope of like oh, I've like that's not the same as it was two years ago. And again, it's been a lot of like diligent practice. I have to be very diligent with my diet. I have to be very diligent with, like what I'm ingesting just on a day to day basis. And I have to be very diligent with my practices, or else I kind of fall off and things just get really bad. And so a lot of it too, I find, is like radical acceptance of like radically accepting that like this is my story, this is what happened, this is my body that I'm in, and like how can I bring compassion and love to myself in that space? And I think that in itself is healing as well.
Speaker 3:And then I'm in the process of this like limbic system repairment program. We'll see, maybe in a couple of years I'll talk to you guys about how that's helped. Yeah, it's an ongoing path, it's an ongoing journey and anyone listening that is on this journey I'm with you and it's hard and it's very hard and it's not linear, it's a spiral, it's like it's many spirals within a spiral. And, yeah, just really encouragement to keep going and loving yourself along the way and asking for help and trusting your inner guidance I think that's the biggest thing is that I've received is, I know, certain things I can tune into my body and listen. Oh, I actually think I need like some like beef liver or like you know, like I can listen to, like what my body is telling me, and I think it's just like a refinement of this. Attunement has been a huge part of the healing.
Speaker 2:I love it. It's returning back to your body, which is this like? It's a tool in itself.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I think that's so cool. Welcome home.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yes.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it is a tool, it's a compass, it's you know, it's it can be a thermometer, it's like it's a very skillful tool and I really encourage that's my I mean, that's why I'm doing the work I'm doing with people is to help them to connect their bodies so they can get access to this very important tool.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:Jenny.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much. Yeah, you're so welcome, thank you.
Speaker 2:Thank you to Dr Jenny for being here and sharing her voice and wisdom. This was such a beautiful and illuminating episode. Check out our show notes for links to the resources shared. You can find Dr Jenny on Instagram at Dr Jenny Kanderi. Please share this episode on social media. Tag us, tag Jenny and share the beauty of this informative episode around. Find us on Instagram at Walk Together Fiercely. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast. Give a five star rating or leave a glowing written review if you loved this episode and want to support us. Thank you to you listening for being here. This podcast wouldn't be what it is without you.
Speaker 2:Now let's finish with a breath of peace. I want us to sync up to our breath, pulling it down deep into our lungs closing our eyes if that feels safe and sinking into our body with our awareness, keeping that breath open and circular. We're going to picture a light above our heads. This light is blue to me, but it can be whatever color you choose. As we breathe in, this light is going to come down over our head, over our skull, down our neck, into our breath, down our shoulders. As it touches us, it dissolves our defenses, it softens our heart, allowing us to return to our body and our breath, allowing our nervous system to feel safe and relaxed, ready and open to receive the gift that is this life and no moving forward, that this light is always available to you, and so it is.
Speaker 1:We would love for you to join us on our podcast page on Instagram at WalkTogetherFiercely. Here we can chat, have community ask questions and lots of other extra information that you might not get on our podcast. For more information about us, you can find Dr Tara on Instagram at Dr Tara Drummond. For more information about me, michelle, you can find me on Instagram at Michelle Morrison Medium. All other information about me is on my website, thebalancedsoulcom. This podcast is recorded by Michelle and Tara and is edited and arranged by Sammy Liu-Kang.
Speaker 2:Any medical information provided is information only and is not to be used for diagnostic or treatment purposes. This information is not a substitute for professional diagnosis and treatment. Please consult your healthcare provider before making any healthcare decisions or for guidance and treatment of specific medical conditions.