 me now. Thank you. Who here has done a psychedelic drug? Raise your hands nice and high in front of all your colleagues. We will be fingerprinting everyone on your way out. Obviously kidding. You can keep breathing your hand. You're very excited about this. I agree, right, right, right. The reason that I wanted to talk on the subject was because psychedelics changed my life completely over the course of the past year. Iowaskan psilocybin mostly. And there's no way to describe the level of transformation that this one addition to my life has led to. And so the person who came here a decade ago, which Mark Sisson was referencing on that video, she's gone. I'm gonna say that she's gone. I have not cared very much about nutrition in about a decade. And I stuck with a certain identity because I didn't know what else to replace it with. And I think a lot of people get stuck in these potholes that we create for ourselves by identifying with something that we then can't let go of because it becomes too much of an attachment. And it took me a while to come to terms with losing that identity. So when I was trying to figure out what this talk wanted to be about on psychedelics, I realized it was pretty simple. I want to share from the part of me that these tools helped wake back up and bring back to life. So I'm not actually going to talk much about science today. If that makes anyone really freaked out, you're welcome to leave right now because I know you guys have been on the science circuit for this whole conference. And I would also say if you want to read about studies, the internet is available to you. Google is available to you. I don't want to just come here and rehash things that you can find on your own. I want to give you something a little different because no one in this room is actually going to feel the thing I want to communicate just by looking at graphs and brain scans. So we'll be trying something else. Psychedelics are fascinating because in many ways they're a complete inversion of our conventional model of healing. Modern medicine's approach is to standardize and sterilize, define, make things predictable and controlled, assure outcomes, give statistics. Psychedelics revive everything that approach tries to kill. It's a medicine that designs itself in response to the psyche of the patient. Totally unpredictable. We have nothing else in the world like it. We have no map of the space they take us to. You are the map. And psychedelics show us a pathway out of the cage of the mind where you can only ever think about healing. And down into surrender, which is where healing actually happens. The space is a wild, chaotic, pulsating womb, steeped in the same kind of mystery that the Western world tries very hard to kill. We don't like unknowns. We don't like the dark. We've built an entire intellectual religion arguing against the existence of the things we can't measure or perceive. Meanwhile, people are flying down to the Amazon and getting more healing, puking into buckets in the jungle than they have sitting in a therapist's office for year after year after year. Our allegiance to the current system is costing us human life. We're choking ourselves to death with the amount of force and control we apply to the healing process. And something has to shift if we're going to change. Psychedelics are very exciting to me because they sit on the fracturing edge of our current understanding. And we might not know what the next paradigm is, but psychedelics can connect us with its aroma and help attune us to a way of perceiving that we can't reach intellectually. And in my opinion, for whatever that's worth, I'm just one person. These are some things that are trying to arrive to launch a shift for us. Healing as transformation rather than a return to baseline. Right now, medicine approaches healing people as doing whatever it takes to fit them back into the life and identity that made them sick. Let's give people drugs to chop off the most vivid ends of the emotional spectrum because those emotions aren't convenient and it prevents us being functional. And another pill to interrupt the grief process because your sadness is taking too long and you have to go back to work. Let's manipulate the chemicals involved in anxiety so that you can get rid of that feeling that something is off in your life and go back to how things were. In reality, the healing process always involves something dying. The identity of the one who is sick. The habits that created their condition. The wounds that created the habit. The attachment to the wounds. We really don't like letting go of our pain. Layers go very deep. And by the time a person is sick, they're already starting a process of ego death. Their body's ahead of their mind. Something in them is saying this isn't working. This isn't me. This isn't the life that I came here for. And with our current approach to medicine, we're abandoning people on the edge of their transformation. Immobilizing them halfway through the birth canal and getting them stuck there instead of supporting them all the way through their metamorphosis just because we don't know who they would be on the other side. And that's very threatening to our current structures. Psychedelics don't make your life an identity more tolerable, which is the goal of most pharmaceuticals. They make it so that anything out of alignment becomes even more glaring. So that we have no choice but to transform. Another thing, we need to stop abandoning what's true for what's appropriate. Humans are very funny with the way we think we can impose our will over reality. In order to fit this idea of what we think we're supposed to be. I shouldn't feel this way. I shouldn't be upset about that. I shouldn't want that. I shouldn't hate that. I shouldn't be turned on by that. Keep it professional. And all those times, when we say yes, when we need no, or no, when we mean yes, instead of listening to our knowing and creating this false doubling of reality, one that's true and the one that we have to try so hard to convince ourselves of. If we override our reality enough times, we lose that connection to our intuition, and we lose our clarity. And that light we're born with gets dimmer and dimmer. And our life gets more and more of those crunchy spots where we know something needs adjusting the job, the marriage, the sense of self, the thing we're doing the addiction. But we don't like what we'd have to give up in order to change. You can ignore those spots for a long time. It's a big world and there are lots of distractions. But eventually the spots get bigger and bigger. And one day you realize there's nowhere left to go to get away from the discomfort of being in your own skin. Ask me how I know. Everything in your world will shift when you come back to what's true. Less becoming, more unbecoming. Our culture loves accumulation, acquiring, getting more studies, more evidence, more rules, more definitions, more labels, more stuff, more knowledge, more Netflix, psychedelics or unravelers. They lead us through our unbecoming. Instead of what can I put on? What can I take off? What stories can I shed? What patterns hold me hostage? What weighs me down because I won't let go of it? What am I not? Discovering who you are is never a matter of finding something you're missing or adding something new to your life. It's always a matter of letting go, of recognizing that your identity and your self definition, that thing you thought was your skin that you've tried so hard to hold onto, it isn't your skin. It's a straight jacket. And life keeps trying to peel it off of you. Over and over, infinitely patient and generous with the number of times it will try to show yourself until you finally see it and break free. This is the path to freedom. It's not a place to get to. It's not something to fight for. It's what's left standing after everything else falls away. The knowing that if it can be taken from you, it isn't really yours. And that if you can watch it die, it isn't really you. Psychedelics won't drag you up to enlightenment. I don't think anyone really knows what they are or what they do. But I can look at my own life as the evidence I need that they are a gateway. Helping us navigate whatever's coming next. Helping us navigate ourselves. Rewiring our mind so that we can see more of what's already there. And there's a way where we can invite this in without abandoning the brilliance that humanity has already given birth to. The next paradigm shift, in my opinion, will happen when we put science and service to the mystery, instead of only trusting the things that we can capture and cage and make perform on command. The thing we've been trying to kill is what will bring us back to life. We just have to let it in. Thank you. Questions, but also if anyone just wants to share something, I invite that. The floor is open. How do you how do you know? Yes, it asked me how you know. Oh, you're over here. Sorry, I didn't even see this one. Look at this dual thing. Yeah, so I spent 10 years working in the nutrition field, trying to force myself to believe that I still enjoyed it. And meanwhile, I don't know how many of you were here for the first AHS, at least some familiar faces. I went underground for a long time. I just stopped posting online, stopped writing, stopped going out in public, speaking wise, also even socially for a long time. And it was from this deep mismatch of what I thought I was, what I was trying to be, and what was actually trying to break through inside of me, which is much more esoteric than I ever felt comfortable showing anybody. And last year, I woke up one day close to my birthday, and I was like, I need to do ayahuasca. Never in my life had it appealed to me. I've never been a drug person, never did a psychedelic before. And I just knew I did no research beforehand. I just found the closest place I went. And it changed my life more than anything, other than being born. And yeah, I don't know if that answers your question, but I had to get to the point where I couldn't stand being in my own skin. There's a beauty at the bottom. If you let yourself go all the way down, it's where the nourishment is. Thank you. Thanks for sharing all that. I like to share something. So I've been to Burning Man eight or nine times, which you can try all the things there if you want. And so once you've been there a couple of times, people will join your camp and maybe they'll have some experiences. And it'll be the first time. And so the veterans will warn them, okay, so you have just seen that you have been living a facade for your whole life. So please just don't go back in the first two weeks and leave your wife, leave your job, just take a little time and do it in a measured way. And it's actually a real thing because that advice comes from the juxtaposition of people seeing that they've been living a fraud. And it's a kind of a forced way to have a midlife crisis at whatever age you are. And we make fun of people who have a midlife crisis, but that's no joke to wake up and see that you've been an automaton just doing what society has asked you to do. So definitely this, I recommend everyone try it, see what chains are freed from you. Thanks. Thank you so much. Hi. It was a nice refreshing change from the all the other presentations. Thanks. Glad you feel that way. Yeah. In my late teens and 20s, I did bassid and peyote and mushrooms and other things. And the insights I feel, and this is makes my life exciting now, the insights I feel I experienced and saw then are coming back and kind of emerging naturally, kind of in a in the insights and wisdom that I'm discovering in myself and my worldview. So it's, it's interesting to note that I don't know whether they set the seeds or set the stage, but I feel like I'm experiencing a lot of what I learned then, now, naturally, although I am curious to try one of those again. It's time it'll call. Thank you for sharing that. As soon as you started talking, my heart started pounding. I have a lot to share, but I'm actually going to do breathing exercise, breathing exercise for the next minute. I'll let this gentleman speak and then I'll share. Thank you. Thank you for sharing your story. You know, I feel like this summer for me personally, for those who followed me on Twitter, I've been tweeting out a lot because with the Olympics, there's been a lot more focus on mental health and the struggles from people who have very high expectations placed upon them. And a lot of times it's really self induced as in we take on those expectations and we put them on ourselves. So I totally I I'm impressed and I wish more people would follow your example and be open about struggles that they not only take on, but when they overcome and then share that with others. So I just have to say I really appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks a lot to me. I just wanted to say a big thank you. I have come from an opposite direction of you being born in the psychedelic community. And actually being here at the ancestral health conference for the first time, I was lucky enough on Easter and 4th of July to be crawling around the lab that where MDMA was not first synthesized, but secondly synthesized and then publicized by Dr. Sasha Shulgin. These are powerful, powerful medicines, you know, and I just want to help everyone to remember that and draw the correlation between Tommy's talk neuroplasticity and these substances, these substances put our brain in a very volatile state. And it's so so important to go into these experiences with love and intention and plan for them, you know, and make sure that you're in a beautiful environment, whether that's in nature, whether that's with a guide. And it's beautiful to see you just the changes from that picture that you put in where you are now. And it's a testament to the power, you know, of these medicines of how they can lower the activation energy to allow the natural processes in our brain, the plasticity synapses changing to take place. So I don't have a question for you. There's not much to ask. It's pretty clear, you know, what's happened to you. And I wanted to thank you. Thank you so much. You should have given this talk. Hi. Thank you for a wonderful talk. Thank you. It's nice. My partner's helped me a lot is the sort of thing that maybe I wouldn't have appreciated three, five years ago. But so it feels funny to ask this after a talk like you gave. But I was wondering if you had any practical tips for implementation and people starting out and I don't know what any legal things are. You cannot say but you know, if you can say certain things, I would be curious what you're what you take is on getting started and in which ways. So obviously, all of this is hypothetical because you know, no one wants to get shoved into a box and locked up. That being said, I feel like if you have a draw, this isn't this is not going to happen at the level of the mind. Like if you make a pros and cons list of should I do psychedelic, should I you will never get an actual answer for yourself. It has to be a resonant match with wherever you're at at life for whatever reason. This thing is just a yes for you. And I can't really explain that in words beyond what I just said there. Like if you know, you know, if it's a yes, it's the yes. If it's a no, it's a no. And also share that my first two I've done six ayahuasca experiences, ceremonies, my first two were the most beautiful things I had ever experienced in my life. The last two, the final two, were the most garb wrenching experiences of hell that that could envision. I can't even envision. You can't know until you're in that state how bad it can be. And I would say that any, anytime you're, you're dealing with psychedelics because we don't have a map for this territory at all. You know, you can have a shaman, you can go down to people who are very experienced, but it's still you meeting you. And no one else can fully help you navigate that. So be prepared to take whatever comes out and alchemize it rather than just fighting against the experience. If you go through something very, very terrible and frightening. I mean, I spent six months with basically with PTSD symptoms after my last ayahuasca ceremonies. And it's still something that I would recommend to people, not unscrupulously, but because the journey that it launched was so valuable to me. In fact, the more difficult trips tend to be the ones where you learn the most. And they show you the stuff you really have to work on. That being said, you know, give yourself space to integrate anything that that comes up like don't don't expect to jump back into work the next day. The residual effect is very beneficial if you keep sinking in. And other than that, you know, just try not to get arrested. Thank you. Thank you. That was well crafted. I loved it. It obviously really resonated. I'm very happy for you. And I wanted to preface what I want to share with a quote that Gabor Mati, I'm sure many of you know what Gabor is. He said this, I think a couple weeks ago, he said, there's only two kinds of psychedelic experiences. Just like there's only two kinds of life experiences. Either we experience love, or we experience what's in the way of it. And when people have bad trips, that's what they're experiencing. So all I wanted to share was I fell in love sometime in the recent future. And I had edible marijuana, and I had a series of psychedelic experiences on edible marijuana. I think it has something to do with my ancestry, to be honest. I had radical psychedelic experiences. And I know it had a lot to do with because of the safety and the love of the person I fell in love with. And them, you know, knowing the totality of who I am, the good, the bad and the ugly, but them accepting that and seeing me for who I am and loving me. And having had those experiences. As a person who grew up in a Christian community, and always had a hard time, you know, being a Christian person, because I've always had an aggressive mind, and I just ask so many questions, and, you know, I can't put me in a box. Having had all those experiences, I did tons and tons of research, and I started to look into Eastern philosophy and started to hear this notion of source, and with sources. And as I had all those experiences, and I've been learning meditation mindfulness for so long, and I'm out in the world now. I'm very emotional right now. But I, whatever that thing is, it's beautiful. That's all I wanted to say. Thank you so much. Hi, I feel like you and I are making some eye contact, but I don't know, may just be me. Okay, because I was I was feeling you a lot. Yeah. And this gentleman who who just spoke, I feel like you gave me the bravery to say something because I'm pretty shy. And I don't like to talk into a microphone. But I just felt like, I needed to say that this is my this was like my favorite message that was but not to like, say I didn't love everything else about this conference and every talk and the first one to Todd Becker, like I've been trying to work up the courage to talk to you. But I haven't yet, maybe I will later. I love that you're talking about psychedelics. But I just want to say I feel like I resonate with everything you're saying without that without the mushrooms without the ayahuasca, I think I am a very sensitive being in that that would be too much for me. But I think for some individuals, they can have the kind of experiences and appreciate the beauty of every image you showed us today. From a just a place of maybe consciousness or self discovery, I don't know quite like the words that would write. But I wanted to say that because I think you could get the wrong idea and be like, Oh, I have to do ayahuasca and I don't think you do. I'm not going to. But I so appreciate the side of health that you're bringing. Because I think that trauma I gave Ramate I wanted to be like, whoa, because he's amazing. He's great. Psycho neuro immunology. That's like, I want to yeah, I'm hoping to explore. Yeah, I'm sorry. I'd love to. Yeah, that's it. That's it. Thank you so much. That was a really good point to I think I'll tack on is that the whole point of this, these are just tools. And they're trying to get us to a certain place. You don't need these. Not everyone needs these. But if they call to you, they can nudge you. But she eloquently said, you know, that that place is accessible to everybody, just inside. Thank you again. That was that was a great segue. Thank you, Denise. When Oh, Denise knew me. I was like, dude, I'm on Denise radar. So thank you. That means so much to me. We were hanging out a little in Seattle. That was like, pretty wild and cool. So knowing Denise's brain and what she brought to the community, this solid nature of dissecting Ansel Key and all the mythology around that. And then now what we've got here, mind blown and thinking that Aaron said, Sure, Denise Minger. Yeah, let's talk about psychedelic. But I want to point out that actually I was scratching around on my undergraduate and one of my graduate degrees trying to find paleo ancestral primal in the 1990s. And I did a interdisciplinary thesis for my undergraduate because I was in the School of Music and then I branched out to anthropology and religious studies and communication. So I had a degree in ritual creativity and human potential. Doesn't it sound like I was trying to find you guys? So along with psychedelics, then so ritual, just kind of seguigging, segueing perfectly from our last lovely speaker, who I adore, who's so cuddly is ritual. And so first off, this community through scientific hard science as well as community is finding ways to peel back the problems with mismatch. It's part of the reason why we hug each other here. Stephanie is a rock star here. You know, I mentioned that because she brings out the understanding of sexuality, barefoot, you know, all of this is going back to our primitive lives. So Catherine Dunham was a African American woman who established the Dunham technique. And she was also an anthropologist, which is dancing, excuse me, African American dancing, unbelievable, mind blown, an American treasure. She studied the Haitian badum, do you say badum trans dancing. And so just drumming, for instance, we could try to have an experience where we're going back to our ancestral ways. So we're not just here as scientists saying, okay, well, then the gene mutates and the, we're also finding that we find comfort in establishing those ways. So through dance and back to Stephanie, the she got us doing karaoke. So, so now the side thing with AHS is going and doing karaoke karaoke. So we sang loud, we did stupid things, we jumped on the tables, we hugged each other, we remembered the bump, what did we used to do back in the day? Well, she's a brick house, right? So, so it was like the womb, right? Isn't a dance floor like the womb with the with the, the, yeah, the strobe lights and the ball, the, I started to say crystal ball. At any rate, we have the science to help us understand basically that without necessarily having something outside of our exogenous to our self, working on our brains in that fashion, it really could just be a trans experience with drumming and and cuddling being right there with each other, being in the cave or, or whatever it is. And so my mind is blown that Aaron said, Denise, sure anything. I mean, he probably didn't quite know what I was going to do with it. She snuck it in, but no one else could have done what Denise just did. I mean, really, if you analyze the history of AHS and Denise, Denise is part of it. And then we end up here. I mean, I am feeling loaded just having gone to this, this, this talk. So I love you so much. Denise, I do want to thank you for bringing psychedelics as a topic. If not, you have a stash on you. I don't know. But at least as a topic, the Anselstor Health Symposium, and sharing your personal story with this with that journey. I personally, as I was one of the people that raised my hand when he asked the question of people who tried psychedelics and it's some of the highlights of the experiences of my life. And also being a cognitive scientist, somebody who studies the mind as well as the physiological substrates by which it's a function of the functioning produces mind. We really in cognitive psychology are understanding that much of the world we look at around us is really in our minds, literally in our minds. Not in a solipsis way, which means that everything's a figment of your imagination, but that there is an external reality. But really, what we're experiencing when we're interacting in 3d space with the objects and the people and everything in it is a simulation that's gathering data, building up a simulation and then running that simulation and continuing just check to make sure that it's predicting is that the way it's supposed to be and when predictions fail, that's when we learn, right? So so basically, we're running the idea that's emerging in cognitive psychology and kind of science that we are running simulations and that's what we're experiencing in the world. And like Dave Feldman had mentioned, we can sometimes get that simulation wrong. We get it in our heads that, you know, we have to be this way or I have to identify that way you would look, you know, you had identified a certain way. And it's very hard to change that simulation once it's really established. And so psychedelics are really emerging in clinical science and just in cultural memes as being a very powerful tool that can help affect that change in that simulation to make it healthier and operate for the betterment of the individual and their community. So it's great that you brought an important topic here. And even you don't even realize this, you're all making jokes like, oh, you didn't know what it was getting into. I'm actually pursuing trying to get some rat research going to look at with a rat model of the effect of hallucinogens and on cognition, the positive effects, because you know, there's some good mouse studies as well as human clinical data on how hallucinogens can be used to treat PTSD and anxiety and MDD major depressive disorders and a neuroplasticity changes that underlie those things. But we don't have much evidence yet, at least in a nonverbal model like a like an animal model of the other positive effects, longer term that can emerge from these experiences. And so it's something I'm interested in pursuing. So all dovetails. And Naomi, you read our minds, we're on the collective same page. Would it be okay to just now roll into closing remarks? Okay, let's thank Denise minger once again.