Dr. Rosalind Watts | You Are Not Broken, You Are Becoming

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Welcome to the Radical Responsibility Podcast. I'm doctor Fleet Mala,
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and I'm excited to guide you on a journey of
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authentic transformation. In each episode, I'll bring you insights from
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leading experts to explore trauma recovery, mindfulness practices, positive psychology,
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and innovative breakthroughs in health, wellness and life optimization. This
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is a space for real conversations that inspire meaningful change,
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helping you find alignment with the person you are always
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meant to be. Let's get started. What if transformation isn't
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just about thinking differently, but feeling differently. Science shows us
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that true change happens when we align not just our minds,
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but also the neural networks in our hearts and guts.
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This heart mind connection is the key to deeper healing, resilience,
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and expanded awareness. That's why I created the Heart Mind
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All access membership and community, a space designed to help
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you rewire your nervous system, cultivate heart intelligence, and live
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with greater clarity and purpose. With over one thousand hours
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of transformational teachings specifically curated to meet your needs, You'll
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learn from world renowned meditation teachers, neuroscientists, and experts in neuroplasticity,
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all sharing powerful tools to help you shift your mindset
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and heartset, regulate your emotions, and unlock your full potential.
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You'll also gain unlimited access to every summit and course
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we've ever produced, a Treasure Trouble Wisdom worth over ten
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thousand dollars in growing, plus live gatherings, and an inspiring
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global community to support your journey. If you're ready to
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step into a more heart centered, connected and conscious life,
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I invite you to join us. Clip the link to
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learn more and start your journey today. What if healing
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wasn't just about a single breakthrough moment, but about the slow,
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steady weaving of your life back in the wholeness. In
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today's episode, we're diving deep into the ACER model with
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doctor Roslynd Watts. Accept Connect and Body Restore, a powerful
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year long framework for integrating lessons of psychoicist syst therapy
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into everyday life. This isn't a quick fix or a
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magic pill. It's a path inspired by the Celtic Tree Calendar,
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rooted in Nature's wisdom and designed to help us face
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our shadows, deepen our connections, and habit our bodies more
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fully and restore our relationship with the rhythms of the Earth.
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Whether you're on a healing journey yourself, supporting others and theirs,
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or simply curious about how deep transformation happens, this episode
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will offer a grounded and hard seted map for lasting change.
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Let's get started. Miami's Fleet Mall your co host of
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the session. And I'm really happy to be here today
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with doctor Roslyn Watts.
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Welcome, Thank you Fleet, lovely to be here.
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Really looking forward to talking with you about your work
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on integration, which is so important and sometimes a bit neglected,
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and I think a really important thing for us to
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focus on. And let's talk about your ACER model, which
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I know is very much central to your work. So
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how does maybe just talk about how it works. We'll
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find you how you enroll them, what the process looks like,
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what some of the pre workerdsits are, what the benefits are,
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and so forth.
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Thank you. So people find us usually from our website
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which is as Integration, or also from when I've been
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doing talks and things like this. People sometimes google us
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and find us. We don't have any formal referral pathways,
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so people come from all sorts of different places. And
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it's open to anyone, anyone that's exploring their consciousness. Most
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of our participants are using psychedelics or have used psychedelics
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for personal growth and therapeutic work, and people can apply.
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We have two intakes per year, a summer intake and
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a winter intake. Each year, people can apply and if
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they're successful, weeks them into this year long process, which
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is the basic structure of it is a global online community,
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but within this format we follow it a twelve month framework,
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a twelve month process which is based around It was
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inspired by the Celtic Tree calendar because I wanted to
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engage with well my own roots, because I have a
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Welsh lineage, but also because I was so aware that
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so many of us in the West and in Europe
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are getting on planes and going to the Amazon and
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searching for indigenous medicine using culture, and that it felt
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to me like it was important for certainly in Europe
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to discover our own plant medicine using lineage and Celtic
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culture and Celtic ideas and Celtic stories felt really really
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powerful and important. So the community follows this structure of
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twelve trees. Every tree is a teacher and we learn
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about a different aspect of connectedness through the tree. We
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follow this structure and we have things like breath work
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and sharing circles and guided imagery meditations, and some people
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come to their live workshops a lot. Some people just
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like following it on the platform. They do the kind
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of recorded material, so it's very flexible. But essentially, when
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people have been through the twelve months, the twelve trees,
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we feel the people well that what ACE and R
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stand for is accept, connect, embody, restore, and we feel
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that people well, and we hear from people repeatedly that
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they're more able to accept their emotions, to sit with them,
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sit with them long enough to learn from them, to
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connect to the meaning in our emotions. When we have
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painful feelings, psychedelics teach us so well when we re
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engage with those feelings, we can learn so much incredibly
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important insights when we give space to those feelings, and
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then it allows us to really embody those lessons in
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a very visceral way. We work a lot with embodiment practices,
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and then the RT, which is restore, is really about
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restoring ourselves to the rhythms and patterns of nature, which
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is about being slow cyclical, interconnected, and imbalanced. So that's
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the broad that's kind of focus of the community, and
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we've discovering that a lot of people. It surprised us
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in staying on for a second year, so we thought
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people would just stay for the twelve month process and
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then go back to their lives, but actually people are
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staying on for a second year. So we've been developing
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a whole new structure around what people can do in
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the second year, which is about sharing the practices and
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the tools with people in their local communities.
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I hadn't really thought about it, but your ATA model
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is very similar to the way we talk about our
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work here at Heart Mind and Heartmind Austry. We talk
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about it's about helping people become more deeply embodied, more
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heart centered, more resilient, more Earth connected. And that restore
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sounds like, you know, slowing down, you know, being within
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the cycles. That's about getting Earth connected in one way
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or look at it anyway. So yeah, it sounds really wonderful.
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So when people join this year long program is so
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like something every week daily activity is half of the workshops.
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What does it look like for people to participate, Well.
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It's completely flexible, so if you wanted to engage in everything,
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you could pretty much do something almost every day. I
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mean there's workshops, live workshops every week at the very least.
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But there's such a range of different things. We have
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everything from dances where we have a playlist for every tree.
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Every tree theme has its own playlist that we get
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together and dance as one way of working with the
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theme of that tree. But we also have Q and
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A's where we have guests that come and talk about
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that theme and talk about psychedelic integration and rep work sessions,
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and there's a range. But some people are really really
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active and they're on the forum and engaging with each
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other and doing sharing circles with each other pretty much
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every day. And other people who have, you know, they
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don't have the time, will find a way to fit
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it into their working schedule, their life schedule in a
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more flexible way that it's whatever works for people.
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So I would imagine that, you know, when people join
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your program, they come who they are, right and they're
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coming with everything that's going on for them and everything
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that's going on in our world today. And you know,
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we are experiencing kind of an endemic of people being
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exposed to a lot of stress and trauma, a lot
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of resulting anxiety, depression, Sadly higher suicidality numbers, especially among
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the youth, but among the elderly, among clinicians, all kinds
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of groups, you know, And some people use this term
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the poly crisis that we're facing, this complex entanglement of
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many crises today, and so the challenge is we all
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face can be quite immense, depending on how we relate
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with it and how tuned in we are not, how
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empathic we are not, and we may be able to
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compartmentalize and ignore a lot of it, but a lot
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of people are not so good at compartmentalizing, and they're
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very affected by all of this, and some ways we
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all want to be open to it, but you know,
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can we be open to it without being overwhelmed by it?
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And part of that anxiety has to do with also
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the existential threat we're facing from climate change, which if
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you really start reading about and thinking about it, can
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be very overwhelming, very disconcerting. So I'm wondering about how
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that's coming up and how your model is helping people
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deal with what's sometimes called eco anxiety as well as
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this anxiety around those holy crisis and things like that.
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Thank you for that question is such an important one.
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The ASM model, the way we work with it, or
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just the way we embody it is that each one
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of those four elements is like a part of a tree.
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And if I try and explain this, it will kind
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of it will make sense as why I'm saying this
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in response to that question. So we think about the
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acceptance going into our emotions is like the roots of
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a tree going down into the earth, the hidden parts
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of ourselves, the dark half, the challenging half, the shadow
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the things that we don't usually look at, don't want
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to see, all the rocks that our roots have had
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to grow around, and all the challenges, the scary stuff,
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and then the branches of the tree. So that's the acceptance.
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The a of a says, the roots the sea of
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acerous connection, and that's the branches of the tree. And
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we really believe that our branches are sense of meaning
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and purpose, what we stand for, what we grow towards,
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is a mirror image of our roots. So every centimeter
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of suffering and challenge, when we're supported it in a
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community process where we really help to alchemize that suffering
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into growth. It gives us a sense of purpose, why
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we're here, what we're doing, and it galvanizes us to
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become activists in some way, whether it's in the outer
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world or activists in our own lives. And then a
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trunk of the tree is the e that's the embodiment,
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and that's kind of the place where the transformation happens
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and the r the restoring to the rhythms and patterns
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of nature is about coming back to our interconnectedness and
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where that is in the tree is the myceeial connection
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underneath the tree that connects one tree with all the
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other trees in the forest. That is what I feel
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our community brings people in these times. It's the my
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celial network of other people that we're together and the
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support that we can feel when we find the other people.
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If you look at the kind of my celium underneath
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the forest floor, it's almost like lots of kind of
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hands together. You can see this kind of blanket of
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like handlike connections kind of holding each other. So I
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think it's so important in these times, because we live
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in a very individualized, disconnected culture to feel alone with
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these problems and these existential crises. As you say, and
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we're all living in these separate boxes. We've had decades
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of neoliberalism on top of centuries of capitalism and even
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longer colonialism, and in a way, it's like the soil
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has become depleted. We're living in very depleted, dry, degraded soil.
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That trees regenerate the soil in which they stand, and
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they also provide structure to eroded soil that has lost
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its dense quality. So in a way, by joining up
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with other people in this way and really having these
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conversations with each other, and also a lot of people
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that are taking psychedelics for therapeutic purposes are they're exploring
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these big questions in their journeys. So when we come
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together with other people and talk about this stuff but
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feel the support of each other, I think it helps
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us explore those questions in it in a way that
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doesn't feel completely incapacitating. Instead, we feel that sense of
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camaragerie and togetherness, and we come up with ideas. We
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witness every day in a little changes in our own lives,
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in the lives of other people in the community, and
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I think we by witnessing that change, we realize that
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transformation is possible, it's happening, and that we can often
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feel that we're solely responsible for somehow, like how do
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we change the world, How do we get out of
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this mess? How do we change the narrative, change the paradigm.
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But I think when you're with like minded people, you
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realize that things are changing on their own, and that
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in a way for us to just stay in our
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center and keep trusting and keep doing what we can
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in our individual lives, but also in our communities, then
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it's kind of trusting the process, trusting the unfolding, and
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it can be very hopeful. So I think we really
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recognize and feel ourselves, frankly, the terror of the time sometimes,
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but it's incredibly nourished. And I'm sure you feel this
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in your community, to be able to be open and
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real with each other and to show each other our
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tears and our concerns, and to have that witness and
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to know that from that pain, you know, the mirror
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image of that pain is our values, is what we
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care about, and it helps us stand up and make
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those changes that we really need to make.
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Well. I love the metaphor of the skillful means of
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the trees and I wasn't familiar with that twelve tree
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tradition from the Celtic traditions. Ethnically, a lot of my
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background is Scotch and Iris, so I connect a lot
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to explore some of that, but somewhat came up for me.
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You know, there was a very wonderful and popular book recently,
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The Life of Trees I think it was called. And
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then I've had conversations with Paul Sammet's about how, you know,
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fungi and mushrooms have co evolved with us and the
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whole relationship with the mycelium to our lives and to
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the planet, to the ecosystem that we're all participate in.
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And there's a lot of direct real connectedness as well
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as a kind of metaphorical beauty around all that. It's
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absolutely wonderful. So it sounds like your community would be
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absolutely wonderful, regardless of psychedelicsist to just be a wonderful, spiritual,
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personal evolution kind of community for people. But bringing you
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know the fact that it is focused on people who
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are having psycholic journeys or have been involved in psychoic
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assistant therapy. I'm wondering how much of the bandwidth of
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the community is taken up with working with or talking
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about those experiences and integrating those experiences. And I'm particularly
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interested in you know, we're hearing about many wonderful results
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and life changing results, but we also know that psychic
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experiences are very intense and can be at least temporarily
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destabilizing in many cases. You know, we all develop within
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our personality and sub personalities kind of management structures that
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kind of keep everything together. Underlying that there may be
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traumatic experiences and things that we're keeping contained and suppressed,
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and a psychic experience who kind of reopen that landscape
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a bit and maybe even destabilize some of our management structures,
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such as suddenly we're dealing, you know, with something. I'm
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curious how much of that comes up, how much are
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that has surfaced in the community, and how you work
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with that, how the community collectively supports each other in
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possibly working through some of the things that come up
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or revealed through the psychic journeys.
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Yeah, also lovely question. Yeah, as you say, the whole
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process could be engaged with by people that haven't taken
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psychedelics before. But because our community is made up of
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people who we've realized that the kind of if you
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think of a ven diagram of where like psychedelics and
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interesting in nature, and also some interesting being of support
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to other people because being a community like ours, there's
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lots of sharing circles. You don't have to hold space
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for others. But that's really at the heart of it.
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There is that sense of you know, you're not just
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receiving support, but you're also giving support in that reciprocal
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kind of my seeum network metaphor. So those three things together,
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the kind of psychedelic exploration with nature interest, with this
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interest in being holding space for other people, we just
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get the most wonderful people that come. It's the community
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is incredibly grounded and it's really with us and resilient.
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So absolutely people have in their small groups. So we
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put people into small groups. They're called orchards, and that's
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a group of about ten people and they go through
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the whole process together. So we do it by geographical locations.
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You know, many of them meet each other in real
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life as well, and when that happens, I think people
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do really hold space for each other through their process
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of psychedelic journeys. Because many people will be engaging in
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psychedelic therapy through the course of the twelve months. It's
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not just afterwards, it's also at the same time as
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and so, yeah, people really share about their experiences, and
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there's a lot of there's a lot of time and
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presence for unpacking and unfolding those insights that come. And
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in terms of the when people are discombobulated or where
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people do feel like, yeah, the experiences can be extremely stressful.
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I think the grounding in nature is incredibly helpful in
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those circumstances. So we make friends with these twelve trees,
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and not everybody will have all the twelve trees in
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their locale, but we really change our relationship with nature
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and with trees. And so we spend a lot of
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time integrating outside in the real world, sitting with our
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back against the tree, breathing with the tree, realizing that
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the trees in breath is our outbreath, and really building
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that connection. And I think that kind of meditative, grounded approach,
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and also realizing that when we have this cyclical approach,
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we realize that things aren't great all the time. There
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are cycles of regeneration and decay, and regeneration and decay
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within nature and within us. So when someone is going
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through a time of feeling like things are falling apart,
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which can happen after a psychedelic experience or just when
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life throws somebody a curveball. There is that real deep
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trust in our community of Okay, this is the night time,
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this is the winter time, the dawn will come, spring
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will come, and it's about holding space for each other
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as we go through that, rather than anakin there's something
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wrong because things are feeling disintegrated. It's allowing that process
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and trusting when the tree loses all of its leaves
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in November and those dead leaves make a rich compost
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for the seed that will connect. So it's really trusting
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that when you go through periods of loss and confusion
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that if we can stay with it, then that can
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be the beginning of our next chapter. So far, we've
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found that it's that the nature connection and the community
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connection provides a lot of safety for people going through
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these Yeah, really quite courageous and sometimes intense experiences.
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Wow. Amazing. So part of this model is connection and connectedness,
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and you've developed a scale around that, the WA's Connectedness Scale.
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And I'm wondering if you could talk about how you
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developed that and the significant scale for it's used in
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measuring outcomes in psycholicals psychotherapy, and how it's been using
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clinical trials and so forth.
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Yes, So, when I was working at Imperial College, the
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first trial I worked on as I was a guide
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for people with depression having psychedelic experiences, which was wonderful,
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and I did some qualitative research when that first trial
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had finished, and I interviewed everybody in the trial and
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I asked them, you know this psilocybin experience you've had,
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how has it affected you, How has it changed you,
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if at all? And the interviews that I then transcribed
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and did a thematic analysis on the strongest theme that
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came back was that people had felt disconnected from themselves
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and other people and the world around them before when
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they had been depressed. They'd been kind of living in
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the prison of their minds and disconnected from their bodies,
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disconnected from other people, and that when they had the
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psilocybin experience, it helped them connect to that, it helped
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their life kind of get bigger and develop a more
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I suppose I started thinking of it as an ecological
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self rather than a kind of mind self. It's this
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self that is in interaction and relationship with this whole
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web of life, and that expansion it doesn't always happen,
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but we saw it happen quite a lot in the trial.
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And of course if you don't have further integration work,
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that expansion can then contract again after a few months.
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But it just seemed like this sense of connectedness that
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was developing was really important, and there was no measure.
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There was no tool for measuring the tripartite structure of connectedness.
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So there was a measure for social connectedness, there was
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a measure for nature connectedness. But I was seeing these
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three things connection to self, connection to others which is
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the social connection, and connection to world which includes nature
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connection but also includes connection to spirituality, connection to a
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sense of being interconnected with everything, connected to purpose, that
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kind of thing. I saw it always the same process.
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So from based on the qualitative research that I did,
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some of us from Imperial kind of selected nineteen items
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that really cover the three subscales self, others, World, and
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then it was validated. There was a validation study which
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was looking at large samples of people who had been
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on psychedelic retreats and filled in the form online to
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look at their connectinn scales before and after, and we
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also included it in the second psilocybin study at Imperial,
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which was a randomized control trial. Yeah, essentially we found
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that the validation study showed that these three subscales are related.
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So we had evidence for this idea that connectedness to
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self and others and world is part of the same
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underlying construct as kind of opening up. And it does
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look like it's a really important mechanism in psychedelic therapy,
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but also so important for the times that we're in
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because you mentioned the poly crisis and this connection to self,
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which includes connection to emotion and connection to the body
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kind of coming out of the numbing that we have
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been I suppose so conditioned to in our culture and
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so and connection to nature obviously is such an important
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thing for us now, connection to community. So I think
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I hope that this measure will be well, it's being
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used by people all over the world, and yeah, I
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really really hope that the results from psychedelic therapy will
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show a really robust and significant increase in connectedness, and
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that will lead us to think about how we can
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think of psychedelic therapy not just as a medical intervention,
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for people suffering from depression or addictions or PTSD, but
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also to think about this communal project that we have,
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this collective project of our time of reconnecting to the
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living wheb around us. How can we find our place
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in the ecosystem and stand up to protect it. I'm
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really hoping that we will start to develop interventions that
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really help psychedelics be opening towards that kind of work
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as well as being useful as a medical treatment.
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And how many impek you say we're on a scale?
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There are nineteen items in the validated measure, but actually
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there are two items that we've added, and that's because
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so the nineteen items relate to connection to self, others
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and worlds. And I was contacted when the measure had
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been published by a group of psychologists and researchers from
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the University of Auckland in New Zealand. They were Marory
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psychologists and they wanted to use the connectedness tool in
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a psychedelic study looking at people with cancer and microdocing.
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And the reason they wanted to use the study is
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because they said that the connectedness model closely resemble the
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Marory construct of health, which is all about connectedness to
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community into land. So this was a good outcome measure.
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But they said you've missed out two of the most
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important things. And the two items that they suggested we
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included and we did were I feel connected to my
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ancestors and I feel connected to my land. But the
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Marory word for land was fenua, which means placenta, So
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it's connection to the land as placenta as connection to
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our mother that sustains us. I thought that was an
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amazing addition. So yeah, there's a ninety item validated official version,
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and then as a twenty one item version, which I prefer,
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with those two items added.
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And you've established not only validity for the scale altogether,
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but interscale or interscale validity as well. It's amazing. I'm
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curious for you know, eventually, I'm in work I've been
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doing and in a black care of many other fields
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for a long time. In the literature, the idea of
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spiritual wellbeing, spiritual health versus spiritual distress is really around
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exactly those three scales. It's connectedness with self interpersonally, connected
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with others interpersonally, and then some kind of transpersonal connectedness.
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So that's quite beautiful, is it? In the public domain.
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It's absolutely a free to use. There's a paper and
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there's an article in the journal Psychopharmacology which has was
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described it all and people can also get it from
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my website which has a manual as well with scoring
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and where we're starting to kind of collate the information
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as different teams that are using the measure that we
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just Yeah, we are under resource right now, so it's
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taking us a while.
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Well, I'm quite interested in using it with some programs
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we're doing. I'm wondering how if you've compared it with
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a scale instrument that's often used around psychaic research. I
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remember the exact name. I'm sure you're familiar. Has to
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do with mystical experiences.
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Yes, the Mystical Experience quescinator.
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Yes, that is so, yeah, and that probably focuses more
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on the third of your three scales. But I wonder
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if there's been any studies to show any cross validation
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between those two.
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I would imagine that there was certainly a relationship between
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the two of them. I think that the Mystical Experience
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questionnaire is going to be we'll show up more people
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will get higher scores on it when they're having strong
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high dose experiences and then reaching through to those transcendental states.
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There's lots of items about unity and are but I
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think that the connectedness tool will show some kind of
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change when people are even microdosing. I think we can
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open up a little bit to connectedness, breath work, microdocing,
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all sorts of other experiences, whereas the Mystical Experience Questionnaire
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is more for use with those big experiences.
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So actually, you brought up MICROHSCEEN a couple of times,
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as STAY in New Zealand had to do with microhosing,
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so I was curious. I was going to ask you
479
00:26:14.359 --> 00:26:18.160
a question about that, whether within your ACER community, whether
480
00:26:18.319 --> 00:26:21.960
that includes people both who have had stronger psycholic experiences
481
00:26:22.079 --> 00:26:24.400
journeys on their own or planted medicine, or they're doing
482
00:26:24.400 --> 00:26:28.680
psychoic system therapy. But is there also an ongoing microhosing
483
00:26:28.759 --> 00:26:30.799
going on and is that part of what people are
484
00:26:30.880 --> 00:26:32.000
sharing and working with.
485
00:26:32.559 --> 00:26:35.559
Absolutely, yes, I think we've been talking about it more
486
00:26:35.599 --> 00:26:38.119
and more in the community, and we have guests speakers
487
00:26:38.240 --> 00:26:40.599
every month, and we had the man that started the
488
00:26:40.640 --> 00:26:44.279
micro Dosing Institute in the Netherlands last month, and yes,
489
00:26:44.480 --> 00:26:47.920
Heim Pineker, he's a wonderful man. And it's been really
490
00:26:47.920 --> 00:26:52.000
interesting hearing people's stories about microdosing and also the combination
491
00:26:52.039 --> 00:26:56.519
of nature connection, especially spending time with treaties and microdocing.
492
00:26:57.079 --> 00:26:59.599
It seems to be a very good combination. So yeah,
493
00:26:59.599 --> 00:27:02.359
there's a lot of microducing and also people using microducing
494
00:27:02.559 --> 00:27:06.160
to integrate their larger dose psychedelic experiences too.
495
00:27:06.559 --> 00:27:09.240
So I'd like to keep focusing a bit on this
496
00:27:09.480 --> 00:27:12.720
connectedness aspect of your work in terms of the Eastern
497
00:27:12.759 --> 00:27:15.640
community and pathner. You already ascribe this somewhat, but I'm
498
00:27:15.680 --> 00:27:20.519
wondering if focusing specifically unconnectedness, how involvement in this year
499
00:27:20.559 --> 00:27:24.160
long program can help people deepen their connectedness with self,
500
00:27:24.240 --> 00:27:27.680
their connectedness with primary relationships, but also a sense of
501
00:27:27.720 --> 00:27:31.079
community and then getting that sense of connectedness with nature,
502
00:27:31.079 --> 00:27:32.880
which you've already talked about a bit with the trees
503
00:27:32.920 --> 00:27:34.359
and so forth. I wonder if you could go a
504
00:27:34.400 --> 00:27:35.359
little further with all that.
505
00:27:35.920 --> 00:27:39.119
Yes, so of the cycle that we have these twelve trees,
506
00:27:39.799 --> 00:27:42.880
they all have a different lesson, but they all teach
507
00:27:43.039 --> 00:27:45.599
some part of connecting us to self, others or world.
508
00:27:46.319 --> 00:27:51.119
So for example, we have the Rowan tree. The Rowan
509
00:27:51.160 --> 00:27:54.359
tree is the tree for February, and this is a
510
00:27:54.400 --> 00:27:58.000
tree all about connecting to our grief and what our
511
00:27:58.039 --> 00:28:00.559
grief teaches us about what we love. So I won't
512
00:28:00.599 --> 00:28:02.799
go into detail, though I could talk for many hours
513
00:28:02.839 --> 00:28:05.400
about just the Rowan tree. But the Rowan tree is
514
00:28:05.440 --> 00:28:08.920
about really going down to the deepest, darkest parts of
515
00:28:08.960 --> 00:28:12.640
ourselves and learning from those places what lights the candle
516
00:28:12.680 --> 00:28:15.759
in the darkness for us. So that's the Rowan tree.
517
00:28:15.799 --> 00:28:18.039
So that's just one example. That's connection to self and
518
00:28:18.119 --> 00:28:22.319
deeper motion. And then the Douglas Fair Tree, which is
519
00:28:22.359 --> 00:28:26.039
our tree for May, is about connecting to local community,
520
00:28:26.160 --> 00:28:29.279
so the people that actually are around us. Then the
521
00:28:29.359 --> 00:28:31.759
metaphor there is the Douglas Fair Forest. I don't know
522
00:28:31.799 --> 00:28:34.880
if you've read Finding the Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard,
523
00:28:34.920 --> 00:28:37.559
but it's a wonderful book. It's about how Douglas Fair
524
00:28:37.599 --> 00:28:41.839
forests operate with the law of cooperation rather than competition.
525
00:28:42.039 --> 00:28:45.519
They used to kind of herbicide all the other trees
526
00:28:45.559 --> 00:28:47.960
apart from the Douglas Fairs, because they thought that the
527
00:28:48.319 --> 00:28:51.039
Douglas Firs were the cash crop and so they would
528
00:28:51.039 --> 00:28:53.200
get rid of all the competition. But what they found
529
00:28:53.240 --> 00:28:56.359
is that when they did spray all the other trees
530
00:28:56.519 --> 00:28:59.920
and bushes away when they killed them. That the Douglas
531
00:29:00.039 --> 00:29:03.480
fur trees themselves perished and did not thrive because of
532
00:29:03.519 --> 00:29:06.440
the my seal connections underground, they were working as a
533
00:29:06.480 --> 00:29:09.799
reciprocal village, and so it was like all for one
534
00:29:09.839 --> 00:29:11.839
and one for all. You know, the thriving of one
535
00:29:11.880 --> 00:29:13.640
is the thriving of all. The suffering of one is
536
00:29:13.640 --> 00:29:15.799
the suffering of all. And so we really use that
537
00:29:15.839 --> 00:29:19.880
metaphor to really think about reciprocity and cooperation and getting
538
00:29:19.920 --> 00:29:23.119
to know the people and that live around us, and
539
00:29:23.160 --> 00:29:25.480
also coming out of the mentality that so many of
540
00:29:25.519 --> 00:29:28.799
us have been really trained in about competing. There's only
541
00:29:28.920 --> 00:29:33.480
enough for some of our scarcity domination being better than
542
00:29:34.319 --> 00:29:37.440
and so yeah, that's just an example of two trees.
543
00:29:37.480 --> 00:29:39.720
But one is connection to self, the other is connection
544
00:29:39.799 --> 00:29:43.079
to community, and the connection to nature is just kind
545
00:29:43.079 --> 00:29:46.079
of all the way through it. So every month we're
546
00:29:46.160 --> 00:29:49.039
working with a different element of connectedness. But we meet
547
00:29:49.079 --> 00:29:51.640
the trees in these guided imagery journeys, which are these
548
00:29:51.640 --> 00:29:55.519
half an hour long form journeys with music, bespoke music
549
00:29:55.720 --> 00:29:58.400
set to them. The way we work with them is
550
00:29:59.039 --> 00:30:01.480
we can do this together in workshops or sometimes people
551
00:30:01.519 --> 00:30:03.519
just do it in their own time they listen to
552
00:30:03.599 --> 00:30:07.200
the recording, But that in all of the journeys, and
553
00:30:07.240 --> 00:30:09.839
we have twelve of them, one for every tree. The
554
00:30:09.920 --> 00:30:13.200
music starts, we close our eyes and we imagine the tree.
555
00:30:13.599 --> 00:30:15.480
We walk up to it, and we imagine sitting down
556
00:30:15.519 --> 00:30:18.640
with our back against it, and we feel our torso
557
00:30:18.920 --> 00:30:22.200
merge with the trunk of the tree, and we become
558
00:30:22.599 --> 00:30:25.519
the tree. And through this embodiment where we're breathing as
559
00:30:25.559 --> 00:30:28.240
the tree, we're imagining the roots going down, and we
560
00:30:28.319 --> 00:30:31.480
do this particular breath work technique where we're breathing up
561
00:30:31.519 --> 00:30:33.799
from the earth up through our bodies up to the
562
00:30:33.799 --> 00:30:36.359
crown of the human the crown of the tree, filling
563
00:30:36.359 --> 00:30:38.880
the sun on the crown, and then the breath goes
564
00:30:38.920 --> 00:30:42.680
back down again and we're really starting to embody this
565
00:30:42.759 --> 00:30:46.240
feeling of becoming more tree. So the way we work
566
00:30:46.279 --> 00:30:48.559
with these themes, it's not just in a cognitive way
567
00:30:48.599 --> 00:30:51.160
of thinking about you know what I was saying about
568
00:30:51.200 --> 00:30:53.400
the Rowan tree or the Douglas Fir treets, not just
569
00:30:53.400 --> 00:30:56.640
thinking about the ideas. We actually go into a subtly
570
00:30:56.680 --> 00:31:00.880
altered state and let the wisdom of that lesson grow
571
00:31:00.960 --> 00:31:03.480
through us, and so the insights people have feili they're
572
00:31:03.519 --> 00:31:06.519
very embodied in they're very visceral, and they stay with
573
00:31:06.640 --> 00:31:08.440
us longer than if we were just reading about it
574
00:31:08.480 --> 00:31:12.240
in a book. So we're letting connectedness kind of grow
575
00:31:12.359 --> 00:31:13.400
up through our bodies.
576
00:31:14.160 --> 00:31:16.240
I'm curious if a maple tree is one of your
577
00:31:16.240 --> 00:31:18.000
twelve well.
578
00:31:17.720 --> 00:31:19.640
The most important of all of them, although I suppose
579
00:31:19.680 --> 00:31:22.279
we can't say that, because it's yeah, each part is
580
00:31:22.319 --> 00:31:26.400
equally important. But the maple tree is what really led
581
00:31:26.400 --> 00:31:29.480
to the whole development of ASA, because I had an
582
00:31:29.519 --> 00:31:32.440
experience with a maple tree where I, for the first
583
00:31:32.440 --> 00:31:36.200
time in my life, as a materialist scientist, clinical psychologist
584
00:31:36.240 --> 00:31:40.680
trained in cognitive behavioral therapy, had an experience in a
585
00:31:40.839 --> 00:31:43.319
very painful moment of my life where I'd kind of
586
00:31:43.799 --> 00:31:47.240
floods of tears in the rain and the dark, leaning
587
00:31:47.279 --> 00:31:50.599
on this tree, which was a field maple, and having
588
00:31:50.599 --> 00:31:55.799
this incredibly profound experience of stealing the support of this
589
00:31:55.880 --> 00:32:01.359
tree and feeling this wisdom of this being, this animism,
590
00:32:01.920 --> 00:32:05.039
and this feeling of being hells And so that was
591
00:32:05.079 --> 00:32:08.200
where the whole thing came from. From that, the whole
592
00:32:08.440 --> 00:32:10.759
model became, you know, was born.
593
00:32:11.440 --> 00:32:14.400
Oh wonderful. I asked that because my wife and I, Sophie,
594
00:32:14.480 --> 00:32:16.559
we live in Badfield, very fortunate. We live in a
595
00:32:16.599 --> 00:32:19.720
small New England town on a very kind of bucolic street.
596
00:32:20.240 --> 00:32:23.599
Especially within you know, three or four hundred yards either
597
00:32:23.640 --> 00:32:27.880
way of our house is beautiful maple trees lying the street,
598
00:32:27.920 --> 00:32:30.759
two hundred to three hundred years old, big large old
599
00:32:30.799 --> 00:32:33.160
maple trees, and we just love walking along them. We
600
00:32:33.240 --> 00:32:36.039
often stop and connect with them and spend time with them.
601
00:32:36.079 --> 00:32:40.839
And yes, they're Queen's the maples. And also, of course
602
00:32:40.880 --> 00:32:42.960
the maple syrup is maple syrup is one of our
603
00:32:43.000 --> 00:32:46.319
metaphors because we talk about how through the process of
604
00:32:46.759 --> 00:32:49.680
our chemical processing, we can turn the mud at our
605
00:32:49.759 --> 00:32:53.440
roots into maple syrup like trees do. Trees maple trees
606
00:32:53.799 --> 00:32:56.559
take in the mud that they stand on and they
607
00:32:56.759 --> 00:32:59.079
bring it up through their bodies and they turn the
608
00:32:59.160 --> 00:33:01.200
mud into maple sana eu. And I think that's an
609
00:33:01.240 --> 00:33:05.559
amazing analogy for turning our suffering to growth, as psychedelics
610
00:33:05.599 --> 00:33:06.759
are so good at helping us do.
611
00:33:07.359 --> 00:33:10.240
That's a wonderful metaphor. Someone like the idea of the lotus,
612
00:33:10.240 --> 00:33:13.160
which you know blooms in the mud and so forth. Yeah, beautiful.
613
00:33:13.599 --> 00:33:15.519
I'd like to explore a little bit more of the
614
00:33:15.519 --> 00:33:19.039
other aspects of your ACER model, as in particular so
615
00:33:19.279 --> 00:33:22.920
acceptance and body and restore so accept I have said
616
00:33:22.920 --> 00:33:25.960
a lot to do with accepting ourselves, but in many dimensions,
617
00:33:26.000 --> 00:33:30.519
probably accepting one's pass what's one been through traumatic experiences,
618
00:33:30.559 --> 00:33:34.599
one's present circumstances, like grounding the way forward, the journey
619
00:33:34.599 --> 00:33:37.039
forwarder and some ground of acceptance that I'm wondering how
620
00:33:37.079 --> 00:33:39.400
you developed that in your community and through this model.
621
00:33:40.000 --> 00:33:43.119
So in our tree metaphor, the acceptance is this is
622
00:33:43.160 --> 00:33:46.640
our roots. And I think there's something very profound that
623
00:33:46.680 --> 00:33:51.720
happens when we de shame having a dark half. That
624
00:33:51.880 --> 00:33:54.079
a tree is a mirror image its roots and branches
625
00:33:54.119 --> 00:33:57.119
are a mirror image of each other, and that every
626
00:33:57.160 --> 00:33:59.799
centime to a growth at the branches is mirrored by
627
00:34:00.039 --> 00:34:03.319
growth down in the dark heart. And life is polarity.
628
00:34:03.440 --> 00:34:06.359
We have shadow cells, we have pain, we have things,
629
00:34:06.920 --> 00:34:10.239
we have traumastic experiences, like big rocks that our roots
630
00:34:10.239 --> 00:34:12.719
have had to grow around. And I think in life
631
00:34:12.840 --> 00:34:14.760
we so often try and pretend we don't have any
632
00:34:14.760 --> 00:34:17.360
of that, because roots are by their very nature very
633
00:34:17.679 --> 00:34:22.440
tangled and messy and muddy and hard, and we all
634
00:34:22.480 --> 00:34:25.000
stand like when you look at other people, I kind
635
00:34:25.000 --> 00:34:27.039
of almost see people as trees now, And I imagine
636
00:34:27.039 --> 00:34:29.920
that you know the side that you see the trunk
637
00:34:29.960 --> 00:34:32.679
and the branches, but you don't see the roots. But
638
00:34:32.719 --> 00:34:35.960
we all are standing on very complicated roots, and we
639
00:34:36.039 --> 00:34:38.440
have no idea what other people have been through, but
640
00:34:38.480 --> 00:34:40.480
we don't really show it to each other. So I
641
00:34:40.480 --> 00:34:43.440
think there's something about the sharing circles that we have
642
00:34:43.519 --> 00:34:46.840
in ASA. We have them after tree journeys, we have
643
00:34:46.960 --> 00:34:50.360
them all sorts of different sharing circles, and we're really
644
00:34:50.400 --> 00:34:56.199
normalizing practice of witnessing each other's tangled, messy, complex roots.
645
00:34:56.840 --> 00:34:59.199
And so in our sharing circles, we don't give any advice.
646
00:34:59.320 --> 00:35:01.639
We don't even give feedback. We just take it in
647
00:35:01.679 --> 00:35:05.920
turns to share, and we share about how things really are.
648
00:35:05.960 --> 00:35:07.840
We don't put on a brave face or pretend things
649
00:35:07.840 --> 00:35:14.239
are fine. People cry, people express frustration. People share about
650
00:35:14.280 --> 00:35:16.760
things that they've done that they feel guilty about. They
651
00:35:16.840 --> 00:35:19.280
share about an argument they just had where they said
652
00:35:19.320 --> 00:35:22.800
something terrible. They share about an experience they've had where
653
00:35:22.800 --> 00:35:26.639
they've really confronted a monstrous part of themselves or their shadow.
654
00:35:27.280 --> 00:35:30.440
We really normalize that sense of you know, we all
655
00:35:30.480 --> 00:35:33.719
have this, we all have this tangle that we grow from,
656
00:35:34.400 --> 00:35:36.840
and so I think by hearing each other talk about it,
657
00:35:36.840 --> 00:35:40.559
it really helps us feel more courageous to share about
658
00:35:40.599 --> 00:35:43.480
our own and to realize that is like the lotus
659
00:35:43.519 --> 00:35:45.599
and the mud of the maple syrup, that is where
660
00:35:45.679 --> 00:35:49.119
the change really comes from. So we work with it
661
00:35:49.199 --> 00:35:52.280
in breath work, in sharing circles, in the tree journeys.
662
00:35:52.519 --> 00:35:54.360
But I'd say more than all of that is this
663
00:35:54.519 --> 00:35:58.039
general approach in the community of we can be our real,
664
00:35:58.159 --> 00:36:02.239
authentic selves and we don't put put on any act,
665
00:36:02.320 --> 00:36:04.440
or we don't feel we need to pretend. And I
666
00:36:04.440 --> 00:36:06.840
think what's helpful about that is, you know, in our
667
00:36:06.880 --> 00:36:09.639
places of work or in our families, we have certain
668
00:36:09.719 --> 00:36:12.639
roles and there's certain expectations. But in the community of
669
00:36:12.639 --> 00:36:16.239
people that are all coming together because we're exploring psychedelics
670
00:36:16.800 --> 00:36:19.639
and we have a kind of commitment to really learning
671
00:36:19.719 --> 00:36:22.559
as much as we can, it's somehow easier to just
672
00:36:22.639 --> 00:36:27.159
really be there as just completely true and completely without pretense.
673
00:36:27.840 --> 00:36:30.920
And it's also easier online. I was unsure at first
674
00:36:30.920 --> 00:36:34.719
whether an online community would really work. I thought, maybe
675
00:36:34.719 --> 00:36:36.960
you know, would be better in person, but I really
676
00:36:37.000 --> 00:36:39.880
wanted it to be global and available to everyone. But
677
00:36:40.079 --> 00:36:45.039
it's interesting that zoom sharing circles. I've found them really
678
00:36:45.079 --> 00:36:47.320
because we're all in our own home environments, so we
679
00:36:47.400 --> 00:36:50.039
have our home comforts, we have a certain amount of
680
00:36:50.079 --> 00:36:52.800
kind of safety, and we see all these faces on
681
00:36:52.840 --> 00:36:55.280
the screen and you can really see each other's compassion
682
00:36:55.320 --> 00:36:57.880
and care and you can feel safe in that way.
683
00:36:58.039 --> 00:37:00.840
You feel held by this screen full of people, but
684
00:37:00.920 --> 00:37:03.639
it's not too overwhelming, and people know that at any
685
00:37:03.639 --> 00:37:05.440
point they can, you know, they could turn their camera
686
00:37:05.519 --> 00:37:08.199
off or leave. So I would I think that the
687
00:37:08.239 --> 00:37:11.079
depth of the sharing, it was quite profound and really
688
00:37:11.119 --> 00:37:15.079
helps with this the a the acceptance of emotion, accepts
689
00:37:15.119 --> 00:37:16.519
in each other's emotion as well.
690
00:37:16.960 --> 00:37:19.119
Yeah, to your last point there by accepting each other,
691
00:37:19.239 --> 00:37:21.559
I'm wondering, you know that acceptance kind of goes from
692
00:37:21.559 --> 00:37:24.079
the individual and is a collective because you know, we
693
00:37:24.159 --> 00:37:27.400
all have our individual history with traumatic experiences and the
694
00:37:27.559 --> 00:37:30.079
entanglements of the shadow, but you know, part of it
695
00:37:30.119 --> 00:37:32.440
as our family lineas that gets passed on to us
696
00:37:32.440 --> 00:37:35.960
in many ways, drect contact epigenetically and then we all
697
00:37:36.000 --> 00:37:39.800
share in our ethnic heritage, our nation's heritage, and then
698
00:37:39.840 --> 00:37:43.159
the human I mean, we're all sitting on this mysilium
699
00:37:43.280 --> 00:37:46.840
of human suffering in human trauma that's very interconnected and
700
00:37:46.920 --> 00:37:50.280
complex and entangled and so forth. So I'm wondering if
701
00:37:50.280 --> 00:37:53.360
there's some quality of you know, I mean, in some
702
00:37:53.400 --> 00:37:57.039
ways we would almost maybe individualistic and think, I wish
703
00:37:57.079 --> 00:37:59.400
I could be apart from that, not deal with all that,
704
00:37:59.440 --> 00:38:02.000
and have a more I had a positive birth, and
705
00:38:02.039 --> 00:38:04.280
I'm not exposed to all that. You know, I feel
706
00:38:04.320 --> 00:38:07.320
compassion for all those other suffering beings. But there could
707
00:38:07.400 --> 00:38:09.519
be a shift. Of course, I'm part of all that.
708
00:38:09.599 --> 00:38:11.519
Of course I'm exposed to all that. Why would I
709
00:38:11.599 --> 00:38:14.960
want to be separate. That is my community. It includes suffering.
710
00:38:15.400 --> 00:38:17.840
But you know, in some ways, the acceptance of suffering
711
00:38:18.000 --> 00:38:20.920
is the entry way into a broader community. So I'm
712
00:38:20.960 --> 00:38:23.719
curious about the individual and collective aspects of it.
713
00:38:24.199 --> 00:38:27.360
Interesting. Yeah, I mean I think that we certainly have
714
00:38:27.480 --> 00:38:30.480
had he been in the community that I'd say felt like,
715
00:38:30.480 --> 00:38:32.719
we have lots of therapists in the community, lots and
716
00:38:32.760 --> 00:38:36.480
lots of therapists SpaceHolders, and I would say that we
717
00:38:36.559 --> 00:38:38.960
have had some people who at the beginning of the
718
00:38:39.039 --> 00:38:41.960
journey have kind of yeah, like maybe there's been a
719
00:38:41.960 --> 00:38:44.960
bit of a distance of well, I'm okay, you know,
720
00:38:45.159 --> 00:38:47.480
I don't my patients. My clients have a lot of trauma,
721
00:38:47.559 --> 00:38:50.000
but I've had a sheltered life and I'm okay. And
722
00:38:50.039 --> 00:38:53.199
of course that may be true. But when we look
723
00:38:53.239 --> 00:38:55.119
at the times that we're in, and when we look
724
00:38:55.119 --> 00:38:57.440
at the predicament of humanity, when we look at the
725
00:38:57.440 --> 00:39:01.840
predicament of the living web and our biodiversity in our ecosystems,
726
00:39:01.920 --> 00:39:04.840
and we look at the injustices in our globe and
727
00:39:04.880 --> 00:39:08.360
the situations faced by so many people, we can no
728
00:39:08.440 --> 00:39:11.280
longer take that position of saying like, oh, I'm okay, thanks.
729
00:39:11.320 --> 00:39:15.800
It's like, okay, yeah, we are needing change, all of
730
00:39:15.880 --> 00:39:19.519
us together. And so I think when that shift happens
731
00:39:19.559 --> 00:39:22.760
and people start to really and I think psychedelics can
732
00:39:22.840 --> 00:39:25.079
open people up to the suffering of the world as well,
733
00:39:25.400 --> 00:39:28.480
really feeling the pain of others. And when that happens,
734
00:39:28.559 --> 00:39:31.199
then think, at first it can feel a bit overwhelming,
735
00:39:31.199 --> 00:39:34.920
like it's too much of a task, But then when
736
00:39:34.960 --> 00:39:39.360
we realize that being alive at this time is I think,
737
00:39:39.360 --> 00:39:42.400
in a way of privilege because there is such work
738
00:39:42.440 --> 00:39:46.800
to do and there is such change happening that you know,
739
00:39:46.880 --> 00:39:49.519
that whole question of like what's my value, what's my purpose?
740
00:39:50.000 --> 00:39:53.559
That existential question that people can have. I feel that
741
00:39:53.639 --> 00:39:55.559
now it's like, well, we all pull together and we
742
00:39:55.639 --> 00:39:58.639
do whatever we can do as part of this project
743
00:39:58.840 --> 00:40:03.119
of you know, connectedness, like opening up connectedness again for
744
00:40:03.280 --> 00:40:06.639
in small and large ways. So I think that people
745
00:40:07.360 --> 00:40:10.199
there is really a sense of like the project of
746
00:40:10.280 --> 00:40:12.679
the time, and that everybody wants to be involved in
747
00:40:12.719 --> 00:40:14.559
that in some small or big way, and that that
748
00:40:14.599 --> 00:40:16.559
gives people a lot of sense of meaning and purpose,
749
00:40:16.599 --> 00:40:20.519
and that in many ways that can be so much
750
00:40:20.559 --> 00:40:25.400
more fulfilling than ease and comfort. And we've had many
751
00:40:25.400 --> 00:40:28.119
decades of kind of numbing and ease and watching TV
752
00:40:28.360 --> 00:40:30.760
and you know, all of the things our culture gives
753
00:40:30.840 --> 00:40:33.719
us to keep us kind of distracted, and I don't
754
00:40:33.719 --> 00:40:35.559
think we've been that happy with that. I think there's
755
00:40:35.559 --> 00:40:38.440
a general sense of kind of there's an emptiness, there's
756
00:40:38.440 --> 00:40:41.559
a yearning for something, there's a longing for something, and
757
00:40:41.599 --> 00:40:43.679
that the times we're in now are connect to the
758
00:40:43.719 --> 00:40:46.440
collective and a pain and a collective we might have
759
00:40:46.519 --> 00:40:48.920
less comfort, and we might have more anxiety and more
760
00:40:48.960 --> 00:40:51.599
fear about the future, but we also have more of
761
00:40:51.639 --> 00:40:54.000
a sense of oh, I get it now. That's part
762
00:40:54.000 --> 00:40:56.519
of me that felt like I was maybe missing something.
763
00:40:56.960 --> 00:41:00.280
I know what that is now, and I think, yeah,
764
00:41:00.360 --> 00:41:03.519
to be beautiful as well as scary. To connect to the collectives.
765
00:41:03.000 --> 00:41:04.679
I'd like to explore just a little bit more of
766
00:41:04.679 --> 00:41:07.719
the embodiment aspect of your model. So you mentioned sort
767
00:41:07.760 --> 00:41:11.880
of literally physically connecting with trees and visualizing your connect
768
00:41:11.960 --> 00:41:14.440
in the trees and sort of becoming the tree, and
769
00:41:14.480 --> 00:41:17.639
you also mentioned the breath work that you do. Are
770
00:41:17.679 --> 00:41:20.920
there other types of embodiment practices that you do in
771
00:41:20.960 --> 00:41:24.599
the community to help people become more embodied, more connected
772
00:41:24.599 --> 00:41:27.480
to their body, And does that involve, you know, the
773
00:41:27.519 --> 00:41:30.159
conventional ways we connect with body, but also the more
774
00:41:30.480 --> 00:41:34.239
the landscape of introceptive awareness, like the really deep, energetic,
775
00:41:34.280 --> 00:41:35.840
sensate experience of the body.
776
00:41:36.360 --> 00:41:40.880
Yes. Yes, So we have a couple of different So
777
00:41:40.920 --> 00:41:44.239
we have one exercise called the Pearl Dive, which is
778
00:41:44.480 --> 00:41:48.280
very much about intraceptive awareness and diving into the deepest
779
00:41:48.360 --> 00:41:50.320
layers of the body and really getting a sense of
780
00:41:50.360 --> 00:41:53.039
the parts of the body that feel tense and height
781
00:41:53.440 --> 00:41:55.920
and leaning into these places, opening up to those places,
782
00:41:56.360 --> 00:41:59.039
and learning from them. So that's something we do as
783
00:41:59.039 --> 00:42:03.280
a whole community every few months. That is their standalone
784
00:42:03.480 --> 00:42:06.119
visualization that people can access from our website for free
785
00:42:06.119 --> 00:42:08.559
and they can use it with clients as well. It's
786
00:42:08.559 --> 00:42:11.000
called the Pearl Protocol. It's on my doctor Rosna watts
787
00:42:11.000 --> 00:42:13.800
dot com websites, and that gives people a chance to
788
00:42:13.880 --> 00:42:16.559
kind of test out these visualizations before they join as
789
00:42:16.719 --> 00:42:18.639
as well, to see if they kind of like the
790
00:42:18.679 --> 00:42:21.840
way they work. So that's one thing we do. We
791
00:42:21.920 --> 00:42:24.559
do dancing, as I mentioned before, we have these monthly dances.
792
00:42:24.639 --> 00:42:28.280
It's a kind of embodiment. But we also i'd say
793
00:42:28.280 --> 00:42:33.079
that the main thing is music meditation. Music is such
794
00:42:33.159 --> 00:42:39.519
a wonderful way to bypass mental control and go deep,
795
00:42:39.559 --> 00:42:44.079
deep into our visceral, embodied awareness. And so we have
796
00:42:44.760 --> 00:42:48.840
John Hopkins who's a musician an artist who's created lots
797
00:42:48.840 --> 00:42:54.280
of amazing psychedelic albums, incredible talent. He gave us, donated
798
00:42:54.360 --> 00:42:57.559
lots of his music for us to turn into music meditations.
799
00:42:58.679 --> 00:43:01.239
And we also have another musician who's created all these
800
00:43:01.239 --> 00:43:05.880
bespoke playlists. So we have lots of music meditations that
801
00:43:05.880 --> 00:43:09.840
aren't linked to trees, and some are short, some are long,
802
00:43:10.039 --> 00:43:12.079
but we get lots of feedback that they really help
803
00:43:12.119 --> 00:43:14.840
people cry, you know sometimes where you're carrying so much
804
00:43:14.840 --> 00:43:17.639
around with us and there's something like crying. It's this
805
00:43:17.760 --> 00:43:21.440
like physical release of tension and stress, and that it
806
00:43:21.480 --> 00:43:24.800
can be such a beautiful relieving experience to just sob
807
00:43:25.360 --> 00:43:29.159
and let all those layers of unligned I'm curious.
808
00:43:29.159 --> 00:43:32.320
So if you're employing Celtic music in your it's so interesting.
809
00:43:32.360 --> 00:43:35.880
So then the musician has just started now weaving in
810
00:43:35.920 --> 00:43:40.440
a little bit more. But it's it's interesting because thinking
811
00:43:40.440 --> 00:43:43.760
about kind of the spiritual chapters. In the sixties, there
812
00:43:43.800 --> 00:43:45.800
was this move to the East to India and lots
813
00:43:45.840 --> 00:43:48.440
of Indian music, and then in the times that we're
814
00:43:48.440 --> 00:43:52.760
in now, the spiritual gay's has gone towards the Amazon,
815
00:43:52.920 --> 00:43:55.760
and so we have lots of amazing ikeros and ceremony
816
00:43:55.800 --> 00:43:59.159
songs from Brazil or from Peru. And so for me,
817
00:43:59.440 --> 00:44:02.440
the music from India and the music from Peru, that music,
818
00:44:02.480 --> 00:44:05.760
for me feels really evocative because I have a muscle
819
00:44:05.800 --> 00:44:09.719
memory of this music being aligned with spiritual ideas. But
820
00:44:09.760 --> 00:44:12.760
when I listen to Celtic music because we have not
821
00:44:12.880 --> 00:44:17.199
yet turned our gaze to Britain or to yeah, the
822
00:44:17.280 --> 00:44:20.239
kind of the Celtic lands. I hear that music and
823
00:44:20.280 --> 00:44:23.599
it makes me think of other things. So I think
824
00:44:23.639 --> 00:44:25.920
that then there will be ways of weaving in some
825
00:44:26.000 --> 00:44:29.440
instruments and with some Celtic refrains and rhythms that I
826
00:44:29.440 --> 00:44:31.400
think it's going to take some refining. When I made
827
00:44:31.440 --> 00:44:34.840
a Spotify play list of Celtic music, it just it
828
00:44:34.880 --> 00:44:39.000
took me out of my kind of meditative medicine headspace
829
00:44:39.039 --> 00:44:41.119
and put me into wanting to do like a Kayley
830
00:44:41.280 --> 00:44:44.840
dance or go in kinds of Guinness in the local park.
831
00:44:45.440 --> 00:44:47.480
Right. No, it's very much part of your culture, so
832
00:44:47.519 --> 00:44:49.239
I can see how it would do that. It would
833
00:44:49.280 --> 00:44:52.519
be like, you know, other forms of popular music in
834
00:44:52.559 --> 00:44:55.119
North America, the West for us. But actually I love
835
00:44:55.159 --> 00:44:57.119
Celtic music, and when I listened to it, because I
836
00:44:57.119 --> 00:44:59.000
didn't grow up in a Celtic culture, even though I
837
00:44:59.039 --> 00:45:02.199
have that sic background, I'd find a very embodied kind
838
00:45:02.239 --> 00:45:04.239
of music, especially when it involves drumming.
839
00:45:04.719 --> 00:45:08.599
Drumming is incredibly I would love to include We've just
840
00:45:08.599 --> 00:45:11.840
started including woodwhittling in our community where we In fact,
841
00:45:11.840 --> 00:45:14.519
after this, I have wood whittling, where we take sticks
842
00:45:14.519 --> 00:45:16.840
from all the different trees and we engrave them into
843
00:45:17.039 --> 00:45:19.480
kind of almost like tarot cards. So we make a
844
00:45:19.559 --> 00:45:22.599
set well, but we use like rooms, so we make
845
00:45:22.599 --> 00:45:25.679
strics like that. Each one has a different meaning. So
846
00:45:25.760 --> 00:45:29.639
we've started woodwhittling, but I would love to include drumming
847
00:45:30.239 --> 00:45:32.360
at some point too. And I just don't know how
848
00:45:32.400 --> 00:45:34.079
we did drumming online. We're going to test out wood
849
00:45:34.079 --> 00:45:36.800
whittling online and see how that works. But drumming online,
850
00:45:36.840 --> 00:45:38.159
I don't think. I think you need to be in
851
00:45:38.199 --> 00:45:38.840
person for that.
852
00:45:38.800 --> 00:45:42.679
One could be difficult. Yeah, So what's your research in
853
00:45:42.719 --> 00:45:45.440
psilocybin when you're involved with the clinical trials and so forth.
854
00:45:45.480 --> 00:45:50.000
I know there's been very positive results, although the sustainability
855
00:45:50.000 --> 00:45:52.800
of the results sometimes can be in question. Like you know,
856
00:45:52.880 --> 00:45:56.760
maybe someone goes to psycholic assistant therapy with psilocybin and
857
00:45:56.960 --> 00:45:59.800
maybe it's depression free for six months or alonger, but
858
00:45:59.840 --> 00:46:03.360
then and it arises again. So I'm curious about the
859
00:46:03.360 --> 00:46:07.599
long term effects of psilocyber and therapy positive and negative,
860
00:46:07.599 --> 00:46:11.440
and also the sustainability of the benefits, and then how
861
00:46:11.519 --> 00:46:14.760
to how to sustain the benefits long term.
862
00:46:15.199 --> 00:46:17.599
Yes, I think one of the things I realized from
863
00:46:17.639 --> 00:46:20.519
working with people long term. So some of the participants
864
00:46:20.599 --> 00:46:23.519
in the First and Second Imperial Trials, so we're talking
865
00:46:23.519 --> 00:46:26.480
about like eight years ago, nine years ago now, are
866
00:46:26.559 --> 00:46:29.280
now they've been through the process of ASA and they're
867
00:46:29.280 --> 00:46:31.280
now facilitators with an ASS. So there are some people
868
00:46:31.320 --> 00:46:33.719
I've worked with for eight years and have seen their journey,
869
00:46:34.159 --> 00:46:36.000
but lots of other people I've stayed in contact with
870
00:46:36.079 --> 00:46:38.039
that I was a guide for in the studies as well,
871
00:46:38.079 --> 00:46:41.239
and so I've really seen the long term journey unfolding.
872
00:46:41.559 --> 00:46:43.840
We don't have data for it because the studies only
873
00:46:44.360 --> 00:46:47.679
record data up until like six months at the very latest.
874
00:46:48.039 --> 00:46:50.480
So this is all kind of informal. This is kind
875
00:46:50.480 --> 00:46:52.840
of case study based rather than something that's been written
876
00:46:52.920 --> 00:46:56.679
up in academic journals. But I think what I've realized
877
00:46:56.760 --> 00:47:01.199
is that psychedelic therapy doesn't really take away pain. It
878
00:47:01.239 --> 00:47:04.639
doesn't take away difficult experiences, It doesn't take away it's
879
00:47:04.679 --> 00:47:07.000
not going to stop you from going through really difficult
880
00:47:07.119 --> 00:47:10.679
times in life. Think about that seasonal analogy as well,
881
00:47:10.719 --> 00:47:12.840
of the darkness and the light and the winters and springs,
882
00:47:12.920 --> 00:47:16.199
it's not going to stop you having winters. So often
883
00:47:16.239 --> 00:47:19.440
people with depression they would have a psychedelic experience and
884
00:47:19.480 --> 00:47:21.119
they would feel like they kind of going to spring
885
00:47:21.159 --> 00:47:23.519
and summer for a while, and then it would fade
886
00:47:23.760 --> 00:47:28.039
into autumn and winter and then and sometimes people would
887
00:47:28.039 --> 00:47:29.760
stay in winter and the depression would come back. If
888
00:47:29.760 --> 00:47:31.960
there's no way that they can keep working in this way,
889
00:47:32.400 --> 00:47:35.320
but if they can access the breath work or an
890
00:47:35.360 --> 00:47:41.079
integration community or further sessions, then I think it's possible
891
00:47:41.159 --> 00:47:43.800
to come into a rhythm when they are they're also
892
00:47:43.840 --> 00:47:45.800
having springs and summers as well as winters, so to
893
00:47:45.840 --> 00:47:47.880
come into something that is more in the flow of
894
00:47:47.960 --> 00:47:51.519
nature rather than being stuck in a winter that never ends.
895
00:47:51.679 --> 00:47:54.360
But I think this idea that a psychedelic experience would
896
00:47:54.360 --> 00:47:57.039
take us to constant summer, which is the idea that
897
00:47:57.119 --> 00:47:59.639
some you know, our culture is quite in love with
898
00:47:59.679 --> 00:48:02.000
the idea of like constant summer and feeling happy all
899
00:48:02.039 --> 00:48:05.079
the time. And it certainly doesn't do that. It doesn't
900
00:48:05.119 --> 00:48:08.519
take away suffering, doesn't take away pain. I think what
901
00:48:08.559 --> 00:48:12.760
it can do is equip people with the tools to
902
00:48:12.800 --> 00:48:15.039
face their pain and to be with it and to
903
00:48:15.119 --> 00:48:18.320
learn from it, and it can help us be more open,
904
00:48:18.800 --> 00:48:21.159
more able to connect, and more able to connect with
905
00:48:21.199 --> 00:48:24.239
other people. And I think it's often those openings and
906
00:48:24.239 --> 00:48:27.480
those connections that it can bring that's what really helps
907
00:48:27.559 --> 00:48:31.719
us stay well through all the seasons, because we have
908
00:48:31.840 --> 00:48:35.119
more of a sense of being in a network of
909
00:48:35.159 --> 00:48:38.119
other people that we can share with. And I think
910
00:48:38.159 --> 00:48:41.159
the other thing that really helps, the thing that I
911
00:48:41.239 --> 00:48:44.320
really think is the real medicine. You know, people talk
912
00:48:44.320 --> 00:48:46.320
about the kind of the plant medicines, and yeah, I'm
913
00:48:46.519 --> 00:48:48.639
hugely grateful to the mushrooms and to all of the
914
00:48:48.719 --> 00:48:52.559
teachers and the trees, But I think one of the
915
00:48:52.599 --> 00:48:56.639
strongest medicines anyway is being able to give back. So
916
00:48:56.719 --> 00:49:00.719
when we are receiving lots of support, receiving care is wonderful,
917
00:49:01.400 --> 00:49:05.039
but the real joy comes when we are able to
918
00:49:05.440 --> 00:49:08.840
support somebody else. I think it's why AA is so effective,
919
00:49:08.880 --> 00:49:10.719
because you know, you go through your twelve steps and
920
00:49:10.760 --> 00:49:14.320
then you become somebody else's I can't remember the word
921
00:49:14.360 --> 00:49:19.119
for it. Sponsor. Someone comes to you and you're saying
922
00:49:19.480 --> 00:49:21.840
and you're you're in that position of like I know
923
00:49:22.039 --> 00:49:24.199
something here and I can help you, and it makes
924
00:49:24.199 --> 00:49:26.639
me feel good to help you. So the model of
925
00:49:26.679 --> 00:49:28.360
ASA is kind of based on the same thing. You
926
00:49:28.400 --> 00:49:31.039
go through the twelve these initially for yourself, although you're
927
00:49:31.039 --> 00:49:33.880
working with community connection and nature connection as well as
928
00:49:34.039 --> 00:49:38.039
self connection. But then in our second year you can
929
00:49:38.079 --> 00:49:41.440
either become a facilitator for ASA. You can apply at
930
00:49:41.519 --> 00:49:44.400
least to become a facilitator in our program, so you
931
00:49:44.440 --> 00:49:47.559
hold the sharing circles for new people coming in. But
932
00:49:47.599 --> 00:49:52.000
we also have these two in person community levels where
933
00:49:52.039 --> 00:49:56.159
people can be out graters. So we talk about integration,
934
00:49:56.360 --> 00:49:58.880
which is where you're bringing all the gifts in and
935
00:49:58.920 --> 00:50:02.800
you're bringing all the learning into yourself, and then outegration,
936
00:50:03.119 --> 00:50:05.360
where you share those gifts with other people in your
937
00:50:05.360 --> 00:50:08.440
local community. So we give people four of the tree
938
00:50:08.519 --> 00:50:12.000
journeys and some of the other resources, and they set
939
00:50:12.079 --> 00:50:14.960
up groups in their local community. Not of people that
940
00:50:15.000 --> 00:50:18.239
are necessarily taking psychedelics, although they can be, but it's
941
00:50:18.239 --> 00:50:21.199
often just people that live in the village or people
942
00:50:21.239 --> 00:50:23.719
that they're friends with and they go around to their
943
00:50:23.760 --> 00:50:27.159
house or the village hall or you know, some kind
944
00:50:27.199 --> 00:50:29.760
of center. It's all for free. We give the resources
945
00:50:29.760 --> 00:50:32.400
for free and people don't pay to do it, and
946
00:50:32.480 --> 00:50:35.440
they share these tree journey workshops with their local community.
947
00:50:36.079 --> 00:50:38.239
So that's one way, and the other way is we're
948
00:50:38.280 --> 00:50:41.360
starting to license the whole all of the twelve Tree
949
00:50:41.440 --> 00:50:44.639
materials to therapists that want to start their own in person,
950
00:50:44.719 --> 00:50:47.960
local ASA group. So by spreading the model that way,
951
00:50:48.519 --> 00:50:51.400
people get the chance to have received it, receive the
952
00:50:51.440 --> 00:50:54.159
wisdom from the trees and the gifts, and then it's
953
00:50:54.199 --> 00:50:56.519
offering it to other people. That really is the beauty.
954
00:50:56.679 --> 00:50:58.840
For many people, it's the most beautiful part.
955
00:50:59.440 --> 00:51:02.719
Absolutely, And I've always felt for a long long time
956
00:51:03.159 --> 00:51:05.559
some kind of service and I love the term autgration
957
00:51:05.960 --> 00:51:09.559
that the service aspect is so important to any kind
958
00:51:09.599 --> 00:51:13.280
of transformational healing journey and spiritual journey, and it seems
959
00:51:13.320 --> 00:51:15.960
like to be a natural culmination of those journeys. And
960
00:51:16.000 --> 00:51:17.840
I also love what you said. It seems like your
961
00:51:17.920 --> 00:51:21.599
view of this kind of recognizing the emotional seasonality of
962
00:51:21.639 --> 00:51:24.400
our lives is a much more realistic view of mental
963
00:51:24.400 --> 00:51:27.159
health and what you described as being stuck in an
964
00:51:27.280 --> 00:51:31.159
endless winter that is the way people experience depression. I
965
00:51:31.159 --> 00:51:33.679
think people would often describe it in that way, and
966
00:51:33.719 --> 00:51:35.760
of course we don't want to be stuck there. But
967
00:51:35.880 --> 00:51:38.159
the idea of imagining that we can be at an
968
00:51:38.239 --> 00:51:41.079
endless summer. I don't think it's particularly realistic or so
969
00:51:41.119 --> 00:51:44.440
healthy either. This has been really an illuminating conversation and
970
00:51:44.519 --> 00:51:47.440
so helpful for us. I think maybe just the final question,
971
00:51:47.480 --> 00:51:49.760
if you have any final reflection, just on the connection
972
00:51:50.599 --> 00:51:56.239
between mental health and nature, or human thriving and nature altogether.
973
00:51:56.840 --> 00:51:59.400
So I've written about this with my colleague Sam Gandhi.
974
00:51:59.400 --> 00:52:03.320
We've written papers on the kind of the synergy between psychedelics,
975
00:52:03.559 --> 00:52:07.000
nature connectedness, and mental health mental well being. I mean,
976
00:52:07.000 --> 00:52:09.440
we know that there is lots of research showing that
977
00:52:09.519 --> 00:52:12.400
nature connectedness is really good for mental health. But I
978
00:52:12.440 --> 00:52:15.719
think what many people don't realize is that nature is
979
00:52:15.719 --> 00:52:19.519
an incredible therapist. So I was talking to a colleague
980
00:52:19.559 --> 00:52:23.440
of mine, Adrian Harris, who's an ecotherapist, and he's telling
981
00:52:23.440 --> 00:52:25.000
me that when he goes out into nature with his
982
00:52:25.039 --> 00:52:28.360
individual clients, he says, you know, you do realize, don't
983
00:52:28.400 --> 00:52:30.679
you that you're working with the best therapist in the world.
984
00:52:31.239 --> 00:52:33.840
And now therapist is nature. I mean, fill me, it's nature.
985
00:52:33.880 --> 00:52:37.000
And when we go out into nature, whether our eye
986
00:52:37.039 --> 00:52:40.000
is open and an open heart and really ask questions,
987
00:52:40.679 --> 00:52:45.639
we can find so much wisdom reflected back. It's hard
988
00:52:45.639 --> 00:52:47.599
to really describe what I mean by it in this
989
00:52:47.760 --> 00:52:50.239
people have had a taste of it, But it feels
990
00:52:50.239 --> 00:52:52.719
like there is a reciprocal relationship and that nature is
991
00:52:52.760 --> 00:52:55.760
not just inanimate. Nature is not just a picture or
992
00:52:55.760 --> 00:53:00.800
a backdrop. Nature is a being holding us and interacting
993
00:53:00.840 --> 00:53:03.239
with us. And so I hope that there will be
994
00:53:03.280 --> 00:53:06.119
a real resurgence in nature based therapy, not just psychedelic
995
00:53:06.159 --> 00:53:11.199
integration or psychedelic therapy, but also just really understanding that
996
00:53:11.239 --> 00:53:14.280
the deeply healing therapeutic quality of nature and how nature
997
00:53:14.320 --> 00:53:17.000
can not just help us heal. And you know, walking
998
00:53:17.000 --> 00:53:19.440
on the earth, our bare feet on the earth, is
999
00:53:19.480 --> 00:53:22.559
so good for regulating our nervous systems, but also just
1000
00:53:22.639 --> 00:53:26.400
learning about ourselves as well. And I think the trees
1001
00:53:26.679 --> 00:53:30.719
are amazing friends. When you connect with the trees like
1002
00:53:30.760 --> 00:53:33.920
you've connected with your maples. Everywhere you go in the world,
1003
00:53:34.039 --> 00:53:37.280
there's friends there. And hugging a tree is such a cliche,
1004
00:53:37.360 --> 00:53:41.199
especially for the sixties psychedelic times, but hugging a tree
1005
00:53:41.360 --> 00:53:44.039
feeling heart to heart. You know, the center of the
1006
00:53:44.079 --> 00:53:46.840
tree is called the heartwood, and you put your heart
1007
00:53:46.960 --> 00:53:50.280
on the heartwood and really breathe with that tree, feeling
1008
00:53:50.280 --> 00:53:53.360
the reciproble connection that the tree's outbreath is your in breath,
1009
00:53:53.440 --> 00:53:55.920
and the trees in breath is your outbreath, the way
1010
00:53:55.920 --> 00:53:59.639
the oxygen and carbon dioxide work reciprocally, and just feeling
1011
00:53:59.679 --> 00:54:04.000
that it can be yeah, really life saving. And yeah,
1012
00:54:04.079 --> 00:54:07.079
I hope that maybe people listening this will maybe go
1013
00:54:07.159 --> 00:54:09.280
and hug a tree today if they don't feel to
1014
00:54:09.280 --> 00:54:10.400
spo embarrassed doing it.
1015
00:54:10.880 --> 00:54:12.800
Absolutely I think so. I don't think I ever made
1016
00:54:12.800 --> 00:54:15.199
fun of a triggers, but I certainly knew of that
1017
00:54:15.280 --> 00:54:18.119
expression as being a little bit not quite derighteous, but
1018
00:54:18.199 --> 00:54:20.039
a little bit making fun of. But I have become
1019
00:54:20.039 --> 00:54:23.079
a tree hummer. I'm a dedicated Tori Hoger today and
1020
00:54:23.119 --> 00:54:25.280
I'm inspired to go out and hug my maples when
1021
00:54:25.280 --> 00:54:28.119
we get done with this. So thank you very much.
1022
00:54:28.519 --> 00:54:31.599
This has really been joyful and illuminating, and thank you
1023
00:54:31.679 --> 00:54:34.159
so much for the amazing work that you're doing. Doctor
1024
00:54:34.280 --> 00:54:36.199
Roslin wats, thank you so much.
1025
00:54:36.840 --> 00:54:38.639
Thank you, Flee, thank you everyone for listening.
1026
00:54:39.079 --> 00:54:41.599
And where do people find out more about your work online?
1027
00:54:41.840 --> 00:54:46.480
So the website is ASA Integration, So that's Aceer Integration
1028
00:54:46.800 --> 00:54:49.400
all one word dot com and we have a weightlist
1029
00:54:49.440 --> 00:54:51.559
that people can join and they can get lots of
1030
00:54:51.639 --> 00:54:54.360
information about when we're next taking people in from that
1031
00:54:54.400 --> 00:54:56.840
weight list, and there's a little info pack that people
1032
00:54:56.840 --> 00:54:59.440
can request. So it's definitely worth signing up to the
1033
00:54:59.440 --> 00:55:01.480
mailing list the wait list because you get loads of
1034
00:55:01.519 --> 00:55:02.400
good free stuff.
1035
00:55:03.079 --> 00:55:04.639
And you also have your own website, don't you.
1036
00:55:05.000 --> 00:55:08.480
Yes, that's Dr Roslints dot com or one word and
1037
00:55:08.519 --> 00:55:12.000
that's where people can find the Pearl Dive audio journeys
1038
00:55:12.039 --> 00:55:13.599
and all sorts of other good stuff.
1039
00:55:14.079 --> 00:55:17.679
Okay, wonderful, wonderful. Well, thank you again so much. Please
1040
00:55:17.719 --> 00:55:19.440
be well and keep going with your work.
1041
00:55:19.840 --> 00:55:23.480
Oh, thank you you too, Thank you, thank you.
1042
00:55:23.400 --> 00:55:27.199
For joining me on the Radical Responsibility Podcast. Remember, real
1043
00:55:27.320 --> 00:55:29.840
change happens when we commit to our growth, face our
1044
00:55:29.920 --> 00:55:33.320
challenges with compassion, and stay open to transformation. If you
1045
00:55:33.440 --> 00:55:36.639
found this episode helpful, I encourage you to subscribe and
1046
00:55:36.719 --> 00:55:39.920
help us spread the message of healing and personal empowerment.
1047
00:55:40.000 --> 00:55:43.199
Stay grounded, stay present, and stay true to you. Take
1048
00:55:43.239 --> 00:55:43.480
care