บทถอดความฉบับเต็มของ EP117 Tripping without Guides: Best Practices for Psychedelics without a Sitter with guest Daniel Shankin

we quickly chose a date to pull together this episode for you. During the first set today, we will consider the differences between having a trip sitter or guide and going it alone or with friends. And then we will discuss best practices for going into your psychedelic trip with good mindset and setting. In the second set, we'll offer some tips on preparing for your trip, locations, and things to do while you're high. And during the 3rd set, we will discuss psychedelic integration, what that is, and how to make sure that you're able to bring your lessons in healing from psychedelics back into your daily life. There are two important notes about today's episode. 1st, I recently upgraded the Shapingfire Studio so all the episodes will sound even better than they already do. Alas, I thought that I had all the settings dialed in and tested, but I did not. At some point before we recorded, I hit the gain and threw it off significantly. Because of that, my voice was recorded too boldly and now clips a great deal throughout the entire episode. Daniel's voice sounds perfect though, but I don't sound so well. Our ShapingFire sound engineer did an excellent job making my voice listenable, but, yeah, you'll hear my voice sound crappy this episode. After a 171 podcast episodes of being my own sound technician, I was bound to make an error sometime, and and that is today. We have adjusted the gain and taped it in place now, so we shouldn't run into this again. So thanks for your patience with the sound of my voice today. 2nd, neither Daniel or I are doctors, and we certainly are not your therapist. This information is offered to add to your own research and discussions with your doctors. Please don't take today's episode as permission or instruction. Similarly, consult your local laws about any plans you may have when considering psilocybin therapy. Shaping Fire has a global audience and you are responsible for understanding the laws in your specific area. Welcome to Shaping Fire, Daniel. Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here. Speaker 0: I really appreciate you joining us. I know your time is valuable and I've been excited about doing this episode for a while. Now, before we get into it, let's go ahead and repeat some of the disclaimers that I already mentioned in the introduction because we want to make sure that we're all on the same page. My dear listener, we are not your doctor or your therapist and we don't know your personal situation. So, we're going to be speaking in generalities. So, don't be taking our insights as, you know, permission to do something at all. We encourage you to do your own homework, talk to your own doctor, talk to your own spiritual leader, and be aware of the legality wherever you live. Because I know that, you know, the audience is all around the world at this point, but here in the United States, you know, the psychedelics we're going to be talking about today are Schedule 1 drugs in most places or everywhere. So, you know, be really aware about the laws in your particular area. So, okay. So with that, so, Daniel, I wanna start with, kind of the kind of the opposite of what the episode about is about today. You know, today's episode is is primarily focusing on people who choose to do psychedelics either by themselves or with friends and not using a counselor or a facilitator involved. But I wanna make sure right off the bat that that we make sure people know that that we're not saying don't use a facilitator. For many people and for many goals, using a facilitator is exceptionally helpful, maybe even vital to their healing process. So, you know, you are a trainer of psychedelic facilitators. So so let's start out with that question. What are some of the good reasons to, to engage a psychedelic facilitator when someone chooses to do psychedelic healing? Speaker 1: Well, you well, you might want a certain level of care. Right? You might want a certain level of safety and care that maybe isn't available with just friends or family or by yourself. You might also want, when I say safety, I mean, of course, like physical safety. We don't want you running off into traffic, but maybe you want a like a psychological or emotional safety. As we know, psychedelics can really occasion catharsis. Right? People have emotional releases. They might have old memories resurface. And that might not be the kind of thing that you feel comfortable talking about with just like your buddy. But when you're with somebody who you've worked with for some time, you've built up kind of a therapeutic relationship and a certain amount of of rapport and you've already started to kind of like open the doors to the stuff that's, you know, in your closet, it might do you really well to go deeper into those places and that can allow a lot of stuff to come up and to be released and to be processed and to have somebody who's trained who knows how to hold space for that and knows how to reflect back and sort of guide you into like a proactive direction, can really come in handy. Speaker 0: For sure. We don't want to be in this situation where all of our walls are down and we're being very vulnerable and we're ready to do work on something that's really important to us, but we happen to be with somebody who isn't the sort of friend that we actually want to share those kind of intimate details with because, you know, if we're approaching these psychedelic modalities to heal, sometimes the healing looks like, you know, bringing up our some pretty sensitive secrets. Speaker 1: Yeah, it can be messy. Yeah. And that and it can even make things go weird. Like, I don't know if you've ever I'm sure your audience knows what it's like to sit on an uncomfortable secret. Mhmm. Right? Or to kind of have stuff that wants to come out and wants to be seen, but you don't feel safe. And maybe there's shame or maybe there's anxiety or whatever it is. And you can't share it and things can go sideways.

Like, people are like, what's wrong with you? What's going on? Like, the whole vibe gets weirder and weirder and weirder. So that can happen, right, if you're holding things back. On the flip side, I've talked to folks who have a lot of experience with, like let's just MDMA. Let's let's talk about MDMA, for example. And they've partied with it. They've gone to shows. They've gone to concerts. They've gone to, you know, good times with their friends in front of the fire. And it was just always a chill and a sweet time. And then they decided, hey, maybe I wanna do some more work. I'm already familiar with this molecule. I know how it acts and then you take them out of the one setting and you so we should probably talk a lot about set and setting tonight. So you take them out of this kind of friendly recreational setting and you put them in a therapeutic setting where the space is there for them and it's an entirely different medicine. And then all of a sudden this person can access things that again have been wanting to be seen and you know, things that have wanting wanting to be acknowledged and loved for years years years, it can finally come out because the space and the setting is there for them. Speaker 0: Excellent. And, yes, we will be we will be talking a lot about, set and setting here just in a little bit. The other thing I wanna hit before we move on about the good reasons, just some of the good reasons to use a facilitator, is that, a lot of people who are drawn to psychedelics have, you know, pretty serious preexisting issues that they're trying to sort out, whether it be, you know, schizophrenia or anxiety or psychosis or or a history of things that if you're going to try to go on a healing path such as this, it can get complex and perhaps even mentally dangerous quickly, and so you might want to have someone trained in these areas present instead of putting that weight of helping you in a crisis situation on your friends or just yourself. So I'm sure there's a host of those as well. Speaker 1: There's that. And then also, you know, we have the renaissance happening. Yeah. Right? Like, you know, like, come up is is going on. And what this means is that there are a whole lot of new people who may have never considered psychedelics before. Right? And so I'm guessing, you know, from from what I know about you and your audience and you know our mutual friend, Yeah. Daniel Hartrocks. Shout out Daniel Hartrocks. We've kind of grown up like these are heads who have grown up with psychedelic people and psychedelic friends and like you know, if I needed a friend of mine to sit for me, like, I can call somebody who's who I've known for some time, for years. And I'd be like, Hey, you know, I just I kinda wanna do this thing. Is it cool? Can you just, like, make sure I have tea and the music's playing and, like, I feel safe and stuff? And my buddy will be like, Cool, that sounds awesome. Will you do that for me next month? Right? Because we've been through it. But then you've got folks who are don't have that don't have that kind of community. They're coming from like, you know, middle class wherever. They're coming from 9 to fives. They're coming from straight laced family life. Yeah. And they're like, I don't know anybody. I don't have I don't have any community like that. And so, they kinda need some of that, you know, and a facilitator can kind of fill that role and also kind of, like, guide them into, like, the world of psychedelics, like the worldview of psychedelics. Speaker 0: Right on. So, my dear audience, we are in favor of using a facilitator when it's called for. But what we're gonna focus on today is, when you choose to do psychedelics without a clinician or a facilitator because, you know, we are in favor of facilitators, but often, you know, sometimes the price is very high, getting into the 1,000 of dollars. And sometimes folks don't want to take a psychedelic in a clinical environment and they they're not able to find a facilitator that does something not in a clinical environment, or perhaps they don't want to have the facilitator's energy mingling with themselves during the trip. And so there are, you know, there are good reasons to want a facilitator and there's also good reasons to choose to not use a facilitator. This little beginning of the show, the point is just to tell you that even though this show is about going it alone or with friends, this does not mean that we are discouraging the other. So I think we've hit that pretty well. Oh, do you wanna say something else on that, Daniel? Speaker 1: Yeah. And I also, again, you said the disclaimers. I just I wanna use the term sort of harm reduction. Right? And education and benefit maximization. Right? This is offered in the spirit of harm reduction. You know, this is and this is one strange man's opinion. So I I definitely suggest, you know, checking, you know, be like doing your homework and things like that. I'm gonna show up for you all the best I can. And and I'm excited about this because this could we can use this as like a resource in the future about, like, sort of friends and family or solo guide to this sort of work. Speaker 0: So That is that is exactly the goal. The the the Shaping Fire episodes are always quite evergreen so that they people can continue to use them over time. And, you know, sometimes we're talking about, you know, a handbook of growing cannabis or using cannabis or making medicine. And today we're talking about psychedelics. So, let's get right into it by talking about mindset and setting, which you have already brought up. It's pretty much the cornerstone of drug usage. And, I'd like to start with the first part, mindset. What are the some of the factors in coming to the psychedelic experience with a good mindset? We'll talk about setting in a couple of minutes. But let's focus on mindset first. What what what what do we wanna bring to the psychedelic experience for good for their

best practice results? Speaker 1: Well, can I take a step back and talk a little bit a bit about the history of set and setting? Speaker 0: For sure. Go for it. Speaker 1: So there was a time, like, way back in the fifties, when there were researchers who studied LSD as something that mimicked the experience of having psychosis. Right? They were like, Oh wow, this molecule creates a psychosis like experience for people. And so if we give it to them, they'll be psychotic for 8 hours and we can study that. And sure enough, they would give it to people and they would they would give it to people and they would go psychotic for 8 hours. And then they were shocked to meet, like, the hippies of Hate Street who had, you know, their velvet couches and their paisley shirts and their music and lava lamps and what have you and that their willingness to dance and to be groovy. And those people weren't going psychotic. They were having mystical experiences of love and oneness. And it was confusing and what the researchers realized is that this is dependent these molecules are dependent on set and setting like Advil for example works the same if you take it on the mountain or in the beach or in an office or on a plane and a train, you know, with a goat in a boat. Right? Yeah. So they kind of decided, oh, it probably just works like that. It just works the same. But what they found is that if you put somebody in a hospital and you strap them to a gurney and you put them under bright lights and you tell them they're gonna go psychotic and then you ask them really probing questions with a clipboard for 8 hours, they guess what? You get a psychotic person. Speaker 0: I might do that without I might go psychotic in that situation without drugs. Exactly. Speaker 1: Yeah. Right? And so there has been this exploration about what are optimal set and settings for particular results for for particular people. And like you were saying, that might freak me out even without drugs. Certain sets certain settings and certain sets are better for some people. Certain settings are better for other people, right? So there's no one size fits all. And so this journey, you know, hopefully if we're talking about healthy use, perhaps over time. Right? And that maybe we're going slow. Maybe we're starting with low dosages and and so on and so forth. But back to sentences, back to mindset. You're going to bring yourself with you into a psychedelic experience, right? So you're bringing you, right? And what they call psychedelics, for the most part, the true psychedelics, nonspecific amplifiers. And what nonspecific amplifier means is that it brings up the stuff that's already there in a lot of ways. And sometimes it's smooth. Sometimes it does add that love and connectivity, and that's really nice too. But people say, oh, it made me anxious or it made me afraid. Well, not real like, you have that in you already. It was bringing that up. It made me feel like I was garbage and I wasn't worth loving. Well, no, you've been carrying that around for decades. Now you get a chance to look at it. So educating people at least about that is a big deal. So people are not so And of course, people forget it, of course, all the time. But, if you can sit with people and kind of coach them on recognizing that that's one of the things that can possibly happen, that's important. So they're not so surprised when they come face to face with their own stuff, their own shadow, perhaps. What's also important to recognize is not only are you dealing with stuff that is potentially very, very old, but your recent environment and experiences play a part. Speaker 0: Mhmm. Speaker 1: So if you have been watching a lot of election news, you know, you've been watching a lot of, like, fear based news before your trip, that's not gonna help. If you've been watching horror movies, that's not gonna help. Although, if you watch the Lord of the Rings trilogy, that actually might help. Right? The hero's journey. Right? So you're tuning yourself you're tuning yourself into, like, archetypal forces. So, you know, a good good thing is that people often do to get ready is not only they they do various diets and so they might limit their food, they might eat cleaner food so that you don't have to process the food on the journey and deal with that whole thing. You might read more higher higher vibe literature, whatever that means for you. I was talking to a student yesterday and she was telling me that she really likes she there's a graveyard near her house that has a statue of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane and she reads the Bible and she listens to George Harrison. And that's like she knows that works for her. Mhmm. Right? And I'm not you know, I I don't have opinions on other people's religious. So that's just that's just her religious beliefs. That's her story. Mhmm. And it's nice. Right? Because it is certainly it's it's really high vibe for her. It puts her in a place of faith and it puts her in a place of love and connectivity. And for other people that might be, Tibetan bowls, right? Or or throat chanting or, you know, Vedic chanting or devotional chanting or things like that. But, you know, if we if we start to turn down the ordinary and the mundane and we start to turn up the vibrations that we want to resonate with, you know, higher vibration things that are in alignment with our intentions, that usually goes pretty well for people. Right? And this brings us to intention, perhaps. And we can still table it if you have more questions about sense setting. Speaker 0: Well, just one thing I wanna add too. I love I love the idea of of, you know, creating a mental environment that that you think is going to work for the kind of work you want to do, but I also generally like to point out to people to to be doing the psychedelic because you want to. Over the course of my life. I have certainly seen people be peer pressured into doing psychedelics because the rest

of the group was and to to make sure that you're doing it for for the right reasons that are that are your own in addition to, you know, removing the immediate, stressors that we were talking about. Speaker 1: Right. Oh, right. So, yeah, turn your phone off. Give yourself a dopamine break from your phone for sure. But when we talk about mindset, one of the key tools for mindset is, having a personal intention. Right? So like you were saying, man, know why you're doing it. Like, do it because you want to and know why you want to. Like, I'm doing this to heal this. I'm doing this to look at that. I'm doing this to become more in alignment with my romantic partner. I'm doing this to become more in alignment with the divine. You know, whatever it is. And then what I usually recommend to people is, whatever that intention is, is try to write it out sort of in like mantra form. And what I mean by that is is like short and sweet, right? You wouldn't want something. Oh, and I kind of want this and maybe I want that and the other thing that You want something like short and sweet that is gonna kind of cut through the noise. Right? So that you can focus your mind on it in a psychedelic state. Right? Some of our our most well known mantras in the West are psychedelically inspired. Things like be here now, right, by Ram Dass. Everybody knows be here now. That's a psychedelic intention. Let it be by the Beatles. Right? There's a story that says that the mother Mary that is referenced in let it be was Maria Sabina, the curandera from Mexico. Mexico. Right? Let It Be. And then, of course, we all know Doctor. Bronner is all 1 or none. Right? So these sorts of, like, short, sweet, like, poignant, like, cut through the noise intentions that we can use as an anchor that will root us in our minds when everything is swirling. Speaker 0: And if folks are hearing this and going, I'm not gonna do this woo woo stuff. I'm just gonna take the drug and go for it. I wanna encourage you that these types of intentional setups, they actually do work. And while to many people, this kind of internal awareness of intention might be dismissible, in this realm that you're about to play in, it is essential. And by creating this intention, you truly give direction to your mind and spirit of the direction that you wanna go. And having an intention and giving your mind and spirit a direction to go in is going to be far more effective in most cases than just going into it without an intention and just kind of like riding the Bronco whatever random direction it goes in. We're talking about best practices today and having intention is truly a cornerstone best practice. Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. I mean, do People can do what they want. You know, if somebody thinks that what we're saying is woo woo, I'm surprised that they're still listening. And I'm not I'm not really here to I'm not I'm not trying to sell it. You're right. Right. Alright. It's known. You know, you guys and what I would even suggest, my friends are try it both ways. You know? It's like run run an experiment, you know, and see how it goes. Report back. I'd love to hear. You know, do it a couple of different ways. Come to our we've got integration circles where people can come and talk about this stuff every week. Let me know how it goes. Speaker 0: Right on. The last thing I wanna touch on here in mindset, well, good mindset anyway, is, I think it's pretty important to have faith in your drugs. If if if your, if your psychedelic comes from a sketchy source and you're not sure what you're taking, that can come up at the worst times right as the psychedelic is coming on and you suddenly feel like it's brewing and it's about to come on and then suddenly you get this hit of adrenaline because now you're second guessing your source. And of course, any kind of drug, even if they're not psychedelics, you should know your source. But with psychedelics, since it's such a momentous experience, be sure to have faith in the quality and cleanliness of the psychedelic that you're using, because not only are there it's important for your personal health, but it's also important for your mindset. You can just kinda, like, check that box of safety off that that that that you don't have to worry about the veracity of of of the of the psychedelic that you're taking. Speaker 1: This is an interesting point. Yeah. So test your drugs, kids. Right? Go to DanceSafe. You can you can get drug tests. You can get test kits. I think if you go to my link tree on Instagram, like, I think, with, role kit, like, I'm an affiliate for role kit. You can you can get test kits there too. But we want to get as much sketchiness out of the thing as we out of the situation as we possibly can. Right? For those of us who kind of grew up under the kind of the shadow of the drug war, right? We knew that there was a lot of stigma. There was a lot of fear. We were worried about getting caught. We were worried about what would happen if people knew. There was all of this anxiety around that and also that ends up internalizing as self judgment. Oh, am I doing something wrong? And maybe on some level, we get off on doing something that's a little taboo, but on another level, like, it gets in there. And I don't know if any of you have had the chance to take psychedelics in Colorado since it's been decriminalized, but it's kind of a whole different thing. Because that kind of worry and those belief systems that are kind of cultural and we've been carrying them around in our in our, subculture for some time, that's starting to get cleaned up. And people are starting to be able to have freer experiences where they are not worried about being caught or being judged or things like that. But part of that means is that you potentially have an opportunity to cultivate relationships with people in a new way where it's not surreptitious and it's not under a bridge and you can, you know, I got pals who were on Instagram saying,

hey, please come learn how to microdose. I'll give you a month's supply. Right? It's it's wild. They're in Colorado. And so, like, that's hopefully gonna become more and more of the norm where people can feel, free and confident and peaceful around the fact that they are exercising their cognitive liberty. Speaker 0: Right on. So, I want to touch on briefly some of the factors that would constitute, like, maybe a challenging mindset. Like, I already mentioned one earlier, the feeling of being pressured, like you're being peer pressured to do it because, you know, your other people in your life are doing it and they're kind of dragging you into it when you're not ready. What might be another, you know, 1 or 2 mindsets that are challenging that you might caution folks to take a psychedelics during that period of their life? Speaker 1: Well, are you fighting with your girl? Did you just lose your job? Do you not have housing? Do you not have safe housing? Did your electricity get turned off? Have you not been eating well? These kinds of things. Yeah. So, you know, you would want there's like a Maslow's hierarchy. So you definitely want, like, your basic safety needs taken care of. Right. So that kind of thing. You would want your relationships, you know, relatively speaking, to be in a fairly good spot. You know, you'd want a certain amount of space in your work life, Right? You wouldn't want to have to be on the phone right up until you took the medicine and then be on the phone right as it wears down. Right? That would be stressful, especially if it's a stressful thing Yeah. Going on at work. So these kinds of pressure. Right? So it's interesting because your podcast is called Shaping Fire. And I'm really interested in the idea of shape. Right? From, like, a somatic perspective. Mhmm. Right? So you're you're familiar do you think your people are familiar with the term somatic? Speaker 0: Sure. But not everybody. So go right ahead and fill it in. Speaker 1: So somatic is a Greek term. It means the living body in its wholeness. And so it means that we're this holistic organism, this mind, body, nervous system thing entity break personality, whole this whole thing and this whole thing is a whole thing. And it is expressed through the body, right? So so one of the ideas of of of somatic kind of theory philosophy is that your entire your body is a representation of your entire history. Right? Everything that has happened to you is smudged on your body like clay in some ways. So the way that you walk, the way that you hold yourself, the way that you react under stress and pressure. Right? This has been developed over years, Right? Through, through your experience. Right? And the way people work in the world. And then what's interesting is that once you're shaped, you then shape the world that way and then you shape your own experience. Because let's say somebody feels like they're not worthy of love. Like, they have that deep belief. I'm not worthy of love. I don't deserve it. There isn't enough love out there for me. Well, you can imagine how somebody who believes that deep in their soul since they were, like, 5 years old might walk through the world and hold themselves in their body. Mhmm. It's gonna be very different. Like, you could put 2 people and somebody who's like, I'm definitely worthy of love. Like, I'm full of love. I've loved to give. I'm open to receive love. I know it's it's the best stuff in the world. Mhmm. I love my friends. I love my family. They love me. I know it. And you put those 2 people next to each other and you tell them, just stand neutral. You can tell who's who. It'd be obvious. Mhmm. Right? And so then the way those people move through the world is gonna be different. Right? And so the person who doesn't believe they're worthy of love is going to act in ways that reinforce that. And the person who believes that they are worthy of love is gonna act in ways that reinforces that. And then they're gonna get more of what they've been getting because they keep doing what they're doing. And so what we are trying to do is, what was the question? How did I get to this? I love talking about this. Shaping fire. We're shaping ourselves. What was your I'm sorry. I'm paying. Speaker 0: We had started on the factors that constitute a challenging mindset, a time that you maybe wouldn't wanna do psychedelics. Speaker 1: Right. So relatively So like, hopefully, we're in in decent relationships relatively speaking. Mhmm. Right? And we're able to kind of show up in a way that is present and available to receive the medicine. Right? And I'm still trying to figure out what that has to do with shape, but we are going to start to be able to see our shape in a new way. Right? And if we are constantly tense and stressed, right, we're gonna wear that and we're gonna have to spend time kind of like unwinding that. Whereas, like, maybe if you've been doing some yoga, you've been opening up your body, you've been taking care of it. Like like the body the the body set is as important as the mindset, I guess, is what I'm trying to get at. And so, yeah. So when we're looking at challenging experiences, sometimes we do need a reset, I guess, is what I'm getting at. Right? So sometimes people like, I've tried everything. I'm in a bad place and I something's gotta change and something's gotta change now. Yeah. Like, sometimes people have to come to psychedelics like that, but hopefully, you can still carve out enough space. Right? That's another somatic word. Space. So that you can embody the space in its fullness and be present for it, be open, and not have to worry about the pressures of the world shaping you in such a way that you can't. You can't stand up straight in the open. Speaker 0: Right on. So that was the mindset and we've been talking about the cornerstone of psychedelcustis, which is mindset and setting. So, so now, let's talk a little bit about setting, which is, you know, often a

little easier to make good than the mindset part. So, since you are the educator in this area, let's why don't we I'll start by sending giving you a general question here. What are some of the factors in establishing a good setting for doing psychedelics? Speaker 1: It should probably be sweet. Right? Let's just let's start let's let's radiate out from the word sweet. Right? It should be sweet and nice and comfortable and safe. Right? And not too overwrought. Although sometimes people, depending on the molecule, sometimes people like overwrought. You know, it's like we know what like the LSD hippies of the sixties, how they decorated their spaces, right? They liked a lot of stuff that was very vibrant and alive, and and that's kind of fun. Sometimes it's a little bubblegummy for some people, but sometimes it's really fun. Right? And then, you know, sometimes for depending on the molecule, sometimes psilocybin, people spend most of their time just inside, Right? Like, with their eyes closed. Mhmm. Right? If they're journeying inward, it makes, it's less of an issue. One thing we do know for sure, it should be neat and clean. Right? So we want something that's neat and clean and, you know, has a ceremonial energy to it in some ways, depending on whatever that means for you. You know, a sense of perhaps sacredness. Right? So you might want to think about, again, like, where is your head at and what are you trying to create? Like, if you create more of a temple atmosphere, you might have more of a temple experience. Right? If you have just sort of a very, clean, minimal kind of experience, well, there's maybe not a lot for the mind to project onto, and it encourages the mind to go inside. But some of the things that I might say is you decorate it however you want and you talk to, you know, you talk to your friends about that. And, you know, maybe you want a picture of your kids. Maybe you want a picture of your parents. Maybe you want a picture of yourself as a kid, depending on what you wanna work on. Maybe you want people who are inspiring to you. But, you know, what what is kind of important is that it's a container. Right? You kinda don't really want strangers wandering in. Right? You want it to be neat and clean and, in many cases, simple, in many cases, ceremonial. And you want to kinda be sure that you're not gonna be bothered because that can be, unpleasant. Speaker 0: Right? Yeah. An intrusive, unexpected person suddenly can really change the direction, not only because we might have to, for a moment, try to present ourselves as, you know, sober and regular when we're actually having, you know, a pretty heavy duty breakthrough moment and suddenly we have to fake it for somebody, that can that can get messy, especially if that person will be bothered if they figure out that we're on psychedelics. So, you know, being being in a good location, a safe location that feels safe is pretty essential and and I would also include some of the biological needs too. You know, a source of water, a bathroom, somewhere where there's not gonna be any threats. And some of the other things that I've recommended to people include a notepad and a pen, art supplies, you know, soft blankets to soothe your nervous system, trippy items, and sometimes movies that are your favorite. For me, I have always been very focused on nature. I'm not really an indoor psychedelics person. I'm a get outside where I know that there's not gonna be anybody around and then, you know, start looking at bugs and mycelium and the weird the sun glistening off the waves and things like that. But everybody has their own their own style of of what, you know, creates that that vessel or that that safe space for them. And and it's it is really worth thinking about it in advance and writing yourself some notes and kind of like you're planning a vacation for yourself so that when you do, when you do take the psychedelic, it's like, Oh, somebody who really cares about me planned this experience for me and the person who cares about you is yourself. Speaker 1: Yes. And I do want to just note that it might be different depending on your dosage. Right. So people might microdose and then just go about their daily life. Right. Right. Because it's it's sub perceptual. And then there is things that slightly up from there, you know, is maybe sometimes called the hycro dose where people are taking maybe, you know, a little bit more than a microdose to kind of make the, you know, the leaves shimmer a little, but they're not their cognition isn't impaired that much or sometimes called a museum dose. Right? This kind of dose where you would feel comfortable going to a museum. Right? Maybe a little bit. Maybe you take a little bit more to go to a concert. Right? Or maybe depending on how you roll, maybe you're taking quite a bit more to go to a concert And then maybe we're going towards something approaching heroic. Speaker 0: Mhmm. Speaker 1: Right? Where being out in public wouldn't do it all. Right? And maybe you could be in a campground in nature or things like that, but you would probably really want someone to look out for you a bit. Right? Like, if you're in a again, depending on dosage. And this is why the general wisdom says start low and go slow. Speaker 0: Yeah. Speaker 1: Right? So it's like, okay. I know that, like, if I do like, I can pretty much manage. I can make a fire and not burn myself on this amount of this. But, you know, if I'm really gonna melt down, you know, maybe somebody wants to watch me if there's a river rushing by. Speaker 0: Mhmm. Speaker 1: You know, because I might need them to tell me that, like, I'm not a fish. Speaker 0: Yeah. This might not be the best time to go for a swim, my friend. Why don't we come on back over here for a little bit and look at the water or whatever? Yeah. Speaker 1: And this is also this brings us to, you know, regardless of, you know, it's hard to do this by yourself, but if

you're gonna do this with with other people, having some ground rules and agreements, You know, that's also good that when we're talking about containers, right, it's sort of like ethical and relational containers of, you know, that we're all going to we're all agreeing that we're staying in this area. Whether we're staying in this house or we're staying in this backyard, we're staying in this campsite, we're staying here for this time. You know, we're we're gonna agree that for this time, we're gonna keep our clothes on, you know, or not depending on how you party. Right? Right. But, you know, we're not nobody's going to, you know, there's a good nobody's gonna try and sleep with anybody. Nobody's gonna cause any physical harm to anybody. Speaker 0: One one of the popular ones in with my friends is no one's going to turn on their phone or make a phone call. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 0: Okay. Occasionally, we will need to use our phones because you're trying to tell a story and you really need some data point that might be on your phone, you know, like, Oh, what was that place called? Or whatever. I wanna show you this picture or whatever, which can all be fun. But for goodness sakes, you know, don't place calls or answer calls. Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that kind of thing. Speaker 0: Alright. So, let's go ahead and take our first break and when we come back, we're gonna talk a little bit more about preparing yourself physically and mentally in advance of the psychedelic experience. So, you are listening to Shaping Fire and my guest today is psychedelic integration coach, Daniel Schenken. Now without these advertisers, Shaping Fire would not happen. So please support them and let them know that you heard them on Shapingfire. Fish poop brand fertilizer is an all natural fish poop concentrate with nothing added. Real fish poop is extraordinarily complex. 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Advertising does not have to be all whiz bang, smoke, and mirrors. Nowadays, I find that people prefer just to be spoken to calmly, accurately, and with good intentions. If you want to make your own commercial spot well, you can do that too. During these pandemic days, conventions and cannabis events are pretty poorly attended, but podcast listening is skyrocketing. With a commercial on ShapingFire, you'll reach your customers in the privacy of their headphones right now and will continue to reach new listeners as they explore the Shaping Fire back catalog of episodes again and again for years. A spot on Shaping Fire costs less than a printed postcard per person, and the Shaping Fire audience is full of smart cannabis enthusiasts, cultivators, and entrepreneurs who are always curious to learn. Do yourself a solid and contact us today for rates on podcast and Instagram advertising. Email hotspotshapingfire.com to find out more. Welcome back. You are listening to Shaping Fire. I am your host, Shango Los, and my guest today is psychedelic integration coach, Daniel Schenken. So during the first set, we talked a lot about the mindset and the setting, things that you definitely want to consider in advance. You know, we have we talked a lot during the first set about how planning in advance is really a way to improve the likelihood that you'll have a good and valuable and meaningful healing psychedelic experience. And we're going to be talking a lot about that again here in 2nd set, but in a little different sort of detail. So, let's start, Daniel, by I wanna hit on something that you touched on briefly, but I wanna I wanna drive it home a little bit more, the physicality of it. You had mentioned that, you know, bringing a good calm body to the psychedelic experience can be really helpful and I totally agree. But I also want to illustrate that a little bit more. For example, you know, there are depending on which molecule that you take, most of them will encourage your body to void itself. And so, one thing that people that I've worked with, including myself, have found value in over the years is to take a little psyllium husk the morning the day before in the morning so that whatever you may have eaten that is heavy, you know, maybe you had some steak or a burger or, you know, jalapeno poppers or something like that that can sit in your gut. And sometimes, during the digestion, that can take your attention can come away from the work that you're trying to do and start thinking about, like, the functioning of your body. And so, make sure you're really hydrated as well because, so, I mean, very often when we're having a psychedelic experience, we will actually forget to drink water, which is one of the good reasons to do psychedelics with friends because everybody can kind of help babysit each other to make sure that you are, you know, getting enough water and such. So, in addition to the yoga and the two things that I just mentioned, Daniel, do you have

any other physical things to kind of round out that that that group of ideas? Speaker 1: I mean, that's pretty good. I mean, you could also kind of just refrain from eating jalapeno poppers for a couple of days ahead of time. Mhmm. That could work. You might want to oh, I was once working with a guy who had his first psychedelic experience, on a camping trip, you know, and he had a friend with him and they had an RV. And when he came back, he said to me, in all seriousness, good set and setting starts with clean socks. Right? Because he had been out in the woods, and he has he the clothes he was wearing was were filthy. And it he really felt it. You know, something that you might not notice if you are just drinking a couple of beers becomes very obvious on, you know, 3 to 5 grams of mushrooms. Speaker 0: It is interesting how messiness and filth and anything that's gross is gonna be usually really gross. And I'm not sure why. And it certainly isn't, you know, for everybody. There are certainly people who can get really curious about messy, gross things as well. But for whatever reason, the people I've interacted with and myself, we generally want to be comfortable and clean and orderly and, you know, just generally happy of body and spirit. Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, being curious about gross stuff and being covered in gross stuff are definitely 2 different things. Speaker 0: Yeah, that's a good point. Speaker 1: And, you know, we could we could make all kinds of kind of cosmic, high woo ideas about why that is. But, you know, it's it's pretty much so. Mhmm. Speaker 0: Let's talk a little bit about, the kind of preparations to make additionally, if you're going to do this experience with friends. And for me, I'm I'm very grateful that when I got turned on to psychedelics in college, it was in a peer group of people. And so, you know, most of my first experiences were, you know, 3 to 7 people and we had a big forest next to my university and off we would go. And we would have these fantastic days and come back exhausted and dirty and take showers and then, you know, kind of have this afterglow period in the evening. The first the first thing with friends that I'll get us started with is to, you know, kind of work with everybody to compare your plans and your locations because if you all get together on the day of your experience and you have different intentions, either, A, some people might have some hard feelings about it, which isn't a great way to go into an experience, or which can sometimes be equally as as detrimental, your original fellowship, if you will, of people who are gonna be together. People wanna do different things and so they split off. And so, your group of 6 comes off into a 3, a 2, and a 1. And, that's gonna be a very different experience than if everybody has a shared plan. Another one is, and I'm hoping maybe you speak to this a little bit, Daniel, is we always had like an emergency signal or word. And not emergency, meaning like there's danger. It was usually a signal or word that meant I could there is a moment that I really could use you to pull your shit together for a moment so we can talk about something that's, like, somewhat relevant or serious for a moment. Like, can can I get your attention? And, you know, I've never really found a really good way to talk about that with people, to to to delineate between, like, a safe word for an emergency and a signal that I need your attention. How would how would you go about that with folks? Speaker 1: I like that. That's really interesting. And before we get to that, because I'm gonna think about that in the background while I mentioned this. Speaker 0: Alright. Speaker 1: There's been a phenomenon recently. Right? So you grew up with your friends and they were your friends and you did psychedelics with your friends and that's that works because they're your friends. So recently, more and more people are coming into the psychedelic space and they're not even kids. They're grown ups, right? So they're adults. You know, they're not teenagers or college kids or whatever. They're they're these adults And there was a and they're interested and they're curious and they're excited about this. Also, then there was a pandemic, right? Which means that people were kind of isolated. And it also meant that people were becoming friendly with people from all over the place on Zoom that they didn't actually know. Right? And then they think because they've had, you know, a half a dozen Zoom whatevers with these people, that their soul family. Speaker 0: Mhmm. Speaker 1: And they get together and they take psychedelics together and they realize really quickly that they're not. And so, you know, people kind of take for granted, real relationship and real connection. You know, the ability to kind of like smell somebody, you know, to know what your friends smell like, to kind of be there when you are weird together at a restaurant. You know, like like all of these kinds of things that are really, intimate relationship things that are missing because you just log in with somebody for an hour or something and you're on like a group signal chat with them. Group WhatsApp group, right? And that's different than being in an intimate psychedelic space with people. So you want to actually be careful, perhaps about like who you're doing this with. Like, are these really your friends? Like, is is there a container? Are there agreements? Do you have a plan? Like and that can help create an intentionality that can help build that bond. Right? But to do it kind of off the cuff and loose and pretend do it like a pretend ceremony. Because what I see sometimes is people like, oh, I've been to ceremonies. I know how they work and, like, it was good, but, you know, we're we're just gonna be chill and we don't actually need to have the group agreements and we don't need to kind of ring the bell and set the circle or whatever it is because we I've done that

before. We have to do it. You have to do it every time. Yeah. Right? Like, it's it's a practice. It would be like, I don't need to breathe today. I breathed yesterday. Mhmm. And so, you know, keeping in mind, you know, are your friends really your friends? Like, are you setting the stage properly? And do you have the agreements? So as far as this thing where you're having, safe words and things like that, I mean, this comes back to, like, do you do you know your people? Because I sort of feel like, with my friends who are really my friends, I can communicate an awful lot with a cough, a pause or a side eye. Right? Like if I need something like I can just, you know, I can kind of look out of the corner of my eye at my buddy and go like. You know, and he'll be like, hey, Dan, you know, I let let me show you something over here in the kitchen. Yeah. You know? And then and then we can have a thing. But, you know, I like the idea that, like, it just introducing that is a great idea. And I think the really the theme here is, making things explicit. Speaker 0: Mhmm. Right? We all have a very transparent Yeah. Speaker 1: Yeah. Clear, transparent, explicit. We all have a lot of assumptions about how the thing was supposed to go. And, you know, are they the same assumptions? Speaker 0: Yeah. And, you know, as we have talked about where, you know, your ceremony is your ceremony, Marni, that you designed and and and your environment is your environment. The same thing would be the safe word or the signal. And since I have some experience with this, I will also take it a step further and say, in my experience, we have found that safe words are easily forgotten and sometimes a safe hand signal is more easily remembered. And one of the ones that I used to use back when I was a young man was we decided that thumbs up was not a good one because we did thumbs up often just to be happy. And thumbs down, well, that's not really good because that kind of sets off your adrenaline. And so, what we would do is we would actually do like, horizontal thumbs pointed out and we just put like the sides of our hands together. And it's kind of a fun hand motion to make and anybody in the group who saw it knew exactly what this hand motion meant. And, a good example of it where where I was not trying to well, actually, it wasn't me who was giving the sign, but in in this is my story. We want to get attention and we want people to pay attention, but we don't necessarily want to give people the idea that there's something dangerous and and maybe influence their trip. And and a good example was that, one of our friends stepped on was barefoot and she stepped on some glass. And she needed just some basic first aid. And it was something that we could provide within our group because we were all kind of outdoorsy people. Right? So we all had our 10 essentials with us when we were out in the forest. But we wanted to come together to heal our friend. We didn't want our other friends to

drift off in the forest. And we kind of wanted to work together to apply the first aid. Right? Because, you know, when you're on psychedelics, things are a little odd to think through. And so, she gave us the hand signal and we all came together and we're like, Hey, what's up? You know? And then she showed us and we were all kind of like a moment like, Oh, blood. Which and so, but then we all just kind of sat down together and we we, you know, went through the steps. We cleaned the wound. We bandaged it. We chatted with her so she understood that this was not the end of her good trip and things were still fine and she was safe and we were with her. And we were gonna slightly change our plan about how far we were gonna walk so so she didn't feel, you know. But it was all as soon as we all saw the hand motion, we all understood that, Oh, we all need to come together for, like, a little meeting. And, and I recommend that people include that when when they're working with a group. Speaker 1: I dig it. I dig it. And what you're reminding me of actually is Disney World. Oh. Speaker 0: There's a there's a non sequitur. This should be good. Speaker 1: Yeah. It's, so what they have now, like, I I haven't been to Disneyland in forever since I was a little guy. But now they get to give you like these wristbands with microchips in them. Right? Until I get on the rides and to get in everything, you just kind of swipe your wristband. And then what they realize is like like if the wristband works, right, like it flashes green. It's like, okay, you paid for your meal. Green. If the wristband isn't working or like you're trying to go somewhere you're not supposed to go, it flashes blue, I believe, because red is too dangerous. Oh. Like, they don't want they feel like they decided that red would harsh people's mellow too much. Speaker 0: I I grok that. Yeah. Speaker 1: And, I just say I think it's really funny that, you know, you don't want the hand signal to be too Alerting. Intense. Yeah. Too alarming. Speaker 0: Alarming. Yeah. That's a better word. Yeah. We just want your attention. Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's like, sure. We know how to, like, bandage a simple wound. This is the most natural thing. We're just friends taking care of friends. Yep. And that's an attitude that, you know, and if there's any, you know, guides listening as well, that, you know, we wanna take an attitude of, like, this is the most natural thing. Things are okay. We're just folks hanging out. Speaker 0: And honestly, it ended up being a very beautiful experience. I mean, the there were 5 of us on this day, and, it was the 5 of us working together to heal one of the 5 of us and all kind of gently speaking with each other and doing the first aid and giving her healing, like, conversation at the same time. It probably was healing things in us at the same time as we were giving her first aid. Like healing us in the sense of we're doing a psychedelic experience to heal emotional wounds or whatever. Us coming together, I'm sure we were all, you know, getting good stuff out of that. I mean, to the point that I remember it now, like what, 40 years later. Speaker 1: Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, just to know, like the experience of competence and care, Right? Of like I can we can do this. We are people who take care of each other and love one another and we show up for each other and do what needs to be done. You know? Because like it's a it'll it's a little thing. It's a little band aid, but you know, on the right molecule like that's an epic quest. You know, even though we're saying, oh yeah, it's chill. Everything's cool. Like you know, we make things big in our minds. Yeah, and you know, healing our friends. You know, is a big deal. Like it's the most, it's the biggest deal there can be really. Speaker 0: Yeah. It's like at the core of being human. Yeah. 1 of the other things that tends to happen is, you know, very often people will get separated one way or another. And, it's kind of a toss-up with who the people that you're doing it with because we all have cell phones. And so, if we get separated, it is easy to go grab your cell phone and say, Hey, I lost you. Where are you? Right? But at the same time, I've been with people where everyone's decided we want to turn off our cell phones so that people who might harsh our vibe don't call us and interrupt what we've got going down. Right? And so, in the situations when we don't have the phone, I usually work with folks and say, Hey, if you get separated from the group, we will meet at this whatever location. And when we realize you're not there, we will all head to that location and then we will continue our experience from that location. I'm sure this has come across your plate many times. It's Speaker 1: a story as old as time. I'm serious. Can we do history again? Speaker 0: Yeah. Do it. Do it. Speaker 1: So should we do kind of modern psychedelic history or archaic tribal history? Speaker 0: Archaic sounds more fun. Let's go there. Speaker 1: Alright. We'll start there. So, when you go through places like the Altai Mountains and Siberia and just places where there are vast fields and steps and hills and mountains, you often come across big stones that are vertical, like, just plopped in the middle of a field. Right? These sort of like obelisk karen kind of things. Mhmm. And you know, the the scholars believe like this is how people oriented. Right? Like if you needed to meet nomads, like you're a nomad, right, in in the Siberian mountains, right, and you need to meet people, we're like, okay, on the solstice, I'll meet you over 3 hills at that stone. Speaker 0: Yeah. At the stone, that looks like a horse or whatever. Yeah. Speaker 1: And so people were have been orienting themselves forever, right, to try and find their place in space, right, which is good because again, you know, like so our minds we're we're taking our minds out into space. Right? We're we're

intentionally disorienting ourselves. Right? And this is one of the reasons why having a good intention is key. Right? We're talking about that mantra intention. You can think of that mantra intention kind of like a stone in a field. Like, I'm lost in the in in Siberia. Where's my stone? Right? And then to have something like that for the group is it only stands to reason. I don't know if you've ever have you ever seen a dead show at the spectrum? Speaker 0: Not at the spectrum. Speaker 1: So back in the day, there was a Rocky statue at the spectrum in Philly. Right? There was the movie Rocky, the boxer. Speaker 0: Yeah. Sure. Speaker 1: And they, you know, they made a statue for him in the movie, but then the statue also existed in real life. And so they put it at the spectrum for a while, which is, you know, a Philly place where the dead would play. Speaker 0: Mhmm. Speaker 1: And so that's where we'd meet our friends. If you get lost, we'll meet you at the rocky statue. Speaker 0: That's great. Speaker 1: So we would not you know, it's natural in our bodies. You know, it's natural in our community spirit to say you know, we say it to kids. You know, if you get lost, this is, you know, meet me here by this thing. You know, find an adult. Find another mom. Yeah. And tell her to take you to this place. Right? And so, you know, that that is the most natural thing in the world that we have been doing for 1000 of years is picking, meeting places. Speaker 0: A corollary to that that, you know, really applies differently in different situations is letting somebody know what's going on who isn't gonna be with y'all. So, if you're going to do a psychedelic and stay around the house, well, that may not be as important. But if you're going out in the forest. Right? Or I live on an island, so, you know, it is not uncommon for people to decide that that we're gonna get in a boat and go to one of the lesser populated islands near me in the Puget Sound or which is, you know, much more of a trip, pun intended. And if you are doing anything where you're going to be leaving home and it is a good thing to let somebody know who's not going with you that y'all are doing this And even if you're sure nothing's really gonna go wrong where that person would need to know, there's almost always somebody in the group who is a little uncomfortable with some aspect and they're just happy to know that there is somebody who's not with the, you know, 4 or 6 or whatever of you on the outside who isn't, you know, tripping or isn't experiencing the psychedelic. Sometimes people need to have a sober person on the outside that they can call if they start to kind of slide off and start to potentially have a troubling experience. So, you know, they can be used in lots of different ways, but I'm a strong proponent of having there be a, you know, a phone a friend out there just so there's somebody who isn't on a psychedelic in case they are needed. Speaker 1: Yeah. That's great. And again, you know, back to the idea of sitters, that person might even be with you in the house. Mhmm. Like they might be they might be traveling with you at the concert. You know, there there is, you know, the idea of sort of like the mom, you know, you know, the the the the dead mother of sorts. Mhmm. And, you know, it could be it not to gender anybody, but, you know, it could be whatever. But, you know, somebody who is there and they are, you know, making tea and they're sort of there if you need them. And is everybody have a blanket and Okay, it's hard for you guys to pick the music right now. I will do that and that sort of thing. Speaker 0: Yeah. The way you just described it sounded really nice, actually. I might actually like that in my regular life. Yeah. And it doesn't mean that the person needs to be right there because very often when people are having a psychedelic experience, it becomes very intimate and they really only want the people who are high there. But it's, you know, if you're gonna have somebody, it's it's perfectly fine that they're in another room reading or something. And if and if you need them, they they're there. And if not, maybe they just, like, go through the room, you know, every half hour and just, like, make sure everybody's doing good, you know? It really just depends on on everybody's comfort level. You can really design this however you want. This is this is your adventure. This is your experience. And and all Daniel and I are doing are are pointing out a whole bunch of best practices that work for lots of different kinds of people. Speaker 1: Sometimes I like to think of a sitter as kind of like Alfred from Batman. Like you Speaker 0: are I like that. Yeah. Speaker 1: You're in the dark. Right? You're it's like you imagine you're laying there with your eyes closed. Right? You're in the dark, saving the universe and then you come out of the dark and you open your eyes, and he's there. And he said, would you like some tea, sir? And the thing is he's been there. Like, if you follow the history of Alfred, like, Alfred used to go on missions with Batman. He would like he was the driver for a while. Oh. You know? He knows how it goes. Like, you know, he can he can, stitch up like you're saying, like, Alfred one of the things Alfred does is he stitches up Batman. Right. He fixes his wounds and offers him counsel, you know, if he needs it. Speaker 0: So I've got 2 more topics before we go to commercial. And and one is, there are some classic foods and beverages that just seem to work well with psychedelic experience for, So, you know, water, coconut water, fruit is almost always fun, especially like bright citrus fruit. Oh, my goodness gracious. What are some in your experience that are you know, low hanging fruit for being a good, good thing to have along? Speaker 1: Yeah, I like a nice fruit plate. Speaker 0: Mhmm. Speaker 1: I I generally like Yeah, I like a nice fruit plate and and so often berries and citrus.

And I I like berries a lot. You know, they're they're bite sized. You have to check because not everybody likes every berry. I like dark chocolate a lot. Mhmm. I think dark chocolate is great. I like cashews personally quite a bit. So, you know, these I I really like, the presentation as well. So, you know, there's there's a difference between having just a plastic bin of berries, like over by the sink versus like taking a really nice plate and array making a mandala Speaker 0: Mhmm. Speaker 1: Of Speaker 0: treats. Honestly, if if you could spend your entire trip making that mandala of snacks. Speaker 1: Well, it's nice. Well, actually, we were talking about preparation. Speaker 0: Yeah. Sure. It's a Speaker 1: it's a really nice preparation activity Speaker 0: Mhmm. Speaker 1: Because it's creative and it's nurturing and it's focused. Right? And it's intentional. So you're starting off your journey by, okay, like, I'm here to I'm taking care of my future self. Yeah. And, you know, I'm just kind of bringing my attention, you know, whatever I was doing in the world. Now I'm creating this kind of little work of art, this little edible work of art, and there's okay. There's the chocolate. And then, you know, maybe there's olives. I don't know. Some people like that. You know, sometimes it's it's nice to have something that's, like, a little incongruous. Speaker 0: Mhmm. Well, because then you can hit all the flavors. Here's my sweet. Here's my citrus. Here's my salty olive, whatever. Speaker 1: Yeah. That kind of thing. Mhmm. You know, mushrooms seem to like, well, you know, you might have, like, a drinking chocolate as well. Like, cacao could be nice. You know you you'd wanna know if that would disturb somebody's stomach, but, cacao is nice. Ginger tea is really nice. Crystalized ginger is really nice. You know, you certainly don't want to have to do much prep. I found it. Speaker 0: Not in the moment. Exactly. You wanna do it well in advance. Yeah. Yeah. And also, you know, with most psychedelics, most psychedelics in the short term are appetite suppressants too. And so, you know, when you're going up and up, that's not usually when you're going to get hungry. After you have some time, you might get a little snacky, which is what we're kind of talking about here. But while it's not never, it is atypical in my experience that when you're in the throes of a psychedelic experience that you'll be very hungry. Now, when you come down, you will often be hungry. And I think it's a good idea to plan in advance what your, you know, end of trip meal is gonna be like. So, at least you know where the food's gonna come from. Because when you're when you're coming down, you might be tired and you might be feeling glowy. You might not wanna be making, you know, like, serious food decisions that time. So maybe maybe you already have it, or maybe you have a plan that, oh, at the end, we're gonna order delivered food from our favorite place or whatever. Like most

everything we've been talking about, you can do it however you want. But it's good to plan this out ahead of time, especially if it's one of your first times so that the whole thing just goes well for you. Speaker 1: Right. And people do you want to be mindful that and this goes with setting I'll go back to setting as well, that what is appetizing to you in your regular life might not be. Speaker 0: Good point. Speaker 1: Whereas, you know, you might be a person like, psychedelics have have minted many vegetarians. Speaker 0: Yeah. You know, who were Speaker 1: who were very comfortable just eating whatever and then they tried to eat whatever and it wasn't working for them anymore. It was like, oh, that's that's that's not that's not it. So, you know, in general, one of the really cool things about psychedelics that I think a lot of people don't recognize, you know, with all the stigma and stuff is that in many cases, they make people kind of more wholesome in a lot of ways. Right? They make people kinder and more gentle and more attentive, and perhaps wanting to have fun in simpler ways. Right? Eat simpler foods. Not always, of course, but you know, that that's one of the things. Speaker 0: Mhmm. Speaker 1: And, you know, on that note, we're going back to setting is sometimes the things that people think are trippy when they're sober are not trippy when they're trippy. Speaker 0: Also true. Speaker 1: Yeah. Like, you know, like like, sometimes they'll be like, you know, cheap plastic crap with flashing lights in it is not as interesting as, like, a smooth gray rock. Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, it's odd too because very often you see the plastic and you're all like, this is an unreal thing, you know? It's it's it's you just don't really know how you're going to interpret things. And I don't know. I think that there are reasons why people tend towards natural things when they're on psychedelics. Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there is a really there's a cool book called Psychedelic Prayers by Timothy Leary. He had, I think, like, 7 copies of the Dao De Ching and a vial of acid. And I think he was in India. He fled the country. And he read the Dao De Ching and he took the acid and he wrote psychedelic prayers. And one of the things that it talks about in there are the things that are nice to have around. You know? And he, I'm seeing if I have it nearby. We can put it in the show notes. I know I don't have it nearby. But, you know, something like handwoven cloth. Right? Uncarved wood. Right? Raw rocks. Right? He said in in his poem, he he says bread bread, cheese, and wine. Mhmm. Right? Anything that is over 500 years old. Right. When you have like like an ancient artifact, that could be really fun. Yeah. And then of course he ends by saying, of course, it's best to be secluded in nature. Right. But just simple natural things, you know, can go a long way. Yeah. Handmade. Mhmm. Right? Things that have care in them. You can see. That's an interesting

thing. It's like one of those superpowers, you know, in the shows that sometimes there's a superhero and they can touch a thing and they know its history. Speaker 0: Right. Yes. Speaker 1: Like, a tripper knows if there's care in a thing. Speaker 0: So the last thing I wanna touch on here is, is just the preparation of the drug itself. I think it's always good, whether you're on your own or with a group, to be really clear well in advance on what your dosage is and to pre make it so that you're not debating on your dosage or preparing it right there at the last moment. Because, you know, some of these molecules, they, you know, you really have to do it with care and slowly if you're going to be making a capsule or, you know, you want to be clear if you're going to do it with friends. Are we going to make a tea or are we going to eat the mushroom fruit itself? I I discourage people from leaving that to the last minute. Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, I am cautious about answering this too much because I don't want it to seem like too much advice about, like, that kind of stuff. Mhmm. But, you know, test kits are available. Scales are available. You know, guy Arrowid is available. Right? You know, there are many reference materials so that you can know what a thing is supposed to do. Right? You can decide based on the effects that you want that some things lean more towards one thing or lead towards another. Right? Guideline dosage guidelines are online. Right? So yeah. Speaker 0: Right on. So let's go ahead and take our second break. We'll be right back, my friends. You are listening to Shaping Fire, and my guest today is psychedelic integration coach, Daniel Schenken. This message is for folks who grow cannabis. I'm talking to home growers, patients and commercial growers too. I'm probably talking to you. When you plan out your next growing cycle, be sure to check out Humboldt CSI Seeds at HumboldtCSI dotcom. Caleb Inspecta and his family have lived in Humboldt County for over a 100 years. For the last 40 years, 3 generations of his family have cultivated extraordinary sense of mia cannabis in Humboldt, Mendocino, and Trinity Counties. Because of his lineage and the hard earned experience that comes from growing up, smoking, and sifting large populations of cannabis plants in Northern California, the seeds you'll caught from CSI will be winning genetics based on long time heavy hitters and updated and resifted to bring out new and exotic traits and better yields. Go ahead and ask around. Caleb, also known as Inspecta and Pirates of the Emerald Triangle is a breeder's breeder. He reaches way back and works with significant strains, recreating them in new and interesting ways that you'll love as a toker and a grower as well as offering you some surprises that will delight serious seed traders and cultivators. Humboldt's CSI goes a further step and selfs all these chemovars so you know all the seeds will be female. These are not experimental feminized seeds. Humboldt's CSI releases some of the best female seeds available anywhere and it will show in your garden. Folks grew quite a bit of CSI Humboldtgenx last year here on Vashon Island and everyone was pleased. The patients had beautiful female plants and didn't have to cull half of their garden as males. The folks growing for the fun of getting high grew colorful flowers with exceptional bag appeal and great highs. And breeders had 7 out of 7 females in a pack which gave them a lot of phenotypic choices. Take a moment right now and visit humboldtcsi.com. You'll find an up to date menu of both feminized and regular lines along with photos and descriptions. That's humboldtcsi.com. After you've caught up on the latest Shaping Fire episodes, do you sometimes wish there was more cannabis education available to learn? Well, we got you. Shaping Fire has a fabulous YouTube channel with content not found on the podcast. When I attend conventions to speak or moderate panels, I always record them and bring the content home for you to watch. The Shango Los YouTube channel has world class speakers including Zoe Sigman's lecture, understanding your endocannabinoid system. Kevin Jodry of Wonderland Nursery talking about breeding cannabis for the best terpene profile. Frenchy Cannoli's lost art of the Hashisian presentation. Nicholas Mammood on regenerative and polyculture cannabis growing. Doctor Sunil Agarwal on the history of cannabis medicine around the world. Eric Vlowski and Josh Rutherford on solventless extraction. And Jeff Lowenfels on the Soil Food Web. There are several presentations from Doctor. Ethan Russo on terpenes and the endocannabinoid system too. While there, be sure to check out the 3 10 part Shaping Fire session series, One with Kevin Gaudry, one with Doctor. Ethan Russo, and one with Jeff Lowenfels. 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Instagram. Welcome back. You are listening to Shaping Fire and I am your host, ShangoLose. And my guest today is psychedelic integration coach, Daniel Schenken. So my friends, here we are at the final set and we are going to talk about integration. Integration is actually the first reason why I became interested in your teaching because integration is a part of the process that I am least familiar with. And by watching your, your TikTok and Instagram accounts, I started really getting a good sense of the integration I was doing right and the integration I could be improving on. And the quality of the advice that I was offering to others has absolutely increased since, since I started listening to your insights. So so let's That's Speaker 1: amazing to hear. Thank you. Speaker 0: Oh, good. Excellent. So so let's start with with just asking you to kind of give us an umbrella. Integration, is it's probably a pretty vague term for most folks. And so why don't we start with that, like, what is integration and what are we looking to get out of it? Speaker 1: Right. Okay. So and we can look at this from a lot of different levels, like, depending on how we view who and what we are. But on a most basic level, you might say, hey, you learned some stuff. You learned some stuff about yourself. You got some messages. We we like to call them downloads these days sometimes, and maybe marching orders. And so, it was like, okay, maybe you should start doing this, be nicer to people, say you're sorry, clean your room, and maybe you should stop doing this, smoking, drinking too much, whatever. And maybe on the long term you want to kind of move towards this in your life. You want to become a chef. You have to go to culinary school. Right? And so, figuring out how to get those done. Like, what might what is it like to genuinely be kinder to people? What is it like to be more humble and say you're sorry when you mess up even though sometimes it feels like you might die if you have to say you're sorry, that it's the most vulnerable thing in the world? What might it be like to quit drinking when that's what you know? Right? And that's how you interact with people. And then what does it take to actually get yourself to and through culinary school? Right? All of these kinds of dreams and upgrades that are available and what is it gonna take to kinda make this happen. Right? So that's part of integration. And what often happens is people start off with good intentions and then it drops off, life gets in the way, they don't have any accountability, they don't have anything anybody, to support them. Right? Speaker 0: We just kinda forget our lessons. Speaker 1: Yeah. We can forget our lessons. And then you know what happens when we forget our lessons is our vibe drops. Right? So also, this is my favorite. I really like integration of transcendence and mystical experience. So this is what keeps me coming back is I have these experiences of bliss, oneness, connection, God, love, all of that stuff. Right? And I like that and I like that feeling. And I can feel it speaking about shapes, like, being in that kind of ecstatic con connected state shapes us in a certain way. Right? We get shaped by bliss and joy and the spiritual experience, which is awesome. And then perhaps we vibrate in a certain way or we show up for the world in a certain way, depending on whether or not, you know, whatever you think of vibes, but we show up different. And we feel amazing and we wanna hold on to that. But then the thing is is that that starts to downgrade too. And it starts to downgrade because we stop practicing humility. We stop practicing kindness. We stop practicing truth. And we drink too much, and we eat the wrong stuff. Right? So it's like the lessons kind of correlate the doing and the being. We start to see a connection. If I wanna be the person that I wanna be, it means I have to do the things that I know I'm supposed to do. Speaker 0: Yeah. Ain't ain't that the rub? Yeah. Speaker 1: And, you know, if you wanna stay connected to one of the things I I say to people, like, if you wanna stay connected to source, you have to serve the source. Mhmm. Right? And so there's that. Integration might also mean that there are kind of parts of you that you haven't been embodying or living. Right? Maybe kind humility parts, but it's like sometimes we discover that there are that we maybe are a more creative person than we gave ourselves credit for. And so there's, like, again, this kind of integration of, being our our full potential. Like, letting our full potential really have a chance instead of just squashing it down and saying it doesn't matter and and putting it away. There might also be, like, integrate like, healing might have to happen. Right? We might need to heal from, like, some really difficult stuff. We might have, repressed memories come up of abuse or something like that, and we have to kind of integrate our own personal history in a new way so that we can, be a whole healed healthy person. So we can look at it from, like, a lot of different angles and depending on who you are and what you're going through at any particular time in your soul's journey, it might mean different things. Mhmm. Speaker 0: So let's say that, you know, somebody just had the psychedelic experience and they wanna do integration because they want to really embrace the lessons that they learned. And, you know, if this person already has a therapist, chances are very likely that they will do this integration with the therapist they already have. But lots of people who are doing psychedelics don't actually have a relationship preexisting with a therapist. What kind of advice do you have for those people? Speaker 1: Well, get one if you can afford 1. Speaker 0: Mhmm. Speaker 1: And it's, of course, cool if you find you know, there's an increasing amount of therapists who are willing to talk about psychedelics with you. So that's cool. You can find an

integration circle. You can find an integration coach or an integration circle. An integration circle is kind of halfway between, like, a meditation group and a support group. Mhmm. Right? So it's like it it kind of might look like a support group on the outside, but it doesn't necessarily mean anybody's broken or wounded or anything. I mean, we all are, but it's not it's not like a survivor type support group. Sure. Not necessarily. It's just a slightly different vibe. People are just kind of like really growing. Right? So it's got that kind of thing to it, as well as healing in some cases. And that is a place where you can talk about, you know, what's important to you and what you got out of your experience and how you wanna keep it going with a group of people who are, you know, semi regular. And you kind of form a relationship with folks. And sometimes, you know, we have 3 a week, you know, on our on our website. They're all on Zoom. And then depending where you live in the world, there might be one in person. Mhmm. You know, it just so happens that I have an online a little online course on how to make your own. You can you can start your own integration circle. It's not rocket science. So, you know, some community support is a big deal. Some of it you have to do on your own, of course. Like nobody can nobody cannot drink for you. Mhmm. Right? Right. You know, nobody can journal for nobody can journal and meditate for you. You have to do that on your own. So, yeah. I don't know if that answers Speaker 0: your question. Sure. It does. And the next question would be, I know that there are some independently minded people who are listening and, you know, people who have got, you know, always seeking autonomy like I am and we're thinking, Oh, well, I can just do that on my own. And, you know, I just I have this belief without any real evidence that doing integration with others who are not who have got a different perspective and are a little more objective and especially if they've got therapy training, that it just seems to be more effective to do integration, along with someone else if if if only to have someone to bounce stuff off of. What are your thoughts about that? Speaker 1: Yeah. You can't We can't see ourselves. You can't see your own eye. You know what I mean? Like, you just We just can't. And Speaker 0: Because I'm in the Skinner box. Right? So, me looking me observing myself is incredibly subjective. So, we need it's helpful for us to have somebody who's looking at us on the outside. Is that the idea? Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Your strategies of evasion are highly sophisticated. Speaker 0: Yes, they are. I'll say Speaker 1: that one's more say that for those of you in the back. Yeah. Your strategies of evasion are highly sophisticated. Right? And so there you know, one would I don't want to say need but I will. You know, we need to have a little bit of willingness and a little bit of humility sometimes and to recognize that we are relational beings. And you've just been talking this whole time about oh, I I did the psychedelics with my friend and friends and it's good to have a group. It's good to have a group. Speaker 0: Mhmm. Speaker 1: Right? Like, you could meet. You know, what would it be like if you and your your party people said, okay, like, we're gonna meet once a week at the same time, right, for an intentional meeting, much like that intention that you all brought to fixing your friend's foot. Mhmm. Right? We're gonna meet for 4 weeks before our journey for an hour and a half. We're gonna have a conference call or we're gonna meet at the coffee shop or whatever. We're gonna get on Zoom and we're gonna rap about what we want and we're gonna talk about we're gonna listen to the Shaping Fire podcast and we're gonna make our own checklist. We're gonna set it up And we're gonna talk about our hopes and our dreams and our desires. We're gonna be vulnerable with each other. Right? And then after the trip, we're gonna meet for 4 to 6 weeks for an hour and a half, and we're gonna talk about how our experience is unfolding and we're gonna hold each other accountable and we're going to focus on what's important and we're going to reflect back what we saw from each other in our journeys and we're going to see what we learned about ourselves and each other and we're going to be there if somebody is confused about something and offer them support and good fellowship without, again, laying our trips on each other or offering each other a lot of advice, but just kind of recognizing that we're growing together. Like how would that change the journey if it was exactly changing? Speaker 0: It would wildly improve it. Hearing you describe it, I'm like, Man, I've never done that. I wanna sign up for that. Like, that level of integration would really expand the healing that any particular psychedelic experience has. Speaker 1: Right. And I say it and it's almost like, duh. Right? Speaker 0: Yeah. Yeah, it is. But honestly, I, you know, I don't know about how psychedelics are done in the rest of the world, but, you know, I've been involved with the psychedelic world for 35 years and integration is not historically a part of the, you know, every person's psychedelic experience. And my God, it should be. Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. And it's almost like keep in mind that, you know, in Peru, like the Ayahuasca people of Peru, Shipibo tribes and such, don't really do integration circles. They live very different lives. You know what I mean? Like, they live like a slower paced life. Right? Their society in a lot of ways was built off of people doing Ayahuasca. If you were a try If you and your friends had the wherewithal to start a society based on your journeys together, what would that society look like? And then that's what you have in Peru in many ways. So so it's built into some cultures. It's not built into our culture. And and, you know, vulnerability and community

is not necessarily built into our cultures, at least not like a vulnerable kind of community thing. Speaker 0: Right. Speaker 1: Like, it's it's more like it's more external. You know, it's exoteric and in a lot of ways, you know, still built around, like, what what the individual can get out of it. Speaker 0: On a real mechanical level, if if somebody wants to do integration with a professional, what would you recommend they look for? Like, what are the attributes and what are the things that they should think of when choosing who to work with? I mean, you've taught so many facilitators and integration specialists, you probably have got, you know, a good list of best practices for choosing Speaker 1: 1. Right. Well, I mean, you should start with me. Right? Reach out to me. You know, you would probably want somebody who was very familiar with the territory. So, you know, I don't have an advanced degree. You know, I I I don't like I don't like traditional schooling. You know, I've taught and trained many people with advanced degrees. But, you know, I as soon as I got out of college, I just I found a yoga mat and I hung out in yoga studios and meditation halls and stuff like that. That's kind of where I did a lot of my training. So you have to decide, like, is the degree important? Like, to what extent is the degree important and to what extent is the experience important? And if you can get both, that's great. Yeah. You know, especially if there's rightness of fit. So you wanna be working with somebody who you feel seen and not judged and held by. Right? And they're clever. Right? So, so you wanna be that's what you're kinda looking for. You know, if somebody is kind of just out of school and they've, you know, they've done a little bit of a ketamine training Maybe, maybe not. Speaker 0: Mhmm. Speaker 1: You know? But, you know, you can vet people. You can ask people stuff. And, you know, in the realm of social media, you know, there's there's people out there sort of like, you know, blabbing about how smart they are all the time and maybe you find one that resonates with you. Speaker 0: I think that's the very important part is is to find somebody who's got a communication style that that I feel blends with my own because we're gonna be talking about, but intimate and subtle and, you know, I think subtle is the right word, things. And I want somebody where we're already kind of speaking the same language so that we can get to the core of the matters swiftly. Yes. Effectively. Speaker 1: Yeah. Right. So somebody is one of the best compliments I've gotten was disarming. Right? Which almost sounds kind of you know, I always had to be like, wait, what do you mean? And they were like, well, you just you make me want to, like, put down my weapons, my defence my defensive structures. You know, I can drop my defences and be myself. And I was like, oh, okay, that's nice. Mhmm. You know, you want to feel like you can take your armor off. Speaker 0: So now

that we've been talking with integration, about integration a little bit because I I've been learning as you've been talking, I think that I would probably summarize it like if I were to be talking with somebody else later on today about integration. I think I would describe it as, so we learn lessons when we're on psychedelics. And we, you know, those of us who have done psychedelics, we've all had the experience of forgetting our lessons and leaving them behind in the psychedelic experience. And so, what an integration coach or similar will do is help you bring those lessons from the psychedelic experience and help to integrate them into your non psychedelic everyday life so that the good things that you have discovered during the psychedelic experience, you actually get to use those to improve your life instead of just having a psychedelic experience and having these thoughts and then having them slip away. Is that a fair assessment? Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. That's a great place to be with all of that. Speaker 0: Right on. Well, thank you for explaining that. So, so let's wrap up there, Daniel. So, I'm going to put you on the spot a little bit, but in a way that you're probably very used to. Speaker 1: Lightning round? Speaker 0: Yeah. Lightning round. Awesome. So so what would be your what would be your last advice for somebody who has never done psychedelics before, They have found a good source for the psychedelic of choice that they want to use. And they're just trying to, like, rev up the moxie or the gumption. They know they want to do it. They they have it. They're good to go. But it sounds like it sounds like, you know, taking the step off of a cliff or something to them and and and they don't know what it's gonna be like. And and so they've got a little hesitation. Maybe they've even maybe they've even had the psychedelic in their pocket for months and they haven't, like, taken the next step. What would be your advice for them to to to help them in this next step? Speaker 1: Oh, I don't I don't know. I don't I don't love this question. Speaker 0: Well, if you don't love the question maybe speak to that and we'll learn from that. Speaker 1: Well, it's, you know, it's it's not for me to to you you can lead a horse to water. Right? Like it's not for me to push somebody off, you know, to push somebody into the pool. Mhmm. Right? I mean, I would just be really curious if if I was coaching them. Right? So it's if I was coaching them, it's it's not a performance coaching. It's not like, Glengarry Glen Ross. You know, this is not coffees for closers. Right? Yeah. Yeah. This is this is what we call development coaching. And so I just wanna hear about your anxiety. Right? I just wanna know what's coming up for you and what is holding you back because it's entirely possible it's highly probable that that trepidation that you're feeling has served you really well throughout your life. Right? Like that trepidation, there may have been times when that trepidation was the difference between life and death. Right? And so I wanna honor like, I deeply honor people's hesitancy. Right? It's it's a display as far as I'm concerned. It's a display of wisdom and discernment. And so I, you know, I I bow to your trepidation. And I want you to know that it is safe and acceptable for you to be hesitant and anxious. Right? And, like, let's learn more about that. How has it served you in the past? Right? What is its aim? How is it held in the body? What does it make possible for you? Does it limit you from things sometimes? Right? It's like, what can we learn about our this is their shape. Right? Coming back to it. Your person is showing up and that's their shape. Right? They're bracing, perhaps. I'm I'm just picturing in my head, you know, as I picture this person whose headset sits in, I'm picturing, like, a musculature, like, attention, almost as if they're bracing for impact. Right? I'm picturing like like, oh, like I'm hand like if somebody would be handing them the mushroom and they're like, right? And their hands go out, like they're pushing away, like, oh, like I I like it's I fear I'm not safe. It's dangerous. Right? And so there's that tension there. And that's their shape. And they can't do anything else. They can't not do that. That's the thing that has been keeping them in as good a shape as they are. Right. And so let's explore it. Let's learn about it. Let's see if there are other ways to practice being in a different shape that is more in line with your higher intentions and value and purpose. Speaker 0: Well, I really like how you took the question that you weren't a big fan of and turned it into a powerful and liberating answer. So I appreciate that in you, Daniel. And I also appreciate, that a couple of the different questions I've asked you today, you kinda you kinda shook off as being not the right question, if you will, and kind of working with me to mold so the right things could be shared. So, I appreciate that level of assertiveness in our conversation today. And, so so thank you for your time and and thank you very much for sharing your breadth of experience and, your your your gentle self. Right? I think that a lot of people who are approaching this, it can be a pretty bombastic topic area for a lot of people. But your approach is so accepting and genuine and soothing that, I appreciate that you you brought that to us and and shared that with us today. Speaker 1: Yeah, man. Thanks for letting me, you know, share the message. I think this is really important work. I also really think the work that you're doing is really important work. And, yeah, it's an honor to collaborate with you. And, you know, I'm I'm deeply grateful that we we got connected in such a sweet and divine way. Yes. Thanks for holding space, man. Yeah. Speaker 0: Thank you. Speaker 1: You're doing really Speaker 0: well. Right on. Thank you. So my friends, if you would like to know more about Daniel and his insights and his teaching and his business, there's a couple great places for you to go. The first place to go is on Instagram and that's where I got turned on to Daniel. And that's at TAM Integration. So that's T AM, integration. And, you know, you can absolutely enjoy his social media clips, but there is also his his link tree there on the profile and you can, you know, find everything, all the different ways to connect with Daniel all in one place. The second place is on his website, which is, again, tamintegration.com. And you can, you know, on on on Instagram and on TikTok, you will you will get, you know, one flavor of Daniel. But on on on the website, you can find out more details about his his staff and the services they offer and how they can be helpful to you in your integration or training or coaching. There's a wide range of good things for you to check out there on the website tamintegration.com. And, and finally, Daniel wanted me to point out that there is, right now, a psilocybin bundle of educational services available, special right now at tamintegration.com/ psilocybin bundle. So, thank you, my friends, for joining us and you've been listening to Shaping Fire. You can find more episodes of the Shaping Fire podcast and subscribe to the show at shapingfire.com and wherever you get your podcasts. If you enjoyed the show, we'd really appreciate it if you would leave a positive review of the podcast wherever you download. Your review will help others find the show so they can enjoy it too. On the Shaping Fire website, you can also subscribe to the newsletter for insights into the latest cannabis news, exclusive videos, and giveaways. On the Shaping Fire website, you'll also find transcripts of today's podcast as well. Be sure to follow on Instagram for all original content not found on the podcast. That's at shapingfire and at shangolos on Instagram. Be sure to check out the Shaping Fire YouTube channel for exclusive interviews, farm tours, and cannabis lectures. Does your company want to reach our national audience of cannabis enthusiasts? Email hotspotshapingfire.com to find out how. Thanks for listening to Shaping Fire. I've been your host, Shango Los.