Mushroom Mommas with Mikaela De La Myco
Alisa Nappa
Today we sit with the magical Mikaela De La Myco to talk in depth about using mushrooms in pregnancy and motherhood, navigating healthy psychedelic spaces, how to hold space as a practitioner, healing sexual trauma, and more. We lean both into clinical studies and indigenous cultural traditions to create a balanced narrative. Such a special episode with such a special human.
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TRANSCRIPT
Unknown Speaker 0:11
Welcome, welcome. You are listening to the mushroom revival podcast. I'm your host, Alex Dora. And we are absolutely obsessed with the wonderful, wacky, mysterious, wonderful world of mushrooms and fungi. And we bring on guests and experts from all around the globe to geek out with us and go down this interesting rabbit hole to try to figure out what is going on in the mycology world. And what are fungi up to
Unknown Speaker 0:40
and today we have Makayla tea that Miko to join us today to talk about all things.
Unknown Speaker 0:48
Mushrooms in in the menstrual journey in the pregnancy journey in many different aspects of conversation that we're about to dive into. So Makayla, how are you doing? Thank you, Alex. Yeah, I'm doing I'm doing good today, considering the state of things. The state of my nervous system, but yeah, lots of support from the plants and the mushroom relatives to yeah, that's, that's part of what they've been here for so long to help humans with. So I'm really grateful that I do have Yeah, resources and accessible things like running water and a beautiful home to live in. So I couldn't be more grateful and just more appreciative of the opportunity to speak with you today and speak to your audience about what it is I've come to know. So thank you so much for having me today. Thanks for coming on. It's it's an honor to have you and I'm sure our listeners are going to absolutely love this conversation and you and the work that you're doing. So for people that don't know you,
Unknown Speaker 1:56
who aren't you, what are you up to?
Unknown Speaker 1:58
Who am I? Well, I'm I'm I'm a fan. I'm a fan living and coming i territory here in North County, San Diego. I'm a mosh womb, educator, community organizer, facilitator, mother, friend's sister, and many people call me Mama. And I'm grateful, I'm grateful to hold that title. I'm building a body of knowledge right now to make a case for entheogenic motherhood, you know, in all of its forms.
Unknown Speaker 2:31
And there's a lot of us doing this work. And I kind of got my my, my feet wet into
Unknown Speaker 2:38
this particular kind of activism around the entheogenic movement about four years ago when I became pregnant with my son.
Unknown Speaker 2:48
And while I had had a relationship with mushrooms already, but as I kind of like walked into conception, pregnancy and other things, so many questions arose, and not very many answers came. So I, you know, I stand on the shoulders of giants when I say that, like I'm a psychedelic mom, and, you know, the all these things, but so many people had been doing it before and me and I'm grateful that I had some guidance from Yeah, indigenous women teachers, you know, and, and some support from my own community that I was building. So I'm grateful to say that, yeah, my nine experience my nine years of experience and relationship with sacred mushroom coming up into my motherhood journey really, like, propelled this line of questioning, like, are mushroom safe for mothers? What are the benefits? What do we know? And if we don't know it, how do we find it? So I committed myself to that journey, that work is certainly ongoing. But what it has really helped me realize and recognize is that mothers and matriarchs and women in general don't deserve a seat at the table, but in an acknowledgement and recognition that without without us there would be no table at all. So the repatriation of entheogens I think, is my thesis for the world is like to give the stewardship of the sacred Earth medicines back in to the hands of mothers. Let us be leaders in the space. Like welcome us back into, you know, eldership into guidance into working with the youth and I think we'll see a lot more balance and harmony happening not just in our you know, psychedelic community but in in the greater conversation of the world. So that's a little bit of of who I am. And yeah, just grateful to be one tiny little node in this giant network of many beings doing a lot of good things. How How was your first experience?
Unknown Speaker 5:00
It's with mushrooms.
Unknown Speaker 5:03
What a gratitude it was. I was in college, I was in a group of people I had already tried LSD, I had a relationship with cannabis had had my MDMA experiences before. And I was very much in love with the mind altering state. I was actually addicted to opiates at 13. So I was no stranger to like complete surrender. But sometimes I would surrender things heavily, like alcohol and other things that didn't necessarily take me to places that were generative or healing or kind. So I found like a truly benevolence force in LSD. Yeah, I was held in their arms for many hours. And that really, that really opened the possibility for that classic psychedelic experience. And then what something that was missing deeply from that, though, is this kind of groundedness, like this rootedness in the earth. And
Unknown Speaker 5:59
now that, you know, I've kind of explored this medicine a bit more and have developed a deeper relationship with LSD now realize why their doctrine of signatures kind of gives them a different quality. But, um, yeah, I found myself wanting to just like dig my hands into the soil after my LSD journey and ground as much as I could, and smoked so much tobacco to just kind of like, anchor myself back, you know, into this dimension. And in the same home that I was living in with, with a few girlfriends was the home that kind of mushrooms made their entrance, and it was a rainy day, and me and three other women came together and yeah, a, you know, a couple grams of mushrooms together and spent a beautiful day in our sweet ass home.
Unknown Speaker 6:50
You know, enjoying the space that we were in together through friendship through sisterhood. With these mushrooms, I was about 2020 years old at the time. So I,
Unknown Speaker 7:04
I was completely
Unknown Speaker 7:06
transported into a place of like kindness and compassion. And that was new for me because I had been harshly bullied.
Unknown Speaker 7:17
Through my childhood life, I didn't have like, a inner voice that was generative that poured into me that showed love to me, it was always very critical. And I felt very uncomfortable. Like, in my body, I didn't even feel safe. Like with my own mind, I didn't really smoke cannabis very much because of how in my mind I would become
Unknown Speaker 7:41
I
Unknown Speaker 7:43
it was it was, I think for some people coming into this space, they're like, Oh, I'm so scared that I, I will have a bad trip or something. And for me, once I ate the mushroom, I realized that my whole life before then had been about trip. And I finally felt
Unknown Speaker 8:05
I finally felt like whole and safe for the first time. So I'm so happy I found those relatives. And yeah, I continued to work with them kind of solo. But I remember people telling me like, Oh, don't look in the mirror when you're sitting with mushrooms. And
Unknown Speaker 8:22
I'm a bit rebellious. So I did just that. And I looked in the mirror at myself. And
Unknown Speaker 8:28
the mushrooms are really clear with me that day. And what they had to tell me, which was something I think that I had never heard before, but kind of had gotten to hence my whole life. But yeah, very clearly in the mirror, I looked at myself, and the insight was that I was an artist.
Unknown Speaker 8:48
That just be that was just the it was so simple. They're like you're an artist, and I was like I'm an artist. I'm looking around like I'm an artist, and then it just made like, wow, that's why I'm weird. That's I don't like get along with everyone. That's why I'm like thinking really differently. That's like, I'm not like someone who just gets told what to do. It's like I'm someone who creates I'm someone who like has this generative power
Unknown Speaker 9:12
that I would love to speak to a little bit more because my creativity is is so intrinsically tied to my sensual nature, my creative force, like my my sexuality, like that part of my body that is so generative and wants to give live and breathe life into things. However, like I was growing up in spaces like Christian school, Catholic school,
Unknown Speaker 9:36
that really condemned any exploration of those spaces and not only condemned, but like, couldn't help me foster those gifts in a healthy way. And they really led me into a destructive path. And so when I got the insight Holy shit, you're an artist and like, you get a lot of your energy from like, your sexual power. I was like, Oh, I'm not broken. Like I was just operating in, you know, a childhood way.
Unknown Speaker 10:00
As adults that like couldn't see this was a gift of mine and instead like, relinquish these things to the shadows where they continue to fester and develop into like negative ways of life and ways of life that were quite destructive. So yeah, I think the mushrooms every day, a lot of people feel the inspiration to find who they are with mushrooms, they like, you know, I want to know who I am, I want to find my purpose in life. And it's just really beautiful, because
Unknown Speaker 10:29
in some traditions, that is part and consuming mushroom or communing with them, is part of actually like, developing a person's role in in the community is helping them understand what is the meaning of their birth? And why what did they come here to do? So I think for people that are seeking, like, openness and revelation about their meaning in life can find that through sacred mushroom. And then also, I'm sure as we'll talk more, you know, young people that are a bit lost in the, why am I here? And like, this world is so messed up, and I don't know what to do inside of it. Why have I been called, at this time to be here in such turmoil? can maybe find those answers through like righteous consumption of medicine? So
Unknown Speaker 11:18
hopefully, I can be eloquent in this next question. But it's a complex one.
Unknown Speaker 11:24
You know, when we started, we were talking about how there's a lot of suffering in the world right now. And, you know, there's always been, history repeats itself. And,
Unknown Speaker 11:37
you know, you're talking about your childhood and being bullied and addiction, and various traumas and things like that, which I also share as well. And
Unknown Speaker 11:49
mushroom, mushrooms have always have also helped me a lot.
Unknown Speaker 11:54
My question is,
Unknown Speaker 11:56
you know, I'm not a parent myself, but I want to be, and
Unknown Speaker 12:02
I think stepping into the role of a parent and also as a, as a healer, or, you know, a facilitator can be scary for people, myself included, have
Unknown Speaker 12:16
you know, I don't think anyone is ever finished with healing. Right. And so I guess my question is, you know, you offer a, an herbal and trauma informed advocacy training. And, you know, I'm curious, like,
Unknown Speaker 12:33
what's been your journey of doing your own healing? And then stepping into that role of being a facilitator for other people? And was there a moment where you felt like, I'm ready now? And what's your what's your relationship with
Unknown Speaker 12:49
your own healing versus holding a space for others?
Unknown Speaker 12:54
If you understand that question, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's like, When do people feel like the permission or the allowance to like, step into these care roles, like when does and what is like the boundary between like working on my own shit and like, you know, serving other people so that they can work on theirs. And you know, what gives me any kind of right to like, be a teacher or a trainer, or someone in this space to help and assist other people. So I think it's a wonderful line of questioning, and I really value it deeply. Because there are a number of trainings, there are a number of, you know,
Unknown Speaker 13:30
yeah, legal frameworks now that people can now walk into in order to become certified to do any of this work. And
Unknown Speaker 13:37
a certification is hardly enough to make someone like ready to unavailable for what you the work of tending to others actually entails. And so
Unknown Speaker 13:46
you know, I yeah, what I what I will say that something that can became revealed to me like really early in my journey was like the desire for others to have me in their company while they were journeying like to be asked for by request from other people that were journeying, like, will you sit for me or one of our housemates was in a challenging experience. And
Unknown Speaker 14:10
she asked my friend to, like, bring her back home so that, you know, we could spend time together and yeah, I just, I just tended to her while she was in a really hard experience. So, you know, something that I always say is like, I'll trust a raised mom on a dance floor before a Maps trained MDMA facilitator.
Unknown Speaker 14:30
Okay, like a lot of these and what I want to just really be clear about is that a lot of these medicines have folk origins. A lot of these medicines have folk origins. A lot of these medicines come from traditions and frameworks of teaching children from a very, very young age, there is no certification, there is training involved, like there is,
Unknown Speaker 14:52
you know, these trials that a person must go through in order to be deemed worthy. They start there, you know, their tutelage is very, very
Unknown Speaker 15:00
early, they get initiated at very, very early stages of their life. And so,
Unknown Speaker 15:05
you know, a lot of us have been largely divorced from those systems. So like, what could that possibly look like in the modern day and like, what it's looking like is having good mentors and and people that, you know, we learned from by hand. And so I'm grateful enough that with those few first like interactions and exchanges, of recognizing, wait a second, like people deserve care, in these experiences, like we're not just eating this together, and then everyone just goes off on their own. And it's every person for themselves. Like, there's like a bit of a unit that gets like, designed by us going in together in these groups that like we are, we are meant to and have the responsibility for tending to one another. And there was also some horror stories that were happening, you know, in my college home, where, like, there was a person who got dose from a housemate of mine, and they had a diagnosed mental health disorder that was overlooked, because that wasn't something that we were doing in college and had like a mental break, and was locked in a room for hours. And no one knew what to do. And I was like, in the house while it was happening, and was not equipped, or had any resources or ability to do anything about it. But what became really clear was, this is clearly not the right way, and a lot of people aren't getting or some people are getting hurt in this way. And so
Unknown Speaker 16:31
I actually, like really tightened my circle, as far as who I would journey with who I felt safe with journeying, and that meant journeying by myself, so I journeyed by myself for years, I actually didn't want to hand off my subconscious mind to anyone else. And that's something that I really like to say in the space is like, you don't need to pay someone $1,500 To hold space for you with a medicine that is like so ubiquitous, accessible, and like gentle and kind, like I would say, most people can hold better space for themselves than like working with someone who's going to charge them for a one off and then just like have this contractual relationship with them. And that is not to say that, like help isn't valuable that like stewardship, and people that like have years of experience is invaluable. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is, is that people are getting tricked to thinking that like, other people should know more about them and their paths to healing than one's own self. So
Unknown Speaker 17:29
I have a lot of friends and teachers that like really advocate for solo journeying. And that became like a foundation of me working through my own shit. And working through and understanding and exploring, like the complexity of my lived experience. And what I think really was supportive in that was having a community around me that was willing to hear willing to process and like hold space with me as I transformed my life. And
Unknown Speaker 17:59
it wasn't until I started walking into culturally competent ways of sitting, that both resonated with my own personal ancestry and felt like authentic and non extractive to the sacred mushroom. So I'm, I'm Ashika, I'm Mexican, from along the lands at the US Mexico border, which is an artificial border, we are one people, migratory path lines always moving, you know, north to south east to west, the only reason why the Native American church has peyote is because of Mexican indigenous people. So, you know, I really just would love to melt that for a second and let people know that like this is the territory that belongs to many and has been walked by so many people and that's where my father's mother's from, and her her lineage is from my dad is also Afro Caribbean. So we you know, our island people, like we dance, we sing, we shake, we cry, like we are artists, like we are expressive. We are radical, we are resistant, like we have this flavor that I think Trenton, you know, has followed me and my whole fucking life. And then my mother is Italian and she's from Southern Italy, the hillsides of like a very isolated mountaintop town where, you know, the nearest hospital wasn't you know, less than two hours away. So birthing babies setting bones like healing disease, things like that were all very in house. So, you know, Pink Floyd and and Shpongle and, you know, they were not cutting it for me. They were like trying to ingrain like a different kind of rhetoric a narrative and I'm like, you know, where did this even come from and who I found was Maria Sabina and the story of Maria Sabina. And the story of people living in Mexico working with mushroom and in relationship with sacred mushroom and those cultural competent ways of sitting for myself in a very simple setting, by the light of the moon.
Unknown Speaker 20:00
and the stars with a flame, you know, with a fire. And that was all I needed.
Unknown Speaker 20:06
You know, take your sound system and take your flashing lights and take your chakra poster and like it can all just go. And I just want to be with the soil and with the sound of a coyote in the back and with the desert sky. And I learned more from that experience than anything that any of my friends could have handed me before that point. So
Unknown Speaker 20:30
as I kind of walked that framework, I found different teachers, I found different circles, I sat in these different frameworks of care. And that's something that I really want to impart to people is that, you know, myself as an educator, right, and as someone who facilitates and supports other people, there are many ways to educate support and guide folks, with and without entheogenic medicine. And I think people like to skip steps like they want to go from, oh, I was in corporate America and like, now I want to be a shaman. or Now I got the call and I'm gonna be a shaman. I was like, bro, you never held space a day in your life. Okay, like, let's like learn to hold space, like let's hold this learn how to sit in circle is learn how to actively listen. And let's learn how to tend to be soft to be like somatically careful to know how to like, change our voice to match the person who's sitting in front of them, like how do I work with survivors? How do I work with people that have been battered? Like how do I work with people with sexual assault and their history? So,
Unknown Speaker 21:30
you know, I met I met my teachers, they gave me a lot of insight. I learned songs, right, like people want to facilitate, they don't know how to build a fire. They don't know a single song. They don't know how to talk to medicine, they don't know how to hum. You know, they don't know how to be settled in their own body. You know, they don't know what it looks like when someone's like, all holed up like maybe they need to dance like maybe they need to scream or shout and that's not going to happen with with a blindfold on. That's not going to happen with the earmuffs on. So, you know, like, I'm not I'm not trying to speak against like the medicalization. Well, actually, I am trying to speak against medicalization of, you know, I just, I'm not trying to speak against the therapeutic model, because I could just see how that entry point is, like, important for many people, but I come from a different way. And the way that we set is encircled the way that we sit is like level to each other. Everyone has something to teach and share. And there is leadership, there are roles, there are responsibilities. And so you know, as I, I witnessed those systems participated them was asked constantly by different facilitators and leaders to just hold space, you know what I mean? Like, I paid full price to be there, but yet, like, I'm cleaning the buckets, like, I'm helping set the fire, like no matter what, like, they would look at me and give me roles to do and I think that was the way that I learned. So you know, I actually learned to hold space,
Unknown Speaker 22:59
not in containers that had mind altering substances in them, like we learned how to hold ceremony, just with, you know, each other, and like, the basic structure of like, creating a safe container. And it wasn't until many years of doing that, that like Anthea, Jen started to make their way. And so they were welcomed into like, a beautiful framework and a foundation. But it wasn't it wasn't the, you know, is it the chicken before the egg? Like does the ingestion of mushrooms create the structure of the culture? Or like, does the culture like create a framework for which, you know, the mushroom can continue to proliferate? Right? So I'm grateful for that. That route, because it I'm so grateful that it built and it built and built and our work with the, the herbal and trauma informed, you know,
Unknown Speaker 23:55
certificate certification training to protect sensual beings and altered states. It's like, you know,
Unknown Speaker 24:01
I'm a California certified trauma intervention care provider. So I have the right or the access and ability to work in different women's shelters around the state of California. I've worked hotlines. I've worked so hard. I've gone through rigorous training to understand how to be trauma informed. I work alongside and specialized with folks that have experienced sexual violence, which is very pervasive. I'm a survivor myself, I testified against my own grandfather at age 14 a bit familiar with the system of giving testimony to liberate I've been in, you know, the intimacy care world before and you know,
Unknown Speaker 24:47
I have seen a lot of shit and so you know, I think with those things, and with being a brown woman in this world and and seeing how, you know, people aren't coming correct to indigenous people.
Unknown Speaker 25:00
All people are like assuming that they have the right to practice. But to understand very basic foundations, I mean, there are ceremonies that require a different level of stewardship,
Unknown Speaker 25:14
holding sweat, right, being a large carrier, that requires a very different kind of commitment. Being able to serve peyote, goodie like requires a very different level of commitment, and that is years of your life going to the desert to do the pilgrimage. So, you know,
Unknown Speaker 25:33
with the sacred mushroom, what I'm very grateful for,
Unknown Speaker 25:37
is how ubiquitous the sacred mushroom is found on every continent, belongs to every people. And so what I think is a huge disservice is someone becoming more well versed in someone else's ancestry than one's own. So finding cultural competent ways for us to sit, you know, that creates continuity for oneself. And the person that they're, you know, supporting, I think goes a lot further than trying to amass and accumulate sound bytes of different cultures, which have and yield no depth or meaning to the person holding space, or the person receiving the space. So that's definitely just a call in for people that feel lost. You know, I don't know what ancestry I belong to, or I don't want to culturally appropriate Well, then don't culturally appreciate, you know, give credit where credit is due and do your own homework on yourself. And I think that will move absolute mountains and do a lot of good things for for this movement.
Unknown Speaker 26:45
I, there's so much to respond there. But I think,
Unknown Speaker 26:50
you know, there's many different reasons why people who are facilitators maybe abused the space and abused that power. And, you know, I'm sure some people have great intentions, but
Unknown Speaker 27:04
their own trauma gets in the way or their own ego gets in the way. And it's just a performance for them, either their own culture or somebody else's culture. And it's more for them performing, rather than actually holding space, or healing.
Unknown Speaker 27:22
And I hear all the time stories of facilitators in the psychedelic community, or just in the spiritual space, whether they're yoga gurus or whatever,
Unknown Speaker 27:35
title,
Unknown Speaker 27:37
sexually assaulting people in the community or, or even just manipulating people spiritually, energetically, physically
Unknown Speaker 27:48
in the space and just using abusing that power that they have.
Unknown Speaker 27:52
What do you think is missing from that space? Or
Unknown Speaker 28:01
to make the spaces safer? Like, do you think these facilitators aren't
Unknown Speaker 28:07
doing enough healing work within themselves? Do you think they're not? Like, in your opinion, I'm sure there's a million reasons. And every, every person is different, and every scenario is different. But
Unknown Speaker 28:19
if you had a magic wand and could,
Unknown Speaker 28:25
you know, change, change the spaces to be safer? What, what main points? Would you want to change?
Unknown Speaker 28:32
Yeah, thank you for asking about that. And I know, it's never really easy to talk about, yeah, power dynamics, and the misuse of power, right and wielding power in a harmful way. So, you know, yeah, I just kind of, like, want to open like, a moment of Yeah, like, trigger warning, like this might be really hard to talk about, or listen to, and I just want to, like, let people know that there is no like, right answer at this time. But there is like an accumulation of efforts as we kind of work through this as a human family. And so, you know, I can only speak from like, the experiences that I've had working in my own community and the answers that we're trying to create through like, the ego central training and things like that, and I would love to talk about how the ego central training kind of like tries to address some of those things. So if I had a magic wand and could like, like destroy or or transmute and and straight Kali this shit,
Unknown Speaker 29:32
you know, and cut and cut it out, you know, at the base level. What I'm seeing a lot of than what's really interesting is that
Unknown Speaker 29:39
you know, I think there's a little bit of a misunderstanding with like, that there is like this like lone wolf type energy like it's like, oh, it's like this one bad apple, right? Their entire systems that hold these things together. So I just want to speak to like, I'm never destroying, like individual people, like I'm here to like, see the system and look behind
Unknown Speaker 30:00
In the veil a little bit at like, what is in place right now that like allows these people to exist to continue, and also like to be protected, and continue so that they can continue to create harmful situations for people. What was really interesting, like when myself and some other, you know, family members in our community here in the states started coming to voice, you know, allegations against a certain member of our community that was causing harm.
Unknown Speaker 30:30
I'm grateful. I'm grateful that you know, we got resistance, right, like, we definitely got resistance, like people like y'all a bunch of millennials complaining and trying to cancel someone. So I'm grateful that, you know, we hit resistance, because it also shows like that, that that we, as a psychedelic community is not super trauma informed,
Unknown Speaker 30:52
is not super trauma informed. And a lot of us don't have the skill set for like managing emergent traumatic situations and like how to attend to survivors and how to attend to people that have, like experienced these things. Previous generations to us some of those systems that are currently in place, previous generations to us have learned sweep it under the rug, you know, like, even my mother's mother, when we came forward about our grandfather, who's a Patriarch in our family, you know, even after he was incarcerated for eight years came out, you know, my mother's mother's asked her she's like, Do you really think he did all those things? Like girl we were in that trial for like, five hours, like you watch your your grandkids and your and your daughters and the neighbors down the street, say all of this. And so there's like, such a, like a delusion around people about you know, when powerful folks come, come get called to the fire, pretty much. And that's all we were trying to do was call someone to the fire like, hey, let's, let's bring some light on this because it's ongoing, and it's not going to stop unless we say something. And that's another system in place is like, you know, a lot of people, they, they feel silenced, like, especially if it's a, you know, a well respected member of our community, which a lot of these folks that perpetrate harm, like, they continue to betray, because people trust them, they continue to perpetrate, because they're very charismatic, like, they can get people on their side, like, you know, it's like their word against this one person. And sometimes that person thinks they're the only one. So like, one small voice against like this amass of respect and influence, it's like, it's extremely daunting, it's a very daunting thing. In a world where like, women have, like, continuously been, like, told that you need to be seen and not heard, right. And so we're fighting a lot of generations of that rhetoric as well. And it makes this space like very ripe for these kinds of things to go down. And, you know,
Unknown Speaker 32:50
what we've learned through that action, though, which is really interesting, is we talked about intergenerational trauma and, you know, kind of the freight train of momentum that a lot of us are kind of like now trying to dig our heels against the person who was causing harm was taught by a man in the jungle.
Unknown Speaker 33:12
And, you know, that I think gives a lot of people like, they feel like they have the right to practice because they learned from someone and then jungle, like, you know, they got permission from a shaman to now hold space and facilitate, the man that this person learned from, was also harming women. So, if I had a magic wand, it would be to, like, clear out like the line of people and like, this is happening all over the jungle, unfortunately. But to like, clear out.
Unknown Speaker 33:46
And like II eradicate the idea that sacred medicine can or should be used as a mechanism of power over and a mechanism of like subduing a person enough to extract like, power from them without consent, like consensual exchange of power, and energy and vital life force has been, you know, like, something that people get warned about, like, oh, when you go to the jungle, like go with someone vetted by your facilitator, because, you know, like, you don't know, there's like, people practicing like dark arts and shit. And you know, I'm not trying to get too woowoo. But when I say dark arts, like I just mean that people that don't care about your agency, trying to get at you by whatever means necessary, which means like, low key stealing from you, or kidnapping, you are doing things like that. So, you know, here in the States, we don't deal with that as much but what we are seeing is that there's still people that believe that they have permission to gain access to a person while they're in an altered state of consciousness. And
Unknown Speaker 34:55
like,
Unknown Speaker 34:57
in college, I saw it you
Unknown Speaker 35:00
No, like the fraternities like giving, you know sorority members like a ton of alcohol and permissioning themselves to be intimate with them, it's no different. It's no different, like people misusing their power in altered states is very prevalent in our society, the use of rupees is very prevalent in our society.
Unknown Speaker 35:20
You know, it's, it's a real thing, date rape is a real thing. Like, we have a rape culture. And what's really unique and interesting about this particular person we've brought allegations against is like, he was like, I don't believe in rape culture, like, I don't think, you know, everyone should be responsible for themselves. And I'm just like, you don't understand that there are systems that have been, you know, going on for a very, very long time that says that, yes, like, indiscriminately, people have permission to our bodies, and can have it by whatever means necessary. And that's just the status quo. Like, we did not even recognize marital rape until like the late 20/20 century. So, you know, I just, I want to just acknowledge that like, there are ways of thinking that no longer work for the present person, and could use a little system update. So
Unknown Speaker 36:17
we're here for this system update. And if I could take the magic wand, it would be doing that system update overnight while everyone sleeps, and everyone just wakes up and like we're all brand new and know what to do and know how to treat each other. But this is a realm of duality. And a lot of us have to learn the lessons of power by causing endless harms, until they can see the error of their ways. So I tried to take a very compassionate approach to dealing with these situations. And what I'm very much seeing as
Unknown Speaker 36:47
we got it, not just teach people how not to get harmed. But it's important to teach facilitators how not to cause harm. And so with the ego central training, what I think makes the Eco central training very different is mostly like,
Unknown Speaker 37:04
we're not interested in teaching people how to be facilitators, we're interested in building in like a framework that you can bring into any care profession, including entheogenic facilitation, that would ensure that you understand your own access to our how to spot things as you navigate the space and when things do happen, how to protect, take care and mend yourself, because it's, it's highly likely for things to occur. But I want people to know that you can have an eye for things, that there are ways that you could protect yourself and
Unknown Speaker 37:42
help way show protect and support other people as they navigate. That's what we do through advocacy work. So
Unknown Speaker 37:51
I have a very, at least at this time, a very See Something, Say Something approach to the way that I look at psychedelic harm in our community, because I think we've tried internal investigations, and wisdom councils plenty. But these are original frameworks.
Unknown Speaker 38:10
They haven't served us and what's happened with the top dog coalition has done a lot of good so far. So I think this is a new framework. And we'd like to offer it as a potential for other communities to take on and to mobilize so that we can stop the harm a little bit quicker, then it can continue. So
Unknown Speaker 38:34
thank you for asking, if I had the resources, I would absolutely love to just do the system reboot overnight, but it's gonna take a lot longer than that. And it's probably not even going to happen in my lifetime. So I'm here for that. And I'm here for the babies like I just want to make a world where kids can can navigate these realms like that they can shift their altered states of consciousness in a way that is far beyond like what we've been able to ever experience in our lifetime with what we have.
Unknown Speaker 39:03
I have so many questions but I feel like we would be talking for the next month
Unknown Speaker 39:11
talking about kids because there's a lot to talk about with pregnancy and raising kids working with with mushrooms during that whole journey as a mother and and also as a kid. What is your what's your view on
Unknown Speaker 39:29
having a relationship with mushrooms during pregnancy during breastfeeding?
Unknown Speaker 39:34
Raising kids while taking mushrooms?
Unknown Speaker 39:38
Yeah
Unknown Speaker 39:41
yeah.
Unknown Speaker 39:43
They were they were like a quintessential component of my my pregnancy and the wellness that I felt in my pregnancy and thereafter in the in the months thereafter. I mean, look what antenna the quarantine the you know the
Unknown Speaker 40:00
fourth trimester, if you will, I think
Unknown Speaker 40:03
I really am so grateful that I knew about mushrooms during my postpartum period, because it tends to be some of the hardest work that a mother will do is those first 40 days and that first year truly
Unknown Speaker 40:18
the way that it impacted me mostly I've shared about this before, but I was dealing with a great bit of alcoholism. I come from two alcoholic parents and probably many generations of alcoholics in my family were Italian, and Mexicans. I was like, you know, there's, there's a lot of that in there, because there's also a lot of trauma.
Unknown Speaker 40:36
A lot of colonial violence that happened. And it's interesting, because even indigenous people had access to mind altering substances, but it wasn't until the colonization that the abuse began. So
Unknown Speaker 40:47
you know, I don't even think this is a genetic predisposition, I really just feel like it's a response to things that happen. And so I took on alcohol really early, like, I think the first time I got drunk was like, 13. So and I was also addicted to cigarettes. And like I said, the opiates before to so I definitely have had, like, habitual you know, and I still deal with habitual behaviors and patterns and things. But, you know, as I came into my pregnancy, I was still partying pretty pretty decently. And
Unknown Speaker 41:13
I just, I didn't want my child to have to deal with an alcoholic mom. Like that was period like, I don't, I don't want to glorify the wine mom in me, like that was just not, I love wine. I come from a wine family and Italy, but I just don't want it to be misused. Like it was in my childhood, there are memories and like, experiences that I had that I just like,
Unknown Speaker 41:35
I resent and I feel sad about and like, forgive and also don't want to give that to my kid. So
Unknown Speaker 41:42
I set the goal or at least the intention, and I asked the sacred mushroom, if you would please help me with, with dealing with my my desire to drink alcohol and like my desire to not just drink alcohol, but to like, feel drunk, be drunk. Enjoy drunkenness.
Unknown Speaker 41:59
I don't want to have to do that anymore. And so yeah, I took two microdosing
Unknown Speaker 42:05
I had my first dose was given to me by
Unknown Speaker 42:08
an A Willa so a grandmother, who comes from Yeah, tradition where she was eating mushrooms at a very young age, like as young as three years old. So she, she gave me like, a great bit of confidence around, this is safe, you can you're welcome to be in our circles as a pregnant person and feeling like connected to the community that was surrounding her was really beautiful. So, you know, also feeling like, held in community around medicine, I think sometimes is just as healing if not more so as actual journeys. So, um, you know, I was dosed by her. And then I took on like my own practice with that I had been eating mushrooms for a long time, but I never really set to like any kind of micro dosing practice.
Unknown Speaker 42:55
It certainly wasn't as consistent as like the James Fadiman protocol or anything. But
Unknown Speaker 43:01
my approach was, every time I felt like I wanted to alter my state with with alcohol,
Unknown Speaker 43:07
consider what mushrooms might do in this moment, instead, like go into it and pull in a little bit more into feeling and understand the discomfort and let mushrooms guide you out of the situations you feel like you want to drink inside of. So that was that was pretty monumental. For me,
Unknown Speaker 43:24
I was able to in those nine months, like kind of disrupt, like my desire for it. And so that was really cool. And I'm very grateful for that, because it not only changed the chemical makeup of my pregnancy, but also like, my attachments for things outside of myself, you know,
Unknown Speaker 43:43
to help
Unknown Speaker 43:47
deal with the stresses of life. So I could INSOURCE a little bit more of my care, which was beautiful. And I felt confident enough and got like really familiar with the mushrooms self that I was as a pregnant person that I took to eating
Unknown Speaker 44:02
and consuming much more. So at six months,
Unknown Speaker 44:07
six and a half, I ate about an eighth of mushroom in my same, you know, group of friends that I had been journeying with and sitting in circles with for a while and one of those people was my doula and we journeyed pretty deep. And I felt things and process things and saw things and worked through stuff I didn't know I was really afraid of. And going into
Unknown Speaker 44:34
that journey actually, I had been voicing to my midwives at the time, that I was kind of amassing this kind of nervousness and anxiousness around like miscarriage and losing my child at that point because, you know, there's not much feeling of the life inside of you before the quickening happens, which is usually at like 14 to 16 weeks where like the kicks and the movements and you really start to feel like well
Unknown Speaker 45:00
Like someone's just like swimming inside of me.
Unknown Speaker 45:03
But by the time you're like heading into the third trimester, like, there's been a bond formed like that person's your friend, you've been listening to music together, your body has changed dramatically. Like, there's such an attachment that develops by that time. And so I think the realization like whoa, if something ever happened at this, at this point, during birth, or, or shortly before or after that, like, you know, removed this person from me, and I can't continue connecting with them, I would be deeply heartbroken, heartbroken so much that like, I don't know how well I would be. And so I was kind of facing this like, something that a lot of mothers face is like, the impending reality of, of death, potentially connected to birth, because for so many centuries, like, not not either one of them, you know, the mother or the child would come out on the other side alive. So I think that death and that feeling of like, whoa, but to also walk into a place where death likes to run around the table a bit and like, hang out in the room. And you know, where life is also kind of this other side of things. The portal is like, open on both sides here. So
Unknown Speaker 46:10
that started to loom over me a little bit. And I talked to the midwives, and they're like, why don't you create some birth art about it? Because, you know, I'm an artist. And so I was creating a lot of birth art. And that was helping me process like these different moments in my gestational experience. So they're like, why don't you make some art about it? You're so good at doing that. And I was like, Oh, wow. Yeah, I should, I should probably take to doing something like that and had this deep journey.
Unknown Speaker 46:35
I didn't tell him I was gonna eat that much. They knew I was eating mushrooms, but they didn't know I was gonna eat a lot of them. And so I did. And I'm so grateful that I did because all of those fears came to surface.
Unknown Speaker 46:49
All of those fears really showed me a lot about
Unknown Speaker 46:53
not only just in my immediate life that was causing me to feel fear, but also like, what is my cultural history? Like? What are the folk legends around? Women Miss Karen, what you know, like, you're gonna, you know, Toni Morrison's story, beloved, about an enslaved woman who has to kill her child, so that they are not born into slavery. Like, what about Moses in the basket, like all of these stories in these myths that had been kind of like, spoken to me, sung to me shared with me as a young person was now also coloring. What I believed about the mother child relationship and like myth, I mean, Joseph Campbell, like what a G like, myth, like, drives everything, it just drives the way that we understand everything about life. And so yeah, moving through in a bathtub was incredible. And scariest book because my Doula was, like very convinced that I was about to give birth. And she asked me to get in a bathtub, and was like, we're gonna just do these breathing exercises, and like, nothing was happening. And the water got cold. And she's like, Oh, my God, trigger warning, sorry for all the moms in the room. But she's like, Oh, my God, I killed your baby. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. Your baby's dead. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. And was like in the drama of mushroom like was in the drama of like, you mentioned performance, but truly, like mushrooms really, historically, have like, moved human consciousness towards like theatrics, and theater and like, plays, and those are very important parts of our human story and like the way that we express like feeling and so maybe it wasn't performance, but it was performative. Right. And like, she really believed this, like, she really believed, like, my baby was now dead, because she asked me to get in a pool when I wasn't ready to give birth. And now I'm not so you know, she actually went through her own leg, expression of her own fears as a birth worker, like I will be blamed for if something goes wrong with you, because historically in her ancestry, that is likely what had happened to her and many other people in her family. So, you know, we were playing out this like insane, very interesting drama. And, you know, I had the opportunity now in my own central nervous system, to accept this as truth and to process it as if it was really happening. So she left the tub and I remained in that tub for about three hours, crying, sobbing, grieving, working through it, like expressing in every somatic way, like my rage and discomfort at this. And when I got out of the tub and went to bed and woke up, my baby was in amazing shape, was happy, was alive very, very much so. And I felt so completed with the emotional charge that that fear like was given to me that I didn't have to carry that fear into the birth room and had a very, like, lively, wonderful, like grounded birth at home, and a postpartum period that needed some work, some working out to do still and so I was able to, you know, continue ingesting mushrooms in higher doses during my postpartum period that helped me also unearth some other things that I was that I was carrying. So
Unknown Speaker 50:00
I will say that the journey of healing, birth trauma, sexual trauma, you know, domestic violence, all these things is nonlinear, right. And it's not just like one big trip and you're poof, like, you're, you're fine now and like go on, and you'll be better forever.
Unknown Speaker 50:16
What my co facilitator and teacher Brittany Jade Wilson always talks about, she's co leading the Eco central class with me. She's a sexual assault, sweat lodge carrier. So hold sweat lodge, for people specific to that, and has a lot of experience working in the birth scene as a birth keeper, she talks about how like, these wounds that we have, they're kind of like, wrinkles in a fabric. And so with each journey, like, we don't like to, like thumb at at the wound, right? Like, we're not here to really, like agitate. And that's what I don't like about, you know, traditional therapies. And like, you know, people trying to use therapeutic models to work with mushrooms is like, we're trying to, like, elicit the biggest traumatic, like, experience and response and release. And, you know, if I didn't get them to cry during session, it wasn't successful. Like, there's kind of like this interest and like being the one to pull all of this out, when the circumstances for which this revelation occurred, like, I had been sitting and eating mushrooms with this group for like, seven years. And only now like, did I feel safe enough to like, fully release and have this experience, like, so much trust had to be built over the years, in order for me to feel like, now I can actually start to, as Brittany says, like, kind of smooth the fabric a little bit. And so, and that, that fabric needs constant maintenance. And so, you know, I,
Unknown Speaker 51:44
I would absolutely say during my pregnancy, like I mushrooms,
Unknown Speaker 51:49
deeply supported me and like smoothing the fabric of the things that I had been carrying, leading into my motherhood journey. And then after the birth happened,
Unknown Speaker 51:59
what, what else needed to get examined before kind of stepping fully into my role as as a mother to my child. So, you know, for folks that are in the therapeutic model, like, I just really implore that.
Unknown Speaker 52:14
Like, we can actually learn how to be like safe containers instead of like the agitator and like the instigator of like, huge, transformative, traumatic, like release experiences, because that can actually leave a person feeling very, like blasted open in need of repair, like, their whole world has now become shattered because of the things that they've learned. And like, we can really focus on like, relational care, and like smoothing out things together, like soothing central nervous systems together by CO regulating and
Unknown Speaker 52:48
deep, deeply, just being dependable and caring for one another in a good way. That's how community gets built. So I'm grateful that in my motherhood journey, I had community and there were times in
Unknown Speaker 53:02
the motherhood journey that was very lonely. So that's, I think, something that your listeners need to know. And I want to acknowledge the moms that are listening, or the people that are looking forward to becoming parents.
Unknown Speaker 53:15
Becoming a parent or a mother in this very individualistic society can be a very lonely road. And so not only are we craving, like, the desire to commune with an intelligence that can help us make sense of our life, but also like, allow us an entryway into belonging, like belonging to a cosmic space belonging to like the space of all mothers, and belonging to a space where we can mother in the ways that we feel resonate with us deeply. So
Unknown Speaker 53:46
that's what this movement is also about is like, normalizing the conversation so that, you know, entheogenic mothers can also feel like you you won't be ostracized and hopefully to change laws so that we won't be forcibly removed from our families for making a choice. That's very good for us and very compassionate and kind.
Unknown Speaker 54:08
And there's so much correlation between, you know, being a good mother and a good facilitator. Right, with with psychedelics, or just not just a community member, right.
Unknown Speaker 54:21
Same, same thing. Yeah. Yeah. And that I'll try to ask this as in as little words as possible, but it's a loaded question.
Unknown Speaker 54:33
You know, this study with synthetic psilocybin, with pregnant rats, and basically the ending of this study showed that the psilocybin pass through the placental and blood brain barrier and
Unknown Speaker 54:49
it it was slower to eliminate eliminate from the fetal tissues, but most of the dose was to the actual mother rat. Of course, these are rats there.
Unknown Speaker 55:00
has been no studies with humans for various reasons. But this this question is also correlated with
Unknown Speaker 55:08
psychedelic initiation. In certain cultures, with parents, it's like, obviously, it's really healing for the mother to use the psychedelics and these healing practices with or without psychedelics, but
Unknown Speaker 55:25
and we don't fully know, the effects on the kids.
Unknown Speaker 55:29
But I've heard so many stories of, you know, different cultures, you know, the second the baby is born, you know, couple ayahuasca, a couple of what trauma mushrooms fed to the baby, or at a certain age, like age 16
Unknown Speaker 55:45
I had an ex who
Unknown Speaker 55:48
she came from various medicine traditions, and at age 16, she was led out in the desert in Mexico, and her dad was like, here you go, here's, I can't remember if it was mushrooms, or what trauma but
Unknown Speaker 56:02
and that was the initiation or other people at age eight.
Unknown Speaker 56:06
And their dad's like, Alright, you're a man now here's, here's your cup of tobacco water go into the jungle, or whatever it is.
Unknown Speaker 56:15
So I'm just curious, like, what your view on
Unknown Speaker 56:21
initiating kids because there's certain
Unknown Speaker 56:30
like,
Unknown Speaker 56:32
especially if they're before consent, you know, and and, like, if we don't fully know what the effects are on the kid, like?
Unknown Speaker 56:45
Yeah, like what? I'm sure there's some concerns. I, I, myself am conflicted. It seems like such an amazing thing, especially if it's in this cultural container, where you have a loving community of tons of people around you taking care of the kid in many various ways.
Unknown Speaker 57:05
Yeah, kind of a loaded question. But I'm just kind of curious on your thoughts on it. There are ethical concerns, obviously. I mean, this is indoctrination. Let's just, like get down to it. You know, you can't spell culture without cult. Right? So religion, you know, should you bring your child to church? Let's have a conversation about that. Okay, I was raised up in a religious household, like, was singing in church choir, you know, I mean, it's like, no one was stopping anything like that from happening, there was no ethical concerns about going to church, because that ideology and framework is deeply rooted in our culture in our society. A lot of people nowadays, probably even more, thank goodness, like, have concerns around like, excessively, giving people you know, children's sugar, or psychotropic drugs, like because they have ADHD, because of all the sugar they ate.
Unknown Speaker 57:55
You know, like, they're, it's kind of like one of those things where you look at another culture, and they're like, oh, they eat bugs. That's weird. That's gross. It's like, you know, we just have our own preferences for things here, right. And I'm sure a mother would be like, it's so much more conditioned and ingrained to like, give their child like a whole can of Coke than like to give them like a micro dose of mushrooms. That's just the world we live in right now. But you and I, and many of the other people in this room would would actually likely choose microdose. So you know, it's, it's, it's a cultural difference. It's like a consciousness. It's an it's an A level of exposure, and it's a level of trust, and safety, right? Like, we have
Unknown Speaker 58:35
carved mushroom heads in ancient Mexico that are data to like 3000 BCE, and we're at 2000 ad. That means that's like 5000 plus years of, they'd already deified them that many years ago, so they had already deep relationships, and you don't think like some kid had had a taste of it like, and I just, I just really want to say like this is this is an issue of, it's not an issue of safety. psilocybin isn't just not, it's just not fatal substance.
Unknown Speaker 59:09
There might be complications, there might be circumstantial evidence to suggest that like, potential it might have exposure to psilocybin might have potentiate it harm in some in some, you know, experience, for example, but the LD 50 is just telling a very different story. Like, as far as safety goes for human consumption, psilocybin is only is only matched and superseded by mescaline, peyote, San Pedro cactus. So you know, and its regular use San Pedro and peyote in use of breastfeeding and pregnant women is prevalent in in traditional Mexican cultures. So
Unknown Speaker 59:49
you know, it's the conversation of is it safe? When we look at things like the C Cillessen experiment and
Unknown Speaker 59:58
you know, Cillessen
Unknown Speaker 1:00:00
then being digested and processed through the fetal tissues at a slower rate than the mother however, like, with the highest concentration being that in the mother also was showing us like the intelligence of the body, its ability to filter filter through
Unknown Speaker 1:00:14
what's, you know, necessary to come and in the right amounts. And
Unknown Speaker 1:00:21
I think there's also a huge propaganda machine around the drug war crack babies, which has been, like, largely disproven. And, you know, that's a contentious argument for sure. And I will just say that it's much more complicated than just like, women harming babies because of their addictive patterns. Like I really do think the drug war did or not like, we are also standing against like a moving train of political rhetoric to remove black and brown people from like, altered states of consciousness that I think expand them into, like
Unknown Speaker 1:00:57
generative ways of thought,
Unknown Speaker 1:01:00
you know, if we're gonna go after an incarcerated people for crack, then like, don't put liquor stores on every corner in the black neighborhood, you know, it is it just shows us like that there, there is a different than the intention is very different. And the impact showed that. So you know, a lot of us are in a post very much failed drug war world. And we just got to be really clear about who gave us the beliefs that we currently believe. And why do we believe them? And under, under, under what do we continue that belief, so, you know, if, if
Unknown Speaker 1:01:39
psilocybin containing mushrooms, mescaline, Sampedro, these do not have a toxic endpoint, or rather have a very, very, very, very high one that is, like almost impossible to reach?
Unknown Speaker 1:01:52
What are we arguing about? And I think we're arguing about, you know, what is the impact on children's brain development, for example?
Unknown Speaker 1:02:01
Well, let's get, let's get as critical about that, as we do anything else we do to our children. You know, like, I don't think it's a surprise that a lot of these practices come from black and brown communities that are held to high scrutiny.
Unknown Speaker 1:02:17
And it's, it's, it's inherent, like an explicit like, racism and and
Unknown Speaker 1:02:27
entrenched practices of like supremacy, pretty much. There is a history of removing Indian and indigenous children from households, because indigenous people were practicing rites of passage work with mind altering substances and things that looked and did not fit the model of the people coming into these territories. And that is the same with medical, that is the same with Africa, that is the same with Asia, and very much in Europe as well. Like, I really like to let people know that the tribes of Europe are lost long ago, every single one of us is indigenous, and every single one of us got colonized. If you didn't, then I couldn't have either. So you know,
Unknown Speaker 1:03:11
a lot of my European like, relatives and friends have been so just also disjointed from their, like ancestral practices in ways that like, have just assumed
Unknown Speaker 1:03:25
colonial culture and values
Unknown Speaker 1:03:28
as just kind of like a default mode, but like your your wild as fuck, too. And like you also had your own practices with sacred mushroom as well, like, your children were rough and tough and played outside in the snow and fought and got cuts and like, we're human animals too. And like, we were labeled as savage because we were like, the more recent savage than you. So, you know, I just I really want to offer the framework of like, how
Unknown Speaker 1:03:54
othering plays a really big role in this conversation around safety and this conversation around like, what is okay and not okay, for your children. And that is not to say, like, oh, we just indiscriminately. High Dose our children, like, people are so obsessed with the idea of like, oh, every psychedelic mom, like, must be putting, like micro doses in the breast milk or like, must be, you know, feeding their kids mushrooms on a regular basis because of their depression. Like, we deal with consensual children, like, what is what is consent? You know, like the food we put in front of our toddlers play. They will pick and choose what they want to have. Okay, like, I don't know why we need to dumb down like children. They're so intelligent. They definitely have agency. They make lots of choices for themselves when they're given the opportunity to do so. And a lot of us are having conversations with children and asking them what do you think about this? Do you feel ready? I have parents of 16 year olds that have been in conversation with their children about mushrooms since they were eight or nine and not until 16. Are they like, I think I'm ready for something like
Unknown Speaker 1:05:00
This was like there's been years of conversation prep, this is not just something you hear about on the news, and then you turn around and then you lose your kid. Like, I really believe that relationship is very important. Education is very important, and children are a lot smarter than we are. So I think it's okay to say that, yes, there's ethical concern. And also, if you're a decent parent that listens to their kids, I think your kids can also make a really good decision with you, for them in your community. So every circumstance is very different. But what I will say is, you know,
Unknown Speaker 1:05:36
we see a lot of benefit with what psilocybin is doing for the brain.
Unknown Speaker 1:05:41
And why would that?
Unknown Speaker 1:05:43
Does?
Unknown Speaker 1:05:45
What,
Unknown Speaker 1:05:47
at what point does the benefit stop? You know, like, does the benefit start just because you turned 18? Does the benefits start? Because you're 50, and you left your fortune 500 company, and, you know, like, the benefit is, is available for most everyone, you know, and
Unknown Speaker 1:06:07
knowing that people as young as three years old, in utero, with breast milk like
Unknown Speaker 1:06:14
they have psilocybin as part of the way that their brain organizes itself and their body organized itself, at gestation? And what are we seeing in the kids? I think that's a good question, too, is like, people wonder, is it safe? Is it safe? Well, I'm really interested in the benefits, like, I've kind of moved past this, like obsession with like, trying to prove that it isn't safe, because that's what science will do is like, Oh, is it safe or not safe? Like very black and white. But I want to do like, quantitative understandings of from the first person perspective, you know, although biased, and certainly not double blind, but
Unknown Speaker 1:06:50
what are we noticing in the mushroom kids? Because there's enough of us mushroom moms out here that can say, Yes, I eat mushrooms during my gestation. And my child's five, what am I noticing? So we've conducted and have an ongoing survey, the mushroom, my mother's survey, with an asterisk, and underneath is like an all birthing people welcome. So we have non binary people, trans people also submitting stories, which is wonderful. And
Unknown Speaker 1:07:18
we have over 260 submissions, with detailed stories and a lot of continuity. And a lot of people saying very similar things about the quality of their child's upbringing, the quality of their child's responsiveness, their use of language, or capacity for emotional regulation, or just emotional comprehension. Like, it's beautiful, all the things that we're really benefited from as adults with these medicines, the mothers are reporting about their kids. So I'm excited to publish those findings. They'll come out by Mother's Day next year, for the general public to see.
Unknown Speaker 1:07:53
That's awesome. And yeah, that's amazing.
Unknown Speaker 1:07:57
If mushrooms had the microphone, and could say one thing to the whole human race, what do you think they would say?
Unknown Speaker 1:08:06
Okay, this is kind of a weird one. But we'll, we'll see how it goes. But
Unknown Speaker 1:08:12
I've been kind of playing with this idea about like
Unknown Speaker 1:08:18
what is what is the power dynamic between humans and mushrooms. And so
Unknown Speaker 1:08:24
what just came forward was like,
Unknown Speaker 1:08:28
We don't serve you, you serve us.
Unknown Speaker 1:08:34
Really, Leonard, plants are very intelligent, fungus are very intelligent, like a seed pod will latch onto your skirt, and walk with you for miles to just move to a different place. Mushrooms will reorganize this, you know, subway system in Japan. They're very sentient. And
Unknown Speaker 1:08:54
I'm very much under the impression that a lot of us are doing their bidding a little bit.
Unknown Speaker 1:09:01
I'm here for it. I fully consent.
Unknown Speaker 1:09:05
Is this an ethical issue? Like, you know, um, because there have been some times when I asked her I was like, hey, this light surgery, like, we got to cut it, like, I don't want I don't want this kind of light surgery right now. So, you know, I just I really do feel like are we eating mushrooms to become better people? Or, you know, are we getting mushrooms to become more like mushrooms and like, you know, they're a lot older than we are. They're a lot wiser than we are. And I wouldn't mind to learn a thing or two from them. So you know, what I've shared with you today are just some of the things that I've learned with their help and we'll continue to do so. And there's a great many projects in this world is a great many things. Systems of imbalance systems of harm systems of like liberation, that that really demand our attention right now, and I absolutely feel like my work with sacred mushrooms has like, propelled me into this kind of this activism.
Unknown Speaker 1:10:00
and this this radical like sense of like wanting to just do good in the world and like, I pray that on everyone like I pray that we have like this, this burning desire to just like touch, move, inspire, it could just be it starts you know, in your neighborhood, it starts like with your plants and your and your dog and your children and you know what I mean? Like we can do the good work of mushrooms and the plant I think that they have for a lot of us to do good works and decompose old things and to birth new ones. And
Unknown Speaker 1:10:32
I just I just ask that people
Unknown Speaker 1:10:36
follow up plants now gurus, right in the words of Terence McKenna. So learn learn as directly as you can have good teachers along the sides of you, but at the end of the day, like have a nice and earnest relationship of humility with the sacred mushroom and they will impart to you the wisdom that they have to share if you're willing to listen.
Unknown Speaker 1:10:55
And I can I can tell why people request to share space with you. I mean, it's been such an honor the last hour and a little bit to share the space to have these conversations, I could tell you've lived many lifetimes in this lifetime, and you have a lot of wisdom to share. And so thank you, it's, it's been a blessing to, to bring you on to share your wisdom and stories with with everyone listening. And so, where where can people
Unknown Speaker 1:11:26
share more space with you and follow what you're up to and connect deeper with themselves and with mushrooms and the work that you're doing?
Unknown Speaker 1:11:34
On the scene, thank you classic, I'm happy, like I really appreciate having any opportunity to, to speak to new people to speak. Yeah, to new to, to maybe some old faces, you know, so I'm just I'm grateful that we are here again exchanging and like, we're just these little puppets and you know, on the strings of our ancestors pretty much and so, like I like I see you and thank you for what you are doing and creating here. You know, people can find my work by searching mushroom.
Unknown Speaker 1:12:05
Mushroom is kind of Yeah, like the body of knowledge, the consciousness that I'm hoping to bring, to bridge the entheogenic world and the worlds of, of the body and the portal of life and death and what it means to be well in the body is particularly the female reproductive system and also in the Yeah, the consciousness of the of the mind and the nerves and the body. And so I yeah, I'm grateful. I'm grateful for Sacred mushroom for helping me develop this consciousness. So that's, you can Google me mushroom, or find me on my website, mushroom dot love. I do have an apothecary as well. That's mushroom dot shop. And I also do have an Instagram mama della Miko and Tik Tok to pop in as well. But I do talk to a lot of people, one on one and to be holding a lot of space for folks. And so I'm very easily contactable, I answer every DM I get like probably to my detriment by hand because I just care about fostering my community. And I
Unknown Speaker 1:13:11
yeah, I do have like trainings and formal teachings and education all coming in. Those are all available on my website as well. So just thank you, thank you for letting like a millennial, you know, who's just learned a few things from Sacred mushroom, like, have a place to speak, I'm very grateful for what we have access to with the internet and our ability to like, reach far and wide now with what we have. And I just hope that I can just continue to be used as an instrument of change. So holler at me, what's you know, let me get eyes on what's going on in your neighborhood and see how I can be of service like I'm just, I'm just here to be of service. So
Unknown Speaker 1:13:47
thanks again. And yeah, I really look forward to seeing what this creates for the people listening Ashay Thank you. And thank you for everyone tuning in and tuning in for another episode of the mushroom revival podcast. I couldn't couldn't do this without you. It's, it's for you. It's in service of you. And you know,
Unknown Speaker 1:14:09
if you learn something in this episode or another episode or just want to keep sharing
Unknown Speaker 1:14:15
your passion about mushrooms and healing and everything related to being a human, please just share it you know, we're part of this this mycelial web community and it's it's up to us to come together especially in a in a weird, weird, weird time in the world. It's, it's about coming together more than being apart and you know, check out our site mushroom revival.com We have a bunch of mushroom goodies there bunch of free resources free ebooks and my newest book Little Book of mushrooms is there as well. It's really cute coffee table book and
Unknown Speaker 1:14:53
leave a review Tell your friends
Unknown Speaker 1:14:56
have an amazing time together and I
Unknown Speaker 1:15:00
As always much love and made this force be with you
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
