Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the True Life Podcast Evening Edition. I hope everybody's having a beautiful day. I hope the sun is shining and the birds are singing, the wind is at your back. I have with me today the incredible Alexandria Arzoglu. And I just want to, I built a nice little foundation for us here. Let me just go and introduce her. In a world that often settles for the mundane and the mediocre, Alexandria stands out as a beacon for those who refuse to let their potential remain dormant. As Joseph Campbell once urged us to bring forth what is within us. Alexandria's journey is a testament to the profound truth. With a background in psychology, she soon realized that understanding the mind was not enough. It was the experience of truly living that captivated her. Since 2017, Alexandria has been on an unyielding quest to uncover and harness the tools that transform a good life into an extraordinary one. Her path has shown that self-actualization is not a final destination, but a continuous evolving journey of becoming more of who we are capable of being. This relentless pursuit has led her to integrate various teachings and approaches from traditional psychology to the transformative potential of psychedelics. Alexandria now dedicates her life to guiding others who sense that there is more to their existence. She helps them feel at home in their own skin, trust in their journey, and rewrite the narratives that hinder their true potential. Whether through personalized coaching, therapeutic settings, or the mindful use of psychedelics, Alexandria's mission is clear, to assist others in realizing and embodying their fullest selves. For those ready to step into their next level, Alexandria offers a unique blend of preparation, integration, and microdosing guidance, tailored to unlock deeper insights and lasting transformation. Her approach is rooted in the belief that greatness resides within each of us, and with the right support and willingness, we can all achieve extraordinary lives. Alexandria Alexandria, thank you for being here today. How are you? Good. Thank you so much. So you can call me Alexandra or you can call me Alex. But either way, thank you so, so much. That was a beautiful introduction. I can't believe how quickly you put this together. It's taken me forever to write my about page. I should have come to you earlier. Good. Yeah. Thanks for that. Yeah, absolutely. I'm stoked you're here. I was, you know, when I visited your website, I was really impressed with, you were really candid about searching for things in life and you were really candid about why you want to help people. And I was kind of hoping we could start off by you sharing some of those reasons with my audience. Yeah, absolutely. Well, that was a great intro right there. I've always felt that there's more to life than what we consider normal. I was raised, like I guess most of us in the Western world, around people who were not truly happy. They were doing well enough, but I felt like there must be more than this. I felt like we're capable enough. of more and that's why I'm really intrigued by the hero's journey by Joseph Campbell to bring forth what is within us, that there's this greatness, there's this thing that we need to go after even when we don't know what it is, even when we don't have a name for it. I used to call it a thirst that I need to quench or an itch there was this thing I had to go after and I didn't know what it was and I studied psychology because it felt like the obvious thing to do but it psychology is a science it wasn't it was more about statistics and normal distribution and research and less about healing the soul and holistic healing and understanding what's behind human motivation behavior and all these things so By the final year of my psychology degree, where I was very stressed to complete it because of the research aspect of it, I found meditation in a period of my life where I was really stressed. That was the first time that I realized I'm not my body. I'm not just what I see in the mirror, but I am consciousness residing inside it. And this body is just a vehicle and it's taking me places and it's really worth taking care of it. But this is not all that there is. And there's energy and we're all energy and everything is energy. And for the first time, when I opened my eyes, I felt like everything is so perfect the way it is. Everything is as it should be. Yeah. And that's when I decided I must go after this and learn more about meditation. And on my way there, I accidentally got into yoga. And that's a whole other journey. But basically then through yoga, I would tap into meditation. And then I realized that if I was teaching yoga, I would get more benefits of yoga because I was very present with the practice. And then one thing led to the other, to finally psychedelics, where... Ever since I read about psychedelics, I felt like, oh, I've always been looking for something that will help me, I call it self-actualize. It can be a bit of a grandiose word, but I felt like there must be this thing that can help me get more out of life and become more of myself and embody my potential more. And when I read about psychedelics, I was instantly called to them. And when I got to try them years later, I was like, yep, I knew it. This is kind of what I thought it would be like. I knew we can get better. So it took years until I managed to piece all these together and realize if I do psychedelic assisted therapy, then I can also both myself, but also help others become more. Cause if I have this thirst, it must be more than me. We tend to be very much the same. So yeah, I'll just pause here. I feel like I'm going all over the place, but. No, it's perfect. A couple of people in the chat. Mark Davis and Crystal Phoenix both say hello. How are you? We're doing well. Thank you, Mark. Thank you, Crystal. Thanks for being here. Let me know if you guys have any comments or questions in the chat. Alexandra... It almost, when I look back on it, it almost seems like something was trying to get your attention, like something bigger than you. Is that something that's inside of you? Is it this language that is, is it the planet trying to speak to us? Is it a higher consciousness? What do you think it is? It just seems like something calls to us. What is that? That's a really good question. I feel like it might take me a minute because I'm getting... I'm getting different things. I think there's definitely... I just finished watching. I don't know if you managed to catch the source by Dr. Joe Dispenza. They had a live streaming 21 to 23rd. So in your time zone, you might still be able to catch it for free, but then it will still be available just not for free. And I follow Dr. Joe Dispenza a lot and I practice his meditations and I feel like it's amazing. His work is amazing for psychedelic integration, but that's a whole other topic. Yeah. But In that documentary, they also talk about the source, the light. Some people call it God, some people call it the divine. There's this light before the big bang, before everything existed that we are all made of and it's there and it's everywhere and it's everything. So it could be that there's definitely more than this. And psychedelics do tend to help us to understand that, oh, it's not just this dimension and there's more layers. There's the energetical body, many of which I don't even know because I tend to say I have a lot of work to do with what is already here. and my past and my childhood. So I've been kind of dealing with that until now, but maybe in the future. And I know there's many beautiful people who do shamanic work, energetic work, and they could possibly speak more to that. But another thing that could be calling me, I've been trying to understand What happened to me now that I'm being trained by Dr. Gabor Mate, I'm in his training, Compassion Inquiry, and it's absolutely life-changing. And I'm realizing that we all have childhood trauma. Trauma is so normal that we don't see it like fish don't understand they swim in water. So I've had a lot of work to do with like understanding how things work and how I work and why do I react this way? And it's been a lot of like soul seeking and soul searching and trying to understand. And one final thing I'll say on that. someone who has been working with ayahuasca for years and years and years he said people when they're young and by young I mean below 60 they try to understand life and themselves and things and then after maybe in their 70s onward when they go to ayahuasca they just want to feel and that is a really beautiful distinction like I feel like I'm still very much in the phase where I'm just trying to understand how things work and how where things come from and what's the purpose. And I've gotten many, many clues on those enough to be like, okay, I can pause for a bit and I can possibly help others on this quest. But yeah, it's just life is an evolution and probably answers change as we age. Yeah, it's well said. Whenever I hear the word understand, like I picture myself underneath something looking up and trying to figure out how it works. Like you're like underneath it, like standing, like how does this work? And psychedelics really... And psychedelics and these different ways in which we enter alternate states really do seem to give us insight on how things work, primarily ourselves, primarily our thought patterns. And if we do take it back to childhood trauma, you know, I... I don't know that I've ever talked to anybody on my podcast that didn't have a childhood trauma. And it's interesting to hear the way they've integrated. Some people have said, you know what? Because this happened, I'll never love again. And other people have said, because this has happened, I'll love more than I've ever loved again. It's interesting to see the way in which we deal with those traumas. Maybe you could share more about that. I don't know if you want to tell a personal story or if you can just talk about how you've integrated maybe some of the traumas in your young life that brought you where you are. Yeah. Well, we're definitely meaning-making machines, aren't we? So the same experience will create very different conclusions for people. And there is... there's healing work and there's coaching work and they're both important. So the way I try to integrate everything is like therapy and other modalities help a lot with healing the past and making sense of things and making different meaning, but that work possibly never ends. So we can be doing it forever. But if we get stuck there and constantly be looking at the past and what's wrong with me and how can I fix it? Then, um, it can feel like a really long process and the results are really slow, even though it's very, very beautiful work and I love therapy and I'm training to be more of a therapist all the time. But at the same time, there's also coaching work, personal development work that capitalizes on your strengths. So instead of focusing so much on everything that's not working, it's like can we focus focus on what is working and strengthen that and focus on that and create out of that so I find that it's really nice to do a balance of both because one gets in the way of the other and there's always an integrated model like if I look at my healing um I used to battle with eating disorders for years and it wasn't therapy or psychedelic assisted therapy that healed that it was having a really good relationship that gave me so much love that I learned to love myself through the eyes of someone else it was a very different and much healthier lifestyle a very different food more low carb and a lot more exercise but also a lot of coaching work on body love and self-love And now looking back, and it was a lot of workshops I've done on my belief systems and different things that it felt like gradually I would have less of the disorder to the point that at some point I would look back and be like, I don't think I qualify anymore. If I look at the signs that someone has anorexia, I don't have that anymore, not even bulimia. So then it was looking back that I realized I'm probably healed from this. But it wasn't like a flick, switching the flick on, like now I have it, now I don't. It was more like the effects are starting to disappear gradually. Yeah, it's interesting to get the flashes of insight. You know what I mean by that? Like you get a download or you get this moment of clarity or you find yourself finally alone sitting with your thoughts and it begins to make sense. But then you got to go and do the work, right? Then you got to go, okay, I know it's this. Some people can get hung up right there. And I think you as an individual who's been studying under some amazing teachers and put in their own work, like how does, how would you help someone make that transition from that flash of insight into start walking the path? Like that, that seems like, how do you, how do you make those first few steps? that is integration work and that is the hardest thing to convince people to do because people want to go to an immersive workshop they want to go to psychedelic ceremony and have all these downloads and expect to wake up next day and feel like I'm enlightened now and I got it and no more daddy issues and whatever but it's actually walking the talk. Otherwise, it just becomes a memory. It becomes a fun event, a nice memory, and it feels like the effects wear off over time. This is what doing the work is. it's often fun and inspiring to do it. And often it's soul crushing and you feel like you suck at it and it's, and you're losing people and because your values change, but it integration work is living life. It takes our, the rest of our lives. And of course we can have, another splash of another ceremony, a sprinkle of a workshop here and there, but it is what we do in between that make up who we are and creates a whole different life trajectory. Like instead of going to the same path we've always went to, then after integration work, we can go one degree in a different path and end up in a different direction. And that is very hard to convince people of because yeah, we just like quick fixes these days and magic pills and tell me something new and what's the new method, but really there's nothing new. It's all old methods like community, health healthy lifestyle meditate I keep saying to people if you're gonna do one if all this healing is overwhelming just meditate if you're gonna pick just one meditate that's it and it's free yeah it depends on you doing it yeah it it's I'm curious for someone like yourself and maybe a lot of the people that you've been interacting with. And I know a lot of people on my podcast that there can be radical shifts sometimes. Like you said, it's nice to spend time at the top of the mountain. Like there's this, you know, there's this sort of, Fearful ecstasy that you feel of like, oh my gosh, like the terror before the sacred and you're understanding things for the first time maybe. There's some radical shifts that can come from there. Have you yourself ever encountered or perhaps someone you're working with ever encountered this, okay, I'm going to make a radical shift in my life right now and they just turn on a dime and start trying to go down this whole new direction? Well, every New Year's resolution, I see my clients trying to do that. So true. But it does. It always comes back to integration. So even if you have an ayahuasca ceremony and realize many things for the first time, like where we come from. I call them the hippie-like stuff, like why we call trees our ancestors, why we all come from the earth and descend back into it, what it means that we're all one and we're all the same, all those things that the hippies used to always say. And then I'm like, oh, I didn't know I had so much hippie in me until I went to Alaska. Now I get it. I want to be barefoot all the time. Why be disconnected from the earth? So those are... It's a red pill, blue pill kind of situation. Those things change you. And once you see, you can't unsee. Yeah. But then again, like for me, it's all about long lasting transformation. If it's not going to change your life, if you're going to go back to the same life with the same people in the same job and the same habits, we can not always change our job or our environment, but we can change friends. We can start hanging out with people we admire, people we learn from, not people who gossip all the time or people... you know, who drag us down. So we could change those things in order to integrate that experience. We can be around people who have also had similar experiences and understand our language. So it's all about what do you do after big, big insights do occur. And, and someone might want to have a massive transformation and it can happen, but it really depends on the success of it depends on whether it's going to last or not. And again, it's, it doesn't have to be so black and white. Sometimes we do the work and sometimes we don't, and sometimes we get in and sometimes we forget, but it's like over time, there might be, if it was a graph, it could be going up and down and up and down and you know, but over time there would be an upward trend of progress. Yeah. It's interesting to think about the upward trend of progress and the relationships that tend to form around us when we're on that upward trend of progress. It seems on some level our relationships change because our relationship with ourself. Crystal says here that she talks about having flashes of insight when she left her abuser. Is that have you obviously none of us are giving medical advice here, but have you had people come to you that were maybe in abusive relationship? And is that a different method you would work with someone with versus someone who's trying to fix their job or fix a relationship with their kid? Do you take different avenues for different like different approaches for different styles? Or how do you how do you decide what what to do there? Yeah, if it's like big T trauma, if we say, I would mainly go with compassion inquiry, just hold space, allow space to be there. I wouldn't coach as much. I would just inquire of... Because we always want, we want to validate the experience when someone has had something traumatic happened to them, it wasn't their fault. So we want to acknowledge that and hold space for that. But also we want to give responsibility to the client. So, cause I can't work with the abuser. I can't work with the person that inflicted the trauma, but I don't want that person to be a victim anymore of that situation. So I want to empower them and help them see. their part in it or how to not repeat the pattern anymore. Because as Gabor Mate says, the trauma happened before the trauma happened and we got disconnected from ourselves. So that was the original trauma. We were, often I see it as if from the neck down, we have put a lid on and we are disconnected from our bodies, our gut feelings, our intuition. So we want to reconnect with those things. And when we are, then it's less likely that similar situations will happen again in the future because we're way more attuned to ourselves. So that's, that's more therapy work. And that's what I would do definitely with big T trauma. That is most of what I do in general, but sometimes, you know, there's also different methods, but that is the core of what I do. Like compassion inquiry. This approach has truly transformed my life and the way I see my, my childhood and the way I hold space for clients and, childhoods and traumas. And yeah, that's, that's the main thing of what I do. It's so interesting to think about patterns that happen. You know, when I look back at some of things that happened to me when I was younger, and I can see patterns of, you know, maybe misalignment or abuse in some levels, you know, it almost feels like, like that trauma that happens to you when you were young is, I guess the proper word would be maybe impressed upon you like it almost creates a new pattern in you on some level would you have any any any thoughts on interrupting patterns with with different states of awareness or is there any particular techniques that you use to interrupt patterns to help people stop performing well again Again, there's the coaching stuff and there's the therapeutic stuff. And I could speak to both, but as Gabor Mati, again, everything I do in my life is backed up by a quote by Gabor. The myth of normal. Exactly. As he would say, and as he trains us to say, is when the trauma happened, who did you speak to about it? Hmm. So, and most people will say nobody. So it creates a very different experience when someone is held, when the child goes to their mother or father and expresses that difficult thing that happened and they are able to help them process that and to feel the sadness and share that experience. And it creates a very different life and a whole different set of belief systems and meaning making. When the child is alone with their pain, then they start believing, I am alone with my pain. Pain is intolerable. I cannot share pain. People are busy. I'm not good enough. I'm not important enough. There's a whole list of beliefs that we create because of experiences like that. So in therapy work, what we do is that when we go through this process of when did you speak to about it? And if not, then why not? And there is a list of questions we would ask. And then the client would understand that when the re-parenting happens, when they understand Of course, they created those meanings and beliefs at that time in that situation. But it's not really that they're not good enough. It's just that the conditions were in such a way that one thing led to another and they were four years old. So, of course, that's what they believe. You know, children are very narcissistic. You know, they're hungry, you feed them. They pee on themselves, you change their diapers. I mean, that's before four. But, you know, so it takes time. They can't really process that dad is busy because he's trying to make money to pay for food and mom is busy because of this and this and that. They can't rationalize in such a way. So they're like, if they're busy, then it means I'm not good enough, for example. So that would be the therapy work. The coaching work as Tony Robbins, the king of personal development. He talks about interrupting patterns a lot. So he will put you in a state. He talks about changing our physiological state a lot. And that's why it's really important that we work out, that we have a healthy, fairly routine, that if someone is watching TV and eats popcorn and drinking beer and thinking, you know what? I'll change tomorrow. And their system doesn't believe that. They're like, he's lying again. Of course he's not gonna, look at him. He's just like doing the same thing he's doing every evening. But if you're in a very different environment, that's why immersive workshops, like going to a Tony Robbins workshop is a really beautiful experience because you are disconnected from your normal environment and you, He helps you be in that state. You get to clap and like high five people and jump around all the time. So you change your physiological state. And in that state, you make a different decision. And that decision. It's as if, if your brain and that pattern was a CD, like we used to have CDs and then you scratch it and that's how you interrupt the pattern. So when you play the CD, it doesn't, the song doesn't go anymore. So you need to change your state and then make a very important decision. and then take massive action after that. So that's where the integration comes again. It doesn't work if you just leave that experience, that workshop, that therapy session, whatever it is, but you just do what you did yesterday. You need to take massive action that aligns with that decision that you just made, and then do that again the day after that, and again the day after that. So it's like walking the talk every day, embodying that decision. It's well said. The idea of perspective, like the idea of changing patterns and perspective change seem to go hand in hand. And one way people seem to really get a different perspective is to write about their interactions. I know for me, writing or journaling has definitely been helpful prior to a psychedelic session, even during a psychedelic session, and then after a psychedelic session. If you could speak to those ideas about writing and altered states of awareness. Oh, that's my favorite topic, probably. Awesome. Actually, my coaching emerged out of creating journals for people, for them to help to reflect on their experiences in their lives. So I used to have a one-to-one consultation with someone. They would tell me everything they're struggling with, but everything they want, like their goals. And then I would create 100 to 300 pages of customized journal prompts to help them address all those things. and then I realized instead of giving them those journals I can just ask them the questions during a coaching session it's going to be faster and that's how I started coaching and then I realized that many people believe that they're ready to move forward but there's trauma from the past that is holding them back and that's when I decided to do my trauma training compassion inquiry and Now I am actually creating psychedelic microdosing journals and also for people who are not into psychedelics, I'm also creating personal development journals to help people reflect on priorities and the year and their goals and what are they doing that is aligned with those goals. Because as a very beautiful quote says, if I wasn't listening to your words, but only looking at your actions, what would I think were your priorities? Hmm. Because we often say, I want to focus on my career, but I spend two hours a day on Netflix instead of researching that career idea and putting a business proposal together and all these things. So huge, huge, huge, huge supporter of journaling. I feel like nothing replaces journaling. writing, especially by hand. And it's really worth doing that brain vomit, especially first thing in the morning, something like morning pages, like from the artist's way. I often find when I personally sit to meditate, there's all these thoughts that are coming in. And I'm like, if I want to think, I shouldn't be meditating, I should be journaling. and then go off to meditate when I've unloaded a bit, offloaded. So yeah, I'm also a very big supporter of journaling during psychedelic experiences. There's a big debate on that. Some people will tell you it disconnects you with the experience, you don't go as deep. I think it really depends on the person in mind. the ayahuasca experience I had years ago I was writing during ayahuasca for like four days unpopular tool of sitting in an ayahuasca swing but I felt like my journaling my writing was 50 of my healing because it would also help me stay on the thread because often we get distracted and that was before I knew about intention setting as much and how to be self-regulated during a psychedelic ceremony. I didn't really know those things. So I felt like the writing really helped me to be like, oh, now I'm thinking of all these other things. Wait, what was I writing? Right, this issue, we are working on this issue today. So yes, yes to that, yes to journaling at any point. It's so, it's such an epic attempt to really capture the imagination. And like, for me, like on a, on a big journey, there's been times where I'll try to, first off, I tried to journal during it and like, it would just be unlegible. I'd be like, what am I writing? Like scribbles and I'm like, I can't even read. I don't remember what I was thinking. So then I was like, okay, I'm going to record myself because I know I can't really, it's like, I can't barely see everything's moving. So I'll just record myself. And like, it's been, I've hit 50, 50, like some of it has been really inspiring and cool when you go back and you listen to something you said at one of those experiences. And the other part is just gibberish. But it's really a way to try to capture that ineffable, right? Because in some of these experiences, you have these flashes. You're like, that's it. That's brilliant. And then five seconds later, you're like, wait, what was I thinking again? It's so hard to hold on to. Yeah, it's like a dream. Yes, it is like a dream. It's fascinating to think about. That particular insight, it's like a dream. Have you been able to take that insight and apply it to your daily life on some level? It almost helps you realize the life you're living is like a dream. Yeah, my parents have been telling me because I don't live in Greece, but now I'm in Greece and I visit my parents and my parents that I'm starting to appreciate The elders, as they say. Yeah, right. So the advice that they give me and like my parents are, my mom is in her 60s, my dad is in their 70s, and they both say it feels as if we were 20 yesterday. Like it really comes by as a dream. And a beautiful thing my mom said that her father had told her was that one day you will remember us as if it was all a dream when we will not be here anymore. So those are very beautiful things. things to ponder on and really help us be grateful for what we have now. Like that idea of impermanence, I've had a life That it was such a dream and it was exactly what I wanted to spend my 20s doing. I've spent a lot of years traveling the earth and meeting incredible people and doing different things and going to spiritual gatherings and having all these like crazy experiences and beautiful experiences, like unconventional experiences. way of spending my 20s. And then I realized that so many conversations I would have with my best friends in Colombia, I was like, I can't believe I met these amazing people, and this is going to end because we both have to do different things after this year, and our visa is going to expire. And I had bought a cheap GoPro, not a GoPro, a fake GoPro. Right, right. a lot cheaper because I was like 21 at the time and I wanted to record all the silly daily conversations we've had so to store them so to not lose them and then I realized you can't do that Alex you can't hold on to life like that you just need to enjoy it as it happens and then let it go so all these beautiful trips and all these beautiful experiences like going to Mexico and seeing all the beautiful views and being 22 once and I was like, this is going to end and that's fine. This is it. It's a moment at a time. And the more I am present during and awake, the more I'm not thinking of different things, then that's the best I can do. That's the most I take advantage of it. Because I'm just here now and life is a collection of nows. But the more we spend distracted and and the more we spend regretting or just not being present, really. Even daydreaming is a way of missing out on it. It might be a more positive way than regretting, but we're still not present right now. So then I just started to let go and realize it is a dream and I will be like 40 soon and then 60 and so on, hopefully. And what else can we do? It's this bittersweet realization of impermanence. It is. I have a good question for that one. Let's see. Bear with me here. It's a really good one. I want to find it. You're looking for a book? I have like, I have like some notes that I wrote up here and I was like, Oh, I gotta ask this question. But as soon as you said that, that reminded me of one that I kind of wrote down, but I didn't really write it all the way down. Take your time. Imagine we're pausing. Okay. Fantastic. How do you balance the idea of uncertainty with living in the present moment? It seems to me that uncertainty is the trigger in which you begin to dream or you begin to make excuses or you begin to have this rapid ongoing question making in your mind. What is your relationship with uncertainty? It's like... My life is constantly uncertain because I don't have a place in the world where I live. I'm not based anywhere and I'm looking for that. So, yeah, very familiar with uncertainty. Right? Let's start there. So, like, I don't even know how long I'll be in Greece for. Let's, you know, this is kind of my life the past seven years. So... Time blocking is amazing. As silly as this sounds like time blocking is everything. Cause that's something I help others with, but I also always try to help myself with first. Like there's always all these different things to do. Like we can spend some days, especially weekends with my partner. We, we are offline and we talk things out. It's like, what are we doing? What is the next step and planning? So that is our time for dealing with uncertainty. But when it's Monday to Friday, 8 a.m. to like 6, 7 p.m., we just crack on with what we have to do for the day. So we are not constantly stuck on pondering on uncertainty and making plans for it. But again, scheduling that in. What gets scheduled gets done. But there's always... level of uncertainty in life and I've been on and off reading things about it um what was it that I read recently that to basically stop trying to avoid it because it will always be there because it feels like I don't know if it feels the same way to you or to other people that it feels like the level of uncertainty that I have in my life is more than other people's But we all have it. And possibly, potentially, it will always be there. I don't know if things will ever get less uncertain. So it's kind of like dancing with it. But again, I don't have an absolute answer or formula about it. I'm definitely still figuring this one out. But all I can say is don't let it consume you. Schedule time to deal with it and also time to not deal with it. That's all I could say. Yeah. It's such an interesting question. I do think that most people, I think it was Bob Marley who said, every man thinks that his burden is the heaviest. And that resonates with me in uncertainty because it's really easy to begin thinking about all the things that could happen to you, all the negative things or reasons why people did things. But yeah, I think This would be a good question for Gabramonte or the elders or anybody in your circle that has dealt with it on a level. I think maybe your parents answered it when they said it was like a dream because how much of those things that you really worry about or those things you're uncertain about really affect you? It's usually something idle on a Tuesday that blindsides you that's the problem, you know? But uncertainty, it's a real clincher on some levels. It definitely messes with my head from time to time, but surrender might be the answer to that, right? trust yeah there you go yeah trust might be the answer to many things trust is peace I always thought trust is peace so trusting ourselves bring power and trusting what is and life brings happiness and trusting people brings love so trust tends to be a really good muscle to work on Alex, you've traveled around quite a bit and you've had some really cool experiences and you've had these different states of consciousness in different parts of the world. How do you feel when you go to a different part of the world and have an experience? Is it different in different parts of the world because it's a different part of the world or is it different because you're different in that part of the world or both? What do you think? Yeah, possibly both. It's definitely who we are is a massive piece of it. First time I left Europe, because I feel like the biggest transformation the biggest light bulb moment happens when we leave our continent, the continent we grew up in. Because if you go from one state to the next, you know, there will be differences, but it's going to be still the same. It's similar in Europe. Like if you go from one country to another, there's different language and architecture and history and stuff like that. But it still doesn't feel like, oh my gosh, it's such a cultural shock. I don't know how to cross the street. But when I went to India for the first time, it was a lot of, I don't know how to cross the street because, tuk-tuks never stop and there's no traffic lights and you just kind of have to walk through them and they will figure themselves out around you while they're still speeding up so that's when but the thing is when I went to india for the first time I had just broken up with my a long-term relationship I had at the time so I was devastated and I was crying every day and then I was in this beautiful paradise paradise-like place in a yoga retreat but I was carrying this grief inside me and feeling like I'm wasting this experience and that's when I truly realize wherever you go you take yourself with you it doesn't matter that I'm in this beautiful place it's still me damn it I wish it wasn't but um and then another experience I've had was Uh, for example, living in Columbia was probably my favorite part of my life, my, my, my favorite chapter, but it was also the time of my life and the people I got to meet and the experiences I've had in that was in 2018. And then when I went back in Columbia in 2018, it was the same city, but I was different and the people were different and the experiences were different and it was so not the same. So it definitely, I think mainly. Our life depends on who we are. It's kind of like a, it's like a mirror, like a reflection. The outside is a reflection of what is inside. but also you know people are where it's at like you meet amazing people that see you and feel you and you learn from them and you admire them and you feel like oh my gosh I can't believe these guys are my friends like I'm learning so much from them I'm becoming a better version of myself so that also helps to having a transformative experience anywhere it could be your hometown it could be a place really far away from home so Everything is, I think, multidimensional, like healing. It's well said. I can't help but think about the language we use for traveling on like a journey from a state or cross country. And then the language we use when we talk about like tripping. You know what I mean by that? Like maybe a micro dose is sort of like going to another county and like a macro dose to another continent. Never thought of it like that. Yeah, microdosing is more like a different planet. It's so crazy to just see the different ways. When we talk about microdosing, there's a lot of different methods. There's the Stamets method or the Fadiman method. Is there the Alexandra method? What is the Alexandra method? The Fadiman method. But many people, especially colleagues of mine who are also psychedelic coaches and they are very in tuned with their bodies. One I have in mind, she's also a breathwork practitioner or they have some somatic practice in their training and in their life and they tend to microdose very intuitively. But that's not something I recommend to clients who are disconnected from themselves and they use microdosing to reconnect and to become more of who they are. But I think there is a bit, I guess, more of an advanced level of microdozer who just intuitively knows and is called to when and what to microdose. Because it's not just psilocybin and LSD. It's also iboga, wachuma. People microdose different things. Even ayahuasca, I don't fully recommend it. But if a shaman that you trust says it, then there's a kind of a way to do it and many ways to not do it. But yeah, the whole thing of this parallel between journey and tripping with psychedelics, it's something I've pondered on too. And it definitely is a journey because it does have a beginning and middle and an end. And it does change you. And you're tired by the end, especially if it's something like LSD. You've spent like 12 hours on this thing. You're tired, you're hungry, you're sweating. And it is really a trip. And I also feel like I love psychedelics so much because they help me understand life better and myself better. So when I, after a psychedelic trip done intentionally, then I understand how life is a trip. And it's also to not take everything too seriously. Yeah. to have fun. Last psilocybin ceremony I was on a year ago, And it was part of my training. So all of us want to do this professionally and are very serious about intention setting and preparation and integration. And half of the room, like 15 people or so, were like, you know what? My intention is to have fun because I haven't had that in a while. And I just want to play. And we keep forgetting that life is also about having fun and seeing it as a game and playing. Yeah. Yeah. That's half the problem is everyone takes themselves so seriously. Like this is so important. I have to get this done or what? You have to get that done or what? You know, it's crazy to think about. Yeah. Even, you know, if you just take the idea of someone who gets high, well, what happens when you get high? Like, don't you have a different perspective? Like when I, if you're getting high, you're looking down on things or you're looking at a different perspective. And there's been plenty of times where, you know, in a psychedelic journey, I've lived a whole nother lifetime where I was able to go back and reevaluate decisions I've made, make a different decision and see how it played out in the third person. Like there's a really transformative things that are happening in there. And I don't think that it is a coincidence that we use that same language to describe it. There is a zooming out for sure. Even in microdosing. And that's why it really helps with creativity, with productivity. Yeah. um I found a faster way of pre-cooking cauliflower one morning because I was microdosing and I was like oh my gosh this was here all along and now I get to zoom out and be like you could be saving 20 minutes a day but and especially in in macro journeys as you said yeah you can look back at your life and and reconsider things and the decisions you've made and the way your personality was formed and many things But even in micro levels, this can happen, zooming out. Yeah. I'm often curious about the revealing that happens. It seems to me like there's so much... I don't know if revelation and revealing are the same things, but it seems to me you can have these really unique insights, whether it's figuring out how to cook cauliflower different or whether it is tying your shoe different or whether it is solving a problem at your work different. But it... the process of the answer being revealed to you is intriguing to me, right? It's like, it was there the whole time, but I just couldn't see it. Now all of a sudden you can see it, right? Isn't that amazing? It's insane. It's as if we really do find them when we're ready. Yeah, I agree. So you know the comedian Shane Moss? I watched him in Colorado last year. He's a psychedelic stand-up comedian, and he's hilarious. And he was just saying how in psychedelic journeys, you often... come up with these massive realizations that were not that big of it like maybe you saw it in your grandma's embroidery somewhere like um home is where the heart is or something and then you have a big psychedelic journey and you're like home is where the heart is like you really get it But it's this thing. And often it's been this quote or that you've always heard or this advice that so many people in your life have tried to give you. And suddenly you're like, oh, I get it now. Like now I'm going to implement this thing. So the way I see it is. to understand something is to embody it, to make it from this cognitive information that was outside of you or in your head to go everywhere in your body. You're like, oh, now I am one with this knowing. Now I fully get it. I fully understand it. It's more like embodiment of like taking something that's outside to make it yours. Because when someone gives you advice, it doesn't really come through until you are in a stage to experience it yourself or you've, yeah, until you've had your own realization of that very same thing they're saying. So it's like, oh, now I'm taking it inwards. I don't know if I'm making sense. Are you following? Yeah, that's a great- that's a great way to explain embodiment. I was like, yeah, I've never really thought about that, but that is a great definition of embodiment is to take it, take it to heart, to take it home. Right. And, and really know that, okay, I've got this lesson now. Now I can move on to the next one. It's. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, it's mine now. I get it. Yeah. Okay. We can move on now. You don't have to repeat this anymore. I got it. Yeah. Yeah. It's such an interesting time in this particular cycle of psychedelics. And while I'm happy to see the potential help for so many victims of PTSD or abusive relationships, Like I'm hopeful and I'm trying to do everything I can to speed along like the new 60s. Like I would like to see the explosion of like artwork everywhere, new methods of teaching, you know, like the new movement come out of there. Do you think that we're about to break out of this medicalized container or are we still going to be in the medical container for a while? I don't know the way things are going now with the FDA trials for MDMA as a legal treatment for PTSD. We'll see. But I loved Rick Dublin's vision of not too long from now, he wanted to have LSD psychedelic therapy rooms and psilocybin assisted therapy rooms and MDMA and ketamine and iboga and whatever you need. And someone who needs treatment, And hopefully not just for treatment of mental health issues, serious mental health issues, but also for the betterment of, I guess, fairly healthy people feeling happier because there's many of us who do not qualify for treatment resistant depression or PTSD. but we're not fully fulfilled. We haven't reached our potential, but we know it's there. We know it's within reach and the clock is ticking and we can get to it. But there's all these things in between, whether there are beliefs or self-destructive patterns or our environment, there could be many things in the way, but we spend years and years and years not being who we want to be and not being who we can be. And psychedelic therapy can help in those. So hopefully there will be a future where where you can go to a mental health professional and they will recommend a protocol of it could be say therapy with MDMA assisted therapy to start things off with feeling love it's always easy to start with MDMA because it's a loving medicine it's not going to kick your butt probably like other ones will and then maybe integrate that for a bit for a few months maybe with with breath work, with meditation, with journaling, with continuing to work with a coach or with a therapist and then having a psilocybin therapy session and so on. So I'm really hoping that such a future can exist and it's not a utopia. I remember Rick Doblin mentioning that he is really, because he has been a visionary for ages. So I really trust this man and I really like his ideas and So I want to believe that it will exist, that we can, especially in the United States, to go out and see so many psychedelic assisted therapy clinics specializing in different medicines for different people with different issues. Hopefully. I don't know. And I don't know how many years this would take. Possibly not. I think even 20 sounds like a lot at the moment because things are moving quite fast. Yeah. but I have no idea because it's not, I'm not that much of a visionary. I'm just more focusing on what can we do now? Can we coach people? Can we create a plan for them for the next six months and so on? Yeah, I think you can. And I, it would be interesting to see like psychedelic accelerators, you know, if we could take people that were, maybe they've done their healing or whatever, but they are, Get some of the best and the brightest and put them in a room and let's figure out this problem right here. Let's make a straw that you can drink ocean water with. You know what I mean? All these things could probably be done. You just need a high enough dose to get the people together and figure things out. That's all we got to do. Let's flip the boundaries a little bit. Well, I think we are doing that gradually. I think we are changing the narrative. We're changing the stigma. And that's what's happening now with the psychedelic renaissance that we're on. And there's so many integration coaches and psychiatrists and therapies getting into the field. And we definitely need more of those. But there's not only... mental health professionals that we need because I speak all the time with people who are in different fields like marketing advertising tech and they want to get in the psychedelic space and there's definitely room for that I i wouldn't be able to speak about it because I don't know anything about those expertise specialties yeah but you know we would definitely need people from all different fields to come in the psychedelic space. So yeah, hopefully we're not going to repeat what happened in the sixties. We're not going to piss off some politicians. I mean, we are trying to, we are constantly advocating harm reduction that should be, government friendly like we're not giving acid to everybody anymore and saying you know everybody take this and don't fight at the war now we're preaching you're getting psychedelic somehow you've always done it because you have this thirst for expanded states of consciousness so let's use them safely we don't want you to have to go paranoid we don't want you to do it in a festival and realize you've been agoraphobic and now you whatever yeah so we're advocating harm reduction and hopefully you know we're doing things differently than it was done in the 60s we're trying to integrate um ancient wisdom and and hopefully learn I would personally love to work with indigenous people and and have them help and hold space and then as therapists can also add the trauma the tools that we have to work around trauma and the preparation, the integration, the community. So, yeah, I'm really, really hoping and I'm also positive that this can happen. But let's see, I don't want to get political, so I don't know how. Because, you know, it was always a bit of a political issue. So I don't know how it would land there, but I don't know. Not my field either. It's the ultimate irony to think that the boomers who kind of were in the last phase are now in positions of power. And you could argue that that's kind of what happened with some of these, whether it was the Lycos or the MDMAs. It seems to me, and who am I but a podcaster, but it seems to me that there's a thumb on the scale to be like, we don't want this right now. You know what I mean? On some level, it seems to me that there's people that are unhappy with this. cutting into the money that comes for addiction. Addiction to me seems to be sort of this conveyor belt of money for certain people. And there's a lot of people that don't want that conveyor belt shut off. And it's too bad because I think that whether it's MDMA or psilocybin, I think that they can do wonders. And there's a proven track record of the wonders they're doing with so many people out there that are helping them. And yeah, it's an interesting thing to think about on some level. What's your take on addiction? Well, I'm also learning a lot on addiction this year from Gabor Matek. He's such an expert on that. So he's very famous for a quote, don't ask why the addiction, but why the pain? And even though I thought that working with people with a lot of trauma and addiction in their lives, it would be very difficult, heavy work. But in reality, when you believe in everybody's possibility for healing, you see it's not heavy work. It's actually a really nice thing to do. It's not negative, it's positive. And Gabor sees everyone for their possibility. So I'm also trained now to see the protective and adaptive reasons why someone became an addict because of their childhood. There would have been... different reasons different people different again meaning making that made one become an addict so it's like going back there and reparenting that and looking at that with compassion only when compassion is present people can heal and an addiction can can be healed and of course psychedelics really help especially like iboga We've heard so many stories about alcohol issues, drug issues that can be healed. But again, it does need a nice setting. It's not just you go to Africa and take it and hope for the best. I mean, it could possibly still help, but now that there is such a field as psychedelic-assisted therapy, we can maximize the benefits of psychedelics because we don't want to be taking psychedelics often. I used to think of psychedelics before I knew whether they're safe or not, especially with something like LSD. You don't know what you're getting if it's underground. So you're hoping it's good and pure and you're not going to go crazy. Like before I knew that psychedelics are actually good for the brain and help neuroplasticity in the brain and all these things. I used to also be hesitant and be like, I really want the experience and really hoping it's not going to mess me up. So I used to think of psychedelic experiences as investing brain cells. Like we're going to invest our brain cells now. We might even like injure them a bit or harm them, but we need to make this worth it. We need to make it count. So today I'm going to talk with my best friend about my issues with, I don't know, my mother or whatever. So we're going to be intentional and make sure it's worth it because we don't know about tomorrow. You know, and now that we know that psychedelics are good, especially if you get your test kits and test them and make sure it's a safe substance, then again, it's about investing that experience, especially if it's something like Iboga that takes hours and hours. It's not like ketamine that it's like a 45 minute journey and then it ends. But then you want to prepare your mind, prepare your body, prepare your spirit, like journal things out, have a certain diet, make sure you cultivate a body that is capable of receiving the medicine, that it's a fertile ground for the medicine to blossom upon. So you want to do all those protocols to make sure that I'm really going deep into this I'm having a trusted facilitator I'm minimizing risks and I'm maximizing benefits because we don't know how good it can get and how deep it can get when we do all these things like it can be good enough like psychedelics have profound experiences anyway but it can be even better when you have a really good facilitator that asks the right questions or creates a space that allows you to surrender and fully trust because when we don't We kind of stay at a surface level when we don't fully trust the environment. So I can be talking forever. No, it's perfect. It's perfect. Have you done iboga before? I haven't. I haven't. I'm on the cautious side. I'm like, he hasn't called me yet. And I haven't found a reason to. But I've heard testimonial after testimonial and many friends of mine have. And I see many recommendations of certain places for those who need it. So, yeah, I just know a few things about it, but I haven't had the experience myself. Yeah, it's interesting to think about the things that are out there that are helping people on some level. I talked with Gareth Moxie from Canada the other day about... iboga and it's interesting we were talking about addiction and he had mentioned to me that you know maybe the idea of an addict is sort of like folk psychology like maybe we don't maybe that's maybe that term and that label alone is doing more harm than good you know it presents this quandary for people to be stuck in something forever what do you have any any thoughts on that like the idea of us labeling people forever that's kind of crazy right yeah and marginalizing them and then they take that on and they see themselves the way society sees them so again what gabor would say on that addiction is this thing that you know it's bad for you and you know you shouldn't do it but there's an impulse to do it and there's a temporary whatever it is, relief or excitement or euphoria, and then there's negative consequences. And it's like a vicious cycle that repeats. So instead of asking the addict, which is a really useless question that people have done for years, it's like, why are you addicted? Like stop being addicted. Gabor asks, what does it give you? What is the, what is this thing that this thing that you're addicted to gives you the positive things. So when I was addicted to food, when I, when I had bulimia for years, I would feel free during when I was eating massive portions of food. I would feel pleasure. I would feel like I'm present. I'm really enjoying the present moment. So then Gabor would ask, how can we, why do you not have these things in your life in the first place? Why is there no freedom, no pleasure? Why do you have to escape the present moment? What is going on? And then how can we find other sources of giving you these things from, you know, from that it wouldn't have to be an, enormous amount of food that is eventually unhealthy. So there's ways to work with addiction. Addiction is not the end. People can heal from addiction when they work with professionals who do it compassionately. Because we can't heal someone when we tell them what the self-destructing part of themselves tell them. If we ask them, why are you addicted? um you shouldn't be doing this this is bad for you you're harming other people you're you're the people you love are sad and hurt because of what you're doing you can't help someone from that place like they cannot help themselves when they constantly blame themselves with these narratives and these stories so instead of focusing on these voices we can focus on What does it give you? There must be a reason why you need to do this. Otherwise you wouldn't survive. Maybe you would have killed yourself. Instead, you're alive and addicted. So we need, that's the place where we can help people. And that's the same angle where they can help themselves. But in the beginning, it's easier with the help of a professional because they've had all these other narratives for years and years and years. So, and again, yeah, psychedelic assisted therapy can help in that because then you get a break, you know, the default mode network is finally silenced and you don't have all these negative narratives all the time. So you can finally take a break and see yourself with compassion and so on. Again, I haven't taken Iboga. I haven't had psychedelic assisted therapy on addiction, but I'm assuming this is kind of how it goes. And yeah, addiction is difficult and we need to understand how difficult it is, but to also find the reasons why someone chooses to do this. There must be a really good reason that their system decides to do it. Yeah. Yeah. I was reading something a while back and was on the last wave of psychedelics in the late 50s. And the way some researchers and doctors were using it, they were using it as like a psychomimetic. I think I'm saying that word right where they would take it and then they would begin in some terms to feel what it might be like to have a psychotic break. You know, and I, I've, it's interesting to think of from that point of view. And I think anybody who's gone pretty deep has found themselves in like a, Oh shoot moment. Like, you know, and it can be, while incredibly frightening at the time coming out of it, I think it strengthens you on some level because you realize what you're capable of. You have more empathy when you see people that are kind of losing a little bit. You're like, yeah, I know what that guy feels like. I know, you know what he needs right now is I just, I can just come over and talk to him more, but on some level, yeah. Maybe you could talk to that idea of people using it as a way to have empathy or understand psychotic breaks in some ways. I've never thought about it this way. In general, even as a therapist, I'm learning I need to find in myself an experience or a part of me that fully understands this client. If I don't understand, if I see them as crazy people, as a bad person then I can't help them but if I see myself in them and be like oh I've done that too or I've been treated this way then that's when and they can feel safe and that's when I can help them but if someone also feels judged because you can't be up here and they're down there we need to be equals So that's when, as we say, healing is relational and it's the relationship that does the healing and so on. But to use psychedelics to have a psychotic break, to understand what that is, I haven't had that experience. What I am pretty positive of is that we don't know what our limits are and we don't know how powerful our minds are and our psyche and when we fully trust and surrender to something, we don't know what can happen out of it. And again, it's really wise to have a really supportive environment about doing that, really good trusted facilitators. There was an experience where I had three grams of mushrooms and then I was offered another gram in a retreat center. And then I was already pretty deep with three, like for some people that will be very small, but tend to be on the very cautious side. And then when I was offered offered a fourth one, I was like, you know what? I'll just take it because I know I'm so safe. Like there's absolutely nothing that can happen to me that these facilitators cannot take. Like, I know I will be so taken care of. They will be able to handle all of it. And it was more than. it was around eight facilitators in the room and it was a few of us, but I just felt like I can just surrender so much and, and be curious and go even deeper with the things that I'm working on. And I don't, I don't worry about what will happen. So when we are to test the limits of our minds, I think it's really advisable to do it in a really, really, really safe place around people that we really trust. Definitely have some people around, I would say, but it depends on someone's self-regulation. If someone is really good with themselves, possibly know how to meditate and know how to concentrate. And, but again, that brings to another topic now that I will kind of digress, but I always find that there's a level of surrender that needs to be there in a psychedelic ceremony, but also a level of, you need to have some practices, whether that's breathing to come back to the breath, if it gets too much or concentration, like the skill that we train through meditation, There needs to be something that you can rely on yourself and come back to something so Again haven't had Okay. I felt like the connection was gone for a second. So maybe, maybe if you ask me the same question in 10 and 20 years, I will have a very different answer. If I will have way higher doses of psychedelics, but at the moment I feel like there's, there needs to be a dance between surrender, but also having a center to come back to like that self-regulation. So yeah, but when the, I don't know how to express this. So when the dose is really high, you still need both, but you mainly need to lead on the surrender side of things. Cause some people, we don't want to be too controlling of the experience with being like, am I working on my intention? Am I breathing right? You know, we don't want that. But we do want to have a level of that, but also we want to surrender the experience, the medicine, the facilitators, and the environment. I don't know if that made sense. Yeah, totally. It had to be said. It had to be said. It's something I'm pondering on and something I find with clients often because they often tell me, are you telling me to be controlling? I'm like, no. I just want you to not go there randomly without having an intention to and without having any regulation techniques. So you need to have some of those, but also be willing to drop them and surrender. But also if it gets really dark and you're really stuck and you're really scared, then to come back to that breathing, to come back to that center. Of course, we can forget all that during an ayahuasca experience. But you know, that's there. It had to be said. I just felt like... it needs to be shared yeah I like the idea of it as a dance and and you know we talk about relationships that maybe I'm curious to get your your your experience account on the ayahuasca ceremonies that you've been to is it common for the shaman or the person leading or the facilitators that are providing the experience for them to take ayahuasca along with the people Yeah, for sure. So I haven't done it in a Western setting, though. I've only done the Indigenous South American way. So there's not much of a guidance, if at all. But yeah, I'm pretty sure that the shaman takes it, whoever is assisting also, maybe in less amounts, but I don't know how much they take. Yeah, I don't know how much it is or if the shaman takes more than the assistants, that's possible, but I wouldn't be able to speak to that much. What about when you're helping people? Like, do you, do you take like a small amount when they take an amount or are you strictly don't take it when they take it or what, what is your procedure like? Well, up until now, I haven't facilitated. I just do prep and integration and microdosing guidance, which is why I'm also feeling very safe because everything I do is legal in every country in the world. So, yeah, I just prepare people and then do the integration and everything. with microdosing is also interesting because different people have different medicines and then many people are cold to mushrooms. I don't get it because I love LSD way more than I love mushrooms, but I love also LSD. but, um, yeah, many people are cold to mushrooms, for example, and then they realize mushrooms make them really anxious. And then that's where microdosing guidance can come in to be like, well, we can change the substance. We can change the dose. We can eat with food. We can take it without food. We can take it without coffee. You know, there's all these different, or we can work on the anxiety. Yeah. That's an opportunity to do since it came up. It's probably here for a reason. So that, yeah, that's all that I do. Um, And, however, we'll see how things evolve. I feel like with the more training I get on how to hold trauma and how to hold addiction issues and also the more training I get on how to be a better therapist, a better mental health professional, we'll see how things will evolve. But up until now, I felt like that's what I'm trained to do and that's what I'm going to do. You know, some people say that on mushrooms, there's an embodiment, like there's an intelligence there. And it's almost like you can ask and hear a voice. Sometimes people do hear voices. On LSD, it seems to be more, less of an embodiment, less of an entity there. That's just my opinion. But have you felt something similar? Or what is your opinion on that? Yeah, there's definitely differences. Mushrooms tend to be more grounding, even in a microdosing capacity. And they tend to be better for healing purposes, for therapeutic purposes. They are more DMT-like. Like I've had a mushroom ceremony that almost resembled ayahuasca sometimes. And there is, of course, they're a plant and they come from the earth. So there's different conscience there. I find LSD simply put too much fun. I find LSD to be amazing for creativity, for dreaming a vision. If it's in a microdosing capacity for brainstorming, for productivity, for writing better emails, creating better content, LSD is amazing. Mushrooms can do that too, but LSD is so good with all those cognitive things. And LSD also tends to be more relational. Like I found, Um, there was an instance that I personally, and I heard that before, but when I tried, when I experienced it personally, I really, I really understood it, that I wanted to therapeutically work on something with LSD, but I found myself alone and, but I found myself wanting to have other people around and work on their relationships more or have beautiful conversations with them so I find lsd to be more relational it's beautiful for relationship work as well not as much as mdma nothing will beat mdma and relationship work ever But yeah, it tends to be more extroverted and mushrooms can be more of an introverted experience. Like you go inwards and it's more grounded, it's more earthly. LSD is more you go in your brain and you're full of imagination and creativity. yeah it's both beautiful yeah yeah I've had some overwhelming experiences of love on lsd it's been like whoa actually on some of the analogs like ethlad and and some of them have you tried any of the different analogs that they they have I know if you read um like shogun's books you know the um the acronyms yes thank you thank you we should probably know what those are but um yeah it's a chemical love story but it's interesting to read some of his accounts on the different analogs and just to think about how many particular substances are out there that can help expand consciousness on some level right Exactly. And it's not just psychedelics, right? Right. Breathwork is an expert. Yes. There's hypnosis. I mean, exercise. Exactly. I have a friend who has this very nice analogy. He says, say expanded states of consciousness on a spectrum if you have meditation being in the lower end and psychedelics on the higher end even though meditation can also take you really high but basically before psychedelics it would be breath work because it can be very psychedelic like it can really really so much dmt that it feels as if you're in a psychedelic ceremony then hypnosis and so on. And so some practices are more than others, but yeah, there's many practices we could do. And I see healing as if it has many angles. So we ideally could be doing more than one type of work, not just psychedelic work. We could do body work. We could do massage work. You know, we could, do yoga tai chi qigong all these modalities that could be breath work there could be therapy there could be coaching you know there's all these different modalities and often it feels as if this is the one but this is just an angle and the more you do and approach your healing from all these different angles then the more of a holistic healing you get because you're like oh there were all these things stuck in my body I didn't know and then um Cairo practice really helped me, for example. Or what was this? I have a friend who does network. It's a type of Cairo. And it works like magic. It's as if they barely touch you. So nothing with the traditional. They got to correct you to the right direction and so on. But they barely touch you. It feels like a lot of energy work. And people get... They start trembling. They're having like massive insights. They start crying. They start laughing. There's all these different types of release from that type of chiro. It's called network for sure. I can't believe I'm forgetting things about it because they've been talking to me about it for ages in the past seven months. But that's definitely another modality that can be really, really useful and therapeutic for people. And it's not psychedelic, but imagine combining it with psychedelics. Yeah. Yeah. I think so too. Do you see sometimes in the future, uh, I think that often you can see it now, like some sort of layering. Like when I talked to Shannon Duncan, he talks about layering, like using, you know, MDMA with psilocybin. And I'm curious to get your thoughts on that. I think that there's probably a time and a place for it. Maybe particular sort of ailments may require some sort of layering. We'll figure out in the future, but what is your take on using the substances together to solve problems? Yeah, I'm changing my mind on that because I used to say never mix. But now I see the benefit of combining appropriately and having the right guidance. Who knows? Because I've heard also reviews of people who go to South America and have a different psychedelic every day and nothing amazing happened. It just felt like they tried different things, but it's like, what changed? Maybe you could have had one ayahuasca ceremony that was more profound and transformative than all those days of having bufo and cambo and all these different things. So when that combination happens right, then I'm sure it can bring beautiful effects I mdma with psilocybin is becoming a thing and I i come I i hear so many people who come to me and they're like can you find me a facilitator that does both because I don't want either one on its own I'm gonna go to my network and I'm like another one who can recommend um but the most important thing for me and that comes from personal experience I enjoy it when it's more than one day of ceremony. So when it comes to ayahuasca, for example, I had four and I would not recommend anything less than that, drinking every day. Because every day, especially if you come with the same intention, which I recommend also, every day you go deeper and then you go deeper and then you go deeper. So you build off of the previous day. And then in the end, and I've also heard that ayahuasca knows the medicine knows when you sign up for more than one day. So it's not going to give you everything at once, like a five meal DMT trip, but it's going to be a more gradual. you know, experience of you getting to those realizations. And I highly recommend that. So when I hear people going to one psilocybin ceremony, I almost get disappointed, like, because especially psilocybin, that's only four to six hours. Often you just scratch the surface. You can go really deep, but if only there was a protocol and it wouldn't have to be psychedelics every day, there could be a sweat lodge or, know temazcal as they call it in south america there could be breath work activities it could be other things that allow you to integrate and go deeper and then have another medicine ceremony to continue going deeper and then you have a retreat whether it's a few days or a week or so where you've really worked on that issue and all that preparation you've done paid off And you also have more clarity around what to integrate because not everything is to be integrated. Some things are just noise. As we've said earlier, a lot of it is like a dream. So not everything is useful material. Some of it is kind of like, I call it like commercial break, like seeing the ads for a bit and then you're like, okay, now we're working on this today. Okay, back to that. So yeah, I think there's... There's definitely benefit in signing up for more than a day of ceremony, ideally more than two. It makes sense. Anytime there's a big problem, it takes a while to crack it, right? Yeah. It's interesting. I keep hearing the word angles. And when I hear the word angles, I think of the geometric shapes that you see sometimes in these deep trips. Yeah. Sometimes I get the idea it's a language. It always helps me understand. Sometimes I feel like I'm just getting these geometric patterns shoved into my brain and it's helping me learn things. Or maybe that's the way my brain's shaping up. But sometimes, too, it feels as if I get to study this image for a minute. And it helps me see things in a different way when I apply that geometric shape to a situation in my life. Like maybe I'm not looking at it the right way, you know. But what is your take on those images? Some of them are breathtaking and they're moving and they're wonderful and sometimes they're unexplainable. But what's going on with those geometric images, do you think? Yeah, some psychedelics have those more than others. That used to be my first, especially during LSD trips, it used to be the first question I had with my friends, like, why do we see mandalas? Like, why mandalas? Why is it not a different shape? Why is it everywhere? And I'm sure there's many things answering that question these days on the internet, some are credible than others. But yeah, so the question is why the shapes? Why the angles? What's the question again? Yeah, what do you think about them? Do you have any speculations on them? I haven't thought of that too much ever since then when I was questioning why do we see mandalas. So in the end of the day, I always, again, I find this dance between... you will know what the right thing to take from the psychedelic experience will be. But also having a good facilitator can help you go deeper or point you to the right direction. Like one question can help you see things from a different angle or move on to something else. Because we tend to... our system is wired in a way to protect us from things that we want to avoid and we want to keep avoiding. So often we're just gonna, we're not gonna go deep and we're not gonna open a different door. because we're just comfortable there and we just want to have fun there or whatever. But then having someone to be like, how about this one? Or what if you looked at that? And then they can help you move through those angles in a nicer way. So, yeah. But again, not everyone has the luxury to have a facilitator. It also tends to be quite pricey these days. So it's like, enjoy it, surrender to it. And also trust that, you know, the big insights will happen. If something is to be realized on that day, then you will remember it and other things will just be forgotten, but it can still be a beautiful experience. Definitely. How long, how long, this is like a two part question. Like how long have you had, is that, it looks like your site has been redone. Is it a new site? And how do you, like if someone's watching this and they're like, I want to talk to Alexandra, like how do they go about doing that? Yeah, my site is changing all the time because my qualifications change. Thank you. I've done it all by myself. Congratulations. It looks really well. Well, thank you. So, yeah, it's and I even have a note in the end, like everything I teach and coach and educate on changes based on my level of development, because I'm constantly immersed in different workshops and philosophies and getting more training. And it used to be more for my own healing and my own personal development. And now it's more about how to help others with with all of this so now it's way more fine-tuned to psychedelic therapy and psychedelic coaching so um things will definitely keep changing so instagram I am at the alex experience instagram has been the the tool and the social media I've been using for the majority of the time then linkedin often I'm there too alexandra and then my site is thealexexperience.com these are the main ways people can find me and sorry are we back yeah we're back I lost you for just a second there. Yeah. I can hear you, but the pictures are still frozen. Can you hear me? Hello, hello. I can hear you, but I just can't see the picture moving. Hello. Okay. Can you hear me now? I can. Yes. Okay. Perfect. So, yeah, sometimes I have to tweak things. Okay. the main things that I want to add on my side at the moment is that if you're interested in preparing or integrating psychedelic start here because I i love to work with people for three months that's the ideal amount of time it's not too long it's not too little or 12 weeks but also many people will reach out to me having a ceremony on saturday That is the most common thing. So even when that happens, I have some ways to work with that. I also offer 30-day message support to help people integrate things after the long session that we have. Then there's microdosing support. So I'm creating these beautiful books. I told you I make journals. You did. yeah so this has taken ages to create and it's basically a whole course in one book with journal prompts so it allows people to track their experience and journal on it and there's trackers and there's also information on microdosing preparing storing benefits risks contraindications all this stuff on microdosing lsd and psilocybin And there's also a program I've been creating with a beautiful friend for almost a year now, and we are about to launch now. We are slowly launching, which is a microdosing course following the hero's journey. So we want to take people from the call to adventure to the allies and mentors and inspirations on their path, to the big ordeal they keep postponing and avoiding of dealing with, to doing with our support, to having that death and rebirth, and then come out to share the gifts with the community, to integrate. And that is a beautiful thing we have going on. And also for people who are not interested in psychedelics, because I'm so passionate about psychedelic therapy that I talk mostly about it, but also for people who want to work through trauma, through addictions, through things like that. And I also offer mainly compassionate inquiry there. So these are the kind of, I don't know if you made sense in my website of those. I keep tweaking things for sure. I get easily bored. No, the site looks awesome. I think that you did a great job of mixing together functional ideas of what you're doing and inspirational ideas of how you do it. And I would recommend people check it out for sure. Thank you. Yeah, it's really well done. And I know why I follow you on LinkedIn and I see the people with whom you're working. And I know that it's something that's near and dear to your heart. What does it look like when... Like, let's say that somebody comes and they're like, okay, I want to work with you for this three months. Like what, how does that work? Is it like you start off with a consultation and you get to know them for a couple of sessions or what does it look like when someone meets you for the first time and wants to get started with you? Well, we go through an assessment together and we go through, there's an intake form they have to fill out so that I know that they are fit for psychedelic use in terms of, especially from a medical perspective. Then we're going to dig into intentions and previous work that they've done, whether that's personal development or therapeutic work or what practices they have in place. And then it all depends on their intention and what they want to work on and how their life is constructed. and the space that they have to, to have more practices on a day to day and so on. So it would be either weekly or biweekly calls. They get to decide what works for them. And then we, so it all depends on their intentions and the substance that we're going to use to decide to work with. So there's a lot of calibration that goes on, you know, it might, it might not work for them. They might need to change. They might need to, increase or decrease the dose when it comes to microdosing. So it depends on what we're doing. Preparation, integration, and microdosing work are all very different. Integration tends to be the least, not scripted, but there's not a list really of things to do. You translate the insights into practices and make sense of them and create change in your life and incorporate that change. So it's more coaching work And like, I would call people out on not behaving in the ways they said they would after the psychedelic experience, then there's trauma is always there. So there's always some work with the body and with memories that come up, whether it's from childhood or from the psychedelic ceremony and what's making sense of them and so on. So compassion inquiry is also a very body based approach. I constantly ask, how does this feel in your body? And after you've told me that you've just got triggered by your wife, then how does that make you feel? So we work a lot with the body. There's some grounding, some meditation there. So that's integration. Preparation is more, it's more clear cut. Like there's some ways to prepare the mind for the experience, some ways to prepare the body, some ways to prepare the spirit or the soul or however you want to call it. certain journal prompts and workbooks I give to people. If they want to, they could have a hard copy of a personalized book as part of their program, because I just love creating those books in the journal prompts. And microdosing is... it's different. There's more, there's also a level of educating on the different substances and how to calibrate them and how to track, how to see the long-term benefits. If you don't, then how to tweak things, things like that. Have you noticed, have you noticed a pattern of people? Like it's, it, Is there a pattern in age groups? Like, have you noticed, I've recently spoken to a lot of people that are in their late fifties and early sixties that are turning towards psychedelic therapy. Have you noticed any patterns with the people you're working with as far as age groups? Hmm. That's a good question. Thank you. I haven't, I'm sorry. I don't know what's happening with my throat. So I haven't had a client that's around 50 turning 60 wanting to work with psychedelics recently. So I wouldn't be able to speak to that. And many of my connections who are already in the field, either as psychedelic professionals or enthusiasts, they seem to have been there. for a bit but yeah I don't have a sample size big enough to speak I feel It's just an interesting time because I read a lot of different parts of some different blogs, and it's talking about – I see Death Doula coming up, and I know that there's a big demographic of people that are maybe getting close to the mortality experience, if you will. Oh, yeah. It's interesting to see that beginning to show itself. Yeah. I think it could be very helpful for that for end of life too, right? Absolutely. Absolutely. And that wouldn't be later than 60. But yeah, I'm a big, big, big supporter of that work. It really changes things when someone dies peacefully and they're not afraid of it and they're not trying to fight it. And I think it was Michael Pollan who spoke about it at some point. And he was saying it also changes the experience to those around the person dying. It's a very different experience when someone makes peace with things and understands maybe I'm not just going to dissipate, but I will become part of something else. And it's just going to be different or whatever meaning making someone has about life after death, it dissipates. it will definitely be a very beautiful work. I'm not involved in it yet, but maybe at some point I will be, we'll see. It's definitely very beautiful work. And I would, if I could, I would recommend it to pretty much anyone I know, you know, starting from my parents. Yeah. Do that before you die. It's not too late. You know, now is always the most important time. And yeah, Yeah, it's definitely really beautiful. And also for relationship work before people die to work on those relationships so that are not things spending after they're gone. Because also the grieving process is very different to let go of someone or to let it be versus hold grudges or feel like things have been left unsaid or whatever, so many things. could happen. So yeah, it must be really beautiful work. Yeah. I'm aware of different trials for different, you know, PTSD or different types of ailments, but are you aware of any of the trials for end of life for like family members and stuff like that? Have you heard about anything like that? I'm not aware about trials for end of life. There might be happening. I'm just not so much keeping an eye on that. Yeah, that would be a wonderful treatment for a setting with family members to change it. There's so many possibilities out there and I'm so excited for the future. And it's so amazing to get to talk to cool people that are out there doing their best to change themselves and change the world. And I think you're one of those people. I'm super stoked to get to talk to you today. Thank you for hanging out with me for quite some time. Well, thank you so much, George. It's been a long time coming, right? Like I'm really happy. We got to do this now. My voice is crazy. Our picture got shut off for a moment. And while it was shut off, I got the sense that you were holding up the books, but I didn't get to see them. Do you have the picture? Oh, okay. Yes. So this is the microdosing guide. Okay. Okay. I'm like, I don't know what I'm showing you. This is a glossy cover. I might also do matte covers. So I've designed everything, all the graphics, all everything in it. So I'm really proud. This is like my baby. So it's supposed to be, I don't know how to show you, but anyway, you can go to my website and see much better versions of this. But it's supposed to be not a book with like literature and research and stuff. This was inspired after I've had a session with a client on microdosing. She was to take psychedelics for the first time in her life. And she wanted to do it in a microdosing way because that's the safest way and most predictable way. And then I felt like if she was zoning out for like half of this session, which is very natural. Then I want her to have a place where she can find all this information, but also a place where she, when we stop working together, she can go back in a year and do it again. And then I almost couldn't stop. So I added over a hundred journal prompts. I added two different microdosing tracking sheets because microdosing is It's this thing that you don't really know if it's working unless you're overdoing it. It's supposed to be sub-perceptual, but then long-term, when you look back, you realize it actually has had some benefits in your life. You've shifted some things. Many people that used to trigger you, you don't react to them anymore. You feel the anger, but don't yell at them. And that's when you know that, oh, maybe something's working, even though no one can tell. Or often we forget that we've taken a microdose because it's so sub-perceptual. So there's tracking sheets in here. for people to track how the microdose is affecting them on different days, whether they slept eight hours or less, whether they've drunk coffee or less, just to understand. Because when you understand how things work, then you can fine-tune them, then you can optimize, you can do more. And it's supposed to be a guide. It's not really a book. It's like A, B, C, D. Like, this is how you prepare. This is how you store. This is how these are the benefits, blah, blah, blah. It's not... James Fadiman was called, you know, it's not literature. Fadiman is mentioned. But yeah, his protocol is mentioned. But yeah, I hope this can help people, especially those who are hesitant of hiring a microdosing coach. Because people don't really know what that is and if they should spend their precious money on that. And that's absolutely fine. So hopefully this is a book that can help not only those who work with a coach, not only those who have not microdosed before, but also people who have or have not microdosed before. And they can learn something that they didn't know. And a few people have reviewed it and they've said it's a really good work in being, you know, being professionals in the psychedelic space. And it will also improve like the rest of me and my services with evolution. So, yeah, I hope I hope this can help people live the same day in a better way, in a more amplified way. being less bored, procrastinating less, being more creative, more focused, having a better mood, having less anxiety, less negative self-talk. These are little shifts that microdosing can help with. Because often we are looking for big transformations, massive insights, and we sign up for like the five grams of mushroom ceremony. But in the end of the day, it's also those little shifts that create a very different life. So that has been my aim with this microdosing guide of, you can have the same life and take a tiny amount of psychedelics. So little, you don't even realize you've taken anything, but you're less reactive, more attuned to yourself, more present, more grateful, connecting deeper with those important to you. So yeah, I hope, I hope it will resonate for some people. Yeah, guaranteed. It, it, One of the things that sounds so beautiful to me is that you're helping people help themselves. You know, if you give someone a guidebook and you can help them out for a few months, it seems it's like driving a car. Like you can show them how to do it and then you're comfortable with them driving the car and playing in the environment and understand, hey, maybe they want to go a little faster. They want to take it down to the track or something like that. But there's something beautiful about helping people and giving them the guidance they need to help themselves along the way. And it sounds like that's what the guidebook does as well as your work. Yeah, and that's something that most of my work does. And that's what therapy, I mean, therapy is a good thing to do in our lives for self-awareness especially, but there could be periods that we don't need it and so on. But when it comes to psychedelic preparation, combining therapy with psychedelic preparation or integration, I don't need anyone to need me for a long time. It could be from two sessions to 12 sessions, but it doesn't really need to be more than that. Unless some people really need it. They feel like they're getting so much out of it. They just don't want to stop and so on. But my intention is not to have the same clients for years and years and years and years. You know, my intention is to help those clients who have access to psychedelics have the thirst to to embody their potential more, to optimize their day, their life, their attention more, and they just don't know how. They don't have the right someone to ask them the right questions, to help them see things differently. They don't know how to combine mushrooms with the right morning ritual, for instance, to have a different experience of being alive. So that's most of what I want to do is help people have The same life, but better. It could be good enough. It could be better because we're capable. We can do it. We're so capable and we want to do it. So those who really want to do it, because there's many people who say, you know, I've tried everything. Nothing works. Nothing will ever work. It's like, OK, if that's your belief. have fun with that. But those who are like, I'm mainly geared towards those who say, I know there's more. I've tried things that haven't worked. Maybe it wasn't the right thing because psychedelic therapy is not for everybody, like most modalities. So it's about finding those people who can benefit from this because it can be a really beautiful work, but it also needs active participation from the individual. Like psychedelics are not going to, sort us out forever they're not magic pills we still need to walk the talk we still need to implement some some healthy habits in our lives and continuing to journal and reflect and revisit the experience if you've been recording your ceremonies then listen back to those and transcribe them that's a very great integration tool like re-invite the ceremony into your life and make it a part of your life and that's when you feel like I'm actually integrating and I'm actually Making the most out of that experience. Yeah. Yeah. It's beautiful. It's beautiful to be able to look back and see the progress. I think that that can be motivation for the continued changes when you're like, look, I've came this far already. You know, it's wonderful to think about. Well, Alex, I love our conversation. This is awesome. You're an amazing person. But before I even let you go, where can people find you? What do you have coming up and what are you most excited about? um so again Instagram at the Alex experience my website the alexexperience.com LinkedIn my complicated name so Alexandra dash I think it is um these are the channels so the most exciting thing I have coming up right now is the micro dosing course eight-week program co-created with a beautiful, beautiful friend and colleague. We've done our psychedelic coaching training together. Her name is Salara Starr. She's mainly a manifestation coach. So it's very beautiful to combine my trauma expertise with her manifestation expertise to deliver this journey. and we're following the stages of the hero's journey. So we're doing beautiful. It's gonna be such a beautiful and exciting journey because I've facilitated groups before and I see that the transformation happens mainly from within the group. When you hear, yourself your story in another person's story and things that you don't dare to voice out someone else does and then you get the coaching help that they got because we all do it as a container and we do it safely and we have um our own ongoing accountability and people can also make friendships for life like that so that's the most exciting thing Because that has been brewing forever and now we can finally announce it and say it's out in the world. And yeah, my microdosing guide is also available. That's for people who want to do it at their own pace. People can find that in my experience, in my website, thealexexperience.com. And also one-to-one work. I also do a lot of one-to-one work. So some of it is compassion inquiry, like focusing on the past, what is this thing that is sabotaging your life and you're not able to call out, we can work with that. And also preparation for psychedelics, integration of psychedelics, the most important and my favorite part of my work probably is integration work and microdosing guidance. How can we tweak these safe and tiny amounts of psychedelics to help you have not an average day, but a really good day. When does the eight-week course start? So we're starting 12th of August. Okay, coming up. And it goes until 30th of September, if I remember correctly. And then we also start pre-course material on the 22nd of July. So we're already starting the group channels. And, yeah, we're starting to send people exercises and some bonus material from the 22nd, but the official – course date is on the 12th of August and hopefully it will run more times in the year for people that can do it but this is our very first we're so excited about it yeah you should be it's magic the first time is amazing and you know congratulations it's a great experience and it's an amazing thing to see manifest and you guys should be proud of yourself it's awesome Thank you so much. Yeah. Well, hang on briefly afterwards. I want to talk to you briefly afterwards, but to everybody who got to hang out with us today, I hope you have a beautiful day. Crystal, John, Mark, everybody in the chat. Thank you so much for participating. All the links we'll put down in the show notes down there. If you're listening to this and you're not watching it, go down to the show notes, reach out to Alex and do your best to become the best version of yourselves. And that's all we got for today. Ladies and gentlemen, have a beautiful day. Aloha. Bye everyone.