Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the True Life Podcast. I hope everybody is having a beautiful day. I hope the sun is shining. I hope the birds are singing. And I hope the wind is at your back. I have with me an incredible interview. I'm going to get into some very fascinating topics. So I want to welcome everybody to an extraordinary conversation with a truly transformative figure in the world of holistic healing. trauma integration, and psychedelic therapy. Today, we have the honor of speaking with Benedict Mannix, a visionary psilocybin retreat facilitator, a Jamaican-based holistic therapist, and an advocate for healing the deep wounds of childhood trauma. With over thirty years of experience in psychedelics, Benedict brings a profound understanding of the human mind, body, and soul Blending ancient wisdom with modern therapeutic approaches, her work is not only about guiding clients through psilocybin journeys, but helping them reconnect with their deepest selves, reconfiguring harmful transgenerational patterns, and fostering profound personal growth. Trained in Rogerian transgenerational and systemic therapies, Benedict's approach is rooted in empathy and unconditional positive regard. She believes that true healing comes from within, through the balance of the mind and body, a philosophy deeply embedded in her practice as a sophrologist, where breathwork, relaxation, and visualization become tools for emotional release and self-discovery. Her work extends far beyond traditional therapy rooms. She has been a pivotal figure at some of the world's largest festivals, creating safe, supportive environments for those navigating challenging psychedelic experience. Her expertise in risk reduction has transformed potentially harrowing moments into life-changing opportunities for growth and healing. with core values of gratitude, humility, empathy, and freedom, Benedict stands as a beacon for those seeking not just to survive, but to thrive. Currently, she's working on a book on how sophrology can help people process childhood trauma, a culmination of her life's work aimed at spreading peace, love, and self-awareness to all. Benedict, thank you so much for being here today. How are you? Wow. Thank you. Hi, everyone. Like for the humility that when I hear you, you're very, I want to give you a compliment. You're very incredible. Thank you. That, yeah, that, you know, it's just that you talking about me, you know, it's how we don't really know each other. And you just speaking about me and just telling me that, oh, wow, this is really me that you're talking about. How do you know me that much? That's kind of incredible that you make me feel that I do much more than I think I do or what. So yeah, thank you for this. Yeah, for this nice bio. Thank you very much. The pleasure is all mine. I think we all do more than we think we do. I think we're all like the most critical person of ourselves. And isn't it interesting to get to see ourselves the way other people see us? Like it's beautiful to have someone see you in a way that you are. Like I wouldn't say that stuff if I haven't read that about you. I wouldn't say that stuff if I haven't talked to mutual people about you. Like it's interesting and it's beautiful to get to see ourselves in that way, right? Yeah. that's what I want I want people that come on the podcast to get to see themselves the way I see them the way society can see them I think that's a responsibility on our part to see the best in people is that too crazy yeah that's that's yeah that's uh um I've been I'm going to thanks my clients Without them, I would not be where I am at today. Like trusting in myself, trusting in the value of the... the therapy that I'm offering, and really the confidence that I have in myself today, thanks to all the clients, because they've made me discover who I was, really, definitely. And just being able to say today, I'm a good therapist. Wow, this is huge, to be able to say something positive like this about the self that's required. A lot of confidence. And this confidence, sincerely, it's due to my client. And I would like to thank them. Yeah. Yeah. So. Yeah. So should we should we talk about. Maybe you could define sophrology for people. I don't think a whole lot of people really understand what that is, but I would love to hear your definition of it. And maybe you can kind of give us a little bit of less a little lesson on it. Yeah. And what's very sad is that everybody knows about mindfulness. And I think and believe that sophrology is very similar to mindfulness, but much more developed. It's a technique, or it's a therapy, more developed than mindfulness. And I will say after why. So it has been developed and created at the same time as mindfulness. I'm doing an analogy because it's very similar. And I will speak about the difference after. So it was created by a neuropsychiatrist. He was working in Spain in a psychiatric hospital during the war. during the Civil War, and you know how psychiatry is treating people sometimes harshly, so they were shocking people, like lobotomy and all the things, like in the sixties, we're talking about in the sixties, and and so there is certain people that are humanists that have like more that want to create another approach that's saying that or maybe we should do something else so it created sophrology And so this is a technique of guided meditation that's going to create awareness of the body and mind and to help people connect body and mind. So Casado, that's his name, Alfonso Casado, was basically working on what we call today PTSD. that at this time was called Shellshock. Shellshock was the trauma. And so I should not maybe talk about my book until it's out, but I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. But that's something I will say that I'm kind of a pioneer here that, you know, because sophrology is not really used for for trauma and not enough. When I, for me, this is like, this has been made for, at the beginning, for people having trauma. For people having, and that's why Casado developed it. And after, he did much more with it. But for him, after it was a way of leaving that, you know, being conscious and having consciousness. So what sophrology means is the study of consciousness in harmony. Sophrology says sos fren logos. That's Greek, sos fren logos. And that's meaning the study of consciousness in harmony. So that's really so... And it's... Sophrology is... really a technique to deal with stress. And the stress is like the big, big, big, big, big, like a perpetrator of all our mental and physical disease. Like, you know, the stress is the, this non-capacity, this non-resilience to, to, to, to align body, mind, and soul. This is the stress that's going to disconnect us from the fear. So when we are stressed, our immune system can't really be activated. So that's very important. So sophrology is going to help you to the connecting body and mind. So you know that, to speak about what I'm doing in my life, that I'm an holistic psychedelic therapist. So for me, it's all about understanding consciousness and helping people to align body, mind, and soul. I believe that psychedelic and psilocybin, I work with psilocybin, help you to connect with your soul. What is your soul? Your soul is your inner child. The soul is that what you have come on earth is that your real self, the real self. And that's important because that's where you got all your gift. That's where you got all your emotion. That's your real you. And fortunately, to survive, we create a persona that is your ego, that is your mind, that is like another adult self that is created to help survive the soul, to be accepted in your family, to be accepted in the society. So you create this ego and this self. Psilocybin, one. Oh, I want to say something else. Yeah. You said that I was able to be ADHD. Of course. My whole audience is probably that way. So it's perfect. Cool. Okay. I want to say something because I want to say it more and more. My belief about psilocybin. Okay. psilocybin for me, it's a pet repellent. It's like animal repellent. That is, yeah, this is this is a very different. I love it. So and and I think that's very important for two things. psilocybin is class one drugs, meaning that is highly addictive. and that it doesn't have any medicinal purpose this is class one drug highly addictive I have been using as a tool psilocybin to help lots of people to stop their addiction and it works so it is not addictive right so When a mammal is going to go eat a mushroom that has psilocybin, psilocybin for me, like nature is perfect. So what I'm going to say is not going to dismiss the spirit of nature. That's not what I'm trying. I want to be factual and talking about science that, you know, I'm not a scientific person. I'm an empirical person. It's just a belief that's mine that is shared. I'm not the only one to have said so, that's not coming from me. So I believe that a substance that has been developed by the mushroom to protect itself, and that's the magic and the spirit of nature still. So the mammal is going to eat it, the insect is going to eat it, and what's going to happen? So psilocybin, for me, is also one of my beliefs, like a big effect in your stomach first. So, and after, in your nervous system. And what it's going to do is that it's going to completely calm and relax your nervous system. Something that is very common, you're going to see that when you're taking mushroom, you're yawning. Like, you yawn, yawn, yawn, yawn. Because what's happening is that your nervous system is completely relaxing. So the animal is going to be relaxed, not wanting to eat anymore, and just like I'm feeling weird, so they're not going to want to go eat the mushroom again. It's not toxic. It's gentle. Mushrooms are not toxic. You need to eat mushrooms. They don't even know how much, and you will not be able to ingest as much to diet. So this is not toxic. You know, you've got mushrooms that are not nice and cool. They are toxic, and that's how they protect themselves. The magic mushroom, they're nice. They're very gentle mushroom. They just make you just relax. So how is it? positive to people. It's positive to people because the state in which the absorption of this substance that is psilocybin transformed in psilocin inside your body, it's going to make you completely relaxed and in a meditative state like if you had practiced meditation for a ten twenty year so suddenly in thirty minutes you become a yogi and you can access certain part of your body that you were not able to access before why because you're too much in your mind and now we're going to talk about the default mode network and The dissolution of the ego. So we're going back to my body, mind, and soul. So when I offer psilocybin to people, I offer them for them to connect with their soul, to help them be conscious of their soul. So what it does, it's helping you to like multiple things. Like you say that I'm specialized in trauma. You're going to be able to go revisit your trauma in a very nice and gentle way because you're going to experience something that could be dramatic at the time. And now you're completely relaxed. You're going to be able to revisit it without feeling that you're going to die. So this is a possibility for you to integrate your trauma. You're going to relieve the trauma is something that is here and now that happened then and there. But that's still present, that every time you're going to have an outside stimulus, it's going to put you directly back then and there without you being conscious of it. But you're going to have a reaction of fight, flight, freeze and to something that is not really... there or that's like small compared to what was before so that's going to help you to first integrate trauma that's going to help you also to reflect on different perspective in your life that's going to help you access, like, I know there's this part of your brain that is like all your imagination, all your creation, because we are beautiful humans. You know, the thing that's wonderful compared to humans and AI is that we are of the ability that's our soul. We can create. We are like this incredible machine that can create, like, more and more and more, like nonstop creating new things, inventing new thing, new story, new life. So this is beautiful. And so you accessing with psilocybin, you're accessing your soul, who I am, who I am if I'm not traumatized, and your feeling. That's going to help you to access your feeling, your soul. for me this is a wonderful tool to help people be conscious of who they are of their soul of their real self and so my company is called sophrodelic because of phrology and psychedelic so now we've talked about like connecting the soul and body and mind is the sophrology So Casado was in his hospital helping people to overcome traumatic shock, the shell shock, and the PTSD, and being conscious. So when you have a trauma, one thing, it's a somatic therapy, basically. It's... you're going to, you know, to survive, like, you know, you're going to often disconnect from your body, you know, because if not that, maybe you will die there, you know. So you're pumping, like, you know, like all this adrenaline, all this chemical that's going to up you, like, not feel and disconnect. People, when they've got a trauma, they disconnect. And a lot of people that have been traumatized, they're completely disconnected. They can't feel their body. Yeah. So it's important that Soprology is going to gently help you reconnect with your body. If you want to heal, you need to be present in your body. You need to be present in your feeling. You need to feel that you're stressed. You need to feel the pain. You need to be able to, and that going to help you to relax. And Soprology is also, guided meditation so it's in some ways very similar to psychedelics is that we're going to like go inside your psyche to create the future so the difference in like mindfulness and uh sophrology is that mindfulness work in the here and now and mindfulness Normally, don't really work with intention. Mindfulness is when you're doing practicing like real mindfulness, you're going to have to accept what is. Sophrology, and maybe people are not going to be agreeing with me, and maybe I'm wrong, but sophrology work in three dimensionality. We're working in the present, we're working in the past, and we're working in the future. In my book, I speak about the power, you know, you've got Eckhart Tolle that talk about the power of now. I talk about the power of the future. I believe in the power of the future. My motto is like, dream your life and live your dream. Nice. So, sophrology will help you to dream your life and to help you to live your dream. You're going to... So, what I believe is that you need to use your past in the present to build your future. And you're going to protect your future. Yeah. And the other thing is that intention. So we have an intention. The intention is to reinforce the positive in people. So now you understand why I work with sophrology to just help people to align body, mind, and soul. When they are aligned, You are healthier, happier, and you do what you want. You can heal. Yeah, sorry, I'll let you. No, it's beautiful. I can't help but think about the Trinity, like the mind, body, and soul, past, present, and future, this idea of three, this idea that they all exist at the same time, if you can find a way to be aware of all of them. And that sounds like harmony to me. When you can begin to stop seeing this one dimension that you've been trained in your whole life, just look here. Okay, you got a problem in the past, look there. You want to be something in the future, look there. But the truth is, like you say, can we be aware of all three at once? Can we be aware of the mind, body and soul at once? And when you can, I think that's when you slip into these states of, you know, cosmic ecstasy or this understanding of something. Oh, my God, I'm part of the whole. Oh, my God, I am this thing. Oh, my God, I'm you. You're me. And you can go there for a few moments if you can just hold it. And if you practice, you can hold it longer. But I do. What you're saying makes perfect sense to me. I hope more people are able to... find a method or find a teacher or find a way in themselves to, to revisit this awareness. What was it? Let me ask you this. What was it that first attracted you to sophrology? Was it like, was there something calling in you? Did you find a teacher? Was it just something that nature was talking to you about? How did you become attracted to this before you became a practitioner of it? Wow. That's a good question. Thank you too. So, I was I was a therapist and I was like seeing that people you know that it's it's uh I I've created a protocol using psilocybin and using everything to help people but you know I was wanting to help myself that you know that if that if therapists don't understand that they want to heal their family or themselves that that they need to re-question that. I'm a specialist in childhood trauma because I've studied transgenerational therapy. Everything that I've studied is like tools that I was needing to heal myself. And I was seeing that the disconnection in the body, that's the first thing. I was seeing that people were not able to speak What's good about sophrology is that you don't really need to speak to be able to, you know, some people don't want to go in the past. They don't want to, you know, they say, oh, we're not going to talk about the past, you know. So I was needing another tool to help speak. the people that were not wanting to talk about psychology, about the past that, like you said, like, how can I go revisit the past in the here and now? Like, you know, like, we're not going to go back there. So, and I remember, like, anecdotal thing that the first time that, you know, when you do, you do internship, like, you know, with working with people, first time that I was in therapy was a client of mine that had accepted to be my guinea pig. And first time that I did like, so when you do sophrology, first you work in the present, after you can work in the future and after the past. And first time that I did like, session in the past she just like exploded in tears and I was just saying like what I was so scary the power of this technique that you know that wow and I was just thinking that oh, I'm lucky that I'm a therapist, that I've got already the tools to deal with this person because I was thinking about my other friend, a sophrologist, that, you know, well, if you don't have the tools to deal with this person, it is like completely having like a breakdown because we want to powerfully revisit the past. That was, yeah. So I was meeting something And the other thing is that I experienced a prology. I was not able. People that are traumatized are not mostly able to, you know, every time you were telling me close your eyes and relax, you were stressing me out. that was like, you know, you were attacking my system that, you know, that I can't like, you know, close my eyes and relax. This is not possible that if you say relax, that, you know, that you attacking me, I'm not, I can't protect myself anymore. So I was needing to have like something that was able that there was ever for me to, to be able to relax. So sophrology is very much guided. It's always guided. You're very much guided. So your mind is completely occupied all the time, very much. So you've got very little time to think. You do, but you're always invited to have something. It's dynamic meditation. Dynamic meditation is much more approachable than meditation itself for people that have had trauma. So this is why I studied sophrology, because there was a tool that was important and useful for me to be able to relax. I was being able to do meditation. then people that have trauma, they can tell you. You can see that, you know. I do, like, very little exercise and just, like, you know, asking people, like, close your eyes. Some people control their eyes, like, for, like, more than one minute. And that's how, like, you know. So you can see right away that, you know, the level of... interception, like, you know, the hypervigilance that people are in, you know. So this is, and the level of stress, you know, the stress. So slowly, you know, you're going to be able to accompany people with gentle little exercise, you know. Meditation can be very simple. You can meditate eyes open. There's... very very different way to meditate and to and to help you slowly to be able to listen to your body how can you heal your body your body so oh can we already jump on yeah holistic holistic healing that that was what I was talking about a good transition because And biodecoding, it's a new study. It sounds very woo-woo for a lot of people. But it's the science that states that mental and physical disease are linked with emotions. And to access your emotion, to be conscious of your emotion, your emotion is in your soul, you know, also. It's in your limbic system that, you know, you got your cortex, you got your mind there, you know, but your emotion is in your inner child. So it is important to, and if you don't have, if you're not alone, if you don't have the capacity to listen to your inner child, to listen to yourself, your body is going to express it. And the way to express the feeling that you've got inside is through mental or physical disease. And often the problem with allopathy medicine is that they're going to treat symptoms. The very good example that's very sad is addiction. And that's also when, okay, so we're going to jump back to something. Yeah. I was in England studying sophrology, and the director of the school asked me that, oh, you've got knowledge for many things. We don't have any English literature in sophrology. Would you be interested in writing a book? And I say, I don't know how to write. I'm not a writer. And I say, OK, I'm very much specialized in addiction. And thanks to her, she also helped me to do all this journey. And there is no addiction without childhood trauma, without suffering, without trauma. Addiction is the medication for pain. Addiction is the symptoms of pain, of suffering, underlying suffering. If you treat the addiction without treating the real problem, And it's terrible that we are in a society where addiction is punished, is judged so mainly when people are suffering and that we're just looking like it's shaming people that are addicted and without. having any compassion for. So I started to want to write my book about astrology and addiction. And I said, it doesn't make any sense. Why should I talk about like, you know, this is not a problem. So that's how I like studied more and more and more about like childhood trauma. So it's a long journey. Um, I almost finished my book, and I realized that it was on pause. This book is about me, in fact. I didn't know. I didn't know. And reading again the chapter that I wrote before, I realized that, oh, well, this person that I'm talking about, this example, it's me. So I've grown. I've grown a lot. Like, you know, this is a journey of, and I'm finishing the, you know, I'm in the chapter of resilience, and this is what I'm writing about, like resilience and healing, resilience, and it's important. So resilience is the capacity of going back to homeostasis, to going back to this alignment, Healing is not being fixed in this alignment, because this is not possible. We can't be happy, and this is not human. Maybe a machine can be happy every day. A human emotion, luckily, we experience this emotion. And sometimes we've got joy and sometimes we have sadness. And sadness is very important also. Sadness is giving us the capacity to have empathy, empathy for ourselves and empathy for others. This is very important. So we can't be happy all the time. We can't be good all the time. Like, you know, this is not true. There is the life, there is ups and downs. Resilience is the capacity to go back quicker to this alignment. So I've got a name. It's a very special name. I don't know if I should say it here and now. I want to copyright it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I don't know how to copyright something, but I want to. So I've created that this is called like I've called it like happy verse. So this capacity to be aligned is that when you are aligned, you're in happy verse. and every time that the more you're going to practice and the more you're going to heal the more you're going to have the capacity to know and feel that you're not in a happy verse anymore my the client did did have been working with me through the old protocol like I know they they They know happy verse. They are in happy verse. And they have the capacity to know every time. But you know the pathway. You know what is it you have experienced. What is it to be in happy verse? And when you're in happy verse, that you're going to create the future you want. You have the capacity to create the future you want. You have the capacity to heal. We all have the capacity to heal, only us. Nobody else is going to heal you. We all have an inner healer, an inner guide. We all have it inside ourself. Nobody is going to guide you. Nobody is going to heal you. You healing yourself. That's very important. We all have this capacity, this power. We are healing ourselves. Apiverse is the capacity of being aligned, body, mind, and soul, and capacity to heal, capacity to create our future. So when you experience and you know, every time you fell out of alignment, you know and you feel. And resilience is the capacity to go back there. This is resilience. Resonance is not healing. Healing is not that I'm going to be healed. So people are sometimes surprised that, wow, how can you not feel good? You're a therapist. You're like, of course I'm a human being. Of course I'm hypersensitive. Sometimes I feel like really down, depressed, terrible. I'm human. I'm hypersensitive. I go back there quicker. I don't stay there. I don't nourish this depression. Depression is a natural movement of the body. It's not a disease. Depression is normal. Depression is normal. It's not an illness. The problem is that we are not taught to go back to this alignment. Because, you know, when I help people that have like twenty years of depression, when I help them to come out of it, it's because now they've got the tools to come out of it. Depression is the movement of the body to introspect that, you know, you have a change in your life, you become something happening that is like throwing the the alignment out, and you know that you have the capacity now to introspect. So you're going inside yourself. This is depression. I go inside myself. I don't want to see no one. I want to see, like, I don't know. I've got the capacity to introspect. Unfortunately, people stay there. They crystallize it. Medication going to put you there even more. Medication, like, you know. The medication for... You don't want to stay there. You don't want naturally to go back to alignment. And you need to learn this. You need to... The society don't teach us this. That's a great way to put it. When you start thinking about Alignment and depression. It sounds like in my mind, I get this picture coming through of depression being this dark valley when you veered off the path on some level. And you think, okay, I'm just here now. I live here now. I have to live in this dark valley. I hate it. And you just start thinking about, you start looking around that path. You start naming all the things. There's a big tiger over there. The water is too deep. It's going to start snowing. But the depression is like, hey, you just went on the wrong trail. All you got to do is walk back and get back on the main trail again. And like it's it's really beautiful the way you explain that, because I do think people that are hypersensitive have gone into depression so many times they've been forced to find their way back. And they're like, oh, OK, I get it. Like this is just a wrong trailhead. And you know what? Once you start figuring that out, especially someone who's also hypersensitive, you begin to see the beauty of depression. You begin to see, hey, you know what? This trail is pretty dark. But if I'm really conscious, there's actually some really wonderful sites, sites that are full of wonder. And I mean I'm using the word wonderful. Like this is full of wonder to see how cold it is here. It's really wonderful to see how dark these shadows can be. I can almost be invisible in these shadows. And instead of seeing it as this horrible negative connotation, you still see it as just the darkness and darkness. I love the way you said you're bringing it back to alignment. I wish, and I'm hopeful more people can learn about this road back. And I think some of the stuff you're doing is, is doing that. Maybe, maybe you can talk a little bit more about resilience. I know we kind of, I kind of cut you off right there, but what more do you have to say about resilience? Hmm. That, okay. So, um, I, you know, for resilience, I give you tools. Like you say that, you know, that, uh, um, it's it's the the there is a pass and I I I I I that that's very funny that you describe this like this this this is what I say that you know and specifically when you're doing psychedelics, you know, psychedelics will recreate new neural pathway. And some people have never felt, because we're going to talk about anxiety also, because lots of my clients have anxiety. And that's the same thing, anxiety. Okay, let me define it like anxiety. We're talking about, you know, the four emotions. for emotion we were talking about joy we've mentioned about joy okay already joy we need to feel and express those four emotion and if they are not felt and expressed that's where you're gonna have disease the energy is toward so the joy It's important to feel, to be able to feel it and to express it. You see, when you're depressed, you don't have joy anymore. You can't connect with other. It's very important. Joy, it's going to be the ability of connection, connection with others. If you don't have joy, you're not going to connect. People tend to... So very important to feel joy. Some people have never felt joy. They've been like, they're born in like, I know that the family is just like, you're not allowed, it's not politically correct to be joyful. It's as terrible as this, you know. So they experience psychedelics for the first time. So, you know, they've created a path, like, you know, a path to joy. They know that, you know, there is a road. And that's what I say that, you know, they wake up in the morning and there is an highway. And the highway is like, What you were describing is the highway to hell. Totally, totally, yes. You know, the highway to go back. But, you know, they have to just remember psychedelics is not going to save you, change your life. It's going to show you a way that you're going to have to walk. You're going to have to walk it. You are healing yourself, not psychedelics. Psychedelics will help you show the way, help you experience the way. If you don't do the work, it's not going to do it for you. Yeah. And that's very important. It's not a miraculous pill. Yeah. It's a magic one, not a miraculous pill. Yeah. You're still going to have to work. You have to work. You. You. So, and that's the thing that, you know, depression, you know, that's going to give you, you're going to experience maybe a bliss and you're going to have to choose, like going back to this highway. This is my life, the highway. The only thing I know. Or turning and going to the green. Like, you know, yes, there is. Yes, there is a greener side. Yes, there is one. There is the greener side on the other side. Yes, it exists. So we were talking about joy, sadness. Sadness is important, like I said before, to have empathy for the self and for others. If you don't express your sadness, often that you have people that have problem in the chest, like there's keeping all this, for example, lung cancer. You know, so, you know, maybe you need to see how much. So fear, fear is important to feel and express to protect yourself. And we were talking and that's where, okay, let's go back after for the fear. So anger, anger, very important because anger is the way to say no. It's the emotion that's going to up you to say no and to put boundaries on. A lot of people also that have cancer, they don't have the ability to say no, to express themselves, to give boundaries to others. A disease is like, you're going to express your feelings. No. If you have strong boundaries, you're not going to shout, no, you're not going to need. If you feel safe, you're not going to have to, you just like, You don't need to be having. So some people, trauma ruptures boundaries. You don't have boundaries. So you can't say no. You say yes all the time. Disease is a way to say no. Your body is saying no for you. So going back to fear, fear, fear. And there's a big difference in between anxiety and fear. anxiety you know you have at fear and maybe a trauma is going to be based on a fear like suddenly you get attacked and there is a fear there is something that you have to defend yourself your life is threatened so this is creating a trauma and this is fear but this is that that's created trauma and the trauma is going to be like you're gonna have a stimulus that's going to re like, re-enhanced the fear, and it's going to create anxiety. Anxiety is like fear of something that's not there, that doesn't exist. Rumination. You're just, like, thinking, oh, this, that, that, that. You know, this is, like, not existing. This is all the talk that we're creating in our head. This is anxiety. Anxiety, most of all, doesn't exist. big difference in between fear and anxiety. So the same thing is that I got fear of things that are not there, but maybe this fear is rooted in my childhood. Because I'm not aligned with what is. My soul, my child, my inner child is not aligned with my adult self. If I'm aligned, I know that my adult self is going to protect the child. I don't have reason to have fear anymore, neither anxiety. I'm adult. I can protect my child. So that's all about, again, about aligning body, mind, and soul. I'm trying to think about the question that you asked me. But I think that was like about, about like the past, about past, about, about past, like about past, like going back to, Oh yes, I got it. Sorry. Not at all. You were telling me about resilience and I was, I was describing what is it to not be resilient and, You're not resilient when you're not having the capacity to go back to homeostasis, to this equilibrium, to this balance in your body, to this alignment, body, mind, and soul. Resilience is the capacity to go back there. That's what's for me. and there is different thing that you know you you so that's what I'm I'm the so the book the book that I'm uh writing I've exercised this is like a exercise book this is like and very interesting. The other day I was listening to, um, someone that was working in, in, um, narcissistic abuse people that, uh, unfortunately also people that have suffered from trauma suffer a lot from a narcissistic abuse and a narcissistic abuse. Like there is a lot of post-traumatic stress was, was, was narcissistic abuse. Um, that people are not conscious. And that was very interesting because he was describing his protocol. And I said to myself, that's crazy that his protocol is so similar to mine. to the one that I'm offering. And I'm just saying that, yeah, this is the end. And you've got someone that I've been talking about it. It's like Jung. So it's a very old thing. It's the process of individuation. So Jung is talking about this individuation. So my protocol And I've understood that it's all about individuation. It's all about this. And when you are aligned and conscious of it, that's when you have reached individuation. Freedom. You're free. You are healed because you are free, more conscious. Freedom, you know. Happiness comes from freedom. You are free from this unconscious. When you have a disease is when you're not conscious of what you feel. And the problem is that allopathy is hiding the symptoms. And it's not really right. So I don't want to throw away completely allopathy and medication. I definitely believe that you know that if you don't work alongside it's difficult to really heal deep deep illness yeah it I feel like we're there's a great quote from um james joyce in the book ulysses it says history is the nightmare from which I'm trying to awaken it makes me think that like so much of what like we're running from the very thing that would free us in our personal lives in our business lives and in the western world more predominantly but like We begin thinking about something. We begin coming up with the question that will lead us to the answer to help us. And we automatically stop. Hey, stop thinking about that. Don't put that away. We're not going to think about that. That's painful. That hurt. You might hurt someone's feelings like these questions that we come up with are the answers. The questions are the path to the healing. But we have to be. strong enough to face those questions. We have to be strong enough to formulate those questions. And sometimes we need people like yourself and others in our lives that are willing to help us think about those questions, not give us the answers, but to sit down with us and help us formulate those questions on some level. And I can't help but think Isn't it fascinating? The way in which you're describing some of these techniques is also describing the way in which neuroplasticity happens in the brain. It just reminds me back to Carl Jung of like, as above, so below. Like we are when we talk about emotions, we're talking about rewiring our brain when we talk about. on some level, sophrology, it sounds like we're also talking about neuroplasticity and neuroscience on some level, but we're doing it in a way with our language, which we talked about the verse, the happy verse. Think about the word verse. It's a language. It's a song. It's a note. Maybe universe is one language. Maybe when you become conscious of the universe right you're like right there I don't know it's kind of a lot right there but it's true right like our language is what defines us I I want to yeah I want to I'm sorry I love it like universe is is aligned like you know yeah yeah completely I want to I want to, sorry, I don't want to forget about what you were saying, because it's important. And after we're going to go back to your universe and everything, because I love what you're saying. I love everything you're saying. Thank you. You know, lots of people are scared about taking... psychedelics about and exactly for what you're describing and I got a very good answer for them that is like very true people are saying that I am scared to discover thing inside myself and I answer to them you are never going to discover more than what you're suffering every day That's a great answer. And this is true. You know that if there is something hiding inside you, you are suffering it. So I've studied transgenerational therapy. It's coming from a study that was done on schizophrenic people. I believe that schizophrenia is a disease that can be healed. I believe so. Schizophrenia is the expression of identity and family. It's a belief also, but they've done studies and just like realizing that the crazy things that people were talking about, if you were putting it back into the family history, they were doing research, suddenly it was making sense. Just food for the thought that, you know, that... there is one member of the family that is expressing all this family secret or this family trauma that needs to be coming out so the pain the trauma is there stored and you're suffering it and you expressing it one way or another If you can put light into it, you're going to be able to have the capacity to heal it. And what's beautiful is that, you know, when people re-experience some of trauma, and I'm going to, I can share about abuse, you know, having the capacity to revisit at an adult age, like something that happened in your childhood and age, you can be suddenly conscious that you were not guilty. It was not your fault. And you see it, and you feel it, and you have the capacity at adult age to analyze it and to see that, oh, wow, all my life I was carrying this burden all my life I was carrying this guilt and today I understand today I know I wasn't guilty wasn't my fault I was a child this is beautiful and this is healing and freeing yourself that hits home for me well Hmm. There's an awakening to shame on some level. Sometimes I think these feelings of guilt can calcify into shame. And then you just carry that with you, which is such a heavy burden. And you're right. Then you begin carrying the secret shame of the family with you. Hey, nothing was done. Hey, this person doesn't care. Hey, this person was never prosecuted. Hey, be tough enough to handle it. Just shut your mouth. Don't worry about it. It doesn't matter. That sort of Pathway. Hypersensitivity. That sort of pathway is a place that goes to a dark area, but there's a path back from it. Like you said, writing your book, telling our stories. And even the greatest myths out there are a way for us to have our story not only be vocalized by us, but there's nuggets that other people can find truth or wisdom in those stories and then apply those tools to their stories. It's so amazing how we're connected that way. And I can't help but think of the human mycelium. Isn't it strange that mycelium grows in a way that finds connections? And so too do our stories, our words, our traumas, our triumphs, our betrayals. These all find ways to help heal each other. And when you can see them as these tools of connection, it does take away that shame or it takes away that heaviness that comes with some of these things. That's true. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. And healing is possible. That, you know, there is not such a thing like, you know, I believe the wonderful power of our body and mind to heal. Yeah. In harmony. Yeah. But it's possible that, you know, and yeah, that my work is... all about helping people to regain this confidence in themselves, this power. It works well. It's amazing. It's beautiful. I love it. I'm so blessed to be able to do this in my life. It is. It's a calling on some level. It's do you feel that what you're doing? I often ask the question, do you feel that you are your motivation comes from being pushed or being pulled? Is there something attracting you towards a higher? Is there something attracting you to what you do? Or is there something pushing you to do what you do? Okay, so I, you know, the motivation and all the gift and everything is in the inner child. As a child, I was wanting and needing to be helped, to be more helped, to be more loved. So, and As a child and as someone hypersensitive, I always say that I have a very selfish, selfish, like, thing to, like, thought to why I'm doing what I'm doing. I'm just thinking that if nobody is suffering anymore in this world, nobody is going to hurt me anymore. Hmm. So I definitely believe that people can hurt others. So if everybody was happy, joyful, that if we were all that. So yeah, I'm pushed. I'm pushed. I want to share something. I've been, one of my last clients, she was seventeen years old. She was medicated heavily. She was on four hundred, like, if there is therapists, psychiatrists, doctors, like, please hear this. She was on four hundred fifty milligrams of Welbitrin, plus, you know, this medication creates for young people suicidal ideation so she was having suicidal ideation she was starting to have anxiety so she was also having pills for anxiety she was having pill now for adhd like enough for everything that and so she was like lots of uh seventeen years old she was going through transformation, and she was needing help. So she was a bit depressed, and she was helped, giving medication to a person. And those medication, and specifically for young people, are creating suicidal ideation. So who didn't add suicidal ideation as a teenage? Probably not many people. We, one way or another, we all went to this, to this feeling that, you know, what am I doing there? I don't want you there. Like, you know, I'm scared, I'm different. I'm just like, you know, finding your place there, you know? And giving pills to a child that is looking for himself and just telling him that, you know, you are not able to heal. You're not able to do anything. Now I'm gonna give you a pill because you can't heal yourself. You lost and I'm going to give you a pill. A pill that is not going to help. It's not going to help long term. It's not going to help. Those medication are not going to help long term. People that are antidepressant for years and years and years. This is not helping. And still feeling bad. Ten years, twenty, because I see them. I help them. So it's saying to a young person that you're not able to heal. You don't have the capacity. We're going to give you pills. I don't think it's right in our society. I think we should do something else. I'm glad that she is, she's completely off her meds. Nice. Yeah. I'm stoked for that. Yeah. That, you know, she, she's got a purpose in life. She do. She has found something. She, she, she is. She find, you know, she, yeah, one, like the second, we did two psilocybin session, like two psilocybin session. The second one, she had the breakthrough and she say that, you know, just for what I've experienced now, I want to live forever. She has found, I don't want to disclose what she has found, like a purpose that she found in her life, but she has found a purpose. She's seventeen years old and she found a purpose. So that's several months that she's feeling much better, that she's completely off her pills and that she knows that she's got a capacity to heal. That's what we need. Resilience is just understanding that we have the capacity. She was having resources. She's got resources and capacity to heal. So Purposelessness and the, what a crime sometimes to see a world that is so willing to force people, maybe not force people, that's not the right word. It's so interesting to think about culture. And I think the first four letters when I think of culture, and if you were not, learning to think, right? If we're not doing the work and learning to think for ourselves, there's lots of people that are paid lots of money to do the thinking for you. And they don't have your best interest in mind. That's culture. Culture is the bombardment of billboards when you're driving down a highway. Culture is the lyrics to a song that talk about the way in which you were treated, which is horrible and how you celebrate it. Like it's, It's constantly around us and just inviting us to live a life that is without purpose. You know, it's just distraction so much. And I, I, I, I feel it, you know, I, I'm so thankful to hear that story because I, it is a story of resilience. And if a young woman at the age of Not only that, but probably on Lord knows how much negative feedback she's getting from the people around her and these doctors that tell her she's not good enough. You need this pill. You're not normal. You got to take this thing to be normal, whatever the hell that word means. I feel like the story you told today was going to resonate with lots of people. I feel like the work you're doing is like, do you think we're waking up to this? Is this something that you see on the horizon? Is the sun rising? Okay, you know my theory? My theory is that, yeah, you were talking about universe. Let's go back to universe. We are united. We are one. We are a body. And I believe that there is people like me, lots and more people like me that are raving. We are white blood cells. The body is attacked. by germs or anything, parasite germs. We are in a culture of medication. We're going to take the cult of the medication. Yeah. That's the cult of medication. So you taking away your power to heal. You're not able to heal. You're sick. And I believe that the homeostasis of the universe, because we are one, and this is a balance. So the more that people want to give medication, to shove medication in your mouth, the more there is other people that are going to say that, hey, like helping to the body, to the universe. Guys, you have the power. Yeah. You have the power. Don't give your power to anyone else than yourself. Don't let anyone else guide you. You know, in my work, in my work as a psilocybin therapist, there's like, you know, now that there's so many psilocybin therapists everywhere, so many. That's true that, you know, that so many, many, many. How do you make the difference that, you know, when people are saying that, oh, I'm going to guide you, I'm going to heal you. Where are you going to guide me? Who you are to guide me? You don't know nothing about me that, you know, because I don't even know myself. Who you are to guide me? Why do you want to guide me? Where? How? You want to heal me. How can you heal me? Who you are? No. Some people need guide and healers, and that's okay. That's okay. But, you know, because they don't... unfortunately don't yet trust themselves enough so they're gonna put their power of healing their power of in the end of someone else but at the end I can promise you nobody else than you is healing yourself you are doing it so if you think that oh I got this healer that's wonderful so you are this wonderful healer all the quality that you're thinking that this person has You need a Buddha to recognize a Buddha. You got it. You got it inside yourself. You are this wonderful healer. That's well said. That's well said. Deep. Benedict, I feel like we've done like over an hour and almost an hour and a half. And I feel like it was five minutes. I feel like we just blew through our conversation right here. So much fun. I'm thankful. Like, yeah, this is great. You know, before, like you've been generous with your time, but before we land the plane, where can people find you? What do you have coming up and what are you excited about? Um, I would like to develop something because I've realized something more and more, and that's my plan Saturday that one more time. When I do a psilocybin session, I do a pre-session and a pre-session that lasts about one hour and a half, two hours. There is something at the end of this pre-session that almost all the people who are telling me, they're saying to me, oh, that's incredible that in just like two hours, it's just that even if I was like stopping here, I would have gained so much. So it's not easy. I am in Jamaica because it's cold. completely legal to do psilocybin here but it's not easy for it's a big price that even if I try to do as cheap as possible for being like having people being able to access like therapy so I want to develop more and more working online obviously not with psilocybin because I don't obviously I owe this safe space and I can't all this safe space if I'm far away but just like doing more and more precision therapy therapy online just like you know helping people to have this consciousness and awareness I think that I've got this gift to you know, when I speak with people, like, you know, to create like a puzzle of what people are telling me, you know, for them to be conscious of. And I've got lots of tools. I've got lots of experience. And I would like to be working more online with people all over the world and to be able to, you know, in two hours you know to already two hours to just like give them lots of insight teaching them personally you know you can go and lots of people are going to see like a tarot reader right it's gonna be a bit like this except that I'm not a tarot reader. I'm not a guide. I'm not. But I'm just having this capacity to listening and to help you be more conscious of who you are. Just like helping you to put, like, just having the, you know, the right question, like, you know, having the right things to help you be more conscious and giving you certain tools and explaining you, like, certain things about, you're functioning and how you can help yourself. So I want to be more accessible to people there to do online, online, those, those online session to that. That's what I would like to do more. I don't know. I'm very bad in marketing. I don't know how to, I don't know how to do this. So people can find me. I think it's a big part of it. I can talk to you about starting a podcast. You should have your own podcast. Every time I talk to you, I have so much to think about afterwards. And I think that you could help. You're already helping a lot of people. And I hope that everyone within the sound of my voice goes down to the show notes and reaches out to you. Because I... I do think that you have a lot to share and a lot to help people with. Maybe starting up like a podcast of your own and getting out there and talking to people would be a great way to begin that journey to helping because you're great at it. Like the way you use your language to describe things is it's transformational for me. And I know a lot of other people listening and it's wonderful. I was wanting to do it. Yeah, you'd be great at it. And to, you know, for offerings. for one person that don't have the fund to seek for healing, you know, having the opportunity that, I don't know, like once in a week, just like giving the opportunity to someone that just like, you know, allowing people that don't have money to seek and just that's okay for sharing because Even as a therapist, what we can share with others is our own experience, our own knowledge that, you know, I share with people tools. I share with people, like, compassion and helping them to, you know, that's how I can help them. So, yeah, I would love to do this, but I don't know that, you know, there's, yeah. You know, that's my frustration. You know, today my frustration is that today to work in this world, you need to be very good in social media. And that's not really... I'm trying, but I don't really like it. And unfortunately, you know, if you have a beautiful package, a beautiful website, a beautiful everything, you're going to sell and you're going to have lots of clients and you're going to... This isn't believed. This is not true that maybe once you get inside the package. So... So, yeah, I wish I could help more people. I wish that, you know, because at the end of the day, that's what I want to do, help. I want to help. But I, yeah, I would like to have the way, like, you know, yeah, that I, that's what I'm lacking. I hope that, you know, I wish, and I'm just always asking for something. I wish that I can one day partner with somebody that is as good in marketing and all this thing that I am and that want to help others and that have the skills. I got skills, like I was saying. I know my skills and I know what I can offer to others. But I... I would like to be more out there. And I need someone to, yeah, to make me out there, to put me out there. And thank you, you doing it. Yeah, thank you very much. Yeah, I hope that, like I said, that even if this has resonated to one person, we've helped one person. And that's great. This person will help other person. This is my psyllium, like you were saying. So this one person will help maybe his family that, you know, something that I've raised on it. Like suddenly this person is just like, I have the power to heal myself. It's great. Yes, you do. Yeah. Yeah. It's that confidence. It's that realization. It's that awareness. And once you're aware of it, It's very hard to be unaware of it. Yes. That's what one client said to me at the end of a psilocybin session. He said, I can't unsee. Yeah. Yeah. Good. Consciousness is healing. Consciousness is freedom. Freedom is happiness. Yeah. I love it. I love it. Benedict, thank you. Hang on briefly afterwards, but to everybody within the sound of our voice, go down, check out the show notes, reach out to Benedict. If you're a social media manager, go down, click on the link below. If you are someone who may be able to volunteer some time, go down, hit the link below. If you're someone who maybe doesn't have a whole lot of money, but would like to get to know Benedict a little bit, go down and check out the show notes. I I have had multiple conversations with her and they all end up like this where I find myself so thankful to get to be here sitting next to you and talking to you. So ladies and gentlemen, that's all we got for today. I hope you have a beautiful day. Aloha. Aloha. Enjoy your day, your week and sending you lots of love. Nice. All right.