Happy Summer, all! I hope you can join us this Wednesday, 7/15 at 6 pm PST for Integration (link below). Why do so many people choose to journey with psychedelics in midlife? Gender doesn't matter. Midlife has a way of cracking all of us wide open. All of the things we tried to keep neatly tucked away seem to surface relentlessly in midlife. For some of us, it feels like everything is falling apart at once: relationships, careers, our bodies, and our sense of identity. I have heard "I don't even know who I am anymore," more times than I can count. We spend decades fulfilling certain roles imposed by society, our cultures, religions, and families: parent, provider, spouse, caretaker, the responsible one, the strong one... and somewhere along the way, those roles became our identity. This is often exactly why people seek plant medicine in midlife: something within us knows it's time to strip away the stories, the roles, the unhealthy patterns, and the false beliefs so that we can return to who we truly are. This is integration in midlife. As we all know, the journey itself is only the beginning. What happens after is where we do the work. And in midlife, that work may look a little different than it does at 25. For those who have had a recent journey, here are a few things to be aware of during integration: - Old roles may not fit the same way anymore, which can bring up both grief and even relief. - Your body and nervous system need time to catch up to what you experienced.   Be patient. When you strip away the roles, the patterns, the identity that society and your life experiences have handed you - who are you? Not who you are supposed to be. We will discuss this on our next call. Start thinking about who you are. Join Zoom Meeting https://us06web.zoom.us/j/3648065492?pwd=APZhhw2iFM2O8a4BGEvza1iPStGqNr.1&omn=88438637643 Meeting ID: 364 806 5492 Passcode: 042494

Sorry for the late notice - I will post the new date soon.

Integration: Before You Tell Everyone. - A Note on Sharing Your Experience Most of us can relate to wanting to tell everyone when something profound happens to us. And that impulse is normal. The experience cracked something open - and for many, especially with psychedelics, you can feel more alive, clearer, and more like yourself. So of course you want to share that. Maybe you want the people around you to feel what you felt. Maybe you want them to understand you better. Or maybe you are just overflowing with feelings. All of that is real and valid. AND - not every share will land the way you hope. The medicine you received is still working. What you're integrating is personal, who you share it with and how you share it are important considerations. Who to Share It With Ultimately, deciding whom to share your experience with is your decision; however, consider these tips: Ask yourself, "Does this person have the capacity to hold what I'm about to share?" That doesn't mean they need to have done a journey themselves. It means: Are they curious enough without being dismissive? Safe without being enabling? Can they be with you without making it about them, their fears, or their opinions about psychedelics? Some people in your life will rise to meet you there. Others, even people you love deeply, simply won't have the container for it. That is not a judgment on them. It just is. What to Share The early days after a journey are a time when meaning is still forming. What felt like a clear insight yesterday might deepen, shift, or reveal itself differently next week. Sharing too much, too soon - especially with people who aren't resourced to receive it - can actually flatten the experience or introduce doubt where there was clarity. Sharing the feeling tone more than the content, at least at first, can be helpful as you more fully integrate the experience. Upsides of Sharing With the Right People When you share with someone who can truly receive it, it amplifies. It can help you make meaning. It can deepen your relationship. It an even open a door for someone who's been quietly curious. It can be witnessed, and witnessing accelerates integration.

The Medicine You Make With Your Own Voice After a journey, your nervous system is doing important work - integrating, reorganizing, and settling into new patterns. What you do in the days and weeks that follow matters enormously. I want to share a simple tool to help you connect with your nervous system: humming. A sustained, low-pitched hum helps give your vagus nerve a workout. The vagus nerve runs through your larynx and pharynx - directly in the path of vocal vibration. Because of this, humming creates a vibration that stimulates your vagus nerve and can increase your vagal tone - the health and responsiveness of the nerve itself. A well-toned vagus nerve is foundational to nervous system resilience: better stress recovery, more emotional flexibility, improved digestion, and deeper sleep. Your vagus nerve acts like your body's built-in brake pedal for stress. Humming is one of the most direct ways to press it. One study found a 15-fold increase in nasal nitric oxide from humming compared to exhaling quietly. Nitric oxide is involved in everything from brain and immune function to blood flow to the lungs. It also protects your body by neutralizing airborne pathogens, and has been shown to reduce blood pressure. The more you hum, the more you flood your system with this quietly powerful molecule. Research revealed that humming generates the lowest stress index compared to physical activity, emotional stress, and sleep. Yes - lower than sleep. The heart rate variability (HRV) data backs this up - heart rate decreases and heart rate variability increases, both markers of better health and nervous system regulation. Studies also suggest that the vibration produced by humming deactivates parts of the brain, particularly the amygdala, which is associated with depression and fight-or-flight response. After a journey, you may be processing old material that's moving through. You want the alarm system a little quieter while the deeper integration does its work.

Hope you can join us this Wednesday, 4/22 at 6 pm PST! Join Zoom Meeting https://us06web.zoom.us/j/3648065492?pwd=APZhhw2iFM2O8a4BGEvza1iPStGqNr.1&omn=88429940564 Meeting ID: 364 806 5492 Passcode: 042494 The Body Knows First After a retreat, a psychedelic journey, or a profound experience, the mind seeks answers - it wants to sort the experience into something coherent: a lesson, a breakthrough, or a story it can tell. And that impulse makes sense. The mind is a meaning-making machine. It’s doing its job.But here’s what’s also true: your body received everything that happened, too. And it’s working on its own timeline.The body doesn’t translate experience into language the way the mind does. It speaks in sensation: a heaviness in the chest, a warmth that spreads through the belly, a tightness in the throat that comes out of nowhere, a sudden exhaustion, an unexpected lightness. These aren’t random. They’re not symptoms to manage or signs that something is wrong. They’re integration happening. Why the Body Often Knows Before the Mind Does During a ceremony or a deep retreat experience, the nervous system is doing something profound. It’s processing material: emotional, somatic, sometimes even ancestral - that doesn’t always come with a clear narrative attached. Some of what moves through you doesn’t have words yet. Some of it may never need words.When you come home and the mind starts grasping - what did it mean, what do I do now, why do I feel so strange - often what’s actually happening is that the body is still metabolizing the experience, and the mind hasn’t caught up yet.This is completely normal. And it’s not a problem to solve.The invitation is to learn to read the body as a compass during integration - not to decode it or force it to speak in concepts, but to simply stay in relationship with what’s there. What Somatic Integration Actually Looks Like It doesn’t always look like anything dramatic. In fact, it’s often quiet:- Waking up with a feeling you can’t name- A pull toward solitude, or an unexpected hunger for connection- Crying without knowing why - and the tears feeling right somehow- A recurring ache or tightness in the same place- Unusual fatigue, or unusual energy- A desire to move, to be in nature, to be held. These are the body’s way of processing. When you notice them and turn toward them - with curiosity instead of judgment, you’re doing integration work, even if it doesn’t feel productive or intentional.