The Role of Somatic Therapy in Psychedelic and Ketamine-Assisted Healing (Part 1) EP9

Somatic therapy's critical role in psychedelic and ketamine-assisted healing cannot be overstated. Our conversation goes deep into the necessity of somatics in these therapies, underscoring the interconnectedness of the emotional, physical, and mental facets of trauma and healing. The impact of unresolved trauma on overall well-being, including cognitive decline and aggressive behavior in older adults, highlights the urgency of addressing trauma at its core.

The significance of creating a safe and secure environment for patients undergoing these treatments was a focal point. Emotional security is as important as physical safety, emphasizing the vital role of somatic therapy in untangling and releasing trauma energy to facilitate genuine healing.

Moreover, we addressed the urgency of raising the standard of care to encompass holistic, patient-centered approaches. The outdated medical education curriculum and the call for incorporating current best practices and compassionate approaches underscored the need for a shift in medical education and practice towards a more integrated and empathetic approach.

The distressing case shared about a client's experience with ketamine, lacking somatic support, resulting in re-traumatization rather than healing, served as a poignant reminder of the necessity for comprehensive, holistic care and somatic support in administering treatments like ketamine.

The importance of medical professionals undergoing mental health therapy, shedding light on the significant pressure and mental challenges inherent in the medical field. We advocated for collaborative medicine, combining mental health support with traditional treatment methods and fostering an environment of support and growth.

It is imperative to recognize somatic therapy as a crucial component of psychedelic and ketamine-assisted healing. Its integration is vital in addressing trauma and facilitating genuine healing, and it demands the attention and prioritization of medical professionals and institutions.

Join us next week as we explore each type of plant medicine and how you can use it in your healing journey.

Connect with Janene on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theacupuncturist_org/

Connect with Jennie on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jennie_pool/

Chapters

• 0:00 Somatic Therapy in Psychedelic and Ketamine-Assisted Healing
• 6:28 Body, mind, and spirit work in harmony.
• 11:37 Medical professionals are integral for ketamine treatment success
• 15:30 Ensuring safety in psychedelic therapy sessions.
• 16:11 Compassion for the impact of cognitive decline.
• 31:41 Ensuring safety and support in psychedelic therapy.

Transcript

  Did a good job of having Peter, Levine, 

but he  was asked to be a part of all the research, for legalizing MVMA and psychedelic, psychedelic assisted, no vessel. Okay. Beel VanDerKolk Body keeps score. Yeah.  So he's doing a ton of research on the efficacy Right. And safety of using right now MVMA psilocybin is  in the in trials behind that. 

Mm-Hmm. . and then you already have ketamine and I was, it was so. It was so refreshing to hear him say  that, these spaces are, this, these medicines can be incredibly healing. These plant medicines and this type of therapy, he's like, it also can be incredibly dangerous. Mm hmm. And, And then he's like, we don't use the word sacred very much anymore, but these spaces that you've tried with people are sacred and, and you don't know, oftentimes where you're going to traverse with them. 

And if it's not, if you don't have somatics involved, sitting somebody in a couch with an infusion and leaving them alone is dangerous. And I was like, Say it louder. Yeah. Say it louder, Bessel, because there's a lot of people doing that, ketamine. Yeah. And he's like, somatics should always be involved in any kind of ketamine and or psychedelic assisted therapy.

That's cool. He's like, they're fundamental for keeping safety. And I was like,  this is one of the reasons why, he's like, that's why you guys are all here, is you're, you're paving, you're part of paving the way to make sure that somatic therapy is, is done and done well. 

Yeah. Right?  That's really cool.

Straight from Bessel's mouth. And he's the one doing some of the research for legalizing, you know, MBMA for the FDA. That's awesome. That's so cool. So. You were so excited and inspired and like, I was, I was like, whoa, she is  high energy today. You were just like, ah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I had so many ideas and thoughts and 

what was also really validating is

to hear  what is efficacy, like what's efficacy, what's effective using somatic tools. And  I was like, literally,  so many times I was like, I do that, yeah, I do that too. I'm doing the things. I'm not behind the wave, I'm right there on top of it, riding it.  You might be in front of it. Maybe, I didn't want to say that, but I think I might be in front of it.

I've been in front of it for a while, and some people like, have somatic tools.  I get when people get in front of these people, they get very excited, they are giants in the industry. They have said,  They have 

incredible, cool work out there,  really cool podcasts, really cool YouTube videos, you know, and amazing books.

But in my head, you just like, so you just, you're quiet and you listen and you learn. Yeah. And there's so many,  like, people who have an opportunity to work directly with, right there in front of them, Peter Levine, and just, Instead of working with them, they're just not utilizing the opportunity as best they could because they just can't calm themselves down  and also trying to like, Do you care if I say something real quick?

It's like, yeah, we do care. Let Peter work. Yeah. Let Peter work. We're here not to hear what you have to say about anything.  This is Peter's time to teach us, and you volunteered, and you got picked, so let him teach us. Like I sometimes was and then sometimes the questions I was like  the line of 10 people 15 people to ask a question We have 45 minutes and we would get to two or three because people would talk so long about themselves the context Yes of their question also themselves and eventually I at one point every three all three of them in different Maybe not vessel because he was just more   kind of a lecturing watching just we'll just lecturing But then there was a Q& A for Gabor and Peter and then Peter had his own Q& A You And at one point, both of them were like, what, what is, like, what is your question?

Like, I'm trying to understand what you're saying, but like, what is, and all of this narrative that you just gave me, like, what's your question? That was That's so interesting. I think it just,  it speaks pretty loud to the fact that people really want to be seen. Yes. They want to be  heard and regarded and, acknowledged.

 We're so desperate for it because we aren't because we're not getting that in our relationships Mm hmm.  We used to we used to when we didn't you know, Robert talked about all the day Oh, yeah, I got brave and said he's like you just look at your interpersonal connections, but also community connections He's like the community connections.

Yeah have faltered because we've got to get back to connecting as humanity He's like part of some the somatic journey and somatic work is  the reconnection of humanity You  It was just like  beautiful witnessing and watching  Like these guys that have worked hard to pave the way these are people that that it's not like it was always easy They had people getting up and leaving there  because they're like what you're teaching is dangerous or what you're saying is not right Robert talked a lot about positions and  medical people saying compassionate inquiry and compassionate care is dangerous in the medical field. 

He's going, this is where you heal, help people heal. is the, yeah, I think you're such a good example of that. Your compassionate inquiry and your compassionate space that you hold while you're doing the medicine. Thank you. It's not like, let's get you in, get you out, needles in, needles out, let's go.

Yeah, I wrote something down today that I thought was like, right along the same lines.  But it's definitely about  raising the standard of care to include holistic  avenues of things that work on a patient centered basis. basis. Yeah. Because not everything is going to work for every single person.

Right. But,

every single person has multiple things, multiple different things that will work for them. Right. And help them  come back into homeostasis, and balance, and ground, and,  Be able to feel good in their bodies, because when, when they're, when they feel good in their bodies, it's much easier for them to do the hard work on their mind and their spirit.

100%.  So, we shouldn't just be giving pills because depression is like a condition. It's like, no, you've had things happen in your life that have been really difficult to,  Not only have happened, but then sustain the aftermath. And that have connected to the physical issues that are showing up. They inevitably are connected.

That's one of the things that, I don't know, I just have always, I have always, body, mind, spirit gets thrown around really easy. But I have always believed that just like your respiratory system is connected to your cardiovascular, they don't operate independently. It's not like, hey heart, I need you to beat a few more times. 

And let's make sure we breathe. They just  act all in sync with each other. So of course your emotional body connected to your physical body connected to your mental body. They're all working in sync. And if there's this ease, that's why with our eventual book, all diseases, heart disease, right? It's,  it's, you're going to have physical connected to the emotional debris, the mental debris, and it's going to show up in the physical body.

And if you don't listen. It gets loud. The physical body gets loud. Not. Yeah, it's like, oh, I will hurt here then. Yeah, I think I've given the example before I took a physiology, anatomy and physiology class. When I went to school, I was, I was actually studying nursing at the time in  Miami, Florida,  and this,  this professor was,  oh my gosh, unbelievable.

I've never taken so many notes in my life. And. He talked about how integrated each one of the systems  are  and  that you can't separate anything because an imbalance in one will, for sure, create a ripple effect and has the potential to wreck the system as a whole. Galbraith would say that he is a rarity in the medical field.

He said the medical field is still way behind in compassionate care and also, Really understanding how,  interconnected,  that even like in a lot of medical classes, you don't have a class dedicated to like helping people through trauma. Right.  Yeah, what a cool what a cool experience you had that kind of instructor I mean that and that was my medical training like I was going into nursing and so that was my anatomy and physiology class in 1998 I believe it was at Barry University.

So  that was my medical training. Yeah, and and Even now if we look at   it with so many people in the space In the social media space. I think it's pretty well accepted,  by people who are leading the charge in  really elevating,,  the profession of medicine. They, they talk about biochemistry all the time.

We talk about nutrition. We talk about,  how to tell whether you're, whether you're physiologically optimized or not. And, and, and I do think that the compass is turning more towards like, Hey, if you feel really good in your body, you're going to feel good in your mind.  You're going to do, you're going to do better  and has everything to do with sleep and nutrition and exercise and breathing well and staying hydrated, getting in the sun and even your relationships because  your, your biochemistry  is very, very intricately driven by so many of these factors and your relationships being a big, one of them, because.

If something happens in your relationship  and it throws off your emotions, your emotions are,   directly connected to the limbic system in the brain. And that will fire off all of the biochemistry to tell you you're not safe. It's time to go into fight or flight. And it doesn't matter how well you optimize your body in your, in your daily life.

If your relationships are. Translating to the equivalent of you're in danger,  then it's going to wreck the whole system. Right. Cause you're in fight or flight. And we know that. And we have scientists telling us that.  It's just not, it's not delivered that way in medical education. And why  the leaps and bounds that it's going to take to change the curriculum because the curriculum is like so set set in stone there are there are people that are trying to change  the curriculum and they they understand like hey you know what  this is pretty far outdated we need to go to  the accreditation commission the higher learning commission and you know we need to start working on a new That's pretty cool.

Curriculum because this is where graduating people into the profession of medicine, and they're 20 years behind what's being what's being published and put out there as best practice. That's I'm glad people are challenging that.  Yeah, and you've got, you know, Tony Robbins and David Sinclair and Peter Diamandis and Peter Attia and like so many other people in the podcasting space that look at this and they're like, yeah, duh, right?

I got to move on because the system that's training tomorrow's medical professionals.  They're just going to have to catch up when they're on the other side of their residency. But case in point to my point about ketamine right now, is medical professionals are  the archstone, the keystone to that arc, right?

 I can hold space for They are the gold standard. Yeah. Well, and they're the ones that have to hold the space for giving the shots and giving the infusions. I can hold space for someone that's taking a trochee and do somatic work, but  I'm, That's not my lane, giving shots and giving.  Right.

 I can do the integrated, you know, session, therapy session afterward.  This getting suggested more, but when Ketamine first came out, there wasn't a lot of follow up like, Hey, you should go talk to a therapist. Yeah. And that I thought was poorly done.  And then, not having somatic at the least by narrow beats playing in the background when people have an infusion or something that helps the visual cortex feeling calm.

Yeah. And, and you, again, you're pulling through senses. Taste, touch, smell, feel. So you can use things that smell calming, , the atmosphere, what it smells. So burning Palo Santo wood or something that feels relaxing or getting oils and having them breathe them. Yeah. And then it's kind of, and it's kinesthetic and it's the kinesthetic.

If you don't, people like, well, I don't want to touch  it's fibroacoustics. Have them by the vibration of fibroacoustics going into the body. Yeah. Right. So the very cells are vibrating. Right. Calming theta, delta. Frequencies and, and then it's, all the other semantics that come with that. Yeah.

Right. And so  I just think   medicine, like do ketamine more holistically, do ketamines more safely. Yeah. And so today I had a client and they, , were really distraught. They came in, they had done Spravato two times, which is the nasal spray. And,  left alone and  quiet, no binaural beats, not even a visual like TV screen, just quiet. 

And,  and, and they all there, they're like, I just had all their, these trauma feelings come in. And then you have nowhere to discharge the trauma energy that starts to show up and somatics does that. Yeah. Somatics discharges the energy. And interestingly enough, this, this client's trauma was connected to.

Being feeling abandoned and neglected and being alone Jesus and someone left them in a lot alone in a room with a psychedelic on board  Was it a medical doctor? What who? Yeah. No, there's an MD Yeah,  so and that's the danger like it's it is given to them automatically within their scope of practice We kept their heart rate safe.

We made sure their heart rate didn't spiral the control And and so what we had to unwind and reclaim safety on today was  I wasn't, I wasn't taking, you know, I wasn't taking care of the way I wanted to as a kid. I was alone. I was alone too much. I was, I felt, I felt like I was neglected. I felt like I didn't get the attention I needed.

I didn't get the attention I needed. from my caregivers. And so, but I reclaimed safety in the present moment because I'm not alone today. I have a loving partner and I am, I'm safe and I can have a voice. And so we spent 90 minutes. Wow. I mean, reclaiming safety in the body, letting those little ones inside of him heal and realize that they weren't alone.

And that what amplified that. And so this is a really good example of what a re injury looks like under the, that kind of medicine rather than healing, because had he been held, had, had space been held for him and somatic work been done. Cause at one point he was on the vibe plate and he, the vibration plate, you know, that kind of shakes the body.

And he was like, I'm starting to feel this build up and,  I said, let the dam break. I'm here. You're safe. I got you. And sobbing. He was sobbing. Sobbing, sobbing, and just letting go. I said, it's safe. It's safe to unpack. It's safe to unwind. You're safe now. It's, it's okay to reclaim safety. We just spent a lot of time, and this is with no ketamine on board.

Sometimes they'll do the trophies and it's like, I need a break from that. I need to, I said, we need to reclaim safety. We need to get you regrounded. And I'm just going to say it. That should be a conversation that's had 100 percent of the time when someone's going to do a psychedelic assisted therapy and or ketamine therapy is if we're going to do this, how do we make sure that you feel not just physically safe by monitoring your heart rate, but that you feel held and safe in the somatic environment, set in setting. 

And then afterward, you make sure that you've reclaimed safety that day, but then also later. So we're going to have a follow up. Hey, how are you doing? Are you feeling like you were able to reclaim safety in the present moment? Yeah. And if not, let's get you back in here and let's keep doing more somatic work.

Yeah. To slough off  the trauma energy.  It doesn't just recirculate.  

And, when we talked about this trend, this overarching trend of  how. Trauma manifests and raises its ugly head in,  in the process of, or even the wake of cognitive decline. You know, I've had a lot of people say, , my brother's in home care or he's in ho like he's in long term care.  He's got dementia and they've had to sedate him because he's gotten mean.

He's gotten really mean. And I'm like,  try to have compassion, okay? Because this is a, this is a. soul whose container  has deteriorated to the point where it can no longer contain  the volume of trauma that has not only gone unaddressed his entire life, but it's been amplified by  re injuries, seeing anything, anything that comes in from any direction that might stoke or re injure that fire. 

And all we do, and all we've ever learned to do is stuff it down.  Stuff it down, suck it up, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, dry your tears, keep a stiff upper lip, all the bullshit we've been told our entire lives. That's in this culture and that's what's unwinding here. That's what is coming apart and unraveling is this culture of adults and elders who are,   we're looking at them and saying, Oh my God, they're just mean.

And it's like, no.  They're hurting. Yeah, they're, they are living through some of the most trying times. Well, you just can't contain it anymore. War, hunger,  survival. Yeah. And, and now we're this ungrateful  age who's kind of looking at our elders and saying, well, I don't care if you leave me any money in my will, in your will, I got my own money.

Go, go rot away  in a home somewhere, mean grandpa, and it's like,  can we see the forest for the trees? Maybe a little bit, like these were different times that these people lived through and they never got permission to be,  to be in a role where it was their job to make sure they felt good and felt safe and had enough and look at us.

Right, mental health 50 years ago. No such thing. Yeah. No, 40 years ago, 30 years ago. You know what? And maybe this is it would be interesting to see like some actual hard data on this, but I don't know if  mental health was probably  getting more respected in the last 10 years, but after COVID, it became alarmingly clear that what isolation and fear and chaos does to a population of people.

And it was like, we all have to take better care of our mental health and mental health matters and mental health matters. It needs to be a priority and, oh my gosh, businesses, we need to make sure that we're having mental health days for our, for our, now companies, I didn't hear about mental health days until, until after that.

I, my, my son will sometimes be like, mom, can I have a mental health day? Like you getting good grades? It's like, yeah, I'm like, sure. You have a mental health day. Yeah, absolutely. You have a break. And so,  you know, like you said, case in point, it's, it's so, so important. It was just our important pieces to like the forest before the trees, right.

Yeah. Yeah. Right, you're hurting, and it doesn't mean that you can't be sometimes  frustrated by being treated poorly. You don't have to like, be like, oh, whatever, but it's okay to see, like, hey, underneath this is somebody who's been incredibly wounded and has had no place to put this, and it needs to go somewhere, Janine.

If there's one thing I've learned about somatic work is that you have to untangle You have to unbind you have to unencumber if you don't it it reminds me of like a like almost those jellyfish tendrils Right, they just get in and they start anchoring into The body and you have to you have to unwind and untangle that like the discharging that this client did today Wasn't just the vibe plate.

At one point on the, on the sound table, there was movement. And Bessel will say that. Kolk will say, you don't get, you don't get through trauma and work through trauma with talking about it. You get it through movement. That's one of the reasons he's such a big proponent of yoga. Yeah. Yeah. Peter Levine, I think said, I think it's a, it's his book.

He says the best thing you can do for somebody who's been into a, in a car accident,  If they get on your stretcher and they're the back of your ambulance and they start to shake, let them shake. Yes. They're shaking it off. They're literally shaking it off. Yeah. What happens in nature when, when, when a bunny rabbit escapes its prey or it's predator?

They go shake, they go shake it off. They buy, they bound, they wail, they  they cry. Mm-Hmm. . And they get it out because they were in danger and now they're safe. Yeah. And so.  We have the inclination to do that too. And if you think about how we sob, you know, when we finally get to that place, when we sob  and we  imagine you can feel your body shake and you sweat and you  You get hot and everything comes up and you, you, when you really let your voice be heard, you cry.

You wail. Yeah. And the sob is, is vibrational. It's, it's a, it's that deep gutteral, you're jarring your body clearly.  Yeah. Yeah. And that's what, that's what I witnessed today was a deep good.  Deep sob. And even the breathing that we did at times was  like the vibration in the voice, like the unpacking, the unwinding.

And I'm,  I do think that everyone and medical doctors included medical people, people that work with human beings need somatic tools. Oh my gosh.  They need the experience of it. I wish you're like, I don't know, man, I wish I could  put something together. that would just go into   every medical system and say, Hey, this is what somatic therapy looks like.

Come on in. Because you know why? You just got through medical school. Yeah. You just got through  whatever, you know, like any level of management, any level of employee is going through something. The vast majority of us, like very few people, there are some, because I do have some people walk into my  clinic and say,  and when I ask them, okay, have you had any physical or psychological traumas? 

And they'll say, no, you know what? My life has been pretty good. I haven't really, I've never had a car accident. I've never had any kind of like  aggressive blow to my physical body. You know, maybe I lost a pet or I had a broken heart in high school. But aside from that, like life has been really good. Very few people. 

I can say that. Yeah. So my dream is that we have this program that's like,  Hey docs, come on in and just participate.  We want you to see what this looks like when patients go through mental health  therapy.  Yeah.  Because it's a powerful transformative process and the process of getting through medical school. 

And I've seen it. I've watched it. I've watched these kids. They fall apart. That's intense.  The sleepless nights. The rigor. The academic rigor. The mental fake out of remorse.  Are you going to get,  are you going to get matched for your, for your, like what you want to do with your life now that you've put yourself through? 

This very rigorous program.  Every one of them needs it  from medical school alone  Forget going. It should be required to as a part of your first profession school. I know you guys have to all be in therapy Yeah,  well that was built into my training actually good. I'm glad they said that Phenomenal my one of my mentors i'll never forget bob  duggan.

He was like so  Your job is to be with people You in their  most vulnerable state. They're coming to you for help.  And in that  you leave  your stuff at the door.   So go tend to your stuff and other places. Yes. Use the next three years. Every single week you're going to come to Sophia for the next three years and you are going to work on your stuff. 

You're going to challenge your constructs.  You're going to  look your prejudices in the face.  And you're, you're going to make sure that no matter what horror story walks into your office,   you are an open line of healing to that person. You need like a hundred of those guys. Yeah. His, his teaching was very powerful. 

It was, I mean, we're still That guy was ahead of his time looking at how much he was supporting mental health. Yeah. Inside the medical community. Yeah. We did have quite a few people,  challenge him because the scope of acupuncture doesn't include  mental health, right? Yeah. But if we're working with the physical body and we're working with the energy, which we are.

It's impossible to separate the energy from the emotions. Well, yeah, Janine, that's why you, Janine, you send me people because they need mental health support along with the medicine that you give them. Yeah. With the acupuncture. Yeah. That's, and that's the beautiful thing about collaborative medicine. I know.

Why are people so sometimes, again, you see it more and more, the collaborations that I'm starting to see are incredible and really cool, but why does it take, why did it take so long to do some really amazing collabs?  In the realm of medicine and mental health and, and also physical wellness, longevity. 

Because we are taught to be competitive, that is very deeply interwoven into our culture. That is true. That's well said. As Americans, we're taught to be competitive. You have to be right. You have to be the only expert. You have to know your information and you have to be able, you have to be quick.

You have to beat everyone to the punch because the top of the ladder is where you want to be. And if you're not at the top of the ladder,  then you're not good enough.  That's what we've been taught. Yeah. I mean, I know for sure. Like  I, I, I definitely can look back on some of my times in. My professional roles and I was constantly strategizing.

How do I be better? How do I be smarter? How do I be faster? How do I beat her? I was gonna say the top you can do that for yourself, but then there was that last piece You just said but how can I beat her so you can do all those things to compete with self? But then there was that and I also have to beat her or him or them Yeah, which is interesting because if you look at from an abundance perspective It's not that is there if enough abundance for everyone there literally is enough room in the sun for everyone Yeah, but we get really really kind of microscopic.

Yeah. I don't know. I have to be you I have to be This over here. I have to be the best. It's like, can you be the best and have 10 other people be the best, too?  Totally. Can we all be the best? What if, what if you were integral in making sure that those 10 other people became the best? I mean,  you know, perhaps that is your measure of your success.

Because the irony Can it be that way? Yeah, because the irony is if you're the best, you can't, you can't serve 8 billion people. Nope. So you need other bests. Yeah, I know. You need a lot of other bests. I know.  So there's plenty of work for every genre and, and so it just  I'm glad you brought that up because I do think there's, I think there's beauty in being competitive with yourself and wanting to excel and being excellent is a beautiful thing, but being kind of shitty competitive with each other instead of, instead of just being like you're the best and I'm the best and we all can be the best and there's enough clients for you, there's enough clients for me and we're all going to be just fine because there's a lot of people to heal and help.

I'm not going to, I was. I always tell people, even during COVID, I stayed really busy, they're like, are you ever worried? And I was like, no,  I will always be busy because I know how to help people and I will be able to, and I will be able to keep helping people. It's such a good thing. And we were told this a lot in acupuncture school, like  somebody is going to come to you because they want  the medicine that you provide.

Your skills. Your medicine.  They don't want another acupuncturist's acupuncture, they want Janine's acupuncture. Yes. And Janine, your clients are such a good representation of that because They just,  they feel so well cared for. Cool. They just have beautiful things to say. Thank you. Oh, I love Janine.

I'm like, she's very loveable. And it's, it's just, it's, but it's the way that you hold space, it's, you have people that are like, hey, you're here, and let's help you, and then you have people that you're like, here, here, I really care about you, and let's try it, let's get you, let's get you as healthy and happy as possible, and you believe it, because it's authentic.

It's not, it's not just like. Hey, hey, and then who's next? Yeah Yeah, my favorite conversation to have with people is they're like, well, you know what to expect kind of thing I'm, like, hey, we're gonna do this. We're gonna do this. I can offer you  this and that  I'm, like i'll tell you what i'm gonna book out a few appointments for you because i'm busy And I really want to give  like I want to be able to get you in,  consistent,  consecutive weeks  Because I have every confidence that I can help you with what's going on.

And if I can't help you, if you don't notice a change by week four, I'm going to help you find someone else that can help you. Yes. Because that's how much it means to me for you to feel better. Yeah. And if you're not feeling better under my care, sure as shit, I'm going to help you, help you find somebody who can.

Yeah. Because that's what it means to me. It doesn't mean anything for me to keep collecting money.  That's a, that's a positive byproduct that allows me to continue to, you know, like have a livelihood. Sure. But the real thing that we're talking about here is your health and your ability to return to that state that allows you to do the things that you love and show up in your relationships and be a contributing member to society.

And the list goes on and on. How do you design your life? That's my job is to help you get back to that. And if I can't do it,  I'm not going to keep taking your money. Here are three other people that possibly can. Janine, sometimes it's just not like that, right? And that's what I love. About how your clients talk about you is they you can't fake authenticity You really can't it gets teased out one way or the other and if people really believe that you care then then they They are so much more workable And I think that they allow for a better space of healing like I really feel like i'm in a good space here Yeah, I mean, I wish I I almost wish I could have recorded what happened tonight Because the level of distress was at like a 9 or 10 and the, the client left at a 1. 

And I was like, if you need to come back in sooner than later, let's not wait. Like we have an appointment Thursday, but I was like, yeah, let's, let's off more  if we need to. And it was really, it's been really interesting because I've had now a few clients that have been like, well, let's, I'm going to pivot and just do this bravado.

I want to pivot and just go do infusions. And it's interesting because I, everyone's,  having a different medium for how they, this is just ketamine, just one layer of it, right? Yeah. But all of those that have started with me and then wanted to kind of just try it other ways are like, I need the somatics. 

I need the semantics. Well they need you. They help me feel safe. Well, and I will say this, sure, I'm not the only one that can do semantics, and more people need to do semantic work, more people need to have semantic tools, so that people, and I will keep saying, because Bessel is such a giant, you know, if you don't listen to me, listen to him.

He said, You don't, you don't move trauma energy by talking about it. It's there is a place to tell your story and to feel heard, validated, seen, and understood. Yeah. If you really want to move trauma energy off the body, you have got to get the body moving, tremoring, vibrating, shaking. And that's why vibro acoustics are so powerful and binaural beats.

Yeah, I can't believe how many times I can't believe how many times I'm like, did you at least listen to binaural beats? No. I was like,  okay. Yeah. Why? Those are easy to put on. Just play them on your phone. Yeah.





It hearkens back to,   primitive medicine too. Yeah. And you know, what we still see in the Amazon today with  the, , the shamans and ayahuasca ceremonies and, you know, the, the sacred sounds that they're able to channel.

 You ask anybody who's done an ayahuasca ceremony,  they're not comfortable. This is not experimental medicine. They're going into these experiences because they have deep, deep things that nothing else has been able to help them with.  And when they work with these medicine men and women,  the sounds that they are creating with their mouths are  as important to the process. 

As the medicine itself and, and the, the chanting and,  the eros. Yeah. It's the frequency is helping to guide the medicine. It's helping to guide the experience. And I've listened to some of these things.  Just in a meditative space myself,  and I'm like,  oh my gosh, this is so soothing to me Yeah, I can see I see stories play out in my mind that  talk about Scenes that I would never imagine in my whole entire life, but but they're they're healing Yeah, and I don't I can't even imagine where that comes from  But,  it's necessary.

It's one that's woven into the music and anyone that's ever done,  you could say any kind of psychedelic assisted therapy or just psychedelics. But ayahuasca my own experiences when you are under that medicine and you hear the the Eros being sung yeah, there's a net a Frequency net right? It's like in the frequencies, but it's a net of protection Yeah, the songs create the frequencies create protection while you're journeying and that's why set and setting an atmosphere is so important Yeah is You don't know where people are going to traverse.

You don't know what they're going to pull from the deep. If I'm talking to someone and doing brain spotting, I have a sense of what we're going to work on, and I can really monitor window of tolerance, and I can pull you out of a brain spotting session like that, because I, we're not under medicine that it's like, we're on this train no matter what.

Yeah. And so there's, when Bessel says it needs to be sacred, it does because, and I could see it as I held space for this client, but it's not. That reclaiming safety and letting these little ones inside of them grieve and be sad and feel the weight of loneliness and,  and neglect. And just like, I needed more from my caregivers.

And, and the deep, deep sadness, but then the safety because at one point I could see them go, I'm hemorrhaging here. And I'm like, I'm, I'm about to lose it. And I was like, Bring it back in. And I got his heart center and his back of the spine, I had the back of his neck and I said, I got you. You're safe to do this here.

Yeah. You're safe and you're supported and, and, and we can reclaim safety. And so he, yeah, he just let himself unwind. And he knew by the end that we would reclaim safety and he knew that we would do it again if we needed to. And so I just, you know, the, the, the,  it's not stopping, you know, ketamine has been around for over five years and now we're just talking about adding possible sound bowls or binaural beats or, hey, maybe we should, you know, better consider doing ketamine.

You go,  taking this long, there's a lot of people that have been re injured. Yeah. Yeah.  And, um,  I remember, I actually remember when ketamine first came out and I was like, I had a gal come see me. She's like, I was told I should come get some therapy after this. I was like, Oh, okay. Well, what was your experience?

Like this is before I knew much about it.  More of a dissociative than a psychedelic. Right. And she, these really intense visuals and experiences connected to this abusive relationship that she was in. And it was really abusive.  And I thought to myself after the first session, I was like,  What if she hadn't come and seen me afterward?

She would have been traversing all of this unpacking and unwinding by herself because the medical people weren't asking her that stuff.  They weren't like, hey, how'd that go? And they didn't even come up. It was uncomfortable. It was like,  you know, you might feel like you're gonna throw up. So drink a lot of water and rest. 

Yeah, and the Skelepsons came out to dance with you today. We don't really want to talk about that with you. So maybe you should go talk to someone else. And the fact that somebody recommended they come talk to me afterward was I think Somebody that was ahead of their time and what kind of initial world of ketamine anyways, right?

This was a medical practitioner was like you this should be done with therapy Yeah, and I wish that that had rippled and reverberated much sooner and that somatics  We're, we're included  in, in the simplest form, play binaural beats for people and don't just have them watch fish in the ocean, you know, give them nebulas and, and visual cortex safety.

You know, look at the binaural beats and some of the ones that you see on YouTube, they're full of these beautiful soothing, you can't help but look at them and go,  I feel so nice. I cannot wait for you to experience quantum bliss.  Oh, is that that thing you tried? Yeah. What was it like? Cause it like, looked like the flashing lights and they were on.

So wild. Like all, like the things that you just described where you see like the visuals and that like you can watch some of this stuff on your screensaver, right? Yeah. Do they still exist? Yeah. They do.  Um.  This is an experience where you have your eyes closed. You're laying on a sound table, tables vibrating.

You're listening to the binaural beat. So you're getting, yep. You have headphones and you have your, you close your eyes.  But you have this light above your head and it's, it's flashing. It's almost like, I don't know, maybe people who get seizures shouldn't necessarily do this. Yeah. But,  uh, for those of us who don't,  um,  it creates the same visual patterns that you would see in a psychedelic experience.

Interesting. Did you go into theta? Or did you stay that long enough to do it? I don't know, but I, what I do know is I could see, I could see the ceiling. My eyes were closed.  Yeah. And I could see the ceiling in the room. Interesting. It took me out of body somehow.  And I know that that's possible. How long were you on it?

Yeah. Oh, for sure. a four minute trip. Listen, I don't care who's listening. Yeah. I'm going to tell you this. Whoever's listening, you can have out of body experiences. You can have near death experiences. But out of body experiences happen all the time. For sure it can happen. They used to happen a lot when I was a kid.

Yeah. Okay. And, uh, and I would float and I loved it. I would just be like. Wow. Wow. Ooh. I am definitely not. I'm, I'm above my bed right now. It was always when I was falling asleep. Did four minutes feel like an hour? Did four minutes feel like four minutes? Four minutes felt like four minutes. Okay. And I was at a party and they were serving alcohol at the party, but I wasn't drinking.

Yeah. We were like, it was a, Hey, try this real quick. Yeah.  So what would a whole session be like? A whole session's like an hour, hour and a half. We have to go do this. Okay, we are these women were phenomenal too. These women were like they're probably living in the quantum light right now Talking to the aliens that we want to mention.

Yes, you guys let us let us in they were like, yeah This is life changing. This is like you you will level you will level  that's cool If you if you want you can go through all kinds of different programs.  I'm like, wow, this is this is pretty cool like I want to  We I would love to go to do this with you.

Yeah, let's do it next week. Okay I'll reach out to them. I'll schedule an hour or an hour. I looked at their website And it said like they had hour, hour and a half sessions and I was like, let's do the whole hour and a half. Yeah, let's go for the deep dive. We're awesome. We're like, eeeeee. I know, mom! Is it you?

Yeah, again.  Cool.  Yeah.  I'm not going to be able to separate reality from the ethers anymore.  Good work. Yeah. It was on that gentleman. I got to say something. It was cool. 

Congratulations to you for the good work you did and congratulations to him for.  Being brave enough to let his body do that thing. Yes, because a lot of  what we teach men  is Don't don't yeah, and how that shows up 

I feel like there is this  in a lot of ways  they will take the emotion of anger  and put it in the forefront  as  as a means of keeping the sadness down and Yeah.  And the anger gets bigger and bigger and bigger, and they find different ways to  utilize the anger. And, um,  and I do see, it doesn't matter where you come from,  um, I see a lot of people use that pattern.

Yeah. That if I can just stay strong, if I can just stay hard,  then I can keep this down. I can keep it tucked away in a place where nobody can see it because.  It's so painful.  Yeah. And the bigger I build my wall, and my hardness, and my anger,  the more protected it is.  And, uh, 

I'm glad that at least one man got to crumble,  and actually feel his  Established, by the way, by a good therapeutic connection that was built over time so that,  so that they knew when they came in that safety could happen. How long have you worked with this? Probably almost like eight months. Good. Yeah.

Kudos to him. Yeah. I think he's super brave. Yeah, so brave. And the, the beautiful thing is,  And this is part of the conversation I'm going to kind of come full circle on this idea of, you know, cognitive decline as we get older.  Do you, real quick, I want to ask this as you weave this in, are you saying that as caught like that, like cognitive, cause this makes sense to me, right?

But cognitive decline maybe opens up space in the brain to unpack trauma that was being held. And so that's where you get some of the, like, ah, yeah, the anger,  for sure. You see a lot of people when they get older and they. Start to lose their  their  cognitive ability  Whether it's dementia or forgetfulness or they just can't deal with it anymore You know, you get you have older people say all the time.

I'm getting too old for this shit Yeah, right  and they just don't deal with it It's the yep, you choose your battles and they're just like I am NOT gonna deal with that Yeah, and as somebody who's like right on the verge of that age  I get it, man. I can definitely see it. I'm like, I am too old for that.

Yeah. I can't contain, I can't keep my  emotions in balance. I can't keep my body feeling like it's okay  in the presence of this situation. Yeah. So that's what that means. I'm getting too old for this shit means.  I can't regulate anymore. That's well said. Okay. Yeah. The container is breached. Yes. And so they just go away from it or they don't deal with it or they, they, you know, yep.

Or go inside. Yeah. So we'll explode implode. Right. Too. Maybe you see the anger. Yeah. So that's the grumpiness that you're seeing. Yep. Um,  And I've seen quite a few of my patients go through this scenario with  their loved ones. And  when cognitive decline sets in, you know, we all hear the stories about, you know, Oh, she was such a lovely little lady.

She didn't have a memory anymore, but she was so sweet and she was so happy. At least she was happy. Yeah. Okay. My grandma, at least she was happy before she died. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Versus. You know, she turned into a mean old bitch. Yeah, and it's like, okay Yeah, nobody wants to be around her. She's so mean and she cuts deep.

She will cut you so deep and it's like The difference between that  is,  you know, maybe somebody led a really good life and they have nothing but happy memories, and that's what they defaulted to, right? Play the piano, you get really good at the piano. Play happiness, you get good at happiness. Play struggle and sadness and mask it with anger.

And that's what comes out at the end. Yep.  Because you lose your ability to regulate. With cognitive decline,  you lose your ability. Yeah. to regulate and to hold it in and to keep it down. If you're angry,  you're angry  and that's going to come out because you have no filter anymore. It's gone. Yeah. So,  um, this, this conversation that I had, um, with my patient, she was talking about her husband and I said, yeah, I, I, I'm so grateful that, you know, he's finally willing to talk about some of the war trauma because  no doubt our men and women that go to war. 

They have seen a lot  and they carry it around with them and they hold it together every single day  and  in the absence of being able to actually shake it off,  they are wandering into very slowly, they're wandering into their elderly years  and we're starting to see a lot of it unwind. And what that creates. 

is potentially unsafe circumstances for the family members that are left behind. And when you have a couple,  and there's war trauma that hasn't been managed,  if the scenario does trend towards dementia  or Alzheimer's,  It can get dangerous. I've seen it get dangerous. I've seen it  volatile volatile physical bruising emotional battering 

Let's go. Let's go. Yeah, like let's go because I have to stay safe. Let's go Yeah, yeah, take me to the take me to the police  In your, whatever,  um, stupor you're in right now, take me to the police because that at least then I will know that I'm safe because I can be in their custody  and I can explain to them that you're sick  and that I've been a prisoner for  months now. 

That's a very specific scenario that played out for one of my patients and she's better now. Yeah. But  that was her reality for months. She was held kind of in captive. Yeah.  Out of paranoia and it  and he was the sweetest man until he wasn't yeah, that's hard And it's so hard. It's insidious. It is this it happens and you're just like hey 

You know, no, I didn't mean it that way  And you've been with this person for how long decades so you're like loyalty Yeah, and the dedication to not only that person in in their home and they're like, my husband, I love him. There's no way I could ever  not be here for him. Doesn't matter what he does and what he says  that the treatment can get abusive.

Yeah. You think about,  um, the, the application of being able to do somatic work  as home hospice or as somebody that's coming in and helping manage any kind of like volatile physical situation, right? Yeah. And it's going. Because, because again, it's the discharge of trauma energy. It's why, it is why the animals shake and tremor.

It's why one of the, one of the talks literally at the conference I went to was tremoring. She's this this presenter was like I think it's funny that I'm teaching this because it's like teaching someone to sneeze Yeah, like we do this inherently as humans, but we've it's it's kind of a lost  We've forgot and you know We can't it's you know people go into shock for a reason when like an accident happens and we and we shake Yeah, sometimes we stop it Like, just stop, just get it together, calm down, and it's like, no, we'd, we'd do better to like, bleh.

Yeah. Like, get it all off. And really helping people, like, I spend a lot of time helping my clients understand that there is nothing  shaking wise and, and movement and unwinding that you can do that's weird in here. Like, you've got, let your body unwind. Um, and it's interesting because I'll have clients even sometimes that are struggling to do it.

Like, this feels weird. I feel this tension in my body. I'm like, just start with your hands. Like, rotate your hands in and out. Open your hands. Close. Like, kind of like you're popping popcorn. Like, you know, like, you know, and, and then, and then all of a sudden they'll start moving their head. And they're like, okay, yeah.

And then it's like their head's moving. And then, and then they start rotating their feet and then all of a sudden this organic unwinding is happening because. The body is an intuitive vessel.  It wants to regain equilibrium. It wants to regain homeostasis and it's an intuitive vessel so it will if you let it. 

That's the beautiful thing about healing is that it is it is a system designed to heal itself. Yeah. If you give it. The conditions to do so, you got to come to booty yoga, booty, booty, booty, booty, booty, booty.  Okay. Dolly. I was like, we're working on our booties. Well, yeah, you do. You shake your booty. You go into downward dog literally like shake and, but there's so much more and I think I just, I can't wait for you to. 

I do want to meet Dahlia. She sounds way cool. You're going to just, she's going to blow your mind. She's a part of our intensives, right? She's coming to our retreats. She is. You just haven't met her yet. Yeah, I just, I know.  So I think we're either going to do like first Friday or final Friday. Like, I don't know how we're going to define it, but I am going to do like a recurring class with her.

Nice. Where she does the yoga.  Like she's going to make a class for you? Nope. Oh. It's just her Friday booty class. Gotta go. And I'm going to do, uh, acupuncture and gong. Nice. Yeah. The last time you did that, people were like, Hey, you got like five new clients. I know. Yeah. So it's good. It's, I think, a part of how I'm trying to build an awareness for Wongu. 

Nice and a way to spill the future the brandy school of acupuncture. Yeah It's so funny. Anthony calls it the bitch institute  Of course brandy institute of traditional chinese healing. Yeah  We'll take that part out. Yeah  That's really funny. Yeah, he's so cynical. He's so he's such my dad. Yeah  It's funny.

I talked to him today, by the way, what did he say? Oh nice. Yeah You  Yeah, we had a really Did you tell them about seeing your mom? I did. Or not seeing her, but having the psychic medium tell you that mom came in? Yeah, the reason I think I was so chill, by the way,  is, uh, she said, who is married to you? 

That's what I heard. Who is married to you? And she said, who is married to you? And Holly's funny, because Holly was like, I felt it come in, go all the way to your toes, and then on its way back out,  You said, Oh, mama, Mary,  I bet it was so surreal for Holly to be in there too. Just all the energy. Oh my God.

She's so magical.  But, um,  I look back and you're like, Oh yeah, mom. Oh mom. And I'd be like,  I almost did start crying.  Um, but  it was, she was a different, she was a, I don't know how else to explain the  feeling I was left with, and it took me like a day and a half to really process it because I was so tired.

Yeah.  And I came home, I went right to bed,  Mr. Moe, little Mr. Moe, I didn't know him, I still don't know if I'm gonna lose him or not, so.  Yeah, all the time. Um, the woman that she was, somehow I was left with this impression, the woman that she was in that space.  Is so much more evolved than the woman that was my mother and I am I am  several days removed from the Janine that was  Wishing that my mom could have been more in those last years of her life.

Yeah, and  whatever  whatever Became infused in my physical body in that moment  was an acknowledgement Of  what we become when we  transcend. Yeah. Yeah. And it's different. And I don't know how. I think we have a lot of potential to evolve. But I understand it now. Yeah. I felt my mama in that moment, and she was grander.

So different. Yeah. That it  elevated me. That's cool. It was like, oh, of course. Yeah. Duh.  Why am I holding on to such trivial little things? Yeah. There you are, Mom. Of course you're here. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, of course she is. She's with me all the time.  And I don't even understand.  Power why it just settled in but it just did it was just like you were so level I was like Oh I had to like a couple times be like I can't even watch these people because I was like I could feel their emotion  Just like we do, you know And I was like getting all teary eyed because I was even more open I mean had my own experience earlier that day and so I was like I just need to listen because if I look at these people I'm be like Tune right into their emotion and I was like, oh,  she's already wrecked.

I'm pretty good. I'm saying I was like, I just gotta keep it together  A couple times he was like, I feel like I had to like ground goes to work But a couple I was like, well, thank you for grounding because there's times I was like, well, I'm just gonna cry right now Yeah,  it was um,  it was a very healing experience  So much so that it was like, I mean, she was like her, her not brother, her son was like, Hey, we're done.

Or like, Hey, here's your tap. And I, I love that, that she was like, I say what I say until I'm not gonna say it anymore. So that was even extra and it was like some such She did, she came right over. Yeah. At the, and she was like, laser on and set it. Yeah. And then she said all that stuff for Kathy. And I was like, and I looked at her, I was like, you gotta write a book.

I was like, you gotta have a voice. You get to say the things. I thought she said that to you. She said it to her first. She's like, you got a book? Yeah. You're gonna write a book. And I was like, how cool is it that you, I have always known that I'll write a book someday. Yeah. I was told ten years ago, like, where's your book?

I see it out there. I was like, what do you mean? What is my book? Let's take a lot of work. I was like, I do not have time. But I've known  Yeah, AI now. Yeah for a while. I I've known like I'd like to write something. Yeah, and eventually become a PhD Let's see. No, I've got a four year old. Maybe when he's 10  But it's it's it's there.

Yeah, so but I don't get one of those  What what do they call them? Ghostwriters? No, no, no the  when you get an honorary  You get an honorary Ph. D. or an honorary doctorate from a university because of your contribution to a profession. I'll be like, thank you. You'll have to write a dissertation.  I didn't even have to apply for the program.

I don't even mind writing, but it's laborious. Well, let's close it up. Okay. As always, this is Medicine That Heals. Yeah, Medicine That Works. 

Yeah,  this is a good one. Connecting to humanity, somatic tools, you know, because again, somatic is get into the body, the mind, the spirit, connect all of them and let the body untangle, unwind. You're going to see it. There's a, there was a way I, when I went to California and then to that conference, there's a wave. 

And I've said this now for a while, but you're either behind it, you're on top of it, or you're ahead of it. And,  I don't care if you're in the medical field, if you're life coaching, if you're a mental health therapist, have a somatic tool, because, you know, there are people that were like, they could just see the efficacy in it.

And they were, You know, decades deep in their old, these older modalities, psychoanalytic therapy. And they're going, I can see that I need somatic tools. How do I get them? And then once I get them, how do I use them? Right.  I was like, I'll show you how.  And these guys were up there, every practitioner that went up there, every therapist and doctorate person that went up there in Gabor and the giants included Peter Levine and Bessel.

They all had great things to say, but all these people in between had great tools. There was a guy that had this little tiny yoga ball. And he was like, now connect to the ball. And it was Dr. Lyons who, who runs the,  he runs the embody lab  and the conference, but his somatic tools were cool. It was like, and now as you feel yourself, it was like spatial referencing, right?

It was like, as you put your head, connect to the ball, really connect. And he was like this connection to the body and the creating a body awareness. By the way, most people don't even pay attention to it. I can't tell you how many times I worked on a gal today. It was a teenager.  And I was like, man, you've got a huge knot in your shoulder.

She's like, I never think that I have knots. And then I come in here and I realized just how tense I am. I hear that a thousand times. Oh, I know, man. I realize that. We don't even know how tight we are until we go, Oh,  body awareness. Dude, I did a float over at True North. Good. That's awesome. And I, well, I mean, I did quite a few of them a couple of years back and I, and every time I went in, I was just like,  Oh my gosh, that sensory deprivation, yeah.

Yeah. That.  Weightlessness. Mm hmm. It just allowed my shoulders to do this  and I was like,  I have so much pain in my neck 

Keep tuning in we got gems. We got gems to share We're Giants in the making Janine. I know  It's fun watching Giants and I'm like, oh  We're next. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Stay tuned, my loves. We'll be back.