The Role of Somatic Therapy in Psychedelic and Ketamine-Assisted Healing (Part 2)

Today's episode shines a light on the role of sound and frequency in Ayahuasca ceremonies, Ketamine, and somatic therapy for healing trauma. The innovative use of sound tables and binaural beats for emotional release is at the forefront of the discussion, offering profound insights into groundbreaking healing practices for patients and practitioners alike.

These methods and modalities are emerging as pivotal in healing emotions through physical bodywork. Achieving a balance between safety and effectiveness in treatment is paramount, and somatic tools are proving instrumental in this regard.

When it comes to Ayahuasca ceremonies, participants clearly seek deep healing. The sounds created by the medicine men and women play a crucial role in guiding the experience. The chanting and frequencies woven into the ceremony provide a protective net during the journey, fostering crucial safety and comfort. The impact of sound and frequency is so profound that it helps evoke healing experiences even outside the ceremonies.

The innovative use of Ketamine alongside sound bowls and binaural beats is a game-changer. Strikingly, Ketamine therapy, when not accompanied by therapy, can lead individuals to traverse deep, uncomfortable experiences without a guide to ensure safety. The integration of somatic tools in these sessions could make a significant difference in improving the therapeutic outcomes.

An intriguing form of therapy involves experiencing binaural beats and light frequencies in a closed-eye, sound-vibrating table setting. This immersive approach can elicit remarkable visual patterns and out-of-body sensations, creating a powerful space for emotional and energetic release.

We also touch on the critical aspect of the aging brain and its implications on trauma processing. As cognitive abilities decline, individuals may find it increasingly challenging to regulate their emotions, resulting in amplified anger or emotional outbursts. This highlights the importance of managing trauma early to prevent potential risks associated with cognitive decline.

The need for somatic tools in therapeutic settings becomes evident as they provide a means for the body, mind, and spirit to connect, helping individuals unravel and release tension and trauma. The importance of integrating somatic practices across various fields, including psychology and healthcare, is becoming increasingly recognized, underlining their potential to revolutionize traditional therapeutic modalities.

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 Ayahuasca, Ketamine, sound therapy, trauma healing insights.
• 5:58 Recommendation for ketamine therapy with binaural beats.
• 9:57 Suppressing sadness through outward displays of anger.
• 18:43 Helping clients understand movement and unwinding techniques.
• 26:18 Somatic tools.

Transcript

0:00

Welcome back. Today we continue our discussion surrounding ayahuasca ceremonies, ketamine, and the powerful role of sound and frequency in these journeys. We discuss the crucial integration of somatic therapy with psychedelics. the significance of somatic tools in working with and healing trauma, and the innovative use of sound tables and binaural beats for emotional release and nervous system regulation. And this episode is packed with insights on groundbreaking healing practices for patients and practitioners alike. These are some of the methods and modalities that are really beginning to take center stage in healing the emotions through working with the physical body. When it comes to treating, it's all about finding the balance between safety and effectiveness. Well, somatic tools are really helping us as practitioners achieve great success with our patients. Thanks for tuning in and we hope you enjoy the conversation. 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 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, 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, , better consider doing ketamine. You go, taking this long, there's a lot of people that have been re injured. Yeah. Yeah. And, 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, , give them nebulas and, and visual cortex safety. 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. 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, for those of us who don't, 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, 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 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, and I do see, it doesn't matter where you come from, 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, 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, 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, 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. 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, 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. 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, 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, I look back and you're like, Oh yeah, mom. Oh mom. And I'd be like, I almost did start crying. 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. 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 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, 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, there are people that were like, they could just see the efficacy in it. And they were, 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.