In this episode of Ayahuasca Podcast host Sam Believ has a conversation with Mark Bodner.
Mark was a head of facilitation at LaWayra and has accumulated a wealth of knowledge while working here. Mark is Brown University graduate and a Zen Practicionaire.
We touch upon subjects of facilitating Ayahuasca retreats, zen Buddhism and Ayahuasca, how it feels being punched in the ceremony, doing hundred ceremonies in one year, bringing your parents to the Ayahuasca retreat and more.
If you would like to attend one of our Ayahuasca retreats go to
Transcript
Mark Bodner: You’re listening to ayahuasca podcast.com though, one of the best ways to work with Ayahuasca, in my opinion, is to understand that Ayahuasca is an incredibly powerful tool for healing. It’s the reason why people come here, right? If it wasn’t, no one would travel across the world to come take this medicine.
It tastes brutal. It makes you puke. All of that stuff people have put up with for thousands of years because it’s such a powerful medicine. And so being able to just trust that is going to work, that you have entered into, that you have the privilege to enter into this incredibly ancient healing tradition that has been carried forward by immense labor for generation after generation, and that just by working with the medicine there’s very little really you have to do.
It’s actually pretty convenient. A lot of people, myself, highly included. Come in with this sort of Western mentality of productivity of perfectionism, and we think there’s something we need to do with ayahuasca that we need to just have it all now. Boom boom. And we’re gonna make progress.
Sam Believ: This episode is sponsored by Laira Ayahuasca Retreat. At Laira, we combine affordability, accessibility, and authenticity, Laira, connect, heal, grow. Guys, I’m looking forward to hosting you. Hi guys, and welcome to Ayahuasca podcasts. As always with you, the host and believe to Damn joined by Mark Bolder. Mark is a Brown University graduate.
He is a slack lion aficionado. You might have seen him on some of our Instagram videos performing his stunts. Mark. Balances really greatly between monastics and work and plant medicine work. I think he’s been a great facilitator here. So before he leaves, we have decided to sit down and have this conversation to collect some of his observations and learnings.
Because here at working at Ayahuasca Retreat is second time machine when it comes to collecting wisdom and knowledge. So Mark was the chief facilitator at LA Wire for one year. We talk about how it feels being punched in a ceremony. Talk about ayahuasca and Zen Buddhism. We talk about facilitation shamanism bringing your parents to drink ayahuasca.
We talk about what happens when you do hundred ceremonies in one year. We talk about projection, regression, and transference and so much more. You’ll enjoy this episode. Mark, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me, Sam, Chris to be here. Mark tells. How did you end up at Lare at the first place and how did you, how did the path happen?
How did you end up becoming a, not just a facilitator, but chief facilitator?
Mark Bodner: Good question. This is a challenging interview ’cause I feel like my time at La Wire has been a little bit like that light tunnel when you go I forget what it’s called in Star Wars when it’s like they go light speed. And I feel as if I’ve just come outta that.
I’m like, whoa. I like what happened there. So I’m trying to organize everything and put it into a story. There’s a great zen story. I look my Zen stories. A an ancient master asked one of his students something along the lines of, what can you say about life before you were born? Something like that.
And kind of in the classic ancient way he paused and I think he thought about it for two or three years before he gave his answer. And his answer was a painting of a rice cake. Can’t satisfy. That kind of comes to mind for thinking about hell I got here. Like I can walk through all the life events that brought me here, but ultimately as we exist in the ayahuasca space a little bit more, it feels as if there’s some sort of puppet string.
And giving an answer doesn’t capture that, but for my kind of human conscious, free will perspective I like to joke with people when they ask, oh, like, why did you first end up at a monastery? I was like, oh, just a great life with no suffering and thought I might as well add a deep spiritual path to it.
The joke being that like most people, I came to zen to ayahuasca through a pretty robust period of suffering in my life to anyone who’s been here and heard my story, it’s, they’ve heard it before. But I’ve had a lifelong relationship with depression. And I think I, I remember first thinking about suicide in like seventh grade.
That just went in waves throughout my life, but reached a real pit towards the end of my time in college when I was at this Ivy League University, getting straight A’s, doing everything right by social standards. And yet was just in this deep pit of self-loathing, of hopelessness, of suicidal ideation and just isolation.
And it, it took a while to grow and mature. But that the chasm between how I was feeling and how the world was telling me I was doing woke me up to there’s more going on here. And that I’m a very curious person, that question mark of what is going on with both living a good life, right?
If I’m doing everything right according to social standards and I’m feeling so, so miserable, there’s some disconnect here. So from the external perspective, how do I go about living a good life? And then from the internal perspective, I could, once I got some space from that depression, I could see that my mind was creating the reality I was living in.
And you can take that on a sort of mystical and spiritual level, but just from a sort of psychological perspective, I was living in the world, but it was totally colored by my pain and suffering and kind of navel gazing with this slide Ting of negativity. That’s right.
Sam Believ: First mark’s Mark’s story many times.
So I know it by now.
Mark Bodner: This that was I would say what I would describe my time in high school as I think I say like an emotional gray with a ting of negativity this time was just all negativity. This like a tsunami of negativity. But yeah so the question was, what the fuck is going on with consciousness in the mind?
If it can make the world a terrible place in which I wanna kill myself, and if it can be this joyous place that I’ve experienced in other times. And so that kind of set me on this path of looking deeper into consciousness and into. How do I live a good, intentional, connected life? Part of that, as you mentioned, as I mentioned, brought me to Zen practice, which has been a huge cornerstone of my kind of exploration of these questions.
And then I started exploring plant medicine more robustly too. Anyone who works with plant medicines knows that it’s one of its cornerstones is just what is going on with consciousness? What is this thing that we’re all experiencing as the water we swim in? So that, that was kinda the starting point.
And then just a whole I think when people say Ayahuasca called them, for me that call was just a path of teeny little things that eventually culminated in arriving here. I was traveling with my girlfriend. We I was reading a book at the time and it was the first book I had ever read that mentioned Ayahuasca and Ayahuasca retreats.
A month later we hit a crashing point and we sat down. Sunburns lonely. Annoyed. Frustrated. And I was like we have two weeks before our next flight. What’s the one thing that we wanna be doing right now with our free time and the money that we’ve saved up? Ayahuasca was my answer because of that book.
And then Lara was the one place that had availability and the time that we had. We booked our flights, we arrived here, and then three ceremonies I noticed I was certain that I was gonna come back. And so there’s the middle picture, which is my kind of personal history. There’s the localized picture of just the serendipity of teeny little things pulling me towards this place.
And I think there’s a really zoomed out picture of how the hell should I know.
Sam Believ: So one, your Ayahuasca experience here, maybe you want to come back and volunteer ’cause you began as a volunteer, just yeah.
Mark Bodner: Again, I think it, it happened on multiple levels for me first. I just had an incredibly profound personal experience with the medicine.
I was like a month or two outta the monastery and so I had felt as if I just had this massive spiritual experience. I’d done a good bit of, a good bit of psychedelics. I had free based DMT mushrooms, acid, you, whatever you want. And so I came in with this hubris or ego of yeah yeah, like ayahuasca is supposed to be powerful, but, I’ve done a lot of stuff.
I I’m in the now and really clearly I was here for a week for ceremonies after my third night ceremony. I was like I had to leave the ceremony space ’cause I was really buzzing. It was back down when we were down down there. I was on this beautiful hill next to my favorite bench overlooking the valley.
It was just like, what the hell did I just drink? What is that? My mind was blown. It’s the classic ayahuasca ceremony experience. And then my next ceremony, I went five times as deep. It was crazy. So there’s a personal experience of just Ayahuasca is a pretty strong magnet, but.
More than that. Honestly, I think was the communal experience and just seeing all of these people from all over the world coming to this one place to yes, to, work on themselves and to heal and to try and live a better life and to try and answer these questions that I was asking but more so to do it in community and to step vulnerably into the challenge of being vulnerable and of going through this path.
And I was just super inspired. I think I know you talk about this a lot we both do. Most people I think in the modern western world are highly isolated. And so the community aspect was a huge element of what drew me to LA Wire. And then the, I would say the biggest part was stepping back and having just come from the monastery, I was had seen the backend of a lot of the work that happened.
And so I had the strongest connection with the team that was working here. You, the old head of facilitation, Jared. Seeing the amount of love and hard work that went into facilitating this. It didn’t just happen meaninglessly. I was really inspired by the, that act of service and by the love and effort and care and hard work that went into facilitating the experience that I had myself.
And then there was the special low wire stuff of it felt it wasn’t like $7,000 to be here. It felt as if there was a sort of heart and soul to this place. And just felt, it felt exciting and it felt like the most meaningful way I could spend the next few months of my life.
Sam Believ: And obviously after that you decided to become you showed promise.
So you got a promotion. So after doing your volunteering you obviously showed promise. You’re a pretty smart guy, I must admit. I would admit it on camera. And you decided to come stay in stay in the. Climb your ranks to the chief facilitator position. Explain to people who haven’t been to the Wire while you were here.
What is that? What does that role mean?
Mark Bodner: If you do come to the Wire, you can just think of anytime anyone’s talking to you. Just imagine that being me. Sam has a great line I don’t know if you’ve said in the podcast before, but running an Ayahuasca retreat is like running what is it?
A hospital, a restaurant, and a hotel all at the same time, A hotel restaurant, and a senate psych ward. Yes. I haven’t thought it as good of a summary for me. Essentially what my job was was everything involving the patients, all of the patients experience here from just the kind of hospitality element of living and being comfortable and feeling taken care of, to, if you are deep in a journey, you have no idea where you are.
You have no idea who you are, you have no idea what time is you’re afraid, you’re paranoid guiding that person. So that’s kinda the spectrum in between would be giving a lot of speeches. I’m pretty long-winded as you can hear from the podcast now. I’d give I think five hours speeches to try and orient people to both ayahuasca the plant medicine and also the way that we do it here.
Both at LA Wire and within the Inga tradition, which is a indigenous tradition we work within. I would be the one that was facilitating word circles and so word circles are a central element in our opinion of working with ayahuasca and of building that community container. So both giving people feedback because Ayahuasca is such a challenging, confusing thing.
As someone who’s seen a lot of people moving through it, I would be giving the feedback and trying to help contextualize it, do some integration work down to Rae. I was translating for Fernando. And so I, I learned a huge amount from just hearing what he had to say to the patients organizing notes to pass on to him about safety for taking Iowa.
Pretty much just everything involved with serving Ayahuasca to people safely and in a way that will help ’em grow. And just for me, the sort of umbrella that, that spans the spectrum from hospitality, making sure someone has a towel when they need it to guiding someone through, probably the most intense spiritual experience I’ve had in their entire life was building this container.
Container is a super common word that we use to describe what happens at La Wire, but when people come here, they’re entering into a communal container that is the set and will determine, or is the setting and will determine the set for their expansive ayahuasca. And so just giving all of the love and care I could give to people to make them feel safe and ready to step into that vulnerability.
Sam Believ: You cannot do it. Managing ceremony team. Yep. And volunteers. Yep. And also creating the operating procedures and just like paperwork for them. Yep. For the team to use. So as you can see, it’s a challenging job. I’ve done it myself. And I as you’re leaving now, I’m picking up a lot of slack and many other team members are gonna take other parts, so hopefully and eventually will get another capable individual like yourself.
Maybe you’re listening, you never know, but you have to volunteer first. It is a difficult job, but obviously what is what are the benefits? What have you learned by doing this work? How do you. Compare yourself on physical, spiritual, psychological level as opposed to when you came now like in this year, how would, has there been a, has there been a learning curve?
Mark Bodner: Has there been an improvement? This is when the sort of light tunnel feeling starts coming on of looking back at the year and trying to move through it. I guess another way of saying is it’s a little bit like as Sam said the challenge of this job is it feels like being in, in a whitewater river.
You’re just like being bounced around trying to keep your head above water and Yeah. And yeah, you’re like learning to, to swim, but then you get outta the rivet and you’re like, whoa. Like, how could I describe that? The first time I think we said this joke to ourself was after my first month here volunteering my fir, the first ever group that I volunteered as a facilitator with was.
I think the second most or top three most difficult groups
Sam Believ: ever from second most challenging group ever. Still to this day. Yeah. Nothing came close. Not,
Mark Bodner: yeah, just and that was my first ever week. And we’ve had what, like over 50 groups? 12 times 3 36. For me personally, but then for in the wire’s, broad history, probably this times three.
Yeah. So close to hunger, really saying something. And it was the first group that I ever worked with. We said what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger or it cripples you. What doesn’t kill you makes you a cripple.
Sam Believ: Yeah.
Mark Bodner: Yeah. So far I haven’t been crippled. And so I think that goes to show everything I’ve experienced here has made me stronger.
It’s or I haven’t been crippled as, as far as I can tell the Abbott the monastery is at, had a few catchphrases that you would say all the time and. You would hear it and I would think that I understood it. And then I’m noticing that just every single month I realized that I didn’t understand it and now understand it a little bit more.
And one of his catchphrases was zen practices being in the center of your rolling ball. And so life and circumstances are always gonna be rolling you around, but can you stay in the center of it? And I think a word that comes to mind when I think of that is unflappable. And I feel as if I’ve maybe just one step, but I’ve taken a step towards being a little bit less flappable by the conditions of life and the winds of change towards being more in the center of my rolling ball.
And it’s very challenging because I’ve, one of the things I’ve seen from my work here and from Ayahuasca, and I think the way that life works is you never finish. If you’re looking for a challenge, life is the best place to start. Like it just is constantly evolving with some new thing. On that path towards just being centered, being a little bit less emotionally volatile or reactive.
I think that’s the main change I can see in myself. And also I think in combination with that is the sort of strength and capacity I have to move through this path. That comes with going through that process of entering the rolling ball. Importantly though, I think like when I heard that at the monastery, I was just like, it, part of what I didn’t understand is it felt like something that just comes about or you think about it hard enough and then you’re in this entry rolling ball, throwing out a bunch of zen stuff here.
But another visual that I really like, it’s part of a zen coan. It says the patch, robed monk, having passed through the forest of thorns is like a snowflake in an oven. The imagery. There is this monk with a very old, dirty robe with a bunch of cat patches all over it. And he is just passed through this force of thorns which have been ripping at him and cutting his skin and tearing at his cloak.
And once he has passed through that force of stuff of thorns, he’s like a snowflake and oven. He’s just constantly resetting, being born and new evaporating into nothing. And I think a big part of the work here has been, it’s been a bit of a force of thorns, in ways of, there have been a lot of challenges, there’s been a lot of difficulties, but that is what is actually required, in my opinion, to move forward on the spiritual path.
Pain is one of the best teachers,
Sam Believ: As mark likes quoting Zen cos I do quote like sayings that I picked up Eastern European or when I was working on ships. But there is a saying that white ship, black work. So like a white festival, let’s say cruise ship, the and the black works.
So if you see a white ship and you think wow, this would be great to work on that ship. It’s so beautiful. And but in reality, and I worked on the cruise ship myself once it is a completely true saying that Seafer say, because if if you see a white ship and it’s nicely polished, that means somebody has been polishing it, it means that working there is even more challenging than working on the rusty ship.
Yeah. So what happens here at Lo, I believe is a lot of people as you probably know, are very happy with their experience here. And not only it’s affordable, but the facilities at the very high level. Everything is really well organized and everything flows and it builds a lot of trust. And this perfection, so to speak, comes at the cost.
And the cost is taken by the team. And of course largely so by, by whoever is, I had the facilit facilitation because you need to collect all of that, and you’re the damper that dampens the good and the bad. Yeah. Making it stable. In that process of learning and observing processes of close to a thousand people in your year here, what patterns have you noticed, and most importantly, what would you tell based on that observation, what is the right way to do ayahuasca for a long-term healing?
I think the
Mark Bodner: first pattern that is tied into what is the right way to do ayahuasca for long-term healing is that it is really challenging for people to be patient with their healing process, to understand that pace. Is not something that is just put on us to frustrate us and to make us practice patients, but is actually an essential element of the healing journey.
And with that, it is tied this sort of like the power of ayahuasca in this, how hard it can be to be humble in the face of that, particularly when you haven’t taken it. And so time and time again, people show up understandably so because of the way that ayahuasca has been framed in non-indigenous circles.
But they show up wanting to boom, just be teleported right to where they want to go and finish their healing path and just be better forever. Which is a very human and understandable urge. But it’s just I’ve seen hundreds and hundreds of people show up with that desire and just not have it fulfilled because it’s, I just don’t think it’s how life works.
Unfortunately. You can’t just go to a foreign country, take a ma magic medicine and have be healed from the human condition. So one of the patterns is just. Instant gratification, which it’s intensified by the narrative we have about ayahuasca. It’s intensified by the sort of modern psychology that can get its dopamine hit at a moment’s notice.
But not understanding that this path is, truly it’s, it sounds trite to say, but it is a path and there is no just teleporting to the end. And one of the biggest things I’ve personally learned honestly in the past month is I’ve stepped back from my role and taken a little bit more time to focus on my own healing.
Is you can do, like I’ve drank, I think in the past 16 months, I’ve drank like 130 ayahuasca ceremonies. I’ve seen hundreds and hundreds of people come through here, go through this very intense healing process. I’ve been the person that’s been guiding them and still I can see that I’ve just chipped away.
At my sort of emotional core or made a few steps forward amidst the steps back, I have not by any stretch of the imagination arrived. And as always, my sort of intellectual understanding of this path that I’m on is far beyond my sort of core. So one of the patterns is impatience. It’s really challenging to be patient with ayahuasca.
And so one of the best ways to work with Ayahuasca, in my opinion, is to understand that ayahuasca is an incredibly powerful tool for healing it. Like it’s the reason why people come here, right? If it wasn’t, no one would travel across the world to come take this medicine. It tastes brutal. It makes you puke.
All of that stuff people have put up with for thousands of years because it’s such a powerful medicine. Being able to just trust that is going to work, that you have entered into, that you have the privilege to enter into this incredibly ancient healing tradition that has been carried forward by immense labor for generation after generation.
And that just by working with the medicine there’s very little really you have to do. It’s actually pretty convenient. A lot of people, myself, highly included, come in with this sort of western mentality of productivity of perfectionism, and we think there’s something we need to do with ayahuasca that we need to just have it all now boom.
And we’re gonna make progress. Understanding that ayahuasca is just working in itself and that change needs to happen over time. There’s myriad analogies, but if you try and build a tower in two weeks, then it’s gonna topple over because you haven’t spent time solidifying the foundation.
And so patience and trust in the medicine will carry you super far. That should be paired, in my opinion, with just gratitude for the actual ability to drink Ayahuasca. Some anthropologist says that when the Spaniards came to South America for the first time, they gave him the gold and hid the ayahuasca, which I think something you’ve said, even if you just think of it temporarily, right?
Like depending on your anthropological study, ayahuasca as a medicinal spiritual tradition has been around for 4,000 and 8,000 years, making it one of the most, if not the most ancient spiritual traditions in the entire world of human existence. Pretty much. I would personally say Ayahuasca has only been like widely accessible to people not from indigenous communities for 20 years.
Max like 60, depending on how you wanna define widely. So if you look at this massive timeline in which Ayahuasca has existed in the, just how privileged people like us are to be alive in a time in the world where we’re actually able to take this medicine. Gratitude just for being able to do that I think carries people really far.
And so that’s number one. The pattern of desire of impatience, of hearing that ayahuasca is 10 years of therapy, which it is, but requires other steps to fall into place. And so that’s number one.
Sam Believ: Ever once 10 years of therapy, but they don’t want the work required to receive 10 years of therapy.
It’s imagine going through 10 years of therapy, you’ll, the process will be as intense Yeah. As having 10 years of therapy in one week. So it’s it’s an accelerant, like a lot of, there will be a lot of work that will need to be done somewhere.
Mark Bodner: The, I also like to say that if the tenure of therapy experience with ayahuasca is like the desired outcome we call working with ayahuasca process because a huge amount of, like insignificant or seemingly minor prerequisite steps and fall in place for that.
Ceremony when you get 10 years of therapy. And so like sometimes what you need are like two ceremonies of just puking and pershing and shaking and sweating. Sometimes you need a third ceremony that’s absolutely brutal and super challenging to arrive at that fourth ceremony. And so that to get to that place requires the patience and pace.
That’s number one. The second pattern that I’ve seen is a pretty fundamental cornerstone of maybe the human psychology in general or just a lot of people is just hating pain and discomfort. This is one of the final points that I give in my integration speech is I think we as humans on a very fundamental, if you’re Freudian on the ID level or just the subconscious or the animal part of us hates.
Pain. We hate discomfort, we hate fear, boredom, sadness, all of these things just on a deep level, we don’t want to feel, and we will do a lot of things to avoid it. I personally think this is a root or a significant contributing factor to drug addictions, to addictions of all sort, be it gambling, porn, sex, alcohol, all sorts of things.
I think it’s why we live in a culture where we have dedicated a huge amount of resources to developing technology that allows us to constantly turn ourselves off from feelings of boredom or pain or sadness. Just pick up my phone and scroll. I am as much a part of this as anyone else. So I think that’s kinda the starting point of there is something deep in us that doesn’t want to feel some underlying pain or fear or sadness, and we are really adept at doing that in ways that we don’t notice.
We had one patient here who, he was actually here for two months. He was a challenging, challenging guy. And after being here for two months, and I think he drank like 20 ceremonies, he was saying mark, like I, I agree with so much of what you say and really inspiring thoughts, but it’s I don’t I don’t think you’re right.
Like I actually really seek out feeling pain. Like I, I try to feel my pain and he had been one of the most avoidant patients I had worked with. And so like our mind is so sneaky at making us think that we are doing these things, but on a deep animal level, we’re getting away from it. And I’ve also seen as a pattern combined with that, if we don’t feel our pain, it will destroy us.
I think that is what brings people to a lot of people, or at least the people who are mainly looking for relief from really exhausting physical or mental pain and illness. Is that when we, our pain doesn’t just go away. We can’t run away from it. It needs to be felt, it needs to be processed, it needs to be let go.
And if it’s not processed by the mind, by the emotions, it gets stored into the body until it wreaks havoc on our immune system, on our muscles on all sorts of things. And so those two are wrapped up for me. On the one hand, so much drives us to escape the suffering that exists as being alive. It’s just a part of life.
For myself, as I mentioned I was so struggling to just confront how sad and lonely I was and the facts that I didn’t feel as if I could reach out for help. Just I could not just be with that feeling that I almost killed myself. Like I, I I hated my pain so much that I was like, I’ll just fucking die instead of feeling this.
The only way that I’ve gotten outta that place has been by confronting it, by accepting it, by finding what’s on the other side, which is a huge amount of wonder and beauty and mystery. But I’ve, as we say, you need to go through to get out. So that’s number two is pain. And it’s, I think our aversion to it is what traps us in it.
And one of the beauties of bios is that it helps us actually go towards it. And if it’s being done in a sort of traditional way with a team that’s experienced with a shaman that’s highly trained, then you’re always, we call, we say titration. It’s like a chemistry term for slowly introducing something so that the, as far as I understand the reaction as a whole isn’t overwhelmed by the introduction of a substance.
As long as you’re being titrated with ayahuasca, you’re going to be taken into what you need to see be that the pain that is protecting you from your healing core or that core. Is love and beauty and joy and connection to everything you’ll be brought towards that. But one of the most important things in my opinion about taking ayahuasca in this indigenous space is that it’s, that process is happening, as I said, with the first thing at the right pace.
Because if you’re just like blasted in, then you can start feeling things that you’ve been running away from for your entire life. Feel overwhelmed, freak out, be traumatized, never wanna work with ayahuasca again, and then remove yourself from the ability to take ayahuasca. That’s super, super rare, I think with ayahuasca in general, and particularly here because we do this work in a responsible way, but is a risk.
And so number two recommendation from my number two pattern would be make sure that the place you’re going understands ayahuasca as a medicine that is bringing us to the sort of core of healing, which is understanding our relationship with suffering. Connecting with the love and joy and beauty that oftentimes that suffering is keeping us away from a place that understands that’s what Ayahuasca does.
And so it’s not just some drug to give you some crazy experience blasts you off and, touch God’s finger. That’s part of it. But it needs to be done in a responsible way. And if you go somewhere that doesn’t know what they’re doing, there can be legitimate harm that comes from that. Assess summer two.
The third main pattern that just came to mind when you asked this I think another really fundamental element of the human existence is just wanting to connect with people. Really it’s remarkable from our perspective as staff to see we have three groups coming through here every single month almost.
Without fail. When the group steps off the bus, they’re at like a very low emotional, energetic, vibrational, whatever you want to, whatever word you want to use, state. They’re closed off. They’re like, who’s this person? It’s competitive. It’s very reserved. It’s a group of strangers, of course.
Like that’s just how we are. There are four day groups even they experience it. But mainly the week groups after seven days, simply with the labor that we as a team do to build this container and encourage people to be vulnerable and authentic. And we have a major assist from Ayahuasca as well.
People have created these relationships that are on a true and I do think real level, deeper than a lot of the friendships that they’ve had for years because it is founded in connection, in vulnerability and authenticity and in the desire to be real with someone. And I think seeing that happen time and time again with every single group, like I can’t think of a single group in which some form of deep opening a connection hasn’t happened.
Seeing that over and over again makes me think that, that’s a really fundamental element of being human, is the desire to be in connection both socially with the people around us, but also I think with nature and the world around us. Something Fernando or shaman always says is, we live in a world where we are being encouraged to think of progress as concrete, jungles, big cities.
And that’s good. There is progress in that, but what would the world be without real, fresh virgin jungles? If we didn’t have jungles, forests, trees, we wouldn’t have air. And so I think also another element is just deeper than human connections are desired to be in union and in harmony with the natural world.
And it’s honestly, it’s been really impactful and beautiful for me to see that as a fundamental element of the human existence. And so I guess. To wrap it up on, on this question. Long-winded answer, my third recommendation for doing ayahuasca in a safe, genuine, healing way for long-term.
Long-term healing would be making sure that you are ready to do your part of stepping into that connection. Can you just be confident in yourself and ready to share that with the world, being authentic, being vulnerable, stepping back, and being honest about what is the stuff that you’ve been avoiding, what’s the things that you might need to work on or to let go of, to take that forward?
And doing that in community. This is a communal medicine. I feel really strongly about that. And so doing it in a place that encouraged you to do that communally, rather than take your cup, go lie your mattress, stay in a hammock for the entire day, resting and then come back to ceremony. I think it needs to be done with people around you.
Sam Believ: Thank you, mark. A great answer. I’ll be a long one. Mark is a man of not a few words you’ve had towards the long-winded. You had many words. So to sum it up, imagine a group of unhappy people generally slightly low in vibration, coming over very impatient, wanting a magic pill that transforms them in one day.
We are, and Mark specifically, not for the last month, but generally for a year the focal point of all this frustration where he gets blamed for the reason that they’re not getting what they want on a day, number one, because he keeps saying patience. So obviously it’s your fault and I know that is not your favorite part of this work.
Having, being the focal point of, let’s say if you’re the person that enforces the rules, all the negativity gets projected on you. So talk to us about projection regression. Counter transference and all those fancy terms.
Mark Bodner: Yeah we’ve joked that another job title could just be punching bag. My last answer, I’ll be long-winded, was a helpful transition into this question, so well done.
I think the way I understand that I’m not, I have a good amount of experience with, psychology and therapeutic paradigms, but I’m not formally trained, so I’ll do my best. One of my understandings of how transference works or projection more specifically is we have our internal world of feeling and when we can’t just see it and take responsibility for it as our own, we look for reasons around us to project it onto.
There’s another podcast that I like listening to that was interviewing someone about chronic pain and they’re talking about how on a biological level there is a difference between. Hurt and harm. So hurt is the actual physical sensation of pain. If you’re feeling pain, that is that is hurt harm is if that pain is communicating real damage to your physical system in any way, right?
So is it, is your tendon actually exploding or do you just have kind of pain in your knees? These two things are often interrelated, but sometimes there is difference or distance between them. But importantly they said, when we hurt, we look for harm. And so that’s the cornerstone of how I understand the projection that happens here is people come in and they have stored up a lot of suffering through their life and Ayahuasca wants to get in there and start, needing it like dough to try and get it softer, get some air in it and release it.
But a lot of times people have to feel that and as they feel it, it’s really hard to just. Feel it and not have a reason. This is something I’ve been working really hard on myself is when I’m feeling something, I don’t need to explain why I’m feeling it. I could just feel that thing. And so as that comes up, particularly when you’re in the suggestible state of Ayahuasca, you are looking for reasons to be feeling it.
So one of my favorite stories that, that articulates this is we had a patient who is here and he was entering into his process and he was kinda like thrashing around, moaning a little bit. Not to the point that it was being disruptive, but usually when that starts happening, I’ll go over to that person, jingle my beads, just to let them know that I’m there if they need anyone to support them.
’cause that’s the transition point where you might be reaching a freak out. So I’m standing there, I’m dingling my beads, all of a sudden he is like sits straight up in his bed, rips off his eye match. He’s like a what’s up man? Like, how’s it going? He’s I’m feeling like the most love that I’ve ever felt in my entire life.
And I just wish everyone could feel this. This is the most incredible feeling I was. Awesome. That’s so great. Like another person feeling this beautiful thing that we hope they do when we’re working with Ayahuasca. So I was like, that’s great. Enjoy man. Start getting up to a, he is hold on.
It’s one thing, one thing. And I was like what’s going on? I just, I need to be closer to the music. The music was over there. He was over here and he wanted to be like really close to really feel it. He was like, ah, but I don’t know. I’m scared to ask. I don’t know if that’s okay. I was like, oh, totally man.
Let’s do it. He starts walking over, I’m like, you want your match? He’s yeah. Bring my match. I’m like, cool. Pick up his match. Let’s bring him over there. Sit him down in front of the stage. He’s no. Like I wanna be against the wall. Cool. Move him over to the wall, plop him down there.
He’s settled in. He is feeling happy. I’m like, so great. Another person having a nice Aya was experience go about taking care of the other people. 10 minutes pass and I look back over and he’s just you can almost see steam coming out of his ears. Just red face, big frown, gr mess. I forgot some people aren’t watching this.
Oh, this is new. This is different. And so I go over, I’m like, Hey man. How’s it going? What’s going on? You feel okay? He’s mark, I do not understand why you put me here. I was not being disruptive and I should not be here. I’m not comfortable here, and I want to go back. And he, for five minutes, he was just furious with me.
He literally said like that he felt like he was in timeout. And this is like hyperbole of, I think what happens on a lot more subtle levels of projection. So like this dude had literally specifically asked and chosen to be in that place. But then his process shifted and he started feeling bad. And so his mind found a way to explain the bad feeling he was having.
This patient in particular had shared in Word Circle about how his father had left him for six years, and then he came back to the family. Was like an authoritarian, really a disciplinarian, very mean to him. And I think that is where the medicine was bringing him. So he felt this beautiful thing.
He connected with this, what I call a soft inner core. We protect with all of our defense mechanisms. He’d been brought to that. But I think in feeling that love, he was confronted with the vulnerability of feeling that, and the capacity for pain. And so his defense mechanisms came back in and he started feeling pain, and then he was looking for a reason for that.
I, as the head of facilitation, the guy that does all the talking, the figurehead, the one that enforced the rules, I was the recipient of that pain. He projected it onto me. He projected his father figure the authoritarian onto me. So that’s just, I’ve come to the point where I just understand that is the role I play.
It’s not me. I think I, I actually do a very good job of this work, but that is part of the work. And that if I’m constantly fighting and trying to convince the person that I’m not them or that I’m not their projection it’s just very exhausting for me. And so for the facilitator role, just accepting that.
That is part of the job and part of this healing process is the natural sort of flashing that happens as people go through the healing. Has been the very protracted journey I’ve been going on to understand projection, at least.
Sam Believ: A great example of projection happened in very last retreat. Not gonna name many names, but a lady was going through a process where she felt pent up anger towards men because she felt that they took from her and they disregarded her and they disrespected her.
And even though men at Lare are extremely loving, everyone from Shama shaman to facilitators, she needed to project that on us to process it. It’s like it’s just a necessary thing. So for a day or two, she went into this mode where she was really upset with all the men and then as she, together with the medicine.
So it’s a part of her process and it’s together with the medicine. She was able to vent it out. She came to conclusion that because of how great the men are here, that there are great men around. And she was basically healed from that thing she was carrying around. But the facilitation work is difficult because you have to understand exactly what is happening to her not to get offended.
Yeah. To keep having that container for her. Yeah. To go through that process, guide her through it, knowing that it will resolve and not take it personally because the more you take it personally, that’s
Mark Bodner: really challenging. Yeah. And I think that’s if we’re getting into the weeds of facilitation, I think that skill of not taking it personally is probably the most, one of the more advanced skills.
I think because it’s so challenging, this kind of gets at countertransference, which essentially like what tra transference is different but similar to projection. So we’ll just use them interchangeably right now. Counter transfer. Sam is a patient. Counter transference is pretty much anything I feel about him.
Oftentimes though, it’s emphasized by, if he’s being really mean to me because his father was mean to him, and he needs to take out that anger on me, my counter transference would probably be stronger of, Sam’s a really bad dude, I don’t like him. Maybe I’m not gonna help him or give him the care and attention that other people receive because he is being so mean to me.
That is a super like human response and really hard to step back from, not get sucked into. And for me, I think like understanding truly like this is the healing process and this is a role that I fill that people project onto it’s not about me. And then also for the staff that do this work, having our own community is essential.
So like Sam has been a massive support for me through all of this. The punching bag stuff that I’ve been getting, of having someone to process, to release, to vent to. So that I can bring myself back to the center to work with the patient and not just get sucked into this sort of childlike dynamic of he should, he said she said, or she slapped first.
So it’s okay that I slap
Sam Believ: I’ve been able to support you because I’ve been punched for Yeah figuratively, a literal letter and you’ve also been punched in your experience here. We can talk about it later, but it’s a very interesting paradox and I had this Jesus moment where, yeah, I was in the ceremony and obviously I’ve created this space to help people feel better and obviously we charge reasonably and there’s there’s so much love in it.
And then to get slapped in the face by one of the patients and not being able to slap him back and having to be, in your piece. So that’s like a very physical representation of this emotional things we’re talking about. And then just to have him slap me in another cheek, 10 minutes later.
Yeah. I’m not say where there was, it was that moment. So it just kinda goes to show how complex this work is. Like people think, lemme just start now. Oscar treat, I’ll just get somewhere. Oscar you pouring a cup. And we are just basically scratching a surface when it comes to just the sort of psychological side of things.
We’re not even talking about the actual spiritual playing goal. Yeah. And thousands of years tradition that has been required. So it is a very humbling notion. Yeah. So let’s talk about being punched and broken and scratched and tell us about some of those experiences and what have it taught you?
Mark Bodner: Just a, keep talking, a disclaimer or kind of a. To set the stage. Horror stories are of course, way more fun to tell than like normal ones, but this sort of stuff that we’re talking about is super rare. Like it, I worked with, I wanna say I worked with between 700, 800 patients and I can only think of maybe five times in which someone got by one.
And so it’s not super common. But my first month after I finished my volunteering term and I came back and I was formally stepping into the head of facilitation role, we do, if you’re not familiar with the structure at Lara, we do 18 day retreat cycles for staffs. We’re working for 18 days, and within that we do 10 ceremonies.
It was the first ceremony of the entire month, first ceremony of my of my tenure as head of facilitation. And I made the mistake of saying to a coworker like, oh, first, first ceremony of the month, nothing’s gonna happen tonight. It’s it’s always chill, cut to another patient. Very another classic moment.
He he took his first cup, normal size, and then we got a very small second. He like flagged me down and grabbed me super agitated about having gotten a small cup. He’s oh, like I got such a small cup. What did I do wrong? Did, does the shaman think I’m weak or like that? I can’t do something?
Oh, I should have lied to him. And then 30 minutes later he was like really frantically dancing on his mattress. Fernando was like, keep an eye on him. I was like, already there. All of a sudden he pop shoots up like a bullet. And this is in the old ceremony space where it had a charm to it, but it was like a sardine can people were packed in and he had jumped up and was in this very thin alleyway between the mashes, like dancing like crazy, like frenetically thrashing all around.
Could have kicked someone in the face. So I rush over to him like, Hey man let’s go outside. If you wanna dance, let’s go to the dance floor. So you’re not endangering anyways, he’s I’m conscious. I’m like, oh, sick breaks away from me and sprints towards the bathroom. Again, in the old ceremony space, there was a, like a single room bathroom.
And because someone could have a deep process in the bathroom we ask people to not lock the door. And so the door is unlocked and people don’t enter because they know someone’s in there if the door’s closed. And so we bust into the bathroom. Someone is actively pooping, like ayahuasca poop, not something to be interrupted.
They start trying to like, push the door clo close. I’m like, oh shoot. Like now we really gotta restrain him, rush over, grab him by the waist. He like rips free, goes over to where Fernando is it’s like a two step journey. And honestly, like to his credit, it was a beautiful kick. Like he looks like a textbook like martial arts roundhouse going for Fernando’s Chin.
Don’t know why he didn’t remember, but Fernando is sitting here playing his flute. He sees the kit coming, he. Gets about this far back, like a few inches I run over, I grab him by the waist. If one of those two things hadn’t happened, he would’ve just connected straight to Fernan. Just knock the shaman out.
So I grab him by the waist. The second I grab him, he rips around and just clocks me straight in the jaw. We wrap him up. And then we go, and of course like the idea of being restrained while you’re on Ayahuasca, of course sounds incredibly unpleasant. Reminder number one, super rare. And number two, it is truly the only thing you can do to protect someone from hurting themselves or others.
This guy was actually like pretty in control of this faculties. Most people are just like thrashing around when they need to be restrained. And if you’re in that state, oftentimes you’re actually not conscious of your physical world. And so there isn’t that same sensation of being trapped, right?
Like it’s not claustrophobic. Your body is really just like getting energy out. And so within restraints, you’re able to do that while getting out. So there’s that, but. We restrained him. Eventually he came back down, we hugged in the morning. It was all good. But that was another great introduction to this work on the first month.
One of the things I learned from that, that I was thinking about as you were talking about being slapped is I think at the end of the day, sometimes Saint Lee behavior is super easy and straightforward. Like we were joking a few months later, we had a new volunteer and I told this story and she was like, what did you do when he punched you?
I was like, the only thing I could do is just wrap him up and bring him over. And she was like, you didn’t wanna punch him back. I was like, can you, Ima, I think you said this can you imagine a was retreat where you’re tripping and you sit up and the facilitator just went like on the patient.
It’s it was just like the, when you are in that mode of caring for people it’s very straightforward. It’s what can I do to take care of this person? And I think there is a saintliness. Everyone, which is just going beyond your sort of personal reaction and dealing with whatever’s going on.
Sam Believ: That’s how parenting feels. Yeah, I bet. Like your children, they like make you, they hurt you so much, but you have to keep, what are you gonna do? Yeah. Oh, it’s oh, you just broke my new phone. That’s it. What can you do? You just keep loving him. Yeah. So yeah, it is a really challenging work.
I do believe that I don’t know much about karma, but you must have gained like life’s left and worth of karmic points doing that work. And hopefully me too. Not that it’s the goal, but there definitely is. There are aspects to it that are very difficult because you’re used to, we’re used to doing good things and receiving gratitude in return, and one, the pattern is breaking.
Yeah. Broken. And you’re like. You’re doing your best and you’re helping so much, and in return you get this projection stuff or physical violence on your, that can be really hard. However, I do believe that this work and the word circles and all the wisdom and learning through people’s processes, it’s like a super accelerator.
It’s a, one year of being a chief facilitator I believe is much more valuable than one year in the university. Yeah, you mentioned couple times old ceremony space. So for those of you watching us on video, if you’re not, check out, find us on YouTube at La Wire YouTube channel. We’re sitting in this beautiful Maloca.
Maloca is a medicine house, a very traditional indigenous style building with a palm tree leaf roof and made from teak wood and compound the wood with it’s surrounded by nature and every direction. This has been built about eight months ago when Mark first joined. We used to do it in the area.
Now for those of you familiar with a wire where we have our eating slash coworking area. So what have you observed what change have you observed after we started doing ceremonies in Malca and just generally what you, what do you think about my designer skills? It’s,
Mark Bodner: The changes are night and day.
It’s on a level that would’ve been impossible for me to predict. I just wouldn’t have thought it was possible. I can confidently say that the most challenging ceremony we’ve had here, and by challenging from a staff perspective, I mean like people freaking out, like needing hands-on assistance, needing to be taken to a private area so they don’t not disrupt in the group, excuse me, running around trying to get away, stuff like that.
That’s a challenging ceremony for us. The most challenging ceremony we’ve had in the molo. Is would be an average one in the old ceremony space. And this gets, I think there’s the, I think there’s the obvious element, and I do think there’s also the sort of more mystical, spiritual level to it.
But from a sort of basic like consensus reality level, this space just makes you feel held. Like the old space was I think, psychologically challenging because you would, that’s where you do word circle, and so you’d be talking all the time. That’s where you would eat your meals. And so you’d be eating there.
That’s where you’d be hanging out with people playing games. And then you’re also brought into ceremony and everyone has to be in an ayahuasca ceremony. It’s just like really confusing. Whereas here, this is understood to be an exclusively ceremonial sacred space. And it has, if you ever look around it, it just has a sort of gravitas to it that makes you feel.
Safe and held and is a place that allows you to let go of control in a way that is calming rather than feeling as if control has been seized from you and you have no idea what’s happening. Yeah, the Moloka is a medicine house. It is the container that holds ceremony, and this one does it remarkably well.
Your designing skills are excellent, Sam. Thank you for, we actually, we’ve had someone who is a pretty experienced ayahuasca veteran, and she said that we have the best bathroom she’s ever seen. For ayahuasca, which is, if you’ve drank Ayahuasca, you understand how important that is. We have eight bathrooms.
Eight bathrooms.
Sam Believ: It got little bide or 20 people. Yeah. That means like no traffic jams ever luxury. So you mentioned that you have more than nine ceremonies in one year. Like that. That’s a scary number for most people. They’re like, how are you still alive? What do you, what have you? Observed by having that batch medicine.
And what is the main lesson
Mark Bodner: number one? It’s also on ayahuasca podcast.com is an interview with Rick a South African showman. And he and Sam talk about integration. And one of the things I’ve heard him say is that integration is like a modern concept and isn’t really a word that’s used in indigenous communities because the idea of integration is combining two separate things.
And so for most people, that’s ceremony and normal life. I don’t want this to come across, am I saying integration isn’t important? Integration is absolutely essential to this work being done, but it is a new thing in a place where you come to retreat and then you need to bring that retreat experience back to life.
For me, I’m definitely like a traditionalist, like I like, like doing things in the way. The old ancients did. And so I’ve really appreciated having the opportunity to just be immersed in ayahuasca bath, like just a teabag seeping in, in the water of ayahuasca. From that, one of the main things I’ve noticed is there is no ceremony and not ceremony with the sort of western, somewhat dualistic mindset it’s very easy to think of ayahuasca and the work that happens with it as being I come to ceremony, I take my cup ceremony lasts for about six hours.
I stop feeling the psychedelic load. I go back to my room and then it’s over. With so much experience with ayahuasca over the year, I can see that from a spiritual level, ayahuasca’s constantly functioning. It’s just the volume is turned up to the point that we can perceive it more. And so I’ll find I’ll come into ceremony with an intention.
Nothing will happen. And then the next day I’ll be confronted with some unique challenge that is exactly in line with the intention that I came in. And that’s pretty fascinating to me. But also that like the, as I was talking about, I give speeches every month to people that come here, I’m giving advice on how to work with ayahuasca.
Some of the key points it’s a lot more in depth than this, but the key points are essentially flow, trust, surrender, opening listening and courage. Those are the core tenets. And I find that ayahuasca ceremonies are not something different from life. Of course, you’re practicing life in ceremony.
And so as this kind of binary between ayahuasca, not ayahuasca, between integration, breaking down is just living in the world with ayahuasca. I see that I’m always in ceremony. And that’s been a there’s a really nice tie in for that with me, with Zen where Zen talks about. It’s 24 7 practice.
And so a lot of people think zen practice is when you’re meditating, but meditation is just you can think of as the ayahuasca ceremony. But once you are off the mat, you’re doing the same thing, same practice. It’s 24 7. And life is constantly teaching within that. So that’s one of the main things I’ve found from that.
Sam Believ: What’s your favorite ever ceremony? Can you recall favorite such a hard or some like very memorable vision or, crazy psychedelic story?
Mark Bodner: Crazy psychedelic story definitely would be my day ceremony. So over a year and a half now. But when I was here as a patient, it was my fourth ceremony.
And when we drink a day ceremony, we start at 7:00 AM Most people feel as if ceremony has meaningfully ended around like 10 30, 11 30. You’re still tripping and you’re in the afterglow, but you’re not like deep. I didn’t come back to understanding not even who, but what I was like that I was a human being living form until like three 30.
I remember at i at three 30, I got into the shower and like feeling water on my body. I remembered. I was like, oh, okay. Like I’m a human. The way that ceremony went was I mean it’s, I could, again, this is another thing I could talk about for three days, but took two very full cups and didn’t purge at all.
Connected with ayahuasca and the way at that time that I was in communication with the medicine was through stomach convulsions. And so I would ask a question. My stomach would eMule like that in a very perceptibly answering way. Sounds super wacky, but when you experience it, it makes sense. I was like talking with Ayahuasca, asking it questions, making jokes, and then all of a sudden it was like, like I was not.
Psychedelically blasted, but I could just feel on a very deep level, I think similar to your most recent ceremony, just the absolute perfection and oneness of all existence, but in a way that I was still functional. Like a lot of times people experience that and they’re like on their mat. I was totally fine, but it was just everything was perfect.
It was like this beautiful high point spiritually, and then pretty much the rest of the day was just a ever furthering descent into pain, confusion, and fear. It started with lots and lots of crying, which felt really good. Like just this massive purge like sobbing really nice.
And then it kept going and it got scary and I was, this is me going beyond my pace. For sure I was not a patient person when I was here as a pa as a patient, to the point that I was like across, laid out on my bed, like flexing all of my muscles in a way that I’ve never done in all of the sports I’ve done.
Eventually some guides came and they calmed me down, calm an ayahuasca experience. I was seeing how every single moment I had ever experienced had led me to this moment. In a way that’s like obvious if you think about it, but when you experience it as reality, it’s it was terrifyingly blatant that like time had just flowed to this moment.
Again, these things are fundamentally ineffable. Time totally disappeared. At first I thought I had been there for four days and four nights, and I was like, it’s so nice that they’re still taking care of me. Like what? Generous people. And then time disappeared. I I felt as if everyone else was a God and I was the last God to be born because I had been so selfish and like egocentric.
I felt like I was the most powerful God because I was the last God being born. I thought Yosemite Valley was right outside of the door and that I could, if I never chose spike ball, the beach game, I thought I was about to play spike ball. But they were like, no, you need to stay in bed. I was like, all right.
That’s probably a good idea. Eventually it was beautiful and profound and well beyond my capacity to understand, let alone articulate. Eventually where I was brought to was what I call nothing land, where there was absolute nothingness. If you think of not knowing and just make that the entire universe, you use this within, that’s where I was to the point where I came once I was coming out of that, and I could see, I could hear and perceive again.
I was here with my partner. It was like three 30, like really late. It was three at this point, really late. So she was really concerned for me, and she was laying next to me. I was able to speak again, and I was like, I’m really confused. What? Like I’m confused. And she was like, mark, you’re in Columbia.
You’ve taken ayahuasca and you’re going through your process. And in my head I was like, what the fuck is Columbia? And then 10 seconds will pass my back. I’m really confused. I was just stuck in this loop. It was really frightening. But at the same time, it was the most profound and intense and beautiful and mystifying experience I’ve had my entire life.
And so for me, I’ve come to the point where good and bad just doesn’t capture ayahuasca. It’s just a matter of intensity. And that was like the intensity of life just turned up to the point that I wanted to experience it. So it was absolutely stunning.
Sam Believ: In one year of facilitating, what have you learned about shamanism and what do you think about our shaman?
Mark Bodner: Number one thing I’ve learned about Shamanism is that it is incredibly complex and would take decades of intense study for anyone to practice. Let alone master. I think anyone that exists around ayahuasca long enough starts to tap into some shamanistic elements of reality.
And so there’s for me, honestly I grew up as an atheist and I, and identified as an atheist or agnostic until I was like, honestly, a couple of years ago. And so for me, number one was recognizing that shamanism is like a real craft. We often tell patients it looks like he just blows on the cup, makes some funny noises, hands you, your ayahuasca, and then chills in a hammock.
And it, you can be like, oh, that’s easy. I could do that. He is not doing anything. But no it’s, he is both exercising a skillset and that skillset is really complex. And so there are certain programs where I think you can go to Spain, study for three months and all of a sudden you’re a shaman, excuse me, which is the same for me as going to a summer camp and being like, I’m a doctor now.
So it’s really, it’s an art form. What do I think of Fernando? I think so I have only ever drank with Fernando. So I don’t have a great comparison point from a personal perspective, but I’ve worked with hundreds of people who have drank with other shamans and all of them are blown away by Fernando.
I’m sure Sam has mentioned this, but Fernando is sixth generates and sixth generation shaman. But working with Ayahuasca goes back a lot further than that. They take care of grow, harvest, cook, and serve all of their own medicine. He has been formally training as a shaman since he was seven years old and has been ordained as a shaman since he was 15 or 16.
I think. One of the stories that I think actually the best for me is we had a patient who. Drinks a lot of ayahuasca and is also a very kind of like orderly person. He had a spreadsheet where he would rank all the shamans he’d ever drank with on a 10 point scale across different elements.
And among all the shamans he’d ever drank with, I think Fernando is like top three. And so I, it’s been a huge privilege to be able to work as closely with him as I have. But I still have feel as if I’m anywhere close to what he’s able to do.
Sam Believ: Last question, mark. Why did you bring your father to drink Ayahuasca?
Mark Bodner: I’d be careful to say that everyone in the world should take ayahuasca, but I do believe that everyone in the world, a lot of people could do well to drink ayahuasca. Yeah. My dad and I have had a pretty challenging relationship throughout my life to the point of a few years ago. It was to the point it was a breaking point of something’s gotta change or we’re ever gonna be close in each other’s lives.
From that point, a lot has changed and we were able to get to the point where I really thought that it would both help him a lot personally, and I wanted to share this part of my life. This has been a huge part of of me and my path. And so I wanted to share that. But for him, he grew up with an abusive alcoholic, very manipulative father that wreaked havoc.
He was also very poor. He was a scholarship kid to a lot of private schools, and there was a huge amount of exclusion and bullying and all of that that came from that. And only recently as he realized that he is been played with PTSD for his entire life from all of those experiences he was always like, ah, but PTSD is for like people who have confronted IEDs in in Afghanistan and stuff like that.
So he didn’t feel like he could use that term, but that he truly has a clinical diagnosis of PTSD. And I knew for him that he just had a lot of stuff that he needed to. Feel and confront and let go of to be the person that he wanted. And ultimately it was, it came from a place of love and care. I love and care for my dad, and I wanted him to be happier and healthier.
And I knew for a fact that Ayahuasca would be a really powerful, profound tool for affecting that. So it was really important for me that he came and did, and he came and he had he said he had one of the best weeks of his entire life. And it was one of the, I would say, one of the special moments of my entire life to have him here.
So get your parents to do ayahuasca. It was really incredible.
Sam Believ: Yeah. My mom drank. I, Oscar my sister and my brother, my dad is the last one in your case, your mom used to have and your sisters.
Mark Bodner: Just before we wrap up, one of the things that Sam has said is when. Your family members came and drank ayahuasca.
If this project of like self-growth and healing was pushing a car, you felt as if a few more people were pushing the car with you. Yeah. And I can feel that
Sam Believ: lifting the intergenerational weight. Yeah. Together. So says our own. Mark, thank you for the podcast. We’ve been it for a long time. What, how do you feel, man?
You’re leaving no moral wire for you. Will you miss Ayahuasca? Will you miss Laro?
Mark Bodner: Will you miss Columbia? Yeah, absolutely. If you haven’t experienced any of the three things that for that Sam just mentioned, you should. Columbia is a paradise. I thought recently I was like, I just live somewhere where a lot of people come for vacation.
It’s perfect weather all year round. There’s food everywhere, just like falling from the trees. It’s warm. The people are really nice. It’s got a beautiful history and topography. Ayahuasca. It’s just, it’s pretty much the closest thing to magic that I think exists in the world. And so that’s pretty cool.
And LA Wire has been my home, my work, my community, my family, my church, my hospital. So I’m going to miss it profoundly. And I’m definitely hoping you always sort your
Sam Believ: gym pressure. My gym, your cigar alone. I could keep going.
Mark Bodner: But yeah, I, this is I made an indelible mark on my life.
Sam Believ: Why will miss you as well. Me too. That’s good. Thank you for the episode. Thank you for the good work. Mark has stepped in this position. He mostly self trains. I was too busy to train him because before he stepped into it, I was doing his job plus five more. So as since then, I’ve hired.
Five plus people to replace me. And I’m still very busy. So challenging, but beautiful. And just ayahuasca, man. Like whenever you feel struggling, you drink ayahuasca and it’s ah. Yeah. And you’re like, I can go some more. Yeah. So beautiful. So whenever you, whatever life happens, you always welcome back And guys, thank you for listening.
This has been a very special episode. And I’ll see you in the next one. Thanks everyone for listening. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you’d like to support us and psychedelic renaissance at large, please follow us and leave us a like, wherever it is you’re listening, share this episode with someone who will benefit from this information.
Nothing in this podcast is intended as medical advice, and it is for educational and entertainment purposes only. This episode is sponsored by a wire ayahuasca. At Laira, we combine affordability, accessibility, and authenticity. Laira, connect, heal, grow. Guys, I’m looking forward to hosting you.