In this episode of AyahuascaPodcast.com host Sam Believ has a conversation with Phoenix White, founder of Sacred Celestial.
We touch upon subjects of postpartum depression, negative sides of facilitation, having hard life as prepararion to help others.
If you would like to attend one of our Ayahuasca retreats go to
Find more about x at http://www.thesacredcelestial.com
@phoenixwhite
Transcript
Sam Believ (00:02.081)
guys and welcome to ayahuasca podcast as always with you the host Sanbeliev today we’re interviewing Phoenix Wyatt. Phoenix is a mother she’s a business owner she’s speaker and author and she’s a founder of sacred celestial Phoenix welcome to the podcast.
Phoenix (00:16.718)
Thank you so much. Appreciate you having me.
Sam Believ (00:21.697)
Phoenix, tell us a little bit about your life story and what brought you into the work with psychedelics.
Phoenix (00:31.79)
So my life story, that is like such a layered question. What part do you want me to go into as far as my life story?
Sam Believ (00:38.721)
There’s many things, you know, being a mother and sexual trauma, whatever you take it, but bring us to the beginning. What was your first experience? When did it start? And when did you realize that you’re inspired to not only work with psychedelics yourself, but also facilitate and help others?
Phoenix (01:02.189)
I would say that my life story started just as a child who went through a lot of trauma. You know, not that my childhood was horrible, but it had its moments where I had a lot of trauma, a lot of abuse, a lot of bullying, a lot of pain. And so I think just starting from there and just feeling like I was always different, like I was always sent here for something bigger than just myself. I always felt like I was this weird,
alien person that just got dropped off on this planet. I was like, why am I here? You know, and I’m on this assignment, this life assignment. So I think sometimes when you have a calling on your life that’s really big or when you’re called to help other people, I find that some of our stories or some of our, you know, our processes are really, really hard. You know, our journeys are harder.
So and I think that the journey, I don’t have any regrets about any of my journey from abuse or pain or all that stuff because it makes me more relatable. It also makes me have more empathy for the people that I work with. Another thing that got me to psychedelics, I would say was moving to Mexico. So after having two brain surgeries and having a new baby, so I have an 18 year old and now I have a four year old. And when my…
little baby was born, we moved to Mexico. And when I moved to Mexico, that’s how I started to learn more about psychedelics. I was already in healing work. So that I was already doing, but I think psychedelics was just another add -on to what I was already doing. And it was like, poof. You know, like my world just like blew open and it became like this super dominant thing because I felt like with psychedelics and it was a mushroom ceremony.
Sam Believ (02:44.993)
Mm -hmm.
Phoenix (02:55.306)
that I tried first because I was working with a healing center that I was investing in in Mexico. And they kept asking me to try it, try it. And I was like, I’m not promoting nothing that I haven’t tried. Y ‘all are ingesting stuff. You know, I had heard really bad things about psychedelics growing up. It’s not really something that in my culture was talked about or used in any way, not even for fun. And so my culture didn’t have, that wasn’t like a part of it. Like it wasn’t something that I.
Sam Believ (03:20.065)
Mm -hmm.
Phoenix (03:24.041)
heard of in a positive way. It was always something to do at a party or what hippies did or something like that. So when I got ahold of psychedelics, I was like, my gosh, this is a life hack. And it’s not doing it the way that I would say people do it in parties. I only learned how to do it in ceremonies. And so it’s honoring the medicine in a different sort of way. It’s using it as a medicine. It’s not.
necessarily even calling it a psychedelic or calling it a drug. It’s called a plant medicine in my world. And so natural plant medicines. So that’s how I pretty much got into it. And I was just like, no one’s going to try this that I know unless it came through me. Like nobody that I know is going to go to the forest in the jungle and going to try some random something, going to drink some concoction and.
they’re gonna take it, they have to trust it. People feel like, or people have heard that you just go crazy and you start seeing a bunch of stuff. Like no one talked about how deeply it could heal you, how it can bring you face to face with yourself. No one talked about that. And so that’s not what we were told. And so when I did it, that’s what I gave to people. So I became that safe space for people to be able to feel safe enough to come into that environment and to try something new to be able to heal. And that’s how I got here. Long.
Sam Believ (04:46.483)
It’s a great story, Phoenix. So you mentioned being different. Can you talk a little bit maybe about is there a trauma there, you know, trauma of not belonging or feeling different? Do you feel anything there or is it wasn’t that bad?
Phoenix (04:46.715)
I’m
Phoenix (05:06.565)
You mean now?
Sam Believ (05:08.385)
I mean, when you started your self -work.
Phoenix (05:11.367)
well when I started my self work, it was, yes, it was feeling different. I didn’t start doing psychedelics because of a trauma. I think it was, I wanted to see more of who I was. And I think in that first ceremony, it was like, can we cuss on here or no?
Sam Believ (05:29.985)
Sure, I mean…
Phoenix (05:31.878)
Well I was like shit. You know this is like a life hack right and so I I wanted to make sure that I was figuring out more of who I was supposed to become that’s why I went and wanted to try the medicine like who am I what’s my next step what am I supposed to be doing next and it showed me this is what you’re doing next it’s you’re doing plant medicine you are bringing this to the world.
in a different way through you or the people that are supposed to come into contact with you. And that was what I found when I did my first ceremony. I saw more of who I was. It was pretty cool.
Sam Believ (06:11.649)
So you’re a mother of two, right? And I think if I’m not mistaken, you had postpartum depression with both babies, right? But you treated it differently first time versus the second time. Can you talk to us about that? Like how did you use all those tools that you picked up in your life?
Phoenix (06:14.565)
Yes.
Phoenix (06:27.031)
Yeah.
Phoenix (06:31.173)
Yeah, so I call it a multi -sensory support plan that I created for myself during my second pregnancy. My first pregnancy, I didn’t have those tools. My son is 18. So when I first had my first child, I was only like 25. And so, well, 24, about to be 25. And he wasn’t planned. The father really wasn’t around as much.
I was very, very depressed. My hair was falling out. I didn’t know about the chemical imbalances. I had support in a sense, but not mental support. You know, it’s like I had like some help with the baby here and there, but emotionally I was really, really struggling with depression. And so I didn’t know anything about postpartum depression, but I did find myself driving to the top of a cliff and about to drive over the cliff in California.
And so that’s when I realized, my gosh, this must be really, really real. And I don’t even remember driving off of that cliff. It must’ve been just on autopilot some kind of way, because I was very high up. I would say 12 ,000 feet high, like on a cliff in Los Angeles. And I think some kind of way, I knew I had a bigger mission in this world. Something took me off the cliff because I don’t remember driving off of it, to be honest with you. I just remember sitting over it.
and just seeing, I was like, I could just push the gas right now, I’m gonna go over. I just wanted to end all the pain that I was in. I felt like my child didn’t like me, he was crying, I didn’t know how to be a mom. I didn’t have the tools. I didn’t know what I was doing. He was always crying. I didn’t feel like he liked me. I had all these things going on in my head. I don’t know if your wife experiences, but big chunks of my hair would fall out. It was just things going on with my body that I was never.
taught about. Like no one told me certain things may happen to me. So I didn’t have support in that way. I didn’t have a therapist. I didn’t have a coach. I didn’t have a support team that could help me. And the partner that I was dating, we were just in a rocky place. Like he was doing a lot of really terrible stuff. And so there wasn’t a whole lot of trust there. He also didn’t know what to do. We were also very young. And if I switch fast forward to my second baby,
Phoenix (08:58.242)
I had all the supports you could dream about. I had my life coach and my therapist, because I had the second baby at 40. So 25 and 40, I’m two different people, right? The second baby, I had my coach. We had our baby at home. He was planned. We purposely tried to have him when I got pregnant. I had someone to help me take care of the baby. My partner was there the whole time.
We had, we practiced everything. My coach was on the phone, you know, praying over us and you know what I’m saying, like telling us what to do and how he could be supportive. Like he literally was sitting in the pool of water, I had a water birth, in the water with me while I was pushing out the baby. So I had all the support that you can imagine was my second baby. But then there’s still those days because you’re delirious, you’re tired, you’re waking up every two hours doing that cluster feeding, you know.
milk production wasn’t coming out. So it didn’t matter. Like even though I had all this support and I had this whole multi -sensory support plan, I knew the songs I wanted to hear, I knew what I wanted to feel, I knew what I wanted to eat. I had all this information. I knew who to call. He knew who to call if he couldn’t help me. But I still had a moment where I just felt like everything was crashing. And I think it had to do with the chemical imbalance more so than, you know, me not having the support that I needed.
And I didn’t know about the chemical imbalance. I had to learn about these things. I had to learn about postpartum depression and postpartum anxiety and postpartum psychosis. Like there are three different levels. The first baby I got to psychosis. The first one I was just at a little bit of depression, right? And so like people don’t know that there’s just layers and when they don’t go unchecked, you end up diving into this deep hole and you don’t know how to get out of it. So he was able to call people that…
you know, he knew we were a part of my support plan. They were able to call and say, hey, what’s going on? Here’s what you need to do. How can I help you? How can I support you? And, you know, like I had to learn about milk production and I was having a hard time with that and the baby was mad. It was always crying and it was hard. So that’s getting through those first couple of weeks or month was very, very, it’s brutal sometimes. And I think people don’t understand that. And men also can go through that, that depression as well.
Phoenix (11:25.374)
because there’s a whole new life that’s just been created. So now there’s all this extra pressure, there’s anxiety with that, there’s depression with that, there’s having to be good enough. So there is symptoms for the whole family because everyone’s life has to change. You know, so.
Sam Believ (11:42.209)
Yeah, I feel you. We have two babies, actually a year and a half apart. And my wife is pregnant again now with the girl. This time we have two boys and a girl. So we’ve been going hard on it also while building this retreat center. So it’s hard both for a man and for a woman. For example, with our first kid, I got depressed while she was pregnant because I didn’t know he was all, he kind of brought it up because I didn’t.
Phoenix (12:04.379)
Thank you.
Sam Believ (12:08.843)
really known necessarily at that point of life what to do with my life and I was like, yeah, I don’t know, should I do this, should I do that? And like, can I be a good father? Am I gonna be able to provide? And I think it was one of those, there were many things, but it pushed me into depression, which then pushed me to ayahuasca, which then pushed me to this direction life I’m going to right now, which is divine intervention. And my wife got depressed after.
Phoenix (12:12.637)
Yeah.
Sam Believ (12:33.857)
I think she did, she definitely did have a bit of postpartum after the first baby, but much more after the second one. And I remember she had a nanny and we had the person to cook for her. And obviously I was around all the time because I don’t have, I don’t have to leave somewhere for work, but basically she had a support system, her family. But I was like, she was just being very negative and she was very upset. And I was like, everything she was kind of complaining about.
Phoenix (12:39.876)
Hmm.
Sam Believ (13:02.785)
was not really real. I was like, you know what, the thing’s actually pretty good. Like why is she so negative? And then it hit me because obviously I have in this line of work, I started researching and I came up into a couple of podcast episodes about postpartum depression. I was like, okay, maybe that’s what what’s going on because she was, she was in a very bad mental space without any reason. Like obviously apart from the tiredness of being a mom, but she would lash out on things and it would appear like everything was just.
Phoenix (13:22.587)
Okay.
Sam Believ (13:32.449)
terrible but in reality it was actually pretty good. So what I did was I had some mushrooms in my freezer and I just went and gave her a microdose and I gave her a microdose for a few weeks obviously intermittently and it just got better. That’s it. She just she was able because I think there’s this chemical imbalance thing where you just don’t have enough of serotonin or whatever it is and doesn’t matter what you say and what you do it you just you just need it and that’s where
That’s what mushrooms came in really nicely for me. Obviously, I could have given an ayahuasca, but you know, it’s a bit tough, you know, purging and having a baby. But mushrooms, I think, is an amazing tool for that. So what do you think about mushrooms and microdosing and let’s say for postpartum depression? Did you do it with the second baby or no? Can you like tell us from your point of view?
Phoenix (14:06.426)
You
Phoenix (14:27.418)
I didn’t do it with my second baby. I did a full -blown ceremony, more so than the microdosing. I take microdoses now, every now and then. Like I’m on it. I do microdoses now. Like this week was like a microdosing week just because I’m working on also helping my brain to heal or when I just need to get more in balance because I feel like I’m a little off. But this week it was more focusing on…
connecting new neurons and all that stuff. So because of having two brain surgeries, sometimes I want to just like go into like working and focusing on my brain. So I’ll use the microdosing for that. If I’m really, really having a stressful week, yeah, I can do microdosing for that as well. But I want to go back to something you said about the postpartum with your wife that I think will be really good for viewers to hear is a lot of people forget that when the placenta comes out,
you know, super big, right? It leaves a gaping wound inside of a woman the same size. It’s stuck to the wall of the inside of her body. When that rips apart, that wound is open. And so your body is also rushing to heal that wound in addition to all of your organs having to move back into place that were moved out of place. On top of you get zero break after you have a baby.
literally within minutes, they’re straight to your boob. So you don’t get as much, like we would think that we have all this time and all this separation and all that, and with all the help that we’re getting, but our body is working so hard to rebalance itself. And that placenta was also giving way more nutrients. So now we no longer even have that.
So I remember even having to get my placenta dehydrated and trying to take that just to have some of the nutrients back in my body. So that’s another thing that I think people don’t realize and I think it was very important for you even acknowledging that you went through the same thing. My husband and I, we did counseling, we went to therapy during my pregnancy just to make sure that we were able to like…
Phoenix (16:46.294)
stay grounded and that we didn’t transfer any issues to our baby when he was born. So we did a lot of therapy on ourselves. So that was really nice for you to say, because I rarely hear men talk about themselves going.
Sam Believ (16:58.625)
Yeah, a lot of people, a lot of people don’t know that men also go through hormonal changes during pregnancy. It’s like as, as a female is getting ready for birth, she goes to her changes, obviously much more drastic, but there, there are changes that happens to, to the man and even to men’s body. Like, you know, what they say, like a dad bod it’s actually partially reason for the hormones. I guess it just makes you more, a little softer. So you’re, you could be a bit nicer around the baby. It’s so interesting, you know, our.
Phoenix (17:05.422)
Thank you.
Sam Believ (17:28.435)
our bodies are really perfect in a way they know what to do and how to adjust. So basically when you got depressed you just want no microdosing, let’s just go and go full in. So can we talk a little bit about that both for postpartum but also in general your thoughts on microdosing mushrooms versus macrodosing.
Phoenix (17:56.437)
I think microdosing is good for people who just need to balance everyday stress. So like a lot of my clients who deal with anxiety, they are on, some of them are on a microdosing protocol. And then those who really just want to go deep and just really want to get in there and go hard, they go to the ceremonies. So it just depends on where you’re at. Everybody’s not ready to do a full blown ceremony or to have a psychedelic experience.
or may not even have the time. Because I do feel like you have to be called to that medicine to do it. Like it’s not something you just wake up and it’s like, I’m going to go do psychedelics today. You know, I think that it needs to be a process. I think it’s something that you need to, you know, really research and make sure that that’s something that you really want to do because it’s a long process. You know, mushrooms and ayahuasca, that six, seven hour journey for some people. And so, and you’re on a journey for real.
Like it’s real work. So if people aren’t prepared for that, then I think sometimes they end up with what they call bad trips because either they don’t feel safe in the environment that they’re in, or they weren’t prepared for the journey, or they don’t have a good guide around them. Not that it’s not hard, but it doesn’t have to be a bad, like, you know, they leave the whole experience. Like this is horrible. I’ve never had that. I’ve never had anybody say that.
because of the protocols that we take. But it’s challenging, for sure. I just don’t recommend a lot of people just going full -fledged and just doing it just to do it.
Sam Believ (19:38.337)
You mentioned the word good guide, you know With the I wasca for example I’ve I don’t know if anyone in their right mind would just get some I was can do it by themselves with with mushrooms It’s a it’s a pretty common thing where people just yeah, like here’s this mushrooms I don’t even have a scale to measure how much let me just eat some What are what are your thoughts on that? I mean, obviously they’re so available now
Talk to us about the work you do and why is it important and maybe talk to people that do want to do mushrooms by themselves or what they should look out for and how. That’s a pretty convoluted question, but I think you can wrap up.
Phoenix (20:20.593)
No, it’s a great question. I don’t think people should do it by themselves the first time, but I think it’s fine to do by yourself if you’re doing it the right way. I think sometimes people just do stuff and then they are like panicking. There’s a lot of 911 calls that go through with people who are just trying stuff, not measuring it, not knowing what they’re doing. They feel like they’re going to die. I…
heard of people going into a psychosis state who have called me and like, my friend just did mushrooms and UFO. And now they’re in the hospital and they disconnected from reality. They don’t know who they are. There’s a harm reduction. I’m really big into harm reduction. So there is such a huge risk. And I feel like with this medicine being becoming legalized.
I want us to do it right so it doesn’t get taken away, you know, or banned in some way because people are abusing it. So I just, you know, it’s a part of what I’m doing right now is teaching people how to properly do it. Cause everybody’s not going to come to me for a ceremony. Everybody’s not going to consistently be going to big groups. You know, everybody doesn’t want to be in a group. Well, we do do one on ones, but I just don’t want people to hurt themselves in the process of
doing things without knowing what they’re doing. That is really, really big for me. And I’ve heard it. I’ve heard it many, many, many times. So I do recommend people do it one -on -one or in a group setting with a trip sitter. I call it with a guide or a guardian. We call ours guardians. But it’s the same as a trip sitter and a guide, except for we do it in a more ceremonial, ancestral way.
So we more believe in honoring the medicine and that it’s connected into this weave of the whole world more so than it just being like a substance that you take to go party. Because you get way more out of it in a ceremony, the vibration of it, the energy of it is way bigger. You could take much less in a ceremony than people take when they’re doing it by themselves and get much more out of it than you would just doing it by yourself because of the set and the setting and the…
Phoenix (22:40.718)
you know, making sure we protect the area, making sure that we honor the medicine, because you’re wide open. People don’t realize like how wide open that you are to the spirit world. Some people may not believe in that, but you’re wide open to a whole lot of stuff to come in. And so even protecting that, your senses are really, really heightened. You know, one person can say the wrong thing to you and it could just send you off. You know, you can hear the wrong sound or something can startle you and you are.
spazzing and so it’s creating a safe space and just knowing that somebody’s there. If you go too far off the deep end somebody’s going to guide you back, somebody’s going to hold your hand, somebody’s going to rock you, somebody’s going to rub your head, somebody’s going to make sure that you feel safe and protected. That’s what we do and that’s what is really really important. Some people they don’t touch you when they do their you know therapy, psychedelic therapy.
Ours is different. We’re more of a multi -sensory healing experience. And so everything we do has to do with touch. It’s non -sexual touch. And of course we get consent, but we are holding people. We are wiping their tears or rubbing their head or rocking them or whatever is needed in that moment to make sure that they feel seen and felt and heard and protected and safe. And that is what I feel makes us different.
Sam Believ (24:03.595)
Yeah, definitely touching is a sensitive topic. You gotta really know how to do it because sometimes if you touch somebody from the back and they maybe had a trauma, then it can trigger something and then they can freak out. You talk about your life was pretty hard and there was lots of trauma, but that led you then to…
to become a facilitator. So I think I have a somewhat similar story. What do you think happens with people like us that sort of have difficult life that then brings us on the path of helping others? What is your theory behind that?
Phoenix (24:49.223)
I believe that we have to be able to understand what it’s like to be on the other end. Because otherwise we’re just, we don’t know what we’re talking about if we’ve never experienced anything. Like, there’s a lot of people that can come and tell me things, but I am not going to trust someone who’s been through nothing. It’s like, you don’t get me. You don’t understand my life. You don’t know what I’ve been through. So you can’t really tell me how that experience feels based off of your research.
I need to know what you’ve been through. I need to know that you really understand me in order for me to be able to connect to you. And I think those people that have those stories, it’s our stories, it’s our testimonies, the things that we’ve survived and we’ve been through is what’s inspiring people. It’s not necessarily like, you know, all the degrees we have and all the certifications we have, but how do we relate? How do we live our lives? What have we been through? What have we survived? I think that is what builds that real solid connection to where people can connect.
feel like they can trust you. You know, and I think that is what makes it more important. You’re way more effective when you’ve survived something or you’re able to understand. That’s what I believe.
Sam Believ (26:00.961)
Speaking of surviving, you had brain surgery and you had a near -death experience, so you literally survived. Can you tell us about that experience and if you have seen any parallels in between near -death states and psychedelic states?
Phoenix (26:21.545)
Yeah, you know, I’ve never had that question before, but that is, it is kind of parallel in a sense to where when you’re about to die, you go into this state or I wouldn’t say you’re about to die. When you’re in this space where I was, which was this in -between space, it was a black space. It was warm, it was cozy, it was beautiful. And I was just floating there, like weightlessly just.
And it was beautiful and it felt good. And it was, you know, in this, this area, I don’t know what part, I felt like I was in the in -between. That’s what I call it. In the in -between where it’s like, I’m not in the natural world. I’m not, I haven’t passed through where I’ve died, but I’m like right in between where it’s like, you’re either going to go this way or you’re going to go that way. You know, that’s, that’s where I was. And I think.
and being able to completely, 100 % remember that whole experience, kinda like how you do when you’re on mushrooms or ayahuasca, you remember pretty much everything. It’s not a dream, you know it’s real, you know where you were. I guess it is sort of parallel, because you see things from a different perspective. So on plant medicine, I feel like it’s different from dream state, right?
Where it’s like your dreams, you don’t know if it’s real or not. Plant medicine, I feel like, my gosh, I can see everything more clearly now. The things that I can’t naturally see, I can see now. It’s more like that, or the information that I’m getting downloaded into me, it’s like, where’s that coming from? Why didn’t I think of that before? Why didn’t I see that before? It’s like, what I’m seeing and feeling for me is real. When I’m on psychedelics, it’s just, I can’t see it as well when I’m not.
I was like, this makes sense. That’s why I dreamed that. this makes sense. That’s why I was doing that back then. that’s why I’m so connected to pyramids and why I’m, you know, you see different things. You’re like, wow. It makes it make sense to me. That’s how I felt about it. But feeling like you’re going to die in the in -between space. It wasn’t a lot going on for me. It was just being in that warm space and hearing a voice and choosing to ignore it for a while.
Phoenix (28:46.246)
and then you start to listen more and more to that voice, it sucks you that way. If I’d have stayed, I think, where I was and let that feeling just absorb me, I probably would have died. But because I started listening to whoever it was, the doctor, I suppose, was calling my name, trying to get me to come back, that is what jolted me back the other direction, because I started paying attention to it.
But I wasn’t thinking of my kids or memories or thoughts of what I had to do. Like nothing existed in that space. It was just a voice. And so I didn’t feel sad or bad or like I was missing out on anything. It was just like, okay, I guess I’ll listen. I’ll tune into the voice. So that’s what made that different.
Sam Believ (29:35.297)
It’s interesting that number one, I think ancient Greeks, when they were drinking this medicine, LSD -like medicine, their motto was, if you die before you die, you don’t die when you die. As in psychedelics being a rehearsal for death. Then ayahuasca, we notice a lot, because we host in a year about 700 people and it keeps coming over and over again. People feel like they’re dying or they’re…
Phoenix (29:54.308)
Okay.
Sam Believ (30:04.673)
they’re going through that experience. Even in our instructions we say, if you feel like you’re dying, just die, because you’ll be reborn. You’re not really dying. But it feels like that. And I recently interviewed Kyle Buller, he’s a co -founder of Psychedelics Today, and he explained his near -death experience, and that it was really similar to your psychedelic experiences, which kind of makes me think about dying being a spiritual process as well, and makes me kind of believe in…
Phoenix (30:12.6)
Right.
Sam Believ (30:33.055)
whatever happens to our souls afterwards. So speaking about ayahuasca and dying, you mentioned pyramids. That’s interesting because my first ever ayahuasca experience was all about pyramids. Even though I haven’t been to Egypt, I haven’t thought about pyramids, but it was all about pyramids and Egyptian. It’s like a lot of people go to this sort of Egyptian style realm. What is it about pyramids?
Phoenix (30:59.587)
I think that if you look on the maps, right, there’s pyramids everywhere and a lot of them are literally lined up connecting to each other. If you look on a map and you actually like connect them, they’re really all kind of connected. So I feel like there was some sort of electromagnetic type spiritual current. It was something that was happening with these pyramids that connected.
all of these different countries together around the world, that they are aligned somewhat in the same spaces. And of course, it’s like pointed up towards the heavens. You can see them on maps raised up, you know, pretty high. But if you look at the different points and the different electrical points, I feel like it had to do with their version of electricity. Because if you think about even the pyramids in Egypt, they used to be covered in gold. So I went to Egypt after I’d…
I tried my brain surgery because I saw all these visions and all these things. I was like, maybe I’m supposed to go to Egypt, you know? And so when I went there, everything looked familiar. I felt like deja vu. You know, that’s what I called it back then. But really, it was just memories. I had like all these memories of Egypt. So when I took my first mushroom ceremony, it was totally Egypt. I saw all the Egyptian stuff. I saw all the pyramids.
Even the ones that made my dreams make sense, recurring dreams that I used to have, it just made them all make sense, you know, and who I was and, you know, part of my journey. Things that I had went through in Egypt is, you know, kind of similar things in my life now. Some of the work that I was doing when I was in Egypt in a past life. People believe in that sort of thing. I believe in it and it just made sense.
for me, it connected the dots. But I think a lot of us originated there or had.
Sam Believ (32:57.921)
There’s definitely.
Phoenix (33:03.904)
So what are you going to say?
Sam Believ (33:06.113)
No, there’s definitely something about Egypt and yeah, they…
Phoenix (33:07.808)
Wait.
Sam Believ (33:12.065)
And they say, you know, the first humans originated in sort of that general area. So I don’t know, maybe eventually figure out. But my experience was there was a very clear message that if I go to Egypt, I will get a gift. And it was, I think, more than four years ago now, like five years ago. And I still haven’t gone. So I don’t know. I need to find time. But life is busy. So somebody’s in Egypt, you know.
Phoenix (33:39.616)
It’s an
Sam Believ (33:41.569)
Reach out, invite me.
Phoenix (33:41.984)
Yeah, it’s you know what? I know a few people who do tours and not tours but retreats they take people to Egypt but one thing about Egypt is When one person prays the whole country is praying at the same time. It’s a very very spiritual place It’s the same in Malaysia. It’s like Because I remember my first time being there and it was just this uproar like
5 in the morning, I want to say, or 35 in the morning, and it was still dark and everybody was just this roar and I was like, what is happening? It was like my first night there in Egypt. This was some years ago. And I realized that it was everybody in the whole country praying at the same time, facing the same direction. And I was like, do you know how powerful that is for everybody to be saying the same prayer at the same time?
Phoenix (34:47.526)
me? Can you hear me? That is insane to me to be so connected all together how powerful that energy must be. So when I went into the pyramids because I actually got to go down into one of the pyramids, I think that was one of those eerie is something going on in here type experiences. Like I went inside of one of the tombs.
Sam Believ (34:49.153)
Thank you.
Phoenix (35:16.165)
and to hear the echo around the room, you just feel like it’s hundreds of people in there. Like it just feels very, very eerie. Like you could feel the energy and you’re like completely underground. It’s very intense. So I definitely would say I got some gifts there and then what some of the people told me while I was there.
you know, like people were bowing to me everywhere I went and I was so confused. I was like bowing back thinking it was the culture and it was like, no, they see something in you that you may not see. And I was like, okay. And I had to come home and do even research on that. It’s like, who, who was I? Who were these, who do these people think I am? You know, so that’s a lot of, you definitely will get some, some answers or more questions after those answers. So it’s kind of like a rabbit hole.
Sam Believ (36:09.281)
Yeah, you mentioned many people praying at the same time. One of my crazy dreams is wake up in a world where yesterday everyone had ayahuasca or could be mushrooms as well. But imagine a country or a city where it’s a ceremony and everyone is in the ceremony at the same time. Imagine the energy that would produce. I think it would make waves and go around the globe several times. That’s a pretty exciting thing to imagine.
Phoenix (36:34.275)
for sure.
for sure. That would be so, so beautiful.
Sam Believ (36:41.537)
So tell us about your ayahuasca experience. I know you work with ayahuasca as well. How was it for you?
Phoenix (36:49.219)
So I remember doing ayahuasca in this temple in Mexico and ayahuasca is intense. But I knew that I needed like a, I needed to just, I needed this jolt forward. Cause I felt like I had gotten to this little, you know, this middle space where I was just kind of like, eh, just feeling, not numb, but just feeling kind of like lackluster. And I was like, I need a jolt. I need.
I need a push and so I went to an Ayahuasca ceremony. And Ayahuasca is a little different because it’s like a guided journey. I don’t feel like mushrooms, it’s like this guided journey. I feel like it’s a bunch of different journeys and you pass off to a different guide for each one. Whereas Ayahuasca, I felt like I had the same narrator that had this grandmother sort of vibe or voice.
And it’s also very, very physically intense. You know, like I don’t throw up on mushrooms, but I for sure threw up on ayahuasca. And so I didn’t think I was going to, I was like, nah, you know, I cleaned my system, all this stuff, but it doesn’t matter. And I didn’t throw up until I saw all these layers of old traumas just lifting up off of me of abuse that I didn’t even remember. And…
I don’t know, it was beautiful. It was one of the first times I had gotten to do something for myself, not helping others in the process in a really long time. And it was beautiful, it was challenging, but I was there for the challenge. I think us facilitators were like, all right, give it to me. What do I gotta work on next? So that’s how I kind of went into Ayahuasca, like, tell me what I need to do. What do I need to get rid of? What do I need to work on? Like, give me the direction, I’m here for it.
But it is intense, like I don’t have to ever do ayahuasca again. Honestly. If I never did it again, I feel like I got everything I needed. I had fun, I cried, I laughed harder than I ever laughed in my life. I purged, I did so much in that one ceremony that I just, it was beautiful. That I don’t feel like I even need it again.
Phoenix (39:13.856)
It was so intense for me, but in a great way.
Sam Believ (39:17.985)
That’s too bad, I was about to invite you to Loire, but it’s too bad. But what about that purge? Did you feel that something left you?
Sam Believ (39:31.489)
In that purge, did you feel that this trauma or a part of it left your body when you purged?
Phoenix (39:37.705)
Yeah, I saw it. And that was different. Like I saw, so it was like the traumas would play out. Things I had totally forgot about, I didn’t even remember them. But they literally lifted off of my body and went, it went to like a dust. One by one, it was like 60 abuses, like sexual abuses. I didn’t even remember. It’s just one by one. And that’s when I started throwing up.
was after that.
Sam Believ (40:09.249)
Do you ever miss Purge when you work with mushrooms? Or some kind of physical release?
Phoenix (40:17.8)
I think that there is always a physical release in some way, even if you run into the bathroom. You know, some people may throw up, but it’s very rare people are throwing up just because we have them fast for quite a long time before we do our ceremonies. But yeah, like as far as like the purging, it’s not that I miss the purging because we also do rabe in the beginning. So people are like purging and it’s not in there. It’s…
people are purging the whole time in different ways. It’s just not necessarily the way that always happens during Aya. And so, I don’t like throwing up. I really, really don’t like throwing up, but I will go to the bathroom. We can blow our noses, we can cry. I feel like there’s just so many different ways to purge. So purging is always happening. It’s just different.
Sam Believ (40:51.777)
Yeah.
Sam Believ (41:10.977)
I yawn a lot when I’m working with mushrooms, like a lot a lot. I think that’s also a form of purging, right?
Phoenix (41:15.143)
Me too.
Me too. So the yawning for me happens in the beginning when it’s activating. That’s how I know it’s coming. I just started yawning. You know, either my foot is twitching a little bit or either I start excessively yawning. And I feel like that is your body’s way of sending more oxygen to your brain. And so, but yawning is totally one of the signals for me. A really big signal.
Sam Believ (41:46.977)
Let’s talk a little bit about.
Phoenix (41:47.239)
But I love it because I feel.
Sam Believ (41:51.051)
Let’s talk a little bit about facilitation, the life of a facilitator. And, you know, it’s not all rainbows and butterflies, right? There’s sometimes there, you know, we, our groups on average are 25 people and generally it’s 25 beautiful people. But occasionally there is one or two like very difficult people, like people who maybe not necessarily believe in the work with the medicines. They kind of came because somebody forced them.
What are your experiences with difficult people? And just generally, you know, what complaints do you have about the facility life? Let’s just vent a little bit here.
Phoenix (42:35.077)
Okay, complaint.
My biggest would be when someone says they didn’t feel anything.
yet they were like laying in the dirt or crying or just something like you just be like, are you sure? You know, or, or I tell people because I do kind of similar to how Aya does where after the first, do they do like windows? Like when you guys do Aya, like after the first window closes, you allow people to come in and like get another dose of it. Okay. So.
Sam Believ (43:16.033)
Yeah, yeah, we do two or three cups.
Phoenix (43:19.812)
Okay, so I do that with the mushroom ceremonies. But I got that from Aya because I didn’t want people to ever be able to say, I didn’t have enough, but I didn’t also get the opportunity to get more. And so in my ceremonies, we say, hey, okay, the first window is closed. Basically after it’s activated, people are kind of getting ready to start their journeys. I’ll ask, does anybody feel like they need a bump up? My bump ups are 0 .5. So I have like a bunch of bump ups.
And if you don’t say nothing, you don’t get it. And so the people who don’t say anything, I always tell them, I was like, don’t come to me later and say you didn’t feel anything. If when I offered it to you, you didn’t speak up because maybe that was a part of your journey and a part of your lesson.
Phoenix (44:10.918)
So that part I don’t like when people don’t speak up in the process, but they want to say something later. I don’t have it happen much anymore because in the beginning, that’s part of my rules. It’s like, don’t come to me later and say that you didn’t have enough if you didn’t open your mouth and ask for more. I’m not going to want to hear it because it was your responsibility to say what you need, to ask for what you need. And I’m telling y ‘all you have.
Sam Believ (44:11.201)
So,
Phoenix (44:38.694)
the opportunity to ask for what you need. So I’m not going to listen to you in a, you know, in your job form. When you fill out your information about what happened, I’m going to bypass that. And I’m going to say, well, you didn’t ask what you needed. Maybe that was a part of your lesson. You know, I think that was, that’s my big.
Sam Believ (44:57.185)
That’s a big one for me as well. I don’t know if you do word circles or sharing circles in your facilitation work, but when people start their share by saying, yeah, I didn’t really connect. And then they go ahead and do a five minute share about this amazingly beautiful process of stuff coming up and the realizations and the processes in their body and purging and like so much. But it’s because all of that time.
Phoenix (45:04.645)
Yep.
Sam Believ (45:26.273)
they were expecting some specific kind of kaleidoscopic vision and it didn’t come. It’s like people don’t see forest through the trees, you know, they just get, they super focus on this one specific type of experience and when it doesn’t come, they get frustrated even though they got so much more. You know, this saying, you know, ayahuasca gives you what you need, not what you want. I don’t know if you noticed that with mushrooms as well.
Phoenix (45:31.831)
Thank you.
Yeah.
Phoenix (45:54.98)
It’s exactly.
Sam Believ (45:55.009)
But what else, what else maybe?
Phoenix (45:57.796)
Yeah, but we say the exact same thing. It gives you what you need, not what you want. And so I think another would be people focusing on what happens sometimes is people will focus on other people’s expression of their journey. And they’re like, I want to be like that. But the reason why they’re not getting so deeply into their journeys because they’re so focused on watching everyone else. And sometimes I’d be like, you need to close your eyes. You know, like close your eyes and go inward and focus on yourself because sometimes when you’re just looking around,
you know, trying to see what everybody else is doing, you kind of cut off the signal, in a sense, to your own journey. Because you’re just being nosy. Now, at the end, you know, people, we create our spaces where people can walk around, and it’s very, you know, twinkly and fairy tale -like, and they get to go out in the large, grassy area and just stretch and move. So ours is not just like you say in one space, kind of like a lot of Aya ceremonies are, but…
towards the middle and the end that people have gone through some of the harder parts. They’re able to like walk around and play and do different things. It’s still silent because we found that that transfers a lot when people start talking and it also cuts the signal when people start talking. But I haven’t had a whole lot of complaints. I would say maybe four in 450 people. I might have gotten four.
Complaints that didn’t get those until I asked for a review and say is there anything that you think we should know? You know it’s always like in my review that you didn’t say so I haven’t gotten bad reviews, but it was just you know a no well You know I didn’t get Attention like I felt like I was more advanced than the people that were there You know something that has to do with like ego. I’ve gotten something like that before Or somebody who doesn’t realize that
I was there working on them, but they didn’t know it was me during the process. Cause I float around and a few other of my staff members, all of my staff can’t touch or connect with people. They can only like serve in a sense, tissue, juice, drinks. So if you’re not a facilitator, you can’t actually physically touch people. So it’s only like two or three of us that can physically touch you. So if you were touched, and this is just,
Phoenix (48:23.457)
because you have to be trained to know what you’re doing and be aware. So we know people aren’t getting in trouble or doing the wrong things. But yeah, I’ve gotten three things. I can tell you my, I think it’s four. One was someone was like, I wish I would have gotten more time with Phoenix. People say I’m like her because they don’t know I’m reading the reviews. They think it’s just going to someone else. And I was like, well, you weren’t there to be with me.
You know, like just different things or the type of people that were there were not on my level. I’m more advanced. Be like, you don’t know who is there because everybody comes in their sweatpants for a sleepover. So you don’t know who’s what or who’s at what level. I don’t expose who’s coming. So no, no one knows who anyone is. Another one is the same, like not feeling like they got enough medicine or nothing happened, but.
the group they’ll tell this whole story about what happened same as you. Like that doesn’t make sense I got you on video telling us your whole story about what happened and I think last would be…
Phoenix (49:40.255)
I don’t know, I can’t think of the last one, but I know I’ve gotten those three. I haven’t gotten a lot. Just because I try to get ahead of it in advance. Anything that I felt like was an issue or could be an issue, I’ve changed my program around or my protocols around to make sure that those things don’t happen. So we’ve adjusted quite a bit over the years just to make sure that, hey, we getting ahead of these things.
this doesn’t happen. I think I’ve had one girl who said that she was scared of somebody else, but I think that just had to do with her. And then maybe noise, like it’s too noisy and hearing people hack or cry or whatever. I’ve heard that before, but you’re in a room full of 25, 30 people, you’re hear something.
Sam Believ (50:24.799)
Mm -hmm.
Sam Believ (50:33.569)
Yeah, it’s not easy. It’s not easy to work with psychedelics and all kinds of energies come out and they sometimes get projected on you. But generally, I think we’re at 420 something five star Google reviews now, but we only have two one star reviews. And they’re from people that did not stay till the end. They encountered something difficult. They just kind of…
ran away, you know, in a way because we have our retreats are two ceremonies or four ceremonies or six or ten. So they didn’t stay the entire retreat. But a lot of there’s a lot of people that come with very difficult stories and they can be challenging in the beginning. But by the end of the retreat, everyone is just glowing and flowing. And it’s so satisfying to see. But it’s those people that kind of like gave up and then they they they they have a negative opinion.
Phoenix (51:07.992)
Thank you.
Sam Believ (51:31.329)
but it’s kind of like, you know, the saying, you can lead the horse to water, but you cannot make it drink. And it’s not just the medicine part, it’s also the work that you have to do afterwards. And we talk to people a lot about that. So let’s talk about that a little bit, maybe. What do you think about, how do you describe this? How do you teach people about the work that they need to do after the ceremony and integration? What is your approach?
Phoenix (51:36.06)
can’t drink. Yeah.
Phoenix (51:57.372)
So our ceremonies, our retreats of course are longer, but our ceremonies are two days. So the first day is a ceremony, the second day is integration and like different workshops that we do. So I think the integration part is so, so important because you have to know how to integrate those things into your everyday life that you went through. Otherwise it’s kind of like you went to a ceremony or a retreat, but what do you do with it?
You know, like, what do I do with this now? Right? How do I integrate all these new things and all this new information, this new found life into my life? How do I weave it in? And so we really do a lot of work on that. My last ceremony I did, I ended up coaching probably 15 of them, like 30 minute coaching sessions for four weeks, just to make sure that they were ready to be able to go and do these things on their own.
So they needed a lot of coaching after the ceremony, which is integration for me. The coaching integration is pretty much the same. Let’s see. And then we do an integration group session a month after or three weeks to a month after where we bring people back. We talk about their experiences, how they’ve been incorporating things into their life, what they’ve gone through, what they’ve done. And so that has also been really, really helpful and healing. And then we have, you know, additional.
things that we can provide for them after that. But I think it’s probably the most important thing that you can do after a ceremony. And if you miss out on that part, I think that that puts you at a disadvantage, for sure.
Sam Believ (53:41.601)
I think mushrooms give you a lot of information as well and ayahuasca also it gives you like homework and the difference with ayahuasca that I never had with mushrooms is sometimes when you come back too soon and it didn’t do the homework it will then sort of tough love you into it and be like you know why are you back so soon why didn’t you do anything so it’s kind of like self -managing in a way that you know if you don’t do the work it will be like
give you a very hard experience. It happened to me once and it was very surprising. What do you think about the plant spirits and like what do you think is it that that talks to you through those medicines? What is your paradigm or worldview on how psychedelics work?
Phoenix (54:29.72)
I don’t have the whole entire view outside of my assumptions, which is everything is connected together. You know, when you think about the fungi and you know, that network that’s underground, it kind of looks very similar to the network in our brains. It looks very similar to the internet network when you look at it on a grid. You know, like all of it looks very similar to how it’s connecting everything together. And I feel like if…
this fungi is like connecting trees on one side of the world all the way to the other, that’s some pretty powerful stuff. You know, so I just feel like everything is connected on top of feeling like you’re coming face to face with yourself, you know, with the higher version of yourself or the past life versions of yourself or the current versions of yourself. Like you’re really like with no ego.
with no emotion, you’re literally seeing everything as it is. Who you are, what you’ve been through, what you’re going through, you’re seeing it without the filter of, without the lens that we naturally use, which can have maybe some ego attached to it. I feel like your emotions are wide open. I feel like.
your thoughts, your feelings, everything is open and it’s real. It’s not able to be manufactured in those moments. And so I just, I call it coming face to face with yourself, but that self is also connected to everything around in the universe. So that’s my feelings on it.
Sam Believ (56:12.225)
That’s a good way to explain it. Phoenix, let’s start to slowly wrap up. We’re almost at an hour. Can you tell us a little bit about your book?
Phoenix (56:22.742)
Yeah, my book is called Redefining Strong, A Journey to Finding Yourself, True Healing and Spiritual Recalibration. I wrote it a couple years ago. It’s more of like, it’s my journey. So it’s like, autobiography slash workbook slash, it’s like a directional, like it gives you healing tips through my story. So I use myself as an example and the things that I’ve gone through in my life to show people how to get to from.
point A to point B with some of the techniques that I used. So that’s how my book was written, which is really cool. It’s really easy to read. And yeah, so that was my first book. So it’s been really effective. I still have a lot of copies of it. People still are loving it. So I’m proud of it.
Sam Believ (57:11.937)
Where can people find your book? Is there an audiobook version?
Phoenix (57:13.426)
Mm.
No, but I am doing the audiobook version this year. So that is actually on my list of things to finish because a few people have asked me that same question. I was like, yeah, just do it yourself. I like your boys. Read it. And I was like, OK, I’m going to go ahead and.
Sam Believ (57:31.841)
That’s great. I like to joke, I don’t know how to read because I stopped reading books and switched completely to audiobooks. It’s just so much more convenient. So where can people find your book and where can people find more about yourself?
Phoenix (57:47.315)
My book is on Amazon, but also my new website should be launching in the next week, which will be phoenixwhite .net, but you can also find me on this thesacretselestial .com, as well as my Instagram has the most current updates of everything that I’m doing. My Instagram is at Phoenix White, and that’s the main places that I would say to find me, is those two.
Sam Believ (58:15.809)
Great, Phoenix. Well, thanks a lot for coming on the podcast. I think it was entertaining and I think that people will learn something from it.
Phoenix (58:23.278)
Yeah, for sure. Wait, where are you guys located?
Sam Believ (58:27.969)
We’re located one hour south of Medellin, Colombia.
Phoenix (58:31.856)
Ooh, I haven’t been there yet. I might have to come to a ceremony out there with you guys. Yeah.
Sam Believ (58:36.001)
You might, you might, but I was going to invite you, but you said you don’t want to do ayahuasca anymore, so…
Phoenix (58:41.65)
No, it’s not that I don’t want to do it, it’s that I don’t need to do it. You know? Thank you. Yeah, you were invited to one of our ceremonies if you ever ever out this way and get you.
Sam Believ (58:45.185)
I’m just kidding. You are invited.
Sam Believ (58:53.493)
Where are you? I think you’re kind of all over the place, right? You’re nomadic in your ceremonial.
Phoenix (58:57.266)
Yeah, we travel and we do our ceremonies in different places. So the next one will be in San Diego in September. Our retreat will be in Mexico in November. But we might need to come out to where you guys are and do something.
Sam Believ (59:15.745)
Come to Columbia for sure. The only problem I think legally wise ayahuasca is very legal, but mushrooms are sort of in the gray zone. So I hope it changes. Ayahuasca is legal when you have an indigenous shaman that has a special paperwork. So cool, Phoenix. Thank you so much. And it was a pleasure.
Phoenix (59:17.443)
Yeah.
Phoenix (59:26.851)
Wait, ayahuasca is legal there?
Phoenix (59:34.129)
Okay.
Phoenix (59:41.52)
Yes, nice meeting you. Thank you so much.