In this episode of Ayahuasca Podcast host Sam Believ has a conversation with Rachel Harris.
We talk about the difference between the psychedelic guide and a therapist, psychedelic ubderground in US, Rachel’s New book swimming in the sacred
Find more about Rachel and her books at http://www.swimminginthesacred.com
Transcript
Sam Believ (00:00.957)
Hi guys and welcome to ayah As always with you the host, Sam Believ, the founder of the Lawyra Ayahuasca Retreat. Today we’re joined by Rachel Harris. Rachel is a PhD. She’s a psychologist. She has 40 years of private practice. She’s a prolific researcher, published more than 40 studies in peer review journals. Her books are
listening to ayahuasca and her recent book is swimming in the sacred in her last book she interviews women psychedelic guides in the psychedelic underground and we’re going to talk about rachel her life story her journey and also her latest book rachel welcome
Rachel Harris (00:45.086)
I’m sorry.
Rachel Harris (00:48.584)
Hi, thank you, Sam.
Sam Believ (00:51.157)
Rachel, before we start talking about your book, can you tell us what brought you in that line of work?
Rachel Harris (00:58.862)
Ha ha
Rachel Harris (01:03.562)
You know, when I just want to say something about the recent book, the Swimming in the Sacred, those are the women elders from the psychedelic underground. They’ve been practicing for 30 or 40 years, and they were trained by some of the luminaries in the psychedelic world. And, um, that was in the late sixties and seventies. And I was in California during that time also. And I knew some of those luminaries. I was around,
a good supply of good quality psychedelics. And I chose to go to graduate school and not work underground. And so I knew some of the same people that they knew. I had a lot of similarities in my background, but I went to totally different direction. And so that was how I came to this work to begin with. I mean, the Ayahuasca story is more specific.
And that was after my daughter was launched. She was in her twenties. I was living in Princeton, New Jersey and I wanted to go to a winter escape, to a retreat center that was warm and by the ocean. And I had heard about this place in Costa Rica and I just went to go swimming and get a suntan. And then a day before I was leaving,
The woman organizing the trip called and asked if I wanted to be in the ceremonies. And I didn’t know what she was talking about. I mean, I really hardly looked at the program. Jeremy Narvey was talking. He was there all week and I didn’t recognize who he was. So I, you know, as soon as I realized, Oh, it’s a psychedelic ceremony. I was ready. I mean, my daughter was launched.
You know, I was ready to pick up my old life from the late 60s in California. So that’s how I sort of just fell into it.
Sam Believ (03:03.885)
It’s a great story and I like how your ayahuasca experience seems synchronistic. And in this line of work, you start noticing lots of synchronicities where things just come your way. You know, when you talk about psychedelic underground, for some and for me especially, when I think about underground, I think about like a…
like a dark valley, sorry, dark alley in like a city and something like that. So I know that’s not what it really is, but what is psychedelic underground? How does it look like?
Rachel Harris (03:37.238)
No.
Rachel Harris (03:41.374)
You know, it looks very different depending on how much experience the person has. So, you know, the women I interviewed have more experience in psychedelics than anybody else in modern Western culture. They’ve been working with these medicines for 30, 40 years. I mean, one woman is 90 years old now. So she was in her late 80s when I interviewed her and she was trained by Leo Zeph, who this is a book I recommend it’s on. You can get it free on the MAPS website.
It’s the secret chief and the secret chief revealed and it’s an interview of Leo’s F. So you’re reading his words and she trained with him in the 60s. So, you know, these women go way back and they have decades of experience. So this is a unique underground. It’s not a dark alley. They have medical doctors they’re connected to. They refer to therapists as needed. They are professionals.
But because these medicines were made illegal, they had to work secretly. So the big thing about the underground is that it’s secret.
Sam Believ (04:49.613)
Yeah, it’s not really underground. I understand that. But the word itself makes it makes the imagination go. So it is definitely a misconception and a historical mistake. I believe that great people like this ended up having to hide, you know, their lives work. And hopefully it is being changed now and fixed. But now the problem and you talk about it a lot that we have the
sort of coming up and they’re in a hurry and they don’t necessarily ground themselves in this beautiful experience these elders have accumulated. Can you talk to us a little bit about that?
Rachel Harris (05:32.642)
Well, you know, I presented them at the MAPS conference in last June, 23 in Denver. And this lovely young woman comes up to me and she says, I’m a guide, I’m working in the underground. Oh, that’s wonderful. And how do you do your medical screening? And she said, what’s that? So I really say, don’t go to anyone who does not do comprehensive medical screening.
and don’t lie to them because people lie about their medical histories. Don’t do that. This is a serious thing. And so the women I interviewed, you know, have, well, one woman has 16 pages of medical questions that she has people fill out. So they’re professionals and they’re working with consultants who are medically trained. And if the, the people doing the screening are not doing that level of interviewing, don’t go to them.
So there’s a, I really say, look, it’s a buyer beware market. There’s a wide range of people, so-called working guides in the underground, but be selective, be careful. And I tend to like people who have, I tend to wanna work with people who have served apprenticeships, who have been trained for years. And the concept of an apprenticeship is not well known in our Western culture, but…
For instance, I’m staying at a friend’s place in California and he’s in the jungle in Peru now as we speak. So, you know, I’m escaping from my main island where I don’t spend the winter. And this is a dear friend of mine and he’s been working with Shipipo Shaman. It’s now seven years. That’s an apprenticeship. It’s a very long time.
Sam Believ (07:28.957)
Mm-hmm.
Rachel Harris (07:31.23)
And one of the women I interviewed, for instance, she said, she also trained with a different Shipibo shaman. And she said, after about six years, he said to her, you’re ready to sing in ceremony. And she said, no, I’m not. And she sat right next to him. And this is sort of a tradition for the apprentices. She sat next to him. And as he sang in ceremony, she knew the Icarus. She sang a nanosecond right behind him.
And then they could talk, they could whisper in the ceremony, in vivo, about what they were seeing and the impact of the Icaros. So she had that kind of direct supervision and training. That’s what I look for in a guide.
Sam Believ (08:14.754)
Mm-hmm.
That’s beautiful. I have a personal story about people lying in the questionnaires. One of the questions in our preparation is about the history of psychosis. And recently, we had a person that obviously said no, no to history of psychosis. But in the word circles, then later sharing in the story, it came out that he had psychosis and it was I had to talk him talk to him about that.
Yeah, people unfortunately have secrets and yet Titus and here in Columbia, the shamans are called Titus. And our Titus, he also travels with his apprentice and he’s a Mexican guy. He sold all his possessions and basically dedicated his life to learning that craft. And it definitely takes a long time and a certain amount of talent and good intentions.
Rachel Harris (08:55.051)
Yes.
Sam Believ (09:15.357)
But yeah, I do notice a lot of times now, and it happens to us as well. Personally, I’m not a shaman. I’m not trying to be a shaman. Maybe eventually someday if I get a calling for it, but we get people oftentimes that come and after one ceremony or one retreat, they want to be a shaman. And what I like to say is don’t confuse an invitation to study at the university, like, you know, this letter that you received that you’ve been approved to study.
Rachel Harris (09:30.765)
Yes.
Sam Believ (09:45.157)
don’t confuse it with an actual diploma and call yourself a shaman because in between that it’s a there’s a long period of training what do you think about this concept of rushed shamans and the sort of new generation wanting to be shamans and just speeding the process
Rachel Harris (10:03.75)
I love your answer. It’s very close to the answer I got from one of the women elders. And she said, if you feel like you’ve received a calling, it’s a calling to begin to study. It’s not a calling to lead ceremony. So it’s really the same thing you’re saying. And I think that’s a great answer. I think our culture doesn’t really appreciate what an apprenticeship is.
and how long and how, how comp, what level of personal development and skill is involved in working with these medicines? And we don’t really respect it. I mean, let’s be honest about it. We have to learn more about what it means to work with these medicines and to learn from them and with them. I even interviewed one woman, this is not one of the elders.
And she had been to one of the retreat centers in Peru. And she said, well, everybody’s doing a dieta. So I thought I should do one too. And I said, well, are you working with a shaman? Did the shaman prescribe the dieta? She said, no, just everyone’s doing it. So I thought I would do it. That’s not how it works. I mean, she’s missing that link, that there’s a transmission and an initiation and that how a lineage works.
So we’re just not very respectful as a culture. And it’s really kind of sad for me, frankly. But I could add one thing about one of the women, this is the one with the 15 or 16 page medical interview. She said, because she knows people lie about their medical history. And I have to say, when I get a driver’s license, I lie about my weight. So, you know, I’m not.
Sam Believ (11:31.997)
Mm-hmm.
Rachel Harris (12:01.682)
I’m not pure about this. You know, in a medical situation, I tell the truth, but there are other times I lie. But anyway, she said, she asks them, what medications have you been prescribed? And then she recognizes if they’ve been prescribed an antipsychotic, that means they’ve had serious psychiatric problems. And so she has a couple of different ways of getting to the truth of the medical history.
Sam Believ (12:31.733)
It’s a bit like cross questioning I believe they do in police like to ask you questions to then lead you to sneakily give out the truth. Well regarding the hurry that we have in our culture I think we can’t really judge people specifically I think it’s an issue of a culture at large we’re sort of know that okay if you go to the medical school you study certain amount of years you spend certain amount of money you get certain amount of
Rachel Harris (12:37.175)
Yeah, right.
Sam Believ (13:00.867)
to deal with the uncertainty of you know shamanist world where you know you sit somewhere for a long time and 10 years passed and then you get some result but it’s I think people go to it for a wrong reason I think shamanism being a shaman is a blessing and a curse and it’s actually not something you should really want to do it’s something that’s normally is
Sam Believ (13:30.237)
higher presence or spirit. But talking about that, now you mentioned that it’s very important for guides that get into work with psychedelics, let’s say, psychedelic assistance, psychotherapy, it’s important for them to learn about plant medicines or psychedelics and experience themselves first to a certain extent and not just get into it.
with only knowledge but not knowing what it actually is.
Rachel Harris (14:08.218)
You know, the women guides did years of work on themselves with medicines and with psychotherapy to kind of, to clear their own systems. Not that it’s, not that we’re ever completely clear and clean, but to do their own work. And you know, you want this in someone working with these medicines. And I want to clarify that these women are not therapists. They do.
preparation and they do debriefing or minimal integration, somewhat akin to the research teams, a couple of sessions maybe. But if somebody really needs therapy, they refer them to a licensed therapist, someone who is familiar with the medicines and knows how to work with the experiences. And that’s a longer term process. I mean, when we talk about the…
the limitations in the North American culture. There’s another limitation that I like to talk about. And that is that we, in the States, went for psychedelic experiences. But in Europe, they work with psycholytic, which means smaller doses, but clearly a journey. So not a microdose. Smaller doses where the person can be, can talk to the therapist. So they’re not…
they’re not getting, you know, swamped with the experience. And the purpose is not to get to a mystical experience, but that the experience is grounded in ongoing therapy. So the system may look like one journey a month and two therapy sessions a week. So you can see that the medicine experience is well integrated into the therapeutic process.
That’s a whole different way of working with medicines that we have not begun to look at or even study. And yes, it would be more expensive. And, you know, we are because of the great need, we’re trying to research the most cost effective approach. But I think it’s important for us to know there are other approaches as well. That are not the same.
Rachel Harris (16:30.482)
And we have just certain this is still being used in Europe today, but, Oh, I don’t really know anyone who’s doing this in the States.
Sam Believ (16:39.961)
It’s great that you mentioned the dosage and the strength of the experience because the shaman we currently work with, he is great at finding that dose to get people
to this productive space where they get the healing, but not to blow their mind away so that they get sometimes even more traumatized than before and get the sort of psychedelic PTSD. And a lot of times we have to deal with a lot of impatience when people come and they want it immediately, they want it now and they…
Rachel Harris (17:09.162)
Yes.
Sam Believ (17:17.201)
they want the strong experience, but I believe that they be careful what you wish for because when they do get there and they do go very deep, they sometimes regret it. I’ve never heard this word before, psycholytic, but it’s interesting. Maybe something in between psycholytic and psychedelic, maybe there’s a gold deluxe zone where you get a strong experience, but it’s not too strong. My question to you.
Rachel Harris (17:43.21)
So let me just say this is one of those mysteries for the shaman to pour the medicine appropriately for each person. And I generally hear from people who are older that they need less medicine. And certainly I do believe the more experienced someone is with the medicine, they know how to get to those spaces. They sort of…
They don’t need as much to break through, so to speak. And some people are more sensitive and able to shift states of consciousness more easily than other people. So they require less medicine.
Sam Believ (18:26.457)
It is very mysterious because you can sometimes have a 250 pound, six foot five guy have half a cup and be completely blown away. And yeah, and like 80 pound tiny lady drink three cups and not really connect. I personally am one of those sensitive people. I can get there on half a cup. I think maybe over time you get kind of like a map or you find that specific.
Rachel Harris (18:38.55)
It’s not by weight.
Sam Believ (18:55.937)
mind state where it’s easier for the medicine to enter you. But it is a mystery because from a pharmacological point of view, it’s really hard to explain why is that way and how come those two people can have that kind of connection and next night they can switch and it can go. So but Shaman, a practice Shaman, he would, a person comes to the altar, he looks at them
Rachel Harris (19:14.219)
Yes.
Sam Believ (19:24.145)
and then just pours the cup and somehow he knows what they need, not what they want but what they need always.
Rachel Harris (19:30.486)
That’s part of the mystery, isn’t it?
Sam Believ (19:32.913)
Yeah. So obviously you have interest and explored both the scientific approach and the therapeutic approach to psychedelics and also the more traditional more shamans elders kind of approach to it. What do you think about new age kind of psychedelics or versus traditional plant medicines? For example, ketamine versus ayahuasca. What
What do you think is the difference? What’s the use case?
Rachel Harris (20:02.986)
these are two totally different experiences and they’re really not comparable. Ketamine is not even a psychedelic. It’s a dissociative. It’s very helpful if someone is suffering with treatment resistant depression or suicidal. I mean, you know, the psychiatric drugs can take three weeks to begin to work and if someone’s really suffering and at risk for suicide,
Three weeks is a very dangerous time length and ketamine can break somebody out of that in an afternoon now That’s amazing. I mean psychiatry has to rethink everything about drugs and treatment because of because of ketamine and some of the psychedelics But ayahuasca is completely different. I mean you never know What your experience is going to be and you know, even if you’re very
You know, I did my first ayahuasca ceremony in 05 and I’m terrified every time I go to a ceremony and I never know what’s going to happen. So it’s not like it can be prescribed exactly for a certain diagnosis. We just never know. So it’s really impossible to compare them.
Sam Believ (21:21.981)
Yeah.
Sam Believ (21:25.989)
Yeah, there’s a lot of variety in what we have, even with plant medicines, there’s many, and I keep discovering more, meaning stumbling upon them. Personally, of course, we focus on ayahuasca because I think it’s a very complete psychedelic with sort of everything you might expect, both from.
healing and spiritual journey. So you mentioned that you’ve tried ayahuasca before in that retreat in, was it Costa Rica?
Rachel Harris (22:01.715)
The first ceremony I went to was in Costa Rica and the shaman were from Ecuador, so they were Ecuadorian. I think they were from the Shuar tribe.
Sam Believ (22:08.466)
Mm-hmm.
Sam Believ (22:12.775)
Can you talk to us a little bit about your own iOS experience? How was it? Or maybe anything interesting you’ve learned?
Rachel Harris (22:20.814)
Well, you know, what has not been researched is people’s experience with loved ones who have died. And so my very first experience, I got to talk to my father again at the end of his life. He had died six years before that. And I got to re-experience my last conversation with him. So it was this incredible reunion.
And at the time of his dying, I had an out-of-body experience in the sense that I sort of went with him as he was leaving. And it terrified me. And so I brought my, I recognized what it was right away, and I brought myself back down, grounded myself, sat down, and did grounding, had my feet on the floor, and looked around me. But I.
I was afraid if I went with him I would die also and of course I was I was it was 20 years ago I was healthy I was healthy
Rachel Harris (23:29.622)
But in the first ayahuasca ceremony, I was able to travel with him and to go with him across what’s usually called the River Styx. But for me, I experienced this as a dark void, a starry night. And it was really wonderful to have that resolution and to say goodbye to him again. And that was just extremely therapeutic. And I’ve had…
A lot of people, more with ayahuasca than any other medicine, tell me they were able to talk to someone who had died or someone who had committed suicide, and they were able to talk to them and understand what happened and to resolve their, any feelings of guilt and loss. It’s this wonderful reunion opportunity. And ayahuasca is, I mean, it is the vine of the dead. I mean, it’s very specific for.
crossing that, you know, crossing into the death realm. I mean, an interesting thing happened for me because as I started writing the book, interviewing the women, I realized I had never done the protocol that everybody, that the research teams are using, the standard protocol with music and earphones and eye shades and lying down under, I had just never done that.
because I had done psychedelics in the 60s, we were always out in nature. We had a spiritual approach to it, but we were on the top of a ridge, a mountain in Big Sur. It was always gorgeous, but it was about nature. And so I arranged to do an MDMA session with one of the elders. And I thought, well, this’ll be fun. MDMA is heart opening and…
fills you with oxytocin, it should be a wonderful experience, if not outright fun. I went right to an ayahuasca place. My MDMA session was all about dying. And I, you know, how do I understand that? I think it’s just because I have the express train to the ayahuasca territory. So it was very therapeutic for me in the sense of working with my own end of life issues.
Rachel Harris (25:54.126)
and mortality, but it was not the fun experience that I was looking forward to. So, you just never know how your system’s going to respond to a journey. And Ayahuasca has a pretty strong imprint in me over these last 20 years or so.
Sam Believ (26:16.413)
Thank you for sharing that. And what you mentioned about talking to diet relatives because we do receive about 700 people a year. It’s a recurring theme, which is very interesting. But what’s very mysterious is that people not only talk to diet relatives and sort of make peace, but sometimes they get specific instructions to let’s say talk to other family members and tell them something
no way they could have known and it sort of freaks people out. So I no longer think it’s just a product of your imagination. I think that there definitely is a connection and few episodes ago I interviewed the Mary Taliano and she’s a basically a person that guides people in their end of life process people who are who are dying of cancer and she uses psychedelics as well to help them and
There’s there was I don’t know if you know anything about it, and I would be very curious to know if you do but in ancient Greece they consumed this psychedelic called Kikion which Which was once a year sort of Event and but their motto I believe was if you die before you die you don’t die when you die so it’s kind of like using psychedelics as a Rehearsal for death and sort of
learning how to navigate that space. What do you think about all that?
Rachel Harris (27:50.858)
that this is an ancient tradition in Eleusis. And I think it’s the name of the book, it’s Journey to Eleusis or Journey, something like that. And so they have found that there are remnants of plants that were mixed with the wine. And it was an initiation process to deal with people’s mortality fears.
Sam Believ (27:55.235)
Mm-hmm.
Sam Believ (28:01.349)
illusion mystery.
Rachel Harris (28:19.714)
that are classic. I mean, you know, we never know how we’re going to deal with death and there is real preparation. And so this was done in a sacred secret setting and it was the women who mixed the plants with the wine and prepared the Kikion. So it’s very interesting that it’s a female tradition. And I, you know, this is, I mean, I think that MDMA experience, it wasn’t fun, but it was another.
psychedelic experience that I’ve had that is really good preparation. We’ll see if it works. You know, I’m not quite ready to go, but you know, we never, my friend of mine calls it the final exam, how we deal with our own mortality. So, you know, we can’t really predict how we’re going to be when we’re faced with it. But, you know, I had a good friend of mine who had spent years following the Grateful Dead. And so this was, you know, this was in the 60s and 70s.
And so this was, you know, this was not a spiritual setting. Well, maybe they thought it was, but it was, it was a rock concert. And that was, but when he sat with a doctor who basically told him, you have a year to live, his response was, I’m ready to go. I did a lot of acid when I was younger. The doctor has sort of taken a back, but that was, and that was his real position. And that’s how he spent that last year. He was
He accepted it, he built a beautiful dining room table for his wife and he was ready to go. And it was from those early experiences with acid. Now I just recently had lunch with one of the people who was years, you know, 50 years ago involved with the Grateful Dead and, you know, she was talking about those old times and asked if I had ever gone to a concert.
And see, this is how I’m different from these women elders. I said, no, all those people, all that noise, I would be like, keep it down. Let’s have a little quiet here. I could not have tripped on anything in the middle of a rock concert. So, you know, these women elders have been everywhere in the history of psychedelics.
Sam Believ (30:37.353)
Mm-hmm. Good.
Rachel Harris (30:39.002)
And the theme of working with death and dying is really pronounced. And so it’s NYU who’s doing psilocybin with terminal cancer patients. And you can look up on YouTube, Tony Bosis. He’s the one to look for who’s been very active in that work and talks about it with great passion for the spiritual experience preparation for dying.
Sam Believ (31:06.897)
You mentioned women elders and when you sort of went into the psychedelic underground, why have you chosen to interview women specifically?
Rachel Harris (31:18.87)
Well, you know, since I really come from my own personal relationship with a plant spirit, not that I understand this, but clearly this is my own deep experience, I felt that the women had more intimate relationships with the medicines. And I had interviewed a couple of the men.
And, you know, one of the men said, you’re right to just interview women. They know more about suffering than the men do, partly because they’ve had their periods most of their lives. And I thought, well, that’s a really interesting, um, perspective. I hadn’t really thought of. But he was, he, he said, the women are less likely to get in between the person and the medicine, which is, I don’t know if you know that phrase, but they’re less likely to get in the way of the.
clients own relationship to the medicine. So, you know, I did a study that was published in a journal of psychoactive drugs in 2012, where I interviewed people who had at least one ayahuasca experience in North America. And in preparation for doing that data collection, I talked to one of the elders. This is even before I…
Sam Believ (32:18.877)
Mm-hmm.
Rachel Harris (32:42.826)
had a dream about the swimming in the sacred book. And I asked her, what should I include in the interview? And she said, ask them, do you have an ongoing relationship with the spirit of ayahuasca? Now that came from a woman elder, and that’s the kind of sensitivity to an ongoing relation. And 80% of the people I interviewed said, no, 75%.
said yes, they had an ongoing relationship where they could connect to the spirit of ayahuasca outside of ceremony, just through dreams, through meditation, just being quiet, just asking for help. It was a connection that was permanent basically. And that’s where the title of the book comes from, Listening to Ayahuasca. That was my experience as well, where I heard
instructions, literally heard a voice.
Sam Believ (33:48.545)
Yeah.
Rachel Harris (33:50.551)
So that’s what led to the women.
Sam Believ (33:54.837)
I understand what it is you’re describing with the connection to the spirit.
You know, I drank ayahuasca with both tithes, which are male shamans and maimas, which are female shamans. I had great experience with female shamans as well. It’s one thing I can definitely say about women is women know more about emotions naturally. They’re just more in tune with those kinds of things. And if my wife would be a good example,
Sam Believ (34:32.303)
before she ever tried ayahuasca she had this talent to know who is a good person and who is not which is which is kind of shamanic in itself it’s very interesting so I definitely I definitely agree that there’s some special connection and you know ayahuasca being a feminine spirit as it says you know normally described as a grandmother and that’s how it feels lots of times so I think it kind of makes sense
Talking about guides and ceremony or shamans, what do you think is the biggest distinction or what’s the difference in between, let’s say, a therapist that gives you psychedelics and an actual guide and what is the role of a guide in ceremony from your point of view?
Rachel Harris (35:20.534)
Yeah, let me just say something. I was on a panel with Jeremy Narby and he very clearly corrected me that there are a number of tribes that consider ayahuasca a grandfather ayahuasca. So, Jeremy knows and I just didn’t know about those tribes but in North America, the colloquial is grandmother ayahuasca but Jeremy takes offense at that.
that it certainly is considered a masculine spirit in many situations. And I recommend his recent book on plant teachers, where he interviews a shaman, and there’s this wonderful description of the relationship with plant teachers and the spirits of the plants. It’s a small book and it’s mostly an interview and it’s an important contribution. Now I forget your question.
Sam Believ (36:19.225)
It was about guide versus therapist and what role of the guide.
Rachel Harris (36:19.27)
because I wanted to make that correction. Oh, how is it different? You know, the big difference is, yeah, you know, I just wrote, I’m presenting at Harvard Divinity School this Saturday, and so I just wrote a paper and I quoted Bessel van der Kolk, who’s the trauma psychiatrist from Boston. And lo and behold, he’s been very involved in psychedelics since the 60s.
And he basically said therapists should say very little during the ceremonies. They should, I think he says something, he plays a tape of a ceremony therapy session. And he says, the therapists say nothing that’s worthwhile or important. They’re mostly saying, uh-huh, I understand. Yeah. Go with that. I mean, it’s very, very little. And
You know, therapists are not trained to keep their mouth shut. So this is a whole different way of being. And, uh, it’s very different from the prep sessions and the, the post-ceremony sessions. So I really don’t think therapists are actually needed during the ceremony. I don’t have any problem with the women elders, not being therapists. Um, it’s really the guide. What you want is a guide who has a lineage and supervision.
and lots and lots of experience. So that they know intuitively from their own experience how to follow the person in their navigation. After the ceremony, when it comes to integration, then I think that’s about therapy. And this business of one ayahuasca session is worth 10 years of therapy. I don’t buy that.
There are plenty of people who have had lots of ayahuasca ceremonies who are still jerks, men and women. I don’t want to name names, but I’m sure everyone can think of someone. So I had one guy, early 40s, he said he believed that until after years of drinking ayahuasca, he realized his personal relationships were screwed up as they’d always been. And so he went to a therapist.
Rachel Harris (38:43.366)
And he said, now I’m really working on my relationships. I’m making great progress. I think the ayahuasca experience helped me, but I needed the therapy to really clean up how I am in relationships. So I think, you know, this is one person’s testimonial, but I think therapy makes a big difference. So it’s the post-ceremony sessions that a therapist is needed.
Sam Believ (39:10.817)
I came up with an analogy, maybe you will like it, but it definitely suits the story you just described and many others that come through our doors. Therapy is like, if you take an analogy of like coal mining, you know, or mining or digging a cave, therapy is a pickaxe and you’re going slowly, but it’s in a very organized manner. Yeah.
Rachel Harris (39:33.057)
A pickaxe.
Sam Believ (39:35.649)
an organized matter and you can make a nice neat tunnel but it’s very slow. Ayahuasca or other strong mega doses of psychedelics is a dynamite and you make a big explosion and then it’s a little messy so then once again take a pickaxe take a shovel and clear it out so this is the integration or the therapy from my perspective but if you just keep exploding dynamite and turning this
rubble into powder it’s not going to make it any better. So I personally believe that the psychedelics, responsible use of psychedelics followed up by therapy or integration is a match made in heaven because one or another are great but not complete. So that’s what I’ve been observing and obviously I’m not a therapist and but we try and do our best in providing people with
container to actually integrate and process the information they got out of their experiences. Something you mentioned that, you know, it’s about the flow of information when you get a therapist and he’s talking in the therapy, sorry, together with psychedelics, right? It’s you’re in such a suggestible state that any wrong word can put a person in a totally different trajectory. So
Rachel Harris (40:51.863)
Yes.
Sam Believ (40:55.841)
We’re very conscious of that. For example, here at Lawyra, we always say the flow information should be from the medicine to the people and then to facilitators. And all we need to do is teach them how to navigate that space, but not teach them or fill them up with some kind of philosophy or belief system, because it will stick 100%. If you use a certain terminology, then people get…
get into that, that’s those states. So yeah, I think I’m talking more than you do. So it’s not nice. Let’s go back to.
Rachel Harris (41:36.494)
I actually like the mining example. I think that’s pretty good.
Sam Believ (41:42.233)
Well, one of my talents, and I don’t have many, is coming up with analogies. Yeah, so all of those guides you interview, does any of them, so for people to get the little sort of preview into your book and get interested, can you tell maybe a story or tell us about one of the guides that comes to mind that maybe will want people to buy the book and read it?
Rachel Harris (41:48.622)
analogies.
Rachel Harris (42:18.001)
You know…
Rachel Harris (42:22.786)
They pretty much have similar positions on, and I think you stated this earlier, that if somebody’s coming to them, and they said they’re now getting phone calls where people sort of wanna order up a mystical experience. I wanna come and do a session with you and I wanna have a mystical experience. Can you guarantee that? So they have to deal with these kinds of phone calls. But what they say is if someone is returning, wanting to return again and again,
for the experience, for the sensational experience, that they don’t work with them. What they’re looking for is that the person is transformed in their life. And if they don’t see that beginning to happen, they don’t continue to work with them just for the sensation seeking of psychedelic realms. So they’re looking for not symptom reduction, the way the research…
teams are looking for psychiatric symptom reduction. They’re looking for a much broader perspective of how does the person relate to their life? What are they bringing back into their community to contribute? How have they changed in terms of their values and priorities? So they’re looking for bigger changes. It’s a much broader perspective about how the person
is in their life. And it’s to the extent of, it’s, and I had a quote from Anne Shulgin, who was certainly one of the elders, but not, she’s Sasha Shulgin’s wife. I mean, these people are both dead now, but these are luminaries in psychiatric, in psychedelic history. And Anne said, you know, to say yes to everything, to be able to meet everything that happens in life.
good and bad, and to say yes to it. So a certain kind of Buddhist equanimity, how to accept what happens in life equally, whether it’s wonderful or really challenging, that’s a transformation in perspective. That’s a different way of being in your life. So the underground women were looking for those kinds of existential changes in the person.
Rachel Harris (44:52.094)
and how they relate to life.
Sam Believ (44:58.257)
So I had to mute my microphone as it got a little noisy here. When you talk a lot about, obviously, this disconnect in between the traditional research world and new upcoming ways to do healing with psychedelics and the old underground approach to it. So do you have any ideas about how we can mend this shift or maybe?
How can we marry the two worlds together?
Rachel Harris (45:31.874)
Well, I think the research teams should have consulted with the elders and they still can. The research teams could connect with the elders and interview them and give them more of a voice in developing new studies. So I think that’s one thing that could happen. But you know, the research teams are mostly men. And
and they’re not inclined to ask the women for help when they really should. So I think, I don’t know how to mend this because so much is happening so quickly. And I know a handful of people who are finding their own way to elders in the community and seeking mentorship.
And so that’s what I look for. And I did an interview with someone just the other day who has really worked hard on herself with medicines and she’s been in different kind of therapeutic training programs and she’s really diving in deep. And I only know a handful of women who are working like that. A lot of the therapists…
are doing a one or two week training program with ketamine maybe, or they’re doing an online longer program with psychedelics, but they’re not really getting the experience they need. So I would really say to the therapists working in psychedelic assisted therapy, one way to bridge is to get more experience and to look for people in your community who
20 years or more and ask for consultation and mentorship.
Sam Believ (47:32.481)
Definitely and researchers.
Rachel Harris (47:33.846)
And you know what, because I’m retired now, but I spent most of my career as a licensed psychologist and a therapist. And I have to say, I think this is kind of, the therapists have an inflated sense of, well, I’m a licensed therapist, I can do this work. And legally they can do the integration work, but they don’t really understand what they’re working with. And I think…
I really recommend more experience and more study with the medicines.
Sam Believ (48:10.621)
So if any of the researchers are listening, listen up.
Rachel Harris (48:15.626)
I don’t think they’re listening. I’m sorry, Sam. I can pretty much assure you they’re not listening.
Sam Believ (48:21.457)
Well, you know, universe works in funny ways. You never know. Maybe I’ll make a short video and they will find it in their, in their Instagram. But if they are listening, you know, pay attention, you know, let’s find balance. There’s, there’s use in both. And you talk a lot about sort of underground versus the modern approach, but also, let’s not forget the traditional approach because
Rachel Harris (48:26.986)
Yeah.
Sam Believ (48:49.761)
There’s been tribes and people who worked on psychedelic medicines for thousands of years. And they also are being ignored because they think that they’re only now being discovered. But like what about all this work that has been done for generations and generations? We should listen to, everyone should listen to everyone. There is merit to.
new technologies and new research and we need it but there’s also merit to both practical experience of psychedelic underground and also the traditional shamanistic lineages and yeah we need to find a way to bring it all together in a beautiful union.
Rachel Harris (49:34.782)
Well, I can give you a story of a failure. And that is that there was an attempt, there was an interest in doing an ayahuasca study using indigenous shaman. And, you know, the problem is the medicines are always different. Every brew of ayahuasca is different. So how do you get it standardized? And so the way the researchers in Spain, and Brazil have done it is they freeze dried.
ayahuasca so they have a standard capsule. So when the shaman realized that the ayahuasca was going to be in the form of freeze-dried ayahuasca taken in a capsule form, they said they wouldn’t do the study. The spirit is not in those capsules. So you see the different perspectives from the two different sides. There’s a big gulf. And so much about
what the indigenous shaman do is outside the Western cosmology. As Westerners, it’s very hard for us to understand how the Ikaros are channeling healing and how to be trained to do that. I mean, the indigenous shaman really have a totally different cosmology.
So there really is a big gap, you know, and…
Rachel Harris (51:10.226)
You know, what I would say to people interested in ayahuasca is find, find someone, find an indigenous shaman who’s probably from a family of shamans or who’s grown up in that world. And, and the healing potential is inexplicable. I mean, I don’t understand how it works and it’s amazing. And I’ve, I can say like many people,
that I’ve really benefited from working with initiated indigenous shamans.
Sam Believ (51:47.293)
Well, you’ve just described my shaman because he’s exactly those things. And yeah, we were able to deliver this healing to lots of people, which is very exciting. And yeah, he’s Colombian. Actually, their tribe is 50% in Colombia, 50% in Ecuador, but he just happened to be ended up on a Colombian side.
Rachel Harris (52:11.519)
Mm-hmm.
Sam Believ (52:11.641)
So very similar probably to what you have experienced in Costa Rica. I’m an optimist, you know, I do believe that the world is changing and maybe 10 years from now, things might be different and we will get better and more mindful research or, you know, I think that, you know, the spirit and the, the higher, higher consciousness, something will, will guide us and figure it out, you know, and sometimes it comes through.
through people and their own journeys with the medicine, but the change is happening. It’s starting, it starts to get perceived and plant medicines is one of the ways that the change comes from. So I’m very hopeful. Rachel, what would your, you know, this interview is coming, we’re starting to wrap up. So what would your…
suggestions be to people. Any parting words, any recommendations?
Rachel Harris (53:15.662)
Well, you know, I mean, obviously I’m enthusiastic. I have to sort of have to watch how enthusiastic I am. And I have to confess the advice I just gave to therapists is really illegal advice. When I say get more experience, I am saying to therapists go out and use illegal drugs. I mean, it’s an awkward position to be in, but I also wanna take a minute and just say there are real risks. And you mentioned earlier,
You know, you don’t want to traumatize people by overloading them in an ayahuasca ceremony. And this is about dosage. And people can be harmed with any of these medicines. And really with any pharmacological medicines, there are adverse effects. But one of the things I would say is, I had a phone call.
years ago from a woman who had been with a traveling indigenous shaman and after the first night she was highly anxious and really scared about how anxious she was and The shaman said well, you know come to this the net the ceremony the next night That’s that she was harmed that was she should have stopped
So be very careful about if you’re in trouble after ceremony. Don’t necessarily go do another one, even though that is often the advice. Sometimes you just have to stop. And it’s Jules Evans. If you look him up, he’s the one who’s writing about adverse effects. That there are people and you know, when I talk to people who have been in this psychedelic community all their lives 40, 50 years.
They all know someone who never came back quite right and whose life was changed. So this is a really serious kind of thing. So this is part of why I say to people, be very careful that harm can happen. And you’re right, people can be traumatized by a psychedelic session. And I’ve seen a number of people like that where it really has taken them years to recover and get their life back on track. And some people don’t recover.
Rachel Harris (55:39.518)
and they’re just not quite the same. So, you know, I’m ending with maybe a little downside, but a balance to some of my own personal natural enthusiasm.
Sam Believ (55:51.525)
No, it’s not, it’s not a, it’s very important to mention that. And I think it’s a great piece of information. I just received the message today from one of our previous customers, or as we like to call them, patients. And he said he went to some other place and they gave them more medicine and he loved it and had the mystical experience and stuff like that. And…
He sort of suggested to me that we should give people more medicine. The issue is that it has to be very responsible because for let’s say any additional 10% more mystical experiences induced per group, you will then start getting another 10% on the, on the bottom side of the group that, that go too far and get traumatized. And then when they go back home, they, they try to fall asleep and they feel like they’re in ayahuasca again.
So I understand that very well. And it’s a very difficult thing to navigate as a facilitator because you have people who want more but they don’t really know what they, they don’t understand what they want. It’s kind of like you have a sick person coming to ER and you’re a doctor and they tell you, give me two ccs of such and such drug. That’s just not how it works. You come.
Rachel Harris (57:05.826)
That’s correct.
Rachel Harris (57:16.588)
No.
Sam Believ (57:17.485)
and you get what is given to you by somebody who knows what they’re doing. So we, the amount of times I say word patience and preparation, the first 24 hours when people just arrive here is probably like 50 times. And then another 10 times it’s said by our shaman because patience, the healing will come. It’s a lot of times it’s very subtle. People want to see visions, but it’s not about visions. It’s about so much more than that.
So it’s, I understand what you’re saying and I completely agree with you. We gotta be very careful. We gotta ground ourselves in tradition, trust, have a lot of patience and good things will come. So yeah, don’t just go away taking, go around taking huge doses of stuff you’re not sure about. So this is very important. Thank you. Thank you for mentioning it.
Rachel Harris (58:11.83)
And I also want to say in some indigenous tribes, the patients don’t drink the ayahuasca, the shaman drinks. So it’s not about the drug.
And people need to, it’s a really different way of understanding how this works.
Sam Believ (58:27.517)
Well, uh…
Sam Believ (58:34.333)
this would be taking it to the next level. I can imagine the next group comes over and we just tell them, sorry guys, you’re not drinking, only Shaman is gonna drink. So just sit around. So yeah, we gotta find the balance. Rachel, where can listeners find more about you? Where can they find and purchase your book, Swimming in the Sacred?
Rachel Harris (58:43.97)
Hehehe
Rachel Harris (58:57.258)
Well, you know, it’s on it’s on Amazon, of course. And I have websites for each book, the listening to ayahuasca.com and swimming in the sacred.com and they can email me through those websites.
Sam Believ (59:14.393)
Rachel, thank you so much for spending time here with us. I think it was really interesting. I learned something today. Guys, you’re listening to ayah Please leave us a like and subscribe to us wherever it is you’re listening to this episode.
Nothing in this episode is medical advice, so it’s for informational and educational purposes only.
Rachel Harris (59:46.986)
Thank you, Sam.
Sam Believ (59:48.606)
Thank you.