In this episode of AyahuascaPodcast.com host Sam Believ has a conversation with Oliver Glozik on the topics of rising popularity of Ayahuasca, mental health crisis and psychedelic renaissance.
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Transcript
Sam Believ: You’re listening to ayahuasca podcast.com.
Hi guys, and welcome to ayahuasca podcast.com. As always, with you, the host, and believe today we’re joined once again by Oliver Glick. This is his third time on this podcast and welcome Oliver. And what are the topics for the day?
Oliver Glozik: Thank you very much for having me. And today’s topic is a lot about how ayahuasca is gaining popularity in the west, the benefits from it, the drawbacks as well.
And yeah, how the whole renaissance of psychedelic revolution is happening once again. And also the mental health crisis that we are in most of the part, most of the western parts of the world.
Sam Believ: Okay, so what we have on our hands right now is on one side, a mental health crisis, which is, I believe some statistics go anywhere between 20 to 30% of people in Western society, north America, Europe, that have some form of mental ailment, something like depression, anxiety the conventional.
Medical establishment doesn’t seem to have any solutions. The antidepressants, they only temporarily cover up the symptoms, but the problem doesn’t go away. The numb you down, numb, numb you to life. Plant medicines are on the rise. So we can have the cause, which is the mental health crisis.
And the result of it is a psychedelic renaissance. The constant growth of plant medicines in popularity, which is I think a great solution inevitably. But as of now, the numbers are 25% of people are depressed, but only less than 1% of people have had ayahuasca, and hopefully this percentage keeps going up.
So from your point of view, Oliver as a retreat operator as well, same as myself. What have you observed? In the, as it goes into increase of the popularity. And what do you think? Is the negative side of this increase?
Oliver Glozik: I think the first one’s interesting because we are here in Columbia and the Ayahuasca in some ways is more popular around the foreigners than it is with the Colombians.
And I think it has a lot to do with a lot of celebrities openly talking about their ayahuasca experience. Starting from Megan Fox, will Smith not even Jake Paul, but also. A lot of entrepreneurs thought leaders like Aubrey Marcus, he on last year as well, and very likely as well, that your favorite content creator is associated with some type of telemedicine, whether it’s ayahuasca or magic or like mushrooms because I think we are so over dominant on our left brain that we’re looking to.
Feel again, that we’re looking to become in our body as well. And of course, drugs are a big part of it, whether it’s alcohol, whether it’s some other sympathetic drugs. But then in some ways they offer a temporarily relief from like that over focused part on the left brain. But with these telemedicines, we can.
You reestablish that connection with our body, with our heart. For me, first time I drank ayahuasca, I didn’t feel anything the first three cups. And I think because I was so head focused, always overthinking, always thinking about the next problem. And yeah, these planned medicines can ground us a lot more in ourselves.
So I think that’s one of the. Big reasons for the gaining of the popularity. Also, because so many public figures are talking about it. But I also think it’s, it can be a drawback that it can be something, oh, it’s on my bucket list, or I want to be able to talk to my friends about it, that I did this as well, and.
I think ayahuasca, you should feel it in your heart because you feel like there’s something within you that you want to overcome, something that you, an emotional event that you haven’t been able to process to move past it, but also to create a vision for yourself, to get you to know yourself better on a deeper level, to see your blind spots, but not just something like, oh, I also did ayahuasca.
I can also like. Lead to the over glamorization of the experience and it’s oh, I need to have done it. And I think that’s not the way to do it.
Sam Believ: Yeah. Some of the example of our retreat here, we are as always reporting from Laira the, we. Four types of the retreats. We have four day retreats.
We have one week retreats. We have 11 day retreats, and we have 18 day retreats. So we notice that a lot of people that come for the four days, which is the minimum we provide they come for those reasons. Bucket list or just curiosity. And we notice how much different the groups are when they come for longer than those that come for a short term amount of time because the commitment is not there.
The research has not been done. The intention has not been set properly. So this is the dark side, you can say of the popularization of Ayahuasca because a lot of people do it for the wrong reasons. However, I personally believe even if you do ayahuasca for wrong reasons. There might be a part of you that is actually there bringing you to Ayahuasca for the right reasons, but you don’t have the connection for that part, and paradoxically enough, ayahuasca itself is the part that opens it up.
For example, when I first did Ayahuasca, as I like to say. The reason for it was a mix of curiosity and quiet desperation. It’s like I was curious to do it, but I was also understanding that something is wrong with me and I don’t seem to know what to do. So it, this combination led me to Ayahuasca and Owas was a perfect tool to actually open me up.
And eventually now, years later, I can go back to that event and, understand that a lot of things started from there and my growth and change started from there. But what we notice a lot of times with people account for the four day retreats and the four day retreat, you only have two ayahuasca ceremonies.
It’s important to understand when working with the ayahuasca, if it’s your first time, first ceremony, half of the group will connect. Second ceremony, 75% of the group will connect. Third ceremony. 90% of the group will connect, and then after every ceremony, two, 2% more. Ayahuasca is not magic mushrooms, ayahuasca is not like other drugs because it’s not a drug.
It’s very unpredictable. It’s very unique. It has a mind of its own. And sometimes people come in and they like, I just want this experience. I’m gonna have those two ceremonies, and then. It just happened to be Ayahuasca is not working for them. And then what we notice, whether the those short term people connected or not, some of them, because of the culture that we create at the retreat, where we explain to people, this is not about drugs, this is not about visions.
It’s about healing. Eventually, after having that experience, whether they have connected and had this breakthrough or whether or not. Then they book another one week retreat like few months later because they now understand what it’s all about. So my goal for this podcast, and that’s why I’m going in so much detail, is education about that topic to change the misconceptions about Ayahuasca as being a drug.
Ayahuasca is not a drug, ayahuasca is a medicine. It’s been so for thousands of years. It’s only been called the drug for the last 50 years. And if you come to ayahuasca with that mindset of. And being a sacred plant medicine that will heal you and help you, it will heal you and help you. If you start the communication early with the plant spirit, it will respond.
So first of all, Oliver, what do you think about that and what do you think about my maths, but people and their not connection because you connect to the ayahuasca before you even drank it. The moment you decided to drink it you establish a connection. What I’m talking more about is the breakthrough.
This big bang moment that a lot of people expect from ayahuasca. What do you think about my formula? 50 75, 90 and then 2% every
Oliver Glozik: night? I think the seven day retreats are amazing and because it also allows you to decompress. It’s not just like you come and you are gone right away again, but you have time to go deeper in your intention, discover more things about yourself.
Also, the more I ask you, drink, the deeper you go. Into your own process as well. At the same time, people also have a life, and for some people it’s easier to take off seven days than it is for others. It’s also understandable that for some people they have a lot of respect and it’s I’m not sure if like my first time I wanna go right away for four ceremonies.
And I start off with two is I think. In some cases also recommendable, especially if you wanna take your first steps with ayahuasca, if you want to get to know Ayahuasca. But if you want are really looking for that deeper shift, then I’m a big fan of the one week retreats. But also what you said in the end, the Ayahuasca does what the Ayahuasca does and.
We’ve even had people after one ceremony we’re just like, oh, I’m not even gonna need the second ceremony because I need to like journal. And I feel like I got all the answers that I was looking for. I personally don’t fall into that category, but there are people who then also say Hey, I might come back in three years, might come back in five years.
I looked within, I found the answers that I was looking for. Also many times it’s not that ayahuasca solves your problem. It shows you your problem in some ways even more. It confronts you with yourself. You see the things that you’re doing good, what you’re doing bad, and also shows your path to healing.
If we talk about mental health issues about had a person after a ceremony said I feel like I wanna be closer again to people. And I noticed that people start to become a lot more human through drinking ayahuasca, more compassionate towards themselves, towards others, wanting to create also those non-transactional relationships.
Because a lot of relationships in the West are based on, oh, I did this for that person. What is that person doing in return? And if you always. Calculating you, it’s not gonna serve you. But once you create those deeper non-transactional relationships in your life, you feel like you have a safety net, that’s when a lot of the anxiety, the depression goes away.
So that’s a little bit of a detour. More specifically about the numbers, I think it depends from. The batch of ayahuasca, how much ayahuasca you are sharing as well. Also depending if you’re there for four days or for two days, let’s say you’re there for four days, you can take it a bit slower in the, for four ceremonies, you can take it a bit slower as well.
Whereas if you’re there only for two ceremonies, you. Even though after two cer, two, two cups of ayahuasca, you’re tired, your stomach is upset, you’re just like, oh no, I don’t wanna drink. But then you remember your intention. It’s Hey, there’s a reason why I’m here. And then you take the extra step and then when you take the extra step, it’s also rewarded.
And maybe if you are there for four ceremonies, you say oh no, tomorrow is another day and tomorrow is also Notre Day. And it’s good to have that patience with these planned medicines too. But we do have a lot of people connecting strongly within two nights as well. And we also work with a purgative that on the per, we have a purging day in the seven day retreat where it really cleans out your body.
And it’s also an opportunity for people to drink before the ayahuasca. It’s before the, a short retreat, and that way their body’s really clean when approaching ayahuasca as part of the tradition that we follow. And that way if you do the extra credit, the extra homework, you’re gonna connect more in the two ceremonies as well.
Sam Believ: Definitely. But just a quick sum up from, for me personally. One week is perfect both for the people that are coming for the first time and those who did it before and do ayahuasca once a year. One week is just optimal. One week for ceremonies, if you have done ayahuasca before, several times, you don’t have much time.
All you have is like a long weekend and you want a reconnect or maybe get. Answers for a few questions. You have go for four days if you have not done ayahuasca before or if you’ve done it before and you wanna do a deep dive and go really deep where you have a specific issue to resolve, then choose 11 days or 18 days.
Generally we find that every month, couple people do 18 days, couple people do 10 days, but most people do the weeks. And I think one week is just just optimal. So that’s just a quick word of advice. But reality is it’s not about connection because you are connecting with the medicine.
Even if you’re just purging, you can go back in this podcast and listen. I think two or three episodes ago I interviewed one of the patients and he has. No, he has felt that he has not felt anything during the retreat. He did one week and he thought it was mostly just purging. It was very mild. Then when he came back home, his wife looked at him, he said, she said he changed his kids noticed he changed.
Parents noticed he changed. And then six months after that he realized that, yeah, I, I truly changed. I’m no longer depressed. He messaged me and said, can you send me the wire logo? I wanted to do it. Yeah. Awesome. So you might not even. A lot of stuff. A lot of work with ayahuasca is sub perceptual.
You might not even know that you’re getting the healing, but you will inevitably notice the results. Which, which brings us to the topic of, we’re in the exciting times of psychedelic renaissance. There’s once again, research and psychedelics. There’s once again people, working with psychedelics there is some, loopholes in the laws, which allow people to start retreats and people work with ayahuasca, psilocybin mushrooms.
They also work with St. Pedro, and people can now finally start to get long-term release. There’s also clinical studies, things like ketamine are being legalized and if done in the proper setting. Provide great results. So it’s a really exciting moment we live in because of that change. And a lot of hope that comes in to, to heal this mental health crisis.
But also it comes with another dark side, and that means that there’s a lot of unregulated space which allows for quick creation of, quick one week sort of retreats and that can bring some drawbacks as well. Meaning like maybe people that don’t wish the best or maybe they don’t respect certain rules or maybe they wanna take advantage of the patients.
What do you think about that Oliver? About that topic?
Oliver Glozik: It’s pretty interesting because in some ways we started out like that, right? It’s Hey, I, we have a I have a thinker here where we can do the retreat. I know a great shaman, I know some people who wanna drink ayahuasca. Let’s bring those three things together and let’s start it.
And we both had the heart in the right place and, you stay committed to the process and we see the fruits of our labors, years. After at the same time. Now looking back on it, it’s also a bit crazy to think about that. In some ways it’s, operation on the psyche of people and for me to just say oh, I know a shaman and I know a finca, and let’s go drink some ayahuasca and I’m going to give you even some advice and some recommendation.
Even though I’ve been like drinking ayahuasca for one year, it’s seems a bit absurd now, looking back on it, I think having the heart in the right place is very important and, it is also very delicate thing because for example, people are in very open states, not just in Ayahuasca, but also in the sharing circles after as well.
And everybody has their projections. I have my projections. And for me it’s very important to say, for example, in a sharing circle, when something is my personal opinion, that it’s like, Hey, this is the way that I see things. Look at it, feel into it for yourself and see if that’s, if you want to take that away with you because, and those are things that develop over time.
And I think that there can be those I. Those problems that somebody who’s just starting out obviously doesn’t have that. If you look at a therapist, he goes to school for how many years before he’s able to work with a patient. And here it can be, I know a title and I know a thinker where we can do some ihu ask a, but I also think in some ways.
You put out an energy and then somebody resonates with that and then it clicks. Because that person who comes to the very novice retreat center, and in some ways he decides to go to that place, he could come to a very well established retreat center. He could go to a luxury ayahuasca retreat center.
He can go to a more affordable ayahuasca retreat center. It can be go to the jungle and drink directly with the indigenous. So I think there’s a lot of a lot of, open market in some ways, which is good. And it goes back to also the responsibility of the participants to think, okay, where do I wanna drink?
Where do I feel safe? And I can say the people who first drank with me also had very powerful experiences and prices were a lot cheaper and they got great results as well. But now from. A little bit more of a mature perspective. It does feel a bit absurd as well that on such important of a topic like mental health, if you then even add maybe thoughts about suicide into the mix and all that kind of stuff, that all of a sudden somebody is in a position that they.
Maybe in the beginning he was like, I wanna help people bring, help, bring people to ayahuasca, and now I have to deal with that person with suicidal thoughts. It can be a lot for the facilitator as well. It’s it’s
Sam Believ: intricate topic. It’s much more complicated than it seems. It’s important to understand that.
With everything out there, somebody have started it someday. Because there does not exist yet, or is in the process of creation, the industry of ayahuasca retreats let’s say the first university was founded, a long time ago, but who was taught in that university? They couldn’t go to university to study.
Somebody has to, it’s like a chicken and egg sort of dilemma. What started first, somebody has to start it. What helped me personally? To feel good about starting a retreat, especially in the, in its very first rudimentary form, as you say, here I’m at the Finca, I know at, I know people who are interested in the healing.
What helped me was grounding myself in a tradition, obviously knowing okay, this person is a shaman and he comes from a family of a shaman and they’ve been doing it for thousands of years, which is really nice and very helpful and is a good start. However I must admit that. The indigenous way of doing things might not be exactly the perfect thing for the modern day people, because in the indigenous cultures, they have other containers which they can ground themselves in after the ceremony or before.
So for us then we. As we started organizing things and getting more professional, we started including more of a Western style integration and sharing circles and talk therapy, and I think nicely grew to the spot where I’m very convenient that what we provide now is a very. Very helping product because once again every year we have close to a thousand people and that talks, talks itself because they absolutely, they message us, they let us know.
But yeah, some, sometimes you get into situations where you get very difficult people and you have to path find and navigate new waters that nobody navigated before. Like when you get a person that is a suicidal and then they’re. They want to they think those thoughts and then you’re worried like, what if, tonight they’re just gonna kill themselves?
It’s it’s a very tricky topic, but with a lot of love, with a lot of care. Somehow it always turns out well. And then a lot of those suicidal people that came to our retreat as a last resort as far as I know, they’re all still alive, which is a really nice thing to think about. But in the end of the day.
We’re not alone. We also have Ayahuasca, which is the main star of the show, which is actually doing the most of the healing. So you have the retreat center, you have the medicine, you have the group, and when you mix the mold together, it brings out that healing, which makes those suicidal people stop being suicidal.
Feel the love of other people in the group, feel the love of the medicine, feel the love of the shaman. The facilitators really. Connect with it and really heal. But yes, occasionally, unfortunately because of how rushed everything is, there are some retreat centers that pop up for a few days or a few weeks or a few months that maybe start with not a best intention.
They just think they might look at as an established retreat center and think look at them. They have all these people and they make all this money. I’m just gonna go and make money. And I think we talked about it in our first ever episode about. How it is facilitating. So guys, go back and listen to it.
If you wanna start, and I’ll ask you to find a lot of wisdom there, but Yeah. And, but the reality is in this wild west of new industry being established the time always shows who has right intentions. And it puts everything in its places. And the good places I believe, survive and get improved.
And the bad places eventually. Nothing gets hidden forever, and they get brought to the clear water and slowly disappear. So that’s on the drawbacks of the psychedelic renaissance. But the posi, the positive side is much bigger because we are really. Desperate in the Western society for some kind of solutions.
And I myself when I felt like I was getting depressed and I didn’t really know the solutions, and last thing you want is to take an antidepressant that numbs you down and also takes away your libido and will to do anything. So having found Ayahuasca and having had that healing experience has been a blessing and then a motivation to spread the word and.
Exciting things are coming. I believe more nicest retreats will be started over the next few years here in Colombia and in the world in general. More and more studies will be conducted that maybe we’ll find a way to explain how exactly does the medicine work, and hopefully as the legalization increases and more places are allowed to drink medicine.
They will not forget the tradition because taking ayahuasca without the shamanic tradition is kinda like taking the roots off the tree. Then it’ll, I don’t know how you can abuse ayahuasca. It’s really difficult because it’s a really tough love kind of medicine, but definitely taking away the tradition will lead to, can lead to a lot of negative side effects.
Oliver Glozik: I’m also like, thank you very much for sharing and a lot of movement because it’s like a new field and so much need for people to find solution for their mental health problems. And for me, I’m more on the conserv conservative side of the spectrum. You mentioned ketamine and then there’s also MDMA therapy and also I believe scientific studies about the benefits of both of these.
As well, and I’ve never taken ketamine, so I cannot talk from firsthand experience. But for me, what I really connect with ayahuasca is what you said, the tradition and that people have been doing that for thousands of years that I met, meet people who’ve been drinking ayahuasca for. Five years, 10 years, 20 years.
And I see how they conduct themselves, how they live their lives, and I get inspired by that. Whereas with with MDMA, I can see that when you take that and you feel all the love, it can get you out of a funk that you might have been in. So I’m not say, and I think everything has its time and place as well at the same time.
Addictive properties. How healthy is it for the body? Is it something that, been there for 50, 60 years? It’s not something that I would want to lean on, not something that I would want my go-to thing to be. For me, knowing that there is ancestral path, knowing that there’s been people who’ve been walking this before me.
Gives me a lot of security in it. It’s not like I’m experimenting with it. It’s not like also they heard about some ketamine clinics where there’s then people are, on the bed and with some white lights and all that kind of stuff. And it’s more about injecting the substance then and taking away the ceremonial aspect of it as well, because the ceremonial aspect is huge when, from my perspective, when it comes to these planned medicines and to not over, overanalyze it again and have all this is how all of this works, but experience it for yourself. Talk with people who have done it. And of course I understand there’s also people who need to see the scientific evidence, but it’s also so much more than just the DMT that you’re taking in.
It’s a connection of the spirit of the plan and following that tradition gives me a lot of confidence. Personally, I’m a bit skeptical about ketamine and then mushrooms and then even people who didn’t do a retreat and add four different medicines in one thing and then after add another in there and this and that.
I’m like to mixing too many things is also something that I’m not a fan of.
Sam Believ: Yeah, it can be very confusing. I have a very similar belief system. My approach to. Medicines, let’s say if somebody calls them drugs, but I have not taken anything that doesn’t have at least a thousand year old tradition.
Yeah. I’ve tried marijuana a couple times. It has ancient tradition. Many thousands of years I’ve had Caliban mushrooms. They have thousands of your tradition. Ayahuasca alcohol, San Pedro alcohol. Yeah, it is some of them you always need to, have be careful when you navigate.
Because every plant is different. There are benefits and drawbacks, but it definitely helps to understand that there has been thousands of years of people doing it. So it’s let’s say they discovered some nice new, fancy psychedelic that you take it once and all your problems go away, but, okay.
What’s gonna happen in 10 years? What about your children? What’s gonna happen to your children? Does that affect your DNA does? Is there? So I’m very skeptical about new stuff and it’s just good to see. Yeah, like here’s a shaman and here’s his dad and his grandad was also a shaman and they drink IO for the life and they live to be hundred years old.
This is really reinforcing, especially those medicines. I like the aspect of the traditional plant medicines with. Pain first, pleasure later. For example, with ayahuasca, when you drink it I would say 70% of your ceremonies will be hard work. Hard work physical purging, mentally hard work.
And then when you go back to your real life, you feel the relief and you feel good. So it’s not an escape thing. It’s not something you will just do on the whi and be like, here I have some. So Ayahuasca in my bar, I’m just gonna go take a cup. There is no impulse. You will never see a junkie under the bridge taking ayahuasca, to escape from Spain.
It is not like this, it doesn’t have that tendency. But with ketamine, for example, if it’s done outside of the clinical setting. People die from ketamine people abuse, things like that. So when you go into this world of medicine slash drugs, because what we’re talking about now is arguably medicines of drugs.
Like whether you draw the line is very personal. But if you go into this world and start exploring, definitely think about it. And of course we are biased because we both run country. The reason I ended up in this work is because I’ve tried it myself, and I’ve seen it. I’ve seen the tradition. I’ve seen young children drinking ayahuasca in the jungle and being the most awoken and the most bright-eyed kids I’ve ever seen, and then everything till the old people.
And I’ve never seen ayahuasca being abused. However, you do see other substances being abused, so just be careful. Do your research. Make sure you’re going to right places, you’re going to drink right medicines. And yeah, be safe.
Oliver Glozik: I got a question for you, Sam. Yeah. Apart from Ayahuasca, what is something that you would recommend somebody to do when they have anxiety?
When they experience depression to overcome that, or people who even come here and have that awe inspiring experience, and then they’re just like, oh, but I’m gonna go home and then I’m gonna be in those fa familiar situations and those familiar situations. And those people, they’re gonna trigger certain things in me.
Apart from Ayahuasca, what are things that you can recommend people to overcome those mental health issues?
Sam Believ: So the, those are the good old advice that, your mom would give you kind of things because when people come to the retreat before they leave, we always say you now have the newly found flexibility in your brain.
You are suggestible, which means this is the best. Time for you to start with good habits. So for example, at our retreat, we always give people an integration journal, which is a journal there you can start journaling. So one of the best steps would be pick up journaling. If you have a thought, don’t allow it to bounce around your name.
Bounce around your brain like a stray bullet. Capture it, put it on the paper, analyze it. And this really helps meditation. Amazing tool. And if you start meditating right after Theoka retreat. You will feel like it’s gonna hit you so much Better. Breathing exercises. Wim Hof style breathing exercises.
Very simple. 40 deep breath. You hold your breath. It’s amazing. It can like. Yank you out of your, I re yank you out of your, negative state of mind very quickly. Ice bath, amazing. And once again, you get into the cult, all the thoughts magically go away. Walk walks into nature, doing sport, going to the gym.
If you are more advanced and you wanna take the plant path. Using rap also really helps to center your thoughts. I’m a big fan of work with tobacco, even taking tobacco, I’m not saying smoking cigarettes, but taking a tobacco and smoking it ceremonially doing cleanses. For yourself also really helps doing plant baths.
Amazing tool I guess hard to find in the western world, but there are certain plants that are very common. Cinnamon, you boil some cinnamon with some lemongrass and it’s already a cleansing plant bath. That really helps sometimes for myself personally, when I feel heavy to sort wash it away.
So all the good habits, everything your grandma told you to do is the kinds of things you wanna do, and in the end of the day. As I like to say, ayahuasca is the gateway. It’s a door to this world of self-improvement, self-growth, and spirituality. It doesn’t, you don’t have to be drinking ayahuasca every day for the rest of your life.
You start drinking ayahuasca, you create relationship with it. You can drink it once a year, once every few years, or when something happens and you need to process emotions quickly. But in between those retreats, the integration that you do, the real, applicable life change, that you do all the good habits that you implement and everything works, including, I know some people that practice religions in a very sustainable way that can also help, prayer can also help everything.
It’s everything you do matters as long as it’s in, in the right direction. And I ask can just be this catalyst around which your healing journey will, will begin. What about you, Oliver? Do you have anything to offer to, to add to that list?
Oliver Glozik: You have a pretty long list, and all of those are absolutely great.
What can I do right now to get rid of that anxiety depression that I’m feeling? And a lot of times once you start moving, once you start exercising, then you’ll start feeling better as well. What I found for myself is also in some ways recreating a different identity. Before I was comparing myself a lot to others, to their pro progress.
My progress, how’s that person doing? Always like evaluating where do I. Than in the social status and all that kind of stuff. And if you are, when I had those thoughts, like no wonder that I’m anxious, no wonder that I’m feeling judged and to, it was a big journey for me to. Myself to find myself on a deep level to accept myself the way I am, and to not have my self worth de dependent if that person says yes or no to me.
Whether it’s a romantic partner, whether it’s a rejection in business or friendship. So for me, it has been a lot about cultivating that, that self-love and letting go of those. Yeah, those ideas of, Instagram and everybody has a perfect life and how can I play towards it And I want to have that good job so then my parents are proud of me, or the people who I graduated with think that I’m a big shot or whatever.
I think those are thoughts that make us mentally sick and by changing that identity, those ways of thinking, by ways of being one thing that I notice. That people with ayahuasca I mentioned earlier, start to become more human. And that humanness, I think helps with that anxiety and depression because if, for me, I feel very little anxiety I can count it on one, one hand how many times I felt anxiety this year.
And every time I felt it, it was a signal to me that something is wrong in my life. And to feel into it hey why is that person, why is that situation so impactful that it gets me out of my state of inner stability? What does that person, what does that situation represent to me? Why do I think that has such a big impact on my life?
And how can I switch that to create that inner abundance within, to not be dependent on those people situations anymore? And apart from all these tangible recommendations that you shared, I think that in their journey process, which also of course Ayahuasca helps facilitate, has been very transformational for me to overcome those anxiety that unsureness wouldn’t mean.
Sam Believ: Yeah, it’s not just stuff that you add in your life, like good habits, but it’s also things that you take away toxic thinking patterns and also toxic people. If you, if I tell you right now, toxic person who does come in mind from your friend group, if you thought about a name or a face.
If you can just, take your distance from that person because you can come to Ayahuasca to experience healing and heal the trauma, but you can’t heal the trauma that’s being formed. And if you have a friend that makes you feel bad about yourself, then avoid that person. Or maybe have one conversation where you call them out and you say, you actually make me feel bad, and I don’t want that anymore in my life.
Because you can come and drink ayahuasca and feel better and then go back to them. And the reason I tell it is because people come here and then they report. It’s like I came here and I felt so great, and then I had this idea to go visit my sister. And my sister made me feel terrible. And now. I’m back to square one and I feel like coming back again and doing ayahuasca, which of course will lift you up from the pit.
And, but you also need to understand that if you’re doing that work with ayahuasca and you’re investing your time and your money to get the relief, you also need to cherish it and do all the good things and avoid all the bad things too. To allow you to stay in that space. And for those of you who have been to the retreat and have connected and felt amazing, best ever best you’ve ever felt before, what really helps as well to reconnect with that feeling is to listen to the medicine, music, to, meditate and do things that remind you of that experience and hang out with people that you met.
At an Ayahuasca retreat because they will be your family now. They are your, you’re in the same journey, you started at the same time, and you can find a lot of things in common. Me and Oliver, why do we meet up and talk and record this podcast is because he runs an Ayahuasca retreat. I run an Ayahuasca retreat.
We have problems in common and it’s nice to talk about that. So find people who have common problems with them. Remember that we are social creatures and a lot of your healing will come from the group dynamics. And we are very lonely right now as a society. Find thanks for watching.
That is a big topic. Yeah. Find people that you vibe with. Find people that you can talk to. Make your own mini word circles at at home. Yeah. I really love word circles. Like it’s such a magical, such a simple and such a magical thing. Like whenever I have a, any conflict in a team, I just collect everyone.
It’s guys, let’s speak. And if everyone speaks their truth and everyone truly listens, there’s almost no problem we can’t resolve. It’s just right now for us, the communication is missing. If there’s a conflict, people just shut down and they just avoid and leave and go to another environment where the same situation repeats.
But I think we’re losing our topic. What was our topic? Our topic was the
Oliver Glozik: gaining of popularity of ayahuasca
Sam Believ: mental health crisis. The growth of popularity. So it’s an exciting time to be alive. Definitely. It’s a time where I keep saying in the groups when people arrive, like my dad is an alcoholic.
He faced similar problems when he was in his he was young and he was starting to have family and distress, and when he was trying to run away from that pain or from that depression that was starting to form, he chose alcohol. So there was no Alaska back then. He didn’t know better. And he just followed that step and then it put him on the wrong path.
Now we live in the time where you have ayahuasca, where you have yoga retreats, meditation retreats. You have this whole wellness culture and you’re one Google search away from starting to change your life. And it’s amazing. It’s super exciting. Like I’m thinking, what if I didn’t find ayahuasca instead, when I was starting to get depressed, I would, I don’t know.
Smoke marijuana or start drinking a lot, or where would I be now? And it’s like how awesome it is to be alive in this time. And yes, there will be some negative moments. Maybe some people will try and abuse power that I was gives you and maybe try to take advantage of people. Or, my biggest concern is when you work with ayahuasca, people get in a very suggestible state. They really open up. So it’s really important for us as facilitators to maintain that neutral stance where we’re not promoting a specific way of thinking or religion or something like that, because it’s very easy if you’re some, there are some retreats I’ve heard about where the leader is a bit of a narcissist and they make it all about themselves and statically create like a little.
It starts to get like a cultish vibes. I’ll answer that later myself. But the tricky question for you, Oliver, what’s the difference between a cult and an AYA retreat?
Oliver Glozik: I think what’s important for me is to remind people of their power. That I like to say, we grow up and in the beginning we start to listen to our parents, then to school, society, university, whatever.
And now it’s not about now you need to listen to the shaman or to the facilitator or whatever, but that you discover your own inner voice and have the courage to follow that. And I think in a cult is more about putting the next person on the pedestal and he has all the answers and he has all the answers for your life.
But who is that person? To have the answer for your life, you need to connect with that own inner mastery, with your own intuition. And deep down, and sometimes it can feel more like a saying that you know all the answers are within, but what I ask you can remove, start removing that conditioning and figure that truth out within yourself.
And yeah, it’s for me too. Know that everybody ha carries that divine spark within them. And I want to cultivate more and more of that divine spark within me. So it inspires others to find that divine spark within themselves. And they don’t, they’re not gonna need me to solve their problems because they found that connection towards themselves.
And I think that’s, the way I see the differences is if the I was retreat is
Sam Believ: run in the right way. Great answer because we have not rehearsed that one. So I would explain the same thing, but only with different words. With a cult or a religion, you have a person that had a sacrament or had a vision, then they write a book and now you have to blindly believe in their vision or in their truth or in their interpretation of the divine.
At an Ayahuasca retreat, or especially at the good one, you are the ones as patients who are having the sacrament. Then you come to us in a word circle after the ceremony, and then you tell us what and you tell us about how the universe works. So nobody at, and if you come to any other retreat, and not our retreat or Oliver’s retreat observe that if somebody is trying to, the flow of information should be going from.
From the group participants to the organizers. So ex, except from obviously the organizational part they should ex teach you how to navigate your experience and stuff like that. But if you come to a retreat and they tell you what to believe in or use a certain me reli, reli religious methodology, or.
They might, basically guide you in some direction that feels foreign to you. This would be the red flag. So when you go somewhere, make sure there is there’s space for you. The good test would be no matter what religion you’re from, no matter what you believe it must all be acceptable because I do believe that all the religions, they talk about same thing, but in a different language. So I believe that we covered the topic pretty well about the growth and the, it is exciting, guys. It is really exciting and I think good things are coming for us as society. I do predict that within the next 10 years, we’ll go from. What is Ayahuasca to?
When’s the last time you did ayahuasca? Like it happened with the meditation? Yeah. I do dream of a world where one day we wake up and everyone has had ayahuasca, or at least similarly compatible experience, and people are more loving and more open. I’m an optimist. I believe it’ll happen and life will be great, but.
Maybe not. What do you think, Oliver? What do you believe
Oliver Glozik: in? It’s interesting because my mom is a yoga teacher for more than 25 years, and when she started yoga was. Not a thing in Europe it’s oh, okay, you do these poses or whatever. And now it’s like the most natural thing. Oh, what can I do to feel better?
Oh, try some yoga. And it’s, in some ways it’s like it came from India. Now it’s like the opposite side of the world, but I see it because people are looking for solutions. And if you look for a solution, you find an answer. And it’s obvious that I ask a. Can be that answer. And at one point there’s gonna be the tipping point where there’s, it’s gonna be even more socially acceptable to do it because, there’s people who come through research retreat center who say oh no, I don’t wanna be in pictures.
I don’t wanna have my face publicly be associated with ayahuasca because some social norms. And I can see that changing a lot in the next 5, 10, 15 years, that many people will see that as positive things when, somebody says oh, I’m doing ayahuasca. I’m I’m maybe even go going to a therapist.
I’m doing things to figure myself out to become a better human, and this is the path that I am, I’m taking for that. So I do see, just so I saw yoga expand from my mom in the last 25 years. I can hopefully we’ll see that same development with ayahuasca as well.
Sam Believ: And when that happens, guys, everyone and their grandma will be listening to this podcast.
So you’re the early you’re the early comers, the early birds. So on that positive note, guys, thank you again for listening. Thank you Oliver for coming. Once again, you listen to ayahuasca podcast.com as always with you, the host and believe. If you are interested in attending one of our retreats, go to lara.com.
Lara is spelled on my t-shirt right here. For those of you who are listening and not watching the video, it’s L-A-W-A-Y-R a.com. And thank you for listening, and I’ll see you in the other episode.