In this episode of the Ayahuasca Podcast, host Sam Believ sits down with Jonathan Robinson, a psychotherapist, New York Times bestselling author of over 10 books, and a frequent guest on The Oprah Winfrey Show. Jonathan has spent decades exploring human connection, interviewing foundational spiritual figures like Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama, and Ram Dass. His latest work, Ecstasy as Medicine, and its counterpart Ecstasy for Couples, centers on the immense therapeutic potential of MDMA.

Jonathan shares his transition from growing up in a chaotic environment to studying chemical consciousness, explaining how MDMA acts as a biological “fast-track” for vulnerability, emotional rewiring, and healing relationships.

Key Discussion Points

  • 02:15 – A Dysfunctional Childhood as a Gift: Jonathan discusses how growing up around family volatility forced him inward at age 12, sparking an early mastery of self-hypnosis, meditation, and early psychedelic experimentation.
  • 05:40 – The Early Days of Legal MDMA Research: Conducting a master’s thesis on MDMA for trauma in the early 1980s before it was criminalized in the US, and how modern data proves it is exponentially more effective for PTSD than standard antidepressants.
  • 09:15 – “The Drug Never Took Effect”: A hilarious story of Jonathan giving pure MDMA to his conservative parents, who spent the evening resolving 45 years of hidden marital tension and cuddling—completely unaware they were under the influence.
  • 13:45 – The 5-Hour Therapy Session on Steroids: The mechanics of facilitating over 700 MDMA journeys, and why Jonathan chooses to run his intensive deep-dives and integration work virtually over Zoom for maximum domestic comfort.
  • 18:20 – Blaming, Shaming, Complaining, and Explaining: Why standard relationship defense mechanisms fail 100% of the time, and the core communication framework required to shift a relationship dynamic immediately.
  • 22:50 – The Illusion of “Dishes” (The Aunt Story): How an MDMA session saved Jonathan’s own marriage by revealing that his wife’s displaced anger over refrigerator doors was actually unmapped grief regarding her late aunt.
  • 27:15 – The “Sweet Killer” Dilemma: A 300,000-year evolutionary look at why male brains were naturally selected to prioritize protective aggression and goal achievement, and how modern environments require an intensive education in empathy.
  • 33:10 – Collectivism of Spiritual Lifelines: Insights from living in Buddhist, Hindu, and Christian monasteries, culminating in Jonathan’s ultimate personal religion: “Do what works.”

Connect with Jonathan Robinson:

Experience Safe, Guided Consciousness Work: To explore heart-opening, traditional plant medicine retreats in a deeply restorative setting designed for integration and profound clarity, explore our programs at: ayahuascaincolombia.com

Transcript

Jonathan Robinson: For 300,000 years, basically 99% of the time, there was only one job opening for men. It wasn’t accountant, it wasn’t ayahuasca facilitator, it was a killer. You either killed people in the next tribe or you killed animals. That was the only job opening. So for all of our background, we’ve been trained and naturally selected to be killers.

Starting a few hundred years ago, women said, “We don’t need killers anymore. What we want are empathic, caring, sweet, kind men.” Most couples fall into are blaming, shaming, complaining, and explaining, and none of those methods work, ever. I’ve never had a time where I blamed my wife for something where she then said, “Oh, yeah, now I see I’ve been doing that all wrong.”

And after that MDMA session, all her anger was gone, and we’re back in a really sweet relationship. It saved our marriage. It reduces blood flow to the amygdala part of the brain, which is the part of the brain that makes us feel fear and defensiveness. So with that part of your brain offline, you can be honest, you can take in information that normally you might get defensive about.

When people take MDMA, they connect again in love, their ego defenses are down, and you can work out a lot of problems in the five-hour journey.

Sam Believ: Hi, my name is Sam Belyev, and you’re listening to the Ayahuasca Podcast.

Hi, guys, and welcome to Ayahuasca Podcast. As always, we’re your host Sam Belyev, and today I’m having a conversation with Jonathan Robinson. Jonathan is a psychotherapist, New York Times best-selling author of over 10 books, and a frequent guest on the Oprah Winfrey Show. A true student of the human experience, Jonathan has spent decades interviewing some of the world’s most influential figures, including Mother Teresa, Dalai Lama, Wayne Dyer, and Ram Dass.

He’s also co-host of the Awareness Explorers podcast. Jonathan’s latest book, Ecstasy as Medicine, explores the therapeutic potential of MDMA. This episode is sponsored by LaWayra Ayahuasca Retreat. Jonathan, welcome to the show. Great to be here, Sam. Jonathan obviously you have a very impressive pedigree, and the things you’ve achieved are very impressive.

But let’s start in your childhood or in the beginning of your life. What in your life brought you to to, to this lifestyle and to this path? And also, why do you say that growing up in a dysfunctional family was was a gift?

Jonathan Robinson: Yeah. For some people, growing up a dysfunctional family with a lot of violence is a real traumatic thing, which it was for me too.

But because I couldn’t leave my family, I kinda went inner, inside rather than trying to find happiness outside. So by the time I was 12, I was into self-hypnosis, I was into meditation, I was into self-help books. And because I did that I was able to a lot of people in terms of interviews and have some s- bestselling books.

And, as a teenager, I got into psychedelics pretty early, LSD, MDMA, things like that, and that also really helped me have a deep spiritual connection. That’s why I say I’m lucky that I grew up in a dysfunctional family because it, it got me started on this path really early.

Sam Believ: Yeah, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

I think that, that worked out for you. So obviously you’re, you have diverse set of interests and you wrote book on many topics from spiritual growth to now MDMA. But you’re, When you were in the university, you explored MDMA. Talk to us about that and why MDMA?

Jonathan Robinson: I was a nerdy kid.

And when I took MDMA, maybe when I was 17 with my first girlfriend, it opened up a whole new world of, emotions and intimacy and connection and love, and that was, pretty new to me. So when I was in graduate school, I decided to do a study on MDMA for helping with trauma. And at that time, MDMA was legal in the US, so I did this study, and the results were so amazing that nobody believed my results.

At that time, nobody was studying MDMA. The next… Right after my master’s thesis they made MDMA illegal, so I couldn’t publish this. Fast-forward 40 years, and MDMA has been studied a lot, showing that it’s 35 times more effective than the next best treatment, which is antidepressants for trauma.

And there’s been millions of dollars spent on showing that it is incredibly effective, not just for trauma, but for anxiety, for couples. I just released a book called Ecstasy for Couples, and it’s just a really amazing medicine, just like Ayahuasca, where with the right intention and the right guide, you can do two years of therapy in one day.

Sam Believ: Yeah. The as I was getting ready for this interview, I was really impressed by all the stories you said and how powerful this psychedelic is as medicine. So let’s talk a little bit about MDMA. Obviously I mostly focus on Ayahuasca, but I talk about other plant medicines and psychedelics.

How is MDMA different and yeah what have you observed in your study?

Jonathan Robinson: I’ve, over 40 years I’ve led about 700 journeys, and what I’ve seen is, first of all, it’s really different than the other psychedelics. With Ayahuasca, LSD, things like that, about 20% of the time I would say people have pretty challenging experiences.

Not that those can’t be really valuable but, they’re challenging. Of the 700 sessions I’ve led nobody has had a challenging experience. It’s like you could have a challenging experience eating an apple but it’s pretty rare. You know the challenging experiences on MDMA are pretty if it’s pure MDMA and you have a guide they just don’t happen.

A funny story about that shows the effects of MDMA I like to share is when my parents asked me why I was working with this illegal drug, I told them the best way to really understand it is to try it out.” They were conservative, so I was a little surprised that they said, “Yeah, okay. We’ll give it a shot.”

And so I gave them the medicine, told them how to take it, a good set and setting. A year later I asked them, “Did you ever take the MDMA?” And they said, “Yeah we tried it.” And I said, “What happened?” And they said we waited like 20 minutes and nothing happened, so I guess the drug didn’t take effect.”

Sam, it takes about 45 minutes for MDMA to take effect. So I asked them what happened after, 20 minutes, and they said we had nothing planned that evening, so we ended up sitting on the couch.” And then their eyes lit up and they said, “It ends up we had the best night of our 45-year marriage.

We ended up talking about how much we love each other and how grateful we are. And then we’d had some arguments the previous week, but we worked all that out, and then we cuddled on the couch. It was an amazing night. The only disappointment was that the drug never took effect.”

So I’m laughing this whole time because that’s the effect of MDMA. It makes you feel open and loving and honest and authentic. And unlike psychedelics, or other psychedelics, that there’s no hallucinations. You don’t feel weird. You feel like you at your most loving, open best ever. And I think nowadays more than ever, we need that authenticity, intimacy, and we need love knowing how to get back to that.

Sam Believ: Yeah. Yeah. As I was preparing for this podcast, I’ve heard that story, and it’s very funny and very interesting. So we… A- as I told you, I run an Ayahuasca retreat here in Colombia and we get thousands of people. And s- the amount of times I have it where people start their share.

We do word circles, like a k- kind of- … group therapy after the ceremony, and they start their share by saying, “I didn’t feel anything.” And then they continue by describing an amazingly productive Ayahuasca experience. “I sat there and then I… All of a sudden I felt sad and I cried alone. Then some memories from childhood came up and I felt some shiver in my body, and then I purged.”

But yeah, then because it’s, i- it’s not what they expect. And it’s very- Yeah … interesting that same thing happened to your parents. And I also gave Ayahuasca to my mom, not my dad yet, but eventually, hopefully one day. So it’s a very natural desire to give it to your family. It’s like that’s first people that come to mind once you have this.

Once you experience that healing you’re like they really need it.” …

Talking about your parents, obviously they’re a couple, and MDMA helped them. It was… And you say, MDMA therapy for couples is two years of couples therapy in one session. Why

Jonathan Robinson: mDMA actually became popular in the 1970s as a couples therapy drug before it entered into, trauma work and the raves and things like that. It’s like pure magic that way. In 19– in, in the late ’90s, I wrote a book called Communication Miracles for Couples, and Oprah said it was the best couples book ever written, so it became a big bestseller, and I did a lot of couples work.

And I’ll tell you, couples work is a long, slow slog. Usually you have couples coming in, they’re blaming each other, they’re arguing, and it takes a couple years to sort all that out. Because working through problems with somebody that you don’t trust and you don’t even necessarily is really difficult.

But when people take MDMA they connect again in love. Their ego defenses are down, and you can work out a lot of problems in the five-hour journey. And it’s fun, as opposed to couples therapy, which tends to be not so fun. So yeah, I think of it as doing two years of therapy in an afternoon, which besides, being more fun, it saves money and it’s really much more fulfilling for everybody involved.

So I really like doing couples therapy with MDMA, and I don’t like doing couples therapy without MDMA

Sam Believ: Yeah, doing couples therapy without MDMA, it’s like reliving your childhood all over again, like having two adults fighting in front of you. People come here to my retreat and they said, “Oh, that felt like five years of therapy, 10 years of therapy.”

I think the highest somebody ever went, they said 20 years of therapy.

But I think I think it is- … definitely great and the breakthrough can be impressive but therapy part is still important. So I do believe a lot in combining psychedelics and therapy together.

What are your thoughts on that? And can you maybe explain to the audience, like what is the mechanism of how MDMA, relaxes you and allows you to actually process better?

Jonathan Robinson: Yeah. Those are two questions. First, how it works, it reduces blood flow to the amygdala part of the brain, which is the part of the brain that makes us feel fear and defensiveness.

So with that part of your brain offline you become fearless. You can be honest, you can take in information that normally you might get defensive about. It also floods your brain with serotonin, which makes you feel a lot of love and affection. So between, reducing fear and increasing love, it’s amazing way to do therapy and couples therapy or dealing with trauma, things like that.

What was your first question? I re- I forget what that was.

Oh. B- that was about integration- The therapy part … and therapy. In, in my protocol I meet with either individual or couple for an hour, usually over Zoom. I do almost all my work over Zoom, and people are surprised that this works over Zoom.

But it actually works better over Zoom because a lot of the effects of therapy are how much safety can you create, how much openness can you create. And the MDMA certainly helps with that. But Zoom also creates a feeling where people can take this in the comfort of their own house where they feel really comfortable.

They might have friends or pets there nearby. So it’s a lot more convenient. You don’t have to worry about driving somewhere afterwards. So it’s really great, and I can reduce the cost of the whole thing that way as well. So I meet with somebody for an hour and they, we decide if it’s a good fit.

If it is we do a five-hour journey. I have a way of making sure people get pure medicine because some of the MDMA sold in the United States is not pure, and that can cause problems. So I have a way of making sure people get pure medicine And then they, we do a five-hour journey. It’s a, it’s like a five-hour therapy session on steroids.

It’s… I’m almost like brain surgery, rewiring their brain in many ways. And then about a week later, I do a integration session, and sometimes I do more than one integration session depending upon what’s needed. But what my goal is take the insights that they learned and apply them into different behaviors in their life.

So when I work with couples, we go into, what problems did we solve? Do you still agree with these solutions? What communication methods you can use to help really eliminate the need for me. Because once people communicate well and they know how to solve problems, they don’t need to see me anymore.

And so I have a big emphasis on integration. I have a big emphasis on using very unique comm- motivation tools to make sure they stay motivated for a long period of time.

Sam Believ: Yeah. You’re giving me a great idea to start doing Ayahuasca retreats over Zoom. I’m kidding.

Jonathan Robinson: I don’t know if you can do that.

I doubt it. I doubt

Sam Believ: it. Yeah. I’m joking ’cause the- they definitely- Yeah. Okay … need support especially with the purging part, it’s very dangerous. But I’m glad it works, and honestly, it sounds very interesting and I’m glad you figured it out. COVID was a big influence for a lot of people to get creative, and for me, actually, COVID was the reason I moved to the countryside, and then because of that, I was able to start my Ayahuasca retreat.

So but, for couples that, let’s say, don’t have MDMA, you outline mechanisms of fixing couples, and you have a bunch of very practical techniques or life hacks and you explain how we as couples, we don’t really communicate that and we keep repeating same mistakes over and over, and in a way of being defensive.

So for couples that are listening, give us a couple of your favorite techniques for imp- improving the communication.

Jonathan Robinson: Sure. Great question. First of all, it’s understandable that couples are having a hard time because we don’t learn any communication techniques not even an hour in our whole life, and yet that’s what we’re doing all the time.

So there’s a lot of room for improvement. What most couples fall into are blaming, shaming, complaining, and explaining, and none of those- methods work ever. I ha- I’ve never had a time where I blamed my wife for something where she then said, “Oh yeah, now I see I’ve been doing that all wrong.

Thanks for showing me the errors of my ways.” That never happens. And yet most couples that aren’t working well, that’s what they do. They blame each other hoping that their partner will change, and it never works. Another thing I’ve noticed with couples is that they all … Everybody wants to be understood, but not many people give their partner understanding.

I’ve never had a couple come into my office and say, “We understand each other really well. That’s why we want a divorce.” That doesn’t happen. So one of the things I help people do is get their partner to feel understood. And a way a simple technique I do is when your partner says something, maybe they’re talking about their hard day or what you did wrong, you simply say, “It sounds like blank.”

And you just summarize what they said in one sentence. “Sounds like you had a really stressful day and you don’t like how I left a mess in the kitchen.” That helps them feel like you got them. And then you say, “That must feel,” and you guess how they’re feeling. “That must feel really frustrating,” or, “That must feel really annoying.”

Now, this is, sounds really simple, but it’s hard to do. So I encourage couples to do the, it sounds like blank, that must feel blank method to help their partners feel understood. That’s one example of a very simple communication technique, and I find that couples that can do that, their relationship gets twice as good immediately.

Yeah. Another thing couples can do is is appreciate each other more often. What studies have shown is that people rate their relationship based on how many ap- appreciations they get as opposed to non-appreciations or negative feedback. That’s something that is also important to realize.

And you could just simply ask yourself, “What’s something my partner’s done in the last day?” Or, “What’s,” “what is something about their character or a trait they have that I can appreciate?” And tell them. It’s very simple, but you need some way to reinforce these things because we all get busy and we forget about that stuff.

Sam Believ: Yeah, it’s simple but it’s not easy. H- you tell a story about your own experience with with your wife where she was really angry at you and and then MDMA helped you. Can you tell us that story?

Jonathan Robinson: Yeah, that’s an interesting story because sometimes couples will come to me and they think they know what the problem is.

But in the MDMA session we find out that there was something hidden that they didn’t know about. My wife and I have been married almost 30 years, and twice in our relationship we’ve hit a wall where we m- we’re considering divorce because something had happened. And about 10 years ago my wife suddenly started being angry at me all the time.

And for no apparent reason, like how I close the refrigerator or how I walk through the house. She just was livid. And it was very unpleasant for both of us for three months. So I hired a therapist friend to live with us for three days to find out what was going on. And after two days he said, “I have no idea what’s going on.

She’s just angry at you for everything.” And he suggested we take MDMA, which we did. And it came out that my wife’s aunt had died three months earlier. Wow. And she had not taken the time to see her beloved aunt in her dying days, and she was really angry at herself for not doing that and had unknowingly put all that anger at herself onto me.

And when she realized this she just sobbed for an hour, just… And I, held her and helped her to forgive herself. And after that MDMA session, all her anger was gone and, we were back in a really sweet relationship. But n- none of us had any idea that was what was going on, and only the MDMA revealed it.

And it saved our marriage.

Sam Believ: Yeah. That’s that’s a great story. And I think a lot of times in relationships it’s like there’s this phrase, “It’s not about the dishes,” right? There is always something underlying that, that provokes it. When you were working with with your wife, even you hired a therapist and you say even you knowing everything you know, you still prefer to have a sitter for yourself.

Why is that so important?

Jonathan Robinson: I appreciate you asking great questions, Sam. When in, in my book Ecstasy for Couples I do have a chapter about doing this medicine on your own, with your partner without a facilitator. But the problem with that is that the medicine feels really good, and the tendency is to just hang out and love and bliss out and be with each other, rather than look at the underlying issues or how to solve specific problems.

So as a facilitator I want the couple to be in love and to feel connected, but then I guide them in ways that would be very challenging if I wasn’t there. Because we all just wanna bliss out and feel good and what you know, like that. Yeah. So that’s why I hired a, a facilitator, and that’s why although MDMA with your partner can feel great and also be healing to a relationship it’s a different story when you take with somebody who can really guide it well.

Sam Believ: Yeah. I guess it’s a form of spiritual bypassing or in this case, like psychedelic bypassing. It’s like why do we… We feel so great, why do we wanna explore those problems when we can just feel great, right? Why are men and women so different? You talk about that.

Jonathan Robinson: Why are what?

Sam Believ: The, you talk about how different men and women are and why- Oh

it’s so hard for us to communicate.

Jonathan Robinson: L- here’s an analogy. Think of a cow and a bull. A cow is fine with you getting milk from them. They’re very docile. A bull if you approach it, is likely to kill you. They’re the same species, but they’re the male and female version. And we don’t realize that we are like different species.

The famous book, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. We’re very different, and that makes for difficult communication because our brains work differently how we think of things, how we perceive the world is actually different. Now, of course, there’s a, a range. Not all men are that masculine, not all women are that feminine.

But I often help couples really understand their partner. Here’s an interesting analogy human beings have been around for about 300,000 years For 298,000 of those 300,000 years, basically 99% of the time, there was only one job opening for men. It wasn’t accountant, it wasn’t ayahuasca facilitator, it wasn’t a coder.

It was a killer. You either killed people in the next tribe or you killed animals. That was the only job opening. So for all of our background, we’ve been trained and naturally selected to be killers. Starting a few hundred years ago, women said, we don’t need killers anymore. What we want are empa- empathic, caring, sweet, kind men.”

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Jonathan Robinson: And men’s genetics said, “Are you kidding? I’m not good at that. I’m good at killing.” S- that’s something that has really made it difficult for the men and women to understand each other, and I try to give men and women a better understanding of how your partner feels, what’s important to them, and to satisfy each other’s needs more directly.

And that, that’s a real education process. And on MDMA, it makes it a lot easier because it naturally unfolds people’s level of empathy.

Sam Believ: Yeah. I think the dating world would be very easy if the women would’ve decided, “Okay, we don’t want killers anymore, we want the sweet empa- empathic guys.” But the problem is that what women actually want is empathetic, sweet killers.

Like it’s like- Exactly, yeah … ’cause this whole thing was like- A good shot … I don’t like the nice guys, I want them to be dangerous but also sweet, and it’s like, what do you want,

Jonathan Robinson: yeah. Men naturally have that, call it killer instinct, which they wanna kill a business or, call it achieve goals and really get something done.

But I teach them how to do the empathy thing because that satisfies a fundamental need for women, and how to help women feel understood and heard. And when they are able to do that, the women are then more willing to give men what they want and what they need. Which, of course, men like sex.

They also like to be appreciated and admired. And women are much better at doing that if their man is satisfying their, their-

Sam Believ: Yeah. Okay. Let’s switch topics a little bit ’cause you, you di- you didn’t just talk about psychedelics, you also wrote many books about spirituality and enlightenment and those are also topics near and dear to me.

I like to focus on healing, psychedelics and healing. That’s the main thing. It’s the- … potatoes and meat of of my life journey. But spirituality and enlightenment kinda comes as a, as this nice side effect in work with Ayahuasca. What are your thoughts on psychedelics and enlightenment and spiritual growth?

What is the role of psychedelics to help someone grow?

Jonathan Robinson: Yeah, great question. One of the things I, I sometimes do in my journeys is help people get better at tapping into the love and peace and joy within themselves. We’ve all heard the kingdom of heaven’s within, we just normally can’t find it.

So then we look outside of ourselves, trying to get a relationship so we can feel love, or get money so we can feel peace, or whatever it is. And those can be helpful, but ultimately happiness, love, and peace are within. And most people don’t really know any good methods or even guidelines of where to look or how to look, and psychedelics can open up that view.

“Oh there is love and peace within.” But then it’s still a mystery to most people how do I get back there without the psychedelics?” So when I took LSD and MDMA at age 16, I said, “I wanna devote my entire life, as much as I can, to getting back to those places without the medicines.” So I started meditating.

I started meeting various gurus. I’ve met over 100 gurus now. And I was always looking for simple techniques that would help. One of my books called The Enlightenment Project is all about that search. And on MDMA, when somebody’s feeling that love, I’ll say, “Okay. Describe to me what it’s like and where you feel it, and see if you can now contract so that you’re not feeling that love.”

And most people can do it. And then I say, “Now open back up. What are you doing?” And, there’s kind of an energetic part of our body where we learn to constrict our perceptions and our love, and then y- a muscle you can learn to relax that so that you’re open and you are just in the moment feeling what you’re feeling peaceful, and opening your heart.

And that’s a learned skill potentially that I help people with. A lot of the people coming to me for MDMA now are looking for spiritual openings, and it’s very good in that way. And, there’s a lot of paths to being able to open to more love and peace, and one of the things I try and do in our sessions is find out what seems to work for that person.

I’ve spent two years in a Buddhist monastery, a year in a Hindu monastery, two years in a Christian monastery, and have explored a lot of other things. And I now come to a very specific belief system or religion, and I call it Do What Works. Now, what works for people is different for different people.

So you… One of the things I like to explore is, I have a lot of methods that take under five minutes a day to do, and I try those methods out on a person to see which ones really resonate with them. And once they find one or two things that really resonate, I say, “Okay keep doing that.” And you get better at it. Just like any skill, the more you practice, the better you get.

Sam Believ: Yeah. So I think opening one’s heart, at least temporarily, with the help of Ayahuasca or MDMA is relatively easy, but what… If someone doesn’t have access to those tools is there… In your opinion, what’s the best way?

Or ob- obviously, as you say, it do- everything doesn’t work for everyone, but what are the tools you notice that help people open their heart?

Jonathan Robinson: Actually some people like to collect things. It might be antiques or baseball cards. I collect spiritual methods, so I have 164 of them.

Sam Believ: Okay.

Jonathan Robinson: We won’t be able to go through all 164 of them.

How

Sam Believ: about top three maybe?

Jonathan Robinson: Okay, I’ll give you three of them. Okay. And people can try out these three right now. One of them is very simple, imagine that you were just born and you don’t know what anything means or what anything is. So as you look out, there’s colors, there’s sensations in your body, there’s these words going through your head, but there’s no sense of what any of it is.

It’s just pure sensation. Some you might some you might not like, but you’re not making … You’re not giving anything any meaning like a six-month-old. It’s just pure sensation coming at you, and you’re open to it without a sense of attaching a story to it. It’s just all now sensory experience.

Now, that’s close to how enlightened people experience the world. Just a full open awareness without any story attached. I call it the just born identity.

That’s very simple. Another one that I like is, Is imagine, and people could do this with eyes open or closed, but it might be better closed.

Imagine you have a, in front of you a whiteboard that says, “I am,” and then you have an identity like, “I am a podcaster,” or, “I am a I have this job,” or, “I’m a man,” or, “I’m a woman.” If you’re a man or woman, put that in there and then erase it and realize there’s just an I am. And then come up with another identity.

It might be that you’re a mother or father. Then erase that and realize it’s just I am. I am a dog lover. You erase dog lover, I am. You might say, “I am a tennis player.” Erase that, I am. And eventually realize we have all these roles, but ultimately we’re just an awareness. We’re just an I am. I am, I exist right now in this moment, and everything else is just story and memory.

So that’s a way to get back to a place of stillness. Another one I like is and you can do this with eyes open or closed, but think of a person or animal that you have great affection for. I love my dogs a lot, so I usually focus on one of my dogs. And remember special times with this being, times where you felt really heart-connected to them.

And just imagine that you have this energy beam of love between the two of you and feel that energy of love and esa- even energy of gratitude that this being is in your life. And if you want, you might imagine hugging them or holding them And just thanking them for being a part of your life. And that’s a way to open the heart very quickly, that you learn to…

We’ve all learned in this, challenging world to close our heart and to make it through the day, but y- we also wanna learn how to open and, a, a hand is only useful because you can close it and you can open it. If you only close your hand, what you got is a hammer.

Yeah. If you only have an open hand, all you have is a fly swatter. But it’s the fact that we open and close it that allows the hand to be so functional, and the same thing has to happen with the heart. Sometimes you wanna close your heart because you’re in a difficult situation, but you also then wanna learn how to open it so that as you go through your day, you can feel connected and loving.

Sam Believ: Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing those. I think those are all very lovely. And, Yeah. For those who are listening, I guess if you pra- choose one that you like and just practice it daily, and I think just with even simple thing like this, you can get so much. Not saying that I’m in any shape or form more enlightened than anyone else, because I’m still walking on that path.

On that topic, like obviously you started early, and you had all the tools and psychedelics, and you had conversations with Dalai Lama and Mother Teresa, and, obviously you are a seeker or you were a seeker. Have you found it? Have you figured it out? Is there an ending to this journey?

Jonathan Robinson: I don’t think there’s ever an ending. I’ve talked to all these very enlightened people, and they don’t think there’s an ending either. We’re all on a journey. We all have gifts. We all have blind spots, including me. But I certainly have experienced a lot more love, peace, and joy than I used to, and I think that’s a good measure of your spiritual maturity as well as how your relationships go.

So I think we’re all on that path, whether we know it consciously or not, and that, if you put time, energy, and money into trying to find more peace, love, and joy, you’ll try different things. Psychedelics is a great path to a point. I think it can be damaging if people make that their whole path, because you’re not learning how to access some of these higher states on your own.

But they’re a amazing opening for people, and I think they give us a fore vision of what’s possible, and they certainly did for me. And, I still take psychedelics every once in a while, but I have a daily practice of meditation that I do and other things as well.

Sam Believ: Yeah. I agree with that. People that come to our retreat, we teach them yoga and meditation and, try to get them to start journaling, and also hopefully sharing and to see, that there’s more things.

But I can’t fi- I can’t seem to think of any other better way to get people to get this breakthrough and start their healing journey. So if psychedelics is the door, you have to still, o- once it’s open, you have to walk through that long corridor of healing. In your s- journey of seeking, you tell the story about finding a guru and he taught you a simple lesson.

Can you tell us that story? I think it’s very interesting.

Jonathan Robinson: I’m not sure which lesson you’re referring to. I did live with a guru for 20 years.

Sam Believ: It was one where you had to travel for a long time, and the answer- Oh. Oh, okay,

Jonathan Robinson: yeah …

Sam Believ: was simple and un- unsatisfactory at first.

Jonathan Robinson: Yes. And now I know which story you’re talking about.

When I interviewed a lot of spiritual teachers, I was surprised at how many of them talked about gratitude as being a doorway to higher consciousness. So many years ago, a friend of mine came back from India and had mentioned that… He really looked all lit up, and I said, “What happened to you in India?”

And he said, “My guru gave me this magical mantra that helps me feel gratitude, like, all the time.” And I was very intrigued. I knew gratitude was a, a door. And I said can you tell me the mantra?” And he said, “No, you ha- have to get directly from the guru,” like a transmission. Have you ever been to India, Sam?

Sam Believ: Not yet.

Jonathan Robinson: Yeah. It’s… First of all, it’s 20,000 miles away and, once you’re there, it’s a little hard place to travel. But I always like to have the best method, so I traveled to India. And once there, I took a rickshaw for, I think, four hours through tremendous amounts of pollution to get to this guy.

And then once I was there, I had to wait in line three hours to talk to him. So I’m already pissed off. I just want the frigging, mantra, and so I told the guru, “I traveled all the way from California to get this mantra.” And in an Indian accent, he says, “Ah, yes.

My mantra is the most powerful mantra on Earth.” He leans in to whisper it into my ear, and he says, “Whenever possible, repeat these words. The mantra I give you are the words-” Thank you. I look at him, I figure he’s kidding me, but he’s totally serious, and I realize that was the mantra. So I’m, I my reaction to that was I said, “That’s it?”

And he says no, that’s it is the mantra you have been using. That makes you feel like you never have enough. My mantra is thank you, not that’s it. That’s it will take you nowhere.” So I’m totally pissed off at this point, so I say thanks for nothing.” And he says, “Thanks for nothing is not the mantra.

You must say it many times a day from your heart, so when you eat good food, say thank you. Or when you see your child or a sunset or your pet, say thank you from your heart and soon you will feel overwhelming gratitude.” I was still pissed off and disappointed, but, I’d traveled all that way, so I tried it.

So I get in a taxi. It’s like a hun- it’s like, boiling outside, but this taxi has air conditioning. I go, “Thank you.” Just like saying directly to God, “Thank you for this air conditioning,” and then I go to my hotel room and there’s a bottle of pure water. I say, “Thank you for this water.

I’m dying of thirst.” I call my wife on Skype back then and, right now, think of it, we’re talking on opposite sides of the globe for free. Your listeners are listening to this for free. And there’s so much to be thankful for, but we take it all for granted. So I started using this and, I’m talking to my wife on the other side of the globe for free, and I’m thinking of all the things to be grateful for and the tears come to my eyes.

My wife says, “Wow, that must have been some mantra you got.” I said, “You have no idea, sweetie. It’s incredible.”

And so I do that throughout the day, yeah. Thank you for my dogs. Thank you for I have a hurt knee, but it’s not hurting today. Thank you that my knee’s feeling good, that I get to talk to you, thank you. It’s a great way of living life and sometimes the simplest methods are the best.

Sam Believ: Thank you for sharing that story. It was a beautiful

Jonathan Robinson: story. You’re welcome. And you didn’t have to travel to India.

Sam Believ: Yeah, I feel like I cheated the system. But-

Jonathan Robinson: We’ll see if you use it.

Sam Believ: Yeah,

Jonathan Robinson: no- If you travel to India and you spend all that time you start to use it for sure.

Sam Believ: I’ve been doing it actually for a while now. Whenever I get- … a booking for the retreat, I get a PayPal notification and it’s in this retreat business, that’s the hardest part. Always like getting enough people to come, especially like we have a very low price in this space, so for me it’s like in order for me to make ends meet, I need a lot of people to come.

And I used to just like- Yeah … swipe, oh great, now, like every time I receive a booking, I look at it and I’m like, close my eyes and like for a few seconds I just thank the person and, wish that they come and they have a great time. It’s beautiful and- That’s something, that,

Jonathan Robinson: That’s really the technique and, and- Yeah

finding some trigger to help you remember to be thankful like that, whether it be a meal, people say grace or, you know- Yeah … some business coming your way or some good fortune. Yeah it’s really a sweet,

Relationship

Sam Believ: with life. We truly live in a world where there’s so many reasons to be thankful and, you know- As you say, clean water, air condition, electricity, internet.

We live better than many kings in the past, but at the same time, our society has conditioned us to be so upset all the time and because all the news, that’s what they run off, that’s survival and and like how many people live their life with that mantra? That’s it. M- myself included, like I’m…

I have so many reasons to be grateful, but I am always focusing on those problems. I have 740 5-star reviews for my retreat, but I focus so much on those four 1-star reviews. It’s like that’s maybe human nature and it’s great to override it. So thank you for that lesson and,

Jonathan Robinson: And we’re all in that process, we’re all in that process, Sam of battling our minds that, for reasons having to do with evolution and survival thousands of years ago, our minds are always focused on what’s missing or what’s dangerous.

And psychedelics and MDMA and different therapies, spiritual techniques help to counter that mind so that we can really enjoy life and not get inundated and overwhelmed by all the hardships of life nowadays. Yeah. That’s a beautiful lesson. Let’s switch to

Sam Believ: a more practical talk about psychedelics. And MDMA is similar to Ayahuasca in a way that before you take it, you need to get off antidepressants, which is a bit, what is, which is a bit of a catch-22 because like people who need it the most, they also they also generally tend to be on antidepressants.

What is what are the techniques you like to use or routines or safe methods for people to wean off antidepressants?

Jonathan Robinson: I’m not a doctor, so I usually suggest that they talk to their doctor about that. It usually takes at least a couple of months to wean off. And there are some, some things that people can take instead that help, such as 5-HTP.

But it is a, a shame that it’s not particularly dangerous if people take MDMA and antidepressants. It, they just work on the same neural pathway, so they block each other or they cancel each other out. So it’s not good for people to take both at the same time. And, some people are willing to wean off and then do the MDMA and then they no longer need it.

So it’s it’s, but it is an issue for people that they really shouldn’t take them together.

Sam Believ: Yeah. It’s, I haven’t been able to find like one method that works for all, but yeah, it’s a slow process. …

Hopefully somebody figures it out and finds the, the best way. There, there’s interesting things I’ve heard about using high dose vitamins that really help your brain, and you can, this way can wean off easier.

I’ve interviewed a person about that. And some people use microdosing to wean off. But yeah, as you said you’re not a doctor. I’m not a doctor either, so it’s not medical advice. Don’t sue us. Do your own research.

Jonathan Robinson: Yeah. I do have a, I, I have a, a training, and maybe some of your listeners are interested in it, where I train…

I’ve trained over 500 people to be MDMA facilitators. And if people wanna find out about that, they can go to mdmatraining.net. And in that training, I have two of the world’s authorities medical doctors, on how to wean off antidepressants safely how to avoid any contraindications with the medicine, and of course, how to do this type of therapy and become, make that your livelihood.

So there’s a lot of information to know to be good at this. And I’m sure, as you know in your retreats, that you just learn how to handle and work with people in a way that’s really beneficial

Sam Believ: Yeah. Thank you. I’ll later ask you the names of those people so I can try to get them on the podcast.

Jonathan Robinson: Okay.

Sam Believ: Yeah, thank you so much for this episode. I’m really happy your publicist reached out to me. It’s an honor. I think you’re… I’m surprised I’ve never heard about you before, ’cause, your pedigree is so impressive. So thank you for coming on the show and telling people about things you learned and…

So yeah, tell us tell people where they can find more about you, your courses, your programs, and your books.

Jonathan Robinson: Sure. XTC, the, the letters XTC, for couples.net they can find out about my books Ecstasy as Medicine or Ecstasy for Couples. And if they put in their email address, they get 12 questions that lead to instant intimacy with anyone, that can be really helpful.

And then 10 ways to avoid bad psychedelic trips. So that can be very useful. And of course, information about my books. And my training people can go to mdmatraining.net and find out all about that. And in fact for your listeners, if they use a coupon code OFF200 capital O-F-F 200, they’d get $200 off the training.

Sam Believ: Perfect. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you for sharing this. Guys, you’ve been listening to Ayahuasca Podcast. As always, we do the whole Sam Believe, and I’ll see you in the next episode. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you’d like to support us and psychedelic renaissance at large, please follow us and leave us a wherever it is you’re listening.

Share this episode with someone who will benefit from this information. Nothing in this podcast is intended as medical advice, and it is for educational and entertainment purposes only. This episode is sponsored by LaWayra Ayahuasca Retreat. At LaWayra, we combine affordability, accessibility, and authenticity.

LaWayra, connect, heal, grow. Guys, I’m looking forward to hosting you.