In this episode of Ayahuasca Podcast host Sam Believ (founder of http://www.lawayra.com) has a conversation with Dr. Waifung Tsang. Waifung is a clinical psychologist, researcher and co-founder of Onaya Sciences, bridging Western psychology with indigenous Amazonian plant medicine, Chinese medicine and sound-based therapies. He also advises Heroic Hearts UK and is a TEDx speaker exploring the intersection of trauma, psychedelics and traditional wisdom.

We touch upon topics of:

  • (00:55–04:38) Waifung’s journey from music and disillusionment in clinical psychology to ayahuasca research in Peru and co-founding Onaya Sciences
  • (06:34–11:38) Why ayahuasca is almost invisible in China: censorship, historical suppression of spirituality and underground ceremonies
  • (11:38–13:58) Dragons, the Monkey King and how Chinese mythology, Taoism and Buddhism resonate with psychedelic experiences
  • (13:58–19:22) Tai Chi, qigong and Chinese medicine as tools for working with plant diets, chi and ceremony
  • (19:22–24:19) Parallels between Chinese medicine and Latin American folk wisdom: hot/cold foods, grandmothers’ knowledge and collectivist spirituality
  • (24:19–29:20) Emerging ayahuasca circles in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan — encrypted forums, harsh penalties and why many seekers are business people
  • (29:23–34:57) From NHS burnout to the jungle: what Waifung learned from indigenous doctors who treat “whoever comes” with plants, ritual and Icaros
  • (35:13–39:19) Onaya’s research with Heroic Hearts: veterans, PTSD, traumatic brain injury and early multi-modal findings
  • (39:19–43:18) Multi-site collaborations with retreat centers, indigenous advisory boards and studying Icaros, dreams and plant spirits
  • (45:04–47:28) Epigenetics 101: how ayahuasca may influence gene expression and “straighten ancestral lines” — and why much larger samples are needed
  • (52:50–59:29) Medicine music, energy in ceremony, “bad DJs” vs surgical Icaros, and a new EEG study recording shamans’ songs and brain activity
  • (01:01:18–01:04:18) How ayahuasca heals on bio-psycho-social-spiritual levels and why community and integration matter as much as the visions

If you would like to attend one of our Ayahuasca retreats go to http://www.lawayra.com

Find more about Dr. Waifung Tsang and Onaya Sciences at http://www.onaya.io, http://www.onaya.science and on Instagram @onaya.io

Transcript

Sam Believ: You’re listening to ayahuasca podcast.com. First, explain to people what is epigenetic changes and how can ayahuasca change your genome and should people worry?

Dr. Waifung Tsang: Epigenetics is the kind of upregulation or downregulation of certain genes over time impacted by environment and life and experience.

Most of the time when we see kinda epigenetic changes, it happens over a long period of time, is very incremental. But then sometimes big events will then happen in your life to change the course of it, and then that will get encoded into your DNA. And one of the things that we have been finding is even on a relatively small samples, starting to see changes in the gene.

So on the genetic level. So basically. Ayahuasca and that ceremony being that big kind of like catalyst to that change. And right now even I think the first study we looked at, we had about 60 people and we were already seeing some upregulation a methylation of the Sigma one gene related to trauma.

So for example, related to like encoding of memory and recall and emotional regulation previously done in kind of rat studies and things. Right now we are on the process of expanding that because essentially genetic studies typically require numbers of up to the hundreds before you can statistically competently say that this change is actually happening.

So more research is definitely required in this area. One interesting thing is when we spoke to the Eros about the epigenetic side of the study, obviously they weren’t familiar with DNA, so we’re just explaining it. And then Don Rno Maestro who we’ve been working with, he who was basically liar.

That makes a lot of sense and is exactly like what I’ve been doing in ceremony. This sense of like clearing ancestral lines and straightening those ancestral lines.

Sam Believ: Hi guys, and welcome to Ayahuasca podcast. As always, we do the call assembly. Today I’m having a conversation with T Wave also known as Wave Phone. Sang. We wa phone is a clinical psychologist, researcher and co-founder of Anaya Sciences. He bridges Western Science with indigenous healing, working with Ayahuasca trauma and sound-based therapies.

Wang is also an advisor to Heroic Hearts uk. A TEDx speaker exploring the intersection of psychology, psychedelics, and traditional wisdom. This episode is sponsored by Lara Ayahuasca Retreat. At Lara, we combine affordability, accessibility, and authenticity. Lara Connect, heal, grow. Guys, I’m looking forward to hosting you Ang welcome to the show.

How did you like my pronation of your name?

Dr. Waifung Tsang: It was perfect. Thank you so much. Yeah, it was really good. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, that one’s a, it’s a hard one for most people.

Sam Believ: Yeah, because in in, in Asian languages, it’s like, it’s not just the way you say, it’s also no, it’s very musical, but yeah.

I can imitate it, but then I’ll probably forget it very quickly. Han tell us about yourself a little bit. Your story, how did you end up in this line of work? Researching ayahuasca.

Dr. Waifung Tsang: Yeah, it’s been yeah, it’s been quite a journey. I would say. I guess like my interests kinda started in psychedelics kinda more widely.

I’m a musician, so I’m, I play a lot of music and in the musical space often there is, drug use is such a common place as well, and being more exposed to kinda psychedelics at festivals and things. And then throughout my psychology career became really interested in the research that’s coming out.

And just like the amazing kind of data that, that it was looking, especially when I was feeling really disillusioned in my in my practice as well with what we had to. Yeah, just a lot of things that we’re taught or made to do in clinical practice that I just really didn’t sit right with me.

And then it was a process of serendipity meeting some really good friends along the way. And there was, yeah, meeting a psychiatrist Dr. Simon Ruffle, who was a psychiatrist and also psychologist on the team working in the hospital who had been, yeah, traveling to Peru and basically was like, oh my God, you have to come check this out.

This is amazing. And then sat with a ero for the first time that had been training in the, in Peru, and then was just completely blown away by the results. And yeah, at that time, going to. The center, the Ayahuasca Foundation the Rio Spoke kind research center in Iquitos, Peru, in the heart of the Amazon.

They had built this like research and retreat center, but no one was really properly doing the re research there. And we were just like, woo, we’ll do the research. We would love to do that. And yeah, that was like 10 years ago. And since then we’ve just never really looked back. I thought a little bit about this the other day, just oh, at that time when we first started researching Ayahuasca, just thinking, oh, maybe that’s just like that one time we’ll be doing this.

But then as we just dug more and more into the rabbit hole, just kept going deeper and deeper, especially for me. The whole, in all the intersections of the different other kind of aspects of my life, especially with music, with the use of the s with that very like surgical use of sound with the intersections, with plant medicine and Chinese medicine and having that kind of like basis for that in my own upbringing and the culture behind it.

And like really a big part of our research is really to focus on indigenous uses of ayahuasca and really upholding that tradition and retaining those, that ceremony the ritual and the whole context around it. That’s what really kept me involved and it’s really become a lifestyle.

Sam Believ: Thank you for sharing.

I see definitely lots of parallels between your journey and my own, the illusion and the serendipity or synchronicity and. It’s it’s very common from with the guests that I interview. It’s just this thing that kind of happens to you and just grabs you. And then the rabbit hole effect of it all.

It’s actually very interesting that we have couple points of touch, but the way I found you was very interesting. So I was, we have a map at my retreat, which is called Lara. We have a map with where people, le lift pins, where they’re from. And I was looking at the map and I was like, we have less people from China than we have people from, which is like a tiny island in Caribbean.

And I was like, what? Why is that? And I was like, let me, so I went ti and I looked like who are and is, are there any Chinese people that talk about psychedelics? And there were a few people, and I think you were the only one that had Instagram. So I reached out to you, but as I was getting ready for this interview.

I was also talking, I realized that you are from Aya Sciences and I interviewed Ian McCall about ayahuasca and traumatic brain injury. So we and I believe he mentioned on science, he even mentioned that I should interview you guys. But I kind, basically, I was destined to finally speak to you anyway in some point of time.

And there’s definitely those very interesting topics about like music and Chinese medicine. It’s all in my list of questions already but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let’s start with this main topic that draw me to you. It’s like, why is there such a huge country, China?

I know you’re from Hong Kong, but still, it’s still, I believe still one country, right? Why is it so huge? But why is there so little people that let’s say are traveling to. To Amazon to drink ayahuasca. I wanna talk about, what is it different about Asia that people are maybe not interested in, or maybe there’s a cultural difference.

Yeah. Anything you wanna tell about this?

Dr. Waifung Tsang: Yeah, where do I start? That’s an interesting question. Firstly I’m happy to represent like the Chinese Hong Kong side of the world, and you’re very right is I think that, I’ve read somewhere around like people who are, have been looking at the kinda anthropology and the, and globalization of psychedelics and ayahuasca and yeah, there’s just this kind of void almost in China.

And and yeah I think there might be like a few reasons for that. Why so much of it doesn’t exist. A lot of it political, I think. Obviously there’s the firewall and there is a lot of information blockage in China that stops everything going in and stops everything going out and everything becomes filtered.

And then the political running of the people as well. I think a lot of it might have to do with maybe like the industrial revolution that was happening at the end of the seventies that kind of finished and how actually a lot of spirituality and a lot of kind of religious acts or even like ancient kind of Chinese philosophies got really pushed down and suppressed and it became very illegal to even hold gatherings.

So people had to do it really on the sly and had to be really inconspicuous about it. And then after kind of Chairman Mao and came new leadership and that’s when more con, Confucius and kind of Buddhism and kinda like more spiritual activity was able to surface a little bit more.

And I think right now we’re also, yeah, because of that is like impacted. How people approach it or how much it gets spread and how people can go in with the knowledge as well. And just as I’m talking about that this is like an ongoing theme in Chinese history where they just have a knack to try to raise the story and erase the history.

And obviously there’s the whole Quinn Dynasty thing where, did you know about Yeah, Chi China used to be like seven, seven states and then it got united into one country and then in that United, they killed all the scholars and burned all the books and just like refresh everything.

Like the, when you go to, like, when you go through China, the terracotta army and stuff, they’ve, they’re slowly digging it up and finding that they actually have so much of this technology that. People are finding out recently that they’ve had known for such a long time, but they just got completely destroyed and then people had to refind it.

And I know in kind of Chinese history, thinking about psychedelic use, there has been some mention of it in some literature. There are some kind of like old poems that mention the use of kinda mushroom and very kind of mythical things happening. And then, yeah, mentions of psychedelics and like old literature from like a long time ago, like we’re talking like Pang Dynasty, Hangang Dynasty I think it was like 200 BCE or something like really old.

And that’s like. From a lot of those more Daoist alchemists uses of psychedelics. But then, yeah, again, all this literature just got buried and people had to be so inconspicuous. And even now, right? ’cause fast forward to today, people when they run ceremonies, and I know of these circles going on in, in China and in Hong Kong is very like encrypted apps is like word of mouth is really just very underground that they have to do it and often run by like expats or foreigners who bring the knowledge in.

Yeah, it’s, so it’s, it is a very interesting topic how that happens. And another thing that kind of really I find it super interesting is there’s so much intersection between the psychedelic space and what’s like in Chinese history, especially when you think about like Chinese mythology and like Buddhism and like Taoism, and there’s so much kind of overlap of things that just lends itself so well to the psychedelic space.

And like even thinking about the story of the monkey king or something is so psychedelic. The whole thing is there must have been, it must have facilitated the, these ideas at some point. And it just wasn’t really well documented.

Sam Believ: Or it was documented and then it was just destroyed.

But it, it definitely, there’s definitely something there, something very psychedelic because in one of my recent ceremonies, I was actually becoming a dragon. Like I could see myself becoming, it’s that’s very Chinese. So in a way I only thought about it now when you mentioned that Chinese culture is very psychedelic, like why dragon?

And so many people see dragons in, in, in ayahuasca experiences. So there, there’s definitely been something in, there’s plenty of pyramids as well and plenty of things. And like in India they had soma or this water lily in Egypt they all had their own psychedelics. And China is pretty close to Siberia and there’s, that’s where the matic traditions of mushrooms are coming from.

So they’re like surrounded by psychedelics in each direction. So it’s to believe that such a big country with such a deep culture didn’t get psychedelics. If you really dig deep anywhere, you find anywhere there’s like advanced culture spirituality. You will eventually find psychedelics.

Whether external or just internal you do, I know you do Tai Chi, for example. Like you can, and you can naturally enhance your own psychedelic, perception of things. But like spirituality is psychedelic, in my opinion,

Dr. Waifung Tsang: massively. Oh and this is something I’ve been like learning so much from the plants as I’ve been doing dithers and connecting for those listening, I dunno about dithers is, this process of assimilating with master plants and teacher plants and essentially in, in commune with them and what, yeah.

When I’ve been dieting, one thing that I’ve really found super helpful is a lot of these Chinese practices that have been embedded in my body growing up. Like my mom teaches Tai Chi. She does like the Tai Chi fan and the sword and stuff. My dad does chi gong and stuff. Like we, we just grow up with, you wake up at a crack of dawn, there’s a bunch of old people just doing Tai Chi in the park and they love it.

They’ve got their get up, and it’s so in the heritage and the lineage that actually a lot of these practices when trying to connect, when trying when trying to help ex, connect with my own body, but then also to the ethereal and to, to the plants. And to the spirits actually.

Having a framework to move with my breath, to move my body to like track what’s happening in my body and in ways of like meditation and mindfulness. So very kind of eastern practices. All of these just are such important keys that I’ve been finding more and more. And it’s really coming through my visions, coming through things that are channeled from like past life stuff.

It’s like very, it’s very Asian. It’s almost like Disney and China, Asian. Yeah. It’s super interesting. It is like one, it is one question that I’ve been asking as I’ve. Try to figure out, this relationship with plants in the ayahuasca space. Like almost what’s in it for the plant, why do plants want to what’s in it for the plant?

And building relationships with humans, obviously that’s the whole kind of like spreading the knowledge and spreading the seed thing. But then also they really wanna have a human experience. And in having that human experience, they wanna learn about these things that are encoded in your body, encoded in your DNA.

And one of the things for me as a person from that lineage is tai chi, is meditation, is breath work is actually mindfulness. And actually bringing those things that just collaborates so well with everything I’m learning from the indigenous side as well in the Amazon.

Sam Believ: Yeah. It’s what’s in it for plant and as you said spreading it and, recently I interviewed Dennis McKenna and it was either him or his brother that took Ayahuasca from Peru and brought it to Hawaii. Because because Ayahuasca gave them a good experience, I assume they, they literally spread it to another car, part of the continent. So maybe that would definitely explain it.

When you talk about like Chinese culture and my, my understanding is very limited. So I’ve been to China once, and I’ve been to I’ve been to Singapore many times and there’s like a Chinese part, but I’ve never been, I’ve never I mean my knowledge of the culture is very limited, but from what I know in Chinese medicine.

There is like understanding of hot foods and cold foods and things like this. And I was really surprised when when in Colombian culture, like my wife’s mother would be like, don’t eat a banana because it’s cold. And I’m like, what do you mean it’s cold? It’s room temperature. But what they mean is like this side of the and shamans say ayahuasca is hot.

And in my culture there is no understanding of hot and cold foods. At least not me growing up. I’ve never heard about it before. But somehow there is this parallel and I’m not, and I’m sure Colombian grandmothers, I’m not using Chinese medicine. It is just like they have their own indigenous way of knowing it.

And if you think about it and if you believe the way humans spread around the planet, it was the Northeast Asians that came through the Bar Strait and went down and populated the Americas. So maybe that knowledge. It was before that, and it came through because Shamanic chan and like Mongolian throat singing, there’s some parallel there.

You see some indigenous people that look very Asian. My wife is my wife is Spart indigenous, but she is still she is like a very her eyes are very Asian looking, in my opinion. Even my kids they have very Asian looking eyes. So yeah anything you explore in that direction.

Dr. Waifung Tsang: Yeah, I think like from what you were speaking about first is, yeah, again, there’s so many overlaps and even like how, like ancient kind of like more Chinese practices on reading bodies, reading palms, reading faces, the understanding of QI know exactly what we’re talking about.

This is something that my mom talks about all the time with the hotness as well. We got T hay. T hay is like a hot chi. It’s like a, it’s like a hot energy that this food gives or how it’s been treated. And then it’s almost, it’s quite Ayurvedic, right? It’s all about balancing, turning everything back to harmony.

Maybe it’s too hot or if it’s too cold, if it’s too much air or the different elements and yeah, that’s really at the core of Chinese medicine and then a lot of Chinese philosophies and there’s actually, it’s, it is super interesting now thinking about it, how. I know a lot more about Ayahuasca than other psychedelics just because that’s my specialism.

But then when you look at how a lot of ceremonies are run now in China or by, in Hong Kong, it really integrates a lot of those teachings into the practice. For example, bringing kind of Chinese medicine to help balance out the qi and the preparation. And the integration. I know some facilitators who like to bring in Chinese herbs into how they make the brew, or they have their own versions of ayahuasca using almost like analogs.

Obviously, the MT containing kind of plants that are very high in content. San Sisu is a really, is a, I need to learn English for that. Actually, San Sisu it, it is like their version of JA and the psychiatry for this kind of plant, and that’s like the version that they use and bringing a lot of these, yeah.

More Taos, more Buddhist ways of working in the preparation and integration, but also in ceremony and calling in those spirits. I know this guy who always likes to use the what’s his name? Guu, there’s a story of the Free Kingdoms in China, and then there is there’s these free guys that kind of led this revolutionary army.

And then there’s this one guy who’s just so loyal to his to his family and to his people that they have a statue of him on like most of the altars in China. And then he represents loyalty and solidity and kind of power and strength, and they always put him like in the altar during ceremony and stuff.

So yeah. Is. It, it makes a lot of sense. And when I’m looking at like indigenous ways of working in the jungle, obviously they’re also very everything is about bringing things back to balance, bringing things back to harmony. I Aveda they’re, obviously very collectivists as a society, as is China, and have that kind of really core value of community and relational kind of identity forming happens.

And obviously that connection with the plants and how it’s just all grounded to earth and yeah it’s super interesting. I would love to be able to conduct research. It’s, it is obviously such a, so much red tape around it in China, but even anecdotally or what little research there is out there, there’s already pointing so much to the vast potential of.

Using this medicine in this context with the philosophies that are already so embedded in everyone’s understanding of the world, that whole understanding of spirit and qi and energy, like every and of lineage. And, everyone, everywhere you go, like every family you go to in China will have an altar for the ancestors.

There will be an altar for the spirits that govern the land, the locally, and then you will always burn free incense for these spirits. It’s just daily practice. When you go for a job interview on a birthday of the Buddha, you would go visit the temple and put some money in the box and, you wanna be on a good side with the spirits and actually straighten your line with, with energy that’s out there, which is exactly how the indigenous people in the Amazon work, it’s all about straightening that line and everything that they do is, it is not even a, there’s no question that there is spirit involved and it just permeates, their whole tradition and lifestyle,

Sam Believ: yeah. A lot of spirituality still survived even the communist ’cause I mean I come from, that used to be part of Soviet Union and they kinda came in and destroyed all the religion. But some still survives in like the way you speak. Like for example, even though religion does not exist, something happens, you say, thanks God, not because you are not necessarily religious.

And basically as I’m understanding in China, you still have the altars and tai chi, and it’s slowly coming back because yeah, you can only repress it for that long, because in the end, we are spiritual beings and we will have to find a way to connect with that because there’s, there is no, not much meaning without it.

Like I personally discovered through Ayahuasca before that I was not spiritual. And, but some people have, there’s many different ways to get there. You’re surprising me. Definitely. I thought there was like zero ayahuasca in China and you say there’s actually circles and at least in Hong Kong and maybe in the mainland China.

And you say they own deals have their own version of farm asca. Let’s call Itasca. Just finding them, finding the prerequisite plants that have similar structure and then mixing them. But of course it’s not ever gonna be ayahuasca because. There’s so many different compounds on top of MAOI Harman and stuff like that.

But so it exists and I was thinking like, we should do, do you reckon there is a person that speaks about ayahuasca on like Chinese internet or is it like the great firewall of China is too prohibitive even for that? Just to even speak about it.

Dr. Waifung Tsang: I know there are encrypted forums that kind of speak about it.

It is very hard to access them outside of China, but even in China it’s very hard to access them. It needs to, you’ll need the kind of encryption and the codes because obviously the penalty is very strict over there. And they have, they’re replaced with a death penalty as well. So people have to be super, super careful.

But there is some literature around it, it’s very. Even those who go off and research in, and people I know, they’re very careful about who you can share with, like what you can share. And I yeah. I’ve never actually sat in a circle there. I’m very careful about who I sit in ceremony with in general anyway.

But I definitely have friends who are very yeah, who are very interested in the area and have been like doing practices in the big cities as well, like kind of Beijing and Shanghai and Sheen and then when you go to Taiwan as well, I have one psychedelic doctor, a friend who has opened up clinic in, in Taiwan is also very, who talks more openly about it because it’s Taiwan.

And then yeah, but it is, it’s super interesting how, because it’s because. It’s so small, but it still needs to be a functional sort of business, right? You still need like people to come through. So it’s super interesting how the kind of circles, these sorts of forums where people speak about it, like then extends to and to my surprise sometimes, and it makes a lot of sense when I was, when I, and I heard about it, is that often it comes to like business people, like a lot of people who just wanna make a lot of money and they’re in that.

That’s very Chinese. We love money, we love business, we love kind of making money and serving society in that way. So a lot of the intentions that people then bring to ceremony becomes like, I wanna be better at my job. I wanna do better in, in life and be able to provide for my fa a lot of like very core Chinese values.

And, I piety and but then, it just, it’s just interesting contrast to me to how when in the West I’ve been working with so many people for that individual. Oh, is my, i my spiritual growth very kind of individual individualistic sort of approach to it all. So yeah, and that’s probably like a remnant of the.

The whole kind of industrial revolution as well where people had to, where you just became more capitalist. Capitalist and money focused. And then how do I then do a spiritual version of that? What it looks like. Now.

Sam Believ: This episode is sponsored by Lara ias retreat. Most of Lara, if you’ve been listening to this podcast for a while, some of you might have already been to Lara before.

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So it will spread. But you mentioned, studies in science let’s go back to your stock. Less about China. I think that’s we dedicate enough time to it. Let’s talk about your science and your scientific career with Ayahuasca. So talk to us about your own first Ayahuasca experience and why did you.

Decided to dedicate your scientific life to that topic specifically?

Dr. Waifung Tsang: It felt quite like a no brainer to be honest. One, once I found that, like I, I really struggled in the clinic, working in trauma, working in psychosis, like working with modalities that just wasn’t really working.

Like people, patients kept coming back or medications that I just really, I found myself in a position where I was literally like having to apologize to my patients for the level of care and the inadequacy of it that we were providing because it was just clearly not good. And then I went to the jungle and one thing that really struck out to me actually was like, you know how.

These indigenous practitioners, when they provide this treatment, there’s no doubt in their mind that this is gonna work. It’s this is definitely gonna work. You’re gonna come here and it’s gonna heal you, and it’s gonna be great. And it’s, obviously it plays into that kind of setting and the mindset that you go into and how powerful of a mediator that is.

The actual therapeutic change and positive outcome. And then I was like, okay, sure. Cool. And then, and then these guys then coming. Also doctors who, jungle doctors, Eros and shamans coming through and actually be like, bring me anyone. And now I came from a very clinical background where, you have specialisms for individual kind of issues and ailments, and then you would then refer to that specialist department.

But then first time I meet these doctors of traditional doctors who are like, anyone, I’ve got something. And so that really like interested me. I do see pros and cons to that as the more I work with indigenous people in that one I am super amazed often when conditions that we really struggled with in the West.

Not just like obviously mental and psychol psychological and trauma and all of these things, but then. Also like really physical ailments, like working with plant medicines, working with jungle medicines like really severe burns or, and then, but then there is a part of me that also feels because the indigenous people are in their kind of jungle setting, that sometimes there might be almost like a, an underestimate of the darkness of the west or of how deep people have gone and all the different conditions.

A lot of ways the different conditions have developed and increased in severity and then people coming with things that they really never seen before. And then. And then having to then trial these kind of old ways that they’ve been working to that setting. So there’s definitely, I feel a very strong place for western medicine as well.

And definitely not up, not holding one belief system or paradigm above the other. For emergency medicine, especially like Western, all the way, if I break a leg, I’m going to a hospital, for example. And then one thing that really struck me about how they work, which was really missing from kind of western psychology and is often just side.

Sided as like alternative therapy, which is art, artisticness. And one thing that I really love about the way the indigenous people work, the they are medics, but they’re also artists. They’re scientists, but they’re also artists. Like the Echoes are a perfect example, is all about the intention behind these words that you sing behind how well you can build this container, calling the angels, have the fiery saws, get the mountains, get the Gorilla Soldiers, and really build that container.

And then leading to very tangible changes in people’s experience and long-term outcomes. That’s when I really became okay, that’s really the intersection between the different fields. And I, yeah, I was completely sold and it was, yeah, ever since.

Sam Believ: And, so basically then you started doing the science.

So with the on, so tell us about on and like what science have you done and what are you working on right now? Of

Dr. Waifung Tsang: course. Yeah. Thank you for asking. Yeah, so Anaya have done quite a few bits now over time. Right now we are working in collaboration with some different organizations.

So one is the Hero Heart Project. I know you know about Ho Rick Hearts projects. They’re like a veteran veterans kind of charity in the States. They’ve got different arms now in, in the UK and Australia and Canada for example. And yeah, working with veterans that have PTSD or diagnosed a traumatic brain injury and really taking quite a multidisciplinary holistic approach.

So thinking about psychology, but then also neuropsychology, cognitive psychology, thinking about biology as well, the gut microbiome, the epigenetic changes that happen after looking at stool samples, looking at blood samples, doing like neuroimaging. And then, yeah, we’re currently two year in a five year study with that.

Preliminary results are looking very good right now. I think right now, the last time I checked, we’ve, we do one year follow up with all of the veterans after. And these are really like severe end of the scale when it comes to PTSD. ‘Cause we do like a 10 day retreat within this study.

And a lot of the research a lot of the retreats that heroic hearts work with are three days and shorter. So we reserve the kind of like the more severe end to our study. And then right now we’re finding. Around kind of 80, 84% of people immediately after no longer meeting diagnostic criteria on clinical measures, standardized measures for PTSD and then sustaining at six month.

And the 12 month data have recently come in. And it’s also like sustaining at that level as well. And then correlating with different changes in the brain and in the gene. And it’s really, and it’s really phenomenal kind of seeing this change. And I’m on the ground watching it as well and the kind of things that I’m sure you see this on your day to day and on your retreats, the kind of things that people come out with and the level of insight the stories that they’re able to rekindle their relationships with.

It’s just so moving and. Beyond anything I’ve ever seen in, in, in an NHS setting, which is, yeah, and I’ll be working with patients for years and not be able to see that sort of change. And then for that to sustain as well, speaking to the community that Ayahuasca can build and the group that you share with, especially for the veterans actually.

’cause one thing I really find when working with veterans is that there’s something about the brotherhood and the comradery of the platoon, of the people that you live and die by. Especially in a life where you felt so disconnected and you really. Need you yearn for that human connection and going to the army to find that a sense of identity to the army that you bring can really bring these groups together more so than nonclinical samples or samples outside of veteran study.

And and then that then lends itself to integration and community support afterwards, where often they’ll become kinda lifelong friends, like following the retreat. And then, yeah, we’ve also recently started started a study working with athletes, Jenny home with Vian McCall, and basically like MMA fighters, mixed martial artists, kind of boxers, people also kinda suffering from quite severe traumatic brain injury.

Different extreme sports as well. But that’s just starting out right now that I don’t have any kind of data to share, but I’m very yeah, I’m very excited for the direction that is going. Yeah.

Sam Believ: Yeah the we, we have plenty of veterans coming through as well. We don’t have specific retreats dedicated just for veterans, but it’s something that I’m planning to eventually create is just haven’t happened so far, but that bonding, that veterans experience going through war together or anyone that experiences going through adverse experience together.

I think some of it is replicated at the Ayahuasca retreat just because even just a random group of people, they come and they are, purging together and they’re like staying awake at night together. It also creates a bit of that, and I think I contributes to an overall bonding of the group on Ayahuasca because, you do have ayahuasca experience, which are very challenging, and then knowing that you did it together makes you like each other more somehow.

And, another thought that comes to mind when you talk about the science is like we already know it works, right? We here, we hosted more than 2000 people now and I’ve seen so many times people coming and getting better, coming and getting better, but now we need science to prove that it is really happening.

It’s guilty and less proven the otherwise, right? So that’s how it feels like I, I’m actually also looking to eventually start doing some science. So I dunno, maybe if you look, if you know some scientists that are looking for a retreat venue where they wanna do their science, I would be open.

Yeah. Let’s ’cause I just came from maps and at maps I was connecting to some people to try and see if I can get some science because I know it works. And we know we have the Google testimonials people can read, but it’s not science. Now we need to measure it. And, yeah, if the world is full of skeptics and I was a skeptic myself, if that’s what we need to do, let’s do it.

But I know when the time is right, the science will find us. Yeah, the,

Dr. Waifung Tsang: yeah. Amelia as well link in, oh, we’re connecting now anyway, but definitely one thing Anaya are opening up to more is working with other retreat centers and, opening up the data collection and yeah, there, there are a few that we’re already started that conversation with raising money for and expanding the study.

And from the scientific point of view is always helpful to have multi-site comparisons in different contradictions with different facilitators and can really help us triangulate that, what we’re seeing is not just within the one, like paradigm, right? Because what we really want to do is as we.

Try to retain the tradition in it. We wanna see how many different traditions that are yielding this sort of results and how the environments and the ceremony and the practitioner actually can then go on to impact the therapeutic outcome. So yeah, definitely open to potentially collaborating on that side as well.

Yeah, it’s on that note, I would also love to speak to your current eras as well around what they would like to research. Like one thing we do on on ONA is we would set up like an indigenous advisory board at basically the Eros and Maestro is that we work with to share with us what they think we should focus the research on and actually how we can then translate that into science and.

Some things are harder than others, obviously. Oh yeah, research immortal plant spirits, that that’s quite hard. But then relatedness to nature or even like the power of the echos or something, that’s something that we can try to find workarounds to do really cool, interesting studies and more like dream, for example.

Sam Believ: Yeah, no, definitely. I’m very interesting, interested and there’s quite a big difference between colomb and ayahuasca, traditional, specifically this tribe that we work with which are called Inga, as opposed to Shabo because number one, shabo ceremonies are in a dark. Ingo.

Ceremonies are, you have candlelight and you have a fire. And then sopi sing IROs to individual people. Our shaman, he only sings IROs to the medicine and then when he does the cleanse, but apart from that, it’s it’s music. It’s actually like we have a band, like six people band. It’s so it’s not always like loud music, but it’s a very musical tradition where as a ceremony starts, music starts playing and it gets first it’s one person’s, two people.

Then closer to the second part of a ceremony, it starts to get more melodic and more rhythmic and more instruments. And it ends up at the crescendo of a very celebratory music. And but the results are the same, people get better. So I’m just wondering, what is, what part, which part plays.

And it could definitely be interesting to, to study it. Maybe get some numbers behind it. But yeah. You said, you studied epigenetic changes, talk first, explain to people what is epigenetic changes and and then how can ayahuasca change your genome and should people worry.

Dr. Waifung Tsang: Yeah, so that’s very preliminary right now. We were the first to look at DNA changes in any psychedelic and epigenetics is the kind of upregulation or downregulation of certain genes over time impacted by environments and life and experience. And essentially we know that things can really most of the time when we see kinda epigenetic changes, it happens over a long period of time. And it could, is very incremental, but then sometimes big events will then happen in your life to change the course of it and then that will get encoded into your DNA. And one of the things that we have been finding is even on a relatively small sample, seeing, starting to see changes in the gene, so on the genetic level, so basically ayahuasca and that ceremony being that big kind of like catalyst to that change and.

Right now, even I think the first study we looked at, we had about 60 people. And we were already seeing some upregulation and methylation of the Sigma one gene when in related to trauma. So for example related to like encoding of memory and recall and emotional regulation previously like dunning kind of rat studies and things.

And right now we are on the process of expanding that because essentially genetic studies typically require numbers of up to the hundreds before you can statistically competently say that this change is actually happening. So more research is definitely required in this area. But one interesting thing is when we spoke to the Eros about the epigenetic side of the study, obviously they.

They weren’t familiar with DNA, so we’re just explaining it. And then Don Rno Maestro, who we’ve been working with he was basically like, that makes a lot of sense and is exactly like what I’ve been doing in ceremony. This sense of like clearing ancestral lines and straightening those ancestral lines.

We’re like, okay, yeah that’s pretty much what’s happening. Yes.

Sam Believ: Yeah. Different language. Same meaning. ’cause shamans, they are the scientists of of their little arts. Like a shaman is a scientist and a musician and a politician and everything altogether.

So I know you yourself now you’re also, you are a scientist, but also you have your own shamanic journey and you’re a musician, how are you combining it all and how do you balance out, the scientific sort of dryness with the spiritual complexity? Anything you wanna talk about the, in that direction?

Dr. Waifung Tsang: Yeah, that’s a good, that’s a good question. For the most part, I don’t find it dry. Like I really enjoy it, but it’s, it is just, yeah, when you get, when you spend too much time on the computer just writing, like crunching nu the numbers are actually, maybe it’s my Asian side, just stereotypically into math, but I’m like that the numbers really speak to me and they tell a story to me and it’s something that I really love to see and how we can both on a, help to generalize across a number of people, but also show incremental change within the individual as well.

And it has that kind of micro, macro ability to, everything is numbers. And then I find the, yeah, the best way to blend it all. It just blend is I’m really grateful in how well is merged as well. Especially when I am in a place where, you know. My work is varied enough that kind of keeps me interested.

Like I get to go to the jungle and be there and, witness these changes and then seeing the numbers and then seeing that, the follow up over time. And then it’s just, and it is, and it I think it’s something that the, I feel like it’s something that the world really needs as well.

Because there’s we’ve been speaking to quite a lot of retreat centers and I think a lot of them share this same kind of concern or interest actually, we know this works. We just really need to find a way to translate it or publish it or show the world that it works.

And I feel that is an important kind of role to take and what makes it much more bearable is just amazing people in my life. A really good team, a really great. Team of assistants and other scientists and universities worldwide, and just the AYA family is, yeah they make everything so good.

And I’m so grateful for them. And then the whole thing just has this whole very like integrated, holistic, artistic side to it as well. Like my musical journey has been completely shifted since researching ayahuasca. For example, I had never really thought about music from a healing perspective before sitting in ceremony and then being exposed to the surgical knife of the CRO and how well it can, provide that onic container to the people what the individual or the group needs and freestyle in real time for these people and that bit.

Blows my mind, like just very specific intentions and melodies and rhythms for specific ailments that people are going through and bringing that then into the research space. I have a band shout out, know The Freedom Collective. So like we bring those sorts of influences from the jungle into the studio as well.

And then obviously the diets, the plants, our plant friends that we make along the way. And then being able to call that in when I’m like playing a show or something, or in the studio or something is just so helpful to how I navigate through the musical journey. I, yeah. And then studying that in research.

Yeah, I pinch myself. Often when I wake up the luck I’ve had in the blessings. And to be able to do this work and meet people like you and amazing people who are on this path to together and yeah, bringing healing. And this time when there’s so much chaos and madness in the world, it really grounds me.

If anything, it, like for example, during that whole Hong Kong revolution movement that happened, like I felt so helpless, like during the whole thing what can I do? And the research and the work with Ayahuasca really grounded me. Just okay, there’s a lot of trauma happening. There’s wars going on, there’s, displacement going on.

There’s a whole mental health crisis. What can I do? What can I do? What can I do? And then it always comes back to, okay, heal. What can I do best to heal? This is the thing I can keep focusing on. So yeah, it brings a lot of meaning to my life.

Sam Believ: Yeah by healing yourself, you heal others. So a lot of people want to first clean their neighbor’s yard before cleaning their own for a medicine musician.

And I’m not a musician, but I play guitar and I sing songs, and I went to musical school when I was younger. I think it’s a common trait between eastern European parents and Asian parents. They send you to musical school in chess and you expect it to be good at math as well. But for yeah, there’s definitely some influence, I assume, but for normally for a musician, the compliment is like applause and people enjoying it.

But what I realized for a medicine musician is when you play medicine, music in a ceremony, the best compliment is when people start vomiting violently. It means that there’s something in vibration of your voice that moves stuff around. And I also understand that playing music in the ceremony is not just a musical act when I’m about to play a guitar and sing some songs, I set an intention and it’s kinda like I’m with my music.

I’m trying to also like, together with the sound coming out of my voice, there’s also something else coming out of some other parts. But it’s basically like throwing like a net, like a, energy so to speak. And let’s talk about that part. Like you’re a scientist but you also do tai chi and there’s energy and we have energy as the car moves and it takes chemical energy from the fuel and transforms it into mechanical energy.

Not that kind of energy I’m talking about, the spiritual energy. Are you able to make any sense of it? Can we maybe eventually measure it? What is it, talk to us about that.

Dr. Waifung Tsang: Very good question. Yeah. I think let’s start the experience of it before going to the measure of it.

Like I think when working with energies in, in the ceremony space, is it becomes such a kind of like intuitive fine tune almost of reading the room right. And what’s going on with everyone. And I really love your your description of the. The positive characteristics of the medicine, music, and it’s really not, it’s not supposed to be a performance, not there to sound good and grab your attention.

And it’s really there to to guide and to help provide that container for you to go through whatever you need to go through without kind of taking you out of your process and really in your face with like echoes. But then as you are able to then tune into that sort of energetic space that’s happening, it becomes this dialogue almost that happens between you, the medicine, your plants, and then the people in the room that you’re directing your intention to.

And often I, when I’m like singing in ceremony, if I’m like, kinda like with someone who’s going through a really difficult process, maybe like where I’m at in my training as well and just not really. Not really great at grounding what I’m taking on. Like I really feel super duper sick if someone is like having a really difficult time and I’m like trying to sing to help them through, but then I’m taking on too much and I’m like, I need to throw up like I’m saying until I actually redirect my intention to the rest of the room and then, bringing in the community in and then I feel much better.

And conversely, if I’m with someone who’s like feeling great and amazing, then that really feeds off as well and can really multiply that energy. And then obviously the energy of the plants that kind of, you know, that just mediate everything there. There are certain, there are words and there are ways of like connecting with the plant kind of allies and the current arrows always talk about this echo line.

It’s like an energy line to your echos that kind of direct you to them, to the diets and to these to. Master plants that kind of befriend you and the characteristics of these different plants, their way of being able to permeate what your experience is or enhance your sensitivity to the space so you are able to navigate essentially.

I often feel that the connection with these plants are essentially a gift of their sensitivity, almost like being able to be gifted some of the things that they have in their kind of experiences being this plant. And then the echoes are like a really important module in being able to then translate that to a more tangible vibrational kind of format to be able to like use that in ceremony. So it’s a lot of this Yeah. In dialogue, in commune and translating into other energies as we go. And so much of it is yeah, really following Jewish. And I think you can always tell when someone is in that like really kinda performance space or doesn’t really read the room too much, or is it is just like a bad DJ almost.

It’s like you’re not really picking up on what people are going through. And it’s more intrusive than helpful when really trying to navigate that space of more balance. And obviously this stuff is so metaphysical, how do you even, how do you measure that in a tangible, quantifiable way?

And we’ve had an idea on that. Actually, and we’ve just we’ve started on this idea, so yeah. As part of the indigenous kind of advisory board, they were like, look at the echos. The echos are like, really important. That’s the power. That’s the energy. And then we’re like, okay, how are we going to study the echos?

So one of the ways that we were we thought of was to put an EEG cap. So like the neuroimaging cap on the ero and on the participants with consent from everyone, of course. And then in real time, record the eeros and be and the e, EG. And then the next day also do a qualitative interview with the ero.

In listening back to the echo, like how, what was going through your mind was your intention during this part or just isolate different parts when they were singing to this person, when they were singing to this person, and then really triangulate and then correlate the neurological changes with what’s happening in Theo.

Obviously translating. All of it as well and timestamping it to the neurological changes. So we’ve just recently started that study. I’m very excited about it. I have I’m quite confident in it. It’s quite a far out kind of thing to trial, but let’s see what happens. Yeah,

Sam Believ: it’s a very cool idea to, to study the sounds and they can like, see if there is any parallels.

Maybe like shaman’s, brain state, change it from whatever, beta to alpha. I don’t know enough to give an opinion. And then the patient’s brainstem changed as he was receiving theia, I guess a good finding if there is some form of synchronization. I wanna ask you a question that. Because of the diversity of your understanding and views you might not have a cookie cutter answer.

So how does ayahuasca healing work? How does one get healed with the ayahuasca?

Dr. Waifung Tsang: Definitely no cookie cutter answer to that. The way ayahuasca healing works, I often like to frame it in a very holistic kind of way, and it’s never, no one answer is ever the answer is my answer and is very holistic.

One, one framework that I like to think of by is kinda like this biocycle social kinda spiritual kinda model and how all of these different A aspects are very like interconnected and ayahuasca healing can work through. The biological, like healing of ailments, healing of your body through shaking, through sweating, through purging, through cleaning.

And then obviously that has this knock on impact on everything else, or psychologically, like going in from the traumas, the relationship with memories, repressed memories, or even thinking about emotions that one can embody to help them be confronted in a safe space to a lot of these things that have permeated their lives for many years.

Socially, then going after, like without the community is so important. I’ve always had a thing with that whole kind of oh, body, mind, spirit trio of words. It’s is really missing community. Like community is so essential of, our interrelationship with other people. Like the interdependence, it’s like a very Buddhist thing, right?

Like we, we are our relationships. And if we just go back to toxic relationships, like broken homes or communities that don’t support you, then that’s not, it’s not sustainable. What are you gonna do? You’re definitely gonna go back to relapse and, and then spiritually and actually recognizing that this the thing between space, the way that.

Everything is then interconnected by it is energy and having spiritual practices that can help facilitate that. Thinking about meditation, having ceremony, having ritual in your daily life, being able to work with mindfulness, like having more relationships with plants and actually beyond like human connection.

How can we also uphold the spirit of everything and with that sort of level of understanding, that would then seep into every kind of aspect of your life, so my answer to that question is, yeah, ayahuasca healing can work on all levels from the acute to the long term and is a very kind of intelligent medicine and how it slowly clicks into place over time through these different kind of like modules are.

Yeah, I don’t think we’ll ever get to the bottom of it, but here’s to try and.

Sam Believ: Yeah, I was is one of those things, or psychedelics in general where there is no point of okay, I figured it out, now I’m bored now. I think the longer you drink them or consume them, the more complicated it becomes. Wayang, thank you so much for this conversation.

I think it was really interesting and very unique. And yeah, is there any parting words or any other question you want me to ask you or Yeah, just tell people more about you and work and they find you and your work or if someone wants to support your studies where can they do that?

Dr. Waifung Tsang: Oh, bless and thank you so much, Sam.

I appreciate you so much for all the work that you do and yeah, my, my closing really is just gratitude and yeah. To everyone listening. Yeah, please feel free to, to find us on. Platforms, like we have a website WW on IO and also on Science for all research and like educational and kind of prep and integration needs.

We have a course we do like a mentorship training and psychedelic kind mentorship to help people with preparation and integration. It’s like a six month accredited course if people are interested in that path. And also we seek to provide kind of help on the bookending kind of safeguarding and harm reduction side of the of the psychedelic experience.

And then, yeah, keep an eye out on our socials handle on I io for everything to do with our research and upcoming projects. Thank you so much.

Sam Believ: Thank you. Guys, you’ll be listening to our podcast as always with you to host Samie and I will 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 like wherever it is you’re listening. Share this episode with someone who will benefit from this information. Nothing in this podcast is intended as medical advice, and it is for educational and entertainment purposes only.

This episode is sponsored by Laira Ayahuasca Retreat. At laira, we combine affordability, accessibility, and authenticity, laira connect, heal, grow. Guys, I’m looking forward to hosting you.