In this episode of AyahuascaPodcast.com host Sam Believ has a conversation with Simon Tennant on the topics of psychotherapy and psychedelics, masculinity and femininity Ballance and role in a retreat, collective unconscious, archetypes in the group, what effect can psychedelics have in therapy world.
Find more about Simon at deepfeeling.nz
Simon’s YouTube channel @deep.feeling
Transcript
Sam Believ: You’re listening to ayahuasca podcast.com
in this episode of ayahuasca podcast.com. We talk to si Simon Tet. We touch upon subjects of. Ity and femininity during the retreat. The balance of that. We talk about collective unconscious. We talk about archetypes in the group, and Simon’s experience as a psychotherapist working with the victims.
What effect can psychedelics have on the therapy world and so much more. I’m sure you will enjoy this podcast. Hi guys. You’re listening to ayahuasca podcast.com as always with you host Sam Believe the founder of the podcast and of Lara Ayahuasca retreat. Today we’re joined by Simon. Simon has just spent 18 days here with us at Lara and had a very interesting experience.
Simon is a psychiatrist, psychotherapist. Psychotherapist. Yeah. He is a tango dancer. Horse rider. He’s so many things. He’s one of those the most interesting people you’ve ever met, kind of guy. I’m Simon, welcome to the podcast.
Simon Tennant: It’s a pleasure to be here. Thanks, Sam.
Sam Believ: First of all, Simon, tell us a little bit about yourself.
And how did you end up finding about Ayahuasca?
Simon Tennant: So I am someone that’s always been a seeker of knowledge and and always I think from a, an early age I saw my mother helping people and it’s just something I wanted to do. And so in my early twenties, I switched from it into health and it’s just been a.
A, an adult long journey with with working with health from, natural medicines and kinesiology to to counseling and psychotherapy. And I think when I was a homeopath, I realized that. The challenge that I had in, in, in my life and I saw in my client’s life was the relationship they had with themselves and with others.
And so that really made me wanna understand the psyche more. And so I went into psychotherapy and doing my training. There was this transpersonal psychospiritual psychology, so very much held transpersonal and spiritual realms and. In doing that, I started to read Stan’s or Stan’s work on the way the aut and that got me super interested in how psychedelic assisted therapies could really be an agent of transformative change in people’s lives.
And and I just, I’d never done psychedelics in my life. And then one day I just woke up and was like, I’ve gotta do ayahuasca. So I contacted you. We exchanged about three lines of of text through an email. And I was sold. I just had a real poll.
Sam Believ: I’m very short in my replies. But somehow it was enough.
Why did you decide to do it in Columbia
Simon Tennant: again? I’m not sure. I just came across your site and there was a price point of course. Which I really appreciated. ’cause coming from New Zealand, it’s a way to get here. There was just, there was something in the just the way you wrote the reply, it just felt, yeah.
I just let my intuition do the, do the choosing for me.
Sam Believ: Nice. I’m glad you came. Me too. So you said you were going to write a paper on change states of consciousness Yeah. Or get an education in that direction. Yeah. So
Simon Tennant: I’m looking at starting, phD master’s PhD program in September on it was in non-ordinary states of consciousness.
And what is it about these non-ordinary states, whether it’s through through tropic breath work or psychedelics or tantric work that is an agent for transformative change that these altered states or non-ordinary states, which we might even say are possibly normal states that we’ve just disconnected from.
Create this deep seated change that someone can come to Ayahuasca for a week and be like, it’s five years of therapy, or 10 years. And that just is always fascinated me.
Sam Believ: So after your own experience now with psychedelics, maybe there, did you learn something new? Are you more inspired about the topic or less?
Simon Tennant: I think my smile says it all. My time here, I at Lara has been. Exquisitely profound. It’s had beauty and pain and the secrets of the cosmos unveiled as well as deep connection with new people. I’ve met people here who’ve been in the ceremonies was for 18 days, and I feel more connected to them than maybe some people that have been in my life for 30 years.
The experience has been profound. It’s been humbling to have your ego dissolved in front of your eyes and be humbled and at the mercy of the medicine working through you and the music and just the caring of your staff, of your volunteers, of yourself, of t Fernando. It’s an incredibly full and life-changing experience.
Sam Believ: Yeah. Through the word circles that we shared, just for those who listening don’t get intimidated. 18 days doesn’t mean 18 ceremonies. It’s actually just 10 ceremonies. So we shared some time together. And I recall you describing couple experiences. I think it was one of the first day ceremonies that was very profound.
And I think I can recall one more, maybe another day. Ceremony day ceremony seems to be your favorite thing.
Simon Tennant: Wow. That’s
Sam Believ: okay. Can you pretend we’re in a war circle now and tell that story again if it, if you can still recall it.
Simon Tennant: Yeah. What I’m grateful for is that the both of those day ceremony experiences are incredibly vivid and still really alive.
And I’m still in the process of yesterday’s ceremony. If I can do my best to put what is experiential into words, my consciousness went from a particle experience of being in this body to being in moldable spaces at the same time and being super conscious to a lot of experience happening on.
So at one stage, I was inside. Tyler Fernando’s flute being breathed. I was also the inside of the drum being beaten at the same time, as well as like the networks of relationships that form the fabric of reality forming in front of me, being inside it, but also seeing it from a distance. At the same time, I almost felt like creation was using my body to experience and know itself more, more intimately.
It was incredibly profound, the hope that you can see in my eyes that the words are difficult for me to find because it was just. It was so huge and to then just have this profound clarity of different philosophical views of the ages, whether it was Buddhism or near Confucius or Daoism, come together in these synergistic spaces and see them from the inside and the outsiders as incredibly profound and life changing.
Yeah.
Sam Believ: Yeah. That’s the problem with psychedelic experiences. They are so profound that the words just don’t do justice no matter how eloquent you are. And trust me, this is one of the most eloquent people I’ve been in the presence of you would daily use words I’ve never heard before, which is a compliment to you and not to me.
But it’s words is not enough. What you described made me recall this, Mo a movie Lucy, where this this lady, she consumed some kind of blue thing and she goes from using 10% of her brain to using a hundred percent. I didn’t do that, and it’s I know this is not a correct thing apparently.
It’s not like we’re not using a hundred percent of our brain. We are. It is just not, but it does feel like your consciousness went to like super consciousness mode where you could be so much more conscious, meaning you could experience more at the same amount of time, which is fascinating. I don’t know, maybe you have a theory behind it.
Simon Tennant: Yeah I’m fascinated too because in the word circle. People were reflecting back to me that they felt me also in their experiences and their journeys. So that feel that field experience of consciousness when we go from body to the field. Allows our consciousness to be in these multiple states at one time.
But also no feeling inner peace and a solidness and centeredness is what I noticed. So it was, while it was a incredibly full experience, it was also incredibly peaceful. Look, there’s lots of different philosophies that would try to bring understanding to that. But one of the ways I look at it as fundamentally where networks of relationships, if we were to take a camera and go inside an electron, we wouldn’t video anything.
It’s like a condensation of energy that has spin. And and these as Fitro Capra would say in his book systems, view of Life, this network of relationships is like. This fundamental fabric of reality. And depending on your magnification it would be like a cartoonist scribbling.
And when you zoom back, he’s drawn a person’s face. But when you zoom right in there, these kind of scribbles, fractals you don’t see the face, intricacies of how that face is made up. I hope that. It brings some light to that. It’s a difficult difficult thing to express and put into words.
I’m still finding the words myself.
Sam Believ: You describe like interpersonal relationships and obviously. There is a group dynamic that happens during the retreat when it becomes obvious that we are pretty much connected and there is processes that sometimes are being experienced by several people at the same time.
You mentioned something about Carl Young and his what’s the. Unconscious.
Simon Tennant: Oh yeah. Unconscious process
Sam Believ: and No, like group unconscious or collective unconscious. Yeah. Yeah. So what have you observed about that? Or maybe you have some smart words about the topic.
Simon Tennant: I really like young.
I I loved the way in which he was a real a real avatar in, in searching new lands and. I think one of the things I said there is that when we don’t take up the invitation to journey into the underworld of our inner world, then all that’s unresolved in there. And it’s like a heroic journey to go into that underworld and that heroic journey is in so many of our different cultural motifs and myths from Greeks to Aztecs, to, to wherever you wanna look.
When we don’t take up that opportunity, that gets projected to the outer world and our outer world becomes an underworld. And then we live in the projections of others. Underworlds, and that’s what we live in today, is this underworld of unresolved trauma, of isolation, of fear and it’s incredibly restricting to people.
But in the group dynamic, what we notice is that in the shearing circles. When people allow themselves to be seen and they allow themselves to be vulnerable, and that’s held in a loving and kind space by by the team yourself and by the rest of us. We allow ourselves to be found in the world.
We allow that vulnerability that’s inherently there and something we, we’ve locked away for so long because it’s usually the place in which we got we got hurt in the first place when that’s allowed to be seen. That’s courage. And courage. To heart is to, courage us to stand in the face of difficulty with heart.
And that’s what happens in these word circles. And so this collective experience comes alive in which people are being seen and being felt. And there’s a group energy. And you would’ve felt that too, that really arises in that space where vulnerability is really present.
Sam Believ: Yeah the vulnerability is the secret missing ingredient I believe in our society today because it’s only one.
Both sides are vulnerable. The real connection can take place, and I think this is what the culture we try and create here at La Wire and also the medicine aids in that, that eventually the masks fall off. And two real people can then start to interact and have a beautiful. Healing journey together because people can heal people, but there needs to be a connection.
So you heal people, you work with people you work with sexual abuse victims. Yeah. If I’m not mistaken, as a psychotherapist would you bring them to
Simon Tennant: Ayahuasca? I actually have been. Philosophizing and doing some pondering on sexual trauma and how I feel like ayahuasca of any of the plant-based medicines I’ve had to look into, not that I’ve experienced.
I wanna make that very clear. I’ve only ever experienced ayahuasca is that sexual abuse is forced upon people. It’s forced in and onto the body and with force and with violence. And there is something about the embodied felt experience of ayahuasca. Like ayahuasca is not just a pretty colors and pretty pictures experience.
It’s a profoundly. Embodying felt experience. And I hope that you can feel what I’m saying by this, that it’s, for me, it was very embodied. And so because it’s embodied ayahuasca through its purgative experience, through, through vomiting or through ping through bottom evacuating has a lot of force in it.
I can speak to experience with that. That, that force almost matches the force that the trauma was taken to the body and the force of ayahuasca allows it to be forced outta the body. Trauma is stored, fragment in the body, and so no amount of just talking about it is gonna get out.
There’s a. There’s no free lunch with it, is what I like to see. It needs to be felt, and I feel that Ayahuasca provides a wonderful container and method for that trauma to come out. And because what you do here at the wider with the word circles, the community that’s here with Tyler Fernando, the music.
There’s a beautiful coming together of the feminine and the masculine. The feminine ayahuasca, the opening and the depth of the feminine. The nurturing, but also the holding. And then you’ve got this kind of gentle penetrative energy of the masculine coming in and almost infusing that in more with the music.
And I feel. That for sexual trauma is also incredibly important.
Sam Believ: Yeah. In our previous podcast you met Ashley, I did. She talks about her trauma with men and how here at this space, because she could see so many men being vulnerable and she could also feel being healed by men. It really helped her to overcome or at least progress with that trauma and feel better.
About men in general. A tricky question, as a psychotherapist and a lot of psychotherapists they spend years and years working with people. Trying to get some results. And sometimes it’s not really that effective. On the one side I can see some psychotherapists getting very excited about that they can finally speed up the process or finally see the, the visible change.
Get this dopamine boost here I am and here’s this person. Here’s him before and after. Kinda like we get here, it’s a really quick. Result. But I’m sure there are some that are questioning it and they think what if I, this is 10 years of a, money being made. What if I can do it in one week?
All of a sudden, like as a psychotherapist, are you worried that maybe. Psychedelics will steal your job.
Simon Tennant: Look, if I wanted to make money, I would’ve stayed in it. My job as a psychotherapist, and I hope I speak for a few of them out there, and I can imagine I’m, that it’s a, it’s more of a calling to be of service to provide a space where we can help those that are really struggling in the world, our brothers and sisters, and.
Yes. On a side note here what I love about Buddhism is they speak about everyone being a brother or sister, because in a past life, maybe they were. And what you feel here at Lewa through the process is that we are all brothers and sisters here. So getting back to the psychotherapy, if we can’t do all in our power.
To use this beautiful medicine or medicines to help open up these portals of healing, then we are not being psychotherapists. I think it’s incredibly, I feel deeply into my bones that it’s, so exciting. Ayahuasca, psilocybin, NDMA, these therapies to help unlock what takes years to do in therapy. Dick Schwartz, who’s the founder of, internal Family Systems talks about psychedelics being able to create a discourse between the exile traumatized part and the soul. It takes the managerial parts, the ego away, and you don’t have to look at people like Basal Vander Co. Dick Schwartz garble mate, world leaders in their fields, in psychology, really being huge advocates for psychedelic assisted psychotherapy.
So when leaders in the field. Talking about this too then we all need to be
Sam Believ: the names you just mentioned. They are on my dream list to interview for this podcast, if you’re listening, reach out g Mate. I’m a big fan. Me. So VanDerKolk as a body keeps the score. I recommend this book to any woman that ever mentions physical abuse.
Yeah. And men as well. And yeah, as they say, if you can’t beat them, join them. So if you are a psychotherapist listening to that, and you are maybe part of you worried about the future job scenario. Yeah, start learning about psychedelics because what I believe will happen, it’s you know when they invent a new technology, like a weaving machine, and all of a sudden.
You need less weavers, but you need more machine operators and then you make more money and make more sweaters. So it’s the same way. Right now. How, what’s the percentage of people do you think that are actually taking therapy?
Simon Tennant: That’s really hard. To say in New Zealand, I predominantly work with a CC claims.
So I know there’s about six months to a year wait to get into a a c registered therapist or counselor. We know that mental health difficulties are epidemic. We only need to look at the amount, especially in the states of how many are on SSRIs or antidepressants and psychotropic medication.
There’s not enough therapists to go around. There’s a shortage. The thing is that where I see psychotherapists being of real value in the psychic assisted therapies is the integration part. Like we have these profound transformative experiences and the music and the sham and the tighter, they hold that beautifully.
When you have these transcend, these really full. Full spaces. It’s like, how do we descend? How do we take the transcendent experience and descend it and ground it in the body? And that’s where. Psychotherapists, I feel could be of super helpers of that integration being really part of helping with the dreams analysis, with the imagery, with the feelings that are risen and how to make meaning of all that, and.
And, use it to create purpose and meaning and values in, in one’s life. So I feel like we’ve got a super important job. It’s just, it changes, but we are not the primary agent of the change. And in the relationships, like in psychotherapy, the relationship, the US being able to feel into.
If you are a client of mine, me sitting in your sand particles and them landing on my body and feeling into, what does it feel like to feel under Sam? And notice what comes arise in me and be alive to the unconscious process. Psychedelics just allows us to do that a lot quicker.
A lot quicker. But the relational component’s still important, but we are also getting that in the group component, but with the intimacy of psychotherapy we can just enhance the process. That’s how I see it.
Sam Believ: Yeah, I totally agree with you. I’m completely not against psychotherapy. I think it’s an awesome tool and I believe if, let’s say psychotherapy is like digging a trench, then adding ayahuasca to it, it’s like you just got yourself an excavator.
So it’s but you still need somebody to do the work. And it’s we try our best to help people integrate, but I’m not a professional. In, in, in this field. Some of our volunteers know more about that. So we have created a vessel, an egg container. I’m looking forward to you coming in, joining us as an integration coach.
Simon Tennant: I would love that. Maybe
Sam Believ: in the future ’cause that’s how my plant of one person in the team like that. But if you are doing psychotherapy I like my analogies. I live in analogies, so the way I see. Mental work or inner work is digging a tunnel psychotherapy is like having a a pick X.
Yep. And you go at it and you slowly going in and you’re doing the progress, but it’s very slow. But it’s organized because you can make a very organized tunnel. Yeah. Psychedelics is like dynamite. So if you put some dynamite, your progress will be so much quicker. But you, the integration is taking the rubble and cleaning it out, because if you just keep blowing a piece of dynamite after another, it’s just mess.
Simon Tennant: It’s just dust.
Sam Believ: Yeah. So I believe this is, there’s this beautiful balance that will be established eventually. Were not only psychotherapists and psychologists and psychiatrists will be able to. Do their work better, but because people will get results quicker, then it will spread more. So the reason I ask you about how many people you think have done therapy is because I assume it’s a very small amount.
It is a very small amount. Maybe five to 10% of population, if we’re lucky,
Simon Tennant: I would say those would be really overestimates. Yeah. So yeah, probably 5%.
Sam Believ: So let’s say hypothetically it’s 5%. But how many people need it? We know 30% of people in the west are on some medications, which means at least 30. But if we’re really honest and we don’t talk about pat pathologies and like really bad cases, and we talk about just general wellbeing, maybe more than half of people.
If not everyone would need it, at least some kind of realignment. So if the psychedelics would come into that space, make the professionals more effective, then I believe what would happen is then their friends would be like, yeah, I’ll give it a try. Because it’s no longer committing for 10 years of therapy.
Of, with little result to now being, it’s gonna be one month and I know that I’ll be just like my friend. I’ll be so much happier. So I’m very excited about. Bringing more psychotherapists in the field and hopefully even having some of them join our team. We do have a counselor on a team. He does remote integration coaching.
Yeah. And it, it helps a lot of people who want to go deeper. And, but if we could have somebody in the presence, just like I noticed you did a little session there. Yeah. Nobody asked you to, but it’s great because obviously it comes up naturally. So yeah. I’m excited about the emergence of these two fields.
As soon as we can let go of those, how would you say constructs? Constructs and also fears because the thing that I mentioned about therapist it’s, I’m sure it comes to mind and some people are like, I’m not sure about it because like, when self-interest is involved, it’s a little, it’s a little tricky and it’s,
Simon Tennant: I think there’s self-interest things that.
Something that comes up for nails in our sharing circles and through my own journey. In Buddhism, they say we don’t have a depend, an independent self that doesn’t exist, that the arising of us being as dependent on causative factors and cau and. So when we exist in these communities and our existence is dependent upon others and upon nature, then our context expands.
Nature said it best when he said, the death of God would have profound impact on 20th century humans as they. They move their meaning, making context from a spiritual to a personal. And that’s what we have today. We have people experiencing so massive amounts of loneliness.
They may be in a room full of people with their family and they still feel super alone. They start to, it gives rise. This free floating anxiety around. You know what’s wrong with me? They may check, they may challenge their own identity, their sexuality, all sorts of things. Is this confusion and maybe what’s speaking to there is the disconnection.
And the existential loneliness is there the connection to something larger than yourself. And it’s paradoxical ’cause we see those connections to something larger than ourselves and war veterans that have been a part of a platoon and they would die for their brothers. We see it in Buddhists that get the joy and the suffering of being there and helping the suffering of others.
And so something like Ayahuasca also brings in those other. Transpersonal context of finding your place in the cosmos, finding your place with people and having something that’s greater than yourself. And I, I feel that’s a super important part of this process here.
Sam Believ: Yeah. I’m very passionate about this topic of like loneliness because I think that.
It’s a big problem right now. And what we do here, we try and address both connection to the group and also connection to the higher Yeah. Whatever it is for you. And basically this is why people are. So full and so connected when they leave here because they felt what they haven’t felt for a long time, but to, to a larger extent in the future, as and some listeners might have already heard about it, our plan is to create a community.
And maybe even several, but the idea is you can come and how therapeutic is just a night by the fire with the hot drink. And good deep conversation, like ayahuasca aside,
Simon Tennant: oh my, again, my smile. It’s enlivening, it’s enriching, its soul food. And every night here has been that the journeying on ayahuasca has been profound and as profound has been the rich connections and the sharing and.
Everyone’s trying to find their sga, their community, that space in which they feel seen and heard. They feel valued and celebrated. And here what’s happening is not just a celebration of people, but a celebration of life, of realizing that our space and humanity at the moment is facing difficulty where there’s isolation, disconnection, dissociation, and these spaces here, what you’re creating here, these seeds of healing and of.
Celebration of life unfolding in each moment is beautiful and healing and rich and just, I think I used the word stupidious stupidly delicious. And it’s just been such a privilege to come here.
Sam Believ: That’s a good word. That’s a good word. Stupidious regarding the group work. Yeah. I know you’re a fan of young and so you, you might know something about the archetypes.
I have noticed that in the past, our groups were smaller 10 to 15 people in the very beginning, and I noticed that when we went to 2025. Group size. The word circles and the lessons from the word circles became richer, so it almost felt like it was enhanced, which surprised me because a lot of people were worried about larger groups because they thought it’s gonna be.
Yeah. Less connection because there’s more people and it wa it went the opposite way. Do you think there is something about those the, like having certain amount of certain archetypes or what do you think about that phenomena?
Simon Tennant: Yeah, I. What comes to mind for me there is intimacy. And to me, see, we can have intimacy one-on-one on small groups or in our group, 24 people.
So the intimacy is like, how willing am I to see into other, and how willing am I allowed for. How willing am I to allow them to see into me? So when you’ve got a bigger group here, we don’t wanna say too huge a group, but you go for from 15 to 20 or 24, you’ve got more people seeing into you. You’re being seen more.
So the vulnerabilities more, we do have these archetypes, whether it’s the warrior or the wounded healer. And a lot of people that would come here would possibly be wounded healers just like us psychotherapists. Wounded healers. I think all these archetypes, they emerging groups an archetype, a good way to look at that is like a patterning function.
They. They pattern the space, they, create a way of things to form. And when you’ve got more archetypes in a space, then you’ve got more inclusion. You’ve got the capacity and, let me find the word here. You’ve got the potential for greater emergence ’cause you’ve got more included in it.
So I think that can reach a critical space if it’s not held well enough. It doesn’t surprise me that going from 15 to 24 is yielding better results, more richness.
Sam Believ: Yeah. It almost feels as if there’s, more people to mirror other people’s experience.
Simon Tennant: Yeah.
Sam Believ: Because maybe they are of a similar archetype.
And then you learn through others sometimes better than you do through yourself.
Simon Tennant: That just speaks to something. In one of the ceremonies, there was someone that, for me, in some of their expressions, wasn’t feeling. So like I didn’t feel integrity and that, and so I could have got pissed off and annoyed at that, but I used that as a mirror.
So what’s my relationship with my own integrity and what spaces in my own life Am I not standing in integrity, even if it’s in small places? And so that person was a beautiful mirror to me. To to shine light into the unknown spaces in my psyche. And if we can look at everyone as our brother and sister holding a mirror to us in these group situations, then we have just far more information, more understanding and more knowing of our, in our process if we take the time to do no,
Sam Believ: definitely, and it happened to me as well this week. There was one person that was causing negative emotion and I did the same thing. I was like, why am I reacting to this? Yeah. Where am I doing something similar? And there is, if that happens to you on a day-to-day life, if you find that some person is really triggering you and really causes a negative emotion, look into.
What is that they’re doing that you might be doing? And it will sometimes lead to a revelation. I, before starting to work at at this field of psychedelics, when I was doing my soul searching and switching from engineering, I did a life coaching course. And I did it thoroughly, actually, I did part of it in this hammock right behind us.
It was years ago. Wow. I have, then tried to implement that on some friends of mine. And there was a friend of mine that I practiced a coaching session with him and I was looking for a breakthrough. And he said he was really annoyed when people were spending too much time on their phones.
And we were trying to understand why. And in the end it was about himself. He was not it was about attention and, basically I, I asked him like, why are you annoyed by people spending so much time in the farm because like they could have been doing something better. With their lives.
And then he realized that he does a lot of things that take his attention from things he actually would be better use of his time. And it was a breakthrough. So I was really proud of it. And on that my life coaching journey ended and I never tried it again, but some of it is useful today, still in in my.
Newly found line of work.
Simon Tennant: That’s one of the great things about being here at laa. The nature, the peace and the people being away from my phone. I’ve turned it on once to, during, the halfway break just to check in, tell my family and my friends and my loved ones back home.
The people that matter to me. To cancel
Sam Believ: to cancel the search party.
Simon Tennant: To cancel the search party. I just wanna say, actually everyone matters to me. That I’m still alive, but the. Being able to disconnect from that concrete jungle and the ways in which we doom scroll. They say if you doom scroll, you’ll, you scroll until you’re doomed.
To be away from all of that, those distractions, and just be here in the beauty to be like what Blaze Pascal says, the, and excuse the engendered language, the root of all man’s miseries is his inability to sit quietly alone in an empty room. Just to be able to sit here. With people and find the beauty and the peace and the simple and the subtle hear the subtle winds that blow see the richness of the greenery through through the lenses of other people too.
It’s, it is beautiful and that in itself is just healing.
Sam Believ: I have some notes here of what you said in one of the word circle. What is transference? Counter transference and reenactments.
Simon Tennant: Yeah. So clinically transference and countertransference. Transference is when unconscious process, say, for example, and the client may be, for example, the therapist might, remind unconsciously the client of their mother or their father, that client might then start to act in ways that are similar. In the ways in which they’d act with their parents. That’s then projected onto the therapist and the therapist in their own counter transference can do a couple of things.
They can give the client the same experience that the parents gave them, which is not cool. Just reinforces possibly the dysfunction was there. Or they can give a reparative experience. They can maybe if it’s the anger. That’s being transferred. All the pain. The therapist can hold that and and give them a reparative experience like where before if anger came out and they were shut down, therapists can hold that anger and say, your anger’s welcome here, and they can have a new experience that dear, their feelings are valid, that their feelings are welcome and they’re allowed to feel.
Most of us in the west, especially us men, we’re taught to, take a concrete pill and harden the fuck up, that’s what we’re taught. And not to connect with the richness of the feelings of our inner world. So counter transference and counter transference can be a real space in which we hold.
The new experiences or reinforce the old ones if we’re not alive to it. Like I know sometimes in sessions if I’m feeling irritated by a client and I’m going, God, part of me wants to slap this client across the face and just say, wake up, I’m going, oh, if I catch myself, then I can go, ah, what?
What are the particles that are landing on me trying to communicate to me, and I can then hold that space differently and going, oh, maybe this client’s kind of, communicating to me that that this is how it’s like to be them in the world. This is what might be like for other people around.
This might be the experience that they feel a lot like that people are irritated by them. And we can give them a new experience that. That’s reparative.
Sam Believ: It’s very valuable ’cause it happens to me a lot as well, just because I am this my role here, obviously as a leader, a masculine figure. Sometimes women project their trauma with men on me.
And it’s strange for me. I don’t know how to react a lot of times because I’m like, I’ve never really hurt a woman in my life before. But that prototype that they have of a sort of masculine figure might be a pretty bad one. So I generally I need to learn how to invite their walk, their anger, and maybe.
Have some language around dad.
Simon Tennant: Maybe there’s some ways you’re already doing that through your music when they’ve projected that on you and then you open with your beautiful voice and your music and they can see the softness, the kindness, the love that this man is holding, even though unconsciously they’ve been projecting.
This this fear really what it is, this fear and hurt upon you that in some ways you may already be doing that, but to be alive and we get alive to that process by being in our body. And if we’re noticing that other, that irritation or or even a desire to be close to. In both ways.
It’s just really valuable information around what’s this person trying to tell me in between their words. What’s the the unnamed known that’s known unconsciously, but hasn’t been named. Yeah.
Sam Believ: Yeah, this line of work is difficult working with hurt people. Because sometimes hurt people try to hurt people and sometimes you’re in a line of attack, but definitely ayahuasca makes it easier.
Because you, you see the change in people and a lot of times the change is fast enough, so by the end of the retreat they realize what I’ve done and they actually can ask you for forgiveness. I believe in therapy might take a little longer.
Simon Tennant: Oh, what you said yesterday in our closing circle and this is something I really want to iterate and I love what you said was that there aren’t bad people.
There are, they’re hurt, they’re confused. There are suffering people that behave poorly and hurt others, but there aren’t. Bad people. And I think it’s really important for us to hold that when someone pulls up, in front of us in traffic and we wanna go, fuck you, get outta my way.
That, oh, this person in their own confusion, in their own pain is acting in a way that, is causing it to others, but it’s unconscious in a lot of ways. It allows us to be more compassionate.
Sam Believ: I’m able to do it, but really rarely. But when I can, then it feels extremely empowering.
You all of a sudden you’re like it’s almost ego driven. Look at me, look at how conscious I am. But in a way it is a, it is the only correct reaction ’cause reacting to anger with anger is not gonna help us putting more oil into the fire.
Simon Tennant: There’s a beauty in the flaws of being human.
I notice times when I screw up with my clients with my daughter, with my parents, with my friends and my partners, it also gives us the opportunity to reflect and how can we be kind and more compassionate? We can always open our minds wider and deepen our hearts, deepen, deeper.
And that’s something that, already stand by. It’s feels like a life purpose, that there’s no end to that. And that’s the beautiful thing about being alive, like what you’re doing here. There’s no end. To what you’re creating here, the lives that you can touch and heal.
Sam Believ: Yeah. Thank you Simon. So you. You sound like a media persona, but I don’t think you are one. Do you have any YouTube channels or,
Simon Tennant: I’ve got one that’s just starting. It’s called deep Feeling and that’s gonna be being populated. I was starting to do that, but when I got the call to do Ayahuasca, I was like, actually, I’m just gonna hold off for that.
’cause I feel there’s gonna be. Some profound stuff there. Which there has been. So it’s gonna changed a few of my views on certain thinkings. So there will, there’s gonna be a website and YouTube channel just where I sit down and talk with people. And I’m really passionate about feelings and helping, especially men.
People really connect with feelings ’cause feelings aren’t thoughts. They’re felt in the body and. In the west we rush to make the meaning, bring the words to it, as opposed to being with the wave, the physicality of feelings the sensations, the motor response, even the imaginal, like when you’re angry, there might be the enlivening energy in the body that comes up.
The felt experience. And there might be the motor response I wanna go and hit something or punch a wall. Not that’s usually a great idea. Then there might be the imaginal space, feeling like a volcano. We often bypass all that. So I really wanna help people to connect with feelings more and also find their inner home.
That space that people were speaking about when they were sharing, that they found love for themselves for the first time. And maybe what they’re speaking to is they found love to something greater than themselves as well. So that’s the kind of space that I’m wanting to become more alive to and talk about more through, through YouTube channel and the website.
Sam Believ: Let’s assume the, by the time listeners listen to that, the website is up and the channels up. What are the channel is deep feelings,
Simon Tennant: Deep dot feeling. That’s just the YouTube channel. And, and then deep feeling nz. Is the, is gonna be the website. Yeah. Okay.
Sam Believ: We’ll try and add that to the show notes as well.
So Simon, it was amazing speaking to you. Very fascinating. I’m extremely proud of you and anyone who does an 18 day retreats because it, it is a hard, it is a hard work. Lots of it is beautiful, but don’t don’t be, confused. It. It is, it does require a lot of work. Just like all good things in life.
So Simon, thank you so much for the conversation, the lessons. I’m sure people will enjoy it a lot.
Simon Tennant: Thank you, Sam. I just wanna hand on heart here and just say my profound gratitude for what you’ve created here the people that you’ve got involved, the vision and just the beautiful healing space that’s been here 18 days is no walk in the park.
It is not full of rainbows, unicorns sometimes, but it’s also filled with depth and breadth and width. So I’m super grateful and this has changed. One of my friends who’s I’m very close to, she said, I look really forward to seeing what rearrangement of atoms Simon comes back as. And so the arra arrangement that’s happened here is not just happening in this lifetime, but the lifetimes to come.
So thank you.
Sam Believ: Thank you Simon. Guys. You have been listening to ayahuasca podcast.com as always, your host, Sam Believe, and we’ve been joined today by Simon. What’s your surname
Simon Tennant: tenant?
Sam Believ: Simon Te. Please give a like to this podcast on whatever podcasting plot platform you’re listening to this and follow us or subscribe to us.
On that same platform as well, leave us a review. It really helps us. The world deserves to know about ayahuasca, about plant medicines, about conscious use of plant medicines, and the psychedelic renaissance that’s happening. Thank you for listening.