Hello everybody and welcome to a new episode of the Awaken Together podcast.
I'm Kat and today I am joined by a special guest to help us dive into the topic of psychedelic
integration.
Now, this is kind of like a part two from last season's episode where Jen and I shared
our experiences around catalyzing healing through psychedelics.
And I'm super excited to be joined today by a very special guest, Christine Grace.
Now, to give you a little bit of information on Christine before we dive in, Christine
is located in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and she's the founder of RAW, which stands for
Radically Authentic Wholeness.
And she's a part of the Leadership Council of the Whole Human Embodiment, which is a
focus on cultivating growth and healing through the intentional use of psychedelics and alternative
modalities.
She's also a certified transformational integration coach and has worked intentionally with psychedelic
medicines for her own holistic integration and growth for over a decade.
She has been supporting and guiding psychedelic medicine work with groups and individuals
for over four years and has coached over 300 people to embody their inner wisdom expressed
through these catalytic experiences.
So excited to introduce you to Christine.
Welcome.
Thank you, Kat.
I appreciate that warm welcome.
Of course.
Thank you so much for being here.
How are you doing today?
Yeah, I'm doing great.
It's a lovely fall Saturday up here.
Our winters are getting pushed.
Normally, we have like snow on the ground by now, but we've been having these lovely
falls these last few years, so it's a sunny fall day up here in Calgary.
That's so nice.
It's a little dreary here in Denver today, but it's still like beautiful fall weather.
And I think it's kind of similar.
We get our first snow usually in October, but it's been gorgeous so far.
So I love it.
Yeah.
And to share how Christine and I know each other, I was actually lucky enough to experience
her work when I had been doing my ketamine therapy just a couple months ago now.
She was one of my integration coaches in a group session, and I absolutely loved everything
that she had to share, the way that she held the space.
And so that's why I asked her to be on with us today.
So again, thank you, Christine, for that.
You're so welcome.
And thank you.
I'm so glad it was helpful for you.
Those group sessions can be so powerful.
So one of my favorite ways to integrate and work with people.
So special just hearing other people's experiences.
I found it very validating.
So yeah, that's kind of why we're here today, how we know each other.
And Christine, I'd love to just hear a little bit more about you.
So what's your why for getting into this line of work?
Yeah, that's such a great question.
Basically for me, I stumbled into psychedelics when I was like 19.
Just some of the friends I had, I was running around with more of a people who would come
across psychedelics.
And I was suffering with really bad depression.
I had been depressed most of my life due to what psychedelics showed eventually was just
some trauma that had been repressed.
And it was through psychedelics that I actually started to not only understand myself and
what depression was actually kind of teaching me, but it helped me actually learn how to
live a more embodied and happy life.
And then I obviously just became really interested in them and started to have worked with probably,
I think, seven or eight at this point in time, different psychedelics for different purposes
and different healing.
So once I learned that you can actually get out of depression and heal, I just kind of
became obsessed with healing in general.
Ended up going down the yoga route, the alternative route, and have studied quite a few different
alternative modalities because it's just so fascinating all the ways that we...
All the different layers of what it means to be human and all the different places where
our expression might need to be integrated or healed.
That part is just so fascinating.
And psychedelics basically hits all different realms of our being.
So basically one of the best modalities there is.
So that's probably a quick way I could describe my why for this work.
Amazing.
I feel like different people can be brought to the medicine in such different ways, right?
Sometimes I find it's a really intentional one, like to heal something on purpose.
And sometimes it's kind of you just stumble upon it because your friends are doing it
or you're partying and it's introduced.
And then you discover all the benefits that can come with it down the line.
I think that was more my experience as well.
It's just like, well, here's this thing that you can do at a show to feel good.
And then it was so much more than that.
I was like, oh my gosh, blasted me off on this journey as well.
So thinking about that in your experience, knowing how diverse and dynamic these medicines
can be, who might be a good fit for psychedelic therapy and why?
Yeah, that's such a great question.
And I kind of approach it from two different lenses because one simple answer is anyone
who's interested in them.
If you feel a pull, if you feel a desire, if you're curious, if you think it might be
worth it for you, anything that comes, particularly if it's coming from our inner source or inner
sense of being, for sure, I would encourage people to look into it.
Other than that, anyone who actually just wants to learn about themselves.
So there's become this big focus on psychedelic for healing, which is amazing.
It was a big part of my journey.
But psychedelics can be used to explore one's psyche more, to explore oneself, to explore
spirituality, to just understand the world in greater capacity.
So the alternate side of psychedelics is people who do want more introspection or more growth
ultimately, psychedelics can be really good for as well.
So I would kind of answer it kind of two parts there.
If you're just pulled to it and think that it's something for you, or if you really want
to intentionally grow and move your life forward, both of those reasons would be good for psychedelics.
And then don't use it if you don't want to.
If you have a big old no in your body when you think about using psychedelics, don't
push yourself.
It's not for everybody, you know, it's not the panacea, it's not going to help every
single human.
I think that's kind of sometimes can be a fallacy.
If we're not pulled to something, it's not necessarily for us.
Yeah, I love that you said that.
And here on the show, we are really big into self inquiry tools, we've done to the Enneagram,
astrology, Myers-Briggs, all sorts of different ways to just learn more about who we are and
the self.
So I'm kind of curious, do you have any examples of maybe from past psychedelic experiences
or journeys that have really helped you learn about yourself?
I mean, every psychedelic journey, I would say helps me learn about myself, partially
because that's the intention I come at psychedelics, or come to psychedelics with, is to learn
about myself.
Like that's, that's one of for me personally, the greatest gifts psychedelics provide for
us.
But anything super specific, the one that always sends out to me as like being a very
transformative moment was in an ayahuasca ceremony when I shortened version, I learned
that basically the judgments I carry are only harming me.
And it was this massive understanding of not only are the judgments I'm carrying about
others or the judgments about the world or, or about right and wrong, not only are they
only harming me, they're also, this part's kind of hard to understand, but they're projecting
out judgment, which makes other people judge me more myself.
So it like doubly harms me.
And it was just this like deep, visceral understanding of like, holy crap, like if I just release
judgment, I'm not only releasing judgments I have on others, which harms me, but I'm
also releasing judgments that might be projected onto me.
And then integrating that becomes a whole thing.
But that was like just a deep, one of those versions of like deep learnings that can come
through psychedelics that transformed how I interacted with my family, transformed how
I interacted with like everybody in my life from there on out.
So yeah, I guess that's how I would answer that question.
Yeah, no, that's a really great one.
And I feel like they're endless too, but these takeaways, right, we have them when we're
on our journeys.
And then we just feel it on a cellular level.
That's like, when I was when I've been explaining psychedelic experiences in the past to people
who haven't had their own experience with it.
That's my best way to describe it.
It's like we have these astounding takeaways and learnings and teachings that come from
it.
And then when we explain what it is, it might sound a bit simplistic to people who we're
sharing it with, right?
But for us, it's like absolutely mind blowing and it changes things.
So the most recent one that I can remember for myself was from my ketamine experience.
And I had six different times where I took it in a guided kind of container.
And inside of each of them, I had this little glimpse.
I was they were very visual.
So even with my eyes closed, like I had all sorts of visuals and I'm very clairvoyant.
So that's just kind of how I process and see things in my journeys.
I was seeing things like statues, like animals that I've never seen before, lots of colors.
And it's like my mind was my subconscious was taking me on this trip.
And the feeling that I was kind of left with after my dosage had really waned off was that
I didn't have to protect myself so much.
And sitting with my husband, I would always kind of talk about it after he'd be like waiting
with bated breath to hear how my experience was.
And every time I just was coming from this place of calmness and sereneness and just
like the best way I can describe it is I was really sitting with my true self, my highest
self.
And I would just share about my experience, my journeys.
And there were some really vulnerable things that I would share, but I didn't feel like
I had to protect my heart.
Like I was very able to be open hearted and that didn't need to get defensive on no matter
what the response was.
And that was new for me because in our relationship, my husband and I, I will admit it at least,
we get defensive sometimes when there's really no need to be, but there's a part of me that
feels like it needs to protect me.
And so whether it's his tone that feels a little icky or his volume or the words that
he's saying, it can easily trigger me.
And so my ketamine therapy brought to light just that and how, rethinking that a little
bit of do I actually need to be protective in this moment or defensive and having that
simple moment of introspection and asking was able to get me to that point of like,
maybe yes, and here's why.
And I can communicate that and we can have a conversation about it.
Maybe the answer is no.
And I can just let that guard down and just be present with that love.
That's so beautiful.
I love what you said there too, because that's one of the greatest benefits I've seen in
my years working with ketamine is that pause that ketamine can provide where you get a
pause and more of a moment of choice to choose which way you want to go in this moment.
Am I, do I have reason to be protective and defensive or don't I?
And then you choose which way you go based on that little introspective moment.
It's beautiful.
That's so cool.
How has that shifted?
If you don't mind me asking you a question, how has that shifted your relationship with
your husband?
It's shifted a lot, honestly.
Our communication has really improved.
We've also been in couples therapy because I mean, I think everybody should be at some
point in their life.
Even if you don't think you have issues to work through, it's very validating to have
the therapist be like, wow, here's what you all do really well.
And here's areas of opportunity.
So just a lifelong learner.
But with that, now it's like whenever I can sense myself getting triggered in a conversation
with him, I can have that pause and take it for face value and say, I am not in the head
space to have this conversation right now.
And that has been pivotal for us.
And just like even having a conversation around that and how Kyle, he has let me know how
he really, really appreciates to hear that of like, I want to know when you can't have
a conversation about something rather than have you push along when you're feeling triggered.
And then we just don't have a productive conversation in the long run.
And then we're leaving the conversation feeling a little bitter and we weren't actually heard
where if we just stepped away and then came back to this conversation when I or we were
ready for it, it would be so much more smoother and flowy.
So actually a service.
Right.
That's amazing that you've found that spaciousness within the relationship as well for the both
of you.
That's cool.
Thank you.
Yeah.
And so thinking about different psychedelic medicines, I know that you have experience
with quite a few.
So I'd love to just kind of hear your, I don't know, I don't want to say favorites, but like
any differences and differences among the medicines and really anything that you have
to share on on those different lights.
Sure.
Yeah, I will do.
How could I answer this question?
I think I'm going to just do a quick overview as to what medicines I use and why, if that
works for you.
So psilocybin was probably my like was my first introduction.
And that one I think is one of the better introductory medicines.
Ketamine also being a new favorite for me for an introductory psychedelic because they're
particularly when supported properly, setting all of that stuff.
I don't know if we'll get into that much today.
You guys went over that quite a bit on that first one, but set setting are really crucial
for psychedelic use always.
So the guidance that's part, I'm going to assume these are all kind of guided, supported,
proper journeys.
Okay.
Moving forward.
But with psilocybin or ketamine, they're really good introductory experiences for us to start
to learn what it means to surrender into the medicine, what it means to kind of tap into
a more spiritual quality of our being and are just really beautiful and pathogenic medicines,
meaning that it helps us kind of connect to and feel the world around us.
MDMA would be another favorite for me.
My favorite for that one is actually couples work.
A lot of the research has been on trauma, which it's amazing for trauma.
But I really encourage people who want to work with MDMA as a couple.
It can be super beneficial for that because it's even what you mentioned with ketamine,
where our kind of our guard drops with our partner and we're able to say that extra thing
that might be just below the surface, just like we're so transparent, we're so honest.
And then there's like that extra 5% that we're just a little bit scared to share.
All of a sudden, we're scared to share it and our partner who's also on MDMA can receive
it without their ego being flared, without their fear centers online as much.
So there's this exchange, this deeper exchange of information where we can connect more to
our partners and work through kind of those deeper, stickier layers that can kind of create
tension within a relationship.
So MDMA and my personal favorite for couples.
Yeah, ayahuasca, I would say is good for people really wanting...
Gosh, I have so many qualifiers for ayahuasca.
Properly held container is needed as well.
People who are trained, like there's lots of questions I would encourage people to ask
before just going to an ayahuasca ceremony.
But ayahuasca is really good for people who do have deep trauma and need people who really
understand psychedelics from a spiritual lens and want to connect more to their spiritual
aspects of life is who I would recommend ayahuasca for.
That's actually one that I'm really curious about right now.
I've experienced psilocybin, I've experienced MDMA and LSD and ketamine now, and I'm feeling
this big pull to Aya.
So actually, would you mind sharing some of those qualifying questions that you would
encourage folks to lean into?
Yeah, yeah.
So ayahuasca being from the Amazon has a really long lineage and quite a few different lineages.
I'm not going to go into the history of that too, too much, but there's a lot of different
tribes and different parts of the world that work with ayahuasca and work with it slightly
differently.
So some of the info I have is based on just the lineage that I understand, which is the
Shipibo-Kanembo lineage.
So just one qualifier there that I'm speaking of only the one lineage that I really know
about.
But there's like decent training that you go through when you're learning to be an ayahuascaro
and an ayahuasca maestro or curandero, where they are dieting plants and they're working
with plants in a way to become spiritual allies and spiritual teachers to help them learn
how to work in the psychedelic realm.
So one of the questions I would ask anybody who might be going to an ayahuasca journey
is find out how long the person has been training or studying.
This is just me, but what their commitment within that amount of time to the lineage
was.
Because some people are like, oh yeah, I studied for eight years, but they really only did
a journey once a year versus people who studied for eight years and immersed themselves in
learning the lineage, learning their tradition, learning how to actually work and serve the
medicine.
So that's one question I would definitely ask is just like, what's their length of time
and their commitment during that time?
And then people will have different feels as to whether that feels like enough time
or not enough time, and I want people can make their own decision on that.
And then another one is just how many participants are going to be there for the amount of people
holding space.
And again, there's no magic number.
It does depend on the expertise of those holding the space.
Obviously people who understand the medicine and all that at a greater capacity can hold
more people, but I've heard of some journeys where there's like 30, 50, even 100 people
in a room with like six or seven people holding space, and that can be actually quite dangerous.
So that's why I'm just saying with ayahuasca, there's quite a few qualifiers to me of what
I would want to look for, particularly if your intention is to go in and do deeper trauma
work or work on more core aspects of who you are, the space, the container, it's good for
that to be held really well.
So those would be two kind of basic questions I would ask.
And then from there, you'll either know if you're feeling like, yes, I want to go work
with this person or no.
For me, and I'll just name the question of like how long someone's been working with
the medicine, no less than about six to eight years for me, and that's like pretty committed.
So before I would feel comfortable working with somebody.
And yeah, that's just me, but other people might feel comfortable with less.
Amazing.
Thank you so much for these questions.
I truly like, I've only heard people mention ayahuasca, whether books that I've read or
listened to or in conversation, and just hearing from you who has so much experience with this,
it's really, really helpful.
I appreciate it.
And if people are going down to Peru or down traveling, like really doing your due diligence
to find out about the centers, like it's become a thing of tourism as well.
And we have to be just mindful of that if choosing to go down to Peru.
So just a little, a quick little qualifier there as well.
Thank you for that too.
It can be so appropriating.
So yeah, yes.
Yeah.
Then just to finish off the question prior, the other two psychedelics, LSD to me is one
that's just kind of fun.
There's lots of healing, lots of kind of re-looking at the world, but that's one I truly just
use if I just want to kind of play and have fun.
I've always found LSD is good for that.
And then the last one that I'm really passionate about is actually 5-MeO DMT.
And that is a medicine that's really good for people, trauma, depression, anxiety for
sure, when dosed correctly.
There's a taping dosing model with 5-MeO that I personally think should be the only way
that 5-MeO is dosed.
But it really allows people to learn to surrender, learn to really release and relax into such
a profound and kind of big experience that 5-MeO provides while also really tapping into
the deep, deep spiritual qualities of kind of oneness, wholeness.
Some people say God, depending on kind of your language.
I look at it more, I use the language for 5-MeO.
It taps you into unconditional love.
But what that can do sometimes is it'll show us perhaps where we are not loving either
ourselves or others.
So there's elements of a 5-MeO journey that can be really deconstructive because we can
think we're acting in a certain way that we aren't sometimes.
So yeah, there's lots of interesting things that can come through 5-MeO journey.
But people go to that medicine for all sorts of reasons.
It can be very powerful.
So cool.
I'm really excited to chat a little bit more about that.
To kind of take a step back on timeframes, I feel like some of our listeners might be
new to this.
So I think that might be interesting to kind of notate.
I know for like, I'm most experienced with LSD and MDMA.
And like psilocybin mushrooms are still like, I've only experienced them maybe five times,
four or five times or something like that.
And in my experience, like a typical dose of mushrooms, two milligrams, I believe, correct
me if I'm wrong, what a typical dosage of that is.
But that lasts me about three to four hours.
And I want to hear like what your sense is for the different medicines and how long those
journeys are to also give some ideas to our listeners.
Totally.
Yeah, that's a really good question.
So I would say for psilocybin mushrooms, nowadays, there's so many different strains that it
does kind of depend on the potency.
So that's one thing as these things become more and more legal, just to be aware of.
So what I'm going to do is more, I'm just going to say kind of a general overarching
place to start would be probably more like two grams, not milligrams.
Yeah, two grams, two to three grams is like a decent intro dose where people should, I
shouldn't say should because it does, you still have to surrender into the experience.
But people, most people will be able to feel it without it becoming an overwhelming experience
at about two to three grams.
Yeah, and then there becomes like bigger doses.
And then the other part of your question was...
Yeah, so just for each of the different medicines.
Right, length of time.
Yeah.
So psilocybin is usually about three to five hours.
If I'm ever holding space for somebody, I usually book at least five to six.
I always book longer than what is going to be needed just so that there's always space.
But yeah, so for psilocybin, it's about three to five hours.
MDMA, people say it's like six.
I always experience it of more like an eight, an eight hour journey.
The earlier in the day you start with MDMA, the longer I feel it takes to ground and come
back down.
Like it is a medicine that does kind of need you to go to sleep before you're going to
feel pretty like sober again, in my personal experience.
LSD is about 10 to 12 hours, and then ketamine is about 45 minutes to an hour, hour and a
half, depending on the method of delivery, I guess, of working with ketamine.
Am I forgetting one?
Ayahuasca is about five, five to six hours, I would say.
MDMA is a little longer depending on the ceremony itself, but usually around...
Well, the whole ceremony might take about eight hours from start to finish, but out
of that time where you're actually under the medicine is about five to six.
And then DMTs, just like regular DMT, 5-MeO or NN DMT, they're...
NN DMT is about 15, 20 minutes, and then 5-MeO is about 20, 20 minutes to 30-ish, depending
on dose.
Mm-hmm.
And that's why I wanted to go into the timeframes, because they are so different, right?
And I think especially as we learn a little bit more from you about 5-MeO DMT, I haven't
had any experience with this one.
But just hearing...I've heard from some friends that the most intense parts of it are like
five minutes long, but it feels like a lifetime.
And so that's what really fascinates me with this one in particular.
And I love that this is the one that you are really committed to working with right now,
along with the others, of course.
But I feel like there's just so much more to learn, and this one may be the least talked
about out of the rest of them.
I'm thinking about on Netflix, How to Change Your Mind, this one wasn't touched on too
too much.
Of course, it was a little bit, but Peyote was even talked about more.
So yeah, talking about how there's that relation with God for so many people, and how it's
just so intense, but in such a short amount of time, I find to be fascinating.
Yeah, it's...5-Me-O is a super fascinating substance.
So it's a big deconstructor.
It really deconstructs what we think about this reality.
So one of the biggest constructs we have in this reality is time itself.
So it melts time in this way where you simultaneously feel like it's been no amount of time.
And the longest amount of time you've ever experienced in your life.
And not always like that.
I've had some experiences where I'm fairly aware the whole time.
Dosing is a really big factor with 5-Me-O, like I said earlier.
Dosing I think has been misunderstood with this medicine because we have this...this
is going to go on a bit of a tangent, but our culture has this more is better mentality
as an underlying core value.
And that bleeds into everything.
And so we have this idea and then kind of how psychedelics have been talked about generally
is like, oh, you need the heroic dose.
You need to break through.
You need like this language of more is better.
You need to like reach this thing.
Whereas with 5-Me-O, like I said, I do...like I've learned a method from a mentor of mine
who uses vape pens where you literally basically microdose it at first.
Like you have a very, very small amount and then you just slowly increase the strength
of the vape pen.
So you walk yourself into what otherwise is often dosed with a pipe and you're getting
a large amount blasting you off at once and is very, very, very challenging on the nervous
system.
Does shoot...does kind of give you that blast off this like massive experience.
But coming back from that massive experience can be really challenging as well.
Whereas when you slowly walk yourself into it and allow yourself to learn how to surrender,
how to calm your nervous system while being in this medicine, you get a little bit longer
of total time in the medicine because you're slowly working with it.
And it's just like you teach yourself surrender in a really beautiful way.
So yeah, I feel like I kind of went off on a tangent.
I love that tangent.
That's such a valid point.
And I think it's really needed.
So thank you.
Thank you for sharing that.
And then thinking about this, do you have any stories that you could share of like memorable
transformative journeys that you've had with 5MeO that are like detailed and can kind of
paint us that picture of what it might be like to help us understand like if we might
be interested in that?
Sure.
One way that people have been describing it lately when working with me is that it basically
moves their mind a little bit out of their body.
So when you can teach yourself to surrender, it's not that like, it's not the traditional
way of like an ego death, but it is this kind of sidestepping of the ego's control over
the body.
So the body can just go through whatever the processes that the body needs to go through.
Sometimes that's extreme shaking that can be like yelling or screaming.
It can also just be the biggest cathartic release.
It can be rolling around.
It can be all sorts of things because that idea of trauma is stored in the body, which
is like basically a proven theory at this point.
I myself have released lots through the body.
Allowing the body to then go through what it needs to do with which our conscious selves
prevent due to like socialization and all these other things.
Such amazing things can happen.
I have witnessed friends of mine just completely and not through just like one experience.
That's one thing I'm really cautious about with psychedelics that you take an experience
and your whole life changes because it's not that simple.
There's a lot of work that goes into it, but who just slowly through what came through
for them, which is hard to describe with 5MeO.
It can be simultaneously extraordinarily universal like this understanding that God exists and
like deep knowing of it.
And it can be super deeply personal where it's really helping you work through like
a trauma that you maybe didn't even know.
So for me, it actually worked out.
I was working with it quite regularly while I was training, like learning to work with
it.
And it kept bringing me back to the same memory I had that basically started this belief that
I wasn't loved by my parents.
And I eventually got to this place where I just had the choice to let the memory go.
Like it was like, you can hold on to this belief.
You can hold on to this memory that keeps you in this belief that you weren't loved
or you can just let it go.
And I just had this moment of like, okay, I'm just going to let it go.
And from that moment, I've never had that memory surface.
I've never had like that belief has shifted in a way that it's really hard to describe.
It's just like instead of it feeling there, it's like, no, that was never true.
And I consciously worked through that in therapy that it wasn't true, but I couldn't get rid
of like the undergrind, underline residue that it wasn't true.
And that experience really like uprooted that whole underlying residue so that that belief
just doesn't exist in my being anymore.
Wow.
Oh my gosh, that's so impactful.
And thank you for sharing that too, like that you've really tried to work on that in therapy
in the past.
And sometimes that works for many things, but for some beliefs that are just so deeply
rooted to your core, like from childhood, I think a lot of people have found that in
traditional like talk therapy that it's just not enough sometimes for those ones that are
just so deeply in there.
So that's huge.
And I mean, thinking about this, like integration is the whole other part of what must happen
after these psychedelic experiences so that they're not just one off experiences and rather
can actually change our lives.
So I'd love it if you could share your light on integration, the importance of it, your
tips, anything on the subject that you think would serve.
Sure.
First thing I just want to say there, that's one of the fundamental differences of why
I think psychedelics are such a great tool, particularly when paired with therapy.
Like I did a lot of therapy along with starting with psychedelics in my early twenties.
I now tend to work with coaches and that's a whole own thing.
But psychedelics are a tool that help us have the embodied experience that our conscious
mind is working out in therapy.
So if the conscious mind doesn't do the processing and therapy, which is also what some of the
integration work is, it might be actually hard to have that embodied experience otherwise.
So they do work really well in tandem and you want to make sure people do understand
that.
It's not one or the other.
It's like use all the modalities you can for a problem to get it fixed as quickly as you
can.
You know, it's like psychedelics are just a catalyst for that.
So I just want to make sure that that's kind of clear.
And then coming to integration.
Integration.
So the way I'm actually thinking about it these days, which is taking me kind of a long
time, is integration is actually the process that everyone is on period in and out of psychedelics.
We are on a process of integration, of taking our lived experiences and working forward
in a way that is effective for us.
Integration fundamentally is connecting things that are different.
We're doing that all the time in life.
We are taking a new information and doing something with it, integrating it.
And so I actually see integration as a process of life that psychedelics come in and provide
a tool to help us in that integrative process that we're consistently on.
So I actually look at integration a little bit differently these days because it's something
that we're doing, whether or not we're using psychedelics.
In terms of psychedelic integration, the reason why that is stressed is because psychedelics
come in and they provide a plethora sometimes of a bunch of new information all at the same
time.
And it becomes a very diligent and intentional process of taking whatever information that
can be either deeply personal or deeply spiritual.
It can totally change the way that we are interacting with our own concept of our place
in the universe.
It's taking whatever is given to us and restructuring how we relate to the world based on what was
given to us in a way that works for us.
So that means sometimes we have to let go of things that came in the psychedelic experience.
You cannot take everything in a psychedelic experience as 100% truth.
There's metaphor, there's things, and sometimes you have to let go of those and sometimes
you have to let go of old beliefs and old stories that you're holding onto to assimilate
and move into whatever the psychedelic gave you.
So it's figuring out what that is for each individual, which sometimes can be an easy
process.
I don't want to make it sound like it's this hard thing.
That can actually be a decently easy process sometimes.
Sometimes it can be challenging and quite a lot for someone to have to work through.
I love that you said that because in the past I've had some super profound experiences with
psychedelics and afterwards or even during sometimes I'm like, oh my gosh, that was huge.
Oh my gosh, this was life changing.
And then I'll start getting overwhelmed of all of the takeaways that I need to remember
from this one journey.
And then I'll start to like, you know, all of these beautiful things will then turn into
an anxiety.
And so it's kind of either something that I'll do sometimes is I'll either write it down
in the moment if I feel like it's something I really, really want to hold onto, but don't
want to stress about forgetting, whether it's in a notebook or my phone, which I don't like
having my phone on me, but sometimes my notes up on my phone is just my easiest go to.
But yeah, just like making it simple.
I love that.
Like what are the one or two big things from this experience that I want to hold onto and
maybe journal on afterwards and really sit with?
Yeah.
And I think that that's, I have people who have said like, oh, I can't remember everything
in my journey.
And it's like, you can't remember everything in your life.
Like that's okay.
Like just let it go.
The things that are most pertinent for you that are really needed will stick with us.
You know, that's life.
And if people continue to work with psychedelics, like if it becomes like for me, it's an integrated
part of my life.
If people choose to do that, and it's on and off, I'm not consistently working with psychedelics,
but I do use them as tools.
If people choose to do that, the threads come back.
Like something that came to you in your first journey all of a sudden pops up again in your
fifth journey because it's important for you to work through.
So it's also surrendering and letting go to just what the process of like learning and
integrating and growing, which is not a linear process in and of itself.
So the psychedelic process is not linear.
Man, I have chills that hits.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Oh my gosh, you've given me so much to think about, reflect on and kind of future ID8 on
where I want to go next in my path.
So thank you.
I know our listeners will gleam a lot from this too.
And how can we support you?
How can our listeners connect with you going forward if they are feeling called to?
Beautiful.
Thank you for that question.
And yeah, I'm happy.
I love talking about this stuff.
So anytime, anytime you want to dive into psychedelics, I'm here.
So yeah, listeners can go.
I don't have social media.
I don't really have social media.
I am, you can go to my website, rawproject.org or just email me, Christine, K-R-Y-S-T-I-N-E
at rawproject.org.
I like email.
And then our community, the whole human embodiment network.
It's a network of little communities of people getting together to talk about this stuff.
There's like different sharing circles.
There's all different things in that, that I am, I lead some things in it, but I also
am just a participant of people who are growing together and learning how to embody and be
our human selves.
So those are the places where people can find me.
And thank you so much, Kat, for asking me to be here and having me on today.
I really appreciate it.
Absolutely, Christine.
It was such a joy.
You're such a gift and such a wealth of knowledge.
So thank you, thank you, thank you.
And to our listeners, if you have any comments, questions, feedback, praise that you want
for this episode for Christine, you can also get in touch with us on Instagram at Awaken
Together podcast.
We're here for you and we love to hear your feedback to show your support.
We'd love it if you follow, rate and review this and other episodes of the podcast and
we'll see you all next week.
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