EP 021 | WHY WE LOVE PLANT MEDICINE RETREATS

In this episode, John and Sinclair share about…

• The different containers for having a psychedelic experience and why we prefer working with elders in a ceremony with sacred plant medicines in a retreat setting
• The path to working with medicines on your own is difficult and often long
• Why plant medicine retreats are so healing and powerful
• The two categories of entheogenic or psychedelic compounds: Synthetic Compounds (LSD, Ketamine, 2CB, MDMA, Mescaline, Psilocybin, DMT, etc.) and Earth Medicines (San Pedro, Ayahuasca, Iboga, Peyote, Psychoactive Mushrooms, Bufo, Yopo) 
• Why we prefer to work with Earth Medicines, and the difference between taking a synthetic compound and a plant, fungus, or Earth medicine
• Start where you are – what’s accessible, what’s available, what’s affordable, what’s close is often how many paths begin. Doing the work you need to do with what you have is valid and okay!
• The benefits of sitting in a circle with elders who carry an unbroken tradition from our ancestors
• It’s not just about our own human healing, but our relationship with the Earth, the water, our environment and sitting with shamans allows you to receive this living wisdom
• Receiving the wisdom of thousands of voices and thousands of years in addition to having the spirit of the plants with you is the most powerful experience
• Being reminded by teachers who live close to the land and walk the spirit dimension has been key to finding a vision for our lives
• Medicine is everywhere: the music, the songs, the land, the animals, the spirits, the people in your retreat, the fire, the people holding space for you and caring for you, the sweat lodge, the teepee, the maloka are medicine… Retreating from everyday life is medicine.
• Going out of your comfort zone so you can break the cycle of the heavy vibration that pervades our culture
• Why coming to plant medicines is a calling – YOU are being called
• Going into a place with a different worldview enhances your ability to change your way of thinking and receive the medicine. New people in a new place and doing something new.
• Why Latin America feels so alive and vibrant and wild, and how our hearts respond to that
• Healing is taking responsibility for yourself, but you have to be ready and willing to do the work
• Going through difficult experiences helps you shed the layers that are not YOU and birth the true YOU
• The beauty and joy of healing with a group in a retreat – they become your family
• The magic technology of ceremony and how gathering together for the purpose of healing makes things feel real and connections feel meaningful
• Changing the course of your entire life can start with one retreat
• Your job is not to pinpoint the trauma or to go on a quest to identify everything that’s ever happened to you, but an understanding that you are part of a big, unified consciousness experiencing itself
• The medicine you need is unique to you, and a retreat is the fastest, most efficient, best investment you can make to find that medicine if you want to work with plants 
• What are the most common objections and reasons why you might tell yourself you can’t go to a retreat?
• How much do you really need to spend?
• What happens before and after and how can you feel prepared and supported?