The Body Knows Podcast

EP 013 | MARCELA & MAT WAKEHAM | UNLOCKING YOUR INNER WISDOM

Hello Everyone, It has been a while since we have been in your ears, and it’ll be while yet until we return with a second season of the podcast. However we have this extra conversation we want to share with you, and it’s with us. We were interviewed on the "Be On Air" podcast from Podcast Farm and we enjoyed it so much that we thought we would share it ourselves. It seems like the perfect mid-season break as it dives into both Mat and Marcela’s origin stories and how we began collaborating on mind-body healing, and on The Body Knows podcast together. In doing so we explore topics like understanding our mind-body connection and why it's important, as well as ways to ground yourself, the influence of western cultural systems, patriarchy, masculinity, self-love, as well as a couple of tips for successful podcasting and so much more. We’ve had a busy summer while the podcast has been on hold, running Temazcalli sweat lodges at the Good Vibrations festival together with the help of our dear friend Eddie from MangoMovement, for Marcela the Still Flowing Yoga and Somatics Teacher Training is taking place at the Yoga Garden in West Suss*x. Her Cacao Spirit Initation with Maru Bibian Albor is underway and she’s cooking up new ancestral, somatic offerings with her dear friend Gemma Mallol. Mat has been building a mentoring program for men, helping to guide them towards a state of wholeness and divine masculine s*xuality while continuing his bodywork training with Michelle Roberton. If you want to check any of what we are up to out the links to our personal socials are in the Instagram and Facebook bios for The Body Knows. Host of the "Be On Air" podcast, K-Lee Marks, brings his listeners on multidisciplinary conversations with extraordinary coaches, speakers, authors, and entrepreneurs that astonish, educate, and it was an honour to be guest on the show, which is all about using the power of your voice to amplify what you love. Follow Embodied Practices on I

WHAT IS A CACAO CEREMONY?

Cacao is a beautiful Ancestral Medicine originating from the lands of the Olmecs, Aztecs and Mayans, among others. When we approach this humble plant with respect it has the potential to guide us to embrace the depths of our hearts, and we might then use it as our compass for profound realisations and healing, helping us to remember who we are, and making us conscious participants with the Universe. The intention of Cacao Ceremonies is to help us navigate our lives in contact with our deepest Selves and our spirits. To find healing and connection with the elements, the land and our relations. To open us to the possibility to enter fully into the vast and expansive experience of our true nature. Once Cacao opens the door of our heart in ceremony, that in turn opens the door of greater consciousness, facilitating a direct connection with nature and the universe, helping us to work with our own growth, strength, expansion and abundance. Cacao helps us to work directly with the loving wisdom of our own hearts, and with the forces of our emotions to have openness, clarity, honesty and truth. Additionally, it also has high nutritional value, and it is a natural antidepressant. This is the mission of Cacao on the planet, which was given to our ancestors by the Mayan and Aztec feathered serpent creator god Quetzalcoatl. CACAO SPIRIT INITIATION will be a Traditional Mexican Indigenous Initiation in to the Sacred Art of Cacao Ceremonies. 4 Day online workshops 17:00 – 21:00 GMT Week One 10th and 11th of July Week Two 17th and 18th of July Our intention is to transmit to the participant the knowledge around this sacred plant; from the history and legends, why it is used in ceremonies, types of cacao, recipes, and all the traditional ritual involved in a ceremony, as well as how to connect and ask permission to the energies and cacao guardians. BOOKING - https://embodiedpractices.com/cacaoexperience/

BONUS EP012 | MARU ALBOR BIBIAN | CACAO SPIRIT INITIATION

Welcome to another bonus episode of The Body Knows Podcasts. These feature in-depth discussions with some wonderful individuals Marcela is working in partnership with to provide some upcoming somatic offerings. We’d like to think that no matter if you participate in the offerings or not there will be insights and wisdom in these conversation nonetheless. This bonus episode is very special for Marcela. She is speaking with Maru Albor Bibián, her ceremonial cacao teacher, about one of her core embodiment practices; the art of cacao ceremonies. Maru facilitates ancestral medicine ceremonies with Cacao and Rapé. She also provides both group and one-to-one healing sessions, as well as leading women’s circles with medicine songs and prayers, and is an energetic therapist, working with Reiki and chakra balancing too. Cacao ceremonies are one of the most beautiful ways to enter into deep inquiry of what is to have a body, and what is to have a soul and connect with the Great Spirit. It was actually through tapping into the wisdom of her body that Marcela awakened this ancient memory, this ancient medicine, coming from her indigenous background. Once this seed was awakened and begun to bloom she entered into a quest to find her initiation. In every indigenous tradition you must be initiated or have the sacred wisdom of the ancestors transmitted orally, encoded in the language. And this is how she found Maru. She gave Marcela the honour of transmitting to her the essence and life of the Tabasco Jungle where her teacher lives and tends his cacaotal. Both Maru and Marcela we were born and raised in the great city of Mexico Tenochtitlan. They are going to join forces to run an online initiation and transmission of the Cacao Spirit. This CACAO SPIRIT INITIATION will be four online ceremonies running – 17:00 - 21:00 GMT, Week One 10-11/07/21 and Week Two 17-18/07/21. If you are interested in this initiation please follow see details the following link - https://embod

BONUS EP011 | STILL FLOWING | YOGA & SOMATIC TRAINING |

Somatic yoga is a mindful and therapeutic approach to yoga through which we cultivate the conditions for a regulated nervous system and move towards ease and stability within. It Integrates creative organic movement with our more traditional exploration of asana or posture supports the awakening of the natural intelligence within as you come home to your bodily experience, and begin to listen deeply to this inner wisdom. In this approach we contemplate, feel and move our bodies to understand ourselves, our evolutionary heritage, and our relationship with nature before and now. This is a revolutionary, body positive, trauma sensitive, creative and in depth approach to liberating body, heart and mind that takes us on a journey from deep physiology to deep ecology and back again. It is not a linear approach to yoga but one which embraces an intuitive and organic response to our enquiry into felt-sense and lived experience. Neither is it an understanding of yoga to be not something we 'do', but rather as our natural state when our body, mind and heart are relaxed and undefended. The practice therefore, can help us create the conditions whereby we can relax into our being and allow whatever tension patterns stand between us and our natural state of non-separation to soften. We can then begin to open to the experience of union ,which is what Yoga translates as. In yoga the seeker and the sought become one thing. • The Still Flowing Yoga Teacher Training offers Pioneering Programmes in Integrating Contemporary Somatic Insights, Neuroscience and Buddhist Mindfulness with Yoga. For more information contact - The Yoga Garden, Still Flowing Yoga, Blanche Mulholland or Embodied Practices

BONUS EP011 | STILL FLOWING | YOGA & SOMATIC TRAINING |

‘Pleasure is our birthright, we’re allowed to experience pleasure’ - Gemma Mallol, Principle Teacher, Still Flowing Yoga Teacher Training. The processes offered on the Still Flowing Yoga and Somatic Teacher Training are a complete re-wilding of the mind-body system, where our physiology becomes an offering of peace, a contribution to the diversity of the planet, a healing intelligent system. We become a wild flower meadow, a fresh babbling woodland stream, a majestic tree in an ancient forest, a deep clear cool desert pool, a rock that sits quietly and patiently and listens for our return home. The body’s natural intelligence and healing power reveals itself through the somatic process aligning us to a huge well of creativity, empowerment, earth wisdom and community. This is the somatic approach, our direct experience of our inner world only verifiable by us. That is our truth. If we could take X-Rays of student’s inner world before and after the training then maybe we would have some more verifiable proof of what our inner world starts to look like as we proceed with and commit to these practices. Maybe it would look like some kind of beautiful rewilding project, with many new plants and trees growing, and diverse creatures appearing and thriving and fresh clean rivers running and gentle breezes blowing and clean air and gentle rain and this inner desert starting to slowly come to life as we pay more and more attention to it. • There’s one place left on this year’s U.K. based training. Contact any one of these accounts for info, dates and prices. Still Flowing Yoga The Yoga Garden Embodied Practices Blanche Mulholland

Welcome to this bonus episode, which Marcela has recorded by herself between seasons. This conversation is about the upcoming Still Flowing Yoga Teacher Training, and in conversation we have a former guest of the show; Gemma Mallol, founder of SFYTT, a Somatic Experiencing practitioner, Senior Yoga Teacher and Mindfulness teacher, Blanche Mullholand, Somatic Movement Educator, Body Worker and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, and Marcela Wakeham, Senior Yoga Teacher, Movement Therapist, and Experiential Anatomist., we three together are the principle teaching staff of the training, along with Neville Cregan, who delivers the history and philosophy of yoga. The conversation touches into the core of Marcela's own somatic practice, as it is the journey of contemporary yoga teacher training in the field of somatics. Somatics is the body, the ability of the mind to be aware of the host. It is as well a guidance to follow natural patterns imprinted in cells and movement initiation from different tissues or body systems. Somatics is a returning to the natural intelligence which is vast and enriched ancestral knowledge. Yoga & somatics is a new trend that has been rapidly taking shape, and gaining popularity, but like most new trends it can have its pitfalls, and it is important find a truly qualified somatic practitioner, one who is not teaching form the head, and for that it takes years of experience, practicing the art of going in, as well as years of practice to make sense of how to teach it, paired with continuous self-actualization. Still flowing yoga Teacher Training was established in 2008, offering a pioneering program in integrating contemporary somatic insights and mindfulness with yoga. It is a 200 hour training accredited by UK Yoga Alliance. The training will take place at The Yoga Garden in West Suss*x in the U.K. A beautiful natural Centre, it is found within the Knepp Estate. For enquiries and more details about the course please see the website link

EP010 | BRUCE PARRY | A VOICE FROM THE FOREST

This is our final Body Knows Practice of season 01, and for it Bruce Parry has offered us an outtake that was removed from the final cut of his documentary feature film; Tawai, A Voice From the Forest, which gives insight into ways that humanity might have overcame its hierarchical primate heritage at one time, and instituted a trust-based, egalitarian society, utilising potent, somatic ritual. ‘The Mbendjele people are from the Congo, and are egalitarian nomadic hunter gatherers. Living in an egalitarian society requires constant group effort, working to maintain balance. They primarily do this through massana, a form of play, dance and song, the women, young and old, playfully teasing the men. This teasing is a formal way of publicly addressing antisocial behaviour within the group. Men who have been aggressive, disrespectful or even lazy lovers are playfully, humorously, but assertively, held to account by the women in the communal space. Rather than entering into a combative space, the women embody their own quality of collective power, expressed through potent laughter, song and s*xuality. But the women choose not to hold centre stage for too long, so they willingly allow space for the men to have their turn, through their ritual called Ejengi. During the ritual reenactment, through song and dance, Ejengi seems to symbolise the alpha male, whose reproductive dominance our female ancestors rejected, simultaneously inviting the other men to join them. This invitation by the women, the Mbendjele say, established society as they live it today. Men and women continue to work together to banish the tendencies of the hoarding, competitive, aggressive male spirit, so that all can live together as equals.’ - Bruce Parry

EP010 | BRUCE PARRY | A VOICE FROM THE FOREST

Our guest this month is Bruce Parry; English documentarian; indigenous rights advocate, author, explorer, and former Royal Marines commando officer. His documentary series for the BBC: Tribe, Amazon, and Arctic have shown Bruce exploring extreme environments, living with remote indigenous peoples and highlighting many of the issues on the environmental frontline. What started out as a simple desire for adventure for him developed into a profound love for humanity and nature, and the kind of deeply felt somatic response that comes with having experienced first-hand what our way of life is doing in the world. He is best known for his time spent living with Indigenous Peoples, and for bringing awareness of the shamanic use of psychedelic plant medicine to the mainstream, as well as his investigations into globalisation and climate change. Bruce's latest film; “TAWAI – A Voice from the Forest, is about how humankind has shifted its connection to nature with devastating results and suggests how we might return to the egalitarian structures that humanity lived in for 95% of our time on the planet before the Neolithic, agricultural revolution. This is a deep and wide ranging conversation taking in the roles of awareness practices, psychedelics and shadow work, the nature of spirit and consciousness via the lenses of felt sense, indigenous wisdom, meditative awareness and scientific study and the possible next stage of human evolution through egalitarian revolution. We dive too into this vision for life informed by ancestral wisdom, through an innate, heart lead connection to the natural order, the peoples he has met who embody this and the importance of this in order to find something bigger than ourselves. Bruce outlines what the new cultural narratives and tools could be in order for us to live truly grounded, and egalitarian lives beyond our Western, individualistic, patriarchal power structures, so that we might discover what it truly means to be fully ou

EP009 | MICHELLE ROBERTON | TA**RA & LIVING ORGASMICALLY

This month’s Body Knows Practice is delivered by our guest Michelle Roberton to help you become back your body in the present moment through the movement of your breath. It is a short, simple practice that enables us to feel our breath, immersing and inviting us to surrender to our body and to our own natural rhythm and space of feeling rather than thinking. Placing awareness on the breath in this way can gently open up your experience of life, quieting the analytical mind and entering a state of receptivity and balance. As we learn to relax into this stillness, our heart opens and we reconnect with the essence of our being, unifying our experience of the body. Michelle guides us into exploring the breath and how it invites us to step into our felt sense, awakening our senses and creating a feeling of softness and spaciousness within the body. She offers us this advice on the practice; it may sound very simplistic but all of Ta**ra and life is simple. It is only us humans that insist on making life difficult and complicated. This is a something we can take into our day, and use whenever we feel necessary, as small gifts of self kindness. Perfect for anxiety, trauma, and to bring a sense of rest to the body.

This month we talk with Michelle Roberton about Ta**ra & Living Orgasmically. But what is Ta**ra? This ancient practice, like many others, have been reduced through our Western appropriation to fit what we want it to mean. And much like how mediation and mindfulness are not simply a productivity tool, nor yoga a series of physical postures, or acupuncture a support for allopathic medicine, Ta**ra was never solely about s*x. So instead of us growing, transforming and reconnecting with our body’s wisdom through the practice as individuals, and as a society, we reduce it to our understanding, limiting its scope and power. Ta**ra is not all about s*x, withholding ej*******on and intense or***ms, and keeping Western Ta**ra tied just to s*xual practices keeps our lives limited too. Sure, s*x sells and our notions, understanding and connection of s*xuality needs shaking up too, but we are not sharing the truth of Ta**ra. S*x is not its only methods. Ta**ra has golden threads to weave through the whole of life, and our whole being, and not just performances in our bedrooms. One meaning of Ta**ra is that of transforming poison into nectar and as such it is a catalyst for deeply knowing our potential and experiencing the fullest expression of life available to us. It is an invitation to explore and remember our sacred heart, sacred body, as well as the sacredness of our s*x.. Looking at the whole person, body, mind, spirit and s*x, it is an invitation to be curious about our bodies, our s*xuality, sensuality and a sense of aliveness and alignment that invites us to go beyond the act of s*x.

This episode of The Body Knows Podcast comes with a - ⚠️ TRIGGER WARNING ⚠️ Our guest this month is Michelle Roberton; Ta***ic therapist supporting women, men and couples through releasing fears and limiting boundaries around intimacy, sensuality and exploring the true sense of being a s*xual being. She is a licensed Councillor, specialised trauma therapist and body worker, certified by The Association of Somatic and Integrated S*xologists. Drawing on her own experience of extreme s*xual abuse as a child, Michelle identifies and focuses on the disconnection and dissociation experiences of childhood s*xual abuse and the developmental trauma created within the body. Michelle has shared with her work with many over the years, specialising in s*xual trauma & intimacy as a ta***ic educator, bodyworker, trauma yoga teacher, and counsellor for adult survivors of childhood s*xual abuse. In 2013 she was diagnosed with Grade 3 breast cancer, and both breasts were removed and later on reconstructed. Her passion stems from her own journey of discovering the healing medicine in the poison of her own experiences as she set it upon herself to reclaim her body, her breath, her s*xuality and sensuality and express them in new, life enriching ways. Michelle very much believes that our mind can only take us so far into any release of body trauma and healing of our s*xuality. The discovery of who we authentically are is not hidden in our thoughts but in the sensuality and home of our body. Her touch has been described by many as her gift to others, and her gentle, authentically honest & calming approach, a comforting breath of fresh air. • As ever if this episode speaks to you we ask that you leave a review on Apple Podcasts, and subscribe and share to your socials. If there’s one person you believe would benefit from the show please forward it to them. Supporting us in this way will help spread our message of the body’s innate wisdom and ability to heal. PODCAST

EP008 | GEMMA MALLOL | STILL FLOWING; YOGA, MINDFULNESS & SOMATICS

This is the latest in our series we’re calling The Body Knows Practices. Our intention is for these to become a resource of methods, practices and approaches to help bring us all back to the innate, inner healing wisdom of the body. In this practice Gemma of Still Flowing Yoga shares a technique from Somatic Experiencing called Orienting. Orientation is the natural response of animals to scan the environment to assess for safety. The body engages with the environment to register and map, is it safe? Gemma has trained for 5 years to become a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner. She now works in the field of healing trauma particularly with yogis and meditators. Her approach has both a structured side to it and also playful free-form side to it, always seeking to balance stability, fluidity and spaciousness. By attuning to the elements of earth, water, fire and space within the body, gravity and its rebound play through the body with ease, affecting our shape and structure, our breath, our feelings, our relationship with ourselves, others, and the environment around us By encouraging the body to undo and let go of habitual tension patterns and old habits that fragment and distort the body and its energy, the body is gradually offered new movement choices outside of old habits. This unexplored movement potential offers rest, regulation and deep internal release. A gradual awakening may take place, as new ways of approaching movement through asana pave the way for new ways of being and experiencing life. At a feeling level this may be experienced as freshness, wholeness or just being deeply and simply happy in your body.

EP#008 | GEMMA MALLOL | STILL FLOWING; YOGA, MINDFULNESS & SOMATICS

This month we’re speaking with Gemma Mallol, originating founder and creator of Still Flowing Yoga Teacher Training. Senior yoga and mindfulness teacher, somatic experiencing practitioner, and body orientated trauma therapist. Gemma’s teaching offers in-depth somatic therapeutic experiences and process through Buddhist insight meditation, embodied journeying and movement practice in and with nature that cultivate resource and regulation in the mind-body-system. This conversation takes place at turning point - one of many in the history of the teacher training - on which Marcela teaches Embodied anatomy & Physiology of movement, and we took it as opportunity to tell Gemma’s story, and that of Still Flowing, as they map much of the evolution of yoga in the West from the late 90s onwards. Her teaching has many influences, Somatic and Scaravelli Inspired Yoga, Buddhist Mindfulness & Eco Dharma, and body oriented somatic therapy, movement and creative process, yet the roots of her own practice go back further; through the rise to mainstream popularity of Ashtanga in the 90s, mindfulness and Vinyasa-Flow in the 00s, and the trauma informed somatic methods of today, being there amid the birth of each of these emerging waves of health and wellbeing. Throughout them all, Gemma’s core interest has been understanding and connecting with existence, and this has been the focus of her 20 + years of practice and teaching, and that is an enquiry has taken place through her body. We cover this in the conversation - and more too - taking in the personal, cultural and also hereditary factors and traditions that have informed Gemma, and Still Flowing, but which have never defined or held her in. As ever if this episode speaks to you please subscribe, like, review and share. Supporting us in this way helps spread our message of the body’s innate wisdom and ability to heal. As with last month’s show we begin with a somatic practice, so we recommend if circumstanc

EP#007 AJAHN SUCITTO THE WISDOM OF THE BODY: A BUDDHIST PERSPECTIVE AVAILABLE NOW.

We asked the Ajahn a most simple, and straightforward question; why meditate? And you can hear his equally straightforward, clear, warm and joyful reply in this post. Elaborating on the mechanism in his book ‘Samadhi is Pure Enjoyment’ he writes - ‘The body is something that can be trusted much more than the mind. And as one learns to trust the body, one learns to receive the blessings of what is good and conducive to the heart’s welfare. This brings joy. The enjoyment of embodied presence - of opening and settling in the body, rather than thinking about it - causes the mind to stop creating injunctions, controls and distractions, just because the underlying agitations that cause the mind to do all that get soothed by the direct experience of the body. And as the body begins to feel settled, the mind also settles - it doesn’t have conflicting interests and doubts. In this way, release in terms of the body - release from tension and staleness - supports release of mind. Overall, practicing meditation entails introducing awareness to body, thought and mood in a mindful way. This requires a clear commitment of intention: to being here, being with the body and the feeling. You use bodily sense, especially the breathing sense, to get grounded in the here and now. Then when you are settled into this embodied awareness, you can stand at the door of the heart and be with what arises in the mind without holding, favouring or resisting. You let things pass. This dispassion is also a ‘sign’ that calms the heart; it loses interest in what passes, it doesn’t get involved. Pretty soon, the distracting inner visitors stop coming.’ Ajahn Sucitto

JAMES SHAW & CHRIS BAKER WEMOVE; NO LABELS, NO BOUNDARIES

This particular The Body Knows Practice from WEMOVE.world differs to those shared before in that it is a reflection on a felt experience, and an invitation to you to undertake action yourselves, rather than a guided exercise. The list of benefits of cold water therapy are many fold, and even more so in nature; building physical health, brain health and gut health, strengthening and regulating the autonomous nervous system, aiding us to abide in parasympathetic states through our adaption to positive and negative stress. This all builds a strong somatic sense and present moment awareness‪, through going out to connect with our inner and outer nature.‬ When we see and trust such a process, and undertake it with with consistency, then transformation can arise. It naturally flows from what our body and our environment is showing us. Nature has provided all the tools we need to thrive, and we can trust in what it’s guidance. Following its cues and clues, our growing ease and resilience are the results of this applied wisdom. The body intuitively knows the way and if we allow ourselves to turn inward toward our felt experience rather than identifying wholly with the mind’s directives, health, happiness and healing can arise simply and of their own accord through connection with our essential nature. Immersing ourselves into nature awakens this within us, asking us to slow down, to listen to our truths, to take stock to hear it’s call within ourselves and manifest our innate powers in tune with it. The simple practice of taking cold showers, along with regular cold water swimming and ice baths can helped to transform our outlook and experience of life, what it is and who we are within it, over time. It gives to us the ability to sit in the space between stimulus and response and face ourselves, and how we choose to be in the moment, instead of running on automatic and being highjacked by those habitual patterns that do not serve us. This is nothing mo

EP005 James Shaw & Chris Baker weMove; No Labels, No Boundaries.

EP005 James Shaw & Chris Baker weMove; No Labels, No Boundaries. This episode of the podcast begins with us discussing how movement was the catalyst that propelled the hosts of WEMOVE.world from unfulfilling, busy urban lives. We then delve into how that opened them to experiencing an innate, somatic, mind-body connection, listening to their bodies to optimise their human potential. This is movement, not as an end goal, but as as a vehicle for awareness, just as the breath is used in meditation, gaining insight through the feeling of action, in the present moment, and without judgment. This has allowed them both to access more knowledge about themselves, as they explore ‘the worlds of movement, health and adventure, towards living a complete human experience’. And once we open to that - they say - we can open ourselves up to a life full of play and possibility. James and Chris’ conversations on their own show, are long form, free flowing riffs, and inspired by that we threw much of our prepared questioning out of the window, and followed the flow of what was presenting itself, and what wanted to be spoken and heard in the moment. It felt like we barely got started telling their story, as their experience through their four-year journey and 140+ conversations is so in-depth, and full of truth and felt experience. Yet still we covered so much ground too, and listening back it unfolds like an origins story, as they cross the threshold from the ordinary world into connecting with lives led by purpose and meaning, integrating and living everything they have learnt from their conversations, driven by curiosity and passion for all that life can offer. We’re sure this won’t be the last conversation, or time we share with these two free spirited adventurers of movement, human connection, meaning and potential.

One of the regular features of The Body Knows Podcast is that within each conversation we ask our guests to share a practice that can help guide us back to our felt senses, and the inner voice of the body. We have given these the title; #thebodyknowspractices , with the intent for them to become a growing resource for grounding and healing for listeners and participants. In this practice Michelle Baker Jones shares with us her guided meditation intended for use in preparation for participants on upcoming clinical treatment programme at the Synthesis Retreat This meditation can help get the psychedelic process going before taking any substances; exploring the inner world and cultivating introspective and reflective states. Of course this isn’t just a practice for those about to undertake psychedelic assisted therapy. This meditation opens participants to their senses and to feeling what is moving inside all of us, allowing us to become comfortable accepting and facing thoughts and feelings, uncomfortable ones included. This aids in the purpose of psychedelic assisted therapy; to let go, surrender and face the limiting, habituated patterns that we otherwise avoid. The psychedelic experience - much like the ordinary waking state we all find ourselves in - are more better experienced when we enter with open, ready minds and hearts, grounded in the felt senses, and so with mindful preparation, when the time comes to surrender we can do so with as sense of ease and be better able to accept whatever we are shown.

EP #004 | Michelle Baker Jones | Psilocybin & the Inner Healer

Research at Imperial College London is finding that psilocybin can reduce depression, when administered with supportive psychotherapy and integration. Current drug treatments for depression have limited efficacy, and are associated with adverse side effects. Depression affects more than 300 million individuals worldwide, and is a substantial public health concern, making this work all the more timely and vital. Mainstream news tends to highlight catchy elements while glossing over other details, so for psychedelic therapy, you’re more likely to hear about the psychedelic than the therapy. Psychedelic therapy is not as simple as administering a substance and the depression is gone, it takes place in a broader framework of preparation and integration, neither of which involve the administration of a substance. Psychedelic therapists maintain that the medicine helps incite a process, where a client’s inner healer can emerge and catalyze the internal shift. Psychedelic integration is the ongoing work of fully loving ourselves, accepting, respecting, and trusting our bodies. Your body has the ability to heal, change, grow, and progress, but you have to let it. When you don’t trust your body it creates anxiety and stress. Fear blocks your capacity to heal. Your body will internalize your feelings – distrust, worries, and habitual negative beliefs can cause physical pain and aliments. Create suffering in your mind and your body will feel that pain. Episode 004 Michelle Baker Jones Psilocybin & the Inner Healer. Available now. Link to show pinned to the top of our account feed. Please let us know your thoughts and experiences here and share with anyone you think this conversation may be of benefit to.

EP #004 is with Michelle Baker Jones. We met and spoke at her private practice in Kingston Upon Thames, London, where she works as an integrative psycho-therapeutic counsellor. Michelle is also a member of Imperial College’s Psychedelic research team where she is a lead guide on trials comparing psilocybin to anti-depressants as a treatment for depression. She also offers individual integration for people struggling to process psychedelic experiences, and co–facilitates a monthly Psychedelic Integration group in London. This in-depth interview with Michelle explores her experiences on the clinical trials for psychedelic-assisted therapy, as well her personal experiences with psychedelics and her work in the integration groups. As one of the lead therapists on the trials she outlines their design and context in which the psilocybin sessions occur. We spoke too about the history of the trials, the qualifications for a psychotherapist to use psychedelics and how this transpersonal, and ancient and medicine, fits in to a Western scientific model. We also discuss the methods and tools used by the program for integration of the psychedelic experience by the participant. The subjects of state chasing and spiritual bypassing are also addressed, as is the need for creating a true Western cultural container, equivalent to those found in indigenous communities. The work that Michelle and the team at Imperial are doing is set to revolutionise the treatment and approach to depression, if not the Western medical model its self, by placing the individual, and our innate propensity to heal ourselves, at the centre of treatment. You can find links to Imperial College London’s work on Psilocybin for major depression, information on psychedelic integration, Michelle’s private counselling practice, and Michelle’s Breaking Convention talk in our show notes. Thanks for listening, we hope you enjoy it, please subscribe, rate, review and share with anyone you think this