[Music] hi there I'm Arlene bisil and welcome to selfcare through psychedelics today we're doing a psychedelics workshop with my very special guest Daniel Su and with that let's get started I actually met Dan at a retreat that he was working at in Jamaica uh a few years ago and had I met Dan uh before I went and did my psychedelic trips my entire experience would have been completely different because I didn't know what I was doing going into it I didn't know what to expect I didn't know who to
talk to about any of it and I was a voracious consumer of all things psychedelics because I was in real trouble and I I I needed help I desperately needed help and I was feeling certain ways and it was so overwhelming and I didn't know where to turn and I just felt like you know what this is the last stop for me if if if these psychedelics don't work for me I don't know what I'm going to do and I was really desperate and so I borrowed all of this money to go uh off to one of these retreats in Ja
maica and lo and behold there was Dan and it wasn't uh until the end of The Retreat that I had an opportunity to spend a lot of time with him and it completely changed my entire perspective on having done psychedelics and I wish I would have had the benefit of all of what he shared with me before I set foot in Jamaica and so that is what brought me into even doing anything like this and having the newsletter and and talking to people and wanting to share people to share with people you know if y
ou only knew certain things like first of all you have to know the questions to ask but if you only knew certain things it would just completely transform your entire approach to doing this and give you the win that you need in your life and that's what I needed and Dan was actually the answer to all of my questions so with that said Dan Dan such let me introduce you to all of uh the people who have uh taken the time to visit with us this evening and if you would be kind enough to introduce your
self and thank you so much for being here I really appreciate it well well thank you for the introduction and uh thanks to all of you for showing up today um yeah I met uh I met arleene at the uh soloc cybin retreat in Jamaica and our encounter was um a really apparent example of um the the type of prepar preparation work that was needed in this field um you know psychedelics hit the scene first and then the emphasis on integration uh slowly followed and it still seems that there's yet uh what I
feel is is proper preparation for something like this um and I think a lot of that is due to how intricate that process is so uh it is hard to get me on on Zoom calls but I'm very very excited about this project because uh I'm so passionate about the the preparation side of things here so yes my name is Dan uh I worked uh at a legal Cil assignment retreat in Jamaica for a little over five years um I have been um sitting for a little over 200 group sessions of about 12 people each um and a few d
ozen uh one-on-one sessions as well um and of course being a psychedelic professional I think uh it is absolutely necessary I have done uh very very many Journeys myself um so a lot of this benefit uh that Arlene has spoke about has come from personal experience and uh I had to get over many roadblocks myself um in the beginning and the middle and the end as well um the the partnership that we choose to take on with psychedelics is an ongoing Journey um but we can feel much much better at every
single step of the way um and the potential just seems totally endless so um that's that's a little bit about me and uh we have a we have a lot to discuss today thank you so much Dan I adore Dan so much and I have to tell you at the end of The Retreat I said to him um you're like a Joseph Campbell in all of the wisdom that um Dan shared with me and all the learning that I got from him it's no joke that Dan really does know what he's talking about when it comes to this and he knows it in a way th
at is very comforting and very reassuring and those are the kind of things that I needed and so what I want to do was I want to start we're going to cover three things tonight um we're going to cover everything that I did wrong um that Dan was witnessed to and how I and you might be better prepared to go into a psychedelic experience and also how the integration period can be made so much easier and I I might be the exception to the rule because I did everything wrong um I I went into the psyche
delic trip I went to Jamaica I I was I was determined to get answers I wanted to feel better and I needed these these mushrooms to make me feel better and I needed them to heal me because I had been through every possible you know therapeutic modality and none of it worked and I was really suffering I was suffering to a point where I wasn't sure I was going to make it to the next day and I'm very pragmatic about things it was like well I'm not going to continue living this way this is a ridiculo
us way to live I couldn't manage things I couldn't manage my triggers I was just I I was just so out of control and I I just couldn't manage myself anymore so I find myself in Jamaica and I'm real type A personality I'm an entrepreneur you know I'm driven I'm going to make things happen I'm a successful business person blah blah blah and none of that really mattered because I was just in such bad shape and nobody in my life knew it and I was suffering alone so I get to Jamaica I'm there I'm read
y you know I'm looking at all the other people in the cohort and it's you know I'm sizing them all up like it's a competition or something and I had no idea what to expect you know I didn't know like how any of this works and and you know I was scared I was scared to death but it's kind of like you I was scared but I was more I was scared of the tripping but I was more scared of continuing to live the way that I was living and the way that I was feeling so I was like I have nothing to lose at th
is point because what's the worst that can happen right okay and so uh the the trip starts they give us the you know the little capsules and everything and you know not much as explained to me about what to expect I don't know how it's going to feel I don't know anything about this and I just like okay put the eye shades on and go sit outside and sit in a swing and wait for something to happen I wait an hour and nothing has happened I wait an hour and a half and nothing has happened I was like o
h I guess this stuff doesn't work and then all of a sudden it starts opening up and from that point forward and I did three of these trips while I was in Jamaica one every other day over five day period and it was an intense amount of psilocybin that I took um I I I I mean I've I've shared with you some of what I saw and what I was experiencing but the big problem was every everything that I was seeing in the trip I was interpreting literally I was in there actually thinking oh well this is what
this means and this is what you know this explains this and oh now I understand this and I was just sleuthing like crazy and my left brain is Super Active and I'm just in there and I'm digging and I'm Excavating and I'm looking around it's like oh I guess that's what this means and now I understand and I'm all better and I'm Healed and everything it isn't that great and oh my God I could not have been more wrong because when I was done and I flew back home uh I went into a very intense period o
f Chaos in my life because I I had convinced myself because I was so busy you know you know analyzing and determining and explaining for myself what everything meant that I saw in these three trips that I created all of this chaos because I had to come back into my real life and contend with all of these explanations that I gave myself and a bunch of them were completely wrong and after a year and a half of this chaos of my own doing I finally settled because I had to give over to okay Arlene ju
st let it flow and being as controlling and typ a personality as I am I just refuse to let go and that was the biggest problem and that is what you know started me on a path and a Journey that I never needed to take after uh after doing these psychedelic trips and in all of the conversations that I had with Dan in Jamaica where I'm like okay well I saw this and did it literally happen did this literally happen to me oh well that explains it and Dan was looking at me like I was crazy because like
Arlene dial it back you know you're not a detective here you're not a super smooth just relax and just let it be what it is but I couldn't do it during the time that I was there because I was so amped up and I was so desperate for Relief and I needed healing and I needed answers that I I couldn't just I interfered with the entire beauty of the whole thing and it has taken me more than it's taken me almost two years to come to the realization that I approached the entire thing in the wrong way b
ecause I didn't know any better and that's where Dan comes into the picture and so basically I have just summed up for you what Dan is going to talk about which is what you're actually doing in there what to do what not to do how you get yourself ready to go in there and then what you're going to do afterwards so that the whole thing is a big win instead of like me having to make it a much bigger mess and Chaos for myself emotionally when none of it never even had to happen so Dan I'm going to t
urn it over to you so talk to me about what I did when I went in there and what people need to know about what's actually happening in there and that it's all okay and that I was the architect of all my troubles well you know I it's uh it's funny to hear the the the criticalness of even your review of your situation thank you for that I appreciate you letting me off the hook um yeah and I think what what you're pointing to is um one of the many things that can sort of get in the way of an experi
ence when you engage with the psilocybin you are going to go on a journey and what this whole thing is about here is the way I like to put it is I'm trying to increase your miles per gallon that you're getting out of your psilocybin um because something we can get into later is um in terms of dose size uh more does not equal more um and that's that's in itself a pretty nuanced thing that we can cover later um but in Arlene's case it was the act of doing too much and it's very often the case that
it's really hard to keep ourselves from doing that it's it's sort of the the the pregame Jitters that um makes us so eager once we engage in the experience but in multiple ways less is more inside of the experience um but there are there's ways to to get more out of the experience but it's more of an act of absorption than it is a a go getting um so there's many ways in which we can get in our own way and um you know speaking as for myself I had plenty of years of doing that uh so over time uh
I was able to recognize those patterns and that's what caught my interest particularly is is how much further could I have gotten in a shorter period of time in my experiences um in regards to self growth and and self-awareness um everything from uh diet the day of the experience uh breathing techniques to get through the turbulent moments which are almost certain that that will happen in these experiences um how to well first normalizing physical Sensations and then ways to sort of deal with th
em in the moment that doesn't require thought that's very key um very practical um making your setting setting your setting um even if you are with a guide or if you're at a retreat center um the details have layers to them and a little can go a long way in terms of what's just around you basically and then um the the fun stuff the the really important stuff is how can we not only physically Prime our bodies to be more receptive to these experiences but mentally how can we be primed um another w
ay I like to put this is can we the pool ourselves before getting into it and I absolutely think that you can and that's been um a main focus of mine uh the past few years doing this work well Dan you know let me let me touch on this um I love the analogy of skimming the pool before you get in because I think that that uh is a great way of talking about um how much more prepared you are to go into a psychedelic experience where uh maybe you can talk about that a little bit and I'm not talking ab
out the things like you know everybody reads about set and setting like everything I'm sure everyone on this call has read everything there is to read on the internet about using psychedelics and specifically for the purpose of healing um but but this really is truly a journey and it begins with you know planning the trip and I don't mean the the the Practical aspects of how we plan for a trip it's more the the the way that we prepare emotionally in the way that you're talking how do we skim the
pool before we get in how do we prepare ourselves emotionally to go and do this and it doesn't have to be like my case was really extreme because I was in real extremis as I went into it which means I shouldn't actually have gone into it because I was in so much extremist that I couldn't quiet my nervous system down enough to be able to just relax into the whole experience and and to be quite honest my my psychedelic trips there was nothing scary about any of them they they it they just present
ed different things to me that were very emotionally like gut-wrenching just all of the emotions and so forth and you know for someone you know coming into this who's not in the kind of exist that I was but you know are dealing with anxiety and depression and ruminating thoughts and all of the other things that bring people into anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medication and stuff you know as you're you're embarking on a psychedelic trip you know where what is the skimming the pool before you
get in so that the waters are clear and clean emotionally that that is the question what is it for you and it is the the practice of being able to feel what comes up from our thoughts and just practicing just the act of engaging with that and noticing what what turns up a dial what turns down a dial and just getting used to reflecting on that um which isn't solving any of the problems that are that are coming up in in the thoughts right not we're not solving the rumination we're just trying to s
ee what it quote unquote looks like first and just the act of that stepping back is the the very beginning of the the practice of of getting ready for um such an altered State uh a bird's eye view on yourself basically right and uh to your your story in the beginning of encountering things and trying to figure them out as you go um it's it's important to hold the the certain amount of I guess respect going into something like this that it can certainly be intense while being extremely safe um wh
ich may sound a little contradicting but the the whole point of the the Psychedelic in the first place is just to reveal the the road map for a lot of things and and not necessarily getting to a destination but the good news is is when you have a map things can be shockingly easy to find and um figure out I guess and and Dan when you talk about like having the road map um you know there there's the whole question of people doing these trips alone versus having a trip sitter versus going to retre
at and so forth and in in the skimming of the pool before you get in is it your opinion and experience that it is more beneficial to be working with someone who has psychedelics experience before you embark on this so that they are sort of your travel guide so to speak in helping you clear that path and help you skim the pool because a guide is always going to be better is is that your experience experience with the people that you've worked with absolutely and I'm happy to share uh about myself
where I uh started this journey with psychedelics um solo I was a uh fully closeted psychedelic user at first and it made things very difficult for me I I covered some ground but it was extremely slow and extremely brutal and I um you know I did technically get some benefit from it but it it absolutely could have gone wrong um and I was I was humbled by that very early on so then after that phase I went a very long time with having a guide um and it would be a friend but you know a colleague as
well so also a professional right so I had that benefit and then after having a lot of experience you know we're talking 75 or so macro doses later I begin to experiment with the solo Journey again you know um trying to be a good professional and and find the boundaries of things you know there we are we are not mightier than the mushroom I I I guess I can put it that way uh and again I can cover some ground it was better than when I started psychedelics um but things can get um hectic and long
story short the place that I'm at now is I absolutely want a a professional with me you know I I I work with a lot of theory Arlene you know this about me I I I I like to talk a lot in theory and metaphor and the reason for that is that there's there's also a reason that people don't learn how to surf from a PDF file or a book right right um there's a part of it that needs to be experiential handson and and mentored a bit that's why you get a surfing coach you know what just struck me is um you
know when you see Tony Robbins at the Retreats that he does and then it's like walking across the coal thing and this is the image that was in my mind is that yeah in this in that kind of an environment they're just trying to convince people that yes it's the power of the mind and you can do this and you can walk across the coals and they run across the coals and everybody's cheering and everything but that's not what this is like it's not like you want to cheer someone on and say here you can
go do this if you just believe it doesn't work that way the whole purpose of having that guide is so that you move from the world of the PDF the world of the internet where you're learning about all of this stuff into the the the human form where you are talking with someone you are working with someone uh that has this experience that basic is holding your hand because it it is different when you take anti-anxiety medication and anti-depressants because what they're doing is effectively you kno
w you know numbing the nervous system to such an extent that you can just continue functioning in your life but psychedelics do not numb anything they actually excavate and bring all of the stuff that has been pushed down and is masked by these other Pharmaceuticals they they basically prevent you from accessing those things and you know if you're going to walk into you know the recesses of your mind and your lived experience you know going back to when you were an infant it's better to do that
with someone who you can feel safe with who you can walk with and then you can come out the other side of the experience because you know it's not like you're a changed person when you come out the other side of the experience but there is so much more to you and available to you at the end of it and then the question is what do you do with all of this and so that then brings me to the third part of this Dan where okay you know you've worked with people you you've helped prepare them you've been
you've sat with them for their trips or you've been in in group Retreats where you've been part of the entire cohort and then the time comes where you know they hand holding ends and people are just left on their own after these Retreats or even when you're working with a trip sitter and it's not like you immediately go off to your a psychotherapist because you're still in a place for it can be an extended period of time where you know it's like you've done 10 years worth of therapy in one trip
and nobody else has caught up with you you haven't even caught up with yourself because your thinking about things your exposure to your insights has like it's like time travel and your therapist is not going to have any idea how you reach the conclusions that you did when they just saw you last week and so the question for you Dan is in your experience working with people especially after the trip you know what is actually happening for them and what are their needs and how long do those needs
last because you know people who are going to do this are going to want to have some sense of what is the commitment to this you know know for with taking Pharmaceuticals is pop the pill every night or every week or how you know whatever the regimen is you just do that and you don't think about it but you know when you've just done 10 years worth of therapy or at least gotten the insights out of 10 years worth of therapy in the span of one trip it's like I don't even know what to do with how I
am now understanding myself and my life and I don't even know who to talk to about this because no one is going to understand what I just experienced well where I want to start is uh you you brought up the nervous system uh so I of course gotta talk about that um so I'll start there where you know a lot of us come to psychedelics to deal with trauma and how is it that trauma so potently affects our lives you can have one um terrible terrible moment and and a terrible thing happened to you in you
r life and you are basically rewired in such a way that it it affects you ongoing seemingly forever the the rest of your life there's there's triggers there's unexplainable anxiety unexplainable depression things like that and here's what's really fascinating is part of that reason is um we all have probably seen the headlines about psilocybin rewire your your brain um neuroplasticity well when else is our nervous system in a in a deep state of neuroplasticity after traumatic events that's what'
s really interesting and that's an an Adaptive mechanism because if we get ourselves into a large amount of danger our nervous system is going to adapt as potently and as quickly as possible to make sure that a moment like that never happens again right um the problem is is this is usually something that has happened to us not um a dangerous situation we we didn't see the snake and almost stepped on it sort of thing um so with that is when we are inducing neuroplasticity and and rewiring ourselv
es through neuroplasticity using psilocybin it is sort of that same um that that same sort of um hyp sensitive state that we're putting ourselves in but what's great about that is in reality we're in a very safe held container you're hopefully surrounded by caring professionals and have a support system in place so that neuroplasticity is actually going to adapt to safety rather than trauma right but neuroplasticity is neuroplasticity at a certain point it's a very sensitive state to be in and t
he nervous system is essentially the brain so when you rewire something so dramatically everything is going to work a little bit different and that's not to be confused with you are going to be changed as a person you're not getting a a personality transplant or or anything of that sort but there's going to be this spaciousness inside of you that needs to be filled and sort of a a new story when uh the the old story isn't going to to suffice anymore old stories we we don't realize how used to th
em we are and how used we are to telling them so adapting to that new narrative can be very intense so the same way that it's happening within the Psychedelic we almost have to treat the integration process the same way and give that spaciousness and emotional trust in the uh inner healing intelligence um and sort of giving it giving yourself enough slack to um navigate things throughout throughout time have have a daily practice for a while afterwards make your schedule according to such and th
e support system that you have in place is almost like something that that I I almost want to say you you delegate certain things to you you come upon new ways of looking at old issues and you sometimes to to think out a thought full you need somebody to bounce that off of right might as well be a qualified professional so throughout this process a lot of it is the is still in your court which I think is a very good thing it's a very empowering thing um but it absolutely helps to a be cared for
you know very underrated um just nice relaxing time with with people who support you and then being able to delegate complicated issues to to other parts of your support system you know Dan I want to touch on two things here and just to will stay in the realm of integration but I want to go back to this piece around the neuroplasticity um and that I can I can speak from my own experience of before I went and did this um psilocybin Retreat I I was feeling intense uh Sensations in my body that wer
e producing panic attacks and I was feeling this intense anxiety associated with a feeling that was being generated in my body and what I realized when I was on the plane flying home from Jamaica is that the sensations came up and I felt them actually rushing out of my body and I just thought what is happening because the sensation was so familiar but the story was now different it was no longer that I was anxious it was no longer that I was afraid it was my newfound understanding that I had tra
pped all of this anxiety in my body and it was producing a physical reaction inside and all it was doing was releasing and that anytime I have felt that since I went and did those trips I have actually acknowledged oh there's something stuck in my body that needs to like release and in and in the past I would like be so frightened by that Sensation that it got further embedded in my body and I would just go for hours or days feeling this intense anxiety instead of realizing my body was like knoc
king on the door saying Arlene can you please let me out and after I did those trips all of that sensation I it's very rare that I feel that sensation anymore and if I do it's actually a signal to me that there's something going on for me and I just need to acknowledge it and then it literally I feel the physical sensation of it leaving my body and so there in lies that neuroplasticity that has basically it it there's now a new narrative for me around the physical Sensations that used to represe
nt danger to me that that now represent oh my God good I get to get more stuff out of my body so I can free up the space and I can feel better and so that was one thing that I wanted to say uh with respect to the um uh the neuroplasticity and then also with respect to the integration as we come to the end of the trip and what happens with you uh afterwards um can you talk a bit about the difference between having this guide with you immediately thereafter and the point at which you then introduc
e your therapist because they generally are not very helpful right after the trip and immediately thereafter because you are in a very different space in terms of how you're thinking about things so if you can touch on that for a second so with with the preparation process um the easy term is we're preparing you to launch um and what goes up must come down so for for your guide in this process you know I I compare my job a lot to uh being a diving coach and you know the the diving coach is is on
the outside of the water a lot of the times it's Manning the boat it's watching the dials so there's there's basic Comforts and ways that I I could assist somebody while they're in the middle of the journey but it's the preparation before the dive and then when they come up and what do we learn from that dive right so um for the integration piece when I say what goes up must come down is you're not in the trip and then straight back down the Earth there's a come down period and the the idea of
how long that come down period is is is always going to be a pretty subjective topic and the role of the guide is really to play that meso layer um not not trying to have their hands you know elbow deep in your experience and more than likely getting in the way if they are doing so but helping you back down onto the ground while you are floating back down into reality which that timeline again subjective um the the journe gets to really decide how long that really is um and and it varies for peo
ple quite a bit um and I'm not talking about the effects of psilocybin uh let me make that very clear I'm talking about the uh emotional perspective right so playing that meso layer is a lot of normalizing and relating and decoding of things and through that process you should have your map like we talked about earlier and with that map you um you know in in an optimal fashion you should hopefully be leading the way in your therapy sessions when you get back yeah that's so right and and I really
want to touch on that for a second Dan because you know the thing with therapy is that your therapists can only work with what you share with them yes and a lot of times people go into their therapy sessions they're upset because something happened with their spouse or like it's it it really truly is all this surface stuff and we spend an inordinate amount of time and money on therapy sessions that don't actually get us any closer to Healing we just keep talking about stuff and we we come back
to it or you know it's just this cycle and years and years and years of talk therapy and yeah okay we can feel a little better here and there but at the end of the day we are not actually getting at what is really going on for us because the conversation in therapy would be so different if we were talking about the truth and the reality is we don't actually even know what our truth is because we've spent a lifetime making it possible or or telling ourselves stories about what it is and and buyin
g into those stories and believing them and letting Our Lives be directed by and dictated by the stories and narratives that we've created in response to the truth and so as long as those stories support us and we can live our lives in the way we live we can manage the discomfort we can manage to go along but at some point you know the truth comes knocking and it's there and it's knocking and it's waiting to be heard and it's a question of our are we willing to open the door and say truth come i
n because the truth you know as the expression goes this is no joke the truth will set you free the truth may be painful the truth may be difficult to come to terms with but better to deal with the truth of things and work with the truth than all this other crap out there because you never get any closer to feeling any better and I can tell you in my own experience as Rocky as it was and as as difficult and arduous as the integration period was all because of how I approached it is that where I
came out on the other side of my own trauma and my own and my and coming into my own truth I began to instantly recognize my triggers I instantly understood the people in my life who were standin for the people who harmed me when I was a child I understood my developmental trauma my the original Shock Trauma that I experienced and I was able to start dealing with those things independent of everything else in my life I would have never ever had that perspective had I not gone through this psycho
delic experience and when I think about it and I think oh my God all those years I spent in therapy EMDR like past life regressions you name it I was like a junkie for trying to fix myself right because I knew their had to be an answer and of course sleuth slth sleuth and I brought the same approach into psychedelic trips right but when I look back on it and I think if I had to do it all over again I would have been I would have prepared properly I would have had a guide I would have gone into m
y psychedelic trip feeling safe and comfortable knowing what I was doing going into it and kept that guide with me during the trip and had them afterwards and just allowed myself to stabilize into my truth and then gone back into therapy where I could talk about okay this is what I understand my truth to be because it would have presented itself in in its in I can't say in its totality but in in a way where you really are at the truth of things and the truth is very much like an onion but at lea
st you're peeling the layers of the truth instead of the layers of the narratives that you've told yourself in support of living your life the the way that you're living and so I think that you know this whole idea of having someone like you or or similar to you or you that like the the beauty of it is that you could you could actually accomplish so much in such a short amount of time and have longlasting results um by just doing this in the right way and not having not having to spend decades j
ust trying to figure out what's wrong with you or why do you feel the way that you do because the only way that you can get at this stuff is for your ego and your left brain to take a nap and you just like go into it and you see what's there and then you bring it all back out like you were saying to me the other day you you go in there and it's like you put things into your grocery shopping bag and then you don't think about it while you're shopping you just put it in the bag you go up to the co
unter you pay for it and then you go home and then you unbag it all and you see what you've got um that that really is ultimately what's happening here and that's where the integration fits into this there's two things I just wanted to say um uh I appreciate your openness throughout this entire call um you know every time I hear your story um I'm just reminded of how proud I am of your journey I owe it to you trust me well I would just to say that in front of a live audience I guess thank you Da
n I appreciate that and I appreciate you so much um I uh yeah go ahead and and just for the last 10 minutes we have here um there's a lot more to to be had here in this Workshop um so I acknowledge that but any pressing questions that anybody has um please put those into the the chat the the message messaging chat um because I do want to to make this as tailored of an experience for you guys as possible um for all of you who who wish to uh commit to this so if you do have questions at this point
feel free to put them in that chat and I'm going to copy paste them all over make sure I get everybody covered this has been a beautiful time and as is always the case I feel very fortunate that uh I know you Dan and that you made yourself available during this time it's been always meaningful to me and I hope it's been helpful to everyone else so thank you so much everyone yeah thank you everybody all right good night everyone [Music] bye-bye
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