74: Michèle Barocchi on Healing, Companionship, Psychedelics and MAPS Italy

Inbodhi Firenze
Website
MAPS Italia

Grateful Dead
Frost Amphitheatre – Stanford
LSD
Berkley
Biomarker
DMT
Psilocybin
Opioids
Salvador
Gabor Maté
SSRI’s
MAPS
Rick Dobiln
Ketamine – Phantom Limb Pain
Santo Diame Church
Akasha Retreat Center
Yawanawa
Huni Kuin
5-MeO-DMT
Allan Watts
Neurons to Nirvana
Julie Holland

Giancarlo: [00:00:00] Okay. Hello. Hi. Welcome to this new episode of the Mango TV podcast. Today I’m super excited to have Michelle Ann Barki, MPH PhD. She’s a scientist and healing practitioner. I. Very magical combination. She began her public health career in Brazil before joining Novartis, where she led molecular epidemiology and discovered a key immunity biomarker With over 45 peer reviewed publications, she has supported the WHO [00:01:00] initiatives and the UN Sustainable Development goals.

In 2024, she co-founded and now leads maps, Italy, the official Italian affiliate of maps. After a 2015 accident that resulted in the loss of her left leg, Michelle deepened her path in integrative healing. She’s a certified breath worker facilitator, DIC Chan teacher yoga instructor, and train in psychedelic assisted therapies with maps and Polaris Insight Center.

Thank you for your time. Thank you for being here.

Michele: Thank you very much, John Carlo for the opportunity to share my story.

Giancarlo: Thank you, thank you, thank you. And as you might have guessed from a last name, she’s half Italian, and so for me it’s an opportunity to speak in Italian about psychedelic, which it’s quite unusual for me.

Um, so as I usually say, people are probably very bored to hear me saying that, but even if we’re gonna touch very esoteric theme, like cosmic consciousness and stuff like that, we, I would love to keep this, um, [00:02:00] conversation very biographical. I feel that, um, yeah, I was saying that the DNA of this podcast is, um, is the, the movie we produced and in particular, 2012 Time for Change was.

Uh, around this idea that global transformation comes from personal transformation. So we are very interested in the cathartic moment, the important step that that brought, uh, you know, a transformation that that brought to. For you wanting to help the world. So, okay, so let’s start from your childhood. I know that has been a bit complicated, but, you know, say just how much as you want to say, but just to give us a sense.

Michele: Yeah. So I was born in Florence, Italy, and, uh, the first, uh, 10 years of my life I think we’re very difficult and complicated because my mother is American, my father is Italian, and they separated at a very, uh, at a very young age. So I went back and forth in these 10 years, [00:03:00] um, between elementary school and middle school.

And I also had a, a brother, or have a brother who’s a year and a half older than me, and he also went back and forth, not as much as me, but he basically resided with my father and I resided with my mother. Um, I finally went to the United States, being brought there by my mother, uh, at age 10 and a half.

And I stayed in United States until I was 33 and I did my middle school, high school, college, master’s, and PhD, all in California.

Giancarlo: And so what, what’s your memory from your pre-teen ages when you were like 11, 12?

Michele: Well, I arrived in Palo Alto, Stanford actually when I was 10 and a half. And it was not, uh, easy transition because I had just been brought without consent, uh, into the United States.

[00:04:00] And so I didn’t speak for six months, actually. Do, do you

Giancarlo: remember being forced?

Michele: Yes. But I was put on a plane by myself at that age

Giancarlo: to join your mother.

Michele: My mother had actually was in Italy when my father was away at a physics conference. And so she, um, put me on a plane and brought my brother back to Florence.

So I was by myself and I arrived in San Francisco Airport and her third husband, who’s a cardiologist at Stanford, took me in. And, and that was the beginning of my middle school, uh, high school years. So I was, you know, into drugs and not studying and stealing cars.

Giancarlo: The rebel, the rebel tree, the rebel.

Michele: Lighting fires in Stanford.

Giancarlo: You think it [00:05:00] was a scream for being seen? Need of being seen? I mean, I don’t want to do a cheap psychoanalysis, but, but what do you think happened in the head of 12 years old that doesn’t speak for six months?

Michele: Well, I was 10 and a half. 10 and a half, sorry. Yeah. And uh, I didn’t speak for six months ’cause I was very angry.

I was being, I had been taken away from my father and my brother, uh, without consent of any of us. And, uh, and then put into a school and you know, the clothes were already in my closet. The closet, yeah. Uh, I had to go to a school. I didn’t know anybody there. It was like being taken out and put into a new reality.

At that age, I went into a complete block. I wasn’t able to speak with my father for a long time, and I went to a psychotherapist, but I sat on the couch. I remember that, and didn’t speak at all with my mother. And finally, slowly I started to just accept. [00:06:00] Except at that age. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Except that sometimes you have no choice ’cause you’re, you’re a minor, you know?

So that started my rebel years. Yeah. I would, uh, I was known as the rebel actually because my, all my girlfriends were very, from good families. They had secure families. So the mother and the father had been married the whole lives. Because you were

Giancarlo: going to a good school.

Michele: I was going to Palo, uh, I was going to Gunn High School.

Yeah. Which is like one of the top schools in that area. And everyone has like really high scores and ap and everyone goes to Stanford and Harvard and Yale and Yeah. You know, it’s like the mission at that, uh, those schools is to make your career and. I think 20 year, 30 years ago, it was less stressful than it is now for the, the kids there.

But you [00:07:00] know, there was psychedelics, the Grateful Dead was around and I was following them. I was 16. And you tried

Giancarlo: LSD the first time? LSD,

Michele: yeah. Lots of LSD. Do

Giancarlo: you remember the first few trips?

Michele: Yeah. I mean, and that container was just incredible. ’cause they would come through fro, there were these concerts, they were called the Frost Concerts at the Frost Amphitheater.

And it was just like the hippies took over Stanford campus and everyone’s wearing flank. And it was so peaceful and beautiful. And there was just love everywhere. And I was very young. I was very young. And I just loved the freedom of being the way you could be. I think that was why I was attracted to them.

And then I, no judgment. No judgment. You could just meet people and be seen as who you were and move freely, actually. And the music really was incredible in those years, in the late eighties. [00:08:00] Right. And so then I followed them around. I must have gone over a hundred. Shows.

Giancarlo: Wow.

Michele: I had all the ticket stubs with the dancing bears, with glitter, and, and so this was my initiation into non-ordinary states of consciousness.

Giancarlo: But do you feel, but at, at home, how was the, were you, you know, your mother and then maybe the cardiologist, I mean, the, um, would they be, you know, open in letting, making up your own mind, having your own ideas? W what was there a strong contrast from DLSD paradigm where everybody’s free and there’s this different reality?

I’m always curious to see, you know, for me, my. When I discovered psychedelic, I realized to what extent the conditioning of your family is so powerful. Some people say that everybody’s [00:09:00] family is a cult because everybody’s parents have their own idea and they brainwash you with those ideas, and not in a malevolent way, but they think that that’s the truth.

And so they give you the set of values that for them are the truth. But obviously not everybody’s right and, and, and sometimes this truth is informed by some their own development trauma. And so I’m always curious to see are the people that resonate with the psychedelic experience usually aware, more aware of the conditioning at home, or it’s just me try to find pattern with this nun?

Michele: No, I think at that age I still was not aware of the conditioning. I mean. Only later on in life did I understand the pain that my mother went through, or the pain that my stepfather, he was a, he is a beautiful man. I’m still in contact [00:10:00] with him even though they have been separated 25 years. Um, you know, everyone has their limits and their judgements and their history of their parents limiting their experiences.

So I feel like I had a complicated childhood because I had three, three fathers in. 10 years. Mm-hmm. Uh, two stepfathers. Um, the third lasted longest of all of my fathers. Um, I’m still very close to him. Uh, but it was a kind of a standard, you know, do your homework, wash the dishes, you have your chores, like otherwise you can’t do this.

You know, very do this and do that. And then you get a reward. You don’t do this, you don’t do that. You can’t go to the movies.

Giancarlo: So very transactional.

Michele: Yes. Very transactional. Very transactional.

Giancarlo: That’s the opening [00:11:00] of the LSD experience. Ls d and psilocybin.

Michele: Yeah. Also as well.

Giancarlo: And so you follow them around, you keep on having this incredible experience and uh, and that informed your desire to study medicine?

Michele: Actually, no. I wanted to be a veterinarian. Uh, ’cause I, I, you know, I had the unlovable, I’m unlovable, right? So I wanted to take care of

Giancarlo: everyone and take care of animals. But the unlovable, because when your parents were distracted, you were not thinking they have their own problem. They were thinking not just they don’t love me, but that I’m unlovable.

Michele: Because when you’re not have an intimate relationship with your primary caregivers, you automatically become unlovable as a core belief. There’s an I’m unlovable, I’m not good enough, and I’m innately bad, and I’m, I’m sorry. The third is typically I’m innately bad, is if you’ve [00:12:00] had some violence as a child.

So psychological, emotional, physical. When you don’t have an intimate relationship with your mother, your father, you typically feel unlovable. So you become a pleaser or a tester. And I was a pleaser. And so just taking care of animals was an automatic thing. You know, it’s like, you know, a lot of people who are caregivers are unlovable, like they have that core belief.

So I went into taking care of. California Sea Lions at this very unique hospital in the Marin Headlands that took care of wild sea lions, otters and dolphins. Rarely. But, so I started working with them. I was one of the only five, five paid staff members. And there I met this research scientist who was at Berkeley.

This was when I was in university, who said, don’t go into veterinary medicine. Come do a pH uh, MPH at [00:13:00] Berkeley and Infectious diseases and immunology. And then

Giancarlo: That’s a master.

Michele: Yeah, a master’s in public health. And I said, oh, wow, that’s, that’d be amazing. He said, you could do anything you want with that.

You can work with animals, you can work with people. And so then I did, and I went, started my career at Berkeley and that’s how I got to Brazil.

Giancarlo: But So what’s the link between Berkeley and Brazil?

Michele: Berkeley is where I met, um, my, my pi who had a project in Brazil on infectious diseases and urban slums. Ah, wow.

And I was an infectious disease master’s student. And he said, Hey, do you wanna go work in Brazil? And I said, sure. And he said, the, the thing, the work you were doing with the sea lions? Well this disease is also in urban slums. It’s called Leptos Posis.

Giancarlo: Oh, wow.

Michele: And I said, oh wow. Humans get it too. And he said, yeah, well, when it rains in the slums, the slums flood.

And since the [00:14:00] slums are full of rats that carry the Spiro keet, you wanna do a project on urban slum disease? And I said, sure. So I went to Brazil off and on for seven years. Oh wow. In Sao

Giancarlo: Paulo?

Michele: No, I went to Salvador. Salvador and I worked Salvador. Yeah. The Ministry of Health there. And, uh, we did a study and we looked at biomarkers and we published lots of papers and, and, uh, then I did my PhD.

I just went into a PhD looking on molecular biomarkers for these diseases. And,

Giancarlo: but why did you choose the infectious disease? Because we went from animals, public health, you can do what you want. But then what was the, I missed the,

Michele: the infectious diseases comes from the seals. The seals. So seals, I was doing a lot of microbiology on the seals, but because you love the animal, love the animals

Giancarlo: love.

So Alito something in Monterey. Marin.

Michele: Marin. Headless Marin. Yeah. And it’s still there. Yeah. The hospital is huge. It has lots of [00:15:00] funding. They take care of seals, sea lion, s California, and Angusta, which is the elephant seal, the big fat one. And, um, yeah, and, and I got to learn about diseases and I really was super curious that these tiny little tiny things that you could not see viruses could devastate entire I see populations, I see that my whole trip was how can something so, so small, so small.

Kill entire populations. Yeah. And so from animal disease, I went to human disease,

Giancarlo: like the big disease, like the Spanish, um, yeah,

Michele: H one. Yeah. Yeah. So I didn’t, I didn’t do my, uh, specialty in virology. I did it in, in microbiology. So I was looking at spirochetes that are bacteria. And then later on in life I started working on pneumococcal pneumonia, which is, but I’ve [00:16:00] always been fascinated with diseases.

And their interaction and relationship with the human body like the receptors. How can the receptors be so similar with bacteria that have been around for millions of years, that we have receptors that allow them to attach to our cells, you know, how did that evolution occur?

Giancarlo: And, and, and, and what’s the answer to that?

Michele: Well, it’s like the receptors for molecules that are psychoactive. You know, we don’t really know actually what the, how that evolved, but there are substances in nature that have, that have binding properties for cells in the human body. I mean, these, these molecules have been around millions of years, way before us.

It’s

Giancarlo: fascinating.

Michele: It’s fascinating. But we don’t have answers for everything, you know?

Giancarlo: So why we have receptor for the tryptamines from the DMT, the Sabine. But maybe not [00:17:00] for many other type of molecules. Molecules in, in, in, in, uh, nature. Right? Like opioids

Michele: as well, you know, like opioid receptors we have that are very powerful that create the whole dependence cycles.

So it’s a very fascinating topic. And, uh, anyway, so I went from, you know, a very turbulent childhood to not being good enough to not studying ever again, to doing the least I could do to get through these schools that were very intense and everyone was in AP classes and I was like the black sheep of the family, the rebel.

And then I finally got made my way to Berkeley, which is known as the uc. Berkeley is one of the top schools, and I was so. Happy that that had happened, and it opened a lot of doors for me and it made me feel like I could actually. [00:18:00] Contribute and be someone. And, and the work in Brazil and the urban slums with the medical doctors doing epidemiology was so inspiring and, and helping communities.

And the whole human part of medicine was so important to me to be able to make an impact on health.

Giancarlo: But Salvador is, there were like a slum there.

Michele: There are many slums. Oh, wow.

Giancarlo: I have this idea of s Bay to be like this, like, you know, like heaven, like I see slums in the suburbs of Rio, of Sao Paulo, but I didn’t know sa um, Salvador had this like unhealthy s Islam with rats and everything.

I didn’t know that. It’s a big city. Salvado de Bay. Yeah, big city. But so you were literally going in and taking sample and Yeah. Yeah. I

Michele: would go with the, and, and there are hierarchies in the slums, like the, the higher you are in the slum, physically, the better off you are because when it [00:19:00] rains, it floods.

And so if you’re on the high part of the slum or the high part of the, the town, then uh, you don’t have problems. You don’t have a lot of health problems. You, your, your house doesn’t flood. Uh, you have running water and then the lower you go the. More impoverished. You are. So even within the high density areas of the urban slums, and now they’re even worse.

And so yes, I’d go in and I’d meet with the people. We talk, we take data samples, we take blood samples, we take vital signs. Uh, we are doing epidemiology, looking at what the risk factors for. The disease was, if you were male, if you had a certain age, where were you contracting the disease? Were you wearing shoes?

Are you working in fewer areas? Yeah, diet, mostly men, mostly a certain [00:20:00] working age. Um, yeah. And from that stemmed more into a molecular type of, uh, field work where I was looking at what the biomarkers on the actual spi acute were to attach to the renal cells because these spi kes live in the renal tubules, and a lot of people have problems with their kidneys.

Um,

Giancarlo: and how were you doing, uh, mentally, psychologically at that moment? You felt good about yourself. There was still some reminiscence of the subconscious material. The, the demons of the I’m not enough. I’m not doing enough. There was still. Sometimes present. Yeah, for sure, for sure. I mean, I,

Michele: I don’t, I think that that’s, those fuckers, you know, I work with a lot of people now because of what’s happened to me physically and, and, and my experience also with [00:21:00] psychoactive substances that it, it’s like, when will I ever get there?

And, and like Ramdas says, it’s, there’s nowhere to get to. Uh, it’s a, it’s, it’s a lifetime journey. The demons will be there. You just have to befriend them. Yeah. You befriend them. Yeah. You befriend them. You don’t try to get rid of them. You don’t try to get, you detach them, you don’t throw them in the fire.

All these things about like, you know, throw away your, you have to accept those parts and shine the light and the love on them, and really give them a hug,

Giancarlo: actually. Yeah. This idea of compassion inquiry.

Michele: Yeah. Compassion to yourself. Yeah. And to your mind, because everyone’s mind is insane.

Giancarlo: Especially now, but, okay, so, so seven years in, in, in Salvador.

And so now you’re back in, uh, San Francisco.

Michele: I’m back in San Francisco. How old are you now? I’m about, uh, 30, 30, [00:22:00] 32. I finally, uh, finished my PhD at Berkeley. I remember the, when I signed my dissertation, it was, uh, 2003 and I was, and I did a yoga teacher training that same year. For the whole month of June, uh, at Folsom Street.

And, uh, I signed, I got my certificate from yoga, the, the month I got my PhD from Berkeley. And I was so excited. And when I went to give my dissertation at the, the, the registrar’s office, they gave me a lollipop, a sees candy lollipop with a pH. And it said, finished, PhD finished. And I was like, this is all I get for eight years.

And, uh, it was, it was amazing. Now, and then I knew I was moving to Italy because I had a boyfriend in Italy and I was gonna move to Italy and I had found a postdoc at, uh, Chiron, which was a, a biotech company that had bought this [00:23:00] company called Slavo. So it was all perfect. I would go back to Italy, finally, I would be with my father and my brother and this boyfriend and I had a postdoc.

And I would start working on. Pneumococcal diseases and it was really exciting and I got to travel all over the world and publish in like nature medicine and all these PNAS and I had a great beginning of a career. And, uh,

Giancarlo: and so just to dig a little bit further, if you don’t mind, on your romantic relationship.

So you were 32, so how was your past and education and environment affected this relationship, you think?

Michele: Well, I made a, a lot of mistakes looking back in partners. So the partners that I would’ve had a very nice secure life [00:24:00] with family and, you know, marriage and. I left, I left for men who were more like, woo-hoo,

Giancarlo: emotionally available,

Michele: emotionally available, Peter Pan, this and that, like, yeah.

And this, this one who I came to Italy for was, he was a good boy. He was younger than me. And, uh, you know, we were gonna marry and, and then that fell through and have a family. And we’re still friends actually. So he’s, he’s, he’s a good person. But unfortunately then I was involved with the, uh, very difficult relationship.

And I know that this is based on my feeling, not lovable. I felt like I didn’t deserve to be loved. And I was with this, I wouldn’t say he, he’s a boyfriend because. There was no relationship, but it was a long, long journey and, uh, I [00:25:00] was with him only because I knew I didn’t deserve love and this ended up in losing my left leg.

Giancarlo: Well, but what do you think, you being a scientist, what do you think is this mechanism of why intimacy feels so threatening to people that didn’t have it? It’s, it’s such counterintuitive, right? Because you would imagine, okay. I didn’t have a emotionally supporting family. I didn’t feel loved. I internalized this idea that I’m unlovable and here there is someone stable that loves me.

I should be so attracted to him. But what is the mechanism you think that create the opposite reaction?

Michele: Yeah, the mechanism’s very simple. It’s, I’m comfortable with

Giancarlo: comfort.

Michele: I’m comfortable with being, um, in a relationship that is not nurturing, that is not loving, that is violent emotionally, and that’s my comfort zone.

And so I would rather stay [00:26:00] there. There’s fear around real love and real intimacy. And so stepping out of your comfort zone is a mechanism that takes a lot of courage and a lot of. Willingness to, you know, be uncomfortable. And I was a lot more comfortable in a, in a relationship that was more abusive psychologically.

It’s crazy. No, and I used drugs and alcohol to suppress all of it. And it’s crazy. It’s such

Giancarlo: a flaw in the human psyche. It’s a flaw in the human that the, that the, the comfort prevail. The wellbeing. And how also how can you be comfortable in a situation that doesn’t make you feel good? It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s crazy.

Yeah.

Michele: Yeah. It’s like why are women who are beaten and in marriages for 20 years stay [00:27:00] there because of that mechanism of, I’d rather be in discomfort violence that is than leave and not know. Unknown. The

Giancarlo: unknown, but what do you think Is there, you think, an evolutionary reason for this mechanism? Security.

Security. Um, can you elaborate on that?

Michele: Attachment, the human needs to feel attached.

Giancarlo: It’s even if it’s uncomfortable. Yeah. Even if it’s violent. Yeah. Because it is comfortable, but it’s just unhealthy.

Michele: It’s unhealthy. It’s the attachment. I need to feel attached and secure. It’s what the work of ga mate. When the child attaches to an unhealthy caregiver, they give away their authenticity

Giancarlo: to get the attachment.

Yeah.

Michele: Even though the attachment may not be a healthy attachment, they’re willing [00:28:00] to give away who they are. To be attached and to feel secure. And that get imprint in the neuro circuitry. That gets imprinted.

Giancarlo: That gets imprinted the first eight years. Yeah. It’s like the same mechanism of the binding of the synopsis.

Right. So you create this, you lose your authenticity to get the attachment. And now attachment is associated with balance. Yeah. Or discomfort. Or discomfort. Yeah.

Michele: Or not good enough, or not lovable. And you keep reinforcing it. And reinforcing it. And reinforcing it. And you never can get an addiction. It’s an addiction.

Giancarlo: Yeah.

Michele: Actually you’re addicted to negative thoughts and negative thinking. We are addicted to our negative thoughts. We are addicted to negative thinking. And that’s why the psychedelics are so

Giancarlo: powerful. Yeah. But before going there, because. So how do you explain before go, because the solutions, but before to go to the solution with all these PhDs [00:29:00] like you all this Stanford, all this Berkeley, all this Harvard, all this FM RI machine that study the brain.

How is that possible that. To this day because psychedelic is still illegal. So I wouldn’t say we really have a new science of psychiatry, but to this day, this mechanism that we describe it, of this imprinting of unhealthy neurochemistry that binds to people at people that, you know, men and women attracted to narcissist or to emotionally available, we still haven’t find a solution, right?

I mean, what psychiatric has to offer. What do you think about, um, those, um, you know, SSRI and prescription drugs to deal with this kind of addiction or the depression or anxiety? What do you think is the men Western mental healthcare missing? Why did they find a solution? I know it’s a big question. [00:30:00] Where did we come from?

Michele: Okay. So yeah, let’s take the most simple one. What do I think about SSRIs? Uh, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, they are a tool and they can be very useful in certain situations. So I’m not a proponent and I’m not against them. I feel that they can be used in, um, many situations where people need a little bit of help.

I’ve also been on SSRIs, uh, and they have given me that, that I, that like, okay, I can just let go for a second. I don’t have to be in fear all the time. It’s very. It’s very painful to be depressed. And so they’re a tool. They’re not a solution like [00:31:00] psychedelics. They’re not a solution. What is the problem with mental health?

Um, love is the medicine and addiction. Right.

Giancarlo: Okay. But

Michele: addiction comes from pain.

Giancarlo: Yeah.

Michele: At the root of all addiction is trauma. There’s Yeah. Loss of

Giancarlo: connection. Yeah.

Michele: Loss of connection. I was in the Ayahuasca conference in Acre, Brazil in end of January. The healers that live in the forest and live the medicine of the ayahuasca say, the farther away you are from nature, the more disconnected you are from yourself.

When you’re disconnected from yourself, you are disconnected from others. There’s no connection, and that’s where. The mental illness and the insanity come in. You have to bring in nature into the [00:32:00] equation. You have to bring in love. You know, people don’t talk about love as a medicine because it’s not quantifiable.

You have children, you love them, right? Can you say how much you love them? Can you quantify the love? So you can’t use that as a biomarker. You can’t use that as a tool. I. You can’t use, you can

Giancarlo: bottle, you can’t sell it, you

Michele: can’t bottle, you can’t sell it. You can’t say, you know, this person received this amount of love in these 30 days and it, and now the outcome is this.

How are you gonna quantify that? But we know that love is an energy that can heal people who are in love, children who bring love, uh, communities who sit in circles and have love for one another. This is the medicine. It’s just how do we teach people respect, integrity, [00:33:00] compassion, forgiveness. How do we teach people that we are connected?

Not that we are all one and all this, you know, rhetoric stuff, new agey. We are all one. We are not one. We are one. When we are in the space of love, that’s what the yoga teaches us. Namaste means I acknowledge the love within you. I acknowledge the light within you, and I bow to that. And when you are in that space and I am in that space, we can share love.

I can’t give you love, you can’t get love from me. But we can share love. We can share the connection. We can share the experience. And what’s wrong with psychiatry? I mean, I’m not a psychiatrist. I’m not judging psychiatry, I’m not judging medicine. I was in medicine. Uh, it’s an isolation.

Giancarlo: Reductionist [00:34:00]

Michele: therapy is typically done in isolation, and I’ve sat in enough circles, whether they’re breath circles or yoga circles or healing circles or ayahuasca circles, to know that when you hear someone else’s pain, you heal yourself.

I’m only healed by sharing my pain.

Giancarlo: Beautiful.

Michele: I can only heal myself if I can share the pain.

Giancarlo: Abs Yeah, you, you explain it very well and, and the fact that we can bottle and measure love. Respect, um, empathy, um, compassion, forgiveness, respect. It’s then, then we can’t introduce them in those clinical trial. And Western medicine is such drug [00:35:00] development base because you get the grant according to a specific element you want to address.

Then we get into this, you know, reductionist idea of, um, you know, one molecule for one. You know, it’s not an holistic idea and so that’s why maybe you know better than me. Why did, um, phase three of the clinical trial of, you know, maps for, um, the M-M-D-M-A assisted ARIA for PTSD was not approved by the FDA in America?

Uh, I heard many explanation, and I’d love to hear your point of view, but, you know, someone told me that MAPS was trying to, you know. Include the word therapy in this product, that that’s where the authorities got confused. Because you can’t measure therapy. You can’t, you know, you can’t, what, what, what do you think is that’s, um,

Michele: yeah.

Well, I think there are many explanations for [00:36:00] why the FDA did not approve MDMA assisted therapy. Uh, because therapy is not a product. The FDA’s job is to approve medication, drug products, molecule therapy is not a product. So, Rick Doblin started this whole process with the FDA. They pre-approved the protocol that the FDA was going to accept for the clinical trials, and they were willing to look at therapy as one of the, you know, variables in.

The drug product of MDMA. So it’s not MDMA, it’s m dmma at assisted therapy. Now, within these years, while the clinical trials were being, uh, done, the management in the FDA changed. And so when the [00:37:00] NDA, the, the new drug application was then, uh, submitted, I think what happened was the people who had been there initially approving and at the table with Rick Doblin and everyone from maps PBC creating the protocols were no longer there.

And so the mind shifted, the mindset of the FDA shifted, and that was one of the main problems. I see. So therapy is not. A drug product. Then there were many other issues with like the issues with the sexual relations. Oh, some

Giancarlo: of the researcher.

Michele: Oh, some of the therapists.

Giancarlo: Some of the therapists, yeah.

Michele: And then like, uh, the unblinding and the blinding and how the placebo Yes, exactly.

So is very complicated. Um, and what Maps and maps, PBC or Lycos and Rick Dolin, uh, and his team we’re trying to do is groundbreaking. I mean, [00:38:00] you have to say that they really opened and paved the way for all of the other molecules to come in, which is mainly psilocybin with Compass and Unison. And they’re next.

And they just opened the first clinic in Colorado of, um, psilocybin assisted therapy. And in Oregon they’re using psilocybin. So it’s gonna happen, but uh, it’s definitely. You know, obviously there are limits because mind manifesting, once you have an openness and an awareness and a consciousness,

you understand that, you know, the structure of society is a bit weird to use a scientific word. Yeah, no, it just doesn’t make any sense. Yeah, none of it makes any sense [00:39:00] anymore.

Giancarlo: The neoliberal, the capitalistic, individualistic, materialistic, individualistic

Michele: religious. Yeah, but, so I wanna talk conflictual military spending trillions and trillions of bills.

Yeah, yeah. Like, it doesn’t make any sense to people who are, have mind manifested and seen other

Giancarlo: dimensions. Yes. So I want to talk more the psychedelics, but I would like to go through your personal experience. So you had this LSD experience, um, with the graceful dead, and then when did you, how did you get initiated to plans?

For

Michele: example? I was initiated to ayahuasca in San Francisco in 2012.

Giancarlo: So that’s before or after your Brazil experience?

Michele: After my Brazil experience before my accident. Yeah. Yeah. So I was, um, he was, yeah, I’m in a yoga community in San [00:40:00] Francisco who invited me. There was a, um, yhe healer from Columbia who’s coming, who comes regularly still to Northern California and New York.

And, uh, so I sat with him. I sat with him and I sat with him for a year after actually, I Oh, how old were you? More I was, uh, 32 30, yeah. Just, just after Brazil. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Giancarlo: And, and so what was the, what was your insight for those very first trips? I was very scared.

Michele: The first time I remember I was so scared.

I, I thought, I had no idea what, uh, it would be like, and I asked the, the Tata, I said, what is one thing you can tell me? I. That will help me. ’cause I just thought, I don’t know, I thought like demons were gonna fly into my body and I was gonna see crazy things and I was gonna, I, I was [00:41:00] terrified of this thing about vomiting.

’cause you know, they say I was gonna, I’ve, I’ve purged twice. So he said, sit up.

Giancarlo: Yeah.

Michele: One thing you can do is keep your spine straight. He said, never lay down. And since then, I have never laid down.

Giancarlo: Oh, wow.

Michele: Never laid down. And, uh, it was, uh, it just started my journey. I mean, I sat with them for about a year.

I would come back to California and live in Italy and come back to California and, uh, work with this group. Um, and then was started to drink in Europe in Iita. I. I came to drink before my accident and met the, like neo shamans who use a lot of music, you know, very incredible musicians. And also Brazilians and

Giancarlo: Karaka,

Michele: those people.

Yeah, that group. And, uh, [00:42:00] and yeah, and then I, uh, and then I had my accident. So,

Giancarlo: so you’re back in Italy? Yeah. You see your, you find, you, you, you’re reconciled with, um, your father and your brother. Yeah. And there’s a boyfriend there. And you’re working for this company?

Michele: Yeah, I’m working for the company. I’m a head of, uh, the research, one of the research groups pharmaceutical company.

Is it? Yeah. Novartis. Novartis, yeah. Novartis vaccines. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And Sienna and, uh, I was, I was doing, um, molecular epidemiology and looking for, we had actually, uh, identified a receptor on one of these bacteria that had been known for a hundred, a hundred years that nobody had ever seen. And so we did a nice publication, PNAS on this, this molecule that was immunodominant that was a receptor that attached to the human lung cell.

So it was a big finding. Wow. And then shortly after I was, uh, in the south of Italy [00:43:00] on vacation with someone who, um, was part of that whole, I’m not lovable. And, uh, yeah. And, and two days into the vacation, um. We were in a major, nearly fatal accident. I was, I wasn’t riding on the back of a famous Italian motorcycle.

Vespa. And, um, yeah. And a car came around the corner of a country road and pretty much, um, took my leg off. It was hanging on by like a little piece of meat on the backside of my shin. And I, we tourniquet my leg immediately. I said, I have three seconds to live. Like, get me a tourniquet. And we tourniquet the leg.

And then the man and the driver left ’cause there was no cell reception. And they went and left me [00:44:00] for, I don’t know, 20 minutes. Wow. And I laid there and there I felt the. Lights, you know that softness, the tunnel. Yeah. I was breathing, I was using yogic breathing. I was like super conscious, aware that something was very wrong, something was very wrong.

I was on my way out and then they finally arrived, like the ambulance arrived, the helicopter arrived. They helicoptered me out to this city called. Power.

Giancarlo: Mm.

Michele: And I was in eight hours of, um, operations. Operations, and they, they amputated my left leg. And here I am in my, the middle of my career, scientific careers, flying all over the place.

South Africa, Korea, Taiwan, you know, the Catalin Institute, New York, everywhere, [00:45:00] like giving talks and doing great science and having a great time. And, uh, had two yoga studios in Florence. And, and then it was, you know, 1, 2, 3, switch, 1, 2, 3, switch, like, and now your story is a different story.

Giancarlo: When was that the accident?

How long, which year was that?

Michele: This, it will be our, my tenure year, 10 year August 11th.

Giancarlo: Were, were you able to, to keep your job or,

Michele: I was in bed for about a, a year. Wow. I had a big infection in my leg. I was on crutches. I didn’t have this, this miracle bionic leg that I have now that you’ve seen me with. And, uh, I was on opioids, I was on fentanyl, sublingual fentanyl.

I was on Oxycontin and Lyrica for six, seven months. And I used actually, uh, ayahuasca ceremony to get me [00:46:00] out of the addiction, the opioids. Yeah. And, uh, I was depressed. I mean, I couldn’t not every develop

Giancarlo: an addiction after six, seven months of this kind of opioid use.

Michele: I was gray. I was, I knew I was going into an addiction because the pain, phantom limb pain, I.

Is like taking your 10 fingers, putting them in a light socket and staying there for days. And there are contractions, so it’s like, maybe it is every two minutes, then it’s maybe every one minute and a half and it lasts like five seconds and then it’s every minute and then it’s every 30 seconds. And it’s so painful that you can’t even have a conversation with someone.

You’re in bed. So 24

Giancarlo: 7.

Michele: Yeah, I was on leave, medical leave for a year and I was not ready to work. I could not work. I was like, give me a bottle of vodka and let me just [00:47:00] kill myself. And actually, you know, I had, I looked into the clinics in Switzerland. I did not wanna stay here. I wanted to check out eu. It was too painful for euthanasia.

Yeah. I was like, they, I have a, you know, they do it with, for diseases. I wasn’t terminally ill, but I’m like, I’m terminally ill in my head. So breath and ayahuasca, they saved my life.

Giancarlo: Breath and ayahuasca. Yeah.

Michele: And then later ketamine with, uh, phantom limb pain. And actually, I, I wrote a little article with Phil Wolfson, who’s an MD and he wrote the ketamine papers.

A therapist who started a lot of the ketamine therapy. And uh, we found that with me, ketamine. Pretty much cured my phantom limb pain, which is a huge thing. So now he’s like working on a study to look at that and they’re actually, they just published some [00:48:00] studies with psilocybin that help people who have amputation, who better in populations, or people who have had se severe amputations because this pain is debilitating and you know, body and mind connection.

So if you’re in pain, you’re gonna be depressed. People like depression and pain don’t have anything to do with one another. If you’re in pain, if your body doesn’t work, you’re gonna be depressed. Depressed, meaning whatever you want it to mean. Meaning you don’t go to work, you don’t have a social life, you don’t give a shit about living.

You have no family, you don’t eat. What’s the point?

Giancarlo: Sometimes you ask yourself, wow, but so, so breath and ayahuasca saved you. And so you find a community in Florence around breath and ayahuasca.

Michele: No plant medicine is, uh, not available in Italy. It’s completely illegal. [00:49:00] So, no, the community I found with Aya, there’s not, there’s one

Giancarlo: on the ground place in, uh,

Michele: there may be

Giancarlo: Asis, you know,

Michele: there, okay, so the Santo DMI church was there.

Ah, but, um, there was a law put in place in 2022, which made even the plants, the two plants sters the, the vine of the soul and is the una una the leaf with the DMT, the government put those plants on the Schedule one. So it became very illegal. And even the San Dami Church, um, I’m. No, very well, Val Azi was one of the leaders of the the Di ESAs.

They stopped completely using their sacrament. They do not do any work. So Italy? No. I do my work mainly in Brazil. [00:50:00] Yeah,

Giancarlo: no.

Michele: No, in above Rio, above at a center called Akasha. Oh yeah. Uh, they bring, um, healers from re so they bring the Ya Nawa tribe and they bring the Uni queen people. To work with, with groups, with participants, and it’s a beautiful container and there’s, it’s a nine day, typically nine day block.

So you do three sessions with the, with the healers, and there’s integration and there’s. You know, yoga and breath work, and there’s the from, uh, Lakota chief leader there, whose name is wia, and it’s a beautiful container. We’re actually doing a little pilot projects, uh, looking at the impact of ceremonial ayahuascan participants who are doing these retreats and what the main variables are, why they go to these things, [00:51:00] what the impact on social connectedness and on nature connectedness is, and yeah.

Beautiful. Yeah.

Giancarlo: Beautiful. But, so, um, and, but the breath work, you find the community in Ibiza? In, uh, Florence.

Michele: Yeah. The breath work actually there was nobody doing breath work. Breath work. Okay. So I’ve started my yoga training in 19 98, 9, and then, you know, breath comes from the yoga tradition. So like the Vedas and the, the, the philosophy of the prana, aam, the extension of prana,

Giancarlo: the pr, yeah.

Michele: Pram is extension of prana. How to, it’s a science. Like if you breathe for five, you hold for five, and you exhale for 10, something happens physiologically. They already knew that. Yeah. Physiologically, but also with your mind, your mind. You can change your mind actually in Nature Communications. Last month a paper came out that shows [00:52:00] that the reduced levels of CO2 actually are com can take you into altered states of consciousness.

So just breath work can be comparable to a psilocybin experiment or experience. And it is legal and it is free because the breath is free. So breathwork, I found breathwork in Ibida in 2017. I was here for Kiva with the group of shaman’s. Uh, musician friend of mine had introduced me to this group and I met this woman in from England who, um, has a.

A organization called Breathing Tree. And she taught me breath work at the beginning and it’s called Transformational Breath. And it’s cathartic. And it’s the first time after my accident that I could let go and scream and let [00:53:00] all that rage out that my leg was gone and someone was holding me. And I had to be strong for everybody.

And this breath work allowed me to say, can I just be like vulnerable? Can someone just hold me? Can I just cry? ’cause I wasn’t be, wasn’t able to do that for almost two years.

Giancarlo: So

Michele: breath work, if done in in a container, is for me, one of the most. Impactful healing tools that we have

Giancarlo: be beautiful. But I thought that also one way of the breath work to be active was through the autonomous nervous system because we have all these nerves in our lungs.

In our throats.

Michele: Yeah. We have, uh, autonomous nervous system, which is [00:54:00] made of two branches. Supposedly parasympathetic and sympathetic. Oh, why you

Giancarlo: say supposedly? Because he hasn’t really been proven Well, no, it’s, you know,

Michele: it’s, it’s the old school medical books. Then there’s the vagus nerves, the vagus hypothesis, and how the, these two nerves running up and down your spine actually have a lot of impact on what the brain says to the body, what the body says to the brain.

And the breath also has an impact on this. So yeah, there is the fight or flight reaction. The,

Giancarlo: the parasympathetic. Parasympathetic.

Michele: It’s the sympathetic. The sympathetic

Giancarlo: is flight.

Michele: Sympathetic is the, I experienced it in my accident when the car hit my leg. My leg was in the headlight. There’s a photo of a chunk of my leg inside of the headlight of this car.

Your body goes into fight or fight. I’m either gonna die [00:55:00] or I better kick up these cortisol endorphins, adrenaline like molecules that are stronger than morphine your life. Yeah. They’re your internal morphines and, and heroines and, and you know, like Jumpstart. And then there’s the parasympathetic, which is the repair and restore.

I feel safe. So one is I’m not safe, and the other one is I feel safe. I’m not safe. And it’s not like it’s one is on all the time and one is off. It’s their homeostasis. There’s always like a balance between it. There’s a dance between the two. Mm-hmm. And so what breath work does is it activates and then it.

And then you feel safe and you can restore and repair. And so that’s the integration phase of most of the breath works. So you, you bring up the stuff that you want to, [00:56:00] you know, work on or whatever you wanna call it, work or release or integrate. And then you can let the cells and the body and the body’s wisdom do everything because we have an internal wisdom at all of us.

It’s like plants have wisdom. They know the seed knows like how to, you know, open and make a, make a vine and then make a flower like that. Wisdom is in their DNA. We also have wisdom of how to heal ourselves, how to

get to another level of, of, of, of peace, because all of us want. Peace. Like, what does everyone want? Love, safety, and peace. The truth

Giancarlo: is

Michele: simple.

Giancarlo: Amazing. Okay, [00:57:00] so yeah, you know what’s coming to mind? You know, we’ve been discussing, choosing a psychedelic movie, to have a screening in Italy to, uh, start sensibly the population that these medicine are, that these plants are actually medicine.

And, um, you know, we discussed several documentary and we discussed the possibility maybe to start from scratch, maybe using an AI animator. And maybe one of the chapter could be your personal story because the way you describe it, you know, from being, you know, almost a year in bed with incredible pain and the, the opiate addiction, and then using ayahuasca.

To, to get out of that state is very powerful and so many people can resonate, right? Mm-hmm. Um, okay, so let’s get maybe, um, uh, so what, so what, what, what were you doing where, you know, you started working with breath work in Ayahuasca, you felt slowly, slowly, [00:58:00] you were like, you know, putting yourself together, you were able to walk again and, and so what was your state of mind and professional life and romantic life and,

Michele: yeah.

So I left, uh, I left my career. I just decided that, you know, I had opened two yoga studios in Florence in 2004, the other one in 2014. So I had two yoga studios. I would just focus on healing myself. Like you said, change in the world comes from within self, within, so. The shamans say you can only heal at the level you’ve healed yourself, right?

Giancarlo: Correct.

Michele: So that was my purpose in life. Heal myself. So I traveled to Mexico because I was part of this community and I was teaching teacher training. So I was teaching yoga teachers like advanced yoga, um, trainings where they could become [00:59:00] trainers. And I was already doing breath work and I was in Oaxaca and I was met an amazing character that’s part of my life.

And I received five M-E-O-D-M-T in Mexico, the Toad medicine. And that was a, was another big chapter in my life. I was, uh, in service to that medicine and I am still, uh, for the past seven years now. In Mexico. Mexico of course. And um, in that moment I met a woman, her name was Aya, and this AYA introduced me to the former deputy director of Maps,

Giancarlo: Federico

Michele: Federico.

And she said we had just in a breath work session, I was talking to her about five Mio Toad, toad [01:00:00] medicine. Um, you know, it’s called in, in the tradition there. And uh, she said, you have to meet my friend. He works for maps. And I said, what’s maps? So in 2021. I didn’t know what MAPS was. It’s 2025 and she said, maps, it’s the multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies.

And I said, I have no idea what you’re talking about. She’s like, it was born in Santa Cruz, you know, in the eighties. And I said, wow. God. I was in, in the, in the mid, late eighties. I was in California in high school. And, um, so anyway, she may, she introduced me to fei and uh, when I got back to Italy, we had a conversation and I said, look, I’ve been out of a, out of work, you know, I, I teach yoga and breath work and this and that, but like my brain, [01:01:00] intellectually, I, you know, I had a career in science and I, I would love to get back in.

Through the door in science. And I work with Psyched. I have a lot of experience, and he’s like, why don’t we do something in Italy? And I said, I have no idea about doing, running an organization or doing that kind of management, uh, that level. I don’t even know what math. He’s like, come do the training, you know, the MDMA assisted therapy training.

So I went to New York and did the training.

Giancarlo: How, how long is the training?

Michele: No, it’s, it’s like a hundred hour training. A hundred hours. Most of it online. And then you do a week

Giancarlo: basically to assist people that are going through MDMA assisted psychotherapist. Yes.

Michele: And it was really, uh, created for the clinical trials so that they had enough therapists who could sit with the people and in the, in the.

Futuring that this [01:02:00] would become a therapy and that they would need a lot of therapists who were trained.

Giancarlo: Yeah.

Michele: And so I did that. And then he said, come to the psychedelic science is this big conference. Two years ago in Denver, there were 13,000 people. So it spans from neuroscience, the top neuroscientists, clinicians, psychotherapists, psychiatrists, cultural people like religions, Islam and and Christianity and psychedelics.

And we have like the indigenous community, and we have, it’s huge. So I went to that and I was like, wow, what is this? You know? You know. You know why? You

Giancarlo: know why I was smiling? Because I went to the, one of the first one, I think 2012 after 13, and I remember from this news newspaper called Mercury News.

Mer, do you remember Mercury? Yes. And the article was Bunch of Hippie and Out casters celebrate preliminary and Inconclusive psychedelic studies. [01:03:00] I want to get this, I want to get the journalist back and say, what do you think they were preliminary, inconclusive. I mean, now it’s like, it’s a multi-trillion dollar industry.

Michele: Yeah. It, it, it, you know, I can only speak from personal experience and I know if I hadn’t had access to the plant medicine, the psychoactive substance, it’s called, the t is called Ayahuasca and it’s called Uni and it’s called Yeah. Many different things. I would not be here.

Giancarlo: Yeah, me too pro.

Michele: I would not be here.

And it’s a tool, and it’s nothing to be scared of. It’s, it’s a tool. You need a container, you need professionals, you need people who know what they’re doing. You just can’t totally give this stuff to people and not have the appropriate guides and the appropriate containers. And there’s a lot of work after.

[01:04:00] There’s most of the work is after you receive any of these medicines, like the medicine isn’t the work, it’s just It’s the catalyst. Right? It’s the catalyst. Yeah. And then it’s a lifetime journey and there’s nowhere to go and there’s nowhere to get to and you’re never gonna get there and you’re just forget about it.

Yeah. It’s like, how do I step one foot in front of the other with grace and ease and compassion and love in my heart? That is the journey. And it’s not gonna be easy. And you’ve waves of 10 meters high and then there’s like, you know, flat sea and then there’s 10 meters high and one day you’re doing great and the next day you are not.

And that’s how life is because there’s a lot of pain everywhere. We are all in pain, and I think the more we are able to say, Hey, how’s it going? Good, good. That’s not the truth.

Giancarlo: Yeah.

Michele: You know, it’s [01:05:00] not,

Giancarlo: that’s why I love Ibiza. The joke is that, you know, in New York, in New York, when they ask you, how are you, they say, great.

In ibi, I wanna ask you, how are you? They say, how long do you have?

Michele: It’s how can, is it okay for me to be vulnerable? That’s healing. That’s healing. There’s no

Giancarlo: growth without vulnerability. It’s

Michele: not, it’s not, it’s not taking psychedelics that’s healing. Yeah. It’s the being vulnerable that’s healing. Yeah.

It’s the being able to sit in, in front of someone and say, I’m sad, I’m hurt, I’m angry. I am. Jealous. I am scared. Secure. Yeah. That’s the healing, the psychedelic or the substance just allows you to do that. Yeah.

Giancarlo: Yeah. Like I think it’s a was says that, you know, the psychedelic, it’s the, it is like, it’s the boat that take you on the other side of the river, but then once you’re on the other side of the river, the journey continues on foot.

Yeah. You know, they don’t, they, you know, the [01:06:00] secondaria, they might show you, they give you a glimpse of what the connected self might look like and where that might be. But you need to go there with somatic therapy, with rewiring your brain, with, with, with, you know, being part of community, with the, with a lot of work and

Michele: human connections

Giancarlo: and human connection.

Community. Absolutely. Community. Absolutely. But, so just to go back on maps, Italy, um, so you decide to call Rick. Say or Federico, someone calls Rick and say, listen, we want to sign an affiliation deal. That’s how it’s called Federico Feder.

Michele: Federico was at the time the strategic operations person.

Giancarlo: Oh, the old maps

Michele: of the The maps org.

Giancarlo: Oh.

Michele: And then he became deputy director, actually, and when he was deputy director, he created a kind of an affiliate for maps in Italy. Actually. There’s one in Canada, there’s one in [01:07:00] Israel. Israel, there’s one in Germany now, and now there’s one in Italy. And so he was the kind of like the catalyst for that because he’s Italian and he was the deputy director of maps and um, and then, yeah.

I said, okay, let’s do it. And I found some people in Italy that were willing to take the risk. One’s a policy person, one’s a person in art and culture, and there were some other characters as well. And there, and then it kind of shape shifted and then maps, you know, last August had this FDA Crunch and Faye was let go of, and many people of the staff, like 40% of the staff was let go.

And so I didn’t really know what to do, if I should stay, continue, go. But our main purpose really is to give people the resources [01:08:00] to be educated on the subject. Because in Italy, mental health is stigmatized. Depression is stigmatized. So you can only imagine if you put mental health and psychedelic therapy together, how stigmatized it would be.

So our main job is to give people. People don’t even know what’s going on in the rest of the world. Rest of the world, meaning, you know, yeah. United States, Canada, Europe. Also, that these substances are, you know, available in other countries and that they have an impact in people’s lives.

Giancarlo: Yeah. Amazing. And then, and then, so Federico, I met him because, um, Rick Dublin would stay with us in our home in the, in soho, in New York.

And we would organize a couple times a year this fundraising event with auction and jokes and comedy. And, and I remember those night very fondly. And, um, and Federico was [01:09:00] there. And, um, and so, so Federico recently put us in touch. And so here we are. And, you know. I’m Italian, I’m a hundred percent Italian.

My four grandparents are Italian, but I still don’t have a strong connection with my country. But, um, my mother is now in Rome and I’m going to Rome, uh, regularly to spend time with her. And, and you know, I feel that we learn a lot from the American experience of, of try to sensibilize the media, the.

Public opinion, the policymaker, the, the philanthropist, and what really worked for us, uh, I mean for us, I’m, I’m not saying for maps, but for what I, one of the, one of the event that I felt really helped was this big screening we had in 2010 in, um, at the Tribeca Art Center. We had 1000 seats theater packed for the premier of Neuro Sun Nirvana.

And we had an incredible panel with Jeremy [01:10:00] Arby and, and Rick Dublin. And um, uh, there was a first lawyer that helped the UDV get their, you know, um, exemption to serve Ayahuasca for religious purpose. And, uh, ju uh, Julie Oland was there. Um, I can’t remember now. Who else? But, um, I, you know, so I offered to, you know, maybe ha collaborate to see if we can do one screening in Italy, one in Rome.

Put together the resources, you know, panel of six people, seven people have like, you know, maybe in a nice hotel, have it with the nice living, um, screening room. Have a nice screening, and then a panel, and then a cocktail, and having the right journalist. And, um, and so if you’re listening to this and you are, and you are in Italy and you want to help, uh, reach out to me or Michelle, we’re gonna put, uh, all the contact in the show notes.

And so that’s why, that’s how we met. And I’m [01:11:00] so happy we had this conversation because you know, very few people I. There’s, there’s secondary expert, there’s trauma expert, there is shamanic expert, there is scientist expert. There’s neuropsychopharmacology and biologists and neurobiologists. But having all this in one person is quite unusual.

So I, you know, I, I think that you are in a incredible privileged position to, to leads, to lead maps, Italy, and I want to help. Um, is there anything, you know, we’ve been now past the hour a while ago already. Um, is there anything, you know, I feel maybe we haven’t completely, so the accident was 20 12, 15 20, 20 15.

And so Maps Italy started 2022 20. Officially last May. Last. May last May, uh, anything you want to share on the last two, three years of your life that has been rewarding, nourishing, challenging.

Michele: Life is [01:12:00] challenging. Life

Giancarlo: is challenging.

Michele: Life. Life is challenging. Rewarding? Yeah. To to share the experience, share the, the pain, share the difficulties, share the challenges, to give people opportunities to see things differently.

I think that’s the most rewarding thing. Um, having a community is very important. I have many communities. One in San Francisco. I have one in Brazil. I have one in Tuscany. The truth is simple. Yeah. Love is the medicine and really that we need to f forgive. And we need to forgive the people that we’re angry with because the more we hold on to resentment and grievances, it just, we, we blast that out into the world.

And, and this collective [01:13:00] pain just keeps getting stronger and stronger. And so if we can just forgive, you know that person. Yeah. And, and not doesn’t mean you condone them, but you bring peace to yourself. The more space we can create for people to bring in peace and love, and that’s what I said. You can’t quantify it.

Yeah. But that is the energy that moves the world.

Giancarlo: Yeah. You know what the problem I feel is with the, with self-love. And self-esteem is that we live in a society that is so geared towards, you know, professional success and, um, yeah, I mean we don’t glorify ahead of NGO or charity or, you know, [01:14:00] missionary or people that dedicate their life to help other, you know, we glorify El Mosque and, I dunno, in Italy was the, was the equivalent of El Mosque.

You know, Bri, I don’t know, but, um. So, so there is this voice, internal voice, which comes from hundred years of, of conditioning that, you know, you’re, you’re not doing enough, you know, achieving enough. And that’s difficult for people to, to, you know, to not let this voice take over and make you feel inadequate.

What advice do you have of that people that are still prisoner of the voice of achievement and,

Michele: yeah. Well, one thing I can say is love and my breath saved me in that accident. In that accident, my PhD didn’t save me, my masters. Your knowledge, your wisdom. Wisdom, my achievements didn’t save me. Who I was in my career did not save me.

Beautiful. What [01:15:00] saved me was that I knew how to breathe and I was willing to see things differently and bring love. And forgiveness into my life

Giancarlo: and, and into your community. And into my community. The yo the yoga community, you know, it’s the

Michele: hero’s journey from Joseph Campbell. Yeah. It’s like you go through life.

You, you, you slay your dragons. You have a guide. But the one important thing is you come back to your community and you share the gifts that were given to you. And that’s the only way we can evolve. As, as humans, human beings. We’re not human doing machines. Yeah,

Giancarlo: yeah.

Michele: We’re doing, doing, doing, doing. And now we’re more distracted.

We, we need to go back to the being just to be.

Giancarlo: Yeah.

Michele: What is, what is being. Yeah.

Giancarlo: Yeah. That’s why I feel this community might be. The [01:16:00] format and the container for a new way to be human. Right. You know, we used to living much more in community and, and, and now we have all these like, you know, picket fans and keeping with the Jones and the polarization and, and, and the tribalism.

And, uh,

Michele: yeah. We need to be open to being vulnerable and stepping out of our comfort zone and creating space and connecting as, as human beings like being. Because when you’re on your deathbed, when you’re about to transition whatever you have in, in your safe in the bank. In your house, all the cars, all the watches, all the material stuff that’s not important is who is around you.

Who’s around you that can, can assist you, support you as you take your last breath out of

Giancarlo: here. Nice. Michelle, thank you very, very much. How do, how, [01:17:00] if people wants to connect with you for your breath work, work for knowing about maps, Italy or the yoga center or whatever retreat you might are doing where people can find you?

Michele: I have, uh, the, the, the yoga center in Florence is called in Bodhi and then my maps is [email protected].

Giancarlo: Amazing. Thank you very much. And uh, looking forward to have you back here in, uh, maybe a couple of years. We can talk so much human in Italy. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank [01:18:00] you.