31: Tricia Eastman on Meeting Iboga

www.psychedelicjourneys.com
www.ancestralheart.com
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Ram Dass
Dr Gabor Maté
Wisdom of Trauma
Iboga
Iboga
Bwiti
5-MeO-DMT
Rupert Sheldrake
Morphic fields
Ibogaine
Egregore
Pygmies
Akashic record
Ayahuasca
Jamie Wheal
Psychedelic Integration
Hu
Thoth
Biodynamic Farming
Kogi People
UNESCO preservation
Blessings of the Forest

Giancarlo: [00:00:00] Hello. Hi, welcome to this new episode of the mango TV podcast today. I’m very grateful to have Tricia Eastman. Eastman is a medicine woman, author, artist, speaker, and advocate for the psychedelic movement and founder of nonprofit ancestral heart. Eastman has created a wellness retreat center, thermal hot spring, and the construction in Azores to open in 2024 Eastman book seeding consciousness.

Planned Medicine, Ancestral Wisdom, and [00:01:00] the Path to Transcendence is coming out in 2023. As a medicine woman, Eastman has curated retreats in countries where it’s legal working with 5MODMT and Iboga for 8 years. She has been initiated into multiple branches of BWITI, the Ancestral Tradition from Equatorial Africa, working with Iboga, as well as facilitated the SACO Spiritual Program with Ibogaine.

and 5 MeO DMT at Crossroads Treatment Center in Mexico. Thank you for being here. Welcome, Trisha. 

Tricia: Honored to be here and just, this is such a beautiful space, being in the island of Ibiza, and just so grateful to be plugged into this beautiful community. Thank you so much for having me. 

Giancarlo: It’s a pleasure, as our listener knows, Mango TV has been following the psychedelic renaissance from the early stage.

I remember one of the first MAPS conference in Auckland, sometime like around 2004, 2005. I remember there was maybe 30, 40 people. And then an [00:02:00] article the following day on the local newspaper said, Group of hippies celebrate preliminary and inconclusive research. Today I feel like maybe calling the reporter and say, what do you think?

Okay. So let’s start from the beginning. I usually like to have a, let’s say a three part conversation, one more personal, one around your practice, and then one about more global. So how did you get interested in this medicine? What was your cathartic moment when you decided, okay, I’m going to dedicate my life 

Tricia: to this 

Giancarlo: medicine?

Tricia: It’s interesting because my first relationship with psychedelics was through my father who, who used a lot of cannabis. And when I was right when I was going to college, I worked for a psychedelic bookstore called Raver Books, and we had all the top classics from Timothy Leary and, you know, Tycalfycal, Alexander Shulgin, Ram Dass, all of that.

And I stepped away [00:03:00] from the psychedelic movement when my father was diagnosed with schizophrenia, which was triggered by cannabis and so I was afraid I would break my brain taking psychedelics after this incident happened in my 20s, and later on I rediscovered MDMA after having a traumatic brain injury where I had induced really high anxiety.

And that led me to looking into plant medicine, discovering ayahuasca, which opened the doorway into this pathway of healing a lot of ancestral trauma that I believe is actually the source of my father’s schizophrenia. And interestingly over the years, especially after I started working with iboga, which I discovered in 2014 The work that I was doing, and I don’t, I’m not taking credit in any way, it just seemed very synergistic and synchronistic that a lot of his symptoms started to subside with his schizophrenia, [00:04:00] and he actually he was living in Hawaii, he moved back to the United, or into Washington state and built a hydrogen powered car, which I never would have thought, you know, he would have, he, because he was just like sitting around very depressed, not really doing a lot and I didn’t think there was a lot I could do for him, but just, you know, it’s hard with schizophrenia because, you know, when you do a lot of this plant medicine work you, you a lot of times have things come up around your relationship with your parents and, and healing with your parents.

And with schizophrenia there’s a lot of times where you just can’t connect and, you know, times where my father would be manic, which is a big part of, of schizophrenia where you know, it would feel like I was being like, kind of like, overly pushed with, with, with information and, and urgency to connect and you know, very overwhelming.

So it’s a very kind of hard [00:05:00] relationship because it doesn’t feel like something that you could therapeutically transform. And so it’s been, it’s been really amazing to, to go down that road and, and find healing. 

Giancarlo: So, specifically, where were we and which year when, when you start experience with one of these plants?

Tricia: When the experience that was most transformational for me was in 2014, I met Martin Polanco, who owned Crossroads Clinic in Mexico. And I had already done quite a bit of plant medicine work, but I wasn’t quite, you know, getting down to the core of my eating disorders. And I had anorexia, bulimia, body dysmorphic disorder, and I just couldn’t get to the core of like, What it meant to love myself and how could I accept myself and it wasn’t until I met Iboga and the spirit of Iboga in this journey, which was in a medical clinic in Tijuana, [00:06:00] which which sounds like a very unlikely place to have that experience and In the experience.

I I saw my true self. I saw myself as a fractal Of the universe and in like connecting to my true self. I realized this is silly. Why would I even be constricted by this false construct of separation and was able to fully love and accept myself for the first time? And when I had that experience the first thing I did was just pour out tears and I cried for a long time.

And after I cried, I said Iboga, how can I be of service to you? And within three weeks, Martine Polanco asked me to facilitate the psycho spiritual program at Crossroads. So, I never sought out this idea of working with others with medicine. I had experience working with others as a facilitator doing healing work, doing more like shamanic work, but [00:07:00] without psychoactive substances.

And I never would have I thought that I would have been chosen by the medicine to, to walk this path and it’s been truly the greatest honor I could ever have expected. And by the way, I it’s interesting because as I was sharing the story, I don’t talk about my father’s schizophrenia. And you know, that relationship, I could just feel some like emotions coming up and so I’m, I’m grateful to have this vulnerable conversation with you.

Giancarlo: Thank you. Thank you very much. But so let’s jump straight into the big topic of you know, mental disease and the origin of this you know, mental condition you’re describing. Gabor Maté has this theory that All, most all you know, it’s very controversial that most, most of this, you know, the typical, you know, you mentioned bulimia or depression, anxiety, PTSD.

Basically they are originated in, in, in childhood trauma. 

Yes. 

Giancarlo: [00:08:00] When, when and he describes two, two, two cases. Two phenomenon. One is the loss of authenticity. 

Yeah. 

Giancarlo: And one is the interiorization of unworthiness. 

Yes. 

Giancarlo: So he says that, you know, when you’re like four, five, six, seven, eight, your parents get distracted, which has nothing to do with you.

Yeah. 

Giancarlo: But you interpret as they don’t love me. I’m not worthy. 

Yes. 

Giancarlo: So that’s, it’s like a psychic fracture. 

Yes. 

Giancarlo: Then you want to get the attachment back. So you lose your authenticity. 

Tricia: Yes. You earn it. You try to earn it. 

Giancarlo: You try to earn it. 

Tricia: Yes. And 

Giancarlo: so these two phenomenon create like, like a, like like an injury, like a cut.

And and then this psychic injury, like Jung says, the subconscious rules your life and you call it fate, right? So it’s this idea that this psychic injury then subconsciously put into situation that in a way. exacerbate the injury. So you end up in an abusive relationship and basically things to confirm that you’re not lovable.[00:09:00] 

Exactly. 

Giancarlo: It’s like the opposite of a normal cut. A normal cut, you would like, make sure that you don’t go to the sea, that it, that it’s, it, it heals. 

Yes. 

Giancarlo: But the injury in the, in the psyche, it’s like reverse. So my question to you is Do you think that that was the origin of your you know, bulimia and, and, and how do you think that the, you know, neurologically the medicine might have impacted on this neurological injury?

Tricia: Yeah. I mean, I think that it. It’s definitely like, I mean, how deep down the rabbit hole do you want to go with this? It’s, it’s both the actual, you know, egoic framework which, which forms when you’re between zero and seven. It starts in the womb where you start to record these patterns and these patterns become your, your framework.

But then if you want to go a little deeper, you know, Stan Grof has gone very deep into the work of the [00:10:00] perinatal matrix and the link of archetypal astrology. And, and The idea of the perinatal matrix is kind of that when you’re in the womb, you kind of relive this archetypal story, like your own specific hero’s journey, which is related to your astrology.

So for instance, for myself, my mother is a Reuss’s negative, and my father is Reuss’s positive blood type, and what happens in pregnancy when a Reuss’s negative and Reuss’s positive father is positive, the mother’s negative, is the mother tries to abort the fetus, and so that creates a stress on the baby, and that stress can show up as being it might be the feeling of being attacked, the feeling of being at war for me, what, what it felt like was you know, the feminine rejecting me, and that affected my relationship with the feminine, which, you know, you know, [00:11:00] anorexia, bulimia, all of that is about our relationship to the feminine.

And if you go even further, like for me, specific to my story, my mother’s mother had cancer when I was in the womb and she died a month before I was born. And so she was carrying all this grief and all that. That was what was feeding me as a baby. I was feeling that grief. And I died 

Giancarlo: one month after you were born.

Tricia: Yeah, so a month before I was born, she passed, and so, so I was born in October, she passed in September, and so she tried to live long enough to see me, and my mom was very young when she was pregnant. She became pregnant at 17, she had me when she was 18, so she was very young when she lost her mother.

And what happened was, you know, what I saw, and this was shown to me through Iboga, and then other, like, integrational work that I’ve done to kind of pull all the pieces together, that when she had me, she was so deep in [00:12:00] grief, and, and, you know, if you study different medicine, like ancient medicine, like traditional Chinese medicine, they talk about grief being in the breasts.

So she didn’t actually make breast milk. And so as a baby she gave me Similac, other formulas, which I was allergic to, and I literally would, like, throw up all the time, you know, like how babies spit up. I would spit up my food, so I was rejected. first nourishment from my mother, but obviously I knew, you know, not saying I knew knew, but that it was not the real nourishment that, you know, comes from the mother, which is the breast milk.

And I had diaper rashes. And what happened was I think over My lifetime, I developed all these food allergies that were a result of this improper nourishment as a child that eventually you know, gave me this disordered relationship with food where I didn’t really understand how food worked within my [00:13:00] body as a supportive thing.

The other thing that I feel that it created and manifested was Well, one of the things that happened was I was bullied very badly by women growing up all the way from elementary school to high school. 

Giancarlo: Where? Where was that? 

Tricia: I grew up in Carnation, Washington, which is a very small farm town outside of Seattle, Washington.

And what’s interesting about that is it was, again, the same perinatal matrix story of the mother rejecting, the feminine rejecting, like, from a social standpoint, feeling that these women were rejecting me, and and then the eating disorders, which were really rejection of the, the mother. So yeah, it’s, it, it’s a big rabbit hole, but very much connected to, you know, that patterning.

But I think even beyond you know, what my mother showed me as an example, because my mother is the most [00:14:00] loving person. She’s a saint. She my mother is My family’s from Mexico on my mother’s side. She’s half, so I’m a quarter, and so we’re, our, our lineage is the Mestiza lineage, and she has this ancient lineage that goes back, which is really rooted in prayer, and and connection to nature, and so even though like my family carried this lineage all the way up to my grandfather and then he switched to Catholicism, she still kind of had that orientation in her of how she approached things and she taught me how to pray and how to, like, really connect.

And I feel like that kind of rooted this indigenous principle inside me that, that I see in all the traditions that I’ve, you know, connected with and studied. But in that sense, like, I don’t feel like there’s anything lacking from my mother, like, as a person, she was, like, [00:15:00] really, really loving and caring and took care of me.

She was a stay at home mom. She didn’t go off to work and leave me and always just super supportive but that whole story in the womb was, I think, really what, what brought about the eating disorders. 

Giancarlo: Wow. So, so in addition to the Gabor Mate loss of authenticity and, and, and interiorize of unworthiness.

There is, you know, biological effect that affect your mental health. And then you’re mentioning something key for the shamanic practice, which is the ancestral material. 

Yes. That’s 

Giancarlo: it. It’s what people, you know, in our Western materialistic, you know, world view. paradigm is a little bit more difficult to understand.

So why don’t we try to unpack that a little bit deeper? And so where you, how old were you when you met Iboga? 

Tricia: I was I was, let’s see, 35 [00:16:00] when I met Iboga. Yeah. 

Giancarlo: And did you have an understanding of the origin of your disease where it was clear for you where was that it was rooted in, in, in your mother condition and then in the rejection of the formula?

Is something that was already clear to you or it’s something you discovered with the medicine? 

Tricia: Something that I discovered with the medicine, but I think the beautiful thing about iboga and this is, to me, feels different than a lot of the other medicines that I had worked with in the past, is that the spirit stays with you for a very long time.

And not only that, The alkaloids are stored in your fat. So literally after you work with the medicine going through an initiation, or like in this case it was a flood dose in an agan clinic, it stays in your fat. So the spirit is with you. And interestingly, the you know, like in most of the initiations that I’ve.

that I’ve done it, which I’ve done three initiations in the Fong tradition of [00:17:00] Bwiti and one initiation in the Gonde Masoko tradition of Bwiti I’ve always been told to take a year off from medicine to not work with any other medicines and you can feel it deeply working with you throughout that entire year while you’re really focused and that’s, that’s why it’s become one of my primary medicines because I’m not allowed, you know, when I, when I go through these initiations to, you know, work with anything else because it can kind of Interfere with with what’s already in place.

Of course, I was micro dosing with Iboga as I was integrating. So I wasn’t taking zero medicine, but in terms of taking those big initiatory doses you know, that was that was done like one time. In that initiation or sometimes in certain initiations, you do, you know, two nights of ceremony, which they call the death and the rebirth and and then I was taking, you know, a year of, of integration time.

And in that time, these little pieces of the puzzle, these little [00:18:00] parts of my soul were being retrieved. And I in my book, I talk about the process of soul Kintsugi, which is the art of soul repair. And it’s that idea of. You know, the broken vessel that in the ancient Japanese art is melded together with gold.

And that’s what we do in this medicine work with integration is we put those pieces back together and we, we mend them with gold. And that’s through our choice of consciousness, bringing the unconscious to consciousness. 

Giancarlo: Beautiful, Iboga, but I think we’re going to explore that in the, in another episode.

Around the psychedelic confessions. But so I would like to understand your interpretation of, because, you know, I understand when you say spirits stay with you, but imagine our little bit more secular audience. How would you describe the existence of spirit in an [00:19:00] equatorial bush, African bush? I mean, how do you see?

evolutionary, the presence of this plant intelligence on a bush in Gabon. 

Tricia: You know, my belief in just this incredible work with nature and connecting with other spirits of nature, maybe non psychoactive plants, including trees is that you know, all all plants have spirits and these spirits, in my opinion of, you know, witnessing the level of intelligence and access they have is beyond what humans, you know, we have these limitations because we have 

Yeah, 

Tricia: yeah.

And I feel that the best described model for this type of understanding is Rupert Sheldrake his idea of morphogenic fields. And the morphogenic field concept is this idea that, you know, really there’s a logos that exists like an [00:20:00] intelligence field with whether it’s animals, bees plants. And then if you go more into the actual it’s like the, it’s the brain of the intelligence and it’s the lifetime of experiences, however old that particular thing is.

And this also exists in the spirit realm and in shamanic traditions like this. They also believe in this concept of the Agra Gore, which is the collective spirit of the medicine. And the Agra Gore is a combination of the lineage. Every person that’s walked in that lineage, how that lineage has been carried, how pure it is as well as all the entities connected to that lineage and the plant.

So there’s an entire intelligence and interestingly, in ceremonies, we have this opening protocol or right ritual that when we open [00:21:00] the portal people have said they literally saw, like, a, This, the, the, the fabric of reality opening even before they took medicine and like pygmies and, you know, which are the first people of equatorial Africa that brought Iboga to Bwiti and other, you know, spirits coming out of it.

So it’s quite interesting. 

Giancarlo: Yes. Beautiful. So let’s say if I can paraphrase what you’re saying, just to have another explanation. Rupert Sheltrick talks about this cosmic memory bank. 

Yes. 

Giancarlo: That, you know, there is a, there is a knowledge in the ether from ever. That’s why sometimes, you know, if you have Ayahuasca in the jungle, you have the vision of the jungle deity, because you, you know, you, you know, some of this medicine and this altered state allow you to travel and to access the like, the like doors in this field of knowledge a little bit like the, you know, Madame Blavatsky was talking about [00:22:00] the Akashic record, right?

Yes, 

yes. 

Giancarlo: So that’s why there is the this study about the monkeys in the, in the next by islands. Mm hmm. And, you know, one group of monkey in one island discovered that the potato without the sand tastes better. And almost simultaneously, the, the, the monkey in the island nearby get the same knowledge.

Yes. 

Giancarlo: Also for humans, there is this study says that, you know, since there’s been, you know, study of IQ, then, you know, humans have been basically doing better and better because it is in the field. 

Yes. 

Giancarlo: It’s, it’s, it’s a bit tricky to understand. Another example was you know, it takes certain amount of time to synthesize a new crystal, but then once it’s synthesized to replicate is much faster.

Yes. 

Giancarlo: So, what I’m trying to explain with this example is that is this esoteric concept that this medicine are portals to a different dimension where there might be a knowledge of [00:23:00] integration with, with the human body that allow a process of, of wholeness, of healing. Amazing. So, so you felt this calling of, of working with this medicine.

And so synchronistically, you get offered to work at the crossroad, the center in Mexico. And that’s, you know, you started supervising sessions. And so how was how was your experience? How did it, how did it develop? What did you learn from observing other people? 

Tricia: Yeah observing you know, when I first started working at Crossroads, it was in a medically supervised environment, and, you know, I wasn’t just giving the medicine on my own.

You need a lot of training to work with this medicine, especially iboga. It was 

Giancarlo: salicine. I’m sorry, it was ibogaine. 

Tricia: Ibogaine, yeah. And so, you know, in the beginning, I was really learning and observing, and you You know, [00:24:00] it was so interesting. I remember witnessing Sorry 

Giancarlo: to interrupt, Trisha. Is it fair to say that ibogaine is what THC is to cannabis?

Yes, so Is the active component? 

Tricia: So, it Abogaine, or iboga, is one of the most like complex plants of the plant kingdom. It has over 30 known alkaloids that work on almost every neurotransmitter system in the body. And abalgain is one of those alkaloids. It wasn’t even able to be synthesized because of the complexity of it until they discovered a similar plant.

in Africa called Vulcanja and pulled this Vulcanjoline, which is an alkaloid from the Vulcanja Africana, and they were able to take off like a hydrogen or oxygen molecule through chemistry and actually what they call a semisynthesis of abogaine. So most abogaine used in the world is derived from vulconjolene.

My understanding, although I have not seen the science behind it, [00:25:00] is that there are some companies that have now gotten to the point where there might be a formulation or something that exists that is an actually purely synthetic form of, of abugaine. 

Giancarlo: And so I interrupt, but so we were saying that supervising people helps.

Yes. Thanks. How was your, what has been your experience in, in been, you know, witnessing thousands of people in, in all these years? Is there like a similar archetypal content coming through? How would you, I imagine you were doing some questionnaire to the people and can you like, you know, like explain by, you know, broad stroke the typical, what kind of, what kind of ailment people would come with and, and, and, and describe it.

I know this is not such a thing as a typical healing process, but do your best. 

Tricia: It’s interesting because I feel that when people come to [00:26:00] Iboga, usually they have some significant experience with other medicines because it is the Mount Everest of all of the psychoactive plant medicines and it’s completely different.

So, whatever their expectations are, they come in and those get kind of blown out of the water. And more often than not, people are completely incapacitated. So, literally, the aboga turns your It insides out in the sense that it incapacitates you from being able to walk, from being able to, it, it turns all the senses inward so that you don’t try to distract yourself with external stimulus because it’s really forcing you to look at the deepest, darkest corners of yourself that maybe you had been running away from, from addiction or because of some trauma.

And Every single person that I’ve experienced, you know, says they get their [00:27:00] ass kicked, basically, that, you know, it kind of knows exactly what to serve up to that person to kind of push them on that edge that, that can be very difficult. The actual experience of the medicine is difficult. It feels uncomfortable because you can’t move.

If you try to listen to outside noises, you can get this intense, like, buzzing, like, almost like there’s bees inside your ears to keep you from trying to distract yourself with something else. You have a lot of physical shaking. If you have to get up and go to the bathroom, the minute you set up, you start feeling very purgative.

So you can expect to purge maybe, And most likely more than one time from the medicine. So you sit up, you start feeling really dizzy, you need to have help to walk to the bathroom. If if you have to go to the bathroom. And it, it really truly just takes you into the deepest pain that can be just being completely attacked.

With your thoughts and your thought [00:28:00] patterns, but in the beginning, usually like in the initiations that I’ve experienced and in the psycho spiritual work that I do, you do two nights of ceremony. The first night is the death. The second night is the rebirth, and then the night of death, usually that’s the most uncomfortable night because you have all this stuff 

Giancarlo: coming out.

How many grams? 

Tricia: It’s a different for everybody. The dosage range is so varied. You know, I’ve had people that took one spoonful of root bark, which is, is basically the, the form of iboga that comes from the root of the plant. It’s like the inner layer of the root bark, which is very, very bitter, by the way.

Probably one of the most bitter things you, you could have in your, in your life. And, and it’s hard to, to swallow and many people have difficulty even just taking the medicine. But it, you know, someone who has a high tolerance could take seven, eight, nine, you know, maybe [00:29:00] even up to 14 spoonfuls where, you know, and you kind of know, like in initiations in the jungle a lot of times, and this is not how you do it in a psycho spiritual setting, they keep giving you Eboga, giving you Eboga until they stick a pin in you and you can’t feel the prick of the pin.

They give you like 

Giancarlo: 15 grams or something. 

Tricia: Yeah, just crazy amounts but you just never know. And there’s many ways that I’ve had in, you know, Gabon different preparations of Iboga. Like I had this tea concentrate at one point and that was probably the deepest journey I’ve had and I have no idea how much Iboga was in that tea, but it was very, very strong.

It hit me immediately. I was completely laid out. I don’t remember moving for like three days. I just remember this like, Feeling dizzy and all this spinning and this portal opening and going right into the spirit world and then [00:30:00] like just being completely laid out for who knows how long. I lost complete sense of time.

Giancarlo: Yeah, for me, I’ve done it in a, in a Western context and it was a weekend affair. They will give you three, four grams. 

Mm hmm. 

Giancarlo: In you know, they would give you three, four grams, then they would leave you for an hour and a half. Then you would come back and they would ask you to describe what you saw and they would help interpret it.

Yes. 

Giancarlo: Their approach is that, you know, the subconscious doesn’t speak English. 

It 

Giancarlo: speaks in mood and force and shapes and, and, you know, you need to have some sort of understanding of this language to help you know, understand it. the participant to, to, to decipher. And and that was interesting. And it, for me and for the people around me, it was mostly, you know, personal material.

It wasn’t so much like in Ayahuasca where you go to like, you know, to the ethereal world, to the, to the astral. And angels. And [00:31:00] do you feel that for all the people you supervise, this is a similar experience? 

Tricia: Yeah. So, you know, what you’re talking about, the material tends to be kind of a life review where you’re reviewing certain things that are happening in your life, certain events, maybe certain behaviors, mental patterns.

And the medicine is designed to kind of Purge all of all of that out, although there can be even deeper mystical experiences like you were talking about where you do travel, which you would think more is associated with ayahuasca and typically that comes with with higher doses or on the second night, which is the night of rebirth.

But there’s just a lot of cleansing, especially in Western society that we have to do to clear us before we can actually travel into the spirit world. And so, you know, the Iboga won’t take you there unless you’re clean. You know, you can’t have any, any baggage before Before you get to travel. So it goes [00:32:00] deep into the body.

Some people especially if they’re there because of a chronic illness or, you know, something physical with the body, it could be really focused on that, which can be also uncomfortable and painful. And you The, the visionary aspect of Iboga isn’t always reliable. It’s, it’s an oneirophrenic. It puts you in like a, a dream state.

And in that dream state, sometimes you kind of fade in and fade out and you you know, can see specific things. And also I would say the best part of it all is even though you are reviewing sometimes really dark, maybe even past life material. That could be very, very dark. The iboga has the most incredible sense of humor.

You know, it, it just you know, I’ve had experiences where it was just trying to show me something and then I wasn’t necessarily getting the, the hints. You know, it was playing Pictionary with my subconscious basically. And then finally, [00:33:00] when I understood it was almost like this vibration in my body, this like blissful vibration and all of a sudden these pygmies pop out and there’s fireworks and they’re waving flags and they’re like, yay.

So to me the aboga has this ability to not only just take you into the darkness, but it can kind of make fun of it in a way that is just like dark. It’s like watching a dark comedy. You’re like all of a sudden, you know, in the dark and then it’s like totally making light of it. And I also notice that it, it.

It shows you this intelligence, like it opens this doorway into this intelligence, which I recognize as iboga, like the spirit of iboga itself, and you can’t even remember the level of intelligence because it’s so nuanced, and it’s so you know, awe striking when, when you receive it and you can have these conversations in the [00:34:00] medicine where you’re just asking questions like, what is my purpose or, you know, for me, when I went through my last initiation in Gabon in, in 2019 was when I received the The message from Iboga that I had to write this book, Seating Consciousness.

This was my like integration homework, and it was like giving me the name. It was giving me the titles of the chapters, like what I was going to write about, and it was so clear, and that’s the difference between in my experience and what others have shared, that Iboga gives you really clear messages.

Instructions. When it communicates with you, yeah. 

Giancarlo: Yeah. Amazing. This is so fascinating. I want to pick on one thing you said, which I think is important for the, for whoever is interested to this kind of practice, this idea of, you know, do your homework and, and, and, and, you know, do your cleaning up, you know, Jamie will talks about the contemporary use of psychedelic as bliss junkie and the [00:35:00] peak experience whore or something.

Yes. And and, you know, like with any teacher, you know, if we believe that this plant medicine are plant teachers because they allow you access to to this, you know, field of wisdom and, and knowledge you know, you go to, you know, you get the lesson, you get the information, but then you have to do the homework.

You have to do the integration. Otherwise, you can’t. keep on going to a teacher knocking to his door. I want more lesson, but the teacher will lose interest in you if you don’t do the homework. And so this is something which took me a long time to fully understand because you always get, if not a peak experience, but that clear head, that bliss.

If not during the ceremony in the morning, and that can be very dangerous because it would basically prevent you to do your cleaning up. Okay, this is great. Let me just ask a little bit about where are we going with all this? So you’re writing a book, you’re opening a center what’s your, [00:36:00] you know, if What’s the name of your center in the Azores?

Tricia: Hu 

Giancarlo: Hu HU. 

Tricia: Yes. Yeah. And that came to me through the medicine as well. What does it mean? 

Giancarlo: You, 

Tricia: I, I received the name and I found out that it actually is the tongue of Thoth. Thoth being one of the gods of the of Egypt. Who some believe built, built the great pyramid, and it’s the sound that is made when wisdom hits the initiate.

Giancarlo: In which tradition, sorry? 

Tricia: In Egyptian cosmology. So, Kemetic wisdom. 

Giancarlo: Wow, wow. Okay, so I’m going to ask you an exercise that this branding company made me do. So, imagine 20 years from now. So, we are in 2042. Wow. And there is an article in the New York Times about who? What would you like it to say? 

Tricia: It would, it would say, You know, I feel like Hugh is an entity outside of myself and [00:37:00] what it’s shown me, like it led me to the Azores, I never even anticipated that that was going to be the place that we would build.

I’d never even been there. And it’s an incredible place, by the way, just truly a magical gem of, of wonder. And when I think about Hugh, I see there being these. Nodes within the planet and each one of these nodes is really based on all the principles of completely holistic living. And that means the buildings, how they’re built using sacred geometries how the food is grown, you know, using permaculture principles and biodynamic farming.

And how, you know, the, the structure of the staff, you know, is, is approached in really creating an environment that is embodying what it’s bringing to the world in terms of, of consciousness and connection. [00:38:00] And so I feel like there’s going to be somewhere between nine to 12 of these centers literally in the next 20 years.

And this is the 1st template. We’re also looking at building. We have land in Texas a ranch in Texas that we’re, we’re developing another project that is a community as well. So you know, by the time. You know, 20 years rolls around. I want to see these different nodes where you know, illuminated individuals who have really done the work and are really embodying and living in their life are coming and teaching along with elders.

And there’s a deep reciprocity within the model of everything and how it works together. And you know, people just see this as a place that you can go and connect and meet people and have that transference of wisdom. 

Giancarlo: Beautiful. So you see seven, eight of the center, so Azores, Texas, can you? 

Tricia: Well [00:39:00] some of the, some of the places that I’ve received and I’ve been investigating is Greece.

Uruguay and potentially the Bahamas. I’m still really listening because, you know, everything that I do is really an exercise of drawing from a deeper consciousness, a deeper guidance from, you know, the medicine, from soul, from, you know, our soul group and our, our purpose together, which I really, truly believe in and really listening to, you know, what’s, what’s mine to do.

You know, it might. Receive information about, oh, Colorado or someplace, but I might be there to kind of help someone else in creating something in some small way. And so I can’t say necessarily exactly, but I do know that you know, that, that the places have kind of started speaking. And as each place is ready, the.

Everything fell into place, like with the [00:40:00] Azores, it literally was like, I got the message that I was going to find this land with hot springs, which had no idea that there was really no land for sale with hot springs in the Azores. So I talked to a few people in the community in the island of So Miguel.

Literally, they said, Oh yeah, you’re not going to find that. That’s a hot commodity. And within two weeks, one person called me and said, guess what? I found your land. And so we flew to Azores. During COVID, we were able to secure this land and at the time, we didn’t even have the resources to, to really fully do the project that we wanted to do.

And interestingly, there was a program that expired. Right at the end of 2020, Portugal 2020, and we received grants and loans from the Portuguese government to [00:41:00] cover a big percentage of the center. And that gave us the ability to really focus on building it. And really perfecting it without having to worry about finding investment and and all that.

And so, yeah, it’s truly been completely guided. And there were times where I was like questioning, like, okay, is this actually going to happen? And it was just Literally, like every moment that I took a step forward in trust, something else would show up that was the piece, the next piece of that puzzle.

And that’s what I talk about a lot in the book Seeding Consciousness is understanding that process of connecting and getting the information so that you can really move forward from that place of, you know, co creation with the universe. 

Giancarlo: Beautiful. Beautiful. Beautiful. And Yesterday I did onotropic breath work and I had this strong download that you know, if your intention are pure and you really operate from the heart, then you can tap into some sort of like energetic [00:42:00] highways.

It’s like the universe play balls with you. And what prevents you from the connection to the higher frequency is your ego. And so it’s, it’s really, I had this image like, you know, in the radio when you’re looking, you know, like I’m thinking about being in the, on a boat and you look on the radio for the station and you go.

And I feel that the bigger your ego is, the more interference there is in finding that frequency. And it was a beautiful, it was a beautiful download. 5meo, do you work also with 5meo? Or it’s more like a personal practice? 

Tricia: I have historically worked with 5 MEO DMT. I used to do a retreat through a company that I started seven years ago called Psychedelic Journeys, where we would do retreats in countries where the, you know, specific medicines were legal, like Costa Rica and Mexico.

Because of a lot of [00:43:00] controversy around sustainability with Buffalo various, I haven’t been doing those retreats because, you know, working with the synthetic now is kind of more the synthetic form of 5meo DMT is, is more kind of the, the general approach that has been happening, but it is also kind of a legal Issue and so because the the synthetic form is not legal in in a lot of places.

So I have I’ve probably Worked with I don’t know 1500 or more people with it historically and It’s an incredible medicine, it’s really, really powerful and also one that should be treated with a lot of great respect because, you know, it can open up really deep stuff really quickly within an individual and right now it’s incredibly popular but it’s definitely not something that you want to take lightly and, and it’s not always the best medicine to [00:44:00] start off with because of its intensity.

Giancarlo: But maybe let’s take another couple of minutes To explain the effect, you know, for, for me was the closest thing to a mystical experience. You feel like projected into the arm of God and you feel, you feel this unbounded sense of, of, of, of forgiveness and compassion and wholeness and, and yeah, and, and I felt similar feeling with the, with the allotropic breathing, the, the, this idea of being in presence of God and also feel like.

You know, you want to devote your life to God, feel like I’m a servant of God. 

Yes. 

Giancarlo: Unfortunately these feelings goes away fast. 

Yeah. 

Giancarlo: Can be like a dream. 

Yeah. 

Giancarlo: But so how, how is it, how is the, not for you, but what, can you explain on average this 1500 session? Where would. The, the DMT take people to. 

Tricia: I mean, it, it, it’s interesting because when you think about this idea of visiting these [00:45:00] realms of complete consciousness, of, you know, connection without the ego and really a kind of a deeper understanding of, of what’s happening on the bigger scale on a universal level, I think that it restores such a deep connection.

Trust in whatever’s happening. And I really feel like it’s the medicine of surrender because as you’re coming back into the body you know, and not everyone’s able to travel that far because you have to be able to let go and surrender to be able to get there. And sometimes there is some purging along the way because there’s things that need to be integrated in order to be able to fully surrender.

But as you’re Returning, you, you can kind of see those parts of the ego many times coming back in, and you can kind of decide, is that really something that I want to keep in, you know, this personality of who I am, who I, I exist in this world, and I have a life in [00:46:00] this world. I know there’s something bigger than that.

But you know, what, you know, What is the best service to myself, to humanity, to my purpose in terms of how to integrate that. And again, it’s, it’s, it’s easy to forget because you know, with, with DMT, you know, 5 MeO DMT, NMDMT, and these holotropic states that actually induce endogenous DMT. in the body.

We 

Giancarlo: That’s what it is. Do you think this has been tested with fMRI? 

Tricia: Yes. Yes. 

Giancarlo: So there is the same reduction of blood supply in the, in the default mode network? 

Tricia: Yes. 

Giancarlo: I see. 

Tricia: So it’s the change of blood flow, but it’s also a simultaneous activation of 5 HT1A serotonin, 5 HT2A and 5 HT7A, which is kind of like the gateway to God.

And the more activated it is, It’s the deeper opening and [00:47:00] complete dissolution of ego. Yeah. 

Giancarlo: Beautiful. Beautiful. Trish. Thank you very much. Okay. The center is not open. The book is not out, but so if people want to work with you now, give us a little bit of some links that we’re going to put in the show notes.

On, on how people can know more about you or work with you and when the book and the center will open and where they can find news about that. 

Tricia: Oh, thank you so much. It was such an honor to talk with you and love all your experience. You’re so knowledgeable in all these areas. So it’s fun, fun to play back and forth.

I have a website, psychedelicjourneys. com if you join that mailing list, I keep everyone updated on everything that’s happening and it’s really easy to just, you know, click the mailing list button and, and join. And then my non profit Ancestral Heart, which is really focused on indigenous [00:48:00] reciprocity is ancestralheart.

com. And really that’s been something that has been deeply rewarding for me. We’ve just been doing some incredible work this last year with the Kogi Mamus in La Sierra, in Colombia, and it’s, it’s we, we helped the Kogi to form a trust and purchase back their ancestral homelands, which were belonging to farmers prior.

And a lot has happened. They just got a UNESCO designation for the Kogi Wisdom as a sacred site and deemed as a sacred wisdom to be preserved, which is UNESCO is, is a United Nations designation. And I’m, I’m going to be continuing to support the Mamus and I’ve been doing a lot of work with nonprofit Partner in Gabon called Blessings of the Forest, and Blessings of the Forest is specifically planting sustainable iboga under Nagoya protocol, [00:49:00] which gives the benefits back to the Bwiti tribes.

And so they have built this relationship with 14 villages in Gabon outside of Libreville in the jungles where they’re planting sustainable iboga and we raised 105, 000 this year to support them and I’m excited to, you know, support them again in this coming year and Other than that, my, my Instagram is at Psychedelic Journeys.

Would love for people to stay updated and we’ll give you guys the publish date for my book, which I should have a publish date in the coming new year. And I know it will be out in 2023. And then our center will be open in 2024. 

Giancarlo: Amazing. Thank you very much, Trisha. And we’d love to have you back.

on the podcast for the psychedelic confessions, where we can pick more your heart and soul on your personal experience with all this medicine. Looking forward to see you again. 

Tricia: Me too. Thank you so [00:50:00] much.