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The Psychedelic Psychologist is a conversational-style podcast hosted by Dr. Ryan Westrum with clients and guests who use talk therapy to integrate Psychedelic experiences for healing and personal transformation. Tune in to hear people’s experiences, breakthroughs and stories of healing addiction, depression, and trauma through Psychedelics. Dr. Ryan Westrum gracefully and empathetically narrates real therapy sessions with people in their most vulnerable and transformational moments.
I would like to invite
you to take a moment.
This invitation is an opportunity
to plant something.
Breathing in and breathing out,
the idea of planting something
in order to grow, germinate, and nurture.
Breathing in and breathing out,
I invite you to consider the
relationship of planting something.
Letting your mind wander in what
it is that you're looking to grow,
and does that represent
What you are planting.
Breathing in and breathing
out, taking a moment
to allow the wonder filled body to
explore the germination process of
everything that you are lying as seeds.
Breathing in and breathing out,
developing deeper and deeper trust
in the nurturing of the growing.
Tending to and watching what develops.
Once again, coming back to your
breath, this breath, breathing
in and breathing out, pausing
to understand all the stages
from the seed, to the growing, to the
planting, and just like all things
psychedelic, nothing being linear.
Breathing in once again and
breathing out, encouraging you
now to tend to the nurturing.
Nurturing of the relationship,
nurturing of the symbiotic exchange.
and deeply understanding your
commitment to grow and to see through.
Breathing in and breathing out
into this nurturing experience.
Now letting yourself soften, breathing
into the body, finding grounding,
breathing into the heart, finding
center, and breathing into the
thoughts, And finding the witness.
Now distilling your focus
on what you have planted
and what you tend to grow.
Hi, it's Ryan.
Welcome to your weekly dose of the
Psychedelic Psychologist, where I
invite my guests to share stories
about their psychedelic experiences.
We cover a variety of topics
from overcoming addiction and
severe depression to finding
wholeness and spiritual emergence.
In a deep sense of reverence,
honor, and humility, I'm so
grateful to have Kaya join me.
Kaya, it's good to hear your voice.
It's good to see you.
How are you coming in?
Amazing.
All things germinating,
all things planted.
Did you have an intuition of when
you accepted plant medicine of
what you knew you were planting?
I did.
I did have an intuition, although
I, I don't feel like I could have
seen all the subtleties
and the details of it.
But I could feel the profundity
of it on the horizon.
Yeah, you said something really,
remarkable there is there was a nuance
of what you were intending to grow
and develop, but the nuances, are they
surprising you or are they reaffirming
and reassuring you at this moment?
The nuances are deeply reassuring
and surprising all at once.
Yeah.
Unpack that for me.
What's hitting, you at this moment, as
you're saying that wonderful paradox.
I think when I was
preparing for the journey to work
with plant medicine, I had an initial
feeling inside of my body of the
bigness of what I would be uncovering.
There were themes that were floating
around for me that were very
obvious that I wanted to explore
that had been coming forward in my
dreams and my life prior to that.
So there wasn't a surprise, when these
themes started coming to the surface after
working with medicines on the other side.
And yet, once I started unfolding
the different avenues, I could
have never anticipated all of the
subtleties that would be inside of
them, like little magical treasures.
I couldn't have thought of them or even,
I couldn't have seen it all.
I didn't have the tools at the time
or the lens to see it like I do now.
And contributing it to your deep
awareness and also your reverence,
from my vantage point, knowing how
much I've walked with you, it's
not a path that you take passively.
It's in germinating and
growing and cultivating.
There is a nurturing.
Can you say what your practice of
nurturing is, this spiritual path?
I love this question.
I feel like coming into nurturing, a
nurturing of self, is a theme that's
really opening for me right now.
Learning how to mother myself, how to
father myself, sister, brother myself.
How to be in community with self.
So unpacking nurturing for me has been,
how do I grow compassion for myself?
How do I love self?
How do I nurture myself in
every day and every moment?
What does that look like for me?
For me, nurturing means allowing myself
to have a lot of sovereignty in my life.
Yeah, that sovereignty, this idea that
you get autonomy and get to listen to
what serves you, what serves me, and this.
Experience.
So that nurturing can be deeply
unique for anybody from going
slower from putting things down.
But
this idea of nurturing,
it's conducive to healing.
No, it is the healing.
I think what just came forward when you
were sharing was this idea of play and
that nurturing is indeed unique to each
individual, like the unique medicine
that we all are seeking or yearning for.
The path for me of uncovering
what nurturing, what, what brand,
what specific brand of nurturing
I need in every moment and every
now moment, every present moment.
And that's been a really beautiful
journey of uncovering exactly
what nurturing looks like for me,
autonomy, giving myself space.
allowing myself a lot of
room to play, to create,
to slow down a lot more in my
life, to see that play is truly
the most important medicine for me.
Yeah.
And this, as I listened to you
and witness you express this, I'm
overcome by the idea of listening.
You, you've said listening a couple
of times and, has that come through?
Did that come through as you took
the invitation to plant medicine?
Has listening always been a part of
your skill set to watch and witness
what's alive, what needs attention.
Can you speak to me about
your practice of listening?
I love this question.
I have always been, a very deep
observer, listener, watcher,
from the very beginning.
It's my jam.
It's my favorite thing in life.
I think developing that skill of
listening to the things around
me, listening inside of myself.
I had a lot of opportunity from
a very young age to be very with
myself in a lot of situations.
for a long period of time, trying to sift
through a lot of chaotic outside voices.
So it really forced me to listen to the
only space that I had that was stable.
So I learned from a very young
age, the language of my own body,
the language of my own experience.
I learned to listen and pay attention
to it and gain the wisdom from it.
That makes sense.
Like the list, the sort of the
language of your own body, it's
like learning a foreign language.
And I still, to this day, have
that same fire, if not more,
to continually be listening.
Thank you so much.
And what's the emotion coming up right
now as you're expressing that and
confirming your devotion to listening?
It feels so good.
It feels like, trusting myself.
Yeah.
Right.
And that's what I'm witnessing, is
this idea of When we, when I, when the
collective can listen, we're capable
of then making informed decisions
that feel safe and appropriate.
Yes.
In alignment with self in every moment.
And so we're like organically
finding words such as nurturing,
germinating, listening, all as
it relates to planting something.
What have you really been surprised
at that's come through your
intimate work with plant medicine?
All of it.
Absolutely all of it.
I laugh because it's
,
it's,, not this like
blissed out experience.
Like everything that's come since has
been just the most exquisite thing.
It's been very real.
It's been very wide and
far reaching and deep.
I think what's been surprising
is, uncovering my capacity.
I truly, when I started this journey,
felt like a deeply broken individual.
I felt like I had been on a path of
healing since I was very young, like
working with a therapist for the
first time when I was 13 and pretty
much consistently working on myself.
Since then and got to
this place where I felt
like I was really out of options.
I had tried a lot of different
things and I really am someone
that has a lot of discipline.
So it was deeply humbling and almost
fragmenting to me to know how hard I work.
And to be like, fuck, I'm
really struggling still.
And on the other side, what's been seeded
and what's been growing or things that
I've struggled with for a long time
and have found peace or wholeness
or clarity, it's not that things
were fixed or wiped away or like the
canvas is clean, so to speak, it's
just, I fucking understand it more.
And that brings me a sense of.
safety and trust in self because I've
been watching myself this whole time.
Yeah, it's been unfolding for you and
one of the things I'm really impressed by
and just want to advocate is your ability
to listen in between big experiences
and being open and grounded in the path
of walking with the medicine, but not
needing the medicine in system, right?
That it's, it's what has been taught
to us through the medicines and
then really incorporating that and
being open to all of the things
that come into our periphery.
Mm hmm.
Yeah.
I, I love what you shared and you use
the word wall and I'm just I'm gonna
play jazz with you here for a minute.
I, I actually walk miles every day.
It's part of my spiritual practice.
It's not even a movement practice.
It's honestly how I can continue
being here every day is by literally
putting one foot in front of the other.
It's so fucking simple.
I do it every day without
shoes, rain or shine.
I walk, and that's what I do between
medicine experiences, what I do every day.
It's
deeply powerful, and it allows me the
space within my heart, within my head,
my whole energy field, to process
the massive amounts of information
that I'm observing and receiving.
At every moment, every day.
Yeah.
And the beauty in that, and can you
tell me a little bit more of the value
of that processing as you get clearer
with the clear, do you see a sense
that it becomes more crystallized,
the more space you have to process?
Yes.
Yes.
I love that you asked this,
the more space that I have to
process it, the more crystallized.
The more in trust with self, gnosis of
self, and in my experience, especially
when I was younger and didn't have
these same tools of creating space or
personal boundaries for my own energy,
my, my emotional energy, my spirit,
without that space, without that practice
and being a being that receives a lot of
information, often, it made me very sick.
Thanks.
It's very challenging to physically
actually be here, physical ailments,
spiritual, mental challenges
like up and down my entire life.
I cannot really having the
tools to sift through it all.
But having a heart that
just can't close here.
Right.
You used the term and
I'm so humbled by it.
Thank you for the vulnerability and
I am in witness to you right now.
Gnosis,
I see you and feel you right now.
What's alive in you.
And you know, it's, it's an unpack
the word for me, but I believe it's
your intern knowing, is that correct?
It is.
It is your intern knowing it's
well, it's the language of self,
like we spoke about earlier.
It's.
It's that listening, it's the observing
around you, but also in your inner
landscape or in my inner landscape.
For me, no, this is trust of self.
It's beyond being right or wrong.
It's just.
Trusting, trusting that even if it is
quote unquote wrong, it's there for me.
It's there for you.
Yeah.
It's there for me.
So, in the art of being super serious,
not serious, maybe we could maybe make a
t shirt of the inner standing of gnosis.
One side will be inner standing
instead of understanding, the other
side we'll just put the word gnosis
and make people wonder what it is.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
They have to be tie dye.
Of course.
I appreciate the laughter, the
levity, the levity in developing and
planting takes patience too, right?
So we're not only adding nurturing,
reflection, planting, intentional
setting, listening takes patience.
Can you speak to me about your
patient psychedelic journey, your
healing journey on this planet?
Yeah, it's really been unfolding since
the moment I opened my eyes here, like
I can't really even say, Oh, the minute
that I started working with plant
medicine, that's when my journey began.
If I pull the threads, they go all the way
back, if not further into other lifetimes.
But if we're just talking about
the embodied here and now.
The process has been my entire life.
I remember being a very wide eyed child.
I have memories going back from very,
very young, like before I was even a year
old and remember just deeply observing my
surroundings like so deeply that I could
remember details of Like the wood grain
on the slats of my crib, like no joke.
I don't know why I have such a deep
ability to see things like that and to
hold on to them, but I find it to be
a gift that I don't want to squander.
And.
I think this journey has just
been a natural progression of
that spark inside of myself.
That's extremely genuine.
Thank you.
the genuineness of it and
just the intentionality.
Can you say more about that?
You drew me in.
Yeah, I
it's just a curiosity.
It's like a deep curiosity, not for more,
like what's better, what's greener on
the other side, but What's underneath it?
Now, what's underneath that?
No, what's deeper than that?
What's wider than that?
What's around the corner from that?
Does that make sense?
It's sort of been my, My
MO in my life with myself.
Speak to me when you do get into
these spaces of curiosity What what
anchors you what keeps you grounded?
Well, what gives you permission to fly?
How do you?
Walk with such a reverence of
one foot in and one foot out
What's coming to me, it's like a rhythm,
like a beat, like having a foot in
like my day to day, the mundane, the
beauty in the mundane keeps me grounded.
And it also allows me to build space
within my, like, let's just give
an example of like a, a day to day.
I get to build a lot of space in my day.
I work, I intentionally work to build a
lot of space in my day to day, so that
I can fly, I can journey, I can vision,
active imagination, because that's just
as important as Getting in the car,
taking care of my responsibilities with my
children, with my family, what have you.
And then having the space to take a
couple mile walk with my bare feet on
the ground is just as fucking important
as any of the other mundane things.
daily magical tasks that I have the gift
of, you know, tending in this lifetime.
Thank you.
Speaking on behalf of, this person that
I might know that knows this person that
is always curious about the grounding
cords, what do we do to stay grounded
in the psychedelic realms of healing?
How, how does one, what's the PSA you
offer to the commitment to grounding
this in such a astral therapy.
Well, I know we've been talking
about it a couple of times, so I'm
just going to throw it out again.
Walk.
It's so simple.
Walking, moving, locomoting
across the earth.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Staying connected to the earth.
I agree.
Whatever way feels authentic for oneself.
And for me, that's movement.
I love to put my feet
on the ground every day.
I love to sense the
temperature of the day.
I love to know like what time of
day my body wants to be outside,
what time it's safe to be outside.
It's too hot.
It's too cold.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Tapping into the five senses and the
grounding and the commitment to listening
again, I hear that's how I'm translating
that is just knowing what your body,
your knowest of what grounds you.
Yeah.
The movement.
And.
Dancing, journaling.
I have such a love affair with writing
and I write all day, every day.
I have a beautiful writing practice in
the morning where I write at least three
pages, like as soon as I open my eyes,
it's been a deeply, deeply profound
experience to dedicate myself to that.
It's allowed me to strengthen that.
Gnosis with self and understanding
the language of myself even better.
I'm allow, I'm allowing myself to write
in different, like, right when I wake up
out of a dream state, I love being able to
go and read my writing from those states.
I find a lot of treasures within
that, and I find a lot of grounding
in the process of writing in general.
One of the things that, I'm remarking
on as I'm witnessing you is this idea
that many of the ways that you tap into
the expanded states of consciousness
have nothing to do with taking,, any
kind of supplement or plant medicine
that it's really been wonderful breath
of fresh air that you're tapping into
the expansive without needing or talking
about ingesting mushrooms or taking
an ayahuasca journey or eating MDMA.
Can you say more than that?
It's for me, there's this rhythm
of like coming to the medicine with
reference, certain times or seasons.
And then in between that, it's Okay.
Boots on the ground.
I'm an embodied being here.
What can I do?
That's within my sphere every day.
That's simple that I can easily reach
for and dedicate myself to that.
That was my thought process.
I really had to think about it.
What is, what is simple?
What's within my reach, but I'm not
going to make excuses about, cool.
I have, two feet, so
I'll just walk every day.
No problem.
Sweet.
I have a hand.
I love to write.
So I'll just write.
Not an issue.
Simple.
Yeah, simple is key.
Yes.
Beyond the sense of being embodied, what
is Kaia doing to be gentle with herself?
I'm really inviting in a
sense of play in this season.
Really allowing myself to
play, to create, to have fun.
That's been,
difficult for me in my life.
I've worked really hard in my life to
have it, and then as soon as I get it, I
find ways not to allow myself to have it.
And I'm really enjoying challenging
myself to do things differently.
And in that it's so simple.
There's like a release of just playing.
So I'm riding my bike a lot this summer.
I'm walking, I'm dancing, I'm riding.
I'm finding a lot of pockets of time where
I can do just that, where I can just play.
Thank you.
The journey that I've been humbled
to be on with you has been grateful.
I've learned so much and I'm so humbled
by what you shared today and appreciative.
Thank you.
Thank you.