Microdosing, Medicine & Meaning: Nurses on Healing Chronic Pain and Emotional Trauma with Amber King, April LeBlanc & Wanda Handel

[Music] Welcome to the Microdocene for Healing Podcast. I'm your host, Casey Garrett, and together we'll be discovering and learning from inspiring voices of healers, medicine keepers, and visionaries. Every episode will explore the world of health, vibrant wellness, and natural medicine for a new era of human society. Welcome to today's episode. [Music] All right. Welcome back to the podcast, everybody. I'm so, so excited today to dive in with three women that I love very much. Welcome Amber King, April the Blanc, and Wanda Handel. So today to set up this episode and what inspired it, when I was first stepping into this work about a year and or so, I was having breakfast with two of my friends, Victoria and Lisa, and they said, "Kissy, why do you never talk about your personal story?" When you're talking about this work, and I was like, "What do you mean?" And I was like, "Oh, they're right. They were totally right." And I had to sit with that, and I was like, "Why do I not share my personal story?" Because, you know, they of course knew me, and knew I had a really profound experience with the medicine, physically, spiritually. And mentally, all the ways, it just changed my life. Yet, I never really talked about my personal story. And when I sat with that, it was really illuminating, and I realized it was two things. One was, it was almost too good to be true. I was afraid. I was really afraid of like setting too high, I'm an expectation for people, that people would be disappointed in the medicine, would be disappointed in me. And so I was reluctant to share in that way. But also, I realized I wasn't properly valuing my own experience with the medicine. I was very fast to talk about what Paul Stammett's thought, or what John Hopkins was doing. And all of the societies version of an authority, and who can speak with authority to things. And I really realized that in that conversation, at breakfast that day, I was not honoring the medicine. I was not honoring the gift that I had been given when I hold back from sharing my personal story. And that is just as valuable as anything else. Fast forward six years later, I realized it's everything. It's everything. And now, when I'm speaking to new guides, it's the most important thing you have, is your personal relationship with the medicine. So don't discount that. It's so motivating and inspiring. And when people are coming new to practice, if you're new and then listing and kind of checking out practice for the first time, that's what people really care about. I found they want to share themselves with you. They want to hear your story and they want to know is the medicine, something that they can walk beside too. So I'm so excited to welcome these three women today who just so happened to all be nurses too, in various parts of the country to share their own really powerful profound stories with the medicine, what brought them to practice and how it is touched and transformed their lives today. So Amber, let's start off with you today. Tell us a little bit about you and your story. Hi, thank you so much for having me here. Casey, I am so honored. So my name is Amber King. I am a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner. And a lot of my nursing experience was as a labor and delivery nurse and a birth doula prior to this. My story, it does feel like it's been a lifetime of experiences that have brought me to this moment that really brought me to my knees to look for this moment. And it started, I think even before me, you know, like a lot of people, we have things that are passed down through our ancestry, through our lineages. And I had to deal with all of that because I didn't want to repeat the same cycles and it really brought me to a moment where I was struggling so deeply with my own mental health and my own physical health and I didn't understand how I could be working within the medical system as a nurse and understanding like the psychological aspects behind everything and still be suffering so much. And still not be seen or heard. And so it came to this moment where I had to really see and hear myself and through that deep discovery and wanting to go deeper. I came to plant medicine and to psilocybin specifically, which is such, oh my gosh, the way that it has opened my heart back to myself back to connection with other people back to the earth has been. Just so transformational and so yeah, that's just a little snippet of what brings me here today. Thank you. Beautiful April. How about you? Yeah, thank you, Casey. I like, I'm so glad to be here and yeah, this is amazing. Yeah, do I grew up in a pretty high demand religion on a farm in the Pacific Northwest with a lot of scarcity, limiting beliefs, neglect, trauma. And I think that kind of set me up to be an ICU nurse because I could navigate that trauma pretty easily and hold everything down. And it served me pretty well for a long time. I worked for 17 years in the pediatric ICU and could handle the chaos and anticipate needs and over function and push my emotions away until it didn't caught up with me. And I realized underneath all of that achievement and caretaking was this really deep limiting belief that I'm not enough that I'll never be good enough. And that's really what brought me to the medicine. I had done years of therapy, read tons of books. I lost a brother to psilocybin. So I had done a bunch after that and I had my own children and just realized that what I was doing wasn't working anymore. And one day I was listening to a podcast and I heard them talking about my credo singing. I was like, I need to try that. I did and it really changed my life. It took a long time for me to do that on my own. And so it was a really slow process and really interesting process. I found your podcast and that was like so aligned with everything I love. I am a gardener and I raise animals and being a nurse and loving plants of all kinds. And I was just blown away by how powerful psilocybin specifically was for my nervous system. I had been so dysregulated for so long that it really allowed me to step back and look at what I was reacting to people around me and really connect with my default mode network. And then I had a reprogrammed that I had in the after I left ice you had moved into integrative medicine. And so the tools I had learned in holistic nursing and integrative medicine was sound therapy and meditation really helped me with integration with the medicine and. Yeah, I'm here now doing this but trying to weave all of it together. So the medical system that I grew up in and worked in for so long and the integrative system and now all these plant allies that we have access to. Beautiful. Thank you. Wanda, how about you? I'm so happy to be here today with with all of you, especially with nurses. My story is sort of I didn't start with with psilocybin or any of the psychedelics. I was in 2019 kind of at the top of my career was working as a clinical nurse specialist and neuroscience. And I had reached a lot of achievements and had just opened a neuro clinical care unit here and it was an amazing time and I had great teams. Everything was was was really good and then it wasn't something just was off. I was was working with with some leaders that that I was really struggling to to work with after all this time of working with so many different people in a. Specialty of neuroscience and I just couldn't get through what some of those challenges were and for some reason I just was looking and I found in 2021 as we were coming out of COVID. I said I want to learn how to forage and I went on Facebook and I found ever Mont foraging website and there was a fantastic fungi global summit and I said wow I'm off that week I'm going to go and do that so I spent that week just being immersed in the fungal world. and how beautiful all of these these amazing organisms are and how much we depend on them being amazing for our earth, for our wellness, for for everything. And then I saw, you know, rolling griffits and and all of the other teachers in the psychedelic space talking about veterans and palliative care. And I'm like, wow, I'm kind of at the top of where I want to be. I don't think there's anything else I want to do where I am. What else could I do? And I started to do some work with teachers from that that conference. And that led me a sony. I led me to this deconstruction of who I was. And none of that had to do with medicine. It was more with ancestral wisdom and earth based practices and and coming into understanding who who I am in the world. And through that, I just let spirit guide me. And I said, I'm going to go to this plant initiation and I'm at Hawthorne and Hawthorne opened my heart. And in that session that weekend that we we were on this land in in Dan Viva Mont, we did a thing called green breath. And I moved so much energy and something within my nervous system that that plant and that ally just had I had a spontaneous healing of something that I had bitten my nails for 50 years of my life. And I have not bitten my nails since then. And that just sort of moved me further into, you know, adapt genetic mushrooms and different ways of thinking about things and working with other plants. And I said, I'm going to sign up for the synthesis institute. I feel like I want to work with psilocybin. I want to do this. And I know that I do not want to do this in a clinical setting. Can't do this in a clinical setting. This isn't where these medicines meet quickly. And I didn't know where nursing fell in that. How I would would navigate any of that. And to be honest, that's been a lonely time in trying to find your tribe of people. And then as I started to move through that process and meeting people internationally and working on a broad, I said, I'm working with these plants and everything. But why am I not working? Micro-dosing with mushrooms. This doesn't make any sense. So I started to do that work also. And it kind of pulls everything together that way. And just the subtleties of plant medicines in general, the subtleties of working with psilocybin as a micro-dosing medicine. It can just tell the soil, move things forward. And it has helped me to be more rounded and open to other people and to see in a more expansive way the things that are around me. I think that's sort of the biggest piece of, it's a very grounded and I can see more globally. Beautiful. Thank you all. Perfect segue. I loved the bite in your fingernail swanda. That's fantastic. On that thread, I would love to invite Amber and April. I know you both too have had profound physical healing and energy move through the body with the support of mushroom medicine. So can you talk a little bit about your experience with physical healing with the medicine? Amber, how about we start with you? Sure. Like you, I've been hesitant to share it because it just feels so miraculous to me. But also, wow, just the power of what belief and what we can do when we work well with these medicines. So there had been like a long lead up, like an entire life of lead up of like suppressing what I needed. And like setting aside how I regulated myself or rest or listening to myself. And that kind of came to a head whenever I became a mother. And that was so much more overwhelming for me than what my nervous system could hold at the time. And I wasn't quite expecting that. And so anxiety turned into severe depression turned into a chronic suicidal ideation. I'd already had my body flare up and kind of be like, "Hello, something's not quite right here through an autoimmune in my early 20s." But it had been kind of just pushing along and quietly unraveling underneath the surface until right after I graduated from becoming a PMH and P. It just shut down. I'd always had headaches every day. But it turned into severe migraines, nerve pain all over my body, severe fatigue. I was diagnosed eventually with Ellers Danlos Syndrome, a cult spinal tethered cord. There were days where I had trouble walking. I had so many muscle spasms and just nerve pain shooting down my legs. And I had trigeminal neuralgia, dysautonomias. You know, it would feel like I was going to faint every time I stood up. And I just didn't understand how I was supposed to live my life like that anymore. And so, of course, the suicidal ideation was still there. And I would just, there's the tree right outside my window. And I would stare at that tree for hours. Praying to something I didn't, I don't know what I was praying to, but I was just asking anything, everything for help. One day I went out there and I sat with that tree. And it's like every part of me remembered. And it's like I felt myself in my body for the first time in my life. I connected with mother earth. I was adopted. I wasn't raised by my mother. And so I remembered that I had a mother in mother earth and that she would always be there to support me and to guide me. And she gave me a good lesson that day. And she said, you have to stop abandoning yourself. Like if you want to be a cycle breaker, which is what you've been trying to do as a mother, you have to stop abandoning yourself, babe. And so I really took that to heart. And I started listening to myself. And I started prioritizing rest and just that internal knowing of what I needed. But things that I always was like, I'll leave it for tomorrow. Or you know, somebody else needs this for me. I need to do that. No. And at first I was like, this is so selfish. This feels so selfish. But I needed that time and that space to learn how to listen. And my nervous system really regulated a lot to the point where I thought that psilocybin that plant medicine could be a good next step for me. And then I went straight for the large journey. I was I was training with the integrative psychiatry institute at the time. And they had a training center in Oregon. And that was my first psychedelic experience in my life. I was so nervous. And they really did a beautiful job of creating a really safe container. And that that was that was such a transformational experience. I did have a hard time at first because I'm used to like gripping and grasping. And I had to learn how to just let go. Enjoy the ride. And once I did that, I saw my ancestors up by my head, which I'd always wanted to connect to my ancestors. But I never understood like how are people doing that? I don't know. And and then I saw them there with me. And that was so special. And I had a lot of pain going into that ceremony. And I realized that I had started like moving the energy in my body. And I could feel like what I needed to do. And I exclaimed, oh my gosh, I'm an alchemist. And I learned how to alchemize all of the pain that I had been experiencing. And I floated down a river. And my ancestors guided me. And the earth God is danced for me. And I felt so connected. Like I could see all of the connections between me and everybody else in that room. And just like to everything. And it was so wonderful to feel so small, but also like such an integral part of everything that I really like that. I took that with me and I practiced moving energy in my own body afterwards. I have come off of all of my medications. I rarely have to take an ibuprofen where that I used to carry it everywhere with me. And I don't even remember what it felt like to be depressed or to be really hard on myself and to pick myself apart like I used to do. It's just like, it's not a part of me anymore. And I've integrated all of these beautiful things of just feeling the sunshine on my face. I can really have moments where I just feel the sunshine and the joy in that. Or just being with my boys and not having all of that shame of how I showed up before, but I'm showing up now because I am present and centered and I just breathe it in and it is so healing. And so that was a large journey, but I've also had a beautiful, microdosing experience too, that I feel like they just add to each other. It's layers of remembering. And each time I explore something with these medicines, I get another thread back to myself and that's why I keep coming back and why I take the time to integrate it all and gosh, what a gift and what a gift to be in this work. Thank you, gorgeous. Thank you. April. Yeah, when I think about specifically my physical and emotional symptoms, it really came from years of grief that was held in me. Like, I feel like my pain was the result of grief and sadness and just not being able to express that and holding it in. I had very bad hip pain that would keep me awake at night. I had done all of the things, years of physical therapy and injections and MRIs and everyone was like, oh, it's just, we can't see anything wrong, but there's something, some inflammation. And also, I had had in the deep stressful part of my life when I was spending a lot of time in the ICU, I had had heart-e everything else that were from stress and was told that that wouldn't go away. It would come and go. I was put on blood pressure medication and it dropped my blood pressure too low. I also have hypermobility issues and that I think made the pain worse. I broke my back when my son was a little guy and have had pain from that. And so I was, before I found the medicine, plant medicine, I was in pain all the time. I just kind of learned to ignore it. And I think that disconnects us from our reality, from our body. So I was living in my head and not even really aware of anything happening below that. And when I started working with the medicine, I microdosed for almost nine months before I did anything larger. And I read all the books because I have to know everything. So I got every book I could find and read all that I could find. And the first thing I noticed is that things got worse but not worse as the energy started to move in me. I cried. I cried and I cried and I cried. And I had my mind body medicine practices and groups alongside. And I was just able to access deep emotions and I did body work with it. And I was able to move emotions in my hip and during the body work. And so everything just started building on itself as people showed up in my life to be with me and Casey showed up so I didn't feel alone. And I did her group as soon as I met her and felt so witnessed. And I went to Oregon also and did a clinical retreat. And that was beautiful. For me, I was held by the earth and just surrendered. And she held me and told me I could just let go and be cared for instead of holding everything for everyone else. And it was a beautiful experience. But I feel like every, it's something I keep coming back to. Like I can go without microdosing for months and months and months and then it's time. It's time to move something else. It's time to work in another group container and access a different part of me and start working with more of the liminal spaces and accessing more of my subconscious and more of my dreams. And so I think it's a really beautiful pattern. But I don't have pain anymore. And it's not like one dose changed that. It was like a slow process. Being able to rewire my default network made it to where I could walk more and I could exercise more. And I did more Kundalini practices. And I think all of that just built on itself. I also teach lifestyle medicine. So I was able to incorporate more of those lifestyle medicine practices as my hypervigilance and overactive nervous system settled down and quieted down and working with Aminita's and another little tool on top of that. So just all the little things just continue cycling through. It's like a rhythm. It's not something you just take every day for the rest of your life. I took Aminita Pressms too for years. And this is like, I don't anymore. I don't need that. So. Thank you. Manda, how about you? So for me, working in the hospital, I had had Zartek prescribed me by occupational medicine because there was something in the environment that I was allergic to. And I would walk into the unit and I would burst into hives. These big hives, I would just walk around and people like, are you OK? And like, why? And I would have this big hive. And I don't know what this is. And I stayed on that. I had lots of sinus issues, chronic sinusitis. I'd had surgery on my sinuses. And when I started to work with functional mushrooms, and I had this drink that I found that had cacao and it had a bunch of other adaptogens in it, I stopped taking pseudofed. Like the real pseudofed, I stopped requiring Zartek. The inflammation in my body just was going away and disappeared. I was breathing better and I was able to do more and feel better. And I couldn't make sense of that. So here I am as someone who die hard, science and evidence-based practice have my measuring stick out. And I can't make sense of this. I don't know what's going on. And then I realized I can put down the stick. I don't need to know why or how this is working. I just need to know that it is. And I think that that's one of the things that I take away from working with these medicines and thinking of myself as a bridge between science and other ways of knowing that there are things that science tells us. And there are things that you can't understand through science in any way. And that's what's going to be coming up in the weeks, the years ahead for all of us that are working in this space to make room for all of that. But I've seen lots of changes just from a mental standpoint of being able to let go and being less reactive to things that come up. And that was important when I was in that acute clinical setting where I was dealing with lots of things that and unsafe things that I might see that would bring something up in my nervous system. And I had to regulate in real time and do teaching and do that in a way that allowed me to be kind and warm in doing that so that people will learn. And over time, working with the medicine from a deep standpoint of my mental capacity to be able to see issues that I was having with people in my family to see those people in a different light and with compassion and to be able to share that with those people has been really important also, just the opening. And how much I'd, in the journeys that I've had, when I left the hospital, I went to Brazil and I was held by the Earth there and allowed to rest. At no time when you are a nurse, do they tell you it's okay to rest? And Mama Brazil said, "Rest, I'm here to nourish you." So those are really important times of working with this medicine for me. Beautiful. All of you. Thank you so, so much. And listening to all of you share, I know I got to point when my seizures had healed, then I could look back and hindsight and have so much compassion and all of my human body. Because we can see how our chronic pain and our conditions were our body's best way of taking care of us and protecting us, right? And so creative and inventive and doing the very best they can. It really brought me and hindsight into such a more loving relationship with my body and what it was capable of. And also the potential we all have to heal from all these things that we can't necessarily heal from, but did. Yeah, thank you so much. I'd love to dive into the connection with spirit and ancestors that you have had with the medicines. I know hearing Amber's story, I have so much in common with Amber's story. And I remember being 19 and being called by spirit. And I didn't know what to call it at the time. It was just very strong to move geographically. And I couldn't put my finger on why it was. It made absolutely no logical sense. It wasn't based on anything that was in my family. But I was drawn to move across the country. And it was there that I met my raky master and then I met my massage teacher. And it just it changed my life. And it was just that connection with the land. And I needed to go there to this place. So Amber, I'd love for you to share that story because I loved the story that Argentina inexplicably called you. And then how that came full circle later in life. Yeah. So background is I am from a 3000 person mill town in the middle of nowhere. I decided I just I met somebody that was from Argentina. Just one person for like 10 minutes. And I was like, I need to go there. And I listened to that. I'm still amazed at myself for listening to that. I was 17 going into my senior high school. Nobody had ever studied abroad from my high school before they were like, I don't I don't know, but we'll get you graduated somehow. And I didn't speak Spanish. I studied Latin in high school. And I go down there. And next to nothing about the country, I get off the airplane and I'm riding in the back of my host family's car. And I'm like, I don't understand anything like where am I? What's happening? And I learned so slowly, you know, I had to point at like a table and they'd say Mesa. And that's how I learned Spanish or Castichano as it is in Argentina. And that was probably the first time in my life where I had to be quiet and just witness and observe and put down the performance. And it was so incredible. But what's even more striking about it, so I studied abroad too. I've been to numerous countries, but Argentina kept calling me back. I went back again in college. I ended up living in Argentina for almost two years in my teens in early 20s. And come to find out, I just found my biological father two years ago, which is the whole story it itself, but he's from Chile. And I went to meet him and like I already knew so many of the undercurrents, Chile and Argentina are right beside each other. They share a lot of the same like food and they speak the same dialect of Spanish, the Castichano. I understood the flow of life there. And I felt so at home sitting across from him and it just amazed me that I had always imagined that I was really cut off from my intuition for most of my life until recently. But something spoke so loudly to me that there was no denying it. And that was one of them. And now I like you Wanda. I feel less drawn to the clinical aspects and I'm very personally drawn to the ceremonial. And as I have been really like diving into that just in the past couple of weeks, I've really gotten this poll to move back towards learning about my roots. My biological father told me that I have indigenous Mapuche ancestry from Chile. And a lot of the ways that I started practicing ceremony in my own life with myself are so reflective of the ways that the Mapuche work with the land and with plant spirits and just, you know, they're cosmology in the way that they see the world. And yeah, it definitely has brought me full circle in the most beautiful way. Thank you. April, how about you? Wow, that's like an interesting question and I love it. I come from farmers. That's my heritage on both sides. And I love the earth. And I went through a period of time where I was very resistant and like an education was more important, but I came back around. I have, I grew up on a farm in Washington state and I got married and left and went to Taiwan for a few years and was immersed in that culture and the traditions and medicine and blown away by acupuncture and Chinese herbs when I was there. And then have always dabbled in herbs and played with them and I've always had a huge garden and raised my own animals. I'm very, very connected to animals and I have been my whole life. I was kind of an odd child. I am dyslexic and did not fit in in the normal system. And so I made friends with animals and I've always been super attached to them and connected to them and had like a lot of wisdom from nature and I always felt like I wasn't alone. And so I've had animals around my whole life. I raise them. I work with kids and animals. I have therapy, animals and I teach polyvagal stuff at a care farm and love sharing the science of animal husbandry and earth and reciprocity and deport panic, farming with people because I feel like we are so disconnected. We are so disconnected from our food, from our bodies, from the earth and we feel alone. And a lot of our pain and suffering is because of that disconnection. And the Mycelial Network is a way to plug right back in. If you work with it and go in nature, so much healing can happen through that connection. I was called to Ireland last summer and went on a retreat and spent time at a beautiful yoga retreat and Ireland and then wandered around for five days by myself and had so much healing, realizing that my ancestors gave up Ireland to come to America and bring their connection to earth and to the land spirits with them. And that's part of who I am. That's part of what I'm connected to. There's a lot of suffering there too and a lot of grief and that's been part of the healing is to acknowledge that. That was part of my trip to Ireland is to witness the suffering that was there also connecting to the elders there. Yeah, I feel like the medicine and the plants have been my conduit to plug in to that connection. And that's what I try to share with everyone I work with and any space that I'm in is connecting back to that rhythm of nature. Thank you. When I think about ancestral wisdom, I think in my first narrow look at that, I thought about my grandparents and the people who are right around me and the more that I started to working, working ceremonially and working with altars and asking for the ancestors to support me. I came away with other things and other ways of thinking about that and understanding when I started to work with the plant medicine along with that because in those journeys, I had one journey that was really profound where I went to heaven and I remember I looked at my husband and I said, I'm in my mind, I'm taking my last breath, I'm nice to see you. I took that last breath and I went to heaven. and my best friend was there who is no longer with me. And I said, I can hear you, but why can't I see you? I can hear all the, it's so beautiful here, but I don't see anybody. And she said, oh, because we're just, our souls, we're only bodies on earth, we're just souls up here. So you can't really see us, but we're all here anyway. And in that process of being there and seeing how beautiful it was, but hearing like my childhood pets all there barking and realizing, oh my God, that's my dog. And they're all right here that I saw myself die numerous times and have different families around me in that process. And to feel the love of those people, mourning me as a dead body, was really, really interesting, but really moving in the same way. And I saw different lineages of people, from English people to Scottish people, to all different people in my ancestral pattern. And that's where I'm from, is Easter Europe and from Northern UK and Scotland. And not really knowing all of those things until you do a DNA test or something to feel, to understand what those parts of you are that draw you to a country or draw you to a specific type of work or just the energy of those ancestors. What I found in doing that work was that I could feel hands behind me. I don't know whose hands those are, but I know I'm supported in some way. And in another journey I've had, someone who is very important in my childhood, come and be in that journey and support me through a really difficult time to come to this place of compassion and have that person be a protector and to say, I was always there, I was always there to protect you, it's safe to go. So those ancestors support you in ways that you don't even know and you don't have to be somebody that you know. It's just somebody who is a beneficial ancestor to you to work with. - Amazing, all of you. Thank you, thank you for sharing. You know, a lot of people I know listening will go, how do I get that? (laughs) How do I get there? And we all can, we absolutely all can. One of the things I love to share, if this is what you're really oriented around practice, is to go back to your childhood 'cause there's always clues. You know, there's April with their hands in the dirt. (laughs) And yeah, we have these threads and these clues. I want to mine, that was really profound. When I was a little girl, I got really into beating. You know, I was, we probably all go through beating phases and I went there really prolonged beating phase. And I would always make these intricate beads, but I would always put two orange beads at the end of every piece that I did. It was like my little signature. (laughs) Six. But it was inexplicable. I was like, I would give them out. It's gifts to people. Like, that's a nice red bracelet. That's what the orange beads on the end. And I never knew, but it seemed when I was a young child, it's just like, that's the way it's done. That's the way it's done. And it wasn't until many years later, I was with my sister at a concert. We were in Portland, Oregon, and she had flown home and I had the afternoon free. I was just popping around Portland and I turned the corner. And there was this huge mural of an Egyptian exhibit at the Portland Museum. And I was like, oh, go in, check it out. And as soon as I went out, I was drawn to one particular hallway and it wound up being the jewelry hallway. And as soon as I was looking at these lit up cabinets and looking at the ordinate beaded jewelry, every single piece started and ended with an orange bead. And I was like, there it is. So it's like, we have these imprints on us always. And so that's often my prompt to people and then it's like, go back to childhood and like, what was that weird thing? Like, what did you spend hours doing and losing yourself in? That's usually your clue and your threat. Yeah, awesome. I would love to inquire if you three. So a lot of people who are just starting practice are in the portal. The portal of deep grief, big emotion, big energy moving, feeling really destabilized. On the other side of it, where we sit today, we're like, oh, it was all worth it. It was all worth it. But when you're in it, I would love and I've gotten to see a couple of you in it in the thick of it. Can you share a little bit of advice or guidance for people who might be newly stepping into this work? And they're in that place and they don't yet know what the other side of it looks like. Amber, let's start with you. Yeah, I have definitely held myself and been held through quite a bit of like things surfacing up. And you know, sometimes I did not know if I had the capacity to hold it, but I did. And I think one of the things that helped me hold all of that and be able to move through it was I had to start, before I even worked with psychedelics, I really had to start with building trust with myself. Like whenever I went into my first large journey, I held my own hands together. Like one hand is the hand that is terrified shitless. And that doesn't trust anything. And the other hand is like my future self, the one that's like, you've got this. I've got all of my ancestors hands piled up on my hand and I've got me. I've got me. And that took a while to build up, honestly. Like it took me being really honest with myself about the different like parts of myself, the parts of me that are wounded or want to fight or are really scared and taking those parts and holding them and hearing them and helping those parts feel safe. So looking at it through like an internal family systems lens was really helpful for me because it really helped me take all of those pieces of myself and make them all feel safe. And it is only through that safety as things have been coming up that I'm still like, I've got myself like you can hold this, it's okay. And be able to move through it because it can feel like a lot, especially when you're coming from a background with a lot of trauma, a lot of grief, shame, pain. Those things do sometimes feel like a lot coming back up but it is so worth it to release that and see what's on the other side. But it hasn't always just been myself. I do think that having like a supportive community, my husband is my anchor. I've built beautiful relationships with people that understand what the heck I'm talking about. And I can go to them in moments where I am just so raw and they help grow me too. And that day with the tree when I felt myself present in my body for that first time, I practiced that feeling. And it didn't happen very frequently at first. I'd still stay stuck up in my head all the time or just full of all these what-ifs and worries. But as I practiced coming back to that center, the core of me that I know myself to be, it became easier and easier to find that place of just loving myself, of trusting myself and knowing that I'm exactly doing what I meant to be doing and where I'm supposed to be. - Wonderful. - When I look back, it's crazy how the, everything has aligned. Like every tool I needed was there. I was in it when the next thing showed up and the next hard thing came to the surface. I feel like the medicine has brought me back to my own inner wisdom. And that really is what this practice is about. Instead of outsourcing to some other authority, outsourcing my worth, outsourcing my value, outsourcing roles, expectations, I've been able to come back to my own authentic self. And when safety came from not being authentic for your entire childhood, because you were weird, then that feels really scary. It's very scary. And so the mind body medicine practices, But we're really my anchor. So meditation, breath, work, sound, I'm a sound healing practitioner, I do online sound bass for people finding a place like that, nature, animals, community has been so helpful for me. It's a different community than I've ever experienced. Like amber shared, it's a community of witnesses instead of people trying to fix me. It's a community that will hold all my weirdness and love me anyway. And I found that was KC and there's so much value in doing these microdosing groups because each time I do what I still do, I'm still doing one right now, doing one with one dot. It's amazing. I have another community to witness me and I'm able to see myself in a new light and go deeper. And to my wounding because that's where my gifts are hiding. If they weren't gifts, it wouldn't hurt so bad. So I feel like if you can slow down and breathe that the things that you need will show up. If you are willing to act on the little, I heard something three times. That's my role. Here's something in my feed, in my community, in what I'm reading three times. I know I need to go a little deeper that there's something there for me. So I think that's like my biggest advice is finding connection and listening to your own intuition and connecting with that. And slow. Don't expect anything. I mean, the big shifts happen and they're scary, but there's always that slow time too. That pause. Silent, dark. Beautiful. Wanda. You went right where I go a lot. And that is the pause. It's something that I think about and moving fast towards something. Say you're in a patient room and you're running to the next thing as a nurse. There's a pause. If you have presence at that door before you go in the room, then you have the ability to be present with that patient or client and be patient and present with yourself to witness whatever it is, it's kind of up for you. Because there's so many things that can swirl around in your mind. And if you don't take that moment just to pause and maybe not make sense of it, but to allow yourself to be present and sit with it, then that allows you more space and more awareness to come forward. I always go to nature. One of the things that I still think is just wild is in that time frame, I started to sleep outside. And on the sleeping porch, I started to do it year-round. There's the rhythms of nature that hold you. And so finding practices that are like that, that, you know, waking to the sunrise, to the birds, pausing at the bed in the morning just to say, "Good morning, Dave. I'm here with you and I'm ready for whatever you bring me." Those types of things, as you're doing your morning routine or you can use that as part of your ritual, all of those things just help you come closer to who you are, whether it's exercise, whether it's eating, you know, something that helps to calm you in some beautiful way, feeling your senses and what's around you. All is helpful to me also in grounding. I think that's what's coming up for me right now. Wonderful. Thank you, all of you. So much, beautiful. I'd love to open it up for you guys to share how to find you. So we're to find you what you're excited about and working on right now. And if there's any particular people like you love to support in this practice, yeah, Amber, let's start with you. Yeah. Right now, I am currently in just the most delicious, like we were talking about paws. I, oh my goodness, I just want to eat it up. It is just full of rest and unraveling and deep exploration and integration. And I continue growing as a ceremonialist and a plant medicine guide through my mentors, AC being one of them. And the relationships that I'm building with these plant medicines that I'm working with is so precious and so sacred to me that I am taking my sweet time. They speak to me more clearly in the slowing down, like we've been saying, I, I can hear the spirits of these plants more clearly when I am just breathing and taking it slow. And honestly, there's so much more to this work than I originally thought when I stepped on to this path, it is so rich and deep and it's about building for me a reciprocal relationship with the land and the plant medicines and it's about learning their language and how they speak to us and knowing how to hold sacred space with integrity. And so as much as I would love to zoom through this and be on the other side, I also realized that this moment that I'm in right now where I slow down and breathe and take all of that into my being, that's what's going to keep me grounded and respectful to these medicines and to the practices and the people that help them so beautifully for so long before we knew anything about it. So that's what I'm working on and you can find me on Instagram at the whole Amber King. I haven't posted anything. I'm going to try this podcast was one of my first tiptoes into being seen. So thank you so much, Casey, for giving me such a beautiful, safe place to feel like I can be my full self, the whole Amber King. And the people that I love to work with the most are, you know, I've been through so much in my life and I love to work with people that are kind of messy and have a lot behind them. I get it. I get it and I can hold that with them as well and walk along beside them as they go through their journey. So yeah, thank you so much. And I just want to put that down as a marker and honor you because what you just shared, I think no matter how long you're doing this work, it's so important to take those moments, those blessed moments in between of integration time and deep rest and deep reflection. Those never and so I love that you name that. So thank you so much. Yeah, so I'm kind of coming out of my little silent space and I do a lot of the mind body classes online. So I did them. I've done them in person for six years with people with chronic disease and now I'm really enjoying it online space because I get people from all over everywhere, which is amazing. And I think it's a really powerful way to learn integration. And I think that's one thing that's really missing in a lot of these spaces is really deep integration skills and it's a place container to be witnessed in in your authentic beauty through this process. So I offer those. I do a ton of things in the community that are with animals and reciprocity and land and plants and I love sharing that with anyone who will listen. And then I also do coaching nurse coaching online. So I'm a board certified nurse coach and that's at the rhythms within and you can find me there. I love working with narrow, spicy, diverse people because I am one of them and my teletron R2 and anyone who wants to really work with nature on a deep level, that's part of my practice and where I lead people. So fabulous. Thank you. Thank you. So, yes, the space to share. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Wanda, how are you? So I left the hospital in 2023 and I opened my own business called Annamari Wellness and in that practice, I offer breath work and voice activation sound healing and rakey and other practices with ancestral wisdom and nature practices. So So I do psychedelic integration and harm reduction education as well and I have a six week one on one microdosing collaborative to work with others in that space. And then also in June I'll be doing a six week group session for reconnection to self nature and antestara wisdom that will have you know alter making and energetic hygiene and nature practices for grounding and presence along with that that journey of microdosing. So that will come up on my website soon as well. The other really kind of hot and fun thing is that we have a new nonprofit called Sparking Vermont. It's a group of seven of us women who are in society of psychedelic advocacy research and knowledge and we're licensed clinicians, educators and researchers who are committed to advancing thoughtful ethical and accessible community education on psychedelics and psychedelic care. So we're just rolling out our first talks now in the community and we're really excited about helping to see what our local community wants and needs and to be able to shape what that could look like in the state of Vermont. So that's really exciting work and really dovetails with what I love about being a nurse and the education components of that. So a lot of my nursing falls right into that community and public education. So that's Sparking Vermont that's on Facebook Instagram as well. And all the places on Facebook with animal wellness and LinkedIn as well. Fabulous. Thank you so much. And all of you listening to New England that are like scrambling for a pen right now to write down. I see you. We'll put it on the show notes for you. So we'll put all these links for everybody down so you can capture them later when you're done listening. So thank you three. So much for such a beautiful conversation and for your beautiful work. Yeah, appreciate you three. All right. Thank you so much for listening everybody. Thanks for being here and we'll see you back in just a couple weeks. Bye everybody. Thank you for listening to the Microdosing for Healing Podcast. Ready to take the next step? Please visit us online at microdosingforhealing.com. There you'll find lots of information about our global community, professional training programs, and upcoming immersions. See you there.