Zoe Helene

welcome everybody to psychedelics today joe here and on the show we have zoe helena psychedelic feminist and founder of cosmic sister thank you for joining us hi thank you for having me on this podcast it's great we are happy to have you because you seem to have made quite the impact in the world of psychedelics with um feminism it's kind of obvious that a lot of these conferences that women are underrepresented and it's you know it's not a simple cause right it's multiple causes and um there's also a lot of dangerous stuff happening in the amazon that you've covered extensively already elsewhere um i do work with women and there are different elements of how i see psychedelic feminism from within our space i like to call it the psychedelic space or community space and i think it's a very important space for us to be able to work with women and there are different elements of how i see psychedelic feminism from within our space i like to call it the psychedelic space or community space and i think it's a very important space for us to be able to work with women and there are different elements of how i see or or movement if you like it's certainly not an industry so we don't want to call it that that would be bad but there yeah i mean some of these psychedelic conferences i've been to i would look up there and i wasn't alone in this and sort of be amazed that there were so many more men than women up on the stage but that also can be a little more complicated than men not thinking about it and not inviting as many women women also tend to be a little more shy with getting up there it's part of our socialization so we too need to step up to the plate we're doing that it's a lot better so since i started noticing that i have to say i have to give kudos to some of the guys running these um conferences as well as some of the fabulous women who are really doing well bringing more women's voices onto the scene so it is really improving that's the good news that's good i'm glad i'm glad it appears that way on our show we've we had the initial goal because of that issue of we had the initial goal of bringing more women voices onto the scene so it is really trying to do a straight 50 50 split between men and women and we haven't done too well racially but it's an underrepresented field for sure racially but we're going to work on that if we can race is a very very tricky subject yeah very very tricky so we'll get back to that later yeah so yeah but gender is also tricky today because really it's like just splitting people into male and female is also tricky so i like to say to people i'm i'm i'm focused on something that i have a calling for and i have knowledge and understanding personal experience also in and that is being female being born female and raised female in a male dominated culture so that clarifies it and that doesn't mean that other people's experiences or uh challenges are less important than the ones i'm working on it just means this is what i'm focused on currently as a professional and that's it's just where i found myself it doesn't mean that's where i will be 10 years from now but it's where i am now so yeah we have a very um we have our own unique set of experiences to to work on and working on them in the medicine space um in the ayahuasca scene or whatever other natural psychedelics you want to be exploring that's where i have found my work and it's a really interesting field so i would like to just briefly well i i know you've covered it extensively elsewhere and we've talked about it a lot on the show but just the general help around trying to be uh safer with ayahuasca maybe specifically um as a lady like what what kind of concerns might might a lady have going in and then we can get into some other subjects if we can i am 53 years old so you know i'm not really in the sort of zone where i would be so much of a um a predator's victim i wouldn't fall prey to that in the same way although peru is different i have to say they don't see older women in the same way as our culture does but i have been a younger woman and i certainly have dealt with it in the past in other parts of my life and i know what it is i've been there i've been an attractive younger woman who was vulnerable to sexual predators i've been naive i've been confident overconfident thinking that i was safe when i wasn't i've been through many of those experiences luckily i have never been raped and i do like to see people who are not and i do like to see people who are not and i do like to say that because so many women have been but i certainly came close to it uh at least four different occasions and those memories are extremely strong in my mind and i learned from each experience some of the things not to do i think one of the things that's really important when talking about this is victim blame because we're not doing that that is not what i'm doing when i'm talking about things you can do to try to protect yourself sometimes something can't be helped and that's really tragic but that's the truth also but you can also educate yourself inform yourself and and make choices that are safer so you know i like to bring this up even though it's not about ayahuasca but it's something that really taught me something important about you know uh paying attention to where i was and what i was doing and my role in my own sexual safety when i was about 23 i think maybe even 22 i was in college i was working in um i was getting a degree in theater and we were doing a lot of work and we were doing a lot of work and we were pulling an all-nighter which was typical but i was exhausted and i needed to be on stage the next day so i needed to you know get some sleep so i i felt bad leaving my colleagues there because they were going to pull an all-nighter and i wasn't um so my it was a commuter campus my car was very very far away on on the lot and there were lights but it was really empty other than my car way way way way in the distance so i i still felt terrible about asking people to walk me to my car and all these different things that i've been sort of taught were telling me don't do it don't do it this is dangerous but i did it anyway because i didn't feel right asking people to take time to walk me to my my car i made a mistake and i knew it the moment i walked out i actually had it in my mind which is so amazing i thought this my god something could happen any day somebody could literally walk out of that gutter and it says this i manifested that person because they did come out of that gutter in front of me in the dark a man walked out of the gutter and he was definitely not right in the head and long story short i managed to get away i talked to the guy i had had experience with people with severe mental um illnesses and i identified him as that right away and was able to speak to him like he was a patient until i got to my car i offered him a ride i said let me open the car from inside you go around that place and i said okay i'm going to go to my car and i said okay i'm going to go to my car and i get in and he did um and then i drove off but he absolutely could have pulled me into the forest and i may never have been heard of again so that taught me a lot and i tell young women all the time i tell them that story do not be shy to ask somebody to walk you to your room to your car don't walk alone at night especially that said two other times in my life were in broad daylight in public spaces so you just don't know it's way worse than most people think i think that that full-on rape is a lot more common than people want to admit so and it's been my experience within my friends and my my family the women in my family and and just many many women i we meet i think it's way more than one out of four i think it's more like three out of five that's a lot so that said when you're dealing with something like iowa And we'll keep it on ayahuasca for now. You're also adding to the normal situation this spiritual retreat and a psychedelic medicine. So a state that's very altered, you're altered. And the whole idea is to alter that state. And the whole idea is to put your trust in the medicine and really go there. You can't be holding back. So you need a really safe space. You need to know you're safe. And for women, you know, we do have special circumstances. So from that perspective, I just want to talk a little bit about the dieta in the Shipibo tradition. And I'm guessing you know about that, right? Yeah, a little bit. Okay, well, the concept for anybody who doesn't know is pretty much that you lay off certain things, substances and sex. And you lay off of those for a little while for reasons that, you know, we don't fully understand. But they've been around for a long time. And those shamans know that from experience. And they have, you know, they've come to these conclusions over hundreds of years. We don't even know how long. And they make a lot of sense. So, I mean, some of them are a little silly with the, you know, no salt, no sugar, no oil. And, you know, every different center has their own diets for food. And that's another conversation. But the sex diet, the no sex diet or dieta, it makes a lot of sense. So, you've got several things going on here. If you're a young woman who is going to the Amazon or going anywhere to do ayahuasca, okay, to experience ayahuasca for your own personal growth, healing, inspiration, revelation, whatever it is, you need to know you're going to be safe. And I think it's very, very important to pay attention to the dieta when it comes to sex. I think it's important for men, too. And I'm very sex positive. I was not. brought up in a repressed sexual household i'm you know i've been pretty open about it my whole life i've had a great life with that i don't want to go into that you know the details in this podcast but i've had a great sex life okay and i do i have you know i'm not shy that way so it's not about sex being bad or shameful or anything like that it's a wonderful part of life it's and it's it's really it's one of the great parts of life so it's not about that it's more about sex is complicated and our culture is complicated around sex so sometimes we are holding social programmings or experiences that have shaped us sexually that we're not even aware of some of them we are you know and they and they also have to do with our relationship dynamics with sexuality so when you're in when you're going into the ayahuasca space to really work on yourself it's you don't want to mix everything up does that make any sense you know if you're having sex at the same time you're at a retreat maybe with your boyfriend you know that somebody that you have great sex with that you have a wonderful sexual relationship with it's still a good idea to lay it lay off the sex until you're out of that situation because you may get to something inside yourself that you don't even know about that is in fact part of your dynamic in the relationship that you could work on it's complicated you know we are women and men too we're both bombarded by you know entertainment media advertising of sexual imagery sexual ideas we don't even know who we are half the time with that so it's hard to find a totally healthy place in that in that culture so in this space you want to be clear of that you want to just say you know what i'm going to set that aside i'm just going to put it aside for a little bit of time and i can do that it'll be there when i get home again right you know we can survive a couple of weeks and i really think you know they all say before at least a week i say longer if you can do it depending on who you are and what you're working on if you're working on a rape wait wait a little longer you know give it give yourself even longer if you're working on you know you're you're been you know brought up in a very repressed sexual environment and you're having problems with you know being having too much sex with people maybe you know that kind of thing give yourself even longer treat it as something somewhat like an addiction even if that's your problem you know you're working on a rape wait wait a little longer you know give it give yourself even longer whoever you are every individual is different is my point but when you're going into this space you want to be clear of that and you might even find this is the irony of it you might even find that ayahuasca um heightens your sexuality actually makes you horny and i've talked to others and and other people have had this experience too there's nothing wrong with that but that doesn't mean you go back to your tombo and you sleep with your you know tombo mate or worse the shaman yeah and that's another conversation so this is where you have to get into the being careful of with victim blame because it's a really tricky subject i think what what i try to do is empower women to know what they're getting into before they go to really make that decision with themselves i will not sleep with the shaman now look rape is rape that is something else you're dragged into a you know the jungle or you're drugged and raped you can't you have no control over that but you do have control over your choices you do and you have control you can say no and if you can't say no because of physical force that's rape you see what i'm saying you can have responsibility and you need to take responsibility so one of the things you can do before you go to an ayahuasca retreat is agree make an agreement with yourself i am going to stick to the diet i am not going to engage in sexual activities even if i find out that i'm not going to find somebody extremely hot no i'm not going to do it even if i meet my soulmate no i'm not going to do it i'll do it later you can wait you can wait and you should wait if it's really your soulmate it can it can wait they'll be around they'll be around they'll be around and you have to make that commitment to yourself and then if you don't you're breaking your own promises and you need to really think about that whether you get in trouble or not you need to think about the fact that you went all the way to the amazon you drank a sacred medicine you were in the medicine and then you broke your own diet why and that is what i think you need to bring up in the medicine space the next night why did i break my own promise to myself because i believe that if you do then there's something there you need to look at sexually yeah so this is interesting the the way i'm understanding it is that um you know sex can bring up a lot of these like personal dynamics and whatnot for a person um i've always heard with the dieta too like no sex because uh say ayahuasca like has this jealousy to it and then um that that's also why is that part of i don't know what you're taking i mean you know somebody can believe what they like but i i don't i would not i don't agree with that i think that it's just simply more about you know setting that aside so that you can be clear to look at other things including your own sexuality you know you're going to start some people talk about even touching other people in the medicine space and you know that your energy you can get the energy from the other person yada yada yada maybe maybe not but with sex definitely and there's like here's a here's an example many women are programmed in our culture even if it's subtle to serve men sexually it's everywhere most movies have a prostitute or more than one prostitute many have strippers all these women are sexually serving males then this concept of hooking up which is prevalent in the younger generations um is primarily for males to be served by women usually behind the gym it's a blow job or whatever that's a servant position that's a sexual service position for a female that is so prevalent in our culture that most women somewhere in there have that inside them so all the more reason if you're looking to empower and liberate yourself sexually you want to look at that look at that sort of sexuality in the medicine space but don't engage in sexual activities until you're home and you've had some time to integrate and the idea is to be healthy so that that's what i think it's about but back back to like for the women being in the medicine space being safer you know that's this is i'm talking about women who have complete control over their situation and sometimes that's not so i mean you you hear these stories like with lily ross you know she was given toei okay so that's something you can avoid you can specifically say what's in the brew and know what's in the brew and just say no to toei now that says i know that at blue morphine they put a little teeny bit in it's artfully brewed and it's beautiful brew so a little teeny bit yeah maybe with a with a trusted shaman okay but there's no need for it ayahuasca traditional ayahuasca with the two primary plants is perfectly fine you will get a very powerful journey out of that and there's no need for anything else and can you describe what toei is for people that are listening that don't know anything about it well toei is a particular plant that can put you in a in altered state that's a it can be quite nightmarish and it's a little bit like a date rape drug it can be used to in that way so it it is a sacred plant and it is used in potions and it's it's almost like a poison in a way because it it puts you in such a negative place so this is something that predators can use um to to put men and women into a state where they have control psychological control over them and sometimes physical control as well you you're not in your right state of mind so it's really good to just not indulge and the only time i would say play around with it maybe is if you were a serious you know ethnobotanist or anthropologist or herbalist who wanted to explore what it really means or what it's like to experience that medicine but that's a whole other situation it's not in the amazon at an ayahuasca retreat you know so when you're in these things this other thing i wrote down here is you know there's sexual safety and then there's physical safety as well you know look at where you're going is the center well built is it well maintained you know you're in the jungle this is not home it may feel like home because you're in the medicine and it's so amazing and inspiring but it isn't home you don't know those plants you don't know those critters you don't know those snakes they do have snakes in the amazon and the snakes are very poisonous and you can die and you need to know that there are risks associated with going to the amazon it hasn't happened to me thank goodness but it could happen they're there i've seen them so you know there's physical safety to consider as well respect nature that's all i have to say about that you know but the sexual side of it you know this is another thing i like to say and i i think this is true it's unfortunate but i think it's true that women are safer in numbers and with traveling with men mm-hmm Preferably big men. but it could be a man that's not physically big but is powerful has a power about him if you are traveling with a male you're more likely to be left alone if you're traveling with other women you might entice some attention from some guys who think you're you know oh look at those cute women and that you know oh yeah look at them you know but you've got each other and you can watch out for each other and that's really really important so that's another thing i tell women when they ask is if you're let's say you're young women and you want to go down there yourself and you've got a group or just two even you have if you're going with someone you really trust like a really close friend or a close sister you can you can basically agree to tell each other when the other one is pushing it with some guy you know pushing their sexuality maybe flirting with someone else you know you can tell each other when the other one is pushing it with some guy maybe shouldn't flirt with or are sexually posturing in ways they don't even know they're doing you know those kinds of things you can say hey we agreed we're not going to do that here now that goes back to another thing that's really uncomfortable and people don't like to talk about but it's also true um we are also women are also programmed to be attracted by powerful men and men in leadership positions it's part of our programming some people would argue it's biological and there might be a little bit of that but it's definitely cultural and you know that can be um what however a male is is perceived as powerful or in a leadership position depends on the culture maybe it's money maybe it's physical prowess maybe it's you know status in the community like a king or a you know or whatever it's different things but or a great hunter let's say but in this case it's often this idea that's put on the shaman the male shaman who's you know you you have this sort of magical heightened idea of who that person is and that is something you have to really really watch especially in vulnerable women who are dealing with you know um not very good sexual boundaries to begin with right right and sadly if you go back to the earlier part of the conversation with you know sexual abuse in our that is often manifests itself in a lack of sexual boundaries so the people who have already been hurt in that way are by far the most vulnerable and the predators know that what would you say about like um i guess if somebody had some of these like sexual wounds or traumas are coming up and you know it seems like a cultural difference like how do you deal with that and how do you deal with that and how do you deal with that about how well trained the shaman is maybe to hold that container because as you're talking about all this i'm just thinking about like breathwork sessions that i've facilitated and um you know some of that has come up but as a facilitator i know that those boundaries should never be crossed and you know you really set that but i'm just thinking too about like the cultural differences um and then wonder how the you know some of those shamans might perceive some of that you know that's also a very complicated subject but let's just say it's south america first of all so there's also a intended tends to be a very macho culture for males but it's also an individual thing you've got a lot of really great guys you know i would trust um don alberto at at blue morpho with a really great guy i mean i've spoken to him outside of ceremony as well and he's a completely different person he's got his shaman thing going in the in the ceremony and outside he's just like this really warm guy and you know what he would just never go there because he knows it's not it's inappropriate it's inappropriate and then there are people like you know joe is cool joe is totally cool ricardo ricardo it would never go there he just wouldn't you know and they've had bad experiences with their teacher too you know so they have seen the dark side and they don't they wouldn't go there themselves so they're very adamant about it so i think you have to be very very careful with looking at it as a cultural thing um i think it's more a personal culture a personal choice if that makes sense it's the same as here you might have you know look at the the whole situation with the catholic priest it doesn't mean that every single catholic priest is that way yeah that's a good point yeah yeah so it's really the individual and you you know it's important to listen to others if people have said they've had bad experiences or you know some of the forums online also but um just go with others go with other people and ask them to keep an eye out on you do you have any tips for women that are looking for a retreat center for like maybe safety um like what would somebody look for for when they're searching for a retreat chris and i have a rule we do not recommend any center we have not personally been to and experienced there may be many more that are great that we haven't been to yet um but we will not do that even if a friend says it's wonderful we can say our friend says it's wonderful but we just have that rule that said centers also change um that people don't always stay there and they they move around and you just never really know and also power can mess with people's heads and people can also be corrupted so it's tricky it's very tricky so i think i would say if you can go somewhere that has a women's retreat specifically and has women shamans and you feel good about that that's a great choice if you're really vulnerable you know um otherwise you go with friends who you really trust who are going to watch out for you there's nothing wrong with that nobody's going to be um they get in trouble if they're with us i know that i'm going to watch them carefully and they all get this whole spiel that's good they get it a lot but i'm protective and i understand some of the vulnerabilities i've known people very closely who've gotten in trouble that way and i know what it does to your life it's not good but you know we also talk about things like yoga and like you were saying the breath work and that that sort of thing same thing any kind of situation where a male is in a position where they are the sort of spiritual leader or can be perceived as a spiritual leader they're going to instantly be more attractive to certain women that's just the way it is yeah the good thing about the breath work sometimes is uh like the male female um the situation that came up for me like i was so thankful that i had another female uh facilitator to help me out with it because i was like nope that's all you then like i'm not i'm not doing that you know well yeah there's that too you have to be able to say no yourself you know it goes two ways and it's true um i've spoken with different men who have that experience where the woman is the aggressor and that does happen and you just have to say no yeah and and also the other thing about that is people who are harmed in that way sexually and who who do become aggressors on either side can be very convincing oh it's fine you know nothing's going to happen there's something really wrong with that whatever they want to say they can be very convincing so this is why the dieta is so important you have to make that commitment to yourself and i always say i think i said this already but i'll say it again more clearly if you make a commitment to yourself you have to make that commitment to yourself the problem is that you are going to lay off sex for the before period like the preparation period the immersion period at the retreat in the maloca and then the integration period after it you make that commitment to yourself and to others and then you break that commitment then that is what you need to work on in the medicine space because there's something there yeah definitely and and that is coming from someone again who's a you know sex is great sex is a great part of life but we do live in an abusive culture sexually especially towards women and you know men have also there are a lot of men who are raped as young young boys that happens much more than people like to admit and it's i think um it in some ways is even harder for for men to tell people about later in life and i've seen that in several cases and friends who didn't tell me for many many many years so it can be devastating um so you know it's not only women that are raped let's um i guess jump in a little bit about what is ecofeminism is all about um we have leah friedman on um i did a little interview with her a couple months ago when i was up in massachusetts and um we started diving into it but then she said maybe she would leave that for you to define and talk about i love leah she's awesome um i think that ecofeminism is another okay let me say that again i totally screwed that up ecofeminism is another ism so they're just useful terms for umbrella for a for a group a subset of something that you're working on and it's the idea that we're very very much environmentalists like other environmentalists but we're also coming from the approach of this imbalance this gender imbalance also has affected the environment because it's affected human culture and with the gender imbalance in human culture i'm trying to be kind what i'm trying to say is the patriarchy the males have screwed it up okay they've had the power for for a millennia now and they have screwed it up and we have not had positions of power to to have real influence we've had some but not enough not anywhere close to how many of us there are in the planet we have there are 50 women on this planet females and we do not have anything close to 50 of the power to make decisions i'm not talking about power over that's a male concept and it's not all men but it's a patriarchal the way the patriarchy is today it is a patriarchal concept power over there's nothing wrong with power being empowered having personal power having the power to to have your voice heard having the power to be influential these are things we don't have enough of there's a scarcity of power for women in this world and okay so we look around us and it hurts us terribly to see what's going on and it hurts men too i'm not i'm not saying that's a bad thing i'm not saying that's a bad thing i'm not saying that's men don't feel this too but i'm saying that from a woman's perspective we're feeling like our voices aren't heard we're feeling like we don't have enough say and how it all is is rolling out in the world and what we're seeing is devastation and it hurts it goes against everything we are and you could even say that's partially biological from a mothering perspective i mean i'm not a mother i don't have my own children but i certainly love i have such a deep love for other species for the environment itself the earth i have such a deep love i can't even put it into words so when i see what we're doing to this planet and to the other species it's devastating to me that's what ecofeminism is it's the same idea we need more women in that space making decisions for the environment and until there are more women we'll have more of the same and how do we how do we go about doing it how do we get more uh women involved like how like how can the broader community not just women help encourage more women to get more active or more empowered are you asking how men can help yeah how can we be allies or how can the whole community you're being an ally right now by asking the question i think it's the same question i might have when i'm speaking to someone who's dealt with the politics of skin tone and has darker skin than i am i've dealt with my own you know um prejudices towards me from a physical perspective because i look quote ethnic unquote and i've experienced that all my life and many doors were shut and i know that that's a horrible thing but i do not have the dark skin like i'm not african-american okay so i don't know what that's like personally on a day-to-day basis but what i've done is i've asked many friends and people who i've met and i pay attention and i listen to other people's you know really some of the really great leaders in the space and i've never had the personal experience because i'm not african-american but i can learn and i can care and i can fight i can be an ally i can fight for their rights and that's pretty much what it is for guys too it's the same thing you can't really know what it's like for us because you don't walk in our bodies and you don't walk in our bodies from birth you know we we experience sexism very very early on and it's it's insidious it's constant it's omnipresent and it's very abusive so this is something that uh you know we all know this and that those of us are just happy people we just try to write rise above the anger but you have to go through these phases of of anger usually in your early 20s um and i think that guys that are more sensitive to that um are just you know i don't want to say few and far between because i see some progress especially in younger men i don't know how old are you i'm 35 i think okay great generation for guys some really good guys in your generation from that perspective i've run into some guys at conferences and whatnot and had wonderful conversations with them it's a different level of understanding of the issues of sex sexism and that the thing also that i'm finding with this work with psychedelic feminism the more i work with this the more the more i'm thinking about how males are also programmed and how they're also suffering like we are it's really really we're all in this together and i i'm you know while i'm definitely still focused on women i just see more and more that oh it's so related to how men are programmed it's it's not separate it's very difficult to separate those two things because let me give you an example um this whole thing of you know youth is beauty and a woman is only valued up into such and so age whatever your break-off age is you know when as you go through life you begin to see the movie stars who are your age you know like like for me be the male movie stars my age um you love them because they're your generation you watch them go through their careers they they have staying power and they're still doing good work and then suddenly their co-stars start getting younger and younger and younger right and it doesn't stop and you start going well what the heck is that about you know is it his choice does he just not think about it does he just not think about it does he just not think about it does he think women his own age are attractive anymore you know what what what is that or is it the producer or is it the director are there economic pressures here that i'm not understanding well in that case why aren't they strong enough to say no i want a co-star that's at least within however many years of my age where does that stop 10 years 15 years 20 years 25 years it's so prevalent that it's just it's just outrageous that it it's i can't even believe that it that hollywood gets away with what they get away with it's so blatantly sexist so from the male perspective you know what is that about what's that programming for you guys that's what i think if you guys were going to work on stuff like that your own sexist notions that are harmful towards women if you took those up in the medicine space what would you find you might be liberated too because those are really false ideas and they're unhealthy they're inherently unhealthy and they cause trouble later i know a lot of men in their 60s and 70s who just can't can't get into a relationship with a woman in their own of their own age and they're miserable and lonely yeah that's a really great question to meditate on have you ever um come across the work of martin proctel no i have not oh i was uh at like a week uh like a weekend workshop with him but he was talking about the like the aging women in the mayan community that uh he lived in and he was talking about this uh you know the thing about youthhood but uh you know how in his culture or where he was in uh the in guatemala how like the older women were just like really um really important you know and and you know and i think that's a really important thing to think about and i think that the wrinkles would just show you how much they've been through the scars they've been through and um how beautiful all that is and how our culture doesn't see this as beauty um and i've definitely meditated on that for a little bit like after listening to him uh talk about that and thinking about aging and how it is beautiful and how life just beats us down and each wrinkle and scar shows us how much that we've been through yeah yeah yeah and and the and the double standard there where you'll see the guy that's like you know on the screen and he's he's maybe he's still physically beautiful but he's also you know fuller wrinkles and tough and he's scarred and he's been through life he's a you know experienced guy and he's really still sexy to everybody and then he ends up with a 25 year old you know it's just with just perfect flawless childhood skin which is really what it is and hey look youth is beautiful you know you you come upon a young person it's like wow wow you know let's know i'm not gonna lie but what it it's just that there's this throwaway culture you know where we're supposed to just sort of not exist past a certain age and it's ludicrous because we have a different experience we know we have value and we know we're actually improving we're we're gaining wisdom we're gaining knowledge we're reaching our prime but that's part of why it's so difficult in our culture because we have this complete um conflict of where how we experience ourselves as being in a prime and the exterior culture as treating us as if we're past our prime so yeah so i would say in terms of working with psychedelics um these are great things to explore from a male perspective what is my programming what is my you know you could ask yourself what is my male programming towards women because you too have been bombarded with all this same crap it's not like it's all us we don't you know we get a little bit maybe a little bit more because we have to look at all the girly magazines and maybe you don't look at those so much but you still see them and the guy magazines hey some of those are pretty terrible too yeah well but they're everywhere how do you get around them right how do you get around those those magazines and those movies if you go to see movies yeah i think it's sorry go ahead oh no yeah i definitely think hollywood and media really keeps this cycle going. it's yeah it's tricky it's capitalism too and i'm not an anti-capitalist but it is capitalism it's money we have a joke in this family i can't stand um i know nick cage nick cage drives me crazy he would never have made it if he didn't have a family member that put him there he just wouldn't have he's just not that good every now and then he's kind of fun he's great when he's quirky and weird but he just thinks he's way better than he is and he ruins so many scripts and if i were a playwright it would drive me crazy too but he's everywhere you can't get around him and i will be surfing you know netflix or whatever to find a good movie to be like another nick cage movie and you know in desperation because we've watched just about everything we'll we'll occasionally watch one and i'll say see now they're going to say everybody likes nick cage because we just bought that movie because that's all they're serving up so it's this idea of you know if you give them your dollar i'm going to give them your dollar and i'm going to give them your dollar and i'm going to are you voting for more of the same you know and and how do they how do they know that really what you'd like is a different actor if you just watched a nick cage movie it's the same with sexism but we have so many movies like that you know most of the movies are sexist what do you do never watch anything you know so we have just learned to watch them and try not to let that bother us too much and i suspect it's the same for people who are like african-american who don't see themselves being cast or asian-american who don't see themselves being cast or asian-american who don't see themselves cast very often i was um one of the things that comes up a lot with this work is these ideas of cultural appropriation and i've uh given a lot of thought to that and i i'd love to bring that up a little later but what i what i was thinking of is you know my mother's side of the family is greek-american and their her people came over because they had to it wasn't to seek a very difficult at the beginning and they were treated um with a great deal of racism they were darker skin they were definitely more ethnic looking they did very well with assimilation but that's what they did to survive in this culture so what's funny to me with this whole it's not really funny it's i mean you have to laugh really it's i will be um people will bring up a cultural appropriation from a native perspective and i look and i say well what about my people my people my people my people my people my people my people you know you use the language constantly they're never they never get any credit for that there's greek in most of the words we say hey psychedelics psyche is a greek word so it means by the way it means soul or spirit it doesn't mean mind so it is that's perfect a perfect example of cultural appropriation is the word was was used and misused it's not mind manifesting its soul or spirit is a female also by the way um but i look at these movies that are done about you know the big greek movies sparto was the most recent one troy which was about achilles and what was the other one alexander disasters horrible horrible movies played by white people all white mostly mostly white not one greek maybe a bit part so you know we deal with that too you know this it's a racist culture we live in a racist sexist classist culture and we all need to work on that we're talking about all this stuff but i always want to bring it back to psychedelics because that's how i see psychedelics as fabulous there we're we're as humans the species of human being we have this funny brain it's a great brain but it also traps us a lot and psychedelics are fabulous for just getting us to just shake that up a little bit and re take a new perspective yeah i was i was going to ask um do you see psychedelics playing a role in breaking or transforming some of this social social programming if everybody was had free access to psychedelics legally i think we could have a very different world a lot faster i think that the people in our field and our community is we're working as hard as we can to change perspectives you know propaganda around psychedelics and cannabis as a psychedelic as well in order to do just that yes i do but it's a big job and i mean i've been working with ayahuasca for 10 years and i still have plenty of things to work on in the medicine space it's not a magic bullet you don't go in there or a magic pill you don't go in and you're not you come out perfect the other side the other night you know you work on it you get to one layer and then that layer affects your life and you go back and you figure out some more things and then you come home and then you you integrate that into your life and you go back and you work on something else it's fascinating and it's a great way to do that and i think it's a great way to do that and i think it's fascinating to me and we're very complicated yeah totally agree yeah you have to live in this culture you have to come back and somehow live in this culture with that altered idea with that new perspective which is sometimes the hardest thing to do but also really um really exciting to see how you can adapt that you know and see how you can evolve from it i think it's wonderful i'm very excited about this work and i uh i do wish that you know obviously i don't want to just make this a plug but if there were more donations i could do a lot more work with a lot more women and i would really really like to do that we've got so many great women coming through the application form now i can't possibly um you know give them all grants it's not possible until people donate more and a little goes a long way lots of people sending a little bit makes a huge difference so it doesn't have to be somebody moneyed somebody moneyed would be fabulous but you know i think this work is really it's it's touched upon a need there's really there's interest out there and the women are fantastic and i am blown away by some of the women and by the way all over the world these women are coming from can you tell us about your organization because i don't think people necessarily know about your group yet okay well cosmic sister has gotten a little press recently and it's made a difference and it's uh really getting out there the concept of psychedelic i think putting those two words together made a difference because it hit a cultural movement or or at least it sort of there were women out there who related to it to the point where they are like yes and then they would pass that to a friend who would say yes and then they would all come to cosmic sister and learn more and we are you know cosmic sister did not start out as a psychedelic advocacy group it's more than that it's really a women's advocacy group but psychedelics definitely started to take off within it and the so-called grants the psychedelic feminism grants are um there's three of them the initial one is simply you know supporting a woman to travel to the amazon the peruvian amazon where ayahuasca is legal and precious and treated as a treasure so not just legal but treated as a cultural treasure um to experience a traditional ceremony or a series of ceremonies at a at a you know fine one of the finer centers and we do move around um so that's that's the first grant and it was started out as just an idea because i was i just thought well i can't change the world so maybe i can help one person a little bit at a time and maybe somebody maybe that woman will then be empowered to go out and help somebody else and it's grown and it's exciting to me just i love that work i really love it the other two grants were created in part to work around uncle sam uh through maps who's my fiscal sponsor and what that means is that we're going to be able to they don't give me money they don't give cosmic sister money they allow people to donate through maps to cosmic sisters projects and get full tax deductions for them and um we have a kind of joke when we were talking about it's a formal fiscal sponsors sponsorship so i had to sign papers and write a proposal and the joke was i don't think uncle sam will be okay with sending women down to the amazon to trip so uh we had to find a way around it and we had to find a way around it and the way we did was what we could get tax deductions for was for education material educational materials creating them developing them um that educated the risks and benefits or i prefer to say benefits and risks of psychedelics and cannabis and again that's their mission statement so for me the focus is women but also their mission right i'm not explaining it very well but the two grants that go within that fiscal sponsorship you can donate to those grants and they're fully tax deductible and they support the original grant which is the grant for sending women down to trip in the amazon right and the two the two other grants are very much the same it's just that one focuses on women in cannabis and the other focuses on women in psychedelics and they're they're geared towards promoting more voices in the scene that are female that's all it is whether you're just a regular woman you know you're a mom you're you know you have a great job you're a student maybe it's not all women who are in the psychedelic field as professionals but it's for them also and that those materials that we create and publish can be everything from photojournalism to journalism to personal stories to presentations and it's making a difference in terms of getting more women out there And this is something that I learned from being in performing arts and then in PR, which was a natural progression. If you have what they call name and face recognition, you can build upon that to get more name and face recognition. It's not something that I want personally. I'm not an ego person like that at all. In fact, I don't really like the spotlight, but if I don't have name and face recognition for this work, it's practically impossible for me to get the media I need to promote the projects that we're doing that then generate funds to do more work. That's the way our culture is. So that's the same with people in the field. So let's say you're somebody who is a psychedelic scholar or someone who's really working in the medicine world, like a medical doctor working with psychedelics or a psychedelic shrink. I love the psychedelic shrinks. They're just great. Great. All of those people are doing good work. So let's say you're a woman that's not that well known but doing really great work. Or maybe you're just really shy or introverted and you don't want to get up on the stage with all those guys that are, you know, get up there and whatever they look like, they'll get up there and talk. And they're declarative. And you're sitting in the audience and you're thinking, nobody knows me, but my work's really interesting and they should listen to mine too. It's really good. They would love it. I had that happen to myself sitting in the audience. Thinking it's my own fault that I'm not up there. And it is my own fault. It's my own conditioning. I don't get up there for all the wrong reasons. And I'm still working on that in the medicine space. But I do sit there and go, wow, that guy's really interesting. Or wow, that woman's really interesting. I have some things to share too. Every time I go to a conference, I think that. Okay, that's been my role in this company. And that is primarily what funds cause McSister is my salary from that. My royalties from that company are what, you know, fund the grants. That's the truth. So it's ironic in a sense, because from that work with other medicinal plants, like wonderful plants, maca, rhodiola, schizandra berry, all of these great, great medicinal plants, cannabis has emerged as this great ambassador. And here's how it will work. I'll get somebody on the phone. A journalist or an editor looking for stories. They will talk about, they won't talk about ayahuasca because it's just too far out and they don't think they can get it past their editor or their producer or whatever. Okay. But then when I bring it back down to cannabis, all of a sudden cannabis is friendly territory. Whereas in 10 years ago, let's say if I brought up cannabis, it would be treated pretty much like cannabis. Right. See what I mean? So it's bridging that world. And then I may go back from there and talk about something like rhodiola or maca or schizandra or kava. You know, kava is having a reemergence in the culture. It's becoming popular again. It's another mood modifying psychoactive, not psychedelic, but psychoactive from the South Pacific. And all of these plants are, more people are talking about plant medicine than ever before. And that's a huge difference that I think people should know about. It's exciting. I've been doing this 10 years. That's not as long as a lot of people, but it's a good long time. I've seen a huge change. People really might not notice that pharmaceutical companies are kind of stagnant right now. There's been no breakthrough drugs and this herbal market has been blowing up really for the last 30 years, but really accelerating in the last 10, 15, 20. Like, it's been really impressive to watch it. I've been watching it for maybe 12 now, but it's amazing. And I think you and Chris are having a huge impact too. Well, yeah, thank you. That's prime. That's really the work that we do. We're communicators, you know, and, and we're not alone. And it's all, it's a movement too. I mean, we haven't brought up the natural products industry. I, when I first joined the natural products industry, I preferred to call it a movement as well, but they call it an industry because it is an industry. It is about trade. It's about products. It's about selling products. It's about buying products. So it's a trade and that's important because that is how you get things done in the world. We, we, we have to have, it's an economic structure. You know, I make a little money. I pay you a little money. You pay somebody else a little money and we all work together. That's the nature of currency. So in the natural products industry, you have this wonderful group of people who are trying to build a better model. And have proven that these models work. They're the ones that got organic certified. There was no organic certified before the people in the natural products industry. They are championing, championing the, um, the environment and your, the whole idea of mind, body, spirit, health of it's not only what you put into your body. It's also how it affects the rest of the world and the soil and the air and the water and the other critters. Those things are each of those good products that are available to you. And I think that's, I think that's, I think that's a great available there are people behind those products you know and if you're not in that industry you may not think about that when you go to whole foods or your natural retailer whoever it is in your area you know or even your farmer's market but when you go to one of those bigger stores and you find these brands that you like and you and you buy one and it's certified organic somebody an individual came up with that idea and built that brand and got it out there and that's a lot of work so those people those people are always looking for fresh ingredients and many of those ingredients are plants right so that's where people like chris were working bringing in these medicinal plants like kava to places like that who are always looking for new ingredients and so when i got that's where i met him in the natural products industry i'm not really part of that scene anymore now because i'm too involved with you know sacred plants you sort of taken my career when i first started working with chris in the fields um which i had not done as an ethnobotanist going into the fields means you go around the world and you you go out farther and farther and farther in these exotic places and you live with people in all sorts of interesting conditions and they share with you their wonderful treasures and their medicinal plants and their other cultural treasures and the arts and spiritual um traditions and all sorts of wonderful things and then you know while you're there you have these experiences with these people and then you bring that back to our world i've been doing that for 10 years and he's been doing it a lot longer than that so you know when i when i'm out there with him a lot of times he'll ask people you know are you working for the plant or is the plant working for you and i've heard yeah it's great isn't it i've heard so many people answer that question oh i'm working for the plant yeah it's kind of like that michael pollen i think he's he might have said that and botany desire yeah yeah he probably did and it's a it's a botanist type of question and ethnobotany is in part botany so to me the funny thing is when i first started traveling and doing this work with chris i was not even a plant person i was a an animal person definitely but not a plant person i didn't see myself as a plant person certainly now i have to say i am absolutely without a doubt working for the plant so there it is they called to me they recruited me yeah definitely now i do want to ask you but you guys this because it seems that guys are a little different about this it tends to be a guy thing and i'm curious i'm not big on synthetics psychedelics i'm interested in the plants and the fungi the natural psychedelics and i think that's because of the ethnobotanical aspect i love that that work um i love the and it's plenty there's plenty of psychedelics there for me to explore because i'm lightweight i don't need anymore but i'm really just not even interested in the psychic the uh synthetic psychedelics and yet people are getting really great results from them and people talk about wonderful experiences that change their lives how do you guys feel as guys do you think that there's a difference there with a gender thing what what do you think kyle i'll let you go first um well i'm i'm with you zoe i'm more of a natural person um i haven't i mean i guess like the semi-synthetics i mean lsd is definitely um a natural kind of semi-synthetic uh substance i think that's really interesting mdma definitely has potential um and really interested in that but other than that like some of those research chemicals and newer derivatives of like say lsd and stuff like that not not really interested in it i guess for my own exploration i guess i'm more interested in working with a plant spirit and i think because of that i just come from kind of like that shamanic viewpoint that working with the plant spirit i remember i think it might have been in one of hoffman's books but um about how he synthesized psilocybin and then brought it to maria sabina and she said yeah these are great like i can use it when the mushrooms aren't in season but it seemed like it kind of lost its spirit um and so yes so i guess i kind of kind of come from that background and viewpoint what about you joe um i think there's a number of ways to look at it i i don't personally have a really strong position um in with this show we're trying to be kind of grounded so we're not always presenting our um true colors which is tricky and complicated you know i have some pretty funny views about stuff um you know spiritually and energetically but at the same time i'm not necessarily saying synthetic stuff is um bad i enjoy synthetic uh substances i also like natural substances um i would say i have a lot more time in with the synthetics for sure um and perhaps that's just this blend right there's people are very different um and we're all doing it for different reasons we're not all necessarily doing this stuff for the same reason and certain attitudes and ways we talk about this stuff might turn people off um you know maybe it's okay to do lsd psychotherapy uh for some people and for maybe others it's more ideal to spend a lot more time with ayahuasca or mushrooms um and you know other people are just doing it uh recreational or your celebratory you know kind of thing just to be closer with their friends and have a lovely night you know the most fun they've ever had kind of thing you know other people drink whiskey for that right yeah i think that's all really spot on and i'm not anti-synthetic just to be clear i feel like what you're saying is is definitely right and i think that one thing that's interesting too um from the work that i do in sustainability with other medicinal plants as well is is also valid when you look at the the uh you know the interest level that is just exploding and in sacred plants now you have to think about over harvesting in the wild and how how are we going to handle that we don't want to we don't consider is this sustainable and are we going to need to cultivate these plants and people are cultivating these plants so from just from that perspective alone the synthetics are much more sustainable in in that way you know they can you know be made more for a lot less money that people can more people can have access to them and that's a good thing but you know when you look at this idea of plant spirit you know i again i'm a scientist daughter so i don't i don't know i i'm an agnostic i don't know but i do feel a spirit in those plants it does actually show up for me in the work i don't know what that means though the scientists in me questions what that means you know am i really feeling another entity in my in my psyche when i commune with cannabis am i really feeling that with ayahuasca or is it the interpretation that my human mind makes with this substance in you know when it reacts with my the chemicals in my brain who knows but i do feel a spirit present i do and i'm not that type yeah so i have to pay attention to that too also the idea of spirit is an interesting word because it's also essence or personality even um so i have no problem for instance saying something oh look at the the wonderful hummingbird that that just came to visit me he has such a beautiful spirit i have no problem with saying the spirit of the rose i feel those spirit or the spirit of a child i met oh what a sweet spirit you know what a happy spirit you know so why wouldn't a plant or a fungi have a spirit too it's just sort of semantics at a certain point so who knows and i um i'm just i guess i'm also interested in you know you were saying the shamanic aspect of the spirit of the rose i'm also interested in the cultural traditions and back in the day they didn't have synthetic going back to the synthetics versus natural one of the things that's important to me is that we evolved with the natural psychedelics we did not evolve with the synthetic psychedelics and that concerns me because i don't know really about the long-term safety and i don't feel comfortable with that and my brain is important to me and so i don't mess with it and i think that's where i firmly sit although others can take that risk and in certain cases it's a controlled risk and they're they have every right to do that and again people are getting results if somebody's addiction is is uh cured by working with a synthetic and they have a wonderful life because of it then you know i certainly wouldn't be a person to diss that synthetic you know it's the results that really matter right yeah and i also appreciate the sustainability piece you know i think um iboga is definitely struggling with that and i think in a lot of places they use like ibogaine which is you know a semi-synthetic of iboga because you know it's there's definitely an over-harvesting there and um yeah i mean for me personally with the synthetics it just um i i i'm definitely not against them i think too um evolutionary like maybe we are entering into a new world of like biohacking with different chemicals and stuff like that but for me personally just like safety profiles of like oh you never know what you're getting and there's a lot of adulterants and chemicals nowadays and so for me personally that's that's the only reason why i think of like the natural stuff we like to on the show zoe have a split two between stuff that does have kind of safety data and then the newer stuff like research chemicals where we barely have any information it's a significant point to make for our community really look at some people could write about it if they haven't already i think that's really important i i so often run into people who are wanting to get off psych drugs they've become addicted to that we get more people coming in through the contact form for both medicine hunter and cosmic sister because of that people who are addicted to psych drugs of various types and they really don't want to be on them for the rest of their life they've all the same story every time i've tried and tried and tried and i just can't get off them sometimes you know there are some medicinal plants that aren't psychoactive or psychedelic that can really help you get you know give yourself your brain certain kinds of chemicals and help the brain to combat the original um sources of depression and whatnot for a period of time they can help you get off those those drugs but the problem is there's often a deeper aspect to the depression and those kinds of things can often be worked on with substances like ayahuasca and you know that also brings me to something i wanted to mention and you guys understand this but it's something that i think it's it's it's certainly a perspective of mine you know people talk about taking ayahuasca or drinking ayahuasca and it's it's not just the brew it's not just the substance it's a guided experience with preferably with with community and that's important to me i know i sort of shot into that but i think that's part of the healing i know that's part of the healing i think that if if you or i you know sat down you guys and we all just sort of said individually on our own we're going to drink ayahuasca and have a a solo ceremony like an a private ceremony of our own we'd probably be okay because we're we've had the experience of the other and we know how to work with the medicine i'm assuming you guys have tried ayahuasca yes yes i have um kyle i have not now oh okay well i shouldn't have assumed that well let's say your experience in one of these things and then you decide to do it on your own you you're probably going to get something out of it but there are dangers in that also because there's something about being in the protected space and you know i don't mean that in a woo-woo you know i'm not coming from a woo-woo perspective i'm coming from it really is because we all agree that it is we're going in we're going to be kind to each other everybody's supportive with each other we're going to take care of each other if we need some care whether somebody's having a really bad trip or they're um physically in pain or they're just getting to some really deep dark stuff that's hurting and they're crying you know we're there for each other in that space no judgment and there are trained experienced people who are leading that and they've seen it all even if they're from a completely different culture they recognize things and they've been trained to deal with them so to me that's really part of ayahuasca when i say ayahuasca i don't just mean the brew and that's a distinction that most journalists don't get and it's a pet peeve really so often they'll say they'll also refer to users people who use ayahuasca i work really hard not to use that word when you know i don't like that word because it's the absolute opposite of how i feel about the medicine i don't use the medicine i would never use the medicine right yeah absolutely Yeah, it's not a matter of use. It's a really complex interaction. Yeah, you're participating in a medicine space. Yeah, journey with the medicine. Yeah, commune with the medicine. It's a bit, some people wouldn't like that one, but journey with the medicine, that works for me. Or have relationship with the medicine. I know my one teacher always talked about doing medicine work. It's about relationship, being in relation with that. Yeah, I love that. That's great. You know, and there's real truth to that, too, because it's a way of entering the space. And the space, I like that term, too. I don't have a problem with the medicine space. When you're in that state, you're in the medicine, it means that you're in that altered state for that period of time. And that's when you can do this particular type of work. And it's valuable. And if you're focused and you really focus on your intentions, you can get tremendous value out of that experience. It's not to say you do this. Every day, you get, you know, there's no addiction here, either. You don't have to do it every day. You do it, and then you work on what you learned and incorporate it in your life. That's what it's about to me. I think that's a great way to put it. Yeah, and the work with women, again, you know, it's more about we have our particular things. And sometimes we want, or maybe even, we need sisterhood to work through those things. And so there's something about that. This is what I'm hearing. This is what I'm getting back from the women who've been on these journeys with us. There are commonalities. Not everybody, not every one of them says the same thing, but there tends to be women who are saying, the sisterhood was important to me and really helped me get to what I needed to get to. Or another one I hear a lot is, I found my voice. Ayahuasca helped me find my voice. I didn't. I didn't even know I was repressing my voice. You know, I hear that a lot. So these are specifically women things. Although, again, you know, maybe males also experience similar types of things. I think so. I don't know, I'm not a guy. Like, that's kind of a way I would look at it, too, for me. I don't think I found my voice until after. I did a lot of breath work, too, but I think this was a really strong catalyst in my whole self-development process, for sure. Great. Well, for me, I did a lot of other trancy-type work, too, before I entered the psychedelic scene. And, you know, dancing, trance dancing with belly dance for many, many years. I haven't done it recently, but I did it professionally for a while when I was younger. And that, you can really get into a flow state. Also, any of the arts, painting, acting, when you're really in the zone, you're really in an altered state of a sort, and you can do wonderful work with that. But it's not the same. There's something about the way these plants interact with the human consciousness that helps us to be better humans. And, you know, I don't need to tell you or anybody else listening to this that we really need to do that as a species. We are really failing. You know, what's going on right now with this whole rally in Charlottesville? Terrible. What happened? It's very confusing. Yeah, it's really hard. Trump is really hard for me. In this symposia interview that Leah did, I had just come back from the Amazon and I talked about Trump because it was that interim period. He had been, you know, quote, elected, unquote, but he had not been inaugurated yet. So we were all kind of hoping that would happen. So we're down there in the Moloka and I was trying not to focus. I was trying not to focus on it, but I knew perfectly well that it would come up for me. So I just took it up right away in the first ceremony. And I just said, how am I going to handle Trump? Personally. It's like the shadow that we're all dealing with. Yeah, exactly. It's really hard. And I'm ready to go down there again and say, okay, I need some more. But I did get a very clear answer and it was really, it was really surprising. It was a long, interesting, winding vision, which, you know, I could share, but I really shared it pretty well in that interview, I think. That ended with, you know, sort of an affirmation to continue on the psychedelic feminism work. And that wasn't something I was looking for, so I felt like that was really the right answer at the time. And maybe it still is, but I still find myself having a lot of trouble. And with this situation with our country, I think also I'm a patriot and I don't like what is happening from that perspective. But from another perspective, it's just really scary to see so many people right here at home in behaving so badly. Yeah, there's a great quote. When we had Natalie Ginsberg, I was looking at it today and I was thinking about updating on the social media, because after all that stuff that happened in Virginia. But it was, through my lens, so many problems in this world are driven by people acting from a reactionary place of fear and pain instead of a place of compassion and love. And I think a lot of that is true, that we just react to fear and pain. Yeah, fear and pain. I think also ego is huge. In the case of our current president. And you could say that was fear and pain, maybe, I suppose. But, you know, I think what it, you know, again, comes down to the same thing. This, again, I don't want to like to use the word youth, but exploring sacred plants for personal evolution, which then, you know, the personal is political and individuals make up subcultures and cultures. And so, therefore, our own personal healing and growth, can, in fact, help the world. And it's really the only thing we can do. That's the truth. You know, we can only work on ourselves. We can support and encourage others to work on themselves, but we cannot do the work for those people. We can only become better people personally, ourselves. And that is what I am doing, trying to do myself, and I'm very humble. I still have plenty of things to work on. And I look forward to doing that, actually. But I also really love watching others grow, and I've just seen so much of it, and I want to do more. And that's really the work I'm doing. I don't like to say I'm an evangelist, because I don't like the religious aspect of that, but I really do see this as something extraordinary that's happening. You know, the interest in these, these plants and this work, my concern with this administration is that all of this, a lot of this progress that we've made, it concerns me that they could come and, you know, do something about it, and really try to destroy what we're up to, or clamp down on some of it. That concerns me, I think. And I think it concerns a lot of people. And I think that one of the things that was happening before he was elected was that we were feeling the opposite. We were feeling so great. I mean, look, Obama wasn't perfect, but he was a great person, and Michelle was wonderful, too, and they did a lot of good work. And they were up against a lot of odds, you know, with people, basically racists in the White House who wouldn't let him do good work. But he did do some things, like, you know, changing prisons, prisons not being private entities, which is absurd. You know, privatization of prisons is absolutely absurd. And he did get rid of that, and Trump promptly put it back in place. So we have many examples of that, where we had actual progress, and significant progress, in human rights and environmental ways with Obama. And we are now seeing them be pulled out from under us again. And it's just a really, really hard thing when you're a progressive person working for human evolution, and you see this person who has ended up in the seat of the president, and you see this person who has ended up in the seat of power with a superpower. Our country is still a superpower. And it's really disturbing and hard. So I'm just sharing that with the community, and I know I'm not alone. Yeah, it is scary. I worry about this stuff all the time. I mean, especially since there has been a lot of progress in the psychedelic realm, I'm always like, is it going to just kind of come to a stop? You know, like, it's kind of a weird time. Yeah, it is a weird time. I think what we have to do, as a community, is just persist, you know, and that's a word that's being used for a lot of things that we do. We have to look at the long run here. This is a long game. And even if we, our worst case scenario, we're stuck with this person for four years, which is a really scary idea, but if we are, I mean, surely not eight years. We really just can't let that happen. But if we're stuck with him for four years, we just have to stick it out and keep looking forward. and we have to expect there to be setbacks because there already have been and there will be more and what's most difficult is the things that he's doing that actually harm and will harm not just humans because he's changing people's lives by some of the decisions he's making but also the environment and animals and those things you know are very hard to watch but for our work with psychedelics and liberating the plants and basically getting more people the rights to to journey with the plants that we co-evolved with that work we just have to look at the long game and push through it and if we're you know if we're set back we're set back and we just take it up again on the other side it's the same with racism it's the same as classism it's the same as sexism it's all the same we have to keep moving forward and if it's five steps forward four steps back you can't quit yep keep moving forward so um i think we're about time probably way over but that's okay because i've been enjoying the conversation is there any last like remarks or anything that you want to toss out to the listeners um i think that if i were to share anything more is to just you know remember so many of us in this space have found have discovered in one way or another that it's all about love and it really truly is if there's one thing that sums up this work that's what it is that's you know love for life love for the miracle that is life you know love for each other and that's really the thing that's what it's all all of the sacred plants are getting to i think that's the real message the heart message so you know i i think that preaching to the converted here but i i really think that sometimes that's what we you know to remind ourselves of that is there's nothing wrong with reminding ourselves yeah great wonderful um and where can people find you are you online anywhere uh the easiest thing is either zoe helena.com or cosmic sister.com they go to the same place um i have a small twitter page i'm not a big twitter person but you can find me on social media um but you can find all of that on on the site and uh if you need to reach out to me through the contact form i'm really easy to reach i do respond and i love hearing from people in the scene uh anybody who's a good person who's interested i'm there and i i love these conversations so i that's i have to say you know i love the people in this scene we're very lucky yeah it's definitely a pretty awesome scene this is after being at scythe science uh back in april i was like wow yeah these are uh a group of wonderful smart people it's very very exciting to be part of it and i i just look forward to meeting you guys in the flesh because i know i will absolutely um we actually uh well we'll wrap for now symposia back in the day um you and i met at the um boston ayahuasca monologues in oh my gosh oh that's so great yeah i hosted that and um chris was gracious enough to speak which is lovely fantastic Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.