[00:00:29] Speaker A: Welcome to the mushrooms, apprentice. I'm your host, Shona Home. Aaron Dunn is a psilocybin facilitator for individuals and groups in Portland, Oregon. In addition, he hosts integration circles for parents in collaboration with a nonprofit organization called Plant Parenthood, which seeks to destigmatize the conversation around psychedelics and parenting. His own experiences with psilocybin have given him a deep reverence for the mushroom, not only as a medicine for healing, but also as an ally in our full flourishing, a way to remember who we are and what it means to be human. Aaron is also a body worker, practicing a form of massage with ancient roots in Russia, northern Europe, and the Baltics. Sometimes referred to as whisking, it takes place inside of a sauna and uses leafy bundles of oak and birch branches to expose and massage the entire body. Aaron was raised in Oregon and graduated from the Air Force Academy, spending six years parachuting and flying. His process of leaving the military left him with a deep curiosity about personal and collective transformation, which led him into the work that he does today.
He lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife and two children. To learn more about Aaron, you can go to aarondunn.com and that is Aaron Dash n Dash e.com. to learn more about Plant Parenthood, you can go to plantph.com. and if you want to check out Aaron's psilocybin retreats, you can go to theelementalretreat.com.
well, I know Aaron because months ago he emailed me to thank me for my work over the years and to share with me his own apprenticeship with the mushroom teachers, and I was struck by his sincerity and his earnest commitment to engage the mystery fully.
He also sent me a poignant article he wrote for symposia titled the Unexpected Trip, which tells of his story from his time in the Air Force to his catalyzing experiences with the mushrooms that opened his awareness in such a way that it changed his approach to life utterly. Here is just an excerpt from what he wrote regarding that experience, and I will of course leave a link below. Quote as interesting and insightful as the trip experience can be, the primary interest of mine in the psychedelic experience is to ask, how does this help me show up in my everyday life? What I can say is that I stare longer into my kids eyes. Instead of rushing them to sleep, I enter into their imaginative worlds.
Instead of fighting an epic inner battle to wake up early, which I've had to do my entire life. I look forward to greeting the day with intention. At 05:30 a.m.
instead of trying to galvanize motivation to eat well and exercise, I find that I actually experience a craving. I also have a greater impulse toward daily integrity to own my feelings, to align my words with my actions, to be honest and open. I'm filled with new ideas and energy for how to be myself in the world, end quote. Well, Erin and I have had very rich conversations about what it means to engage this powerful medicine as a spirit teacher and then what it means to feel called, to hold that space for others. And now you get to listen to what this beautiful man has to share. So welcome, Erin.
[00:04:13] Speaker B: Thank you so much, Shawna. It's so good to be with you. And I was wanting to say just even from the conversation that we had before you started to record, I don't mean this to be a pun, but I've always felt truly at home with you many, many years ago when I first encountered your work. And now that we've stayed in touch and continue to explore things together, there is just a sense of really being welcomed.
And I feel. I feel very much at home. So thank you for having me.
[00:04:44] Speaker A: Oh, you are so welcome, Erin.
Let's get kind of the business end over with in the beginning. And by that, I mean we can talk about this because you live in Portland, Oregon, and psychedelics are legal there. So what does that mean exactly? Because I sometimes what they mean is it's just at the bottom of the barrel, so they're not going to really, or is it totally legal? You tell me. And then how does that work as a practitioner?
[00:05:15] Speaker B: Yeah, good question. Yeah. Oregon's legalization of it is really unique.
And so the state of Oregon has essentially created a legal framework to allow for the industry to flourish, you know, and flourish sort of above ground, so to speak. Certainly the below ground is very, is really alive and well. And I think there's also, like a decriminalization of the substance, you know, and, like, very low priority for police enforcement. But, yeah, but what Oregon has done to create this framework is, I think, you know, it's controversial, sure.
But I think it's been a really big step forward in that it's, you know, creates paths for facilities to get licensed, for the experiences to happen there, and for facilitators like myself to get a license and for growers to get licensed. And, you know, there are so many people in the world who would love to have this experience based upon what they hear from others. And for them, I think the first step has to be above ground. They just feel a much deeper sense of safety and what they're about to do. And so, yeah, so that's how it's happening in Oregon. Every place kind of has to get licensed. And as a facilitator, yeah, I went through a six month training program, which there's a lot of curriculum that you go through.
It's community based. And then there's a practicum.
And for that practicum, I went to Mexico for one week with a group of 14 and worked with some very experienced facilitators that work with different medicines down there. So, yeah, so here I am. I grew up in Oregon.
I'm back home in Oregon after a long life here, and it's just an amazing place to be alive, given what's happened in my life. So I'm really grateful for the legalization.
[00:07:13] Speaker A: Yeah, all that. So you started in the air force, and I would just love to have you talk about that, because as I mentioned earlier, I have a soft spot in my heart for vets.
And.
And just that whole framework.
[00:07:32] Speaker B: Right.
[00:07:32] Speaker A: It's so different. And not only that, what we have in terms of military today is very different, I think, from the warriorship of Oldenhouse.
Everything's so commercialized. But anyway, you were immersed in that framework and then you moved into these extraordinary mushroom experiences. So can you talk about that? I'd love to hear your story.
[00:07:57] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, when I was. When I was really young, I just knew that I wanted to fly. And so that's really the impulse that drew me into the military. I wouldn't consider any other branch than the air force. And I was a kid who just loved adventure. And I think as I reflect back a little bit on and see now the kind of marketing of the air force or their military and adjoining it is kind of really tapping into that kid who wants adventure and a free education and maybe a little bit different than it was thousands of years ago. There's a more like, there's kind of almost like an entertainment component of, like, this is going to be fun. Like, come fly jets.
There's literally commercials, you know, that show kids skateboarding, and then it's like they become a fighter pilot or something.
So, anyways, all that to say, when I was young, though, it wasn't that marketing. I had this really deep longing to fly, and I would sneak up onto the roof of our childhood home when nobody was looking. And it was a vaulted spine.
It was pretty high up.
I have this one memory of going to the very edge of it and leaning over the edge of, with this really clear thought that I could fly, but that what was holding me, what was holding me back was my fear that I couldn't fly. And it was like this paradox that was just so clear in my mind that what I hoped for was already a capability within me, but I couldn't tap into it because of the fear.
And so I gave up on that sort of flight, and I started to design jetpacks. My dad would come by, I was, like, maybe ten years old, designing jetpacks. I could run my back. And he said, hey, there's a school you can go to to learn how to do that and to fly. It's called the Air Force Academy.
And so I opened up the encyclopedia and I just read it and basically memorized everything about it. And from that age, I just. That's all I wanted to do was to go to that school. And I still love flight. I always have, my whole life. So it really wasn't, for me, so much about the military. It was like, I wanted to go fly jets. I wanted to parachute. I did love the idea of a challenge and a really good education.
And so a lot of my childhood was, it was a really loving, very supportive home.
Family was evangelical Christian and many generations of Christianity, and they just really supported me in my desire to go do that. And eventually, in high school, I received my acceptance.
A week after I graduated high school, I went to boot camp in Colorado to start that journey.
[00:10:58] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:10:59] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:01] Speaker A: Okay. You talked in your article about, would you call it hazing, something you did?
[00:11:11] Speaker B: Yeah.
So, yeah, I'm at the air force academy. Yeah. And I. That was such a wonderful chapter. I did join their parachute team, and I got to parachute every day for, like, three and a half years. It was so wonderful. And anyways, I.
Yeah, you know, Christianity is such an interesting thread for me because it really is alive and well in the military. There's just so much Christianity in the military, so many different groups and Bible studies, and I was a part of that.
And then when you're a senior at the academy, one of your jobs is really to make life really difficult for the freshman.
The whole freshman year there is kind of like a big hazing. It's a hard year, and the very end of it is like a hell week. And so when you're a senior for this hell week, you're allowed to transform your room into whatever sort of challenge you want it to be. You could design it in any way. And usually they're physical challenges to really, like, bring you to your knees physically, but they can be mental challenges or whatever. And so my roommate and I, who such a wonderful guy, Bryant Bevin. We were always just so creative, I don't know, in different things. And so we're like, you know, we're going to turn our room into a civilian coffee shop. It's going to be a really liberal one. And we're going to invite the freshman into our room in groups of two, and we're going to serve them espresso, truly. And we have, like, this fake fire and a rug and artwork, and we're going to ask them how their day was and what do you do for a living? And then we're going to kind of all of a sudden become, like, really antagonistic towards them and make them defend why they're in the military to test how thoughtful they are about that commitment. And so to help me, and so I was going to be, my roommate was going to pull the espresso, and I would be the main antagonist. And so to help me with this, I emailed a professor at Colorado College, one of my best childhood friends, Andrew. He was going to Colorado College, which is about, I don't know, 5 miles away from the Air Force academy, but couldn't be more different of a school, a small liberal arts college.
And so I knew there was a very outspoken anti war professor there. And I emailed him to send me. I said, hey, this is what we're doing. Would you send me all of the different perspectives that you know of that are against war? And he was like, sure.
And so one of those perspectives was that of a.
In the imagery he created in my mind of, like, a catholic woman who said, you know, based upon my understanding of what Jesus said and what Jesus invites us into, I can't kill my enemy.
And this idea that christians can, when they apply their theology, they can draw these lines around their life to create a safe zone for themselves. And to say all of this talk about giving to the needy or forgiving others, it's good, but not when it threatens my safety and my security.
This idea of really not having that sort of boundary.
And so I embodied that night in that hazing event with the freshmen, that perspective. And what I would say now is it kind of planted a seed within me. It felt too easy.
[00:14:49] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:14:49] Speaker B: And so after that night, I started to just get really curious, and I read a lot of Martin Luther King Junior for many years and his work later in his life when he was speaking out against the Vietnam War and started to read a lot of people within the christian tradition. That are pacifists and speak of nonviolence, that it's rooted in a christian theology.
And it just really started to open me up.
So I graduated from the academy, and then I had my pilot slot, and I learned to fly. I went to Mississippi to fly jets, and I went on the fighter bomber track. So I was flying to 238, which is the small fighter jet that the air force has used for decades to train fighter pilots and bomber pilots.
And so meanwhile, while I'm kind of on this really, you know, this trajectory, this path that had a lot of momentum to it, underneath it all, I was, like, realizing that I was really not in alignment with it.
And then a few, maybe I'll mention just two moments that happened while I was in the air force that feel to me, they're kind of like pivotal moments that helped me realize that that wasn't my path.
And the first is around the time when I was graduating from the academy.
The parachute team that I was on was just a really tight bond of brothers and sisters, very tight bond. And we were out one night drinking at a pub.
And this captain was with us. He was maybe ten years older than us, also had graduated from the academy. He went to pilot training and went on to fly a ten jets, which is an air to ground attack plane, which has this just massive machine gun strapped to its nose, so it flies really low to the ground, and the pilot shoots people. And he had returned to the academy to be an instructor at the school and was also a parachute instructor and pilot for the jump planes that we jump out of.
And we were with him at the pub, and I just remember it being very dark, and we were all around a table, I think, drinking something like Guinness. And he was telling us the stories, like, yeah, when I was in Iraq, my commanding officer would always be telling us, you know, that we're here to do the Lord's work.
And then he said, but you know, when I, when I flew that plane on the missions, when I would, when I would be at that moment where I would kind of roll the jet in and nose to the ground and look at my target and have my finger on the trigger, the. The only thing that I thought was, this isn't the Lord's work.
And that's all. That's what he said. I just remember it was kind of like a period at the end of that sentence.
And I don't know what we all did from there, but it just really stuck with me.
And then I went to pilot training, and then when I was in pilot training, which I just loved. I just loved the flying and the people. And there's so much about it that I missed.
But there's one day at the end of pilot training when we were in an auditorium and there was maybe 200 or so student pilots, and we were waiting for these experienced pilots to come onto the stage. And while we were waiting, they were playing video footage with rock music in the background. And it was just kind of, people were listening and talking and waiting. And this footage was video from an a ten thunderbolt that was diving down and shooting people, and the people were dying. And some people, you know, would get shot maybe in half and then try to crawl away. And the energy in the room was one of cheer and laughter.
And my hands, I remember them sweating because I was about to go on the stage and just be like, what are we doing? But I didn't. I walked out of that auditorium, and that was the moment when I knew that I didn't want to participate anymore and in the whole complex, the whole military complex.
And so I went home and I told my family. They let me go home for two or three weeks and tell my family and process it before I made my decision.
I know I've settled out there, so maybe I'll pause to see if you have anything.
[00:19:45] Speaker A: You had me riveted.
That's just so powerful. It's really moving to hear that, Erin.
[00:19:54] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, should I maybe finish that story a little bit?
[00:20:00] Speaker A: Yeah, I'd like you to.
[00:20:02] Speaker B: Okay.
So. So when I was home, my family just thought I was nuts, didn't understand it, and did, you know, as I, as I, as I would expect them to, they did everything they could to really try to dissuade me from, from leaving.
But there were two people in my life, two childhood friends, Andrew and Joe.
Andrew was at Colorado College, and he was studying philosophy.
He graduated with a degree in philosophy. And Joe, I think he also did philosophy and undergrad. And at the time, Andrew and Joe were in New York City pursuing PhDs in philosophy and theology at Fordham.
And so I was, I was at, I was back home with my family telling them I was going to leave, and I just knew I was going to leave. It was more, it wasn't like, you know, what do you think? It was more like, I'm going to leave.
And I think the emotion that comes up for me right now is because they're so loving and they had been so supportive, and I think it was probably really hard for them. It may be confusing for them to see me make this decision that they couldn't understand at all, because for them, it was their faith. Kind of like the George Bush sort of faith. It was their faith, this conflation of faith and patriotism that led them to the military. And my family had people in the military for at least the last three or four generations anyways.
So I told that military that I would leave. And they said, I originally tried to pursue it through conscientious objection, but they said, we have too many pilots, so you can go. You just have to pay back your education.
And I said, that's fine.
So then, yeah, I left the military in April of 2006.
And when I was in my car, well, I decided to drive to New York City to go see Andrew and Joe. They were living in the East Village and they had a futon waiting for me.
And so I get in my car and I start to drive from Mississippi to New York, and I just started to cry, like, uncontrollably.
And I look back on it now, and I do think of it as my first psychedelic experience because it felt so potent and clear that words won't ever touch.
But I was crying because I felt so overwhelmed by love.
And this idea, this realization of this feeling that there is nothing that anybody could ever do that would not allow me to act from a place of love.
Like even the most cruel person or the most harshest condition still does not rob me from the freedom to act out of love.
And so, yeah, I drove to New York City and lived with Andrew and Joe for three years.
And it was. They were people who could really help me ask really big questions about life, have a lot of fun with, you know, and they exposed me to just tremendous thinkers and books, ways of thinking about the world.
And they just understood me from when I was a little kid, so it was a really great time.
[00:24:05] Speaker A: Wow. Wow.
And then when did you.
Gosh, it seems like such a perfect progression, especially, you know, opening your mind with these different writers and thinkers and I.
Philosophers, I'm sure. And then when did you find your way to your first mushroom experience?
[00:24:27] Speaker B: Well, I'll make that somewhat of a short story so we can talk more about the work that I'm doing with mushrooms now. But Joe had read a poem one night over dinner, just the three of us, me, Andrew, and Joe, on a winter night. It was very dark, I remember, and nobody remembers what the poem was, which is probably a really fun and great thing, but nobody remembers. But this image in my mind really pierced me and it was. And I don't even remember the words behind it. But I can just tell you the image that stuck with me. And it was the image of a man in winter working his ass off to create shelter for himself and warmth, but he didn't know that spring was coming.
And I thought to myself, I think this is a really incredible thought experiment for us all to do is, what would it be like to live in the season of fall and winter, not knowing that spring is coming?
And if you really sit with that, you realize that that's what our modern world is doing. It's trying to go backwards. It feels like it's sort of. There's a. There's some sort of fall. Things aren't quite right. Things aren't as good as they used to be. There's something I'm really longing for. It's like a deep existential angst. And we try, through the strength of our morals and through the strength of our ingenuity, to climb our way backwards up to summer, to kind of recreate a summer for ourselves that we never can. The horizon's always sort of receding on that.
And so, anyways, this image of the poem was just like, wow, this idea, and this is what the wisdom carriers and different lineages, different religions, people not within religion have said is like, no, there's a spring. You just have to go through the winter solstice to get there. And so I say that because that night and that idea of just this, like, really fundamental narrative of flourishing, that things die and that in that death, you know, comes rebirth.
And that's a good process. It's hard, but it's good. And I.
I just became so curious about that. And as I read authors and books, I found my way to Arrowood, this website, you know, people haven't discovered it, should check it out. Erowid. Erowid.org, maybe. And I just started reading. For many years, hundreds and hundreds of different people write about their experiences with psychedelics. And it made me realize that I thought I knew what they were for my upbringing, but I really didn't. And these were beautiful stories of people sharing, you know, these processes of moving through kind of different, like a death and a rebirth. And I.
And so then I texted a good friend of mine from childhood who lived in Utah at the time, and by now I'm fast forwarding many years here. So I'll just maybe back up a second and say I lived in New York for three years. Then I got married while I was there. And then my wife and I, whose name is also Erin, we moved to Seattle.
And we lived there for six years, had kids. And then now I'm in Portland. I'm in Oregon with the family.
And so there was probably from 2006 to, I don't know when, maybe ten years of me doing a lot of this sort of inner work and reading and thinking about wanting to have an experience with psilocybin. And then when I was ready, I texted a good friend who was in Utah at the time, and I just said, would you come out here and do this with me? And I didn't know where I would get the mushrooms. I didn't know if he. I haven't talked to him in, like, a year. And he replied back instantly. He said, yes. And then I talked on the phone with him later that day, and he told me that he and his girlfriend had just started to grow mushrooms.
And the day that I texted him was the day that they first fruited.
And so that's my friend Garrett.
Love you, Garrett.
And, yeah, so Garrett flew out, and we went camping on Mount Hood, this beautiful mountain next to Portland, went camping next to a river in an old growth forest.
And I had my first experience with mushrooms then. And, you know, I had started to have a career in business, mostly in technology. I worked for Microsoft for many years and did consulting work. And I never liked it, never wanted to be doing it, but just had to have a job, you know? And so I had some anxiety in my life around that and some melancholy. And I think just being a dad of young kids, it's, you know, in marriage, it's all just. It's just hard work sometimes. It really is. And so I brought to that mushroom experience just that. And it was so profound. It really was.
It really just reminded me. It was a perspective. It gave me perspective. It reminded me of what I am grateful for on this life and how it's just right in front of me, and it put sort of my anxieties in context.
And the whole experience was so profound. But the thing that I really took from it was this comic absurdity that what I had just experienced was illegal.
I just couldn't get past that. And I knew that I wanted to play some part in destigmatizing what this is about and potentially maybe create safe spaces for others, but I certainly didn't think about facilitating at that point. At that point, it was really just me wanting to develop a relationship with the mushroom, which is what I did after that for many years. A very private but intentional practice.
[00:30:42] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Which I think is so.
I think that's so important. And I think that is almost a given that you have a relationship, because, of course, it's in the news a lot, and it has great efficacy for, of course, assisting people therapeutically. But there is a spiritual, very deep and profound spiritual side. And, you know, I just. I just feel if you're going to be facilitating, think it just goes without saying that you should have a relationship with what you are.
[00:31:29] Speaker B: Yeah.
I appreciate you saying that. I absolutely agree. And I think also that when I work with people, they come to it, maybe wanting to have one experience, because I've heard it's helpful, but I really work with them to understand this as a relationship that they can form, that they should form.
You know, we form relationships with all sorts of plants and fungi and animals in our world, and these relationships are symbiotic, and we're all in this together. You know, it's a collaboration. It's a participation. It's beautiful. We have so much to learn from each other. And so I really love this idea of a relationship as sort of just the most fundamental way that we even think about these substances, so to speak. Yeah.
[00:32:22] Speaker A: Would you feel comfortable just sharing a bit about what is your relationship with the mushroom?
[00:32:30] Speaker B: Yeah.
By the way, a fan just turned on. Can you still hear me okay? Is the audio okay? Beautiful. My relationship with the mushroom. Thank you. That's a good question.
I just feel in deep allyship to it.
I think that I feel okay. So in one of my earlier journeys, I was just by myself. It was a higher dose experience. I was in the forest, and I remember really not being so sure. Like, is this sort of thing going to take me sideways in life? Am I going to be in a cardboard box thinking that I just know the truth and just screaming at people or something? Or is it going to lead me to, like, you know, really leading a good life? And I asked the mushroom in that experience, I said, what is your agenda? And before I could even, you know, finish that word, it just responded instantly with one word that was just full of meaning. And that word was life.
So I think that what mushrooms do in our physical world is no different than what it does in the world of our psyche or our soul.
You know, they're agents of unlearning and relearning, of really cycling, of helping the cycle of life happen.
And so, yeah, my relationship with the mushroom feels really deep and symbiotic. And I would even say in a later experience, you know, I.
I felt this real longing to connect with nature.
And then there's this really clear message.
I know nature's not an other. We are it. But I was kind of relating to it in that way, and it related back to me. It said, well, we really want to have a relationship with you, too. Like, it's not just one sided. Like, so many humans are, like, you know, like, we need to respect and love nature, enjoy, you know? But then nature is just like. Like, oh, my God, you're a fucking human. Like, we really want you, and we want all of you. We just don't want. We don't want the serene you or, like, the, you know, whatever you. We want all of you. All of your grief and anxiety and whatever. And so anyways, I could speak maybe more at length about my relationship with the mushroom, but it just feels like something that really has invited me into the fullness of life and what it can be, how beautiful it can be, and how hard it can be and all of it. I mean, it's also wild that we're here living this life, but the mushroom just feels like it's just like a partner in that.
[00:35:13] Speaker A: Yes, very much so.
Very much so. I like your word. You used in your bio, ally.
[00:35:21] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. You know, and I'll say too, shona, like, I'm.
We oftentimes, like, in midlife, like, when you come into relationship with a mushroom, you're bringing decades of patterns and patterns, you know, and just life. Yeah, just decades of patterns. And it can take decades for those things to be reshaped, you know? And so I give myself and everybody else a whole lot of patience in this work. As you get to know the mushroom, there are different layers of work to be done, and it just feels like an ally that can meet people where they're at, meet us where we're at, and really kind of grow with us and teach us things.
And I guess just what I wanted to say, too, is that even the concept of allyship, I don't think our western world really understands that at all. We're just so used to using things, to using tools. In fact, I privately just can't stand it when we refer to the mushroom as a tool. Like, what sort of tool do you ever have a relationship with? I don't know. You use a tool, like, it kind of puts humans too much in the center of things to call it a tool. Like, I wield it with my. I don't know. Like, I'm much. My relationship with the mushroom is more like, let's learn together. I have a lot to learn from you.
But then I realize it just opens me up to myself more.
And so it's not like I'm always learning from the mushroom, per se, but I think it just helps create a space within myself to really learn from nature.
[00:37:01] Speaker A: Yeah, I agree. I agree. Well, all right, so you have these years of engagement, apprenticeship to this great teacher. When did you start facilitating, and how did that come about?
[00:37:20] Speaker B: Yeah, after, like, I don't know, five or six years of having my own experiences with the mushroom and sort of developing this relationship, there's just a clear moment within a journey where at the very end of it, actually not even during the. The real trip part of it, it's almost like the mushroom, like, embodied a grandfather of some sort and said, you know, I'd like to invite you to share this with other people. And extended his hand, and I shook that hand, and it just felt a sort of like a really private, but sacred agreement, and.
And it felt really natural to me, too, because it had been so helpful for me in. In my life, and I just, you know, when something feels really helpful and good to you, it's like you naturally do want to share it with others. So that was maybe three or four years ago from now. And so I started to facilitate experiences for people, mostly friends. And then it became friends of friends, you know? And then it got legalized in Oregon during this time, and I was like, what? Like, I'm living in Oregon right now, and it just got legalized, like, so I immediately, you know, signed up and took that training course to get licensed. And so I've been able to stop doing the previous work that I had been doing for many years in business. And now I just do this work full time, facilitating for people and also leading group retreats.
Yeah.
[00:39:05] Speaker A: Okay. Talk to me about the group retreats, because I worked 101 and one on one, and I love that you do one on one. I think that's so important. And I've heard from different clients over the years, not great stories about working in groups, and I know you do it a very good way, so I'd love to hear what that.
[00:39:30] Speaker B: Yeah, great question. Yeah, well, I'll say that, yeah.
You know, I think that this is one on one experiences are great and wonderful. I don't mean to discount those in any way in anything that I'll say from here, but I really do see this as a community medicine. And when you look at so many of the different plant medicine traditions, it's done in group.
And one of the phrases that have come to love in this work is that the medicine is half the medicine or the medicine is just part of the medicine. And so the presence that we each bring to this work in group and just the vulnerability and trust that we formed of sharing our full selves and seeing other people in their full selves and that sort of witness of the fullness of humanity with other people, I mean, that is medicine in and of itself, you know?
And so group work, I just think, has to be done in a really strong container. You know, the person that is really holding that, people have to be able to hold that space and do it from a place of really high integrity and from love and safety.
And so I can imagine that people have some group experiences, maybe, that weren't curated well or held well.
Yeah, that can happen for sure.
But in the work that I do, I feel like I just have this really wonderful community of other facilitators that I really see as brothers and sisters, truly. And the spaces that I think we can create for people are really safe. And fundamentally, I feel like that's, again, just half of the medicine is to be able to go on a retreat and feel safer than you've even felt alone with yourself. We build up these protectors inside of ourselves, which we need to function in life. But to be with other people where you have such a deep level of trust and safety that you can allow all those guards to come down and to work with a powerful thing like the psilocybin mushroom, the group work is just absolutely profound, and it also just builds community. And so you don't feel so alone. I think that's one of the hardest things with facilitating for people one on one, is they go back to their lives and just feel, like, so alone, and they can't. It's hard to share with other people. So that's one. And I'll just say one other thing, too here, is that, you know, the more that I do this work and facilitate for people and see people and groups having just really, really, like, really helpful experiences, sure, they're hard, and we can talk more about what it's like, but people go back to their everyday lives, and I feel like if you're going to be doing a this work, then, and I'll speak for myself. I feel an obligation to try to meet people in their everyday lives, to create spaces for integration, you know, for rest, for connection, for community.
Because what our modern world accepts as normal in terms of just an everyday way of living your life is nothing in service of our well being.
And so much of my work is not just in the facilitation but really thinking about how to just support people in every day.
[00:43:01] Speaker A: Beautiful, beautiful. How would you say that your practice with this very old tradition of massage, the whisking?
Because that what I so appreciate about that is it's all about the body. And my late teacher, Doctor Brew joy, used to talk about this, and he was very cerebral, but he was also deeply honoring of the body. And he would say, the sacred is in the body, and, you know, and you're touching another, and you're, you know, just. You're tuned into the rhythms and. And the blockages and. Anyway, I'd love to hear it from that perspective.
[00:43:42] Speaker B: Yeah. Okay. Well, I'll just say briefly, you know, I grew up around forests in Oregon, and particularly oak trees. Where I grew up before white people came, it was an oak savannah that the indigenous people would tend to, and, you know, they would do their own, you know, wildfires as a way of supporting the earth. And it's flourishing. And I love to climb oak trees. And when I lived in New York City, I lived in the east Village with Andrew and Joe.
And we happened to live across the street from a russian and turkish bathhouse that had been there since the late 18 hundreds.
And when I went to that bathhouse and experienced, you know, the banya and different sauna rooms and the cold plunge, I realized that I thought I knew what sauna was, but I really didn't. It was just a whole new understanding of what it means to be in a, you know, in a hot room. And I. And I intentionally don't want to call it something because when you. There's so many different names for it right across all these different parts of our earth, all the different, you know, communities of people that have lived here for thousands of years. This idea of getting into a really hot room with other people and sweating and then going. Jumping into cold water, such a primal, ancient practice.
So I fell in love with that in New York as a way to help with my mental health and just have fun. And I could bring in there all of my anxieties or whatever, and I would leave feeling light as a feather and like a million bucks.
And I watched their people do this whisking work. It's very traditional in Russia and, in fact, Scandinavia and the baltic countries for thousands of years, people would always bring plants into the sauna. The sauna is like an everyday thing, and it's a way that they bathe and they bring in all sorts of species of plants. I mean, you look at, like, Lithuania and Latvia and Estonia in particular, you know, I don't know.
I was going to say a number, like over 50 different species, but no, there's no number. They just bring in, you know, all of the different plants have these properties, and they bring them into the sauna and soak them in water and use them in different ways on the body for aromatherapy, you know, and also just for application on the body. And so I witnessed this, a bit of this happen in New York, and I've always loved receiving massage and giving massage. And so one day I bought whisks from, like, a russian, you know, little mart when I was living out in Oregon, now in Portland, and with a few of my friends who loved to sauna regularly. And one of them had a backyard banya that he built. And I said, hey, can I bring these and just give it a go? And something shona with that was unlike anything else that I've ever experienced. When I held those whisks in my hand of Oakland, I and did this for the first time, it felt like I knew what I was doing.
And it was really just intuitive. And they told me, you should think about maybe just going to some of the public bathhouses in Portland and just offering this. That's what I've been doing now for four years. And it's very part time. Like once a month, I'll do this. And.
And so basically, somebody lays on the top bench of the sauna. And these whisks of oak and birch and other species have been soaking in warm water, so they're very supple. The leaves are really fragrant. And as the person lays down, under their head is the pillow of different species.
And there's like, herbal whisks of like, 13 different herbs. And eucalyptus is one that I always love to put under people's head.
So then I land that bench for 15 minutes, and with the whisks, I bring heat down to the body.
And it's a very gentle process at first of really warming up the body. And then I compress each of the joints with the whisks from head to toe and the feet in particular to help with blood circulation and warmth.
And then I start to slowly, I exfoliate the whole body with these and then start to rhythmically tap. And then the middle of the experience gets more intense, and it's like, you know, you're basically, you know, beating them with these whisks. But there's the language. None of it works. Like it's. It's not felt as a difficult thing. It's like it's more of a nurturing thing, but when you look at it from the outside, it looks like somebody's beating somebody with these whisks. So, anyways, yeah, that's the work. And I truly do feel so called to it, and I love it because energetically, I feel like it's. We just all need tended to in a really tender way our bodies do, and we need to rediscover bathing. This modern notion of taking a quick shower. You know, you can learn a lot from a society by looking at how it bathes or learn a lot from somebody, maybe from how they bathe. Do you give yourself time for it? And so this. This experience is one where people really surrender their body and let go and just relax. And it's a pretty blissful. And sometimes people will say, like, a very psychedelic sort of experience.
It's like, some people say it's like an energetic car wash or maybe like a forest bath in the tourists sense. And so, yeah, it's another part of my work that I just absolutely love doing it.
[00:49:44] Speaker A: So how do you bring that philosophy into psilocybin retreat?
[00:49:52] Speaker B: Yeah, well, yeah. Thank you for that question. I mean, you look at, again, these so many traditions of plant medicine work, and you see the.
You see them bringing together the plant medicine work with the sweat lodge or the Temez cow. Right? And so there is a beautiful and very natural synergy of these two things. And, you know, I'm from. My lineage goes back into western Europe, and there are these ruins of old saunas in Ireland and Scotland. And. And so I'm very interested about exploring that. But basically, like, the way I feel, like, the synergy is, if I were to kind of put words to it, is that the sauna really strips us down to our elements.
You know, if you think about it, fire and earth, water and air, and our naked bodies, you know, it really just strips it way down.
And so much of our anxieties of our life comes from these layers that we build up of. Like, I am, you know, this worker, or I make this much money. I mean, all that stuff is just all we know. It's all bullshit stuff that just becomes a part of our identity. And so the sauna really is this invitation to come into a space where you can let all that melt away and just be with other people. And I really do appreciate the nudity. It's really helped me differentiate sexuality from nudity and just understand the beauty of our bodies and really being fully seen. I mean, it's such a helpful thing.
And so the psychedelic work is so similar, right? It's like a need to really show up and surrender and just bring your whole self to the experience. Experience and trust that you're working with something that has your best interest in mind.
And so doing a sauna before a psychedelic trip is a really great way of people just allowing their nervous systems to deeply relax into that place.
And then also after a psychedelic journey, to be able to go to a sauna as a place to just get out of your head a little bit and more into your body and process and be with other people.
And so I really see the sauna as a truly, as a way of life. And one of my visions and hopes in my life is to create a place where people can do this sort of psilocybin journey work. And also for there to be a bathhouse that is affordable for people to come to every day.
What a wonderful replacement, maybe, of going to the bar, watching too many shows.
It really is such a beautiful thing to bring into your life, but it's so expensive for so many people in the current options. I'm really hopeful that I can help bring into being something that feels like it is more possible for the everyday.
[00:53:07] Speaker A: That would be amazing. That would be amazing. And I was thinking how a mushroom journey can be like, being stripped naked mentally, emotionally.
[00:53:18] Speaker B: Well, yeah, totally.
[00:53:20] Speaker A: Yeah.
I mean, that's what we need.
[00:53:23] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:53:28] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So just that surrender over to the elements, if you will, and the cleansing, because journey can be very cleansing. And how interesting also that it is moisture that brings forth those mushrooms.
[00:53:46] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah, yeah. You know. Yeah.
I never put this together, but, like, you know, working with mushrooms and also with the sauna, like, I come to really look forward to the fall and winter very much so, which, like in Oregon in the northwest, where it's so overcast, that can be the hardest season, you know, for people. And I've had some journeys with the mushroom in the fall out in the forest when it's pouring rain. And we just did a retreat a few weekends ago out in the forest in a cabin where it was pouring rain. And it just really can help you fundamentally shift the way you relate to, to cold, to rain, to fall and winter. And so I think there are just like, you know, an infinite number of ways that you can kind of position or frame or work with this mushroom. But one of them that I am curious about being in Oregon is, like, for people that suffer from seasonal affectiveness, order. Like, let's go out into the forest where it's raining and maybe soak in a hot tub and journey with this medicine and it's. Or not go out into the rain and get cold, but come back into a sauna. Like, just kind of getting out into the elements, I think, can just be such a powerful reset for how we relate to climate and the seasons.
[00:55:08] Speaker A: Absolutely. And I, having lived in the Seattle area for 18 years, which I cannot believe, that time of the year never bothered me, and I actually found the fall winter time when it was overcast and moist, as being very womb like.
[00:55:25] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:55:26] Speaker A: Forest is very womb like. And I had an amazing journey where I was up in the Quinault rainforest with a dear friend of mine and we ate some wild mushroom. Oh, my goodness. Is it that azorescence?
[00:55:44] Speaker B: Yeah. That grows? Yeah. On the coast range? Yeah, yes, on the coast, yeah.
[00:55:49] Speaker A: And, I mean, it was wet and rainy and we actually had waders on and we just went out into the forest and it was an absolutely.
And I feel. And also, of course, my half dozen mushroom journeys all those years ago took place in that mossy.
[00:56:12] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:56:13] Speaker A: At night, you know, so I just. Something opened in me, I tell you. And I remember on that one particular journey on the azorescence, I felt all of these. I have a sense behind me of the presence of many, many ladies in white. And then I turned and looked over my shoulder and it was all these thin birch trees now. Wow.
[00:56:37] Speaker B: Beautiful.
[00:56:38] Speaker A: And I realized, like, the spirit of those trees opened to me. It was all these ladies in white. Anyway, my goodness, I love your idea. I love that idea, Aaron. To bring these people into mossy, moist, just earthy forest at that time of the year, put a little mushroom in them and just watch what happens.
[00:57:06] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:57:07] Speaker A: I think that might be even be something that is far older than we even know.
[00:57:15] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:57:17] Speaker A: Because, you know, when you were saying, oh, white people cut down the oak trees, and I would say white people of a certain mindset.
[00:57:26] Speaker B: Right.
[00:57:26] Speaker A: Because our folk, the Celts, the Gaels, the Scandinavians, germanic people. Oh, my God. You go back and you see how they treasured nature.
[00:57:38] Speaker B: Hey.
Yeah. Thank you for invoking that. As a white person and a white male, I think it's just like a wild time to be born, to be incarnated into this society. And, like, I am so curious about my lineage and what it means to what it has meant for white people to be deeply connected to the earth as their mother.
[00:58:04] Speaker A: I mean, we always, we really, truly always have been. So, as irish, they were brought here as indentured.
[00:58:12] Speaker B: Right.
[00:58:13] Speaker A: Which is a nice way for, you know, nice term for slavery.
[00:58:17] Speaker B: Right.
[00:58:18] Speaker A: Was horrendous. What was done. And so anyway, there's just the. In old Europe, there is, and not even so old, such an appreciation for the forest, for the trees. And Victor Schauberger, who was known as the water wizard, he was from Austria, and he was born in 1865 around, I believe, and he was born to a family of foresters there, and their family motto was, faithful to the silent forest.
So, yeah, yeah. I personally am not. I take a step back with all this sort of current narrative because to me, it's very mean spirited and it's very divisive. And I just love my brothers of all colors.
[00:59:08] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I. Yeah, it's so interesting. This is the divisiveness. You know, I've really cut back on my consumption of. Of unnecessary news and media. And I feel like it's just, I realize now, like, how much of that divisiveness, I think, is just sort of, like, spun up and isn't totally real, you know, when you really get to know people underneath it, I think, yeah. The role that media plays in our culture is, like, really quite dangerous.
[00:59:43] Speaker A: Yes, yes. And whoever is spinning what the media then vomits out that, you know, poisons people's minds and you have divisiveness. And there is that old saying, a nation divided falls, divided, we fall. So, so, yeah, but anyway, and, yeah, and then our people have, boy, a lot of medicine mushrooms grow all over.
[01:00:09] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. It's so interesting. Yeah. They grow all over. And, like, yeah. I think there's something I've spoken to some other people who facilitate, like, ayahuasca or, you know, peyote and come from those lineages. And I spoke to a woman recently who has a lot of experience and connection into the world of ayahuasca, and she mentioned to me that in a mushroom experience, she was told, like, this is different, and you really have to let yourself unlearn a lot of things. And I think mushrooms, for me, feel, like, very, like, in terms of how we use them or how if there's something really intuitive, I think that can happen versus, like, a lineage that kind of gives us some guardrails and, of course, there's sort of danger and maybe not having some set guardrails. I mean, there's some precedent with Maria Sabina, but we really don't have too much. They grow all over the world. And so I think there is this sort of deep allyship that humanity has had with psilocybin, but it might be up for us in this moment right now, for those of us who have that relationship to really go into it and explore, like, how do we, how does it make sense to do this in group?
Yeah. I think we're all in just this deep phase of learning, you know?
[01:01:33] Speaker A: Yes. I love that you're carving a path. You, among others, are carving a path for how can this look, yeah, look. When held with great reverence and respect?
[01:01:48] Speaker B: Right.
[01:01:48] Speaker A: There's many ways.
[01:01:50] Speaker B: Yeah, many ways. That's the thing that I just keep on getting my mind blown with in this work, is that there are so many different ways that this can help us be human, to be loving, to create flourishing communities.
But I think the thing that I keep on coming back to in it is that, you know, it's, and I'll say it this way, in the middle of a journey that I had, and actually in Mexico, during my practicum experience for training, the mushroom said to me very clearly, it said, don't forget that you're not a student of psychedelics. You're a student of love and of living.
And so I think as we work with this medicine, it is very important to remember that it's not just about the psilocybin, right?
[01:02:40] Speaker A: Oh, you're just reminding me. That's why I called my book. I wrote love and spirit medicine because midway through that year of the monthly journeys I did, I said, this is, this is love and spirit medicine.
[01:02:56] Speaker B: Right.
[01:02:56] Speaker A: I titled my book that because that's what it is.
[01:03:01] Speaker B: Yeah. And I love that, too, because, like, yeah, I mean, if for me it's, gosh, maybe it was a ram Dass who said something like, if you're gonna put your ear to the lips of goddess, you should have your 2ft in the mud.
And so I think I love just this idea of, like, let's go have some really wild, like, mystical experiences where we explore consciousness and ourselves and, but let's also have our feet in the mud together and live our everyday lives together. And if, and if all of our sort of psychedelic exploration doesn't bear the fruit, you know, of good living, then maybe we need to take a step back.
[01:03:48] Speaker A: Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely, Erin. Well, listen, let's finish here for the first hour. This was wonderful. I could listen to you for hours. So in the second hour, I'm going to get deeper into what those retreats look like, what you, what your principles are with all of that and more. So I will invite listeners to join
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