Episode 153 – Carlos Tanner – Healing Trauma/PTSD – Plant Medicine, Ayahuasca

welcome to the human experience podcast the only podcast designed to fuse your left and right brain hemispheres and feed it the most entertaining and mentally engaging topics on the planet as we approach our ascent please make sure your frontal temporal and occipital

lobes are in their full upright position as you take your seat of consciousness relax your senses and allow us to take you on a journey we are the intimate strangers thank you for listening ladies and gentlemen welcome thank you so much for

your presence this evening we are gonna be speaking to my guest tonight about plant medicine just waiting for everyone to show up here this is our Christmas end of 2019 special and we're broadcasting live on YouTube Twitter D live which so many different platforms

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much for your presence sincerely appreciated either way sit back grab a drink and enjoy this conversation the human experiences in session my name is Xavier katana my guest for today is mr. Carlos tanner Carlos is the director of the ayahuasca

Foundation a nonprofit organization based in Iquitos Peru the IUS co-found a ssin is an organization that was created in 2008 from Carlos's desire to spread the science of plant medicine and healing to the wider world Carlos later went on to open the Risso

Bo ayahuasca Research Center in 2017 a research and healing center which will study the effects of ayahuasca and plant medicine on such issues such as childhood trauma chronic pain PTSD drug addiction and much more Carlos it's a pleasure very excited to have you here

welcome to hxp thanks thanks so much Xavier it's great to be here so I mean Carlos is such a large anticipation thank you again for making time to do this and Christmas was yesterday so you know it's time for the holidays and no one really wants to work you know today

but I'm glad I'm glad you're here we could talk about such an important topic I mean but let's you know let's start sort of from the beginning how did you get to a point where you you know you wanted to to work in this field yeah well it's always a challenge to try to

pick a place to start you know when you're talking about a life path I often say that it all started with the movie Return of the Jedi because when I was just a little kid I saw the Ewoks and they had a shaman at least it was depicted as a shaman and that was

became like my favorite figurine for some reason and and that was the first time I ever really knew that there was such a thing as a shaman I guess but later it kind of became more real for me I guess when I started reading Carlos Gaston ate his books in high school and

then of course when I started experimenting with psychedelics like mushrooms in high school and and then into college I started to feel like that there was something a little bit different about me I guess I didn't really want to like go to a party or

something I enjoyed being out in the woods and then my life just continued on after college I got a job career job working as a production manager of a non-profit I mean sorry have a news weekly called the valley advocate in Western Massachusetts and that was kind

of like oh I Here I am you know this is gonna be my life I have my career so I got a nice house and a nice car you know started checking the things off of the list that we're supposed to do when we become successful but a couple years in I I wasn't happy I was actually like

starting to feel more and more depressed and I really felt like this was like not satisfying this concept of success was not what what I had imagined it to be and I began drinking more started using different drugs not like psychedelics for exploration anymore I started using

opiates to try to dull myself to try to tolerate the success I guess and and that led me to kind of spiral out of control and slowly like spiral my life down into the depths of addiction became a heroin addict but still worked you know I I was you know keeping my job and

tolerating it by myself be numb to it to the dissatisfaction until that culminated in me waking up in my car at like two o'clock in the morning under water I had blacked out behind the wheel while driving high on drugs and drunk and had to figure out where the hell I was

climbed out the window of my car swam to the shore and at that point realized that if I didn't do something drastic my life was going to end and so the concept of success and you know tolerating it whatever all of that didn't matter anymore it was more about survival and

being coming healthy again sure and two weeks later I got an email from a friend seemingly randomly that it informed me that she was in Iquitos Peru that she had met these two men from Russia who had found a shaman that they were drinking ayahuasca with and she had

no idea that I had driven into the river she you know I was travelling and didn't know any of that news but decided to write to me to see if I wanted to come down so I took that as an omen and I booked a flight and flew down to Peru met her drank ayahuasca and I guess you

could say the rest is history but that the reality was that I spent the most profound three weeks in my life in a healing process that uncovered the traumas that were at the root of my addiction and the root of so many other problems in my life and came to an

understanding what healing was on such a deep level and also an expanded view of what reality is on such a deep level and during that time the shaman or as they call them in Peru curandero whose name was Don Juan he told me that this was my

path to be a healer my experiences in my own process were pointing me in the same direction and he invited me to become his student and be his apprentice and live with him and I accepted his offer and so that was in June of 2003 and then in January of

2004 I moved to Iquitos permanently and I lived with him for four years and at the end of really at the end of three years I started coming up with this idea that would eventually become the ayahuasca foundation Wow I mean um it's such an amazing story you

know we've we've covered you know various aspects of addiction on the show we've had dr. Gabor Matta I'm sure you know who that is in Krush he does a lot of work as you know on on addiction and I mean that there's there's there's something about being here I mean

whether it's being incarnate here or what but there's something about being in pain and and wanting to somehow mask that suffering and and according to dr.

Mattei you know the what's happening with an addict is that they you know that's what they're trying to do they're in so much pain that they're just trying to mask that pain level they're in I agree completely I mean I'm so fortunate to be able to read his work and and I am

so thankful for his contributions for sure but that's exactly it you know that's exactly what it was for me as well like the the addiction to drugs was an attempt at self medication and I think that's what's happening for so many people when it comes to what you

could call emotional or even spiritual afflictions modern medicine just doesn't it's not very adequate at treating them and you know people go to therapy for years and years and years and and don't really get that far because in my view they're the trauma that's caused or that

causes the the need for drug addiction or or other addictions people express their you know that they try to medicate themselves necessarily with substances but maybe with actions you know gambling addictions or shopping or whatever it might be like there are other ways that

it gets expressed but all of those causes the root causes which I refer generally to as traumas they are all happening at heightened sense of emotion they're heightened emotional states heightened perceptive ability States which comes from having those heightened

emotion States and so if you're just sitting on a couch and you're relaxed then you're not going to be able to reach the depths that those heightened states allowed you to achieve and that's where psychedelic therapy becomes so valuable and that's why ayahuasca is so

powerful because it replicates that heightened state except it doesn't have fear to replicate it and so you have a controlled environment where you actually have access to those deeper levels of consciousness where the roots are planted so to speak and you can then

pull those roots up as in the metaphor yeah I've come to like look at it a little bit differently which is using the reference of states of matter and so you know we're very familiar with the three most common states of matter of water which would be vapor liquid and solid or

gas liquid and solid the common three states and those I feel could be related to the three states of our being which would be our mind our thoughts and the liquid related to our emotions and then the solid related to our physical bodies but those can also be related to the

three states of matter in consciousness the gas state being the state of ideas and the liquid state being the state of beliefs and the solid state being the state of truth and you know the truths reside in your body and the truths essentially become the

foundation that you build your realities on your personal truths and and beliefs though they flow more like your emotions they can change you know it's it's easier to change your beliefs than it is to change your truths and the ideas are the the most fleeting you know like you

can have ideas come and go all the time and then you condense them into beliefs when there's a particular resonance to an idea and then a belief can sink down into freezing so to speak you know you can solidify a belief into a truth but when you solidify the belief into a

truth it then begins to reside in your body and that we would call the subconscious because it's just much more difficult to access it's solid you know and so once you solidify a belief into a truth it's very challenging to liquefy again you know to bring it out of the

realm of solid and that to me is what happens when you have a trauma you know you're you take an idea that becomes a belief through the heightened emotional state and then it becomes solidified in into a truth inside your body and it's just very very challenging to to liquefy

you know to transform that truth back into the state of beliefs and ideas so that it can be let go but when you use a substance like ayahuasca which is essentially an amplifier of perceptive ability then you have a much greater access to the

solidified state you know you have an expanded awareness of what is what you are and and what the world is around you because you can see beyond the visible spectrum and here beyond the audible spectrum and all of your senses can sense beyond their normal limitations of

biology and by doing so you can gain much greater access to those truths and then you can liquefy a truth you know you can transform a truth back into the realm of beliefs and ideas if it doesn't serve you if it's detrimental to you which a

trauma of course would be but you can also take ideas and beliefs that are positive and helpful for you and solidify them you know replace a detrimental truth with a positive truth and that to me is the essence of the healing process within the ayahuasca

tradition I absolutely love that analogy so much I mean what is the human body mostly made of is water right so I mean it's it's perfect and I mean yeah and the cells contain memory so you know when you experience trauma its it's like the consciousness is a crystalline

structure and it does store you know it does store information and in my experience with with ayahuasca it's it's kind of like a closet door that's been closed and the light is off and you forgot about it in your house in the house in your mind you've just you've

forgotten it's there and in my experience what ayahuasca does is it opens that door it turns the light on and one at a time it pulls out you know something that you've forgotten about a trauma that's affecting you and you look at it you observe it and you look at you

get to play with it from different angles and you know somehow that that affects the the healing process without a doubt I mean you know to give the example of my personal healing experience and how it relates to what the idea is that I just put forth are I

had a you know I I feel like my life was basically very very good you know I wasn't my parents didn't abuse me they didn't beat me or anything I wasn't like in the presence of you know an abusive relationships and in my my family in my life or anything but I did have some

traumas and so I was sexually molested in in a park by a stranger when I was young and that definitely like had a powerful negative influence on my life but there was a particular moment in my life that I completely forgot about that I I had no idea was there and in the

second ayahuasca ceremony that I attended I relived that experience like all of a sudden I was eight years old again and I was in my room my brother who shared my room was crying and I was listening using a glass against the wall to my parents on the other side of the

wall in their bedroom having an argument because my father had lost his job and they were fighting about money and finances and I was the youngest of four children and for some reason my mom decided to say that they didn't have money for me you know and like named me

as if like to suggest that if they only had three kids then they would have been okay you know and then my parents went on to get a divorce and I totally forgot that that moment had happened but right there in the ayahuasca ceremony I relived this memory and as soon as I

started you know as soon as I saw the scene like playing out I was like oh my god I totally remember you know I remember this this night exactly and then I saw like how I had taken that moment and decided that it was my fault mm-hmm you know my mom had said me you

know she had named me as the the person that the family couldn't afford to have you know and and from that moment on I took it on myself that it was my fault that my parents got a divorce and I was a burden on my face Emily and I began pushing away my

parents love like they would want to get me new clothes for school and I would refuse and they'd want to like throw a birthday party for me and I would adamantly refuse like and refuse to accept any presence from them and and that like started to infect all of the

relationships that I had as I got older and older this this one seed of an inaccurate interpretation of a particular incident infected my entire life to the point where I couldn't allow someone to love me when I was an adult and I didn't feel like I deserved it you

know I had like transformed that burden to my family to a burden of the world and and that led to this depression that couldn't really be resolved and I didn't even know that it had happened you know I I didn't remember but then right there

in the ceremony I reinterpreted more accurately interpreted that same situation but in that heightened state and I I was able to override the original misinterpretation and replace it essentially like took a truth that had been in solid form of my life for

decades and removed it and I released it into the realm of belief and ideas and let it go and then replaced it with a more accurate truth that served me better and then the next day I wrote letters to my mother and my father apologizing to them and asking for their

forgiveness and letting them know that I forgave them and starting the process to regain all of that harmony and balance and love in my relationships and of course like it doesn't just fix everything right because the you know the effects are there they've been

decades of effects so you have to like work at it for a long time yeah but at least I had the the right foundation to do that and so that's like that was a personal example of how it happened for me and I think that if you were to talk to pretty

much every single person in the world they all have some story that resembles that to some degree you know mmm-hmm I mean it's it's really interesting to me how much of a profound effect ayahuasca can have I remember after the first time that I had drank

the tea the first time I had a very deep awareness and realization that alcohol was a poison it was poisonous to my body and I never drink alcohol again I still don't I just have no need for it you know and I mean that there's and there's also something about the Western

paradigm of Western medicine that kind of is this sort of revolving door you know it it it doesn't seem to seek cures for patient its patients it seems to want to get you on drugs sort of you know mask the symptoms and you know bring you back next month and and I

think the people that I encounter that have this interest in plant medicine or namely ayahuasca they they're curious about it because they've met this wall in Western medicine and they are to be honest they're just desperate they want to they want to be healed they want to

be you know for lack of a better word normal they just they want to feel like they're making progress somewhere within themselves you know and so they're searching for you know retreats that are thousands of miles away and it's a weird system that we're in would you agree

definitely I mean it's hard to look at where we are now and not have some level of some sort of kind of conspiracy theory which is which is is such a shame you know but I definitely feel like we had a system of medicine that was trying to bring about health and happiness for

people and that somehow was replaced by this massive profit corporate you know the corporatism of medicine that we have now which is exactly like what you say and it makes total sense I mean if you're a pharmaceutical company and you're trying

to make money in the way that you do that is selling medicine to sick people you clearly do not want everyone to be healthy you know you don't you're like hey this is our whole livelihood for ours for our shareholders to to profit we need as many sick people as possible

do you really want people to be healthy if anything you want to find out ways that you can get people to be sick because that's going to gain more customers so it's it's that's the kind of the conspiracy theory theory element of it where we have what we jokingly

kind of call a health care system now where it doesn't really seem like people care about you at all and they're not even trying to have you be healthy and that's not the doctor though that's not the nurse like I think that human to human interaction is like people do want

you to be healthy your doctor does want you to be healthy except that they went to a school that was funded by a pharmaceutical company and they and the curriculum that they studied was developed by people that sat on the board of pharmaceutical companies and so

they learned essentially to become prescribers and now in the US where you see advertisements for prescription drugs which is pretty ridiculous that we even have that but they don't even refer to the doctor sometimes they say ask your prescriber for more information

like just you know go to the guy who has to write you the piece of paper to get this because you want this drug you know yeah I mean it's it's a really amazing I guess we could you know harp on that all night if we wanted to but you know kind

of moving on here I you know as I was going through some of the things some of the videos that you've done and there was there was something that I recall that you mentioned that I really want to talk about because I mean I guess this this part of it fascinates me I feel like you

know in many of the visions that I've had in my ayahuasca experiences it seems like there is a sort of battle between light and dark you know like and I mean that you know in exactly those terms like the the light side you know good versus evil and I think you mentioned

want in one of your in one of your sessions with the tea you um you were battling a demon is that right yeah yeah it's kind of interesting my first teacher he had a particular perspective that was very kind of in line I would say with Western medicine

in a way in the sense that he he felt like you needed to be a warrior and you had to have your sword in in the spiritual dimension I was like a samurai and in the beginning I thought that was super cool you know to be a samurai like in my visions I would be this badass

samurai and like chop and stuff up with my knife with my sword because it fit into my view also like as a westerner like you fight an illness you fight a disease you know you you kill the disease and but and so that was at that time like I would that story which I

believe was in Lepik Canyon weren't they when I was talking about that I'm thankful thank you for watching those videos by the way but um but yeah so early on I believe that was just my third ceremony I found a vine like just looked down and saw that there was a

vine growing out of my belly into the ground and I decided to follow it so my spirit left my body and like started climbing down through the earth following this vine and it followed it like through the earth all the way to the other side of the earth into outer

space and at the very end of it was a giant black shiny pterodactyl and you know you got to put this into the context that I have drank ayahuasca twice before this you know and now I'm having this vision and as soon as I saw the pterodactyl I was just like you were

driving the car because it always bothered me like how I had blacked out behind the wheel I I kind of it when I say I blacked out behind the wheel and drove into a river people often imagined that I just blacked out and swerved off the road but that's not how it happened

I blacked out and drove down Main Street took a left at the light went through two lights through the center of town took a left on route 10 drove like four and a half miles took a left on the road I'd never been down one drove this windy road down until it hit a cornfield drove

across the cornfield through the like cornfield and then drove into the river you know like I had this crazy like specific route that I had driven and so when I woke up you know I was like where the hell and like how did I get here like how like who was driving the car I

kept saying like who was driving the car you know like I was blacked out like how was i driving and not conscious and and so as soon as I saw the Teradek you were driving the car and and I just pulled out my sword this was before my I don't

think he'd even told me that I needed one but I just had one and I chopped that thing up into pieces and then I was afraid that it was gonna I don't know Terminator 3 like back into like melt back into itself again so I pulled out a laser that I had just happened to have

this is all in my vision you know and lasered the pieces into this dust that floated in space because we were floating in outer space and you know I what what was that really like what was really happening there I don't know I but I definitely know that

when I did that I had just defeated a demon you know I had just with my own force my own power my own strength I had just vanquished a demon that was in my life that had been attached to me that had been connected to me and they were you know there's just so many and

very fast interpretations very fast decisions that you make it was a it was a vine coming out of my stomach and it was perched on this vine and somehow I just quickly knew that it was using that vine to take energy from me and you know it was like putting thoughts into my

head and you know all of these things just quickly became interpretations as soon as I was presented with the scenario and so in defeating all of that I then had all this like liberation like I'm free like I don't have that demon and I don't even care really what that

whole thing was except that I knew that afterward I was completely empowered you know I I felt like no one was controlling me anymore like I was in control of my life I was taking full responsibility for my actions and and at that in that moment like that second I

knew that I would never do drugs again like I was you know I was done like that was it I connected a representation of my addiction to that creature and when I defeated it that and I defeated my addiction and that was how it played out that's amazing what a profound story

thank you so much for sharing that I mean I think I don't know man I mean I think people have you know some you know relevance to that something in their lives perhaps they don't feel and you know I feel like that that the sense of this is increasing more and more I don't

know if it's just a sign that times I don't know if it's like a Kali Yuga thing you know maybe we are just maybe it's just the way things are now you know and maybe this is how we learn and grow the Moses through these battles in our lives and whether you

know it's it's a demon or whether it's something else you know it there is that you're you're fighting with that and you know there there are some people who are called to this this role of of ayahuasca and I know for me it's it's it's in my

DNA it's it's in my blood and you know for you you felt something similar so you know if we could get into you know you run a center in Peru how did you how did you get to a point where you know you mentioned a little bit about you know how much your life transitioned

into something that you you know you changed completely but you know what's involved in creating a Center in Peru I mean which is basically in the middle of the jungle right yeah totally yeah I mean getting back to like just what you were describing and and the state that

we're in right now you don't have to go that far back in modern history and thankfully you don't have to go back at all because there are cultures that are fully intact like non westernized cultures still exist on the planet thankfully and and that's who I work

with down in the Amazon rainforest but even our ancestors no matter where you're from like no matter who you are all of our ancestors practiced a form of plant medicine that had at its core belief the existence of us like our existence as spirit and that all of

nature was made of spirit like every animal had a spirit and every plant had a spirit and we are essentially spirits and and that isn't that far back you know you don't have to go that far back to have that be our own ancestral wisdom but it so as a real it's like in the

span of human history it's an incredibly new idea to abandon that concept of spirit and science is really to blame like I don't want to like be negative towards science because it made so much sense for why science came to be and why it wanted to start

out you know from the beginning I guess or from scratch but um but science took this notion where you know let's start with with the stuff that you can touch you know let's start with the easy stuff the solid stuff and we'll work our way up and and so spirit just kind of fell

by the wayside it was it became it it became removed you know from our our consciousness and and then how human culture kind of started spiraling out of control and and so I definitely feel like when it comes to these concepts of demons or the concepts that the

indigenous people still use today in their understanding of the world it is still within a spiritual dimension it's their paradigm you know the spiritual paradigm or the indigenous paradigm and we don't have that and I don't think it's coincidence that we don't have a

spiritual paradigm and we are all suffering from depression you know we are and and it it fits consumerism perfect well like the corporatism like oh you feel like you're empty inside because you don't have the understanding of what you're truly filled with which is love

and spirit then by stuff you'll buy something yeah right exactly and so we're all coming to find that now though we're all kind of waking up to that and like you are saying we're all starting to like feel this intuition that we need to get back to what our ancestors were

doing and but unfortunately we don't have that you know I don't have the ability to go see where my ancestors nobody's doing it anymore it's forgotten you know it's gone and so we're traveling to the distant places left on the planet where those ancestral

traditions are Gong's sure and where they're still being practiced and so thankfully that they are being practiced right and and now even science is is coming around you know it's kind of coming full circle to the point where even scientists have to

acknowledge that there is certainly something beyond what our normal understanding is and that there's whether you want to call them dimensions although that's certainly being a word being used by science now you know that there are many many

dimensions that are existent but we don't aren't able to perceive them due to our biological limitations you know like we're even within our scientific paradigm we're coming around it's just that that those details of that aspect of understanding within current science

is not permeating into general consciousness the way that like biology is or chemistry is you know but I think that that's just a matter of time and I feel like there's a coming together now where you have science actually looking directly ad ancestral traditions and

basically opening up to a new understanding that hopefully will be deaf will be permeating the the future of humankind and be what brings us back to harmony and balance and that's where to get all the way back to your original question I don't feel like I did much to

start the ayahuasca foundation or to start the the Research Center or you know all of that it just played itself out you know like I just kind of followed the path like I just did what I was supposed to do that's what it always has felt like and and so now like

looking back I I look back and my like wow this is incredible like this is so great that that this happened you know but I can't really say that I did that much of course you know I made decisions I acted and I had faith and I trusted but but all of the people that it

took to make the ayahuasca Foundation and all the people that it took to get the research projects and the the funding from the UK government and all of that you know like I didn't do much those people just showed up you know man and I believed in it like I

believed that it was going to happen and the reason I believed in it is because spirit told me no the guy I had ayahuasca showing me the way and then I had the the bioluminescent RINO arau like literally just setting it all up for the research the Research Center

belongs to a tree you know it's so true but I basically received an email in 2013 saying hey were a charity organization in the US and called the grant town Foundation and I am so thankful for the grant town foundation I encourage anyone to like check out their

website grant town org and so thankful for them and they offered to fund the building of a Research Center if I would build it Wow and I knew it was going to be a huge project and so to help me make that decision as to whether or not I should do this I went into the jungle

and I did a diet with a bioluminescent tree called NOAA Rao a tree that's leaves glow-in-the-dark and if you're watching on YouTube there's a picture on the right hand side of my teacher Don Enrique up above and down below there's some blue leaves those are as a

photograph of the leaves that are actually glowing and so I did a diet with this tree which essentially meant that I ingested it and I chose to fast so I fasted for eight days and so I only and ingested the extract of a root of the root of this tree and nothing else

for eight days and I connected with this tree and and so when I walked out of the jungle I had drawn the architectural plans for the research center on piece of paper with a pen and and so that was like clear that yes I was going to accept this offer and I

was going to take on this project and but it was really like no arel this tree that brought me to that decision and no Arau is what I feel like brought me the researchers because I have a degree in philosophy and a degree in art you know I was a graphic artist as my career in

the u.s. and I knew nothing about research and Here I am like building a research center in the middle of the jungle and people would of course ask me like how are you gonna do the research and I would say I don't know like I honestly I don't know but I feel like

once I get it close to build like the people will show up like the right people will show up and sure enough like a psychiatrist from the National Health Services came and did a retreat and he had met one of my facilitators randomly in like a bar in Costa Rica or something

and and he did a retreat his mind was blown he went back and he took it upon himself to write up all the grant proposals and he won the grant from the national health services the UK government actually gave him the money to set up his research but and so all we

did was host it and then him Simon ruffle is his name and Nigel nets band the two of them came and they set up their own research and they did it and the findings are stellar and they're gonna be published in the next couple months but I just like two weeks

ago I was with them looking at the results that they just finally like finished compiling all the data at the end of this year and it's it's just it's gonna make people's jaws drop to see just how effective this medicine is Wow I mean there's there's so much there

Carlos I don't know how to package that or unpackage it I mean okay so I mean it this bioluminescent tree that led to this sort of enlightened state of consciousness where you know you you're inspired to draw out the blueprints for you know this what would be the center

that you're doing all this this research in and you know the this grant that you got and and the people kind of appearing in your life as they needed to and I fully prescribed to that same idea that and it's kind of how I built this show and everything around here is you

know the people who are supposed to sort of appear do and you know it's it's always kind of been that way and not to say it's not a struggle it's not hard it is really hard to do what we're doing but you know we push forward I want to get into love you know you talk about

love talk about love and and forgiveness if you could touch on you know though couple those two things that would be amazing yeah definitely well I think the way that I look at you know the way that I look at everything is through consciousness now like I my

philosophy if you want to call it that is that everything is made of consciousness so the energy of the universe is consciousness every cell is consciousness every atom is consciousness like everything there is nothing but consciousness that is my

personal philosophy but of course there's so many different kinds of consciousness just like we were talking about states of matter and ultimately those states of matter are could be described as frequencies you know like a lower frequency will put you down into a

solid more solid state of matter and a higher frequency of vibrational energy would put you in a higher state like a liquid or eventually gas or the highest of all the plasma state which I didn't really talk about which is to me spirit and consciousness in though in in that

reference before that I was making and so love is in the realm of the highest vibration and so if you picture a wavelength you know like a line that goes up and down you picture one that goes up and down with you know very very close to each

other so the peaks and the the troughs of that wave are so close to each other that it almost just looks like a band that is the frequency of love and and so musically speaking like if you if you have a note and it has a frequency you want it it will sound good if it

resonates with another note that has a symmetry to those peaks and troughs in their vibrational frequency but love has you can't not be in harmony with it you know it's it's so there's so many peaks in so many troughs that like no matter where your vibrational frequency is it's

always gonna resonate with love and so when you're in a state of love like everything is in resonance everything you know fits everything feels right nothing feels wrong when you're in that state and we fall out of that by thinking that love is something that we

have to get from someone else mm-hmm and that to me is part of like the the sad state we're in where we don't have spirit as our core identity like I was mentioning before we think that we're individuals that are made that our bodies and therefore we are alone

essentially in the world and even though we have relationships we are always like alone and yeah as a body but when you have spirit as your core and everything has spirit as its core then you have this universal spirit that you're all a part of something and the simplest term

for that is nature we talk about nature as if it's something outside of ourselves like it's very common to say I love being in nature but we rarely say that we are nature and yet we are you know of course we are we are walking on this planet as

and every other animal is nature but not us and and that's just inaccurate and so if we could get back to an idea that we are nature then I think very quickly we can get back into the state that by loving nature which i think is a pretty easy thing to do you know when you see a

beautiful mountain or a beautiful stream or a waterfall or just a flower blooming or hear birds chirping or even when you see a child smiling like that it still has that aspect of nature if we include ourselves in that then we can easily bring that love to ourselves and feel

that love from nature because nature loves us the same way it loves every tree every plant every animal and I know that might sound like some hippy crap or something but but it really is the reality like that vibrational frequency of energy is permeating all of existence

but our consciousness is so powerful that we can deny ourselves that and in the same respect like you got to where you are because you felt that you trusted this vision you know you use you had a vision and you knew it you know you like knew that this was going to be

it and to the point where even if there was an obstacle you were gonna find a way around that obstacle or through that obstacle because you believed in it right and and that's what it was for me to like I was building a research center and I had so many problems I mean it got

hit by lightning at one point like crazy stuff happened but I just knew to such a degree that it that it was meant to be that I just persevered I just did what I had to do and and I think that every success story has that underlying theme that people just knew and that's why

they were able to persevere and when an opportunity comes and you don't have that belief then it's very easy to say now that could never happen you know that door could never open for me kind of mentality and then you just don't walk through the open door or you don't

allow that opportunity to reveal itself or to you know provide the gifts that it is there to provide but when you do believe in it then you're ready to step through that door you are expecting it you know you're just like oh well an opportunity is going to come I know it

will because I believe in this and that to me is the result of reconnecting with nature and allowing yourself to bring yourself up to that resonance of love and that frequency of energy I mean as such a powerful statement I think that realizing you know love is within

ourselves and you know there I think so much of something that happens is that people are seeking that connection so much with someone else and looking for something that's already inside of themselves as you know I don't know as a means to get it you know through

someone else's validation or acceptance or maybe it's like a neurological thing that happens in the brain but you know even that is short-lived you know until you find out that when it comes from yourself it's it's the most lasting and the most pure and the most real but you

know unfortunately the way our culture is set up it's it's just it's not very aligned towards demonstrating or showing you that you know that that love is in within within yourself I mean even even with you know this idea of you know Christmas and you know consumerism and

the way the pharmaceutical industry is I mean there's so many different adversarial sort of avenues that a human being can experience when you know you're just living an ordinary life and you're trying to get by and you know especially this time of year I think it

really affects people you know they look out you know they look externally at the lives of others maybe it's on Instagram maybe it's on Twitter what wherever it is but you're comparing your life to bears and you're thinking in your mind like oh okay well this guy has

it this person has it made you know this person has everything that I desire and want in my life and then somehow you just feel like crap because of that you know I recently had someone tell me exactly that that you know they just don't feel like they're

in the right place in their life because you know everyone else around them seems to be more put together but that's just that that couldn't be further from the truth it's just it's not a it's it's a fault it just appears that way would you agree Carlos 100% I mean

that's where I am I say I sum it up by just saying nature knows but I I love I spend a lot of time in the Amazon rainforest and I mean like in the jungle you know and the trees the forest like the whole the whole environment it just always has the answers like every every

answer and and yet the comparisons are just futile like in nature you would never say oh the pine tree is so much better than the oak tree you know that you would never that's the that's kind of a ridiculous thought the pine tree is what it is the oak tree is what it is

they're totally different the pine tree has all of these qualities and that's so cool and the oak tree has all these qualities and isn't that cool and and that's how it is with nature but for some reason when we working we want to compare ourselves and try to make that

claim you know I want to like try to say like oh that one's better and I'm not as good or I'm better than that one and it's it's kind of just useless and and that to me is another example of how reconnecting with nature like looking at the trees and and plants and seeing how

they do it like they've they've pretty much perfected it you know they've got life down that they're not questioning their realities much you know they're not wondering if they're if they're worth their value their 1 in 100% faith and Trust all the time and

they're always thriving you know they've given the right environment every plant will thrive and they'll never question it and and that's like to me the perfect example of what we're supposed to be doing and I know it's weird to like talk about plants being your mentors hmm but

that is exactly what plant medicine is about and honestly that is exactly what ancestral wisdom is about like all of our ancestors were very closely connected with a particular plant or a group of plants that enabled them to regain or maintain their harmony health

and balance in their lives and I mean this was happening for tens of thousands of years in human history and it's still happening and so even though it sounds weird to say it in the state that we're in now in the way that our lives are it was certainly not a weird idea for tens

of thousands of years in human history and I think it's just high time for us to get back to looking at plants again and plant medicine again and and thankfully that's that is what that is what's happening in fact on February 20th there's going to be the thank you

plant medicine movement the social media movement where everyone is encouraged to use the hashtag thank you plant medicine and share a story about how plant medicine helped them in their healing process and I think that's awesome very cool I mean there's yeah I would agree a

hundred percent I would say that plants are much smarter than human beings and probably more intelligent than we will ever be and and there there is a sort of networked intelligence consciousness that that understands the nature of the universe I mean we as humans we I think

we like to think we know what's going on but it's not - it's not how it works we don't we have no clue what's going on here and you know plants have and ayahuasca you know namely as a teacher I think it it will remind you of that and if you fight that you will it will

remind you of that in a not so gentle way you know so I mean if if if it if an ego thing is your problem then I don't know but you know there there is there does seem to be this resurgence of psychedelics that I don't really like that that term but that's the one that

we have right now but there does seem to be this resurgence in awareness of you know plant medicine and the research that's coming out I mean we're seeing it be become legalized like mushrooms are becoming legalized and there there are institutions like John Hopkins that are

opening and the work that maps is doing I mean there's there's a bunch of institutions right now that are pushing this research out into the water public totally and I love it I mean I it's so crazy I started living in Peru almost 16 years ago and started the ayahuasca

Foundation v eleven years ago and I never when I started the ayahuasca Foundation the idea that ayahuasca might be legal and that all you know plant medicine might be legal and that research organizations were going to be studying it and that psychedelic therapy

was going to be a term were not far away like five years from now you might go to a psychedelic therapist for your treatment of depression or anxiety or PTSD or something like that and that is to me really fantastic and a lot of that is just because people are starting to

realize just how powerful we we are you know to me the pharmaceutical industry will pushed it too far they they were like too greedy if they had if they had been like moderately greedy they probably could have kept us go for a while but now we're just turning

our backs on them the human race is just fed up with it and and so we're empowering ourselves and and so so grateful for John Hopkins University in Imperial College which also announced their grant to build a psychedelic therapy Research Center in the UK and at

King's College that's helping fund the research that we're doing at the ayahuasca Foundation and the NHS I mean how crazy is it that a government is funding ayahuasca research that is the future is for me looks bright it looks very very bright and people are

returning to using plants the way that their ancestors did and and and not you know they're not going full native so to speak it's being blended with the developments that we have made because it's not like modern culture was total crap you know there's been some really

wonderful developments in technology I'm certainly not against technology the fact that you and I are talking in this manner and so many people are listening is amazing so I do envision like an incredible future but that respects and honors the the wisdom of nature and

incorporates it and now with environmental movements as well like I I'm really hopeful for the future personally like I think it's a pretty cool time to be alive it's definitely interesting time to be alive I would say we are on the precipice or in as far as

the balance goes there is there is it does seem to be that we're at a tipping point where people are becoming more conscious of what's going on we're becoming more conscious of our footprint here we're realizing that we can no longer sort of sustain the way that

we've been living in this consumerism based society and you know people are starting to wake up to that slowly but you know surely and hopefully we get to a point where more people are acting on this and you know taking action and doing something for their local

communities you know like it doesn't have to necessarily be you know an adventure or you know heading out to the junk the Amazon rainforest I mean you can start to connect with the people and around you that are also interested in this and there's form groups that I

think that would be a really great thing I mean if that was in my area I would I would have gone to that easily you know at first Carlos we're running out of time man this flew by I want to give you a chance to kind of wrap this together you know if if it sounds like you know

you this was your mission and we talked a bit you know in the pre-interview and I asked you you know if if this was something you felt was programmed into your DNA and you said no you know you and you know so I know I'm just I'm just curious you know how you would kind of

tie all this together maybe for the people who are searching for this medicine maybe they're struggling with different aspects of trauma they're wondering if I you ask us for them or not you know how do you how do you wrap this together right well there's a lot

of different paths to take of course in ayahuasca certainly one of them I I have a bias towards ayahuasca believe it or not I definitely feel like it is one of the most effective ways of treating trauma and that's the particular focus of the research that we're doing and the

results have just been phenomenal like I mentioned in the ability of ayahuasca traditional therapy because it's not just ayahuasca there's a whole group of plant medicines that are involved in collaboration with the ayahuasca ceremonies but to me like I said it's

it's all about nature and like you were talking about it you don't have to go far to connect with nature there's a park if you live in the city you know there there's your backyard if you live with a backyard there are Gardens you know luckily there's nature everywhere

and just by connecting with it and by connecting with it what does that mean you know I really just mean like just sitting in the grass like touching the tree like feeling the leaves of a plant something very very simple plants are always in this harmonious state they're

always in a state of balance they don't get thrown off you know their consciousness is rock solid and they can share that with us they can bring us to a balanced state but if you are troubled by trauma and you are troubled by anxiety and crippled by depression

ayahuasca is definitely a fantastic option our Center offers programs that range from one week to eight weeks and if you feel like it is your calling also to be healer with plant medicine we have training programs or educational courses that we offer too and so if you if you

visit the website ayahuasca foundation or RG you can check out that information and soon we'll be publishing the the research on our own website but that research will be published in over 10 journals in the next few months but beyond all of it like I I think that my

greatest advice would be to try to condense the ideas of trusting in nature and trusting that you are a part of nature and that you are on the right path you know sometimes we can feel lost and sometimes we can think that we're totally going in the wrong direction and

but having trust in everything working out it will help you put one foot in front of the other and start moving forward and and so there are these little things that we can do and trusting in the process trusting that it will all work out putting your faith in

something bigger than yourself which i think is nature which you are will be helpful in allowing you to figure things out you know allowing you to find the right path for you and it's all gonna work out like I guarantee it it will all work out

that is an important perspective I think to have just to like you said to put you know one foot in front of the other and a lot of people need that a lot of people need just to find the ability to do that Carlos where can people find your work yeah like I said ayahuasca

Foundation o RG is our a nonprofit organization and we have programs that you can check out on that website I do have a youtube series that's also ayahuasca foundation on YouTube where I just did this year 10 part series on lessons of ayahuasca

things that you can do in your life today that were taught to me by plant medicine and and yeah I am always available so if you ever want to write to me you can reach me through the website as well through the contact us page and I'll definitely respond and I

also I'm happy to like do calls if people want to speak with me in person perfect Carlos I sincerely appreciate your time guys that's that's gonna wrap it up for us here on that HIV Wow I mean it we didn't drop any package during frames tonight a pretty happy at

it the quality of the stream and I appreciate everyone that was here and I know it's the holidays and everyone's with their family so I surely appreciate if you're listening to this on you to make sure you click like and subscribe to the YouTube channel if you're

listening to this on the podcast version maybe leave us a review positive or negative I definitely read all those if you want to join the community get to all my links comm slash the human XP and there is an invite code at the top of that you can come and join

us thank you guys so much for listening we will be back here next week I didn't take any time off at all for you guys so we will be back on January 2nd with a fresh episode for you guys thank you guys so much for listening ringing it out of here good night