08/23/2026
There is exponential potential with plant medicine and healing conditions like trauma, PTSD, depression, etc... But it can also do as much harm as good, and the risk reward is simply magnified with the use of psychoactive substances.
There needs to be proper direction, guidance and facilitation. And even then, there needs to be proper integration into ones regular life experience, otherwise what seems like a cure can lead to something worse...
1) How does one approach their lives, family, the world when their entire concept of self and existence has just completely changed?
2) How do we prevent reliance on the substances for the feeling of being healed/whole/changed?
3) How do we prevent a resurgence of the ego through attachment and identity with the medicine ("I am the Shaman")?
4) How do we prevent the feeling of failure if it doesn't work?
5) How do we know who to trust in facilitation and guidance?
These are all realities I have personally witnessed in doing this work and facilitating peak-state experiences most my life. They are real challenges that exist outside of the lens of just "doing plant medicine for healing."
I have seen equal amounts of harm than good, and there was a reason why one of my Kundalini teachers warned me significantly not to support or do plant medicine for these exact reasons.
But I saw the exponential potential for good, and I could see the patterns that existed in the failures, and knew that the risk had to be taken; there is just to much potential to not use these tools for human transformation.
This is core to what motivates me to teach peak-states through breathwork and sound, because, we do not need plant medicine, we have the breath... and it can be just as powerful without the inherent risk.
But still there are reasons, and plant medicine is becoming mainstream. It needs to be understood on a deeper, subtler level that takes into account the nature of the human condition and the real world that we exist in.
The ancient cultures that discovered plant medicine did not do it in the context we now live in, so there needs to be an evolutionary understanding of how we can apply it to our lives today, and integrate it in to the world we live in now.
This is what I will be discussing at this years Sioux Falls Holistic Health & Spirituality Fair on Oct. 10th. It's core to our teaching at Breathe and Believe and the work we do with vet groups like Heroes and Horses.
It is also plays an essential role in our trips to Peru, where yes, we use plant medicine to connect deeply with sacred sites and power centers, and experience the full beauty of this human experience. 🙏❤😇❤🙏
