Episode Transcript
[Intro] Welcome to Brainforest Café with Dennis McKenna.
[00:00:22] Dennis McKenna: Mariya Garnet is a Ukrainian born artist, traditionally trained psychedelic facilitator and student psychotherapist with over 15 years of experience in indigenous healing practices.
Since 2008, she has been in apprenticeship with Mestizo Curanderos in the Peruvian Amazon. During her eight years living full time in Peru, Mariyaco founded Canto Luz Center for Research and Cultural Preservation, a treehouse retreat dedicated to healing and environmentalism. Mariya integrates her expertise in psychedelic therapy within the Amazonian vegetalismo tradition with modern therapeutic approaches. Currently, she leads retreats in Peru and maintains a private one on one practice focusing on healing complex trauma and restoring holistic health. As a postgraduate student at the CREATE Institute in Toronto, Mariya is deepening her knowledge in expressive arts therapy. She views creative expression as a powerful tool to an integrated self, believing that artistic practices, similarly to plant medicines, can help individuals access deeper levels of consciousness and embodied cognition, facilitating personal transformation. It's my pleasure to welcome Mariya to the Brainforest Café. Welcome, Mariya.
[00:01:58] Mariya Garnet: Hi, Dennis. Hi.
[00:02:00] Dennis McKenna: Thank you. Good to see you again.
Let's get into it. We are having this conversation because we have been in discussions about presenting a seminar or a one day virtual symposium about some of the issues that come up when ceremonial or psychedelic retreats or situations, when things go a bit off track. I think the name of the symposium is “When the Ceremony Doesn't End”.
So the focus is on that. It brings together a group of therapists who have dealt with this situation, which is rare, but it does occur, and also some traditional healers that you've worked with who've also had to deal with these kinds of situations. So do you want to elaborate a little bit on what this will be? The conference will be going to be in February 25th and we've just begun to put up information on the website about registration and so on. It's got an excellent list of practitioners and experts.
Mariya, of course, is kind of leading it and many colleagues that she's worked with, including our own Dr. Ranji Varghese, who is a psychiatrist and a ketamine therapist who's on the board of the McKenna Academy. So I believe this is up on the website for the McKenna Academy and people can find more information there.
All of these links will be on our podcast website. With those preliminaries tell me what inspired you to do this? What led you to decide this was a necessary thing to do or something that you wanted to organize?
[00:04:08] Mariya Garnet: Well, it's interesting, Dennis, that we're talking about it on Your podcast, because all of this kind of started with your podcast with Lee Kaiser.
A few months ago, you talked with Lee Kaiser, the wildlife biologist, about his experience with prolonged altered states, as we can call it for now.
Two episodes that he went through in Peru and then in Mexico. And Lee Kaiser has been a friend of mine for over a decade. We met when I was a director of Canto Luz and he came to work with Ayahuasca. He had our first ceremony, his first ceremony with us, and we stayed in touch. So I've been in touch and I know his story, the adventures that he went through. And in the summer, he shared the podcast he did with you, and he contacted me and he said, well, Mariya, I know you're working with plant medicines and you're taking people to retreats. So he was asking me, how can he be helpful to me? And he said, well, I don't want to be necessarily a coach, but I want this story to serve and to be useful. And originally he proposed me to coach maybe some of my patients, to which I replied that, luckily this is not a usual story. It doesn't happen often. And we were almost ready to just kind of let the idea go. And then literally, last minute, when we were on Zoom, an idea came through. Why don't we do an online Q and A for practitioners? Because it's definitely.
While it's a rare occurrence, these things happen. And there's very little research, very little awareness from both clinicians and retreat facilitators. So the idea was originally born as just kind of like a Q and A online on Zoom. And the more people we talk to, the more people were getting excited, like yourself, Dennis. And we're saying, well, we need to take it bigger. You know, it really has to be out there. There's useful information. You know, there's so much that we can talk about. So, you know, the idea kind of snowballed and now it's becoming a five hour online seminar with a big panel.
[00:06:31] Dennis McKenna: Well, I think I'm glad to see it. I'm glad to see that the McKenna Academy is, you know, able to help organize this, because this is an area where it's often overlooked. You know, facilitating psychedelic therapies, facilitating retreats and so on is difficult enough even for when this doesn't happen. It takes skill. It takes a skilled therapist or curadero. And often these roles are combined. There is no, you know, distinct, you know, definite distinction between them. And the interesting thing that I have sort of gleaned from talking to Lee and I haven't known Lee as. As long as you have, but we met originally in the Sacred Valley. And I know that he's been, you know, that was about five or six years ago, and at that time, he was deeply involved in medicine work down there and had been for some time. And then he shared with me, eventually, his experience in having these essentially breaks with ordinary reality as a result of these ceremonies that required intervention.
And he had various kinds of intervention. You know, he had curanderos that he had worked with who tried to help him, and that was actually, it turns out, it seems, that was perhaps more effective. He had the conventional psychiatric, biomedical types of intervention, and those were not so helpful. So. So sort of what emerged out of this, I think, in conversations with Lee, was that there is a need for this, and there's a need for therapists, particularly if they come from what you might call biomedical perspective or psychiatric perspective, to understand that the standard approaches to this are perhaps not as good as some of the traditional approaches. After all, you know, traditional healers and indigenous people have been using ayahuasca and other plant medicines for many thousands of years. They've learned a great deal more about it, perhaps, than a therapist who just goes to a certification course. Not that that's not important. But again, we come back to the idea of listening to the people that know these medicines.
And so Lee suggested to me that we organize this seminar. And I was all in favor of it. And then he introduced me to you, to me, Mariya, and your colleagues, and I was even more in favor of it.
[00:09:39] Mariya Garnet: Thank you. Yes.
I find that we really have a very rounded panel where we're going to be looking at the phenomena of psychosis, let's call it that, from different perspectives. As you mentioned, we are working with people who really do know best. There are cultures that have been using these plants for over millennia. So they do have protocols in place, safety protocols in place, and we can really learn from them. At the same time, also, we can just forget that we do have access to the biomedical modules as well. And we're not, you know, they're just two arms of the same body. What we really all want is to have, you know, positive outcomes for our patients.
[00:10:29] Dennis McKenna: Right, right. And often, you know, if you're an unusual person, in that you straddle both worlds, you know, and some of your colleagues, like Yarissa, I believe, and Ranji, the people that will be on this panel, you are qualified medical therapists. You're certified psychedelic therapists, and you also are steeped in Traditional medicine practices.
And so you understand the power of both of those. And what do you think?
I mean, my sense of it and I'm, I'm not a therapist, I'm a humble ethnobotanist, so my preoccupation is with the plants. But what do you think needs to happen in the development of these therapies, effectively protocols for when this kind of thing happens? What is your approach, for example?
[00:11:35] Mariya Garnet: This is a big question, so I'm just going to share my opinion. And first, no, for legalities, I have to say I'm not yet a registered psychotherapist. I'm in my process and in fact kind of coming from the traditional training and stepping into the Western modalities, this is really, you know, to be able to kind of stand in both of these worlds. This is what prompted me to kind of embark on the official registration process because, yeah, it is important in many circles.
What do I see happening? And again, I'm just sharing my opinion because it's a really big, big, big, big question.
I believe, you know, I personally believe that the way that traditions are taught, they're taught through experience, right? It's experiential learning.
I, you know, it's impossible to learn how to administer psychedelics without really going deep down that road yourselves the same as you cannot become a psychotherapist without ever being in therapy yourself. So unfortunately, you know, this is kind of a legal battle many of the training programs are facing right now that, you know, the students are not necessarily even allowed legally to access the medicines that they're being taught how to treat. So I know some training programs organized during journeys to, for example, Peruvian Amazon.
And I think that is one that's great way. It's a great practical way for people to see what holding space, what facilitation looks like and really learn from the maestros and to see how to apply it in the Western model.
I have my own biases, of course, and I have my own preferences in my personal practice and career. I use the arts because I believe that is exactly what stands between the science and tradition. And as an expressive art therapist in training, we call our modality the original psychotherapy because it's something that uses and recognizes and ceremony and ritual. And this is one thing that really isn't between two models and can be understood by North Americans and Europeans. This is a language that's accessible to them, to us, to most of us. Right. I'm also a foreigner practicing something going down the traditional route. It's an interesting path to walk and has to be walked in with lots of reverence and respect for tradition and learning without appropriating.
And that is what I attempt to do. And I don't know if I'm answering your question. I'm kind of going on a tangent, but, yeah, that's where I find myself. Yes.
[00:14:36] Dennis McKenna: Right, right. Well, it is a huge question. Absolutely. And a couple of things. I mean, since the earliest days of psychedelics or psychedelics emerging into Western culture in the 60s, and people like Timothy Leary and Ralph Metzner and people like that, always talking about the importance of set and setting. I think that's the fundamental of any kind of therapeutic application of psychedelics, where, I mean, they were on the right track. Setting is important. Obviously, it has to be a setting that is safe, where people do not feel threatened, where they understand that they're being looked after. And set is by far the more complex of this equation because set is what they bring to it. And effectively, some people say set is your intention for the session. I feel that it's way beyond that. Set is you. Set is what you're bringing to it, your whole set of life experiences and expectations. And then you have these two dynamics coming together. And if the setting is not appropriate in terms of the protocols and support, then the set, the person's experience, cannot unfold in the way it needs to, because in this dynamic situation you're having this experience, the intention is to open up. The intention is to let go. But the expectation is when you get through that, you'll be able to reconstitute, recondense. And in most cases, that happens, sometimes it doesn't, and people get lost in some kind of hyperspace. And maybe that's not the way to characterize it. But then the therapists or the curandero's task becomes. That's where the real challenge shows up. It's one thing to modulate a session and bring everybody in for a soft landing.
When they don't land softly or they don't land at all, then it gets tricky.
[00:16:58] Mariya Garnet: Yeah. And this is exactly what we're trying to kind of look at in our February seminar, because it does happen. And the more psychedelics are coming into mainstream, more people using them for therapeutic purposes, for spiritual purposes, just statistically, it's going to keep happening.
More people are going to come seeking help, you know, be it. You know, even emergency rooms. Right. Somebody can. Who hasn't come back, you know, where do they go? So the people who are going to receive these patients, you know, need to have a little bit wider awareness of different uses for plant medicines and psychedelics and just be. I don't know if, if we can ever say that we can be really prepared and ready for something like this because it's a deeply unsettling event for everybody, for the patient and for the circle of care.
It's kind of, yeah, it's really out there. It's difficult, it's hard, it's very vulnerable, it's very personal.
But awareness that this happens and it will happen, I'm going to go on a leap here and say it will happen even if everybody has the best intentions, even if everybody's prepared, even if the intake was done correctly, because intake is actually something that's addressed often in a psychedelic setting. We do a lot of things to prevent these kinds of situations to happen, but they still happen and they will happen. So I think in our seminar we're not trying to talk about how to make sure that it's safe and it doesn't happen, but we're talking about, okay, we've done everything correctly, everything was good, but it still happened. So now what?
[00:18:50] Dennis McKenna: Right, right, right. So among the things that you have to think about in order to sort of anticipate this is the intake process. Are there certain people?
I imagine there are certain people that if you interview them or what you know about their psychological history or perhaps genetic proclivities and that sort of thing. Certain people that you would definitely advise, psychedelics are not for you.
You should really not be taking psychedelics. What sort of characteristics would you identify that would lead you to advise someone to stay away from psychedelics and maybe seek a different path?
[00:19:43] Mariya Garnet: Okay. And once again, I'm not a medical professional, but definitely a personal diagnosis like bipolar schizophrenia. And bipolar is, you know, it's kind of interesting because there are.
There is even a center in Costa Rica that specializes in using ayahuasca, full bipolar, and they are developing a protocol for it. So. But generally we believe that the risks outweigh any pros.
So definitely, yes, a history of mental health, like serious mental health disorders in relatives, in parents. But the thing is, not everybody knows their family of origin. Right. There might have been a history of this and we don't know. There are some underlying conditions that people might not know about or sometimes withhold information.
Personally, when I interviewed people for the retreats, going beyond the, you know, the medical information, you generally want to look at the person and see how much support they have around them, not only how much, you know, let's say, how well they hold it together on their own. But who is going to be around them if things kind of get, you know, get tough? Because things get tough even without going full on into psychotic episodes. You know, we know psychedelics bring up a lot of things. So I would be curious to know, is a person, are they familiar with psychotherapy? Maybe they have some kind of counselor supporting them. Maybe they have a community elder. Maybe they are a member of a large traditional community. So, yeah, the support system is something very important.
So that's what I would be looking at, how stable they're on the ground.
[00:21:38] Dennis McKenna: Yeah, I think that's very important. And in the traditional context, where ayahuasca, for example, is part of the culture and accepted, so then there is a larger community that the person could look at for this kind of support. In our culture, psychedelics are only beginning to be accepted. So often, sometimes we say the real work begins on the plane home from the retreat.
And if run into difficulties trying to integrate after the retreat, there's often no place to look. There's nowhere you could go to get help if things start to fragment again. And I think this is something that Lee has experienced. He experienced a couple of these, but one of his episodes was in a situation where effectively there was no choice except to go to a psychiatric facility. And they completely misunderstood what was happening.
Also, just the remark you made a few minutes ago that there was a center in Costa Rica specializing in using ayahuasca to treat bipolar.
And normally we would counsel someone with that condition not to take them or schizophrenia. But I've also corresponded with schizophrenics who have experienced ayahuasca who felt that it's been really healing for them in some cases. And, you know, this is not a recommendation for schizophrenics to take ayahuasca, but I think what it is is it's a recognition that people are complex, and people's interaction with these molecules, these drugs, is similarly complex. You know, and for one person, a certain person in ayahuasca experience, may act, who has schizophrenia. And ayahuasca experience may be actually integrative, but I think it takes an exceptionally skilled facilitator to recognize that and guide someone through that kind of thing.
With this diagnosis of schizophrenia or bipolar, it's very tricky, but it can help. And these diagnostic categories are often rigid, and they sort of fail to recognize the fluidity of people's consciousness and experience. So, you know, I guess this is tricky territory, both for the patient and the facilitator.
[00:24:37] Mariya Garnet: Yes, I agree. I think, you know, I'm speaking more from the position of, let's say, Western facilitator, right. Who deals with a little bit of a different set of responsibilities and even legalities. But when I go to Peru and I work with my maestro, Enrique, I have personally seen several Peruvian local patients who live with him who we probably would have diagnosed. Right.
And I've seen him working with those people. In fact, last year I went and there was an elderly man who spent several months in the forest with my teacher. And the patient was sent to the curandero by his family.
And yes, clearly, as I said, we would have diagnosed that person. And I've asked Enrique, so what is his journey like, what's going on? And I've seen that man in ceremony with us. And Enrique told me that six weeks ago, that person couldn't talk.
And he wouldn't talk, like he wouldn't communicate.
He wasn't verbal. And so, few months later, yeah, like we were able to have a conversation with that person. So definitely, I think there is a lot of things that we don't know, we don't understand. And yes, we are very complex.
[00:26:03] Dennis McKenna: Right? Right. Yes. There's a lot of things we don't understand about the mind, about consciousness. And in any context, in some ways, it's a guessing game. You need a very astute therapist or curator or practitioner to navigate that. And then when you introduce plant medicines into it, it further complicates it because, you know, the whole point of, of that is, you know, there are different ways to frame it, but it.
You're, you're exposing yourself to this experience to deliberately sort of disable your default mode, network. You know, that's the buzzword. That's, essentially, the illusion that you create to keep yourself functional. Ordinary consciousness, you're choosing to disable that. And that can be very therapeutic because it opens up channels that are normally closed. But it can also be very dangerous and threatening for some people.
And sometimes there's no way to tell.
So how can Western, more Western biomedically oriented therapists who want to work in this area? There are many, many people who feel a calling to become psychedelic therapists. How would you suggest their education should encompass these kinds of possibilities? How do they prepare for that? Or do you prepare for it?
[00:27:44] Mariya Garnet: Can you rephrase it a bit?
[00:27:45] Dennis McKenna: If a person is training to become a psychedelic therapist, there's certain protocols that they learn. Expectations largely about orchestrating the set and setting.
But do they receive enough instruction in how to handle situations like this when the therapeutic process that they're shooting for goes off track in some ways. I mean, I think this is in part what we hope this conference can bring into focus.
The conference is really, the audience for the conference, we think, are primarily therapeutic medical professionals, whether certified and all that, or whether they're simply what you might call underground facilitators or people with that kind of experience, but people who want to dedicate and develop the skills to handle this. So that's who should come to this.
[00:28:52] Mariya Garnet: Thank you. Yes. Now, I understand your question.
I'm looking forward to expanding my own perception and view on this and on this question. But what comes up for me right away?
Sensitivity.
Developing therapists own sensitivity and the trust in their senses. Right. So in a way, you know, it's kind of coming back to our senses. Not even necessarily following the protocols to the tea. Because again, this break with the reality is very subjective and it's different. You know, there are similarities between all of them. But in the end, it's very much rooted in this one particular patient's story and their perception. So the therapists, or the facilitator's ability to sense, emphasize and bring compassion, which is empathy with action, into the session. I think this is what is crucial, the relational skill where we can. We can fluidly follow holding the space for our clients, not as a rigid container, holding space, but almost following them while holding that space around them as they go so they can go on the journey. Because this is also what we will be talking during the seminar. What is a psychosis and what is a spiritual emergency? Lots of shamanic cultures see this as actually a positive thing. This is a rite of passage. And many people who go through this experience, they talk about it as something that actually was beneficial. So we don't, in my perspective, we don't want to necessarily change that course of that person's journey. We just want to keep them safe, maybe physically safe, people around them safe, so they can have that space to go through what is happening to them.
And I know there's different depths, let's say, to which people go when they're in these moments, some people don't recognize who they are, where they are. Some people kind of come above the water sometimes. So in those moments when they emerge from under the water so that they can see the compassionate person holding space and a person who can have at least some lived experience.
It doesn't mean that we all have to go over the edge of reality. But it would be beneficial for the therapist to have had difficult journeys. I don't believe in bad trips, difficult Journeys and what it might feel like. Right?
Holding flexible space while being connected through all of the senses to your patient.
[00:31:49] Dennis McKenna: Right. I think you've touched on something very important here.
How would you see the difference between, I mean, how would you distinguish between a psychotic episode and a spiritual emergency? Or is there a difference? Or is the difference in the way that. In the response of the therapist?
[00:32:16] Mariya Garnet: And again, I think Yarissa actually will bring a great perspective into that question during our seminar. So I'm just going to answer from my limited understanding.
I know that there are some objective factors.
The term spiritual emergency, as actually Yarissa pointed out, is not clearly defined yet. It's almost like a suggestion.
I think there is difference in basically how far the person have gone, how much awareness they have about what's happening, and the degree to which they are dissociated from the consensus reality.
What I would rather speak without using the term spiritual emergency is, let's say, shamanic initiation versus psychosis. And there I would again, I would talk about the external perspective, how the facilitator, curandero, or the therapist views the person who is going through this difficult time. Are they seeing somebody who is sick or, you know, I don't know all of the words, or are they seen as somebody?
[00:33:30] Dennis McKenna: Is this something that they need to correct, something they need to fix, or something they need to help the person through the journey? And then they become more akin to the shamanic initiation. So when they get through it, they are back together in terms of being functional, but they're not the same person they were when they started the journey.
[00:33:54] Mariya Garnet: Exactly.
[00:33:55] Dennis McKenna: And in some ways, we may be a better person, more improved on many levels. I can speak to this personally because, you know, I mean, I had.
And people have read about the experiment at La Chorrera, my brother, and that whole mythos about us at La Chorrera. But I had a prolonged. After eating way too many mushrooms and sort of buying into the delusional space that mushrooms can take you. I had a break from reality that lasted about two weeks.
And it's interesting because in our party there were people who were appalled at this. And it was like, we have to get this guy to a psychiatric facility. Well, I was in the middle of the Amazon. This was not really an option, but that was their. And from the outside, it looked like I was really disengaged.
Face it, I was batshit crazy.
But my brother, who was also in an altered state in a kind of a complimentary way, but he could communicate with me and I could communicate with him. And his whole approach was, it's okay. This is unfolding the way it's supposed to. Just be patient.
And as a result, and because there was no option to leave and get airlifted to some hospital someplace, it had to play out. And I've always been grateful to him for sort of holding the line and just keeping it to say, just let it happen. Because it did turn out to be.
I mean, I have no claims to be a shaman. I'm not saying that, but it was an initiatory experience.
And as difficult as it was, I'm grateful for that. I felt, and I still feel that it was one of the most valuable experiences of my life.
And it made me a better person. It certainly made me a more humble person. And others will disagree. I'm not particular, but it was a valuable experience. And because he protected me in that way and insisted that it had to happen, I was able to literally put myself together, back together on my own schedule, in my own time, so that when I finally did re-emerge, as you put it, returned to the surface.
It was definitely a therapeutic thing and I was a better person for it. And I feel like.
But, man, that sort of model is not easy to follow if you're in a biomedical context. If you're in a traditional context, you can do that. If you're in a biomedical context, you know, you'd be threatened with malpractice if you didn't take some steps to try to avert this, sometimes to intervene and you know what I'm saying.
[00:37:28] Mariya Garnet: Yeah. And maybe this is what we can discuss.
[00:37:31] Dennis McKenna: Right, Right. Yeah
I think the therapeutic community has got to define some boundaries for tolerating this kind of thing. And because a person seems severely divorced or estranged from reality, that is not necessarily a bad thing. In some ways, it can be an opportunity for complete reintegration.
And that's why people are taking these things really, for kinds of transformative experiences. And it's not all fuzzy bunnies and happy hippies. I mean, these experiences are difficult, you know.
[00:38:14] Mariya Garnet: Yeah, I don't want to glorify those experiences, but few people that I have met who were going, who have gone through such experiences in kind of shamanic settings, they have all gained a lot from those. They're definitely not to be seeked out. But, yeah, I don't believe it's something that needs to be fixed and treated in this particular kind of scenario.
And we are bringing ancient traditions into, as you said, a biomedical kind of paradigm existed for far less time. So I think as kind of Western practitioners, we can also exercise some humility and learn from people who do know best. In this particular context.
[00:39:08] Dennis McKenna: We have to listen to our elders, our indigenous brothers and sisters in that way. And I'm particularly happy that we'll be able to talk to some of those people that were involved when Lee was having his difficulties, his episodes or prolonged altered states or whatever in Peru. They were the ones that intervened, that were called on to help him through it. And his experience with them was much more healing, much more integrative than what he was offered in, in the hospital when it happened another time, and where it was viewed, as he described to it, basically they viewed it as a drug abuse problem. Your problem is you're on drugs, you're an addict, which is absurd, of course, and it's none of that.
Have you. I mean, you knew Lee before any of this happened, and you've had a relationship with him over the several times that it has happened. Right. So you're sort of a supporter for him for a long time through these different episodes that he's had.
And I don't want to, you know, say too much. I mean, it's a very personal thing, but I guess what are your reflections on that relationship over time that you've seen? Because Lee, whatever he's gone through, he's come through. I mean, he's clearly a very intelligent, very stable, balanced and wise person.
[00:40:59] Mariya Garnet: Well, when I met Lee, he was, well, clearly much younger biologically, but also I've met him when he drank for the first time. Right. And I witnessed him kind of, well, as it happens to many of us, we fall in love with this process, right. Enamored with the experience. And one thing that I am noticing and you know, definitely this is no personal criticism, but I would think, you know, one piece that I think he missed in his story and what I'm trying to share with other people. If you're going to really go all out, you know, go to Peru, spend, you know, months and years, you know, doing these medicines, have a mentor.
If he had somebody, you know, it doesn't even have to be in. Well, we all dream of having a teacher. You know, we go to South America with this idea that the shaman is going to see us and say, okay, you're my next student. Okay, that doesn't happen. And that's not even necessary. But having kind of one person that can be a person, you know, in a different country, but who has experience. And now there are a lot of us, you know, 20 years ago there were no mentors, but now just having somebody with whom you can talk about what's happening to you. Because some of the things that have happened to Lee wouldn't have happened, if there was somebody to whom he was listening.
[00:42:30] Dennis McKenna: And in some ways you were that mentor for him?
[00:42:33] Mariya Garnet: No. We were more like he wasn't really taught. Like it has to come from the person if the person needs to ask for advice. Right. It's not really, you know, my place to. I mean, I can say like, okay, Lee, like that sounds like a lot, you know, or maybe don't do that. But we didn't have that relationship, you know, the mentee and the mentor.
It's a therapeutic almost relationship and it has to be clearly defined. I was not that person for him.
[00:43:07] Dennis McKenna: Okay, okay. Have you had experience with other people that have been in situations similar to Lee's?
[00:43:17] Mariya Garnet: Yes, but not as strongly. I did witness somebody who kind of lost touch with reality. After Dieta, after planned dieta, after being in isolation in the forest taking non psychoactive medicines for 10 days.
It was not such a such a strong case. There was no hospital or medical staff involved. It lasted well, it did last for a month, but it was obvious that it was gradually reducing. So I never had to actually. Luckily, I'm grateful. I never had to hold space for such an intense story as Lee´s.
[00:44:04] Dennis McKenna: Interesting. Yeah, well, the diet itself is, you know, pretty stressful. It can be. I could see how that might put you in a prolonged altered state because you're really affecting your physiology in some profound ways, even though you're not acutely taking plant medicines. But it does affect you. Yeah, yeah.
[00:44:28] Mariya Garnet: Like it is the whole purpose of the diet to kind of go into the altered state that's not induced necessarily by chemicals, but there is very limited, you know, food options. No salt and isolation. Right. Thats a big factor. And that's what shamanic plan Dieta shares with other traditions, like vision quests in North America. Sort of, kind of very deep introspective state and can go pretty deep.
[00:44:58] Dennis McKenna: Right, right. And most people can get through it and some have found it difficult. And many people can't complete the dieta. It's the temptation to quit, which is probably the right decision in some cases.
[00:45:18] Mariya Garnet: It's always difficult. It's always difficult for different reasons. When I used to host dietas in the forest, people would ask me what is difficult? I'm like, I don't know what's going to be your story, if it's going to be mosquitoes, the food, or something else, but something is going to bug you, and your job will have to be to get through it.
[00:45:38] Dennis McKenna: Absolutely. Well, adversity can be a spiritual practice. I mean, that's why ascetics starve themselves and spend months in the desert and this kind of thing, because obviously this puts you a very complex biochemical state.
I mean, food. The dietas are not psychoactive, but they are biochemical systems like any food, and they have properties, and that might affect your state of mind. And the distinction often, especially in. Well, the distinction between food and medicine is often artificial. And I think in indigenous societies, this is recognized.
And I think it was. Was it who, Hippocrates, that said, let your food be your medicine? And there's great truth to that.
At the end of the day, we are biochemical systems and we're interacting with a complex chemical ecology. I mean, all these plants with all this vast array of secondary products that, you know, some of which are psychoactive and some of which affect physiology in other ways. We're not separate from those. So that's, you know, it's a complex thing.
So what else do we. Would you like to touch on that we haven't touched on? We've both been kind of raving, and it's a fairly constructed conversation.
[00:47:20] Mariya Garnet: But I just want, you know, since, you know, the seminar is really kind of the primary focus of this podcast. What I wanted to say, what excites me the most is that from having conversations with all the panelists, I think we're all coming with the understanding that we are opening a possibility for new learning to emerge. Like, we are kind of creating this liminal space where we're all going to go in and put our energies in and allow new understandings to emerge. So this is not the type of seminar where teachers come in and tell you how it is. No. We're bringing different perspectives, from indigenous people to psychiatrists to researchers, and we're through a variety of ways, including the creative expression, we're allowed to shape something new.
And I find a beautiful collaboration across multiple disciplines. And I'm excited to see what's new what. Maybe it's even questions. I don't know if we're going to get any answers, but it could be questions that we haven't thought about before. It could be different insights, surprises. That's what I'm excited about.
[00:48:43] Dennis McKenna: All right, Well, I am, too. I think this is going to be a significant seminar. I think it's going to be very, very valuable for people that want to be practitioners or maybe they are experienced, but, you know, there's always room for more learning.
I understand there is an opportunity for continuing education credits.
They can contact you. Right? And your address, it's on the page on that website. So Mariya is the organizer of this and the main contact person.
And we'll be putting out more information. We'll release this podcast closer to the actual event.
And yes, I think we have a. I think we have a great opportunity to do something that will attract a lot of interest and be helpful to people, either whether they've had experiences similar to Lee's or whether they're traditional practitioners or biomedical practitioners or something in between. There's something here for everybody.
And it's the McKenna Academy's mission to educate people about all of these factors. So I thank you for taking the opportunity and suggesting this and being so professional on the way that you've organized this and so on. So I think we have a stellar panel of a variety of expertise, and I think many people will see this and they'll sign up and will propagate this knowledge. So thank you so much.
[00:50:36] Mariya Garnet: Amazing, Dennis. Thank you. It's an honor to speak to you and I'm excited for more.
[00:50:42] Dennis McKenna: Me, too. Looking forward to it. Well, happy holidays and thank you.
[00:50:48] Mariya Garnet: You too. Thank you.
[00:50:49] Dennis McKenna: Bye. Bye.
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Thank you for listening to Brainforest Café with Dennis McKenna. Find us online at McKenna.Academy.
