Psychedelics, Addiction, and IFS: Healing the Parts That Seek Escape with Clayton Ickes- Power & Purpose Podcast
Why do we turn to addiction? And what if the answer isn't just about what we're running from, but about the parts of ourselves desperately asking to be heard?
In this powerful conversation with Clayton Ickes, we explore how Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy combined with psychedelic-assisted therapy offers a completely different way to understand and heal addiction. Instead of treating addiction as simply a bad habit to break, this approach reveals the deeper emotional wounds and protective patterns that keep us stuck—and shows us how to welcome them home.
What You'll Discover:
Clay breaks down what IFS therapy actually is and why it's so effective with psychedelic work. You'll learn about the "parts" of ourselves—those inner voices, fears, and coping mechanisms that developed to protect us but sometimes keep us trapped in unhealthy patterns. Rather than fighting these parts, IFS teaches us to listen to them with compassion.
We explore how psychedelics can act as catalysts for awakening, helping people see beyond their addictive behaviors to the pain and needs underneath. But Clay also warns about the risks of "treatment without therapy"—why taking psychedelics alone, without proper therapeutic support, can miss the entire point and even cause harm.
You'll hear about the difference between difficult trips and bad trips, why connecting with others is essential for healing (and how our culture's toxic individualism works against recovery), and what real integration actually looks like in daily life.
Clay shares practical wisdom about bridging science and spirituality in therapy—what he calls the "brackish waters" where measurable healing meets mystical experience. He discusses research showing how mystical experiences during psychedelic sessions can predict long-term recovery from addiction, and why these transcendent moments matter so much.
The conversation also dives into:
How IFS principles apply to leadership, business, and finding your purpose (not just therapy)
Daily practices for integration, including Yoga Nidra and Vipassana meditation
Understanding who we are beyond our roles and identities
Rumi's poem "The Guest House" and what it teaches about welcoming all parts of ourselves
Whether you're struggling with addiction, supporting someone who is, or simply curious about deeper approaches to healing, this episode offers hope and practical pathways forward. No clinical jargon—just honest, compassionate conversation about what it means to truly heal.
Episode Timeline:
00:00 Intro
05:13 Who we are beyond our roles (Sankalpa & identity)
06:25 From addiction to alignment: psychedelics as catalysts for awakening
12:04 What psychedelic-assisted therapy really is
15:19 The risks of "treatment without therapy"
16:24 Toxic individualism & the need for connection in healing
22:10 Trauma vs. growth: difficult vs. bad trips
25:20 Where science meets spirit — the "brackish waters" of therapy
30:20 Mystical experiences and the measurable healing of addiction
36:38 What integration truly means
41:54 IFS, leadership, and parts in business and purpose
44:13 Understanding IFS and the multiplicity of the mind
46:05 Yoga Nidra, Vipassana, and daily practices for integration
51:49 Rumi's The Guest House – welcoming all parts home
Transcript:
Speaker 1
So it wasn't that I took a psychedelic and everything about my life changed. It was that I took a psychedelic, had an experience that caught my attention when getting arrested, when going to rehab, when having my life generally fall apart. Didn't. And there's a way to cultivate my attention, to cultivate my mind and my presence and my relationship with reality in a way that can bring me happiness. There's a power that's available to me as a human being.
Speaker 2
Welcome back to the Power and Purpose podcast. I am Vanessa Sole, your host. Thank you so much for investing your time and your energy here. I really do appreciate it. I'm super excited for today's episode. We have Clay Ickes here. He is a psychedelic assistant therapist and founder of Keiki on Wellness. He supports individuals in aligning with meaning and purpose and the divine through therapeutic and spiritual practices. Clay, thank you so much for being on the show today.
Speaker 1
Absolutely. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm looking forward to diving in with you.
Speaker 2
Yeah, it's amazing. I love your voice.
Speaker 1
Yeah, that's sweet of you.
Speaker 2
Do people ever say like they love your voice?
Speaker 1
All the time I do a lot of audio work and also one of my main modalities is yoga nidra or integrative restoration. So I often use my voice in kind of like a hypnotic way to support people.
Speaker 2
That's what I'm, I mean, it makes sense, right? Because you do psychedelic assisted therapy. But yeah, I love yoga Nidra and I when you said yoga nidra, I can imagine what that would look like or what that would feel like and sound like with your grounding voice. Love it.
Speaker 1
That's sweet of you. Thank you.
Speaker 2
Yes. So I love asking people, who are you and who are you not?
Speaker 1
Such a delightful question. So in Yoga Nidra, we work with this idea called Sankalpa. Son culpa is our overarching reason for being on the planet. It's intention sort of roughly translated. So my son culpa is, and this is who I am. I am the creative universal power itself embodied in the service of a more beautiful psychedelic world. So that's my like high level claim on this earth to my power, to my purpose, to my essence, my essential nature. So that's kind of who I am, who I'm not. I play a lot of roles, right? I'm a therapist, I'm a friend, I'm a lover, I am a writer, I'm an explorer, an adventurer. But really I'm not any of those things, right? There's something deeper, like who who I am is the essential creative force that animates all of those tasks and animates all of those things. Those are things that I do, but what I do is not who I am. What I what I am is the sort of fire that illuminates all of those activities, and that's kind of how I conceptualize myself and who I really AM.
Speaker 2
That was beautiful. Thank you for sharing your perspective. I love that. So good. So let's talk a little bit about your journey before we talk about all the amazing work that you do. You went from addiction to alignment. What was that like and when was that? How long ago was that?
Speaker 1
Yeah, so when I was, I got out of rehab on my, I got a juvie on my 18th birthday and then kind of immediately went into an inpatient rehab program. So like 1617 inactive addiction. By the time I went into rehab, I was an IV amphetamine user and I came out and was still kind of in it for a couple of years, maybe like a year and a half, two years. I found psychedelics and started working with them really intentionally when I was 19. The story always goes for me, because I was saying yes to drugs, I said yes to psychedelics. They were categorically different and they got my attention when really nothing else could. So it wasn't that I took a psychedelic and everything about my life changed. It was that I took a psychedelic, had an experience that caught my attention when getting arrested, when going to rehab, when having my life generally fall apart didn't. And it sparked this curiosity in me. And so I happened to have the fortune of having a book in my house by the Dalai Lama called The Art of Happiness. And I just became curious about it just sort of like glowing on my shelf, my mom's bookshelf. And I, I read that and was like, oh, oh, there's a way to cultivate my attention, to cultivate my mind and my presence and my relationship with reality in a way that can bring me happiness. There's a power that's available to me as a human being. And so I discovered that path of power and practice and presence. But like 1819 and then the rest of my life up to now has kind of been a devotion to that. So yeah, my addicted part, the part of me that craves, like, to move away from reality, all right? The part of me that craves to just distract or to avoid, to be somewhere other than where I am. He's still kind of here. He's still present in my system, but I've recruited him now into the service of my work, into the service of my passion and my devotion. So yeah, it's a, it started like 1819. I'm 32 now, but it's an ongoing practice, ongoing devotion.
Speaker 2
Wow, sounds like you do some part work. IFS therapy, is that right?
Speaker 1
Yeah, I'm trained in IFS.
Speaker 2
Same yeah, I love it. I love it and 'cause you know, I, I, I, I wish more people got an introduction to part work in, in IFS, you know, before we're adults. While, while those parts are like, you know, being formed or, or, you know, just like in, in the development of our lives. It's so important and it for you personally, did you when you were making that transition from addiction into working with psychedelics, were you receiving part work therapy or is that something that you started to get into more towards your sober journey?
Speaker 1
Yeah, so Vanessa, I so agree with you. The tragedy I often think about like the tragedy and the robbery of public education, you know, to spend 12 years in school and never once was anybody like, hey, this is how you regulate your nervous system. This is what it means to be in relationship to your own mind. It's like memorize the dates and the times of all of these things, but don't look at all about your relationship with yourself. So I, I so resonate with that and echo that I really wish parts work would have been taught in school or even like basic emotional regulation. There's like a home EC class. So why not like inner home EC or Inner family EC, right? Yeah. So no, I, I did not find parts work formally in those early years. I found meditation, found some teachers like Ramdas, the Dalai Lama and some books that were really important to me. There was one guy, David Icke, that I got really into. But parts work kind of came out of me organically. I wrote a letter to my younger self and I sort of sensed inside there was this pain that was like still speaking to me. And it seemed to be speaking from a voice that was younger than who I was. I kind of recognized intuitively that there was something happening inside of my mind that was not who I was in that moment. And so I undertook this sort of process of like identifying and trying to update what was going on inside of myself. And I did that through like labeling and naming parts, but I didn't know about IFS. And actually my intro to parts where I came through James Fadiman, who's a psychedelic researcher and author, he wrote a book called Your Symphony of Selves. And reading that book maybe like five years ago, something like that, that was kind of my formal introduction of parts work. And then I found out that there were all these connections between MDMA assisted therapy, which is something I'm really interested in, psychedelic assisted therapy and parts work. So yeah, it wasn't present in the early days in a formal way, but it kind of emerged organically out of my own relationship with myself.
Speaker 2
I love that. I think I had a similar experience as well. And I, I feel like ifs will find people. It's like a calling will find you like the energy, the the concepts, like you already started to develop your own. You already start to label the different parts of yourself before you even knew it was a thing. And then, you know, when we find out it's a, a process, a, a concept of therapy modality, then we can go deep within it. So I, I love that, Yeah. So what is psychedelic assisted therapy for anyone who may not have like a clear understanding of what it is? I think it's become a lot popular in the last, which is I think is a good thing in the last five or ten years. And so sometimes people mention it and they may not understand like what it is.
Speaker 1
Yeah. So psychedelic assisted therapy is the formal use of certain compounds in the treatment of both mental health disorders and pathology, and what the clinical world would call pathology, as well as there's another aspect or branch of it that I don't think it's talked about often enough, which is life maximization. So psychedelic assisted therapy is the clinical professional use of psychedelic tools in order to treat mental illness and also to optimize the course of somebody's life. There are phases or stages of psychedelic assisted therapy. Pretty much no matter what medicine you use. One of the big things to know is that there's a big difference between psychedelic assisted therapy and psychedelic treatments. Often people will go to a ketamine clinic, right? And at the ketamine clinic, they will sort of lay you down, blast you off with a high dose of ketamine, and then return. That's really common. And there have been a lot of prescribers who have been incentivized financially functionally to start ketamine clinics. You know, if in the sort of demographic that I'm in, in my algorithm niche, I get these advertisements of like, oh, start a ketamine clinic, be a psychedelic therapist. What I will say is that's not psychedelic therapy, right? Laying somebody down, blasting them off on ketamine, leaving the room. That's not psychedelic therapy. That's that's a call it ketamine treatment. Psychedelic therapy exists of phases including intake and assessment, right where you have a conversation with somebody about what's happening for you, they get an understanding of you. There's preparation. In the preparation phase of psychic genuine psychedelic therapy, you're looking to build safety, connection and tension and surrender. And I can sort of go through each of those things, but there's preparation and then there's the administration session. During the administration session of genuine psychedelic assisted therapy, you have a practitioner with you who's been training in a really genuine way and putting a lot of effort and focus and time into learning how to show up for you and with you in the psychedelic state. And sometimes people, people and practitioners have different modalities and methods and tools. But like, for example, I use a lot of IFS and some EMDR and some yoga nidra techniques in conjunction with psychedelic. That's what it means, combining tools of therapy or coaching or whatever modality with the medicine experience itself. And so that's what's happening. You have a person who's with you in a very focused center, dropped in way, working with anything that arises using the perspective, right, and the potency and the power and the clarity of a psychedelic experience to actually turn back towards what's happening in your life and consciously work with it. And then there's integration following the experience. So that's kind of the arc of psychedelic therapy and and what it is in total.
Speaker 2
Thank you for explaining that so beautifully. And so my question to you is, what are some challenges that may arise, not that they have to arise that, but what are the challenges that may arise for people who do the, the treatment, right, the treatment without the therapy part. And before you answer, I'll, I'll just say for me, you know, I've done it without the therapy part. So my challenge was getting stuck in loops like the like the medicine got me somewhere or, or it allowed me to access something, a memory, a feeling and emotion. And I'm in the journey. So I can't, you know, I can't observe myself. And, and even though I am trained in IFS and all the things, it was, it was just difficult to kind of get myself out of a loop. That was my own personal struggle that I've had when I did ketamine as a treatment or just, you know, without a professional kind of guiding me. So that's one example. And what are some other challenges that people might experience?
Speaker 1
Yeah. So like you mentioned, if you get to a difficult place psychologically or emotionally, even sometimes, if you have the tools without the anchor of another person, it can be hard to, like, navigate those waters. I'm going to speak really generally. One of the wounds of our culture is sort of this toxic individualism, this sort of sense of like, I'm going to do it all by myself or it's only the medicine, right? Yeah, this is deep, deeply woven inside of me, too. And so the sense of like, oh, OK, cool. It makes sense logically that I would go into a room and I would take this medicine and have this experience. But do you know the difference in feeling like when you walk into a party and you don't know anybody and you're the only, you're just sort of alone and you're with yourself versus the feeling, the sensation, the emotion of walking into a room and being seen and known and felt and heard deeply and having somebody inquire into you. There's a supportive emotional psychological field that's created by another human being. And you can go into a journey space without that field, all right, without that. But you're, you're literally like floating alone through the ocean of the unconscious mind. And it's really my sense that like as human beings, we're not supposed to do that. It's not woven into who we are. Every culture that's worked with these medicines has worked with them in groups and in community, in relationship to other people. And the idea that we could go and be like, alone is representative, not of any like clinical knowledge, but I think it sort of represents this toxic individual individualism. So really the main sort of risk and there's things that spin off of this, but like the seed, the core of it is amplification of the things associated with toxic individualism, feeling alone and unsupported and unseen, unheard. Like you have to deal with what's happening with you by yourself. And there are lots of specifics that come from that. You know, I've seen people spin out in all sorts of ways, endorse ideas and beliefs about themselves in the world that if only somebody was there to sort of be with them and inquire into that in a self LED compassionate way, maybe they wouldn't have to hold that. So that's what I would say. I mean, there are lots of specifics, but it's like the reinforcement of sort of a toxic individualism.
Speaker 2
Yeah, I never thought of it from that standpoint. And it's like if you think about it, when we isolate in general from people or other things, not a lot of good comes out of it. And I'm talking about like, you know, isolating, not just spending time with yourself for rejuvenation. I'm talking about like, you know, they, they, we all heard about people who, you know, during COVID who were isolated from friends, family, so many people for such a long period of time, right? And it took them into a different place. And so, yeah, that toxic individualism kind of, you know, not allowing yourself to be supported, not allowing yourself to receive can really restrict your growth and, and like what you're trying to do. So thank you for sharing that. And then are there any other challenges that people might have experienced when they did psychedelics, you know, without the professional support?
Speaker 1
Yeah. So this is what I'll say. There is long standing anthropological cultural evidence to strongly suggest that we can productively work with psychedelics outside of a clinical context. People who are very for the medicalization or the therapization of psychedelics at which I am one of those people. My professional career is built on supporting people through a psychedelic experience. And what we know naturalistically is that most people who work with psychedelics in any context and in any container don't tend to have major difficulties, right? It's like 3%, maybe 3-4 percent of psychedelic experiences historically outside of clinical context based on epidemiological data like large population surveys and studies shows us that these are pretty well tolerated medicines, but that doesn't mean that there are no risks, right? So I'm not opposed to sort of recreational self therapeutic, self optimizing psychedelic use. And most of my life that's been my relationship with these medicines. And for certain people in certain times there, there are risks like you can get stuck in loops that amplify your negative thinking. You can encounter situations or circumstances that can be physiologically dangerous. Sometimes we forget that fire is hot and water will drown you, right? And electricity works. There's sort of a relationship with reality that can get skewed a little bit. Psychedelics are amplifiers. And so the question that I always want to know before taking a psychedelic or inviting somebody to take somebody a psychedelic is, is the current state that you're in psychologically, emotionally, something that you're ready and that you have the capacity to amplify and move towards right now? I mean, one of the dangers that's a little more subtle is like getting something worked into your mind that doesn't really serve you, actually intensifying A belief or intensifying a fear that can happen. It is possible to have a psychedelic experience. It's not dangerous or bad or traumatic, but that does sort of bring you into touch with fear or challenge or something about yourself or the world that you struggle to work through by yourself. That's one of the big dangers, encountering something that you're not prepared to encounter.
Speaker 2
Yeah, that's that's so important 'cause that can almost be like a micro trauma, right? Possibly.
Speaker 1
Yeah. I mean, this word of of trauma, like trauma's an interesting culturally bound concept. We are very focused on trauma as Westerners, and I work as a trauma therapist and practitioner. Trauma's very real. And the idea of like trauma versus growth, like when is it a trauma that challenges us and, and permanently makes us weaker or temporarily brings us into a place of sort of place where we need to heal versus when is it something that we encounter that brings us more into our power, more into who we are. And sometimes a psychedelic experience, if there's not an external thing, right? Like this, it's this idea of bad trip versus difficult experience, right? And so bad trips are very different than difficult experiences. Bad trips are actually pretty rare, but difficult experiences are pretty common. So a difficult experience. Oh, did you have something? A difficult experience is when you encounter something internally that's psychologically or emotionally challenging. Almost universally in my experience with clients and with myself, when that happens, when I encounter, and oh boy, I've encountered horrific internal content, things that are just unbelievably horrific and challenging and frightful and terrifying me to the outer edges of the, of the dark cosmos. Those are difficult experiences. And pretty much universally, when I or my clients or the people that I work with or people that I know encounter those, it's this unbelievable opportunity for growth and expansion. In the space of the darkness that's made we shine brighter. And so sometimes when we when we encounter this horrible darkness, it's like an I describe it sometimes as like a psychedelic experience can be like an iceberg moving through a valley and instead of hundreds of thousands of years, it happens in like 8 hours. This thing like, oh, it's horrible, it's wretched and it carves you out. But then when it's over, there's more space inside of you, right? And that space becomes a place into which the sort of flowers of your life can grow and bloom. It becomes reforested. So the darkness is an opportunity. Those are difficult experiences, incredibly valuable, incredibly helpful to encounter the darkness so that it carves us out. And then there are bad trips, which are typically like, you know, if you get in a car wreck while you're tripping on a second out, that's a bad trip. And that was, I'm not going to say there is difficulty there. There is some growth, but I'm not going to try to do the love and light spiritual glossing over of like, no, well, I'm not going to immediately jump to that. I'll say like, that was bad, that sucked. But those are external things that happen, and they're pretty rare if you set it up in the right way.
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah. Thank you for unpacking that. Does therapy in this space in in the psychedelic space? Does it bridge spirituality, psychology and purpose?
Speaker 1
Certainly, and it's something that we're working on all of the time. So one of the fascinating things about psychedelic therapy today, the way that I view it, is we're sort of existing in this, I call it brackish waters. So we have these two fields of information. We have the field of materialistic Western science, which is beautiful and valuable. I sort of think of that field of information as like a river, freshwater river flowing. There's a particular directionality. There are boundaries and banks of the river. There's a depth. Typically we can like see across it. We know the river. We can measure the river. We have a deep relationship with the river. Our Western culture honors and values and sees only the river because that's where we live. And then there's this other world, which I sort of metaphorically described as the ocean of animism, the ocean of spirit and the ocean of the of relationship with the divine. This sort of place. And maybe we call it spiritual, or maybe some people call it New Age, and certain religious traditions and certain animistic and indigenous shamanistic traditions. These are the waters that they swim in. That's the ocean. Boundless, measureless, right? Sweeping, expansive psychedelic therapy is the place where the freshwater river of science meets the ocean. It's brackish and we're seeing this kind of speciation where there are freshwater species who are the researchers and the clinicians and the academics and the scientists. And then there are saltwater species, which are the true indigenous shamans. Like I've sat with Maza Tech, an A Maza Tech elder who's been at his altar for 50 years. I've sat with Shipibo teachers who have been drinking medicine since they were children, right? People who are deeply, it's not like 5 or 10 experiences and then they're a practitioner. It's that they were born into this tradition and they've known nothing else and they've been in relationship with the medicine that they serve their entire life. They know that landscape with everything that they are and like they live in this world that from the materialistic scientific perspective is false, categorically right, categorically untrue in the indication of spirits and in in the indication of the divine right. And same from the perspective of the the shamans, the shamans and the indigenous people, the people of the salt water of the boundless. Look at the freshwater species and say, like, what are you people doing? You're missing the fundamental thing that we're all talking about. You can't reduce it down to something you can measure. And so psychedelics are the place where these meet. And predictably, we are working that out, right? Like we are in the process of developing systems of understanding and relationship to ourselves in the world that sort of bridge this gap. As a practitioner, I have my own ways of doing that, but they're still under development. Like psychedelics are inherently the word means soul revealer, right? The psyche, de Laan soul revealer to reveal the soul. And in the Western world, we've sort of come away from what the soul really is or the idea of, of purpose of a divine relationship with our who and what we are. And it's my hope and my intention and my practice to to bridge that gap. There are people who don't speak the language of the soul and spirit. And if you say that, some of my clients and if you say that, you might burn rapport. And similarly, there are people who don't speak the language of Western psychology and science. And if you're too scientific, you'll burn rapport with them. And so there's this like very interesting dance of building a bridge depending on who you're talking to. So the answer to your question is like, yeah, they're psychedelics inherently invoke a divine relationship. We have tools like the Mystical Experience Questionnaire, and we know that the intensity of somebody's experience of the mystical on a psychedelic is predictive of the therapeutic efficacy, right? So like we've been able to measure that your experience of a relationship with the divine, we call it the mystical experience or the numinous timelessness, boundlessness, being connected to everything that is, identity with everything that is, is connected inextricably to the reductions in anxiety, depression, BTSD, all right, The clinical outcomes that we're seeking through therapy. So yeah, they're tightly embedded and their efforts on both sides to remove one from the other. But I think that we're seeing sort of a synthesis in psychedelics, and that's what's really needed is a synthesis of science and the divine. But it's incredibly nuanced and incredibly complicated.
Speaker 2
Yeah, it's, it's layered, you know, it's, it's not simple, but it's so potent and powerful. And I I think of it just as we have to expand our awareness beyond our immediate reality or beyond the ego self. Like, yeah, I think, you know, I'm a little different. I think the ego is an expression of our soul. But yes, and then there's the soul and and then that, that is vast. And you know, with my experience, my first psychedelic experience, and I wasn't prepared. I didn't know what ayahuasca was when I signed up for it. I didn't know I signed up for it. I thought I signed up for a yoga retreat. But but in the seven days of, of doing that, it that, that connectedness, that that oneness, that mystical experience, talking to God, being God, being with God, being next to God, you know, like kind of being like in all these different contexts to the universe. That was the thing that really allowed me to do a complete 360 with my lifestyle at that time, right? Going from, you know, something very intense. I was doing sex work for 10 years, but coming home and coming out of that, like I completely just stopped everything cold Turkey almost actually not not even almost just, but it was that it was that soul expansion. It was connecting to the soul again, soul retrieval. I don't know if you, I think you used a different word than that, but it was all of those things and that mystical experience and seeing my other lives during some of those journeys to kind of see like how it all connected and just coming out of that immediate emotional, mental or physical or material survival mode because that's kind of illusion within itself. So let me know any of your thoughts on that. But that's what kind of comes to mind for me as we're speaking about this.
Speaker 1
Yeah, what a beautiful experience. Potent immediate directionality. Sometimes I think of them as like a tuning fork, right? It's like you get this ping and it can be a little disruptive if you're living out of tune and you hear this like, like, well, that was very intense. And then the feeling of that, the feeling of hearing for even just a moment the true sound of your heart or the true sound of your spirit aligns and tunes your life. And then everything that's not that becomes immediately recognizable with sometimes with a psychedelic experience or a very intense spiritual experience of some kind, mystical experiences. We touch these States and then we carry that into our life and we still hear. It's like if you're learning music, right, and you hear like, and you hear like AC enough, you can hear it in your mind. You know what that sounds like and you can call it up and then you can sort of tell immediately what's in tune with that and what's not. And the heart plays a similar sound. The spirit plays a similar sound. And when it sounds like what you experienced was, you felt what it sounds like and what it feels like to be who you are, and you're recognized immediately that the song that you were playing with your life was sort of out of key or out of tune with who you really are, and you immediately adjusted. That's incredible.
Speaker 2
Yeah. What's so well put? And these are the types of transformations that happen, right? This is this is, and I know everyone's story is different and unique, but would you say that this is like a common path or journey of transformation that can happen with using psychedelic assisted therapy?
Speaker 1
It doesn't always happen in that same way. It sometimes it takes repeated sessions, repeated experiences. And you know, a lot of people come to this work with a desire for it to change everything. Some people that I work with, it's like, I've tried everything and I want this to be the thing that saves me. And often I feel some concern about that. Like I don't want to present this as the path or the way. The path or the way is, you know, Buddhists call it Dharma. That's the path or the way. And that means what it means is like the living of life. And psychedelics can't help adjust our relationship to reality in a way that brings the cure, in a way that brings health and happiness and all the things that we're looking for. But psychedelics themselves are not necessarily the thing that that can do it for everybody. So like, yes, it can and it does happen. And just because you hear what it sounds like to be in tune doesn't mean that you're living your life in tune. It's a practice, a devotional practice in your relationship in in relationship in my relationship to reality, right? Like it took me 10 years between my first psychedelic experience and where I am probably it took me like 8-9, ten years to integrate some of those first experiences. And the integration is the living of our life. So like just 'cause you can hear AC doesn't mean you can reproduce it. The integration is going from the place where you can hear the song of your life in your mind and your heart. And psychedelics can reveal that. But then to play it, to learn how to play it in the way that you live, in the way that you speak, in the way that you think, in the way that you hold your body physically in the world. That's the sort of path. Or the way in the way that you relate to other people, in the way that you make your money and the things that you expose yourself to, your diet of all kinds. So like, yes, psychedelics can be corrective, but the degree to which they can do that depends on your readiness, your environment, all these things.
Speaker 2
Yeah, so beautiful. And I love that you said it took you 7 or 8 years to integrate because I think some people or I don't know, maybe it's only on Instagram. Maybe I'll just say maybe it's just the people on Instagram saying like integration it is or they allude to like maybe it's a two week process or four week process of integration. So what is your perspective on integration? You know, and I know it's not defined by a time, so I'm, I'm not trying to to create that expectation, but it is a process that's probably not bound by time itself and, and it is hard to define. So I'm just interested to see what is your perspective on integration.
Speaker 1
Yeah. So the Ioffer integration sessions in like the two weeks following session. And in those specific integration sessions, we have like integration sessions and integration work between a practitioner and between a client. And then we have like what integration really means. In the integration sessions, I'm working to sort of identify places in the system of the person in the mind and the emotional field or the body that are still holding charge, and then we draw the wisdom of that charge into life. We kind of like integration sessions are the process of identifying the specific things that need to be done, the specific things that are being asked of you by the intelligence of your body or by the wisdom of spirit or by the wisdom of the medicine or your higher self. IFS would call it self. EMDR calls it the adaptive information Processing system. You know, what is it? Hakomi? Hakomi calls it organicity. Buddha Buddhism calls a Buddha nature, Christ consciousness. There is an organizing principle, Ottoman and Yoga, an organizing principle that's been identified by all of these traditions. In psychedelic therapy we call the inner healing intelligence. And so integration is listening to the inner healing intelligence, understanding what's being asked of you by the intelligence inside of you, and then aligning your life consciously with that ask. And so in sessions we can here, right? Like I can hear the ask for me. It's like, oh, it's asking me to meditate 30 minutes a day or an hour a day, right? Or oh, it's asking me to write. It's asking me to dance. It's asking me to devote my life to the path of this profession, right? It's asking me to hold my spine straighter and honor the gift of my existence with everything that I do, with every breath that I take to pray, right? With my mind, with my attention, with my heart, to be in relationship with reality in a devotional way. Everything that I do, that's what my integration asks of me. And I'm constantly failing that, right? And then I, I realign, then I come back. And so integration is the identification of what's being asked in the two weeks, you know, right. But then, real integration is the living of that ask.
Speaker 2
Beautiful. I love that. I, I, I love that you're phrasing it as a ask like, 'cause I, I, I think that's, I, I think it happens so automatically. Sometimes people just bypass it or, you know, but it, but if we have more awareness like your, your integration is asking you to do a 30 minute meditation a day or a week or whatever it is you, you, you can kind of catch it. You know, I also have felt that integration many times and then realigned and then learned and then made it like a standard, right? Like then, then I really understood like this is just what I need. This is like bare minimum basics. Like this is what my soul needs in order to thrive here, you know?
Speaker 1
Right. And what you said is so important, like we miss it. It's important to say we miss it. And that's what it means to be a human being. That's what it means to be on this path of growth and development and learning and understanding. We forget. We are forgetful beings. We are beings who move away from what we've what we know to be our truth. And that's a part of it. So there is this, it is an ask and an invitation. It's in my experience. I'm just, I don't always use this language with every client. I call it spirit, for lack of a better word, like I'm in relationship with that thing that I call Spirit. And Spirit is infinitely patient with me, but also very like clear and like subtle and inviting, but strongly dividing, strongly inviting, insistent and diligent in its extension of an invitation, but also patient and forgiving. Like, so we fall away from the things that are asked of us. We, we fail to play in tune. And that's a part of the learning process of developing ourselves. So like there's a there is this insistence, like this is for me in my relationship with the reality and the divine. I hear this like, oh please, we so hope that you tune the instrument of your being so that you can play the true song of your heart before you leave your body. We so hope you do that and we love you regardless. We love you and your failings. We love you and your laziness and your apathy. It's but we strongly invite you. You are strongly invited into more right into the living of your heart while you while you still have this body. That's that's good how it sounds for me.
Speaker 2
I love that. That's beautiful. And I have so many people who listen to this podcast who are conscious entrepreneurs, spiritual entrepreneurs like yourself, like me. And So what ways or either what ways or how do you kind of see this play out for others, you know, in regards to the leadership in business, how can IT support, support someone in stepping into their authentic way of leadership or business if at all?
Speaker 1
Yeah. So the question about leadership or business is where is it coming from? Like what? What is the thing inside of you that's compelling you into the leadership or compelling you into the business? Because if it's anything other than like pure service and devotion and love, it's going to be off key. And that's going to be felt by everybody who receives it. They might not articulate that right, but it's like, how aligned are you with your own truth, your own intention? Do you understand your intention, your service and your purpose? And is your leadership an expression of that service and an expression of that purpose? Or is it coming from one of those wounded parts that needs to be loved and recognized and needs to be seen as that's one for me? And like, when am I acting or speaking because I need to be seen as smart, intelligent, capable, articulate as a result of the wounding that I experienced as a young person? When am I acting as a need to have money or success because I think it will bring me happiness in the meantime, forgetting that it's actually my pursuit of that thing that's robbing me of the divine happiness that's available in every moment, right. So that's, that's the thing for me. It's like, where is it coming from? Truly really. Like when we're serious, is it wounding or is IT service? That's kind of the question. Is it, is it a part or is itself? It's one of the ways that we can put it.
Speaker 2
Yeah. And it's, I mean it's a it's an effective question, it's a high quality question. It sounds simple, but I think when we when we really sit with that in journal about it and you might have some of your parts answering very quickly like of course as I'm doing this for service.
Speaker 1
Oh, the managers are really good, like oh the.
Speaker 2
Managers, Oh my gosh, they will come and just put up a mask for you and be like, Nope, don't go here, everything's great.
Speaker 1
Yeah, you ever seen a manager wearing a monks rub?
Speaker 2
No, that's so funny. Yeah, those, those, those managers manage our Yeah. Can can you just give us a quick breakdown? We don't have a lot of time left, but we've alluded to IFS and how helpful can be in combination with psychedelic therapy even on its own. Do you just want to give a, a quick summary or, or maybe even the benefits of IFS? And maybe we don't have to go into the managers of the parts, but just kind of like a quick overview.
Speaker 1
Oh, sure. Yeah. So IFS is internal family systems, the therapeutic modality that capitalizes on a system of philosophy known as multiplicity. Multiplicity as a system of understanding does not belong to IFS. Multiplicity says that the nature of the mind is many, that inside of the vehicle of us, there are many passengers. And in certain moments, certain passengers take over the wheel. They're in charge, They're fronting the system. So shamanism sometimes presents this is like spirit totems or spirit possession. There are different systems that sort of hinted this. Understanding internal family systems is the process and the practice of identifying the internal voices that are speaking in any given moment, building a relationship with those voices, healing their pain, understanding where they're coming from, really like parenting, loving, serving our own internal system as we seek to serve the systems of others outside of us. And then eventually identifying the most calm, clear, compassionate, courageous, confident, present aspect of us and working internally so that that one can be in the lead. Yeah. So it's the intentional kind of process of understanding who's driving at any given point, the recognition that there are many of us inside, there are many versions of us. It's it's baked into colloquial language. A part of me wants this, a part of me wants that, a part of me feels this, a part of me feels that. So all multiplicity in IFS is, is the formal practice and process of working with those parts in a way that brings harmony and coherence and cohesion and agreement and understanding to what's happening inside.
Speaker 2
Beautiful. What a great way to to kind of give us an overview of that so good. What are some spiritual embodiment practices, something that's super practical that someone might be able to do on a daily or weekly basis? Do you have any?
Speaker 1
Sure. So the most powerful practice in my life has definitely been Vipassana meditation, long periods of of sitting practice. There are secular practices of meditation like mindfulness, basic mindfulness meditation. It's become baked into sort of Western culture in a way. Mindfulness is a buzzword, but it's that way for a reason, especially in the cacophony that is modern day existence, the digital circus that we live in. To be able to cultivate the capacity to focus your attention for extended periods of time, to return to your breath in a way that's compassionate and clear. It's the most simple thing that exists and one of the most powerful. Often we're seeking like, you know, oh, I want the 10th chakra activation or I want the like kundalini awakening. Sit and watch your breath and when the mind drifts, return and do that consistently. That's the that's one of the most powerful things. Yoga Nidra. I'm a yoga nidra teacher and so yoga nidra is a really powerful way that we can de stress. Sometimes in clinical circles, it's called non sleep, deep rest. But the Yogi Swami Sachinanda Saraswati, who introduced yoga nidra to the West, he described it as like reducing the allostatic load. So that stress that we feel that causes disease and disharmony in our lives and then our relationships. Yoga nidra is one of the ways that we can consciously rest and in a deep way. Swami Sachinanda said that an hour of yoga nidra equals 3 hours of sleep, right? Yeah, it's super powerful and it's a way that we can. So if people work with intentions, if people work with affirmations, yoga nidra is one of the ways that we can access the deeper layers of the unconscious mind and plant the seed of an intention into the actually fertile soil of the unconscious mind, as opposed to just repeating it in the arid, dry conscious mind. So yoga nidra is a tool of allostatic load distressing you de stress your system and you can plant deep intentions like way, way, way further into the soil of who you are. Then you can sort of in the conscious space. So those are two practices, Yoga nidra, classical yoga nidra, wonderful, beautiful, powerful non sleep, deep rest is also really helpful and then Vipassana or mindfulness meditation.
Speaker 2
Those are great. Those are great recommendations. Thank you so much. And you know, I used to do yoga nidra pretty regularly until, you know, until I didn't. But I'm going to revisit it this week. And specifically, I started a 72 hour fast earlier today to for that purpose of destressing, decompressing, allowing myself to go back to homeostasis, just kind of like just, you know, coming out of like all the busyness, right? That that beta brain wave state fasting always does it for me. And I'm going to have it stack. And I'm taking this as an invitation from the universe because it's it's lighting me up every time you mention yoga nidra. And even though I've done it a lot for a while, it's perfect time for me to revisit that. So if this is resonating with you, take what resonates with any of these tools. Oh, what I want to add is I just recommended yoga nidra not too long ago for someone who was having, you know, challenges with just regular meditation. It just didn't feel safe for them right to, to, to do like a meditation sitting upright in the morning or whatever. It kind of felt like that was creating some more anxiousness or just some challenges. And so yoga Nidra, you guys, is one of the, it's a, it's a alternative. So if you feel like your meditations aren't that great, like trying yoga Nidra, I think you might get something out of it.
Speaker 1
Absolutely. It really well guided practices have a cadence to them and the voice of the person who's guiding it gives you sort of this place for your mind to rest. If you have a very active mind and somebody is guiding a practice of yoga nidra, the mind can sort of rest in that. So even minds who are sort of jumping from here to here have trouble just sitting in silence. It's really wonderful practice to sort of calm and tame the mind. And there are tons of really good practices on what is the name of the app It's.
Speaker 2
Inside timer.
Speaker 1
Inside Timer, Yeah, lots of my teacher has some practices on there. Richard Miller has some practices there that I highly recommend. Even just punching in, like yoga, nidra, irest. Yeah, really wonderful practice.
Speaker 2
So good, so good. Well, thank you so much for your wisdom, your energy, all of your insight. You guys can connect with him on his website. K Keon Wellness Kaikeon, I'm sorry, Kaikeon wellness.com that's spelled KYKEON wellness.com also in the description. Just go there. The link is there along with his Instagram and clay. Do you have a powerful one, powerful offer or a way to work with you that people can know about?
Speaker 1
Yeah. So probably the offering that I have right now that that I love, that I love serving and that I feel like gives the most benefit to the clients that I work with. I'm Colorado's first licensed natural medicine and clinical facilitator. So I'm legally licensed by the state to do psilocybin assisted therapy. And my individual psychedelic assisted therapy container is sort of the thing that I would offer or recommend. It's a very unique thing that I get to do. And I also have group containers, small group psychedelic assisted therapy containers.
Speaker 2
Amazing. So good. All right. Do you have a quote off the top of your head or a book recommendation for us before we record?
Speaker 1
Yeah, I've got a poem.
Speaker 2
Oh, what's up? Yeah.
Speaker 1
This being human is a guesthouse. Each morning a new arrival, a joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all. Even if they are a crowd of sorrows who violently sweeps your house empty of its furniture. Still, treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight. The dark thought, the shame, the malice. Meet them at the door, laughing, and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, for each has been sent as a guide from beyond. That's Rumi, the guest house.
Speaker 2
Wow, powerful, thank you for sharing that. I hope you guys really enjoyed this episode as much as I did. Namaste and have a great day.