Psychedelic Embodiment
Many Indigenous ways of knowing are based in whole-body perception, while the modern West is primarily a mind-centred culture. The consequences of living in a mind-centred culture are evident in the many crises we are going through at the moment, as the product of the mind as a primary navigation tool is to separate and divide you from both a holistic sense of beingness within the world and the present moment. This fundamental disconnection is what lies at the root of the environmental crisis, the mental health crisis and many of the other situations we currently find ourselves in.
Having worked intensely with a wide range of psychedelic plants and substances over the last 20 years, I have found that some psychedelics can either take you out of your body or actually bring you back into your body. Through my own process of overuse of LSD in my youth and then a year I spent drinking Ayahuasca and Acacia on a weekly basis, I was able to experience what it felt like to undergo severe disembodiment where i encountered a range of symptoms including ego inflation, amplification of existing neuroses, ungrounding, excessive sensitivity, delusional thinking and what Ayurveda terms 'Vata Aggravation' which means excessive air element in ones system.
Through undergoing a 6 year deep dive into a range of practises including Qi Gong, Martial Arts and Tantra assisted by intensively working with the African Psychedelic Iboga, as well as mescaline bearing cacti and Kambo in both large dose and microdoses, I was able to integrate my experiences and become more embodied as a whole, sinking my point of awareness into my lower centres in my Dan tien and Pelvic floor and moving from thinking (which is the mind based faculty) to sensing/feeling (which is the embodied state of being).
Through this process I learned that other factors such as trauma, body-shame, unhealthy modern lifestyle practises and many other factors are also significant contributors to the mass disembodiment the West is currently stuck in.
This talk will also be interspersed with amusing anecdotes, psychedelic themed jokes and more.
