Do you feel broken beyond repair?

Have you come home from an ayahuasca ceremony carrying something so profound you have no idea how to integrate it into your everyday life?

Are you navigating a dark night of the soul—that terrifying space where everything you thought you knew has crumbled, leaving only confusion, fear, and the raw possibility of transformation?

This episode is for anyone who has sat with plant medicine and struggled to make sense of what happened afterward. It’s for those in the depths of a spiritual crisis, questioning if they’ll ever find solid ground again. And it’s for seekers who want to understand what true integration actually looks like when you’re bridging mystical experience with the demands of modern life.

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN IN THIS EPISODE:

• What a dark night of the soul actually is and why it feels like being thrown in a blender—plus how to navigate it without losing your mind
• Why you’re not broken or unfixable—Kat’s controversial perspective that challenges everything we think about healing and therapy
• The difference between transformation and spiritual bypassing—and why most people fail at integration because they skip the embodiment work
• How to know if a ceremony space is actually safe and what red flags to watch for when choosing where to sit with medicine
• Why the medicine keeps showing you the same lesson over and over—what ayahuasca means by “doing your homework on the teacher’s desk”
• Concrete integration practices that actually work—beyond just meditation and journaling, the physical actions required to embody your insights
• How power gets abused behind the altar and what Kat learned from being “fired by ayahuasca” after a devastating falling out with her teacher
• Why death is actually a gift and how making endings sacred transforms our relationship with grief, loss, and transformation
• The interconnectedness of all beings—Kat’s story of searching the entire cosmos for her dead soul cat, only to find him in her lap the whole time
• When to do solo ceremony work (and why most people shouldn’t)—the risks of drinking alone and why community matters
• How to ask the right question after ceremony: “How am I really feeling?” and why honest answers create the map for your integration work
• Why you can’t think your way to integration—the body must move the energy through dance, yoga, nature, or physical action in the world Meet Tina “Kat” Courtney:https://www.plantmedicinepeople.com/coaches/kat-courtney If you want a deeper container for this work, go to ⁠⁠www.davidvox.com ⁠⁠ Here are three ways to step into the work of Ayahausca integration:The Sacred Integration Facilitator Training: Become a guide in the integration space:https://www.sacredfacilitator.com/ Sacred Service & ImpactA six month, 24 week container for leaders building their offerings and platform in a soul-aligned way. Explore options and book a consult via ⁠⁠https://www.davidvox.com/⁠⁠
• Follow and connectInstagram: @davidvoxFacebook: Ayahuasca Integration AllianceYouTube: @Ayahuasca-IntegrationResources and podcast transcripts: ⁠⁠ayahuascaintegration.org

TRANSCRIPT:

0:00

Do you feel broken beyond repair?

Have you come home from a ceremony with something so profound inside of you that you have no idea how to actually live it?

Or are you in a dark night of the soul right now, where everything you thought you knew has crumbled?

0:17

If any of that’s true, this conversation is for you.

We’re going to talk.

With Tina Cat Courtney today, she thought she was unfixable and she was in the worst kind of hopelessness where you don’t even believe trying matters anymore.

0:34

Then she had her first.

Cup of ayahuasca.

And for the first time in her life, she had hope that maybe things could be different.

Since then, she has been in several 1000 ceremonies and today she is known as the Afterlife Coach, the founder of Plant Medicine People and one of The Pioneers.

0:54

Who have built this field?

Of ayahuasca integration when nobody was talking about it.

She was also my first integration coach eight years ago when I was lost and terrified and really confused after ceremony.

Without this beautiful woman, I would not have been devoting myself to medicine integration for ayahuasca.

1:17

She has truly been one of my guides and this conversation we had many years ago and I’m so glad I get to share it with you right now.

We talk about.

What happens when you fall out with the medicine or get fired by ayahuasca?

What happens when you are in a deep dark night of the soul?

1:37

We talk about grief, death.

And why endings are just as sacred as beginnings.

So if you’re.

Struggling to make sense of what the medicine showed you or trying to figure out.

How to actually live the?

Transformation instead of just thinking about it.

Enjoy this discussion and conversation with the beautiful Tina Cat Courtney.

1:56

Welcome Cat to the podcast.

Thank you for having me, David.

It’s so good to see you.

It’s an honor to have you here.

I read a quote that you have written.

You don’t see sick or broken people, you only see perfect souls that simply need to recognize and remember who they are.

2:16

I love that that’s the quote you brought in right away, because that is a controversial perspective.

People get very upset at the idea that we’re all actually perfect.

We’re just in a process of remembering that illness and ignorance and all of it is actually what we came to do.

2:37

So I that’s really near and dear to my heart, but I know it’s tough for a lot of us to wrap our heads around the idea that nothing needs to be fixed or healed.

Who for you before you remembered who you really were before you started this journey?

I was a corporate girl who worked for Disney and was diagnosed bipolar, had an alcohol problem, bulimic.

3:00

Like I was a girl who thought she was broken for sure.

And not only that, but there was nothing that was going to fix me.

So that that’s the worst of all perspectives.

You’re broken and you’re unfixable.

So that’s who I was before I had my first cup of ayahuasca like 17 plus years ago.

3:19

And when you started that journey, you went really all in into your surrender.

How was your first encounter with ayahuasca?

How did you remember who you really were?

The very first encounter I had with her, David, the pivotal recognition that she gave me is that I wasn’t unfixable, I wasn’t unhelpable.

3:40

So I had this spark of hope for the first time in my life that maybe I could be stable or happy now.

It’s a long journey, a lot of medicine work, a lot of spiritual shadow work to get to the place where I’m like, yes, but that first journey gave me the hope that there there was something more for me available.

4:05

You went really deep into the journey, actually working with shamans and you did over 1000 ceremonies.

Yeah, we’re probably up to double that by now.

Count all the ceremonies that I’ve led and assisted and solo work, all of that.

4:21

So it’s a lot I know my little mind sometimes can’t compute.

They add up quickly when you start going deep, but at one time you actually were fired by ayahuasca.

Can you tell a little bit about?

That that’s how it felt.

4:36

So what happened?

It’s a very common experience of having a fallout with my main teacher.

There’s a point at which when you work with somebody intimately as an apprentice, that it’s time to graduate.

And that doesn’t always go gracefully.

4:51

And for me, it didn’t.

My teacher and I had a horrible falling out.

It broke my heart.

I got very disenchanted, not by the medicine, but by people who abuse their power behind the altar.

You know, it’s very rampant that people get a little taste of power that these plants can offer, and they don’t always do the most gracious things with it.

5:13

And part of that was knowing I knew I wasn’t immune to that either.

And I was very scared of the responsibility of what it means to pour a medicine like ayahuasca.

And the fallout with my teacher was just this catalyst.

So I felt kicked out by ayah.

5:29

Now, in retrospect, I know that happened because I needed to get the message of how not to become an abusive person behind the altar.

But we had a pretty big break up there for a period of time, and I was really hurt by all of it.

5:45

Now I’m really grateful for it.

But yeah, it was quite the drama.

And now you work yourself with your own ceremonies and rituals.

The journey that you have had from thinking and feeling that you are broken.

There are so many people that are looking for that journey somewhere.

6:03

Where do they start?

They start wherever their heart is telling them to look right, like we all have our own unique path to awakening.

Mine obviously involves the plants.

It’s not required.

But working with anything that helps to alter our perspective give us an opportunity to look at ourselves in a different way.

6:26

That can be a very devoted meditation practice.

It can happen on a therapist couch.

For me, it happened in an ayahuasca ceremony where I got to basically step out of my regular view of myself and try something different.

6:42

So regardless of where it starts, David, it has to start with something different.

We have to stir the pot.

We have to experience ourselves in a different way or we will just continue to perpetuate our current story of ourselves.

And for those that are looking into plant medicines, what do you feel is the most important advice that you can give them for starting in a safe sacred container as you talk a lot about?

7:10

To let the mantra of safety guide them as to where to go.

And again, we all have a different definition of what safe feels like.

For some people, they need to be in the presence of a male or a female.

For some people, they want to be in a small group.

7:27

Some people feel better in a larger community.

Whatever our definition of safety is, that’s the foundation we want to work with when we basically call in and manifest our our place to do this work.

Because if we feel safe, we can surrender, let go big.

7:44

If we don’t, we can add to the trauma that we’re trying to release and work through.

So never to settle and to take the first opportunity because it’s available.

If it doesn’t feel good, don’t do it.

We got to have some discernment.

Yeah, the importance of having this safe, sacred space to do this work in, to be able to go deeper is something you speak a lot about.

8:07

And not to go and order something on Amazon from the Amazon and do it by yourself.

Why is it that you feel that this work should be done in a tribe or in a group where people have a?

Good question, because it is.

It’s not impossible, but it’s very difficult for us humans to be both the protector, the guide, and the participant, going deep into the cosmos or into our own psyches.

8:31

That takes a lot of training.

I think I trained for six years before I did my first solo sit with Aya, and I was utterly terrified.

I still am.

Would I do this solo work?

What’s going to happen?

And I’m the pilot and I’m the passenger.

When that happened and those of us knew to this work, it’s just so powerful to have someone who has your back so that you can let go and not keep one eye open and not worry about the space or what’s happening.

8:59

And if you need assistance, you’ve got it.

You can’t do that when you’re solo or when you’re hanging out with your buddies who have no idea how to guide you through a dark night of the soul if it should happen, because we never know when that’s happening.

And the reason that I connected with you some years ago was that sometimes you have these deep breakthroughs with ayahuasca and plans that completely alter your life for the better.

9:24

But there is this dark night of the soul that comes with it.

What is the dark night of the soul?

I love that question.

It is ultimately it’s an experience of expansion, but it feels as though we’ve been tortured or thrown into a blender and nothing makes sense.

9:43

The Dark Night of the Soul always involves some level of confusion.

It is ultimately a death and rebirth that we’re going through.

It’s really easy to talk about them in the past tense of, oh, I’m so grateful that happened, but when you’re in it, it feels like hell.

10:00

That’s what it’s like, our own recipe for hell.

And the plants love to take us through those experiences because what we’re seeking is in that experience.

It’s just not fun to try to navigate, especially alone.

How was your dark night of the soul?

10:17

Had many, but pretty much the first the first time I went through a Dark Knight as a result of the medicine.

It was devastating and confusing.

This was almost 20 years ago when there wasn’t any talk of working with ayahuasca or plant medicines.

10:36

There was integration was not a thing and I felt very alone and isolated in my my basically reworking of how I saw the world.

But I felt like I was dying.

It does feel that way.

But everything I thought I knew about the world was not wrong, but limited.

10:54

There was so much more to know.

And so it was a very lonely journey.

And looking back, it was perfect for the preparation of being someone who could help others through that.

Because I have deep compassion for what it feels like.

And of course, now in hindsight, I’m super grateful.

11:12

But in it, it was.

It’s just incredibly isolating and terrifying what is happening to me.

Same here.

When I was going through for the first time, I understood it was a process because I’ve been doing over 100 ceremonies with ayahuasca over five years.

11:27

But still, it was this really dark, scary space, and the will of living disappears with it.

But I understood it’s not being suicidal.

You don’t want to die, but still, you don’t really see the meaning of life anymore either.

So you’re in this trapeze where you’re like holding one hand in each trapeze and you don’t really know what way you’re going.

11:49

And eventually I had to confront everything that ayahuasca asked me to do, which meant physically going after in the world and doing some of the hard labor and spiritual work that I’ve been postponing until another lifetime.

And then of course, it transformed into the most magnificent life ever.

12:07

But for people that are going through it, what is the importance of integration?

Integration.

Another word for it is completion, to feel whole with the experience.

So if we don’t allow integration to be an equal importance in this process, we’re going to repeat the same lessons.

12:29

Ayahuasca calls it doing our homework on the teacher’s desk.

When we show up for ceremony and we haven’t integrated and done the homework like you’re describing, then you know it.

Ultimately, it’s OK, but it’s not fun to keep repeating the same lesson because we’re not doing the homework of making sense of why we’re in this pattern to begin with.

12:50

And you’re probably laughing because you’ve done it, as have I.

I always cry because it’s so funny.

I had this one thing that ayahuasca wouldn’t let go of.

She wanted me to take off my clothes and be naked in the ceremony room.

And I was eyebrow fused.

That’s like the only thing.

I want to be like, crazy guy who runs around naked.

13:07

But she kept repeating it night after night of the ceremony.

And I’m like, I want something else.

I don’t want to do this.

And then she took off my clothes, 2 seconds, took them on again.

I’m like, now I’m done.

Yeah, now we can go deeper, but it was just like being vulnerable and standing there in your naked skin and just feeling that little lesson because somewhere in my subconscious that was to see that needed to grow.

13:29

And I think these lessons sometimes are so funny.

It can be like, get up and dance.

I was petrified, could not get my feet up on that dance floor and dance with the shamanic music.

It was terrifying because at that level of consciousness, maybe I was 5 or maybe I was 7 or who cares?

I needed that experience to be fully integrated.

13:47

So there’s a lot of doing that goes into the ceremony and after the ceremony.

But after the ceremony, many times for myself and for all of the people that I know, we sometimes struggle with integration.

What is your best tip and advice to create a beautiful container after the ceremony for a deep transmission container and integration?

14:10

Good question.

First of all, we have to have some level of ritual of showing up for ourselves, a spiritual practice basically.

And it doesn’t matter if that’s grounded in yoga and meditation or time spent in nature or things that essentially help us to connect inside.

14:28

Most of our lives are distraction based.

We’re doing and thinking and and externally focused.

So integration, the heart of it, involves being slowing down.

The core question I asked everybody to ask themselves after a big experience with medicine is how am I feeling?

14:48

How am I doing?

What’s really going on in here?

Because we don’t often take that time to check in and to be honest.

And then that tells us what we’re working with.

You can pretend that there’s not terror and anger and sadness in there.

Doesn’t work.

15:04

So when we ask that question and get the honest answer of how we’re feeling, what we’re working with, that gives us a map of sorts of what to do to move that energy.

But it has to involve a relationship with the body.

Most of us are very mental and integration always involves embodiment of the experience that we had.

15:26

And sometimes that means ecstatic dance, movement, yoga, like something so that the body can feel like it’s moving energy.

We can’t think our way to integration.

I love that.

I try real hard though.

Get to know.

15:41

Same here.

When ayahuasca said to me like go to the family that abuses a child and Share your story, I was like, OK, I can think my way through the whole scenario but I’m never going to do it.

And eventually of course I have to go and do it.

And when you do it in a physical form, it can be something simple as going to a dance or calling someone where you have a lot on your heart that you need to share.

16:02

Something else happened.

It becomes like a multidimensional experience that you can embody.

What has been one of your greatest experiences that you got to embody on this transformation?

It’s a really simple one that comes in when you ask that question.

16:18

So I was born with hearing loss, profound hearing issues, and I would beg the medicine, please help me heal this.

I’ll do anything to heal this.

And it was always a no, this is your karma.

You signed up for this.

But she kept telling me to go see the doctor.

16:34

And I had seen so many doctors, David.

I was like, they’re not going to help.

I just stop being stubborn.

Go see the specific audiologist.

And when I went and saw them, literally about two months prior to that, the technology had changed for hearing aids and they finally had something that would help me.

16:52

So the medicine was like, look, you’re not going to heal it, but if you turn to the Western world, they can assist and give you an opportunity to hear better.

The thing was, I couldn’t afford it.

It was a really expensive pair of hearing aids.

So I happened to share this with a couple of friends.

17:09

They put up a GoFundMe campaign, and the ayahuasca community that I worked with within two days raised the money.

So she did heal me, it just didn’t happen in the way that I was attached to, right?

Like some magic, like Stroke of Genius and I can hear again.

17:26

But I did get the healing that was right for me, and it was incredibly profound.

But I had to get over being stubborn and accept that the Western world can help too.

This is so beautiful because sometimes what ayahuasca shows to you is also not linear.

17:42

It’s not like it’s happening right here and now.

It’s like multidimensional on a timeline and there are many elements that comes together to support you on your paw.

For example, for me, she’s shown me the daughter that I once will have and it’s such an extraordinary moment.

17:59

I probably never cried as deep as when I got to see my unborn daughter.

I don’t even know how to make her.

I can try with my husband.

It’s not going to work.

So she showed me this beautiful girl and she said, you’re not doing all of this healing work so that you can heal yourself.

And you’re doing this also because she has already chosen you to become her father.

18:19

And that became the the grounding anchor in my on my healing journey that this is so interconnected.

And you must have had many of those experience with spirits or with death or rebirth.

That has been really deep and touching to you.

18:35

And I would love to know what one of those has been for you.

It makes me emotional to remember, OK, this is the quintessential story of recognizing the interconnectedness of all things.

But you know how our minds get convinced of being separate?

Sometimes it feels so real.

18:51

But I had a soul cat, Mr. Boo, who was my everything.

And when he died, that was, it was an existential crisis that I went into of where is my cat?

Is he still connected to me?

So I went in on ayahuasca once the sole purpose to find my cat and David.

19:11

I went through the cosmos.

It took me hours and I’m like looking on every planet in every Galaxy about to have a complete meltdown because I couldn’t find my cat.

And I feel ayahuasca just say, sweetheart, look down.

And I look down and he’s laying in my lap with this message of where do you think I would go?

19:33

I’m your soul Kitty.

I’m like, you could have said something four hours ago when I started the journey of like, where is my cat looking everywhere.

But the joke was on me and I knew it.

Of course, these beings we love so much are always connected to us, but our minds get in the way of experiencing that sometimes.

19:52

And this is another magic of the medicine.

But that gets pushed aside and we can feel how present our loved ones that aren’t in bodies anymore.

Or yet in your case, the unborn being.

They’re still with us, it’s just not the same as in a body.

20:08

But that was my big aha.

I love this because I had a similar experience because when I was a child, my best friend was a goat and it was my goat.

It was my best friend and when unfortunately he was murdered by a, what can I say, a father who had forgotten what love is, I kept seeking for him.

20:30

I couldn’t accept that he was taken away from me and in my first ayahuasca ceremony she told me that I had to bury my best friend otherwise life couldn’t fill that space that I had first served for him and it was the only thing I refused to do.

20:48

So five years later I meet my soul mates that she has also showed me before I even met him in physical person.

She literally showed him to be and said he’s coming.

And I went out in New York looking for him and eventually I found him just by a strange encounter.

21:04

And now we’re engaged.

And ayahuasca again told me you need to bury your best friend because you can only have one soulmate at a time.

So sometimes our soulmate, they come in form of a cat or a teddy bear or we don’t know.

They can come in many shapes and form.

21:20

And my goat literally was standing next to me full of light.

He was so ready to reincarnate and do something else.

He was like been following me for a long time and I had to make a funeral for him over 30 years later at a beach with this beautiful little goat statue, a letter to him and the only photo I had of him to also createspace for another soulmate to blossom into my life.

21:45

And it became a very important ritual and it leads into what you are actually doing now, which is you call yourself the afterlife code.

And I would love to understand a bit more what is your experience and what has death taught you in your work?

22:02

Death is my favorite topic because it is the elephant in the room it.

I know it’s weird to say.

That the emo elephant in the room like I’ve got back.

Except for it’s our best friend, really.

Because if we really knew the eternal nature of our lives and our being, we would not have the motivation to actually treat it as sacred.

22:26

If death didn’t exist, we’d all just be like hanging out, knowing that we live forever, not just taking each other for granted like death allows.

Sacredness.

It’s the reason that everything is sacred because it ends.

22:42

Which is that story that you just shared is the perfect mirror of that because you have to let something end for something to be able to begin again.

So grief around loss is what it’s the portal that we go through in order to have a rebirth, whether it’s falling in love or reincarnating or a part of ourselves dying and being reborn.

23:07

And the word ayahuasca means vine of the dead or vine of the soul.

This is her.

I think her deepest teaching for humanity is that death is a gift that and it’s not what we think it is.

It’s not a permanent ending, but to honor the grief that comes with loss and endings.

23:26

To make a ceremony and a ritual out of them, like you did with burying your best friend, like it is so sacred.

So I’ve also become a death doula because I want to bring back ceremonies for the end of our journey, which is the beginning of the next chapter of our journey, to make them sacred again.

23:47

This is really intrinsic to what the medicine has taught me is endings are just as sacred as beginnings.

We just tend to want to ignore them and avoid them, but that doesn’t make it sacred.

This is so beautiful.

24:02

We have death to understand what is sacred and for me, because I was saved when I was a child, I was attempted killed and then something saved me.

I lost respect for death because I understood that death is like a very loving hug.

24:17

It’s very peaceful, it’s very nice.

And my life became actually about respecting death because now my life is so full and it’s like blossoming everywhere and abundance enough.

Now I don’t want to go.

Before I wanted to go.

I was waiting for death.

And I’m wondering what is your experience with those that you are supporting in that journey?

24:38

How can we become best friends?

Fear that.

There is a part of each of us, no matter our background, our ethnicity, our financial status, that remembers this eternal part.

24:54

This is the spiritual journey.

And so anything that we do to connect with something other than our mind helps us to know everything’s OK.

Death is just a transition.

The expression that I got from the medicine is that the only thing that dies in the universe is resistance.

25:20

Just I have a big world with resistance because I always feel behind your greatest resistance is your biggest reward.

And then I keep getting that message over and over again because of course, under that level of resistance, there’s a deeper level of resistance.

If you didn’t even owe you that.

25:36

Oh heck yeah.

But that’s the thing that keeps dissolving in our journey.

And when we die, I’ve got to witness this many times, whether it happens slowly or instantly, that’s what dies is the resistance.

And suddenly I get to witness this soul know that everything’s OK, because although the body is dying, the spirit’s getting stronger.

26:00

That’s the core of the truth of death.

How each of us remember that is very unique.

And again, I work with plants.

They’re the ones that help me remember.

But death itself helps us remember when we go through it.

The idea to me is to die before we actually die, to do these things where we have essentially an ego death, an opportunity to feel the truth inside of us so that we can enjoy our lives more.

26:27

Not fearing and resisting, trying to negotiate with that because they go together.

The more we’re friends with death, the more we’re friends with life.

It’s just how it.

Works.

I’ve seen and experienced a lot of miracles with ayahuasca.

Like incredible things.

26:43

And it just happens every weekend.

Like you go to ceremony, someone who looks like they’re dying comes in, they’re Gray in their face, they’re full of anger and resistance and depression, and they’ve been depressed their entire life and so on.

And they leave after a few days completely reborn.

27:00

What are some of your favorite miracles that you’ve witnessed on this journey?

You’re right, we get spoiled because it happens every single time.

Yeah, one of them was a woman who had diabetes for many years and felt like she was at the end of her journey.

27:18

She was a Native American, and when we doctored her, I could see the tribe, her ancestors coming and supporting her in the ceremony.

And she had a massive breakthrough and hasn’t been diabetic since.

That’s been seven years now.

27:34

One ceremony taking a lifelong illness from someone and alchemizing it.

It was.

It’s just magical.

When that happened, there was a woman who was just weeks away from dying of breast cancer who felt the toxicity leave her body and is healthy still today.

27:54

Lots of stories of spontaneous healing.

But what I want to emphasize is happening in those ceremonies is when we get to heal in that way, we’re coming to terms with the reason why we developed those illnesses to begin with.

There’s always a method to the madness, right?

28:11

And so we get to feel and process the reasons why our bodies decided that was an important journey.

But it is possible to have these miraculous experiences of healing if we’re willing to be in integrity with the wisdom of that illness.

When it comes to healing with ayahuasca, for me it wasn’t easy.

28:30

Like I have been kicking, screaming, I think for every graduation party because the resistance going into trauma, it can be incredibly scary.

And it really you really need to learn how to stay cool and surrender.

28:46

And for me, surrender is this process that you just keep learning about.

What has been your greatest surrender so far in your journey?

Surrendering to the darkness.

Surrendering to the space that brings up terror in me that I can’t even describe.

29:05

And I know you understand this.

It’s like when I’m in this particular vibration, I don’t even know what I’m afraid of, David.

It is just pure darkness.

And but learning that that too is an aspect of the universe loving itself.

29:21

It doesn’t feel that way.

But the moments I’ve been able to say, yes, I accept this, I can handle this with that intensity are the most profound because it’s much easier to do that when it’s lollipops and rainbows and I’m connecting with my dead cat.

29:37

That primal fear that lives inside of us, that ayahuasca in particular can go.

Let’s press that.

Button is.

Yeah, that’s that’s the mastery.

I feel like as spiritual beings, when we can work with that by saying yes, I accept this.

29:56

That’s it’s just incredibly empowering.

It’s what makes my life easier when a curveball happens is I can go, yeah, but I’ve sat through darkness like the darkest of the dark.

I can handle this.

I can handle this.

Yeah, and ayahuasca has a way also of having you experience your own darkness and having you experience the part of you that you don’t want to look at all.

30:23

What parts of that experience has been most difficult for you?

The parts that bring up guilt and shame.

And I ask her if she tells me that guilt is the most destructive emotion that we have as humans because it implies that we’ve done something wrong, which is beautiful.

30:40

It speaks to what you were saying at the beginning, the quote that we’re perfect.

We’re just, we just forgot and we’ve never done anything wrong, any of us.

We’ve just done things that maybe we would like to modify in the future.

So when she touches on guilt and shame, when I contract, when I’m just like, oh, yeah, I don’t want to even admit to having thought those things or done those things, That’s the most difficult part.

31:05

I think of the shadow work that I do with the medicine is finding those places where I don’t want to look.

I’m like, oh, that’s in me, too.

That’s very difficult.

I find this so interesting because the first time I met shamans, native shamans from Columbia, I didn’t like their music at all and I got super sick from the medicine.

31:27

So I actually managed to breakthrough a Dome and start running.

I literally just ran through the wall because I couldn’t find the door and I just started running and I screamed to the shamans get away from me jungle boy.

I did not want them to get closer and I had no respect, no understanding of what this was.

31:48

And I said, whatever, you don’t bring the flutes because the flute that they were playing on created this intense pain in my heart.

And I felt like my heart was just stopping.

And of course, they found the fruits and they played over my heart for two hours.

And eventually, I think that so many times and I was in so much pain, but eventually they pulled this big black thorn out of my heart and I could see it.

32:11

And they were both holding it and looking at it.

And it was bigger than my arm.

And they said, you’re OK now you have a new heart.

And I screamed to the psychotherapist who was next to me.

And do you see that?

What is that?

What was that inside of me?

I didn’t understand that this stuff is like multidimensional healing.

32:29

This is like surgery on an energetic level.

And in that moment that this happened, I, for the first time, actually felt love in my heart.

I probably felt it a lot as a child, but I didn’t know that the heart was something else in a beating pump that you was just working for.

32:47

And then eventually it stops.

I could feel love and I was just so full of love.

And it was this massive thorn that I had to integrate afterwards.

That was all the guilt that I literally stabbed into my own heart for the things that I couldn’t have changed in my childhood.

33:05

And I think a lot of people, they are walking around with that thorn in their heart that is just full of guilt.

And it has this ability to really leak your life energy out all the time.

Could never fully feel deeply because there’s guilt in you that is stabbing.

33:22

How do we heal that?

First, by acknowledging that these things exist, right?

The denial of the idea that there is literally an energetic thorn that can live in our hearts allows it to grow, right?

So our ignorance doesn’t save us.

33:38

So the moment we have at least the courage to be honest and say something in me feels painful to be real.

That’s why it’s so important to be real about how we feel because we can’t move through something that we’re in denial of.

33:57

So first, to be brutally honest with ourselves and OK, I’m carrying something.

It could have been karma from a past life, a traumatic death.

It could be from this life.

It’s probably an accumulation of everything that has led to that.

34:12

And then it’s back to the question of how do we heal any of this?

Is is to then listen to our internal guidance system around what feels like the next path.

Plant medicine, acupuncture, meditation, ecstatic dance.

There’s no wrong answer to move energy, but it’s again, we want to stir the pot.

34:31

We want to do something different to create new results.

But first we got to acknowledge what we’re working with.

For those that are in denial, is there anything that they can do?

Because I work with clients and I always ask him, do you have anything inside of yourself that you need to forgive?

34:50

Because the shamans once said to me, they use me as an example that if you are willing, you can heal anything.

So I’m that boy now.

Before I was like, get away from me and struggle people.

I love them now.

I have such a deep, profound respect for the medicine.

And what I see is that the medicine has a way of showing you these things that you are in denial of.

35:11

I didn’t even know that I’d fake humility, arrogance, all of these things I didn’t even know.

And I also didn’t know that had a lot of stuff that I had to forgive myself to actually connect to my own innocence.

So when I work with someone, I always ask them, do you have anything?

35:27

Do you need to forgive?

And most of them say no, I don’t think so.

How do you work with someone are in denial that there is a need for a deeper process?

Listen.

That’s a good question.

I like to point to the results in our life as either validation that yeah, we’re doing good, there’s intimate relationships, feedback from other people, we’re living a fulfilling life or vocation, we’re aligned or not.

35:54

So for the people in denial, you look around at your life or like how are your relationships?

Are you really experiencing love unconditionally and giving love unconditionally?

Are you doing a nine to five or are you in your soul work?

Typically, those people in denial can go, oh, yeah, things aren’t perfect, OK.

36:14

And that shows that there’s something inside of us that we’re hiding from.

So in other words, we don’t have to rely on the ego’s assessment.

We can look at the results of our life and it’s going to show us if we’re pretending not to know something.

Yes, because life is a magical integrator, so no matter what is going on with the inside, you will find it in your life somewhere, somehow.

36:36

Absolutely.

As within, so without, we can’t hide.

We can’t hide forever.

It’s right there if we’re willing to look.

For me, the surrendering to unconditional loving partner and all of this was really like the challenge that needed and a spiritual entourage.

36:55

I felt like a spiritual roadkill starting the dating scene after starting my awakening.

Because after you start on this work, there’s a lot of thing you can’t go back to.

You can’t just go and play in that character whenever you want to.

There is a spiritual hangover that comes with this work because you can’t just believe in Santa Claus again.

37:12

When you want to transformation, you can’t actually undo it.

What has been some of those awakened difficult parts of your journey afterwards?

Going back to normal society and.

The biggest one I literally had to bury is my victim.

37:30

The part of me that wanted to feel like there was something external, be it another person or God or however I defined it, that was doing something to me.

The accountability of this path, when you wake up and realize I’m creating my own reality, I have nobody to blame.

37:49

That has been a really difficult transition.

In fact, so much so that like with my best friend, we’ll have a ritual where she’ll let me speak from my victim and pretend for a few minutes of damn it, it was this person and the universe.

And then of course 5 minutes later is OK.

38:07

Now I’m back to being accountable and owning that I’m Co creating this.

I’m not to blame but I am responsible.

So letting the victim die has been difficult.

And when it comes to remembering who we really are and who you are, who are you now showing up as?

38:28

Because before you went into a corporate job and today you’re leading ceremonies, you’re guiding people to do dietas.

Can you share a little bit about the work that you’re doing right now?

Yeah, living my dream life and then some.

It’s actually beyond when I could have dreamt of.

38:44

I do ceremony work but COVID made that a a bit of a rarity.

I don’t do it nearly as often as I did for now.

Most of my days are filled with coaching around the integration of these experiences, not just plant medicine, but also peak spiritual experiences of all kinds.

39:03

And I’ve been getting certified this year as a death doula was a really big thing.

So that I’m now welcomed into Hospice, places like that, and can help people surrender into the experience of death.

And then my dream, of course, with that David, is someday to have everything be legal so that I can work with clients that maybe want to have mushrooms before they transition or Aya to be legally administering these plant medicines that can help make our transition into the spirit world more graceful.

39:35

I can’t wait to see that all come together.

Where do you see the development?

Because it seems like we’re in the Renaissance for the awakening, both with plant medicines but also spiritual work.

Where do you see the development of this movement going?

How I’d love to see it is, first of all, the Western world welcoming the indigenous wisdom to this process.

39:59

That’s something I’m really passionate about, being a white girl who was trained in the indigenous tradition.

It has a deep responsibility that I always point to the guardians of these lineages and medicine, and I want them to be welcomed to the table of all the Western renaissance that’s happening with these medicines.

40:19

They don’t.

The Western world doesn’t have these wisdom.

And so to honor where all of this came from, then I’d love to see places like a Hospice setting where people are dealing with the transitioning of their bodies, but they have access to coaches, medicines, ways that make it sacred, ways that we celebrate this process instead of shoving people away in a hospital.

40:44

And it’s just this, it’s sterile and it’s not sacred.

So I want to see sacredness come back in our lives in all forms.

That’s beautiful.

That’s really in a nutshell.

Yes, to make life into a ceremony.

Exactly.

41:01

Life, death, everything into a ceremony.

Yeah, it’s a perfect way to put it.

Thank you so much for coming and sharing your incredible wisdom with us.

There is just so much beautiful spiritual.

It’s almost like I’m sitting here with my spiritual popcorn just enjoying when you’re speaking.

41:19

And thank you also for modeling safe and sacredness in this work.

Because we know there’s a lot of people in this work that are using its power not for so not for good.

So thank you for being a safe and sacred space where people can go deeper into their process, into their healing.

41:39

God bless you.

Thank you for guiding us to such a beautiful conversation today.

It’s just a joy to connect with you, David.

Thank you for having me.

Thank you so much, love.

That’s what I got for.

You this week, my friend.

And if you feel called to go?

Deeper into your own integration.

41:55

Work Ioffer tree journeys.

I lead an integration circle for people walking this path with ayahuasca and I just completed finishing a six month integration circle.

With therapists, coaches.

Retreat facilitators and those that are going deep on this journey, you can sign up at davidvox.com.

42:14

And then there’s the sacred impact.

And this is the one for leaders in the transformational and spiritual.

Field who have this great.

Vision, depth and sensitivity.

But they struggle to bring their service into tangible form here on Earth.

I’ve guided and coached over 5000 leaders in the last 15 years, helping them create platforms and offerings that comes from a real alignment, something that honors their integrity, their sensitivity, their pacing.

42:40

And for six months.

We meet as a group of 10.

We bring your platform, your ideas, your service, your medicine into structure, into form, and into a rhythm that actually grows the tree you’ve been cultivating and produces the fruit you’ve been trying to reach for years.

It’s planting these seeds in a container where they can grow and bringing it into resonance and clarity, and then watching the.

43:02

Fruits of the sacred work.

Manifest in a way that finally feels true.

To who you are.

You can find more information about these journeys on davidvox com.

See you next week, my friend.