Kristin is a health and high-performance maven, nutrition specialist, certified fitness trainer, and leader in the global breathwork and cold exposure space. Her SHERPA Breath & Cold Instructor Training program has trained over 175 coaches and healers across North America and the Caribbean using the transformative power of breathwork and ice plunges. Her trademark wit, wisdom, and female biohacking expertise are shared on international stages as well as in her 'Warrior Woman Mode' coaching programs that guide women to optimal health and vitality. Kristin also hosts the WELLPOWER Podcast which blends biohacking and wellness subject matter expertise, inspiring guests, and practical application of tools to lead clients and listeners alike. As a progressive voice, dynamic leader, and health optimization champion, she questions how far the human body can go, and helps others realize their capacity for greatness.
Kristin is a health and high-performance maven, nutrition specialist, certified fitness trainer, and leader in the global breathwork and cold exposure space. Her SHERPA Breath & Cold Instructor Training program has trained over 175 coaches and healers across North America and the Caribbean using the transformative power of breathwork and ice plunges.
Her trademark wit, wisdom, and female biohacking expertise are shared on international stages as well as in her 'Warrior Woman Mode' coaching programs that guide women to optimal health and vitality.
Kristin also hosts the WELLPOWER Podcast which blends biohacking and wellness subject matter expertise, inspiring guests, and practical application of tools to lead clients and listeners alike. As a progressive voice, dynamic leader, and health optimization champion, she questions how far the human body can go, and helps others realize their capacity for greatness.
SHOWNOTES:
😴 What happens when a Sleep Is a Skill expert gets humbled by insomnia again?
😴 Could MDMA-assisted facilitation be a missing link for trauma, hypervigilance, and sleep?
😴 Why wake-ups, rumination, and anxiety often signal a nervous system that doesn’t feel safe
😴 How stored trauma lives in the body and quietly drives night-time scanning and overthinking
😴 Why tools and supplements aren’t always enough to resolve insomnia
😴 How hypervigilance can be both a survival superpower and a sleep saboteur
😴 What Internal Family Systems (IFS) work reveals about the inner “watchmen” that keep you awake
😴 How fear extinction may support nervous system safety and deeper rest
😴 What current sleep research suggests about improved sleep quality after MDMA-assisted psychotherapy
😴 Why intentional facilitation and screening matter more than the medicine itself
😴 Why integration work is essential for lasting nervous system and sleep changes
😴 Why circadian basics like light exposure, timing, and routines still make or break sleep
😴 And many more
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DISCLAIMER:
The information contained in this podcast, our website, newsletter, and the resources available for download are not intended to be medical or health advice and shall not be understood or construed as such. The information contained on these platforms is not a substitute for medical or health advice from a professional who is aware of the facts and circumstances of your individual situation.
Welcome to the Sleep As a Skill podcast. My name is Mollie Eastman. I am the founder of Sleep as A Skill, a company that optimizes sleep through technology, accountability, and behavioral change. As an ex sleep sufferer turned sleep course creator, I am on a mission to transform the way the world thinks about sleep.
Each week I'll be interviewing world-class experts, ranging from researchers, doctors, innovators, and thought leaders to give actionable tips and strategies that you can implement to become a more skillful sleeper. Ultimately, I believe that living a circadian aligned lifestyle is going to be one of the biggest trends in wellness, and I'm committed to keeping you up to date on all the things that you can do today to transform your circadian health, and by extension, allowing you to sleep and live better than ever before.
Welcome back to the Sleep and Skill Podcast. Today's episode is a deeply personal one for me. If you've been listening for a while, you know, I believe fully that sleep is a skill, something we can learn and strengthen over time. But what we don't talk about enough is what happens when sleep challenges aren't about routines or supplements, but about what the nervous system is holding onto.
So today I am joined by someone incredibly special to me who is back for part two of our conversation, a close friend and a leader in the health and performance space. Kristen Weitzel is the creator of Sherpa Breath and Cold instructor training, a global breath work and cold exposure educator, a host of the Well Power Podcast and the voice behind Warrior Woman mode, helping women reconnect to strength, vitality, and capacity.
Now, in this continuation, we go somewhere we've never gone before. On this podcast, we explore trauma, hyper vigilance, and. Sleep, but really through this lens and concept of how MDMA assisted therapies may support nervous system regulation and deeper rest for the appropriate person. Now, this episode is educational, nuanced, and grounded emerging research.
If you've ever felt wired but exhausted or tried everything and still feel stuck, this conversation may open a powerful new lens for understanding your sleep. As always, this is. Educational. This is not medical advice. We are very mindful of the fact that MDMA is a approach that might make sense for certain people and not for others.
So really listen to this from a curious perspective. And as always, as you take in this podcast, I'm always open to feedback information. So please reach out to me if you have any questions, call outs or concerns. You can always do that at Sleep as a skill. And you can even email us directly at Team at sleep as a skill.com.
Now, we're gonna jump right into this episode, but first, a few words from our sponsors. As we head into the fall and vacation season, winds down IEA time when late nights irregular eating habits and indulgence tend to become the norm. It's time to get back on track with our health and of course our sleep.
Just a quick, interesting fact about sleep to mention drinking more than two servings of alcohol per day for men and more than one serving per day for women can decrease sleep quality by 39.2%. A sleep foundation survey reports not even mentioning all the indulgent food and late night effects that often come along with it.
And as we know, sleep is the key to your body's rejuvenation and repair process. It controls hunger and weight loss hormones, boost energy levels, and impacts countless other functions. A good night's. Sleep will improve your wellbeing much more than just about anything else I can possibly think of on the planet.
Uh, you know, I'm biased, but gotta say that. And sleep is your major to focus on as we head into the fall season and hopefully beyond. And that's why I recommend that if you're going to start taking some supplements on your sleep often, magnesium is a great place to begin. But not just any magnesium supplement, I do recommend getting the Magnesium Breakthrough by Bio Optimizers.
Magnesium Breakthrough contains als. Seven forms of magnesium designed to help you fall asleep, stay asleep, and wake up refreshed, which isn't that what we're all looking to do. The sleep benefits are really remarkable. I use it every night, and once your sleep is optimized, you'll find it much easier to tackle all the other major aspects of your health.
And trust me, it is a game changer to test it out. Visit mag breakthrough.com/sleep is a skill you can enter code. Sleep is a skill for 10% off for any order. This special offer is only available@magbreakthrough.com slash sleep is a skill. I will also include this in the show notes as well. Welcome to the Sleep.
It's a Skill podcast. Our guest today is not just any guest. It is one of my closest friends and someone who is just absolutely remarkable in the work that she does and has made such a profound and lasting difference in my life. So I'm wildly grateful. So we're gonna be sharing all about that and I am excited to learn more from so much research that she's bringing to us today.
And the topic is going to be around something that I have never done on this podcast, which is diving into the world of MDMA trauma and sleep. So Kristen, thank you for taking the time to be here. Yeah, I really appreciate you opening the door and letting your listeners peek in on this conversation around, let's call it the world of psychedelics in some way, but with a, a focused energy on how we can get people to feel better in their bodies and in their sleep habits.
Yes. And I know you absolutely did that for me. I just wanna say that. This last year was really a challenging year for me. Many of you know if you listen to the podcast or if you haven't. About a decade ago, I went through this period of insomnia that completely changed the course of my life. And I thought I was done with any sort of, I was a little, a little cocky, not gonna lie, with my sleep skills.
And I've said many times that I believe sleep is a skill, and yet I was humbled a bit this last year and change. When I started experiencing some wake ups, I hadn't really dealt with any of this in many years since that period of insomnia. Again, insomnia, difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep. And not only was I having then difficulty with wake up and there'd be times when I couldn't fall asleep, I was dealing with anxiety experience with my work and my business was just one of burnout to say the least.
And I think really confronting things that I had never confronted. I turned 40 a lot of big life questions. This whole episode is not about my my year of 40, but I'm sharing this for context because I think for any one of us, there's gonna be different seasons of life and there's different things that can be supportive.
And one of the things that was really helpful for me was discovering. Really thoughtful and mindful facilitation around MDMA and how it could be supportive for sleep and for health and for trauma in general. Now, when I say this, I have a lot of disclaimers. This is for educational use only. This is absolutely something that we're not just casually discussing, but I also wanna share some of that background context and we'll get into more of that.
Uh, but I say all that because it really, one of the things that I described after my experience with MDMA was. Quote, inhabiting my body differently. And I borrowed that from somewhere else that I had read someone having some experience. But it absolutely spoke to what my experience was. And this was going from kinda a hypervigilant state from a tense state.
And many of us who have dealt with insomnia at some point have felt hyper vigilance, have felt overthinking, rumination. And there was a couple triggers that had led to this, uh, you know, in the lead up. And that was. Kind of my experience and I felt kind of stuck in this loop and MD me among other exercises, lots of different modalities diving into, but this was one that just was so dramatic.
So I'm very excited to dive into how this could just be something for people to be aware of. That was a lot for me to say. What are your, what's your take on this and how, how you found yourself at the helm of helping to support people here? Yeah, I, I, such a beautiful opening, um, and, and knowing you as well as I do, knowing a lot of the pieces of that.
So like, I just wanna honor you sharing, um. Your navigation of, of that, of that year, that, of the time that you're like, Hey, I got this on lockdown. But wait a minute, maybe I don't. Totally. Yes, exactly. And how we have things that come up in our lives that actually can be correlated to things that happened in our childhood and how we've patterned in our brain and our body.
And every synapse that's firing is things over the course of a lifetime. So for anyone who's like listening to this, um, it's really was important, and you saw me go through this over the last year myself. Just getting trauma informed, getting certified as a somatic somatically oriented practitioner and facilitator and really making sure that I understood the power and the nuance of doing this work.
And it has become some of the most pivotal work I've done in sort of nervous system coaching. Mm-hmm. So, uh, if we scale back even just a little bit further, I know everything that you're speaking of because although the, the stimulus was different for the way that we were, um, feeling in the last year and a half, we took a little bit of, for a year or so of our, of our lives in the last year and a half, we took a little bit of a wild ride together.
I think bonding over, Hey, this is coming up. I'm having some rumination, I'm feeling and experiencing anxiousness mm-hmm. Over X, y, z thing that's happening. Yeah. For me it was more of a, um, a trauma bond breakup and, uh, emotionality that I thought as a nervous system coach, I have all the tools. Yeah. What's, what's the issue?
Um, and it's how I found my mentor and eventually how I found this layer of work, which is on top of the breath work and the cold exposure and the heat therapy. Yes. And all of that coaching that I do for health optimization and really all of the years of doing that gave me the underpinning to be able to layer this in this, this interesting layer of facilitation that it is, and again, uh, not, uh, overtly advocating that this is the answer for everyone, but knowing that.
While, um, legalization continues to expand in many areas of psychedelics and plant medicines, including THC and CBD, that we are in a place where more and more I think and hope we will see these tools coming to the forefront and, um, legal shifts in the way that we can utilize them in the United States.
Um, I, when you said a dramatic shift, it's like there's nothing that I have ha I was unsure how I was gonna continue to put one foot in front of the other. Mm-hmm. I think you're one of the people who saw that in my life. Mm-hmm. Sure. Until I found my mentor, um, Mike Zeller, and he, in the midst of being in facilit, him facilitating me through a space of this, I was at a very clear moment where I was like almost out of the medicine, I would say, and said to him.
I have all of the underpinnings to do this with you. I know you can't do this alone because the combination of things, this is what makes this so different than just going out with your friends in a night. Mm-hmm. And like doing some psychedelics or, um, you know, leaning into, uh, a solo journey or recreational use.
This is a very, very different, I think it's important for your listeners to hear this. Mm-hmm. It's a very different intention and responsibility and the gravity of this kind of work is, is. Laid forth in such a way that it is, it's clearly defined and it's as safe as humanly possible. I mean, I like Harken back and was pulling up the, the sort of the ranking on, uh, all of the toxicity from the, the harmful substances in the world.
And we have a good friend, Amanda Cuda Yes. Who talks a lot about like alcohol and, you know, it's a top harm to users based on, um, long-term brain effects and a number of different health stats, you know, alcohol and crack and there's all these other Yes. Um, things that, that are like 3.54 on the scale. And when you start to look down at the bottom and the lower parts of the scale, you find things like psilocybin and MDMA and some of these other psychedelics, LSD.
And it's really interesting to see that, right? Because we've been socialized to think drugs are bad. Mm-hmm. And the eighties Reagan era, I, you know, I think was a lot of, you know, this is your brain on drugs and fry an egg in a pan. Yes. And scare tactics. And again, while it's not necessarily for everyone, I think there are some of these tools were had originated, um, MDMA specifically originated, uh, in use with therapists and, you know, to be, Hey, this is like an experimental thing.
Yes. Let's try this to see if we can shift people's state. Um, and then quite quickly, of course was like scheduled as a, a drug. So it's a big container to open up, but also it was a very pivotal moment in my life. It's another way to say it, not even coaching, of course, it made me more empathetic, but a very pivotal moment in my life as well as I think yours.
Mm-hmm. Based on everything you just said that I could realize what. Who I am when I put the fear down. Mm. When I put down the sensation and, um, experience of anxiousness in my body or depression. And of course there's a number of different layers with anxiety and depression that, um, you know, if you're working with a doctor and someone's listening to this, you wanna be with your clinician to understand what's exactly going on.
And there have been a ton of trials, um, maps, the Psychedelic Science Research Organization. There's been a ton of trials and a ton of money put into MDMA, working with people who have PTSD showing amazing results, some of which we'll talk about today. Um, and in the focus of sleep, the arena of sleep as well.
And it's just not something that has become legal at this point yet, right? Mm-hmm. Outside of the country and other places it's worked with. But I. Really look forward to a time where we have at least people have the option. Um, everyone should decide, I'm a libertarian, so everyone should decide what they wanna do with their bodies.
And the pivotal change that you experienced and the honor it is for me to get to do this work with people where they're trusting me, letting me into their lives, letting me into their childhood stories, letting in, letting me into their psyche. Hmm. Um, it's very much like navigating and there was an old movie where like somebody gets pumped into the body and is like flowing around the cell.
I can't remember the name of the cells and the blood vessels and stuff. Oh. It's like some movie from the seventies. I don't know. Oh my God. But I feel like I get the honor of sort of floating around someone sort of brain and psyche and experience and stories and to be able to bear witness to that and the way that.
The medicine we use is, which is a combination of MDMA and sort of a closer with psilocybin, and we'll talk about mm-hmm. The psilocybe mushroom and why we use that for neuroplasticity extension. But that really feels like I get to do this work and, and be in the realm of somebody's, what their life experience is and how it is shaped and formed.
That person and their nervous system response as a whole is just. To me, some of the most sacred work I've ever done. Mm. And so it's really important, I think that it's held in that sacred container and that it's treated with strong empathy and intention and no judgment, which is like, I don't think there's a lot of facilitators out there judging the process.
Yeah, yeah. But I do know that I don't think there's anyone better. I could have learned from the combination of IFS parts work, internal family systems that I use alongside being, um, brought up into the psychedelic coaching world from Todd Cole Witty. There's just a lot of things I've done in the last five or six years.
The universe has gifted me with those things. And then when this came along, I was like, oh, this is the missing. Link to put it all together in my capacity. Yes. Oh, it's so true. And just to underscore, when I was determining if I was gonna go down this path, so for me, tend to be an overthinker, tend to be a ruminator, tend to be a bit of a scaredy cat.
And I say all that from a thoughtful perspective. Always wanna really be mindful and ensure that there is some real thought behind a choice like this. And when I would discuss this with certain individuals, there was a lot of feedback around. Oh, I did ecstasy back in the day and I felt horrible for days and weeks after.
And a lot of these just kind of flat blanket statements. And also I was surprised how many people, even in the wellness space, the coaching space, who are just really not abreast of some of the research. And again, I'm not trying to make blanket statements and this is very individualized, but not aware of some of the dramatic responses that can come from using something like MDMA.
And so I think we can kind of go into some of that, what that looks like. But just as it relates directly to sleep, one of the things that we know in the United States is gold standard for treatment of things like insomnia is CBTI, cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia. And when we think about that, so many people absolutely will have some results commonly with their sleep.
That's beneficial. And there is a group like myself who did not respond particularly well. So it is, and I share that because one, if there is such a response commonly with CBTI, it is from an approach of mindset and thought and structure, but. There is something there around how we're thinking and rumination patterns and stressors and trauma that we can't just supplement our way out of, that we can't just gadget our way out of.
And so for people that have real things to unpack, maybe we can talk about how MDMA can be helpful. And the last thing I'll say is that one of the things that had me. Finally take the leap was the research on, if you're looking into the portfolio of psychedelics, if you will. Mm-hmm. MDMA in my research being one of the commonly, one of the least likelihood of things going astray.
Totally. If you well. Right. And you find that a lot with psilocybin as well. Sure. Like the psilocybin mushroom that people have been microdosing a lot more often now it's being talked about in the press. It's, and I just think that's a good shout out and microdosing with the understanding that it is a psychedelic mushroom, but it is in a small enough dose that you are, it's sub perceptual.
Yeah. Right. You might feel more flow or focus or like, wow, it was really on today and got a lot of things done. Yes. Depending on what strain you're using, but it is sub perceptual, so there is a range here. I think that's. Yeah's really important to talk about and for anyone who's like, you guys are talking about drugs.
Mm-hmm. I like, I just sent my mother like three months ago, the book, my mom is always a barometer for conservatism. I'm sure they're more conservative people, but I'm like, I made a commitment as I started to do this work and, and work in this, let's call it the psychedelic landscape or facilitation, that I would speak openly about it.
That I would speak openly on my podcast about it, that with friends, and this is a lot about the. Understanding that I have no shame around this work. Mm-hmm. And that there are tools that can be helpful for people should they decide to use them. But, um, a shout out to the book, um, it's called How To Change Your Mind by Michael Pollen.
Mm. My mom really loves him as an author, so I was like, great, here's a book. And it, it does give a foray into, you know. Different usages of psychedelics over time, some history, some science, some understanding about the safety. And it's a great book. Just as a shout out to anyone who's like, what are we talking about?
Yes. Here, it's great. This sounds like sideways. It's great. Yeah. So How to Change Your Mind is a great book to start. It's also like, I think a series on, ugh, I don't know if it's Netflix or something where it's like five parts series. Yes. Really beautiful that talks about all that so that you can get, gain some more insight and understanding.
So, Hmm, that's a good call. I should actually re-watch that. I think I saw. Some of that, but I should check that out. Um, great to have some of those primers as a place to begin. Yeah. And there's also that other book we were chatting about before too, uh, specifically around MDMA. Oh, ecstasy is Medicine. Yeah.
By Robinson, uh, was beautiful. He came and spoke to my mentorship group about the book, about his work, and this is a guy who's been a therapist specifically who's been working online with these medicines, let's called them medicines, um, specifically MDMA or Ecstasy, also commonly known as Molly. I have a lighthearted love that I have a lighthearted thing that I was like Molly on Molly.
Um, and. He's been doing this with, um, police officers and people in the line of duty in, in, I think San Francisco and just, there's a whole, um, you, you can see the weaving and unpacking of how he's helping these people who have seen quite astonishing things and have had big trauma responses to like an officer involved shooting and things that show up.
Mm-hmm. Um, and I also will just shout out to people who are listening, like as a breath work facilitator who's been doing that for 15 years. Even when I look at, like you talked about some therapy that has some efficacy, but, you know, I look at a lot of the studies around P therapy. Mm-hmm. Like just straightforward talk therapy and, you know, they would liken a session like this to, you know, parallel to about 15 years of talk therapy.
Mm-hmm. Yeah. There have been studies, um, my friend Richard, uh, who's the breath geek on Instagram, just did his PhD and did a big study around conscious connected breathing and, um, comparison to talk therapy and just how people saw benefits to. Um, utilizing breathwork only. Right. And breathwork, we know, is a way that we can use our breath and adapt our nervous system to the, in a way that we might be breathing, so that we can shift our state and we can shift our brainwaves and we can unpack some old stories and really, um, transform ourselves.
So breathwork alone can be something that can be helpful. This is like, you know, I wanna say the velvet hammer on top of it. I think if you're out there and you're listening and you're like, wow, I'm navigating experiences of depression and anxiety, and I've met with therapists and I've talked to my clinician and my doctor, like, there's an opportunity here to explore and research more because of the, it's like a pinnacle moment.
It's a peak experience of state shift. Mm-hmm. That I don't know about you, but for me, I've, uh, outside of an ice bath, which comes real close sometimes mm-hmm. Based on how cold or what country I'm in. Yeah. It's a, there's a, a. I've never really experienced a mindset shift, understanding of myself as a human, my capacity, an unpacking of fear and my ego, and really just being like, I'm actually like a super beautiful woman, and I came into the earth like I was born into this world with so much like love and care and capacity, and I'm short selling myself.
Mm. Right. Absolutely. Like that feeling and that understanding of the constructs that we've built over a lifetime. You and I share this beautiful commonality of hyper vigilance. Yeah. And ps for anyone who's listening who might be like, I have a lot of hypervigilance, I like to say and speak to this, especially in the parts work landscape or through the lens, like Richard Schwar Schwartz, um, internal Family Systems Lens.
It's like I, I. Every part has a superpower and every part has a shadow. Mm. Because isn't about getting rid of like, I hate this part of me. I wish I wasn't so, uh, overly ruminating. I wish I wasn't so hypervigilant. I wish It's not about that. We don't, when we resist it, it pre persists. Mm-hmm. So how do we keep the parts of us and lovingly attend to them?
And then also meet them and say, actually how old is this part of me? Mm. You know, is there something that went on at five or 10 or like some pivotal year in my development that made me really be able to feel into, oh, hyper vigilance can be a superpower. And what does that mean? That means hyper vigilance at some point for you and I you and me.
It kept us safe. Yeah. And then not only did it keep us safe, it made us wildly detail oriented. Mm-hmm. It got me and landed me every corporate promotion job I ever wanted. Mm-hmm. It had me run teams with a level of detail that was like, people were like, this is magical. Right? Yes. And, and produce events and do all this stuff.
And then the flip side is that it makes me like. A really challenging partner, especially when I'm with someone who's like avoidant. Yeah, right. And my, it raises a level of, I guess I would say anxiety now. I never really had, thought I had anxiety most of my life, but it, it gives me the experience of anxiousness when I'm with a romantic partner who's like not.
Showing up fully or being clear with their intention and their, and their plan forward. And so like just as examples, right? For people who might be listening. Oh, so beautifully said. And that hypervigilance to underscore that piece, I know you have some exciting research around how hypervigilance and MDMA, how MA could support if we are dealing with hyper vigilance.
And for someone that's listening, if they're just saying, listen, I just wanna sleep better, like, yes. And part of the reason commonly that we are struggling with this, even if people might be unaware or maybe overly aware of their nervous system and how their nervous system could be playing a role in their sleep results, I just wanna say that it's very, very often that we, we'd make some tweaks and changes to people's routines and maybe their supplement stack and this, that and the other, but.
Often it's conveying safety to the body and the ability to really kind of unwind some patterns of behavior that haven't been working. And that can take many different routes. And I think it's really important to know the different tools that are available. And so when we think of some of the research, what are we seeing out there for hypervigilance and MA?
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. The, the, you know, I tried to really sur initially, surprisingly, as we started to have this conversation, I was like, wow, there's actually a shit ton of research Yes. On, um, M DMA slash psychedelics, uh, for managing. Sleep or for sleep improvement, overall sleep improvement. And that can be like habits, lifestyle changes, all the way to when you really look and you unpack what people's sleep challenges are.
Right. Especially like, listen, PTSD is a clinically diagnosed state and um, I know people kind of walk around freely and say, I have P ts D from that breakup or from that, um, woman in the grocery store, whatever. Like, I think that's like, that's a bit lighthearted and like there's a clinical diagnosis there and that's where some of the research is really, um, pivotal.
But when we're thinking about the reasons that we stay up at night, it's like we either have something that's coming on from a trauma that we had either as a child or something in our life that we, it, we might not even have it in our awareness. Mm-hmm. And this is a big thing that I think working with medicine in a space of like yeah, getting outta the amygdala, getting 'em out of your fear center of your brain can really assist with is like, how do I, oh, I get to see these things that came up that were actually parts of my developmental years.
Uh, and it could even be like current state if you're working in hospitals or policemen or whatever. It's like, how do I bring it into my awareness? Right? It's like that Joe dispenser thing. It's like how do you bring it into your actual awareness? Because we can't do anything about it if we don't know it's there.
Mm-hmm. And like having multiple in sessions and journeys when I'm facilitating where people are like having an aha moment, like, holy shit, oh, because of this, that, because my nervous system had these two experiences and it's like, this is how I'll always navigate this type of situation when the guy delivers the groceries.
Like I won't go to the door, or whatever the thing is. Mm-hmm. Yes. Right. And then we bring it into our awareness and we can see this state shift. So just to go back to the hypervigilance piece, it's like, of course superpower shadow. When we are in the space of working with psychedelics, specifically MDMA and the psilocybin, it's like we can downshift that hypervigilance.
And if you are in bed at night and you're not sleeping and you're, you tend to have a hypervigilant attachment cell or have some hypervigilance, you're gonna be ruminating and thinking and sort of, it's just a slippery slope, right? You're gonna be more and more and more, okay, well the light's on and I hear my clock ticking, and I'm like, what's that noise outside?
And it's just gonna continue to keep you in awake in an awake state, and that's not gonna be good for your sleep. So if you can downshift the hypervigilance, you can facilitate fear extinction and, you know, reconsolidation updates and settling yourself in with what IFS parts work would call the watchmen, which are like the, oh my god, okay, I'm on high alert all the time, and how can I, how can I, I need to fix this, all right?
I'm not safe if I'm not aware, if I'm not awake. In some part of my brain or some part of my, what it really is, is your nervous system is awake, even though you're trying to sell yourself in and be asleep, your nervous system is like on high alert. Right? So when we look at some of the research talking about downshifting hypervigilance and how that is going to affect sleep, some of these studies, you know, uh, controlled trials are still like we we're using subjective data.
In some cases, that's just what happens, right? So people are giving their subjective data, but downshifting the hyper vigilance and being able to sleep because they are no longer, and their nervous system is no longer on high alert. Mm-hmm. Right? And that's like, I think it's important to, to go back to this one quick understanding for everyone who's listening, like, okay, how do I even know if I'm hypervigilant?
Yes. I mean, you may if you're having challenges sleep, sleeping. Yeah. But our nervous system is checking in with the environment, internal and external. Every 200th of a millisecond. Mm. And that is happening autonomically. That means automatically it is checking in before we know it. It's important to also say that our, the vagus nerve, which is so hot to talk about, like 80 to 85% of the vagus nerve has ent efferent fibers, which means they go from the body to the brain.
So if we're looking at all of this and we're looking at the science and the physiology, it means that our body is really keeping the score, right? Mm. Our body is the thing that is feeling the sensations. And we know for sure that a 50 to a hundred or so of these every 200 millisecond check-ins that our nervous system is doing, you can think about it as like a young puppy, right?
It's like checking in and checking in and checking in. Not necessarily hyper vigilantly, but it's always there to protect you. Every 50 or a hundred of these we're deciding in our mind, oh, I feel joy, or I feel sad. Oh, I feel a little bit scared. I feel a little bit in love. I feel that's like an aggregation of all those moments together.
And so if that's the case, and we don't know every single 200th of a millisecond, it means that we need to be able to get to a place where we can go, okay, cool. How can I like let those things happen and not be reactionary? Mm. Right. How can I, this trauma conversation that's happening right now, and people say Big T, little T, which I don't really subscribe to anymore, even though I have spoken in that vernacular, but trauma is not something that happened to you, right?
It is your experience and your response to something that happened. And that means, and this is like a very rough and tumble example. You could be like a Vietnam vet who has clinically diagnosed PTSD, or you can be, I've used this example with you before. Yeah. Or you can be like five years old in the sandbox.
Yes. And the kid next to you hits you in the face with a red shovel. And who am I to say? Which person experienced more trauma. Mm-hmm. Right. It's the body's response to the event. And now every time you see a red shovel, for some reason your hair stands on down on your skin and you're get have a fear response.
It, it's like if we don't get back to understanding that that lives in the body, then we don't get back to a place of being able to clear it. Mm. And by clear it, I just mean integrate it fully so that it's in your awareness so that you can then go on and be like, oh my God, I'm running into all these red shovels and Yes.
It doesn't bother me at all. Exactly. You know, so the hypervigilance thing and the research around it about downshifting that is like, it's a, this is a downstream effects of utilizing medicines in this way, is that our body and our system calms. And I would love for you to just speak briefly about what it felt like both in the experience and the days right after to like in your body, in your nervous system, in your tissues.
Mm-hmm. Somatically what it felt like, because I think this is a big. A big win for the understanding of how it actually shifts by the way that you land. Yeah, a hundred percent. One thing that I think is really so powerful, at least in my experience, was as having a bit of an identity as someone who is a bit head up.
You know, so an overthinker maybe not as connected to my body for a lot of my. Life. What was so powerful was throughout the experience you would have such great prompting to feel the body. 'cause I would go into the thinking state, but sometimes would forget to actually feel how I could be experiencing life.
And you would language that in such a way of saying this could be something a, a way in which you navigate the world around you, where it's. Not a tensing and not a something's wrong, not a scanning for danger. And that was what it felt like. It felt like a kind of melt and it felt like all is well energy.
And to be able to go back to certain, you know, events in my life that I had not really sorted through or I thought I had, and it turned out that I hadn't, especially on a physiological level. So then to be able to go back to those memories, almost a timeline, like how I was envisioning it was many, many hours.
And for me it was pretty much an eye mass. The whole time and going really inward, and it felt like there was some sort of invisible timeline. And then I felt like I just scrubbed through the whole timeline with your guidance, with that support, with the safe environment. And from that place, then I was able to almost just feel like I had gotten complete in a new way with each one of those memories and could look at them newly and not have any sort of lasting kind of fear response.
And then the next day, one of the cool things and, and future and subsequent days was it really felt like more of this grounded rootedness, just a solid way of inhabiting the world that was new for me and just a, a powerful stance versus one in which I might be more messed with based on the circumstances around me.
And it's not to say I don't still have mess moments, of course, but I just, it. Really helped me get the message. It felt like on a cellular level, that at its core all is well, is really what it felt like. And I think the timing is so important too. And I'm curious your thoughts on the fine line potentially for this, because I know I shared about this past year and spoil alerts.
What was wonderful is that while navigating that now. On the other side of that, I'm so grateful 'cause my sleep is like better than ever. And part of that process took a lot of time to, you know, different tools and modalities and I felt like in some of our conversations and the strategy on the when for this, this had gotten to a point where now I was still experiencing some of that hyper vigilance and yet had a bit more of a handle on, um, just some of my relationship to some of that anxiety and the sleep and was able, you know, sleep was okay there.
And so I'm saying that because I'm curious if you have thoughts on when might someone wanna be mindful of getting themselves a bit more grounded before exploring something that, or is it. Still something we're e experimenting with and discovering. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I think it's, it's very personal to the person in many ways.
I'll also say that there have been moments in my life when I first, I started microdosing personally about eight years ago. Um, and during COVID when things were really heightened, I was like, I'm not taking a microdose because I'm too emotional. And the lab and one of the people that I get the micro doses from would say to me, Hey, this is okay.
This is like the time that probably a microdose is gonna support your system. Right? Yeah. Your neuroplasticity and firing new synapses and all the things. And I was like, no, it can't be. It's just gonna make me more emotional. And so I was like, there's that hypervigilance yes. Of me being nervous or in a fear space about how to, um, prioritize that in my life during a time that was like nothing we had ever seen before in the world.
Right? Yeah. And the reality was that one day I think I was just like so beside myself. That I thought, okay, well I I really don't think it can get like worse in this moment. Let me just have a microdose day. And it was something that was like, I was like, oh, this actually was really helpful. Mm. And so I think that we have to sort of dispel our own myths sometimes.
And I think from a personal standpoint, the shorter answer to the question is, uh, by example your, you felt a bit more grounded when we settled into a session together and I facilitated you. I was not in that place. I was in a level of what I might call desperation. Mm-hmm. Emotionally. Sure. Um, and you're, you were familiar with that.
'cause I, you know, had the 2:00 AM phone calls or, well, 2:00 PM in the afternoon 'cause Molly's asleep at 8:00 PM But I had some heightened states of emotionality that I just could not unwind. And it was Sure, it was like coming from past traumas in my life, it was coming from a codependent relationship and correlation and my dad's death and all the things that kind of came up.
Mm-hmm. In a separation slash abandonment container, which would be my definition. Certainly not wanting to play victim, but um. In that opening that lens. And like, also, let me be very clear. I am a very different woman than I was two years ago. And I've learned so much and healed so much in the ways that I've seen you continue to Yeah.
Heal yourself. Mm-hmm. And that also my job as a facilitator is to not, I'm not here saying I'm healing anyone. Yeah. It's not about that. But the challenge is for people who are out there, like putting this medicine into their life on their own without someone who's well trained to coach, facilitate or guide.
Um, and that is like a very special thing is like finding the relationship that you need for your facilitator is that you forget 80% of what happens during your journey. Yeah. You know, or you're with friends and it feels too recreational or you're dancing. It's like this is a very targeted type of work and we see, and it was beautiful to see because I know you and knew you so well.
Yes. And now I know you even more deeply. Yeah. Like we, we build empathy not just for ourselves, but the stories where we. Potentially hold onto a little bit victimhood. Yep. Sure. Or we're like villainizing someone, or we just hope hold onto some more empathy and understanding and self-compassion and self-agency to say, oh, I was seven, and like, why am I being so hard on myself?
I had no idea I was in a space where, you know, whatever was going on with my parent, the figure or my, my sister, whatever, whatever the thing is. And then also having empathy for them. Mm-hmm. Like I can look at my relationship with my sister and be like, oh, well my sister was like seven and I was 12, so why were we having expectations of each other?
We were kids. Yeah. You know, and it's not to say that my mom did a bad job parenting. Right. The, the body's gonna recognize an issue, a trauma in its own way. It's gonna experience something and it will hold it in a patterning and it's energy that's stuck in the body. That's really what we're doing essentially.
Mm-hmm. With these medicines is clearing this energy. Yes. I just went off on a diatribe, so I don't even know if that's answering your question. No, that's perfect. But I think it's important to talk about that empathy that comes up in the midst of. The journey space and that I specifically, for me, it was like, uh, I needed the period at the end of the sentence, I needed a strong pattern interrupt.
Mm-hmm. It wasn't like the dose that I consumed was any higher than yours. Mm-hmm. I needed a strong pattern interrupt and I needed someone there to hold space for me. And for me specifically, I chose a male, not just because he came on high recommendation as kind of the only one doing this combination of work.
Mm-hmm. Thankfully. Mm-hmm. Um, and I needed a male that I could feel safe with to help overcome some things around my experience in life, my traumas, et cetera. And that felt really comfortable for me. I think it's important to choose the right facilitator, that it's a person that makes sense, that is someone that you trust, and then it's someone who can, like, we're weaving the magic work of.
Guiding while the medicine is leading the way. Mm. And I think that's like the notion that it's never about, the facilitator is the one who's curing you or making you healed, or you, your body is so intelligent, it can heal itself, your brain, your nervous system. It just needs to have the open opportunity to be able to recognize and bring into its awareness with so much love and kindness for us to say, oh, I see the forest through the trees now because I'm an adult and I can look back.
And for anyone who's listening too, I think it's important to say like. A lot of my guidance and when we're doing this work is like, it's fine if people wanna bring up happy topics or sometimes people's future selves will talk to them like, yeah, their future self or an alien comes out, you know, there's all this crazy, crazy things in the landscape that do happen in the most beautiful way.
And who am I to say what's really happening or not? But quite often because I am prompting people, um, with kindness and care to say, Hey, is, would you like to speak and share about the things that have come up in your mind right now? Is there something that the medicine or you, or your body wants to share with me verbally around a challenge or an emotion or difficulty you've, you've experienced that you'd like to look at clo more closely?
And that's the invitation. And I don don't. Over prompt. Of course I do. Mm-hmm. I was mentioning to you right before we recorded, I like work within like a four eyes structure, which is why again, I'm like so proud of the ability and all the like coaching containers that I've been in and the people I've learned from in the condor approach, they talk a lot about the four eyes.
Mm-hmm. Which is how you do your intake. So important, right? Mm-hmm. Because you gotta make sure if there's contraindications, you have to really get clear with someone's thought process. Of course, I can do this work with like a multitude of doing breath work experiences only if people are nervous about medicine or microdosing or whatever it might be.
Um, or diving deeply into the, the MDMA and psilocybin work. It's like all equal and, and in many ways for what a person is ready to do, which I think was your original question. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, okay, we can do this work in a number of ways. How can we settle in and. See what is the right fit and then unpack it from there.
Right. Bring, continuing to bring things into people's awareness. So Good. I know you had some amazing kind of results that have come from some of these. I, I've been surprised when I've shared about maps, how many people are just not even aware of maps. And maybe just kind of explain quickly what Maps is and then just a couple of those results that some of these studies have found that are often so impressive and in reputable journals and not just, you know, fly by the night.
So what are we seeing there? Yeah, so let's, let's talk about that. Yeah. The maps is, um, the psychedelic sciences, um, community and they, uh, have a conference every other year. This is the first year that I went this, just this past year, and they've been doing this research and there are a million people that have been leaning into the research and efficacy and conversation.
You know, since the fifties, sixties, seventies, right. There's, there's so many people of Eser Band VanDerKolk who did The Body Keeps Score, who wrote that book? Um, who many people are familiar with. It's like translated into like 90 Languages and Maps as an organization. Who you had on your podcast? I had on my podcast recently.
Yes. If anyone should check that out. Yeah, they should do that. Yep. And Maps as an organization has been like a, a. Just a bastion or like a lighthouse, I think, for so many people over, over many, many years. Um, third Wave, again, I interviewed Paul Austin, who has a company called Third Wave, which just talks about the third wave being like the psychedelic third wave that we're, is Renaissance that we're experiencing right now.
And these organizations are both leading the way in research and also leading the way in like training coaches and facilitators and educating, let's just say consumers or potential consumers of, of anything in the psychedelic landscape on like safety, efficacy, what medicine makes the most sense for each specific type of person.
And then, yeah, just to cite a few of like the studies that, that we've looking at. You know, I look at publications that are some of the, the bigger, the big five or the big 25, like nature and, um. Journal of Traumatic Stress, and there's a Lancet Psychiatry study from 2018 that just really talks about like veterans in first response, first response responders who have the, it's like very large sample sizes and strong effects and really understanding and unpacking, navigating, letting go of their trauma mm-hmm.
So that they can like, feel more calm, feel less fear, and have less triggers for nighttime wake ups and sleeplessness and all of that, so that they can, um, they can yeah. Improve their sleep overall. Right. Um, sleep quality improvements after MDMA assisted psychotherapy. So there's a, a study 2021 from the Journal of Traumatic Stress that was like randomized controlled style trial that showed.
Improving this PSQI, um, use, utilizing this is a test, right. That they take. Yes. Yeah. Um, and that the maintenance level of, um, improved sleep lasted over 12 months from just doing one session. Wow. So those pieces feel like very strong evidence for me. And I think the other thing is why it needs to be well facilitated and well integrated and we should talk a little bit about mm-hmm.
Integration is, it is in the integration process and it is in the well fac, like the wonderfully facilitated process and why picking that partner, that facilitator is so important that you then are able to. Basically have a translator for your psyche. Mm. Right. Like, you know, this thing that I do that not many facilitators are doing yet.
And hopefully more and more will. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Which is like I'm running AI in the background. I like that. Capturing all of the things that are said. I'm taking feverish notes. I think I took 22 pages of notes. Yes. In addition myself of things that I'm seeing from that I can categorize based on IFS parts psychology.
Right. Internal family systems, which is parts work I can categorize that I can understanding and having been the nervous system coach for so long that I can unpack and look at and help clarify. And then I take my notes and the AI notes and I make a big summary for integration. And I also assign you homework.
Yes. So anyone out there is not getting homework from their psychedelic assisted Exactly. Person. Um, then, you know. Get your facilitators. Like, one thing that I would suggest is that someone needs to really do an intake. Like if you're out there looking and you wanna like, slide into my dms, by all means, and I'll tell you these things as I answer my own.
And, um, Molly has my super secret private link that just talks about, yes, all the work that I'm doing in the landscape of nervous system. And I call it the inner quest, but you wanna make sure you're choosing someone who, you know, like, and trust. I mean, like mm-hmm. You're gonna have to build rapport with them, but hey, this person feels like they're grounded and I can connect and there is some connection there.
And, and no shame. If you meet someone, you're like, ah, they're a little creepy. I don't really like them, then just like, move on. Yeah. But find someone who you feel like there's like a no, like, or a likeness. Um, I, when I chose Mike as my facilitator. After the initial intake, caller two, I was like, he has helped his wife through some really strong mm-hmm.
Postpartum and suicidal, um mm-hmm. Like ideation, at least, I wouldn't necessarily say attempt, but she had attempted suicide like 12 plus times when she was younger. Mm-hmm. So he, I really had empathy for him and understanding that he had, like, this was the love of his life. Mm-hmm. And he was like, the reason he got into the work is he was wanting to save his family.
Mm. And that felt so in integrity and it felt so, and he's, he, he works with a lot of high performers and, and executives and so that felt like, okay, there's a cleaner world here. It didn't feel like the opium dead. Yes, yes. You know? 'cause I am, in some ways I'm like, Hey, I'm not wanting to like, throw this around and, and make a choice that feels like I'm partying.
You know, it's just like a, just yes. Just knowing that I was utilizing it for, for good and for healing myself. And so having a conversation or two or three or four or whatever, you need to feel a level of comfort. I would stay away from people that like overly sell you. 'cause I think that there's a little bit of that going on in the world.
There's a lot of rise of plant medicine and come to the 25 person ceremony. And I'm not knocking any of those ceremonies. I'm not knocking ayahuasca, I'm not knocking any of that. I just think this work is meant to be done. Like I will work one-on-one and I will work with couples. Mm. And I don't, outside of that landscape, I guess that there was like a throuple maybe.
But typically I, it's like I'm not wanting, it isn't very intentional, slightly intense at times. Container that is set up and structured. So you can learn a lot about the human that you are, the ways that you human, the ways that your nervous system functions and so that you can re-pattern what needs to be re-pattern.
And this is nobody's body or reaction is ever doing anything wrong or bad, ever. Never bad, never wrong. Their bodies are doing the thing which is so beautiful, which is creating safety. Mm-hmm. In whatever way they learn to create safety from the time you were in the womb, even until current day. So find a practitioner, make sure they're intaking you make sure they're asking about your contraindications.
I have a 78 question intake form. Yes. Which I took. Yes. It's like Exactly. Okay. And it's important, I have totally, uh, people on a team I go to like that's a pharmacologist and I check backgrounds and anything people may be taking supplementation, et cetera. And they're challenges in life. Things that come up on the intake form.
I'm working through the in space process with them. And then I am doing the thing that is not optional, which is if you have a facilitator that's not gonna give you integration. Mm-hmm. And that to me is at least two phone calls afterwards. Mm-hmm. Um, and I'm like, notes homework. I mean, you saw all in.
Mm-hmm. I think. Integration's not optional. Yeah. And also integration is everything. If the psychedelic experience, the peak experience, which is what a lot of people are chasing. Mm-hmm. If that's the thing that opens the door, that gives you the keys to the jail that you have put yourself in. Yes. That's the irony.
Yeah. Then you don't wake up the next day and put the key in the locks. If you don't open the door, if you don't realize the door is already open and you're gonna walk through it, if you don't take the beautiful adventure that is integrating the work and the learnings you just had, then your life, although it will change in slight slightly shift, of course, your life cannot open to the full breadth of possibility for your capacity to be like limitless.
For you to do everything that you dream and for you to understand that your energy is directing your entire life. Mm-hmm. Yes. Ugh. I couldn't agree more so much. Yes, so true. And that integration process, one of the things that I didn't quite realize was the call out around the levels of BDNF that appear to be present in the brain thereafter, and based on the, particularly the way that you administer this or you explore this as far as the kind of combination of MDMA and psilocybin in a thoughtful way that that can help.
Extend the integration period of time. Yeah. And for anyone, it's like what is BDNF, this brain derived neurotropic factor that can act as sort of fertilizer for the brain, uh, if you will. Mm-hmm. And help to really re-pattern some of these ways of thinking that we might've gotten stuck in. Is that accurate?
And what do you see with that as far as length of time integration process? Yeah, so we just, uh, we had this beautiful neuroscientist come and speak at a group retreat that, um, I helped co-facilitate with my mentor and 'cause like there's a decent, solid study research, um, information pulled that we can see with like the psilocybin mushroom that there is, uh, up to a two week window of neuroplasticity and that it's a pretty extensive window and we're pretty solid.
There's some solid foundation for that. MDMA, you know, there's, there's, I don't wanna say there's, the jury's still out, but it, it, while we see that it can create some neuroplasticity, it's probably a shorter timeframe, which is why the combination of the two is so important. Mm-hmm. Um, in my opinion and my mentor's opinion and the, and the, like, the theory of the research and the understanding, even just speaking with this neuroscientist is like adding even just a smaller dose of psilocybin to the mix when this is all, um, present when you're in the midst of your journey or your experience adding psilocybin, um.
Is the thing to really sort of solidify that you are extending the neuroplastic window. Mm-hmm. And for everyone who's listening, the neuroplastic window is this priming of your brain, of an opportunity to say, okay, I can fire in a different way. I can connect the dots differently, and I can really, um, yeah.
Learn new things, create new habits. That it's like always like. The first and you, I was on your case for the two weeks after. Yeah. It's like what are the, what are the ways that we can change habits and tomorrow you're not gonna get up and smoke a pack of cigs and sleep till noon. Like you're gonna, you know, you're not gonna go through the same process.
Yes. Any patterns and any, um, adherence, like protocol adherence that you wanna weave into your life, it's like you start right away. Yeah. 'cause this is a time that your brain has capacity to be able to stretch and shift because it's as plastic, as malleable, as it as it can be, um, post experience. And so you can really anchor and root things.
And that anchoring process begins actually during the session. Right. You remember when, in some cases when it's like, I, I would see a physical somatic response in you, and I would say, Hey, I want you to take a breath into that. Mm. Mm-hmm. And I want you to just like anchor this feeling right now. What happens if you could have this feeling in your body Yes.
All the time. Yes, exactly. And so this is the importance of like prompting and understanding neuroplasticity. Both as a facilitator, but also like the person you're working with needs to give you that gift and remind you in the integration process that there's those couple of weeks that you really get a chance to like wire and fire together things differently than you have before.
Oh, totally. I couldn't agree more. And for anyone that does have some of those concerns that I heard from many other people of like, oh, you're gonna feel horrible after and all these callouts, I just, this isn't anecdotal, my experience, I felt none of that and actually felt. So freed up because I had, and my experience was dropped so much that was in sort of my psyche that I was holding onto and ruminating over and what have you.
And so really felt great thereafter and you helped have me be set up powerfully with these different supplement stacks thereafter to add some prep things beforehand around stimulants and this, that, and the other. And this is all circadian aligned. Mm-hmm. There's no late nights and none of this. And of course bringing in all the things that we talk, you know, on this podcast all the time about around sunlight and grounding and consistent sleep, wake, timing and all those things were all maintained.
And I think it's possible that for some of the people that have experienced really a whole swing on subsequent days or not, maybe experiencing some of that prep and thoughtfulness potentially, and certainly just the psychological aspect that goes in alignment with this versus, as opposed to just a party night out on the town.
Yeah. Having intention and like setting yourself up for, I sent you, I sent my clients eight, five to eight intention setting questions. Yeah. Look, some people love a journal, some people don't. I don't care if they like type it up or they show up with one sentence. It's like, as long as it's been really thoughtful mm-hmm.
And they're like, I, this is the one thing I wanna show up with, this is my deepest intention ever, then we can work with that. You know, and, and of course I'm gonna do their intake in whatever way I need, but it's. It's important to come with some intentionality in a very different way than any kind of recreational experience.
And I think it's important for people to kind of have it land that this from like a, at the level of your tissues and your cells and the way that you feel and experience things. I can speak from my personal experience, you just spoke from yours, like I, the shift in reduction in my anxiousness, my experiencing anxiety over various different topics in my life.
The shift in depression. Mm-hmm. The ability to get outta bed in the morning, which by the way, completely affects how, and I said to you even today, like I'm still having days here and there that I'm like, God, today was a day I couldn't get out. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Right. And I couldn't get outta bed in the same way, with the same level of ease and like, so we're, we're, it's never gonna be a perfect clean slate for everything.
Mm-hmm. Because life is gonna keep lifeing. Mm-hmm. And also. The minute I woke up the next day, I knew things were different. Mm-hmm. The minute my tissues felt different, the minute I was like, I can actually survive. I don't have any suicidal ideation. I don't have like anxiety to the level with which I had it.
Mm-hmm. And I knew that there was work to be done. Mm-hmm. Right. Getting back into the gym, finding all the other things that I already knew as a nervous system coach, we're gonna boost my mood and help me feel better. And then I actually had the handle, like the remote control to instill those things back in my life because anyone who's listening, who's navigated high levels of anxiety, anxiousness, depression, suicidal ideation, any of that knows is you know what to do.
But it's real hard to take the first step to do it. And so. Instantaneously. The next day I, I journaled for like 45 minutes to an hour. I napped. I woke up, I journaled again. I like went to bed. And my recommendation is for anyone who's listening, who's considering this is exactly what you did, and we created, which was like, let's not start at 7:00 PM Yeah, exactly.
Let's do this in the daytime. Let's do this. My journey started at seven 30 in the morning. Yeah. Which was a bit early, but fine. You know, it's like, let's find a time that it's gonna work for the people who are wanting to do this work. And just disclaimer, disclosure is important to know that, that we do see sometimes that first night after a medicine journey experiencing, depending on how much you unpack, you can have a little bit more like interrupted or a little poorer sleep.
Mm-hmm. But that the. Boomerang effect after that mm-hmm. Is like quite well worth, uh, the juices worth the squeeze. Yeah. We had a nervous system expert who had come on the podcast a while back and he was speaking to some trauma that he had gone through, so he'd done, again, anecdotal story, but many people are often curious about impacts on HRV around plant medicine, and he had shared how this was his journey with MDMA was the only thing that he has found to make.
A sustained and lasting difference with his HRV after some really traumatic events had happened meant to be able to sort through with that assistance made all the difference. So just, it's really understanding just how much this trauma can show up in the body and how we're breathing and our nervous system.
And then of course with our sleep. So this is such a big topic. I know. And I know we've only scratched the surface. This happens. We have every time we have these conversations. But before we get into hearing how you're now navigating your sleep, is there any bow that we wanna put on this huge topic? I think that we want to, I feel really good.
Like we, I love to talk to people about how to find a good practitioner. Yes. I love to find, talk to people about like putting down the sword, which is like, these are just drugs. I think it's really beautiful. Again, I wanna like honor the experience that we had together. Yeah. And also when you know someone as a friend and then you get to.
See all the spice of their life. Yes. And start to put two and two together, especially given my, like the certifications and the knowledge that I have now. Yeah. It's like this beautiful aha moment to understand like, you gave me this beautiful gift of understanding humans. Mm. Just humans better. Because the more that I work with people that I know on a deep level, the more I'm like, yes.
Oh, I see this human and how this nervous system, if I look at you as a nervous system in space, how this nervous system made this whole beautiful like safety net for you that also sometimes isn't serving you. Right. A hundred percent. Or, or any human. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I think the important, I wanna cover just a couple quick things mm-hmm.
Please, um, that are all coming out of like nature medicine. Mm-hmm. Some of the research. It's important I think for people to hear some of these top line. And again, I'll send Molly all the links to these if you wanna be a nerd and read the research. But, um, we talked about downshifting hypervigilance, of course.
We talked about improving subjective sleep quality with people using the PSQI. But there are other, many, many other studies that talk about boosting your felt sense of safety versus oxytocin and pro-social effects. So increasing social connectedness, the ability to do so, um, and uh, is like queuing the ventral vagal system is a key for drifting into deeper sleep at night.
So there's like a big discussion paper within nature medicine, um, on that integrating the pro protective parts that trigger insomnia behaviors. So your protectors are all the parts of you that are again, like on alert to be like, I'm not gonna let you go there because I'm, you know, I'm gonna be a little hypo hypo arousal, I'm gonna be in catastrophe mode.
So that you just are all protected from the things that are like external things that might hurt you. And one of those things is like, you know, it's a sleepless sleeplessness sentinel that like guard at the gate that's like, you know, you're not gonna get any good sleep tonight. You know, it's not gonna be hard, you know, that your husband just rolled over and elbowed you again.
You know, that like, and all of that, reducing that cognitive emotional attachment to it. Can like defragment your sleep, right? So you get a longer sleep experience and um, just even latency, like your latency period Yeah. Of the worry that comes beforehand. Um, yeah, like MDMA specifically is a lot of studies around reducing comorbid anxiety and depression.
We've talked about that. If you don't feel so anxious, if you don't feel so sad at night, and that's a heightened emotional state in your nervous system and you're trying to do the thing that Molly tells you to do, which is like set up your pres sleep routine. What did you call it earlier? Oh, the wind down piece?
Yeah. Oh, the anchor habit. The anchor anchor habits. How can you form an anchor habit and have all this wind down and the most beautiful way to sort of Pavlov mm-hmm. Your sleep system every night. You know that your body gets really used to that and patterns in that way because if you're in a heightened state, you can't do that.
Um, and again, like any kind of trauma reduction, and again, we're not trying to get rid of our traumas and we all have them note to news to everyone who's listening. Even when I went to go do like EMDR therapy and I made a list of traumas, the most important question my therapist asked me was, do you think you have trauma?
And I was like, well, I don't. I I, no one held me down when I was a newborn and like burned me with lots of cigarettes. I think I probably, I guess I don't know if I have that much trauma. And the reality is my body took in trauma, all of our body's trauma. It can be in a very heightened space. It can be in a, in, in a space of like, maybe it's the, the red shovel in the, in the playground.
It can sound dramatic, it can sound anticlimactic. We all carry trauma and, and the more we break, you know, avoiding it or we like integrate it into our lives, the more that we can, like we just have better sleep queuing. And so there's lots of like M-D-M-A-I-F-S, um, cues that can repair that. And also research that's showing that around darkness and people who are scared to sleep in the dark and then staying awake longer.
And um, and then the biggest thing is research showing it like it really. Subjectively, of course, but still build self-efficacy, self-compassion, self-agency. Mm. And understanding the capacity that you came into this world with and, and empathy around all the parts so that you can have them at the table and you'll understand this reference.
It's like that you, the present version of you or your future self, which is the moment to moment growth of you in this moment and the next and the next. They're driving the bus. Mm. Not all of these parts of you, not all of the hold backs, not all of the, you know, and the less you sleep, the, the, the worse you're gonna feel, right?
Mm-hmm. Yes. We, we know that for sure. Yeah. So I just think it's, it's important to feel into that. I think it's also, um, I'm not here to tell anyone to go off their medication, but so many people taking so many sleep meds mm-hmm. That then have other wild effects on circadian health. I think there's a capacity for people to be able to like either wean off of those with their medical supervision or, um, go off that medication so that they can get a much more like naturalized approach to sleep.
Yes. Which, and many of them aren't even approved for long-term use. Yeah. Many of them are only supposed to be for short-term use, and yet we see people on them for months and years and decades, unfortunately. Yeah. So I think it is powerful. Some of the research that you're pointing to that in such a relatively short period of time can yield.
Such great results commonly in certain areas that could be complimentary to sleep. And we're not saying, you know, this is the new sleeping pill or something. The intention is to be really responsible that this is from an educational perspective, but just also being aware of the tools that are available.
So, and the gift that can be available when we are struggling with their sleep. Because for me, I thought that my, my learnings in a large way had been done a decade ago. Mm-hmm. And yet I think it was just. The final reminder, just a little, a little knock that, oh, there's still more to learn as it relates to sleep and sleep, as I've been saying for so many years, and this was just the element and opportunity for me to see this for myself yet again, was that sleep continues to be a barometer of the workability of your life.
And if your life is not fully working in the ways that you would like or that the body would like, then it's gonna tell you. And that's kind of what happened for me too, was, and it was a beautiful opportunity to make so many changes. I mean, living in this house is part of that because really realizing that certain directions that I was starting to take in my life and overworking and traveling so much and all the things really needed to be pulled back a bit.
And so that was one of the many, many gifts. And additionally, with all these tools that got discovered MDMA as something for what felt like for me, a full body reset button, um, of the nervous system was just. Such a gift to know about, and I absolutely want for other people to have this knowledge and to then get curious and then to continue to seek, you know, guidance from people like yourself and others and resources and read the books that you mentioned and all the things Yeah.
To know that you don't have to just be stuck with the sleeping pillar bust or what have you. So thank you for saying those things. And then did we miss any other research or anything that we wanna point to or do we feel like we've No, I think we can link all these landmark studies and whatnot. I think it's great.
Um, perfect. And, and yeah. And there, there's so much on it, and I think at the end of the day, it's like, what would it feel like for you if you're listening right now to do a lot less holding and constriction mm-hmm. And really have a lot more ease in your life. And how would it feel if you laid down. In bed at night at the right time with your blue blockers on.
Yes. And like a little, you know, nature sounds in the background or what have you, wherever you live. How would it feel to like, lay down in bed and feel ease before you went to sleep? Right? Mm-hmm. And I think many people struggling with sleep challenges are not feeling that sense of ease. Mm-hmm. And it's a, it's a deep nervous system.
Response in many ways. You know, so it's, it's just, I think it's the opportunity for people to look at it with fresh eyes and like you said, get, get curious. Yes. Yes. Okay. I love that. And on the note of curiosity, I'm excited to hear how with all the tools that you've discovered over the last, you know, year and a half and change or what have you, how you now are managing your own sleep.
And the first question is, what does your nightly sleep routine look like right now? My nightly sleep routine. Anyone who's like following me on social, like Kristen Wezel official will know. Like I have, I have a really good lockdown on my night routine because I like Nice. Really went to town with like, making my home into like a beautiful nighttime temple with all the, I have like red lights that, all the things I use in ceremony now.
Yes, I have like special red lights and I have like a fuzzy, like things like tactile, fuzzy, sheepskin, rug on the couch. Like just all these things. Yeah. And I put, I really am religious about turning the lights out after sunset and the blue blockers and all those things a little bit harder when I travel.
Um, and I do like always a nighttime hot cup. I know you do it too, but for me it's always kind of a different one. Or I toggle between four or five different ones. Yep. Um, I always have a hot cup that settles me in and I, you know, there's a whole process in my, a whole process in my too many Canadians around process.
Um, in my bed. I have a soul tech and I like turn on that, which is like working with my brainwave state and I have a, a thing that cools my, my sheets, my bed, my mattress. And so there's all of those things that are just, again, I know that they work because I see my data. Yes. And also I don't wanna be without them because it's part of the actual routine, right?
Yes. So it's like filling the water and clicking the thing on, and it's all part of the, like what's charged and what's on me. And Yes. You know, that that's, uh. That's been really successful. I think it's, I call, I call you and I'm like, I need to do better in the morning. The mornings are harder for me still, but I, some days I'm doing it.
It's great. Yay. The nighttime is, um, the nighttime is more, it's like on lockdown than the daytime, but yeah. Totally. Well, that's a perfect segue to what, what we see currently in your morning sleep routine with the idea that how we start our day can impact our sleep. Um, what do I, what do I see or what do I know I can improve?
Uh, maybe about, maybe about, well I think that the, the, the jam is I have a balcony, which is great, and I get myself into that morning 'cause it's facing east. So it's like I get this morning sunlight. I would like to get it a little earlier. I cheat the system a lot and use a red light panel. Even my handheld one in bed when I'm like, oh, seven 30, I'm just gonna put my red light on my eyes and then maybe even nap again.
Yes. And just, it's all fine in some ways, but it's definitely like, that's a big p part of my work is getting more outdoor, outdoor, outdoor time. Mm-hmm. 'cause as you know, I moved into a high-rise building, which I love. Yes. 'cause it has a sauna and cold lunch and all the thing and height and light and rooftop.
Yes. And barbecues and people. And it's amazing here in Austin. And um, also it's 36 floors off the ground. Yeah. Yeah. And so I'm missing the grounding, I'm missing some of the, the light on my skin more than like the mm-hmm. 10 minutes or so. Yes. I just like sometimes leap right into work or our train. We, I run off to train with you or?
Yes. Yeah. The gals. Um, and then, but the beautiful thing is one of my, uh, old clients who's become a good friend, just moved in and she has a dog and she walks every morning. So I just said to her today, can I just come on your dog walks when you're, you know, when you're open to it to get more time to do that.
Yay. She, she does good like three miles every morning. So, ugh. The dog walking is such a good circadian hack and the consistency of that. And friends, I feel like accountability helps. Yeah. Uh, totally. A hundred percent. So that's my ownership of what I'm working on, um, for the rest of the year to try to have a better, not try, but to get a better Yes.
Sleep response at night. I love that. Okay, great. Um, and then the next question would be, and you already kind of touched on some of this, but what might we see on your nightstand or in your environment? I told you I was gonna say all these things. Yeah, that's perfect. Well, still tech, which I love, like I really love.
And in the beginning, I mean you both, we both have interviewed, um, that doctor, the founder. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Um, and I really like it and I really see change of deeper sleep. Um. Then, yeah, I have my, the cooling system on my nightstand. However, I have an Apollo, which I still wear. It's like version one, but it's like, it's all yes, my nighttime routine.
Everybody is all vibration all the time. I cool everything down. I put on my Apollo, it's vibrate vibrating on my ankle or I use my harmonizer, which I love that pill. I like put it on my spine or my hip. Um, I, uh, I, yeah, vibrators, I'm in my bedside table for other uses, which are really, you know, there's research on like helping you sleep.
Fantastic. Wind down. Yes, sleep to sleep better, whether it's like a red light, inter vaginal device, which I had to like tell my mom about before I posted on social or I still need to do more content on this. Yeah, exactly. Or just, yeah. Um, you know, vibrational sexual toys. Thank you Susan Bratton. Um, those things are really nice, um, to be able to like unwind into the evening.
That's all that's on my, oh, and I have a book, like a tactile book, right? Yes. And I got one of those little amber reading lights to clip on my bed so that it's not, if I'm gonna read at night, I'm not reading with white light or anything and can have my, my glasses and um, and read a book. Yeah. Fantastic. I love that.
And the fourth question would be so far to date, what would you say has made the biggest change to your sleep? Or said another way? Biggest aha moment in managing your sleep. I mean, the breath worker in me wants to talk about it's, you can take five minutes and do a little breath work, even as simple as two x breathing, which is like inhale for three.
Exhale for six. If you really wanna get inhale for four, exhale for eight. Like long, slow, and easy. It's just like re I'm, I'm hard pressed to do three to five minutes of downregulation style breath work and not fall asleep. But I will say that the biggest aha in the last seven years is really seeing the data when I do like a sunset ice bath.
Cook a beautiful dinner and then I sleep so damn well. Mm mm-hmm. Yeah. 'cause I'm like really aligning myself with like the way the body is, like cooling warming. Then I'm putting some food in. Sometimes the sun is set before I finish my meal. Don't tell Molly Eastman. But, and then I'm going to sleep because it's that two or three hours before bed.
Because you have a parasympathetic rebound. Mm-hmm. After the cold. Mm-hmm. Which, which gives you a little bit of a hunger and gives you a little bit of like a, oh, I'm re-patterning into my evening. I'm shifting into my evening. It's calming the whole nervous system. And then you can just kind of ride that, like, ride that sweet wave right into the, you know, into your pillows.
Yes. I love that. Your pillows, that's. So good. Okay. And so for anyone that is listening and they want to learn more, they want to work with you, they want to follow you, what are all the ways that they can do that? Yeah, I'm happy to share so much education, information, insight. If someone wants to book a call with me, I'm very open to having discovery conversations about the work that I'm doing across the board.
Breath, cold, heat. But specifically, um, you know, when you're wanting to work and bring MDMA psilocybin into your life, that's a choice that you have to make. And, um, there isn't really an easy way outside of Instagram, Kristen Wezel official to find anything. Um, there's plenty of research. My, our friend Sean Wells has written a really great article that is in, uh, in the footnotes of my, one of my webpage.
And the super secret webpage that I have yes, is, um, the Inner Quest. If you wanna get a better understanding of sort of these kinds of tools and how I work as a facilitator in this space. It's the T-H-E-I-N-N-E-R, quest, Q-U-E-S-T. And it's really about. Yeah. Reshaping you from the inside out, making the version of yourself that you were rediscovering, that you were always meant to be.
Oh, I love that. And that was certainly my experience, so huge. Thank you for the work that you do, and also just, I think it's such a great acknowledgement of sometimes we find these paths and through our own journeys and our own self-discovery, and certainly I'm not wanting you to have gone through that stressful period of time, but I'm so grateful that part of your discovery helped.
Heal other people, including myself. So really, really grateful. Can't wait to continue to see how all of this continues to flourish. And I'm hopeful for continued research and support and shining a light on how these modalities could, for the right person, be really, really helpful. Not just in sleep potentially, but also for other aspects of their health and wellbeing.
So yeah, really grateful. Thanks for having me. Thank you.
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