088 | How Underground Psychedelic Guides Develop Their Skills, Wisdom & Training (w/ Rachel Harris)
“These women elders have experienced all the medicines in all levels of dosages. That’s a lot of traveling in these other realms.
They actually know the territory and can intuit where the person is, because they’ve been there. They did their own healing using these medicines.”
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The women of the psychedelic underground stand in stark contrast to psychedelic therapists, clinicians and researchers. In some ways, they hold much more wisdom and knowledge about working with these medicines. It’s an honor to have Dr. Rachel Harris back on the podcast to discuss this. Since we last spoke, she has released a new book called Swimming in the Sacred: Lessons from the Psychedelic Underground.
This is one of the most important books written about psychedelics, as it shines a light on the wisdom and work done by elder women psychedelic guides. Dr. Rachel Harris has been in private practice for 40 years as a psychologist. Later in her career, she began exploring psychedelics for healing and transformation. In this conversation, we dissect what exactly transformation is, and the qualities that these underground elder guides have, making them so effective at facilitating transformation (which is very different from healing).
Listen in for a chance to win a copy of Swimming in the Sacred!
Topics Covered:
The difference between a transformation and the therapeutic process
Signs of transformation that psychedelic guides look for
How underground guides transition from their healing journey to guiding
Differences between underground guides and psychedelic therapists
How underground guides view integration
Psychedelics and plant medicine as a way of life
Navigating the “subtle realms” and expanded states of consciousness
The quality of fearlessness in psychedelics guides
Being aware of ego inflation as a psychedelic guide
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Things Mentioned in This Episode
Where to find Dr. Rachel Harris:
About Dr. Rachel Harris:
Rachel Harris, PhD, is the author of Swimming in the Sacred: Wisdom from the Psychedelic Underground and Listening to Ayahuasca. A psychologist who has been in private practice for 40 years, she spent 10 years in an academic research department where she published more than 40 scientific studies in peer-reviewed journals and received a National Institutes of Health New Investigator’s Award. Rachel splits her time between an island in Maine and the San Francisco Bay Area.
Looking for a professional coach to support you on your psychedelic path?
Look no further! Along with being the host of the Modern Psychedelics Podcast, Lana is a 3x certified professional coach who works with people on the psychedelic path.
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Lana Pribic: [00:00:00] Hello everyone. I am so excited to welcome back Dr. Rachel Harris to the podcast. She was a guest on season one, I believe it was in. April 2022. So it's been almost two years since we've touched base. And since then you have actually written a new book called swimming in the sacred wisdom from the psychedelic underground. Welcome back to the show.
Rachel Harris: Thank you. Thank you so much, Lana.
Lana Pribic: Yeah, it's so nice to have you and yeah, just like your sweet, gentle spirit with us today.
So I really want to get started by just diving into your fantastic book, which I loved reading and I encourage listeners to pick up a copy. One of the first things that stood out to me in your book was you were at a friend's house and. You thought she yelled something at you, but she didn't yell it at you, and she was a healer, right?
What's the correct word for her? She's a shaman and
Rachel Harris: Connie grout. She's not [00:01:00] underground. So I can say her name and she's got a bunch of books out. You can find her on Amazon. G. R. A. U. D. and she calls herself a Shamana.
Lana Pribic: a Shimana.
Rachel Harris: chooses the feminine.
Lana Pribic: And what was the thing that she said to you that you were certain that she yelled, but she did not? Yeah.
Rachel Harris: So it was three women. And we're spending all day together and we're talking. And I'm a lifelong therapist. I had 40 years as a therapist. So I'm asking the usual therapy questions and asking about ayahuasca ceremonies and therapy and childhood history and, these kinds of standard, the context of therapy kinds of questions. And she, my experience was she got right up in my face and yelled loud and she's a strong personality and yet and basically said something like, it's not about therapy. It's about transformation.[00:02:00] I backed off and kept quiet and didn't ask any more therapy questions. I was really silenced. And, at the end of the afternoon, after spending the day together, Connie left and I was there with my old friend, whose kitchen we were in, and I said to her, did Connie yell at me? And she said, no, she never yelled at you. I had an experience of being yelled at, but the reality check was, she did not yell at me. The way I understood this Was she used her energy to shift me and it and she did shift me out of the therapy questions And this is when I really got that the underground women are not Therapists because I had made that assumption These are therapeutic journeys and it was not at all true and they are really more like priestesses guiding a journey and that interaction really shifted me [00:03:00] and permanently, I would say it had a huge impact so that I really understood the importance of the difference between a transformational experience. With these medicines, or even a spontaneous one, and the process of therapy, that these are two different animals, basically. And therapists, I'll speak as a therapist, would do well to recognize the difference. And so it took this energetic intervention to move me. So that's really what I'm calling out.
We don't care. We
Lana Pribic: And what was the other thing that she said around the family history? We don't even want to know about it. We don't even care.
Rachel Harris: care. And you know what, somebody said to me, they were in Peru working with a shaman and talking about their family of origin, the usual stuff that I'm always fascinated by. The shaman fell asleep.
It's always a bad sign if a therapist falls asleep.[00:04:00]
But that's a good indicator they're not using family history or history of trauma as diagnostic tools. They're using what they see energetically.
Lana Pribic: Yes. Yes.
Rachel Harris: different process,
Lana Pribic: So amazing. Yeah. I love that. And I want to really want to start our conversation off here because there's this difference between the healing journey and the transformation journey. And yeah, I have my own understanding of what I think that is, but I want to hear from you. What is the difference between healing and transformation or the healing journey and the transformation journey?
Rachel Harris: I can actually tell you an example from an email. I got a week ago and this is an old client of mine. Who's done a lot of breath work and all kinds of consciousness work. And she was a client of mine for a number of years that's the past tense. Her sister was a huge problem in her life. And she had all kinds [00:05:00] of psychiatric and medical issues. And so it was always an ongoing crisis of one sort or another. And she'd been in a nursing home really. And it was just this sort of tragic, bad story that went from one crisis to another. And so I worked with my client on this. The traditional therapeutic stuff, she's a survivor in the family, the other sister isn't obviously, she's had a life of illnesses, and so with any survivor guilt with a sense of over responsibility just the burden of having a sister that required constant care and the guilt. The guilt that goes along with survivor she was the sister member of the family who survived and thrived and the sister didn't. So that's all this complex, mucky family of origin stuff. And we did a good job of it. So she could take, help to take care of her sister and keep all the mixed [00:06:00] emotions and feelings out of it and set healthy boundaries for herself. And functioned well, given this tragedy of a very sick sister. That was a good therapeutic outcome. Then she went and had a psilocybin journey. After that experience, she could say, My sister was a blessing, not a burden. I could not help her get there in a therapy session. We did everything else. We did all the work around it. Maybe all that therapy work helped her reach that breakthrough. In the mushroom journey, maybe she would have gotten there anyway, we don't know, but that's the difference to be able to say, my sister is a blessing, not a burden. That's an incredible leap. And, when I work with therapists or talk to therapists, I want to be very clear with them that they recognize that difference. So they don't [00:07:00] try and therapize a transformation experience. So when this is just in an email, my response is not but does that mean you don't feel guilty anymore? No, I don't go there. I go to, oh, wow, that's wonderful. I'm so happy for you. And it happened, that transformation happened just serendipitously, that mushroom ceremony happened just a few weeks before the sister died. So she was able to get to that place just before her sister transitioning.
Lana Pribic: Yeah. Yeah, that's an amazing example. And in your book, you talk about this idea that, yeah, transformation is getting to a place where, yeah, you can be, yeah, grateful for all the things that happen in life. And one of the quotes I highlighted was one of your underground Guides that you interviewed said to say, thank you for everything is a [00:08:00] hard place to get to.
I love that. It's so beautiful. Yeah.
Rachel Harris: And that's, the research studies are looking at people with certain diagnoses and the. The desired outcome is to reduce the symptoms so that the person no longer qualifies for that diagnosis. So in maps, many of the people no longer qualify for PTSD diagnosis, which is amazing because these are treatment resistant subjects. That's not what these underground women are looking for. And I just want to say, I had a criteria of 20 years experience for the underground women, but in fact, I found women who have 30, 40 years experience. So they're very experienced and they look for the signs of transformation. So how it's how you live your life, how you, so that's one of the quotes I always use, but here's [00:09:00] another one I watch for shift. And how the person embraces being alive. That's very different from looking at a symptomatology list from the DSM 5.
Lana Pribic: And when I think about my experiences with psychedelics, that's exactly what happened. I have embraced life in a completely different way. Thanks to my journeys. Like I, I feel like that is completely accurate and
Rachel Harris: That's a
Lana Pribic: a sign of transformation. Yeah.
Rachel Harris: and then, but the thing to watch for is if you don't have enough kind of feedback in your life and reality check, some people can feel I'm transformed. I'm going to save the world. And you, they can get into an inflated state. Even though I don't want therapists mucking around, asking therapy questions about a transformation. I also want people to have some reality check that they're they're contributing, they're bringing back from this [00:10:00] experience and contributing to their community or doing what I call their spiritual job, whatever that is, but not an inflated, I'm going to save the world what I do is going to make such a difference.
Or now I'm ready to lead ceremonies.
That's a common one.
Lana Pribic: Absolutely. And a lot of the women that you interviewed, I'm willing to bet really embodied that yeah, that reality check. What do you think?
Rachel Harris: Yes and, there's a whole new generation of people who call themselves underground guides. And they're, they've just appointed themselves. They've just decided, that's not how these women arrived at this work. And it's not how they function, so they might look like they're working underground alone, but in fact, they are not. They have doctors and pharmacologists. They consult with, they do extensive medical screenings and then they talk to doctors about it. [00:11:00] They have. Peers that they can talk to for what therapists call, peer consultation, peer supervision they talk to each other about, you need to take a break and rest.
You're becoming depleted and that's not healthy for
you So they look like they're functioning alone. But really they have a lot of collegial support. And when I, when I was at MAPS in June, I, some young people would come up to me and say, I'm an underground guide. And I would ask do you do medical screening? This one woman said, what's that? She had no clue. So there's comprehensive medical screening, and then there's having professionals that you can consult with, licensed professionals, medical doctors and pharmacists.
Lana Pribic: Yeah, it's definitely something that people want to look out for when working with underground guys or even above ground guides is a thorough
Rachel Harris: there a complete medical.
screening?
It's one of these concrete things. If there isn't, don't go. [00:12:00] 30,
Lana Pribic: Yeah. And on the topic of people rushing into guiding ceremonies, leading ceremonies, that sort of thing. Many of the guides that you interviewed had over two decades of experience, right?
Rachel Harris: 40 years.
These are the real, these,
Lana Pribic: Yeah, that's why they have so many gems to share with us. So yeah, you talked in the book about, yeah, the importance of, heal thyself first, doing your own work first and how most of these women leading and guiding ceremonies was a natural progression of their own healing journey.
Can you talk to us a little bit about that? Was there a moment when they knew that they wanted to take on the role of guiding or was it a natural progression? What did they have to say about that
Rachel Harris: well, each of them is different because they trained in very different ways. But there's one who was a [00:13:00] traditionally trained Shapipo shaman. So an American, but
had
Lana Pribic: pretty rare.
Rachel Harris: trained it takes six, seven years to begin.
And The shaman said to her after six years, you're ready to sing in ceremony. And she said, no, I'm not. And so she, she just recently described this to me, how the different apprentices, as they came of age as they got to that six or seven years. Each apprentice would sit right next to the shaman and sing just a nanosecond behind the shaman. So they're almost singing together and then they could whisper and talk about what are they seeing in the patient?
What are they seeing energetically? And so when she moved up in the apprentice list and sat for a whole other year until she was ready to sing in ceremony. So that's a, and I understand that we don't. We don't have that [00:14:00] luxury or that discipline or dedication now, people are not going to spend, not many people are going to spend six or seven years and, the therapists have are licensed, they've done graduate work and they've, they feel they have a right to go to an online training or a week or two of ketamine training and say, I'm a psychedelic therapist. But there's no comparison between their knowledge and what grows out of years and years of experience and training. And these women elders have experienced all the medicines in all levels of dosages. That's a lot of traveling in these other realms. So they know the territory, not they actually know the territory and can intuit, where the person is, they've been there.
That's very Different from maybe having a couple of MDMA sessions or a few ketamine sessions [00:15:00] or maybe even one mushroom session. They did their own healing using these medicines.
Lana Pribic: What would you say if someone is looking to have a psychedelic experience and they are. Considering going down the route of working with something like an underground guide or someone who has been and apprenticed under an elder, and then they're also maybe considering going through the, psychedelic therapy route, like maybe a ketamine clinic or something.
What would you say is the differences in approach and outcomes that one can expect from each of those?
Rachel Harris: We don't have any data really showing what the differences are. But but see what I'm trying not to say. Is the women have done everything at all different dosages, and that's really the way to know and learn the terror. That's how to be a student of these medicines and develop a relationship with a different plant [00:16:00] medicines, especially, and that takes years, but that's not the framework for therapists necessarily. And it's a very different orientation and, and we've conflated the roles, so the psychedelic therapists in the research studies, for instance, they do prep, they do the journey, and they do the so called integration sessions, which are just debriefing sessions mostly. Now you're conflating a guide who sits and a therapist, and the women I interviewed are guides. They're sitting there, the priestesses who are with you and traveling with you. That's a different role than a therapist. And for some reason, we've jumped right into this and not really been clear about that distinction. These are really 2 different sets of skills, experiences and trainings, and we've conflated them. And I, there's someone [00:17:00] I know who qualified for Hopkins study, I think with I I forget what the diagnosis was, but it was it was a, like a long term COVID kind of diagnosis. So it wasn't a psychiatric one. And so she did the study protocol and then I spoke to her months later, had dinner.
So it's an informal setting, but intimate. And she had lots of questions about what does this mean? How, what impact? This is months after the so called integration sessions. And she talked about being very irritated that what they had her do was write out her experience, which she did. And then when she went in for an integration session, the therapist asked her to tell them her experience. And she said I've already written it out. Why do I have to tell you again? That's a waste of our time together. If someone said that to me in therapy, I would have to say you're absolutely right. But no, they are following a protocol, and they no, no, [00:18:00] please tell me. And so she was a little irritated with them. So they do a six month follow up. So after our dinner together, and we talked about some of these existential questions that she had. When she went back to Hopkins for the follow up, she gave the therapist my book. And it was totally different. So called follow up integration session. So I think we really have to say no matter what the background as therapists, we don't really know what the hell we're talking about when we're talking about integration. It means so many different things. And the women, even though they're not doing therapy, They're looking at how people integrate their experience into their lives, so they're looking for how that transformation shows up in the life. And if what they begin to see is the person is only interested in another mystical experience, they don't work with them again. [00:19:00] That's not what they're interested in. So look at how they're managing the whole thing, even though they're not therapists, they're working at a different level. So there's just, there's a whole shift in the way they hold the medicines and hold the process for people.
Lana Pribic: Yeah. Yeah. These women elders in the underground, how do they tend to approach and view integration and going back to life after the experience?
Rachel Harris: They want to see behavioral changes and how the person embraces their life. And and whether the person has A job to do a mission, what are they changing in their life? What are they contributing? And how do you relate to things that are difficult? Here's a good quote that contrasts, the research infatuation with mystical experiences. you get a mystical experience. But so what you have to learn how to [00:20:00] work with energy. If you don't shift your awareness, you'll never know how energy works. That's a whole different way of looking at how integration unfolds and in the underground world, people use these entheogens in a very different way.
So people tend to maybe do a couple of sessions over a 6 month period, and then maybe once a year. Albert Hoffman the chemist who discovered LSD 25, evidently he did an LSD session once a year till he was like 97 years old and that was his last LSD
session. And then he died at 102. That's a whole different way of looking at these medicines than trying to reduce symptomatology. But I have to say as a researcher, we need that data. , they've chosen people with diagnoses who have suffered for decades. These are very simpatico people who are [00:21:00] facing terminal cancer diagnoses. We, we want the medicines to be able to help them. So these are also very important processes and two different ways of holding the medicines.
And as a culture, we're very young working with these medicines. I'm hoping we can develop an attitude of learning. I hope we have the humility to say we don't know what the hell we're doing, but we need to learn. And then there'll be a whole array of ways of working with the medicines and of holding them. The one of the underground women said, even if these medicines become legal, I would continue to work underground because that's where the sacred container is. So there are real differences.
Lana Pribic: Yeah. And that brings such a smile to my face because yeah, I'm such a believer in the underground and just in every way, not just with medicine. But yeah, the underground is where the magic happens. And also [00:22:00] where some of the most, unethical stuff happens. But I totally agree with that. That is where the sacredness
Rachel Harris: happens in
the research studies. Come on, we've all seen that horrible video.
Yeah, so there's no escaping
Rachel Harris: Inflation and abuse.
It's possible anywhere.
Lana Pribic: Absolutely. Yeah. One of the things I really related to in your book that the, a lot of the guides kept saying was that this is a path. This is a lifelong process. This is a journey. This is a way of life. This is the way that I live my life. Can you talk to us a little bit about that and how they see.
Yeah the plants, the medicines as a lifelong path and journey rather than, yeah, just this thing that you do to reduce symptoms and then you're done with it. Ayahuasquero.
Rachel Harris: Underground guides had more intimate relationships with the plant spirits and the book [00:23:00] I recommend, because this is a different way of holding the medicines and the therapeutic 1 is Jeremy Narby's plant teachers. And he talks about ayahuasca tobacco and something else, which I can't remember, but it's called plant teachers a small book.
It's really a valuable book. It's mostly a recorded conversation with, and I, what does he call me? Doesn't call him a shaman think
he calls him a.
But he really talks beautifully about the relationship with the plant spirits and. This is, if you've done one or two journeys and you're a therapist, you don't have a relationship.
It's not, it needs to build over many journeys and experiences and dietas and working with the plants. And so that's a different process in itself. It's really like a school that's learning, where the student is learning. And here's an example of what a life looks like for one of the guys. I spent [00:24:00] the afternoon with her, and then it began to move into sunset, and I was going to drive home. And she said, she pulls out a bucket and she says, I'm going to drink this, and it's a bucket of ayahuasca. This is a Western woman. And she's, she's not doing a ceremony with other people. And I'm like, why do you want to do that? I'm not, these are not easy journeys, at least not for me.
So I'm not, why are you, why? And she said, this is a new batch. tasted it before. I'm going to serve it tomorrow night in a ceremony. I have to know what I'm serving. Every batch is different. Every plant is different. I have to know what this particular mixture Is like, so this is how I'm going to spend my night and I'm like, bon voyage, I'm out of here. And so that's part of her life. That's part of [00:25:00] what people don't see if they go to a ceremony with her and she's traditionally trained. They don't know that this is her dedication in life. And this is what her life looks like. And it is really it's really years and years of working with the plants. So it's a whole different process.
Lana Pribic: Yeah, I imagine that their lives revolve around their work and that it takes a great deal of commitment, dedication, sacrifice. Yeah how. Yeah, so it is all encompassing, like it is a huge part of their life.
Rachel Harris: Yeah. It is all encompassing. So I, So I'm traveling. I happen to be in Santa Cruz right now. And a friend who was one of the women I interviewed, she'd been a long time friend anyway. And she's traditionally trained and she was guiding people on a dieta. And so she felt she should accompany them on the dieta.
So this [00:26:00] is a month long, very restricted diet. No salt, no sugar, no eating out, no eating food that you don't prepare yourself. It's like she says she's doing a modified version of this in the Western world, but she lived with me for three days. I know how strict it was. We couldn't go to a restaurant she ate very little and it's, it's just an extremely restricted diet. And this is how she was supporting her students , by joining them on this dieta. And if I saw her cut up another banana and put almond butter on it, I think I would shoot myself. That's all she ate some days almost. And and salads with no salad dressing and yeah very little.
There is absolutely real sacrifice and discipline involved.
Lana Pribic: Yeah. Yeah. And I would imagine with relationships as [00:27:00] well and just like free time and how they spend their lives. So yeah, that's a, that's an important note for people out there considering guiding.
Rachel Harris: They didn't, some had children, but many didn't, more than. Most, if you look at what percentage of women have children, this was an unusual number who did not have children. They really dedicated their lives to this process.
Lana Pribic: Beautiful. Beautiful. And you talk about the relationship that they have to the plants. You've mentioned it a few times and you talk about the subtle realms a lot in your book. Can you tell us a little bit about that? The subtle realms?
Rachel Harris: Here's the most interesting thing about these women is I think they're very flexible in their state of consciousness. So they move very easily across realms. And my hypothesis is that they were like this before they started with the medicines. They reported a number of very [00:28:00] unusual childhood spiritual experiences and unusual dreams. And so they already were shifting across expanded states of consciousness, even before they became adults. And found their way to the medicines and I think this is, this was, this was part of their, a preparation for something they didn't realize it was just happening in their lives.
And part of their calling is the best way I can put it. They had unusual dreams, unusual, spontaneous experiences. And then when they came upon the medicines, it was like, oh, yes, this is it.
So they have a fluidity across states. And in psychological terms, that's called the variable is called absorption.
It's an absorption factor and personality, and there's a paper and pencil scale that measures it and it determines how [00:29:00] easily you can be hypnotized. How easily you can shift. States of consciousness and one of the questions is, remember when we went to movie theaters years ago, if you forget, you're in a movie theater and you're in the movie, that's a shift.
Then you're in a trance and how easily that happens is is a function of absorption and, there's a range. Some people shift easily and some people don't and these women shifted very easily. So lots of times. Just in conversation, I could see them getting a little dreamy, and because I shift easily, I would get a little altered also. And there were times after a day spent with someone where, I realized , I was driving home and I should not be driving. And there was one where I stopped at a gas station to medicate with peanut M& M's. I needed something grounding. I needed sugar. It wasn't that I was hungry. I just needed to shift my [00:30:00] consciousness so I could drive the rest of the way home and sugar and the protein in the peanuts helped me.
But I didn't realize that I was in my car for a half a mile. I thought, Oh no, this is not okay.
I'm going to get on an expressway on a highway. No. There's this altered state.
There's another one where I spent 12 hours with two Native Americans and at the end of the day it's 9 o'clock at night and they just very sweetly say to me, do you want to use the bathroom before? Do you need to use the bathroom before you go? And I said, I don't know, I don't know if I need to pee or not.
No, that's a crazy statement. So they immediately knew. They had to do energetic work on me so I could safely drive home. And that's what they did.
Lana Pribic: Wow.
Rachel Harris: And what's so interesting about that is most of that 12 hour time. We had lunch and then we went out for dinner and, but most of that 12 hour time was spent around the dining room table talking and I'm [00:31:00] taking notes. And there was a door in the dining room off to the side that I didn't even notice. So once they diagnosed that I was in an altered state and they didn't want to let me get in my car, I came out of the bathroom. I did need to pee. I didn't even know it. Come out of the bathroom and they take me back into the dining room where I'd sat for all those hours. And through that door, I hadn't noticed. And it's their ceremonial room with all their sacred objects and feathers and rattles and shakers and all kinds of things. I would have had no clue about that if I hadn't shifted consciousness. I could have missed that completely in my interview process. This is really a lesson for interviewers. I don't know how we, maybe look around better than I did and say where does that door go? But that might not have gotten me into the ceremony room. I'm, it was that I could shift into an [00:32:00] expanded state that they took me in. And then they did energy work all around me with herbs and feathers and for quite a while. And then I drove an hour home.
Lana Pribic: What an experience to have spent time with these human beings and to be in their presence and to get to know them. Wow.
Rachel Harris: Yeah, I'm yeah, I'm very grateful for the impact that this experience had on me. And I have a running teasing with Joe to for, the fellowship of the river. Because he's he's the Shipibo trained shaman, so he's seeing things in energy fields, and he's working with spirits, and he's done dietas, and has plant allies, and he's really embedded in that whole world, and I'm a visitor, and he's always trying to nudge me. More into that world. [00:33:00] So he's watching my progress of leaving a more scientific Western cosmology and moving into really believing my own experience with plant spirit. Believing my, I have the experience, but really believing it.
Lana Pribic: I think you can really see that shift in you from your book listening to ayahuasca to this one that shift from the because that book was quite scientific and research based.
Rachel Harris: but I'm making progress.
Lana Pribic: You are. It's
Rachel Harris: And you know, There's There's a shift out of a linear time reality. So it was really interesting. I didn't ask to record these women because they are so secret. They've never talked to anybody. They're, I just didn't have the chutzpah, I don't know if you know that word, to ask them if I could record.
I just thought it was not respectful. So I took extensive notes. And, Sometimes they would jump around in their stories about [00:34:00] their lives. And I would get a little lost which happened, which, what happened when and where, and it's because they're not as tied to a linear sense of time as I am.
If you ask me about my life, I would give a chronological, summary. That's not how they did it. They went from experience to back again to I had a dream and then it came out in a vision quest. 30 years later, it was just, and it's because they are not tied to that linear time zone. And that's part of that shift. That's part of breaking out of our Western conditioning. And I grew up in a, not a religious family, and I would have thought, oh, I'm not conditioned in these Western ways. But yet, yes, I am. And so it's been a process of. Breaking out of that slowly.
Lana Pribic: I think your [00:35:00] past paradigm, right? If we want to call it that from the scientific therapeutic world gives your current body of work a lot more to stand on. And it almost makes you more creditable because you are making that shift and we're watching it and we're learning it along with you because you've been in both sides.
And I think that's what's so fascinating about you.
Rachel Harris: And I'm not losing one. I'm not, I'm not only living in the land of
spirits. I'm, I have not moved to the jungle. Far from it. It's my own flexibility moving between those
worlds that I think is being curated
by these experiences.
Lana Pribic: Yeah. And I forget. It might have been Ann Shulgin in your book that was quoted in saying that transformation is embracing all of it. The shadow and the light and all parts. And,
Rachel Harris: It's really focused on the shadow
Lana Pribic: Yeah. Yeah. She is. [00:36:00] Yeah. That's yeah. It really is just such a treasure that you had an opportunity in writing this book to sit with and learn from and yeah.
Go into the world of so many fascinating women doing such beautiful work in the world. What would you say that are, what would you say? How many
Rachel Harris: there were 15. where I did really in depth interviews where I went back to them in person again and again spent weekends with them. I'm still in made phone calls to ask questions. What did you mean by? So it was ongoing. It's qualitative research. . It's not statistical, but usually there's an interview schedule where you ask the same questions. I didn't do that. And I chose, I consciously chose not to do that, although that would have been the appropriate research thing to do. I wanted the women to go wherever they wanted to go. I wanted to follow them with whatever they wanted to talk about [00:37:00] what was important to them in their lives. And and I spent much more time with them. Research interviews might be an hour or two long. I spent days with many of these women. And so these were not therapy sessions, but they involve that kind of intimate sharing.
Lana Pribic: Yeah, it's amazing. So when you look at this group of 15 women or so that you spend time with, what would you say are some of the common traits that they all have or that most of them have that really do make them amazing guides? Wow. Oh,
Rachel Harris: of nothing. Yeah, they've traveled and been in all kinds of, entheogenic travel and all kinds of worlds, all kinds of situations. And yeah, they're afraid of nothing. And I can tell you, I'm pretty much afraid of everything. I'm not, I [00:38:00] share a lot in common with these women. I was in Cal living in California in the sixties.
I was around many of the same people who trained them. I did not go that way because I'm not of their ilk. They are spiritual warriors. I went to graduate school. You don't have to be a spiritual warrior to go to graduate school. As a matter of fact, you're better off if you're not. So these women from childhood, and I had I met a new person who was not part of this book and she wouldn't have qualified because she's only been working underground for, I think, four years or so, but she's done a lot of trainings.
And so she again, it was not an interview. We were just having coffee together, but she talked about her life and there were so many early experiences in her life that kind of braid into working with these medicines. Yeah. And my life did not look like that it's [00:39:00] I was writing papers for college. It just did not. She had these unusual experiences. I think it was 20 years ago. She did 1 of those dark meditation retreats and total darkness. This
is before, but he talked about them 20 years ago who was doing them. And it was, I think it was a week long one. It wasn't
a day or two. It was, it's like, how did you even know to do that? Why in the world did you? But that is part of what informs her work with the entheogens now. So this is a whole other life path. And this is not atypical of what these women are like that I interviewed.
She's just at the beginning. She was A decade or two younger, she doesn't have the 20 years that were my criteria. So she wouldn't have qualified, but the stories of her life were very much the same. And I'm like, where should I apply to college? It's just [00:40:00] completely
different.
Lana Pribic: Yeah. What? What about being afraid of nothing makes these women such great guides?
Rachel Harris: How do you do these medicines at all different dosages? I asked 1 of the women, because I have a special interest in in the way the European, psychiatric community has worked with these medicines and they've used them in a psycholytic way. Do you even know that term? You've heard that
Lana Pribic: Psycholytic, yes. It was the first kind of framework that they used when studying psychedelics.
Rachel Harris: It was low dose, not a micro dose of an experienced dose, but held within a therapeutic process. So someone might have a lightly dosed journey with the therapist. And then come to therapy twice a week for a month and then another, the second month, another lightly dosed journey. So the journeys are really an integral part of the therapeutic process. And I, as a [00:41:00] therapist, this appeals to me, it's a very different framework than the mystical, 1 or 2 higher doses and the mystical experience solves everything. That's a very crude approach so far. It's Johns Hopkins. And it's yielded great data, but it's still we're still learning. So I asked 1 of the women and of course, these women are now in their 70s, they've been working 30 or 40 years. They're older and she said yeah I tend to like lighter doses these days. And I'm feeling like, yeah, me too. And then she says, but sometimes I just like to fly. There's the difference.
Yeah. I don't like to fly. I don't like one of those big doses. No, thank you. And but she's still game for it. So
not all the
Lana Pribic: probably comfortable for
Rachel Harris: did when she was in her 20s and 30s.
Lana Pribic: Yeah,
Rachel Harris: That's a different attitude. That's a different capacity.
Lana Pribic: totally. Totally. And were most of these women working with, I would assume, mushrooms and ayahuasca? Or were [00:42:00] any working with iboga or 5 MeO DMT?
Rachel Harris: Everything.
covered the water. Everything..
This is not a how to book, I didn't ask about what dosages, how are you doing it,
or the most rude question, where do you get your medicines? I didn't go there. Um,
is not a how to book.
This is more of a philosophical book about what it takes in the person's being to have the presence to sit there and be with someone and intuit into their psychedelic experience as they're having it. It's a very esoteric skill. So I was not doing a how to book. There
are some of those out there.
Lana Pribic: No you certainly were not.
Rachel Harris: didn't ask, I didn't ask what medicines did you use, in
what order, in what way. I didn't ask any of that. I was not interested in that. I wanted to know, [00:43:00] how did they, in their own lives, develop the capacity to do this sacred work? Because I think they are our best, they are the most experienced in the Western world. At this point, and they model a way of holding these medicines in a sacred way, and we need to learn from them, and they're not standing up at conferences speaking, and the research teams have not contacted them, and they would be able to, but they have not chosen to do that.
These women don't have higher degrees, mostly
and that's a mistake that the research teams have made.
Lana Pribic: Yeah, absolutely. It's totally a different ball game, the research and the underground. And I think that your book is such an important piece of literature to bring. This information that [00:44:00] we really do need in the psychedelic space right now. It could not have come at a better time. What did you learn about this?
Yeah, being aware of, you mentioned the ego inflation that can happen often at the beginning of our interview. So what did you learn about how to, yeah, just be aware of that and be cautious of that.
Rachel Harris: That's part of doing your own work so that you don't fall into that counter transference and act out from inflation and abuse people, which is. It's already happening. But it was Laura Huxley and Ann Shulgin. The quotes came out. There was a theme of don't get in between the person and the medicine, keep your own stuff out of it. And in Stan Groff talks about this in a, in an analytical counter transference kind of way in his book, LSD psychotherapy. And and it's, it is the traditional. Have your own analysis before you become a psychoanalyst, basically, but he goes a step further and he says that [00:45:00] when someone is under the influence of an entheogen, they become almost psychic and being able to suss out the guides, unfinished business. So you can't hide anything. If you've got your own issues coming up, as you're guiding a session, your client is going to feel that. So that's even a further statement than just counter transference issues coming up. So it's and Anne is very clear about do your own shadow work, keep it out of the way. And that is not happening, Jenner. I mean, It doesn't, that's not part of the training. You can become a therapist without, a licensed therapist without ever having been in therapy. If someone's looking a therapist, you have a right to ask them, have you had your own therapy? And if they have not, don't go to them.
Lana Pribic: totally. How important do you think it is to take one's time and to not rush into it when it comes to, yeah, limiting the ego [00:46:00] inflation and the potential harms?
Rachel Harris: You did a wonderful interview with Jules Evans. I listened to it this morning before our time together.
Lana Pribic: Thank you.
Rachel Harris: He's brilliant talking about risks and and that the psychedelic community is not talking enough about risks, but among the elders in the community who I interviewed, not just the women, but lots of people, men and People who've been in this realm for 40, all their lives really, 40, 50 years, everyone knows someone who's permanently harmed. Never been the same. Yes, it's a very small percentage. For the most part, these medicines are very safe. And they're not totally safe. So there's always some risk. So you want to be in the safest situation possible. And I looked at one of your it's on your website and you list some retreat centers and you list the number of people in the ceremony, you don't list the number of helpers or the number of shamans, but [00:47:00] you have a right to ask. Those, how many people will be in the ceremony? How many helpers do you have? Is there one shaman or a few shamans? And in terms of going to some of the retreat centers in Peru or even Costa Rica, you want to know how that retreat center is treating the shaman they import. Because some of them have rules, you have seven minutes to sing to each person. I would not go to a retreat center who restricted a shaman's work that way, or you're not allowed to speak directly to the participants outside of the ceremony. I would not go to a and they may not, they're not gonna that's not gonna be in their description. You have to hear about this. So you want to know how the shaman are being treated.
Lana Pribic: Yeah. Yeah, thank you for that. And last question . I'm sure many people listening[00:48:00] want to embark on the journey of becoming a guide or a facilitator. So what words of wisdom do you have for people who are considering that?
Rachel Harris: I have a request. Please don't write to me and ask me how you can connect with these women. I interviewed. I don't know what people don't get about. They're anonymous. I'm not handing out their phone numbers. So don't ask for them. I know it's not easy, but some people find their way to really experienced guides. And so it's a little bit like when you're ready, the teacher will appear, keep looking. I tell people, go to your local psychedelic society meetings network, but take your time and be very careful. And I also refer women to the women people to the, what used to be called the women's visionary Congress now, I think it's called visionary Congress.
These are really [00:49:00] experienced people. And they do, they're very supportive of women and they do conferences. And there's a lot of information on their website. So these are places to connect, to find experienced people.
So, Look, you know, this is part of the path.
Lana Pribic: sounds like what you're saying is take your time.
Rachel Harris: And you know what, I didn't put this in the book, but one of the elders said to me, People should ask someone if before they go to a ceremony with them, and I thought it was too aggressive a question, but now I think it's a needed question. I'm sorry. I didn't include it in the book. But the question is who authorized you to serve this medicine? In other words, what's your lineage? And if they say I did a bunch of ceremonies and, I'm I prefer working with someone who has a real lineage.
Lana Pribic: Yeah, for, [00:50:00] and of course there's some medicines that don't have a lineage, but for the ones that do, absolutely. That's absolutely important.
Rachel Harris: So it is a choice involved.
And you have a right to ask questions.
Lana Pribic: Any other, anything else that you want to share before I let you go? Anything that it's just burning inside of you to share?
Rachel Harris: I think we need to know more about what do the work means. This is what, this was a theme that these women did their work. They worked on their shadow and and how, you do that work with entheogens and what that looks like. And it's a combination of journeys and psychotherapy and spiritual work and how that all comes together. And I think we need more models for that. We need to know more about what that looks like. It looks very different in everybody's life, but it's a very different, much bigger concept of integration than a few follow up sessions.
Lana Pribic: Thank you for [00:51:00] that. Thank you for that. And for everyone listening, Swimming in the Sacred, Wisdom from the Psychedelic Underground. This is one of the most important books on psychedelics that I have read. I think it's absolutely necessary to pick this up and read. Read the stories and the wisdom in here and Dr.
Rachel Harris is kind enough to offer our listeners a copy of her book. So you definitely want to enter that. I'll be doing a, giveaway on Instagram and we'll hold it open for a week after this episode airs. So I'll link that in the show notes for you guys to enter and check it out. And. Rachel, where can people find you or get in touch with you, not to ask you to get connected to the guides, but if they want to connect with you about something else.
Rachel Harris: you can put the website on your, with the on the internet. It's [00:52:00] swimminginthesacred. com.
Lana Pribic: Amazing. Amazing. Thank you so much for writing this book. I know it's been a journey. We talked about it two years ago when I interviewed you. So it's been a journey.
Rachel Harris: do remember that. You're
Lana Pribic: Yes. Yes. So I know it's been a journey. Thank you so much for writing this and for being open and flexible to evolving and growing in these ways.
Rachel Harris: Thank you, Lana. Thank you.
Lana Pribic: Amazing. All right, everyone. Thanks for listening. We'll catch you in the next episode.
