Ibogaine, Kintsugi & the Secret to True Healing

Tricia Eastman, a lineage offering medicine woman and founder of the nonprofit Ancestral Heart, bridges worlds rooted in her mestiza ancestry with profound insights from a decade of witty initiations and training.

A renowned speaker, artist and writer, Eastman has been privileged to engage with audiences at Stanford University School, the World Economic Forum, and on GaiaTV. Psychedelica.

Eastman has curated transformative retreats worldwide with plant medicines, as well as facilitated the Psycho spiritual program with ibogaine and 5 methoxy DMT at Crossroads treatment center in Mexico. Her wellness retreat center, Hu Azores on São Miguel Island, Portugal, is scheduled to open in 2025.

Tricia lives in the US and Portugal.

Tricia, welcome to the Brainforest Café.

[00:01:26] Patricia Eastman: Hi. It’s so good to be here, Dennis.

I am just so humbled and grateful to have this conversation and just someone with such deep intellect, deep philosophy, deep respect and stewardship for the medicine, and really a lifetime living example of that. So deeply honored to talk to you. And I think we’re gonna have a lot to talk about because we have a lot of common interests.

[00:02:01] Dennis McKenna: Well, the feeling is mutual. You have been at this for a while and you’ve connected with many of these indigenous traditions, and you’re kind of eclectic. You’re not tied to any one particular one.

You’ve worked with the Bwiti, you’ve worked with the Koji, I take it, other traditions. So, yeah, you bring a lot of experience to it and you’re very much an activist. So let me ask you, first of all, your retreat center was scheduled to open in 2025.

Is it now open?

[00:02:45] Patricia Eastman: So my retreat center, my husband, Dr. Joseph Barsoulia, who is a psychedelic researcher, and I started this project in 2020.

Portugal is probably the most bureaucratic place you could possibly do anything. So we’ve had many delays. And I was thinking when the book came out, Seating Consciousness, the retreat center, you know, is going to be open by this date, unquestionably. But the universe has other plans, and Portuguese authorities have other plans. The people that stamp the documents. So we did get our final letters for approvals.

We just got some financing approvals from the banks this last month. So we’re going to be breaking ground later this year.

[00:03:43] Dennis McKenna: So it’s a bit delayed. Bit delay. Are you.

[00:03:46] Patricia Eastman: A bit delay?

[00:03:47] Dennis McKenna: Are you running into regulatory issues with regard the. The legality of the medicine? Is that is an issue in Portugal or. Or not?

[00:03:59] Patricia Eastman: Yeah. I mean, really, when we started the center, the reason I started this vision was, where is there a place we can do this work?

In nature, where it’s actually a center designed for doing work with medicine or, or doing inner contemplative work.

And we did really deep dive on, you know, the legalities in Portugal.

It’s a very gray area, like many places.

[00:04:34] Dennis McKenna: Like many places, right?

[00:04:36] Patricia Eastman: Yeah. And so we realized we didn’t want to hang our hats and say this is a psychedelic retreat center. There’s many places like Esalen Institute is probably one of the most well known places for psychedelic education, but not officially ever served psychedelics. So I would kind of think of like Huazores as a center of learning, kind of like an esalent of the eu. And we also have the thermal hot springs just like Esalen, which is really cool.

[00:05:10] Dennis McKenna: Sounds marvelous.

So you’re.

You’re providing psychedelic education and maybe medicines, but those are sort of de emphasized is that, I mean you don’t really advertise that, but those on the inner inside understand what it’s about. You’re so as you’re aware, particularly in France, other parts of the eu, practitioners, curaderos and so on bring medicine from South America and they often get into problems, you know, with the law, especially in France. France seems very rigid and uptight about it. And our good friends at Icer, you know, you’re probably familiar with them, they have a legal plant medicine defense fund.

Hopefully you’ll never have to use that. But it’s good to know that people are out there with that, with that resource. So your book is out, your retreat center’s in process on the way.

When do you project that it will be open or do you hazard a guess?

[00:06:25] Patricia Eastman: I think it’s going to be open in 2029. I’m going to knock on some wood so nothing else gets in the way. It’s going to be about two. Two years of construction total.

The thing about this center that’s really unique and the reason I’m okay to be patient is I really believe so I worked with a team of some of the most renowned architects in the world. So Nicolo Bini, who, his father, Dante Bini, created Beanie Shells, which are these beautiful pneumatic formwork, beautiful balloons that you spray over it with thin shell concrete and it’s like beautiful feminine kind of nature esque formations.

And he designed Robert Downey Jr. S house in Malibu, California if anyone wants to Google some of his work. And then I partnered with Philip Block of Block Research Group, which is the top engineer.

He’s worked with like Zahid and has his architecture is now officially on the new Swiss francs that are coming out. And his architecture is just like jaw dropping, like if you look him up. So those are the kind of the primary creative minds behind our design. And I really, truly believe, and this is why also it’s taken so long, is that it’s such a new style of architecture that hasn’t really existed. And everything from the details to lighting that matches the circadian rhythm to. And. And these were all things that we started doing in 2020, before there was like a trend in wellness architecture.

But we really wanted to create a place that embodied wellness. Like, you’re not. Like you don’t have these, like glaring overhead lights on you and, you know, looking at how to really build with nature instead of against it and how to really create formation and design. And a lot of my influence actually came from spending time with the Kogi. And the Kogi, I remember I was sitting down with them in 2018 with Mama Louise and Mama Evangeliste, who, who are the mamus, just as a, as a backstory, are the high level kind of initiates of this tradition that spend at least nine years in complete darkness in a cave.

And so they have this just profound wisdom.

And one of the things they said to me is that humans in our modern era, who they call little brother, live in boxes, stare at boxes and die, and they get buried in a box, but the universe thinks in spirals. And they said our original houses of thought, which are around. I know you’ve seen them before, Dennis, because I know you’ve done a lot of work with the coca leaf, which is their medicine.

And.

And they said our houses are a replica of the universe. Everything outside is inside. You go to your house to disconnect, we go to our house to connect.

And so that was the vision behind the center, was we want the buildings to be a healing technology, because healing isn’t about, like going and taking plant medicines or like, you know, healing your. Your mother or father wound or your inner child. Healing is about connection to yourself and about love and so what and about creativity. And so what if the building itself can be a technology to help the

[00:10:35] Dennis McKenna: person to connect sacred space, Sacred spaces that focus that energy.

I resonate with that. You know, the alchemists say, I think it was Hermes Trismegistus or someone in major figures said, what is here is everywhere. What is not here is nowhere.

So the idea that the space, particularly if it’s thoughtfully created to facilitate these deep inner journeys, that’s a good thing. That’s wonderful.

So, but it’s, at this point, it remains A vision. So you have, you’re working through the permitting process, you have all the plans, the architect’s plans, the engineers plans. That’s all worked out. And now it’s a matter of just patience or I mean, I guess when, when do you anticipate groundbreaking, you think? Maybe 2029.

[00:11:39] Patricia Eastman: So because our project is over, like there’s a benchmark of, I think it’s like $6 million or something, you have to go through this like public tender process. And so the only thing that’s like delaying us is we have to go through this legal process. And part of going through this legal process is that we had certain design level details that weren’t mapped out, you know, and so, you know, it was like little things like what are the doorknobs exactly going to look like? Like, like really like minutia kind of stuff, right.

And so we’re just like doing a little design sprint to make sure that every little detail, like what toilets, what light fixtures, even though most of it’s already been done, we’re doing kind of like this next three months and then we open that process and that’s like another three months. So if that all goes smoothly and to plan, then it should be no later than the end of the year, depending on when the construction company can start. And they can’t commit to a date until we turn everything into them and say, okay, it’s actually, actually, actually finished. But we’re like further than, I mean, we’re there.

[00:12:58] Dennis McKenna: Patience is a virtue, you know, and yeah, it’s good. I mean, it’s, it’s good to let the world know that this is in, this is emerging, that it will, it will come to fruition in its own time, you know, when it’s meant to. And I have no doubt, I mean, here we are in 2026 and I have no doubt that by 2029, the world will need this even.

You know, I do not have to tell you where.

Our poor planet is in great distress, you know, and our species is in great distress and we need this kind of healing medicine. And this is, this is, you know, you’ve been working in this space for a long time. So have I.

And I think, I mean, I’m not a retreat facilitator, but I’m certainly involved in plant medicine and sort of the consciousness of the role of these medicines effectively as co evolutionary catalysts, teachers of our species. And boy, our species has a lot to learn.

Our species is not very good at listening.

So it’s great that you’re doing this, and I want to, you know, we’ll keep in touch on this, and, you know, we can follow it as it comes along.

You have written also a very interesting book called Seeding Consciousness, Plant Medicine, Ancestral Wisdom, and Psychedelic Initiation that was recently published by Inner Traditions.

And when did that come out, Tricia?

[00:14:55] Patricia Eastman: That was November of 2025.

[00:14:59] Dennis McKenna: Okay.

So quite recently.

And is that being recognized?

Are people aware of that?

[00:15:09] Patricia Eastman: Yeah, it’s incredible.

Maybe it was November 2024 that it came out. I mean, I’m losing track of time now. It. It must have been November of 2024 that it.

Okay, well, I don’t know, but it’s new. It’s a new release, but I’m now finally, like, seeing people have read it. I’m seeing that a lot of really positive feedback. I really believe, you know, I wanted to give something back to the community. And I know you’ve written many, many books. It was 2024 because you and I were both on stage together, right after each other at Psychedelic Sciences.

[00:15:53] Dennis McKenna: I forgot about that last year. Okay, well, that puts. That puts a marker in it. Yeah.

[00:15:58] Patricia Eastman: Yeah.

[00:15:59] Dennis McKenna: So tell me a little bit. You. I really appreciate the talking points, the questions that you furnish. That makes my job a lot easier.

The first question is, can you share with your audience the essence of Seeding Consciousness, and it’s significant in the current psychedelic renaissance?

And the second one is related. You’ve created this term, seeding consciousness. Can you explain its multifaceted connotations and the role it plays in personal and societal growth?

So there’s a lot to unpack right there without touching the rest of the 20 questions you provided. Hopefully we’ll get to some of those too. But. But tell me, what inspired you to write Seeding Consciousness, and what do you hope that readers take away from this?

[00:16:53] Patricia Eastman: Yeah, it’s a big question, what you. What you just shared. I was just thinking I could spend the whole podcast just answering that one question.

There’s, like, a few distinctive things that I think are really important, and I’ll touch on. First, the meeting of Seating Consciousness.

So Alex Gray, who wrote Alex and Alison Gray, wrote the foreword.

[00:17:24] Dennis McKenna: I noticed that. Yes, they’re good friends of mine, too.

[00:17:28] Patricia Eastman: They’re just dear friends, lovely people we met at, like, the first time. We really hung out. Like, we. I met them at Art Basel years ago, and, you know, I’ve seen them in the community, but we spent some time together where we were all at Davos together, and we really kind of connected then, and. And I just love they’re just the real deal, you know, like, like just really, really beautiful human beings. And just like you, the world is so grateful. I mean the world is so lucky to have such incredible mentors in this space. And I think what, what really struck me was Alex posted this quote and it was from him about how art has the ability to activate the seeds of consciousness within.

So it’s just by viewing his art, which I really, truly believe that his art is a transmission directly from the psychedelic world. You know, it apps to what I’ve experienced and, and many people have, have experienced. And really I believe that the essence of each of us doing this work is to be able to cultivate those seeds so that we each just like you have these beautiful ayahuasca vines behind you in your background. You know, we are those beautiful vines within us. We are cultivating something that’s unique and beautiful, that is some form of transmission of art to the world. And that art can take it in communication, in food, in just a way of being, or like in the case of someone like Alex Gray or Alison Gray, it can take the form of artwork. And so I think really when we look at psychedelics and psychedelic healing as a whole, there’s been a big focus on healing PTSD or healing some specific condition.

But not looking at it necessarily from the perspective of how do we become more creatively empowered, how do we connect to the transmission through, you know, what we are seeding in the world through our own consciousness and what we are, you know, really meant to be conduits of and, and receive. And I really believe that, you know, I’ve been an initiate of the tradition of Bwiti for 12, for 12 years I’ve worked with, I worked at an Ibogaine Clinic in Mexico and then I got initiated 11 years ago.

And I’ve been deep in the study of buiti and really understanding initiation because it’s one of the few living initiatic practices that is, is still being practiced culturally today.

And there’s a very different orientation to the work. With any psychoactive or entheogenic, however you want to refer to it, plant or medicine when you’re looking at it from that context. And when we look at psychedelic therapy, it’s, it’s kind of broken down, kind of like our modern day healing. You go to a chiropractor and you get an adjustment or you go to an acupuncturist and you get an acupuncture treatment. But I don’t really believe that that type of work belongs in a vacuum and that’s why in these traditional practices, whether it’s, you know, Bwiti, whether it’s Shipibo, you know, doing the long dietas with different plants that I’m sure you’re familiar with, there is massive amounts of preparation, including purification rituals, and then there’s massive amounts of different things where you’re. You’re integrated back into the community. And this is all happening in nature, which in itself, I believe, is an integrative technology, even though it’s, you know. And so when you look at that framing, how do you. How do you take that framing and the core essence of that and translate that into the modern space, obviously, in a way with deep responsibility and respect of stewardship of the original teachings that have come from people like the Kogi and the Bwiti. And so that’s really the essence of the book, is my personal experience working with the medicine, working with several thousand people in clinical setting in an Ibogaine clinic in Mexico, but also in a retreat setting, and also receiving these initiations and really how.

How that can be used for healing, but not healing from the sense of we’re not whole. Healing from the sense of, like, seeding this, this part of ourselves that we’re cultivating throughout our life.

[00:23:21] Dennis McKenna: Yes, everyone can benefit from these things, or I shouldn’t say everyone, but many people.

You do not have to have a disorder, you know, or something that you want to cure, like PTSD or intractable depression. Psychedelics, of course, can be good for those things, but we’re all incomplete beings, you know, and we can all benefit from it. Bob Jesse talked about how psychedelics can be used for the benefit of the. Well, you know. And Rick Doblin also memorably said people don’t take psychedelics to have psychedelic experiences. Humans don’t take psychedelics for psychedelic experiences. They take them to have a better human experience.

And I think that really sort of embodies the holistic perspective.

And it’s very hard to take to rip that out of a cultural context, because that’s where these things originate. And the cultural context supports the ritual and the use of the medicine, as you found out, undoubtedly, very, very profoundly with your work with the Bwiti. You know, when you take the medicine and put it into a clinic without any of those cultural accompaniments, you’ve impoverished it, basically. I mean, then the clinic becomes. The clinic becomes sort of. The context becomes impoverished in some ways, where it’s just you and you’re. This. If you’re the patient, and then the. The, you know, the Medicine and the therapist and it’s a stripped down kind of thing.

And psychedelic medicine, biomedicine in general is uncomfortable with psychedelics.

You know, that’s why it’s proving, I think, to be so hard to integrate it into biomedical practices because you have to leave so much behind.

And then often in the clinical setting as well, if it’s in a biomedical system, there’s usually a cost, often considerable costs associated with it.

And there’s all of that, plus you have, you know, it’s just a different thing. I’m very much in favor of your approach. You know, do it in a traditional setting. Work with people that have this within their tradition, sometimes millennia long traditions of using these things. I mean, these medicines have been around a lot longer than there’s been an FDA or a DEA or some other institution to tell us how we’re supposed to use these things. I think the indigenous people have probably learned a thing or two after over thousands of years. And we need to listen to how they do it, you know, and what they recommend. So that is the, that is the big difference. And you’ve, you’ve definitely been an advocate and a practitioner of the, of honoring these traditions and practicing them, although you are not yourself, Bleedy or I mean, I guess you’re indigenous in some way.

Like, I sometimes tell people we’re all indigenous to earth, you know, and we share this heritage of. This is a gift from Gaia. You look at something like ayahuasca, for example, used by many different cultures, but no one culture would claim ownership of ayahuasca medicine. You know, they don’t really have that in their context and many of the other things. So that’s another, you know, way, way to look at it.

[00:27:42] Patricia Eastman: Thank you. What you said, I mean, there’s so much there. I mean, I think the piece around the impoverished is, is really what strikes me the way that you explain that, because.

Yeah, when I think about how, you know, kind of the first line of how this is hitting the medical system is ketamine assisted therapy.

And on one side of the coin, you have, you know, so much that has been taken away. It’s being done in a city. People are being sent out on the streets afterwards, sometimes on subways. And, you know, like from a perspective, if I was, you know, interviewing, you know, a shaman who, you know, was, you know, understood on such a deep level and, you know, what’s happening in the spirit world.

And I say that because, you know, there’s, there’s real teachings and knowledge systems connected to those Happenings, they would say, I would never send someone out like that, in. In. In that kind of condition, you know, right after. Right after.

And yeah, what I see is a lot of over consumption of ayahuasca of Iboga, Ibogaine.

Of all of these sacred medicines.

And the reason they’re being over consumed is because all of those things have been stripped away. They are part of the technology itself. Meaning that, you know, a certain percentage of the healing is the actual entheogen itself, but it’s all of these other preparations. Like when you think about the purification rituals we have to go through with iboga, we’re taking vomitifs, which you’ve probably taken with. With ayahuasca.

You know, I’ve had to do different types of enemas, different types of smoke baths, which are kind of like a sweat lodge, many different types of. Of purification plants. And what that does is it strips away a lot and. Oh, and also the purification baths, which I’m sure you’ve done a lot as well, but that strips away a lot of things that are like emotional debris, somatic debris, which we can all agree, you know, from Bessel van der Cork and somatic therapy, that the body does keep score.

So it would make sense that these, you know, rituals and medicines could, you know, kind of remove some of that stuff so that the plant medicine is not having to do the heavy lifting. And so that you have this new numinous experience, to quote Carl Jung, and Carl Jung said that the numinous experience is far greater and has the greatest, you know, essentially healing outcomes rather than, you know, looking at treating some specific, you know, neuroses or condition. You know, something in, in the dsm, which I think is. Is kind of where we’ve gone in Western society is we’re looking at MDMA for PTSD or for, you know, we’ve got psilocybin mushrooms for depression.

And the truth is, if it was done in these contexts where you have this like, deep kind of framework that is really deeply preparing and integrating the individual, which can be done in some ways in our modern system, you might only need one session instead of three sessions or six sessions.

[00:31:52] Dennis McKenna: Right, right. Well, you’ve highlighted what is a standard trope and understanding, which is these important variables of set and setting and setting.

A lot of what you’ve been discussing is setting, and there’s more to just where you do it. It’s all of this preparation, purification and all that is necessary in order to put the context so that the set and they talk about the set and in my understanding of what is meant by, what is often meant by set is what your intention is. But I think that’s a very constricted view of set. Set is you. Set is what you bring to it. All your life experiences, your expectations, certainly your intentions. But much more than that. Set is everything that this complex organism, that is the individual that is agreed to made this decision, shall we say, to have this relationship with this other teacher. And I’m very much on board with the idea that these are teachers, they have a certain consciousness. The molecules are an aspect of the nervous system of the plants in a certain way, or the mushrooms as it would be. But, but the set is a more complex thing because that’s the person and that’s kind of the patient, if you want to look at it in those terms. But the context is so important also, and you do mention this, if possible, it should be done in nature because a lot of the, what the plants teach us is the importance of the alliances that we have with nature. I mean, these plants and fungi, as I’ve often said, they’re co evolutionary catalysts.

And I think the major spiritual crisis of our time is our estrangement from nature, that is the lack of that people feel this is what we need to reconnect with is nature. And psychedelics can facilitate that in the proper natural setting. And then it’s a completely, a much richer, more holistic experiences because you’re surrounded by not just the encounter with the medicine under those circumstances, but the whole cultural context and really human context that goes with that.

So you know, this is, but this is clearly how it should be approached. But these are also things that are difficult to, you know, to convince somebody like an IRB or something like that that this is the way to go. And I don’t think we have to. I mean, lately I’ve been talking a lot about symbiosis.

And what we’re doing here is participating in a symbiotic relationship with these plants and fungi. And we do it, we’ve always done it. And we have symbiosis with many organisms. I mean, the foods that we eat, the plant materials that we use for our basic needs, this is all symbiosis. But we don’t think of it that way, you know. So to shift that perspective, I think is important to try and explain that we’re participating in co evolutionary and symbiotic processes with these plant entities. Plant teachers call them that. If you want to anthropomorphize it to some extent.

The important Thing is, they have been around on this planet for millions of years longer than we have, you know, so they’ve learned a few things that we could benefit from knowing that. Wisdom, you know, I mean. So anyway, I think we’re on the same wavelength in that respect.

I noticed there’s an item here I wanted to ask you about. You introduced the concept of soul.

Kintsugi.

[00:36:39] Patricia Eastman: Kintsugi.

[00:36:40] Dennis McKenna: Kintsugi. How does this connect to healing, inner fragmentation and reclaiming our souls? Could you elaborate on that a little bit?

[00:36:49] Patricia Eastman: Yeah.

I’ve spent my, you know, entire life, you know, focused on healing. I would say that, you know, in terms of ancestral stuff, I got a nice little karmic assignment from my family and, you know, my. My father, you know, got pushed over the edge and suffered from schizophrenia. Actually, today is his birthday and he. He passed away sadly last year, like, right during, actually the Psychedelic Sciences conference in, In June.

Um, but what, what, what I inherited, which we all inherit at some level, some ancestral trauma.

You know, I tried everything. I did every modality of healing. You know, I worked in the spa industry since I was 21, you know, doing like, consulting and training. And, you know, I under. I understand every kind of misunderstanding massage and every kind of, like, healing modality. It’s, you know, like I’ve. I’ve been through it all.

And when you. When you look at all of these different pieces and you look at, you know, really the process of inner alchemy, each time that. That something comes up and we’re working on, you know, a piece in alchemy, they call this the negredo.

And so these are kind of these broken pieces of ourselves that we’re picking up and reclaiming.

And how does that work? You know, like, for me, the analogy.

This analogy, which is something that came through when I was writing this book.

I remember, like, going into ceremonies, you know, when I was younger, like in my early 30s or, you know, even being in different types of healing workshops and feeling different things, reemerging that I had already worked on before and thinking, oh my God, am I just going to be healing this for the rest of my life?

And. And it feels, you know, like heavy and. And burdensome. And. And when I realized that. That each part of the healing is that little piece of self that we reclaim that moment, that we reclaim presence, that we remember who we are, and that each of those pieces we hold is essentially through our love, through our self love and our self care and our cultivation painted with gold. So the process of kintsugi is this Ancient Japanese art of broken repair. So the idea is that’s where I’ve

[00:39:52] Dennis McKenna: heard this term before. Right, right.

[00:39:54] Patricia Eastman: Yeah. When you. When you drop something and you break it. And actually to be.

I have an example right here of. Of kintsugi. So essentially what happened is this is a beautiful piece I got in Japan that it kind of funny because Kintsugi is from Japan, and I loved it because it was so abnormal. And wabi sabi is a big part of the Japanese aesthetic, which is like accepting imperfection, which is really what we do in the process of self love.

And so when you break it, there’s a deep process that you go into. And it’s a contemplative practice. It’s a meditative practice. It’s an art where you take the piece, you sand it, you use a special glue, and you glue it, and then you have to let it set for seven days, because this particular glue needs a long time to set. And then you sand it again, and then finally you paint it with gold.

And that’s really our process of healing, is this process of going back in again, sanding the edges, refining the edges, going back again, waiting for the glue to dry. Those times where, like, we feel raw, we feel, you know, a lot more open in these different chapters of our life, as, you know, different things kind of open up. Like, I could even, you know, use the example of the grieving process of losing my father and all the things that. That came up through that process.

And then the final piece is that gold painting that gold on. And when the gold is painted on, it is believed. And there are pieces like in Japan, because, you know, this is actually highly honored and coveted art that end up being worth more having been broken and repaired than if they had. And in our culture, you know, you break something, you throw it away, you buy another thing on Amazon.

So I think.

[00:42:24] Dennis McKenna: I mean, this, this.

This is so deep. Tricia, I really appreciate your bringing this up, because this idea of. I. I had forgotten what the term was, but.

But the purpose, you know, you’re never completely. Once wounded, you’re always wounded. You don’t ever really lose those, but you can integrate those into your future.

And the concept, as I understand it applying to these broken objects, you very lovingly put them back together, and they’re more beautiful than they were when they were first made because they bear the marks effectively of their journey through time.

And in some ways, they’re much more valuable. And people are that way the same way. You know, you. You don’t ever get Rid of your trauma. I don’t think you cure these things. You integrate them. And that. That’s kind of the core of what you do, is to have these experiences, not to. Not to. Not to necessarily erase those things, but to. They become part of your character, you know, and a person who has been.

And my condolences about your father, by the way. Thank you.

It’s not easy to lose anyone, but especially a parent.

But when people have become wounded by the traumas, and everyone has traumas that they experience just in the process of living, but if they can integrate those, and that seems to be what this kintsugi process is on the human being, integrate them, that becomes a part of your character. You know, if you look, for example, at an elder, elderly person, you know, an elderly woman, an indigenous woman or whatever, if you look at their face, maybe it’s very wrinkled and, you know, it shows the.

The trace of time.

But then you also see that there’s a much deeper level that they bring to their existence. And they may be old, they may be wrinkled, but they’re much more beautiful than they were when they were younger. I guess it’s kind of a trivial way of saying that, but that’s it.

We never really erase the slings and arrows that we experience during life, but we.

We can integrate those and become stronger and ever more beautiful and ever more valuable, both to ourselves and others. So I think that’s a beautiful concept, and that is kind of at the basis of the healing and integration that you practice and advocate.

Is that right?

[00:45:35] Patricia Eastman: Thank you.

[00:45:35] Dennis McKenna: Yeah.

[00:45:36] Patricia Eastman: Yeah. I mean, really, the essence of, you know, the work is. Is, you know, the. The alchemy is, you know, diving into what’s fixed and then pulling it up, holding it, looking at it. But the beauty is you don’t actually need to do anything. Sometimes. Sometimes it’s just your presence. Like me, you know, let’s say I have some grief come up today because of, you know, remembering my. My father’s life, me just sitting with that. I don’t necessarily have to, like, ball my eyeballs out or, you know, but just giving presence to that part versus running from it. But just like, taking that pause and. And being like, I don’t even need to talk to it unless it wants to be talked to. You know, maybe the Greek wants a conversation, but sometimes there’s just some alchemical beauty of that. It. It just moves when it’s ready to move. And it’s not really even anything we can do or some healer can heal or we can heal or Anybody, even the plant medicine, it’s just our work to do is just to give presence to what is.

[00:47:05] Dennis McKenna: Yes, and I think you make an important point here.

There are plant medicines that can heal.

There are people, healers of all stripes who can heal. But ultimately the healing comes from us.

You know, all healing comes from within.

The tools and the medicines and the practices that we apply is all to facilitate that inner healing process. We’re the healers.

What we need to do is discover that within ourselves.

I think that’s what I’m getting from what you’re saying, and that’s certainly something I believe. You know, I think, you know, we’re all innately, we all have an inner healer.

And the process of becoming healed is to discover that and listen to that.

So the couple of other things I wanted to mention and not overlook.

How do you see reconciling the traditional approach to the use of these medicines and the scientific approach, or can they be comfortable together? Can they be reconciled or are they diametrically opposed?

How do you bring these things together? Because I think both the scientific approach, the clinical approach and the traditional approach have a lot to offer.

Can in this post science era, in the current era, is there some way to weave these things together and make something that’s greater than the sum of the parts?

[00:48:57] Patricia Eastman: I love this question, by the way. I think that the beauty that I’m, we know Ibogaine has made a surge of interest.

I mean, it’s a very difficult medicine. It has dangers, cardiac risks, complexity of delivery far beyond any other medicine. And so the level of popularity, I never really thought of it as something for the masses, like to see it kind of hitting the forefront. But I do agree, and I’ve seen this and witnessed myself, the miraculous potential of this medicine. I know you’ve done some, some research with, with Ibogaine and, and iboga as well.

And I think what’s interesting about it is you have this very beautiful traditional practice that’s been highly refined.

And within the practice, I as an initiate cannot share specific things because there’s a level of initiation and specific things like blessings you have to receive in order to receive certain types of information.

But what I can say from a general perspective is that for every type of risk with iboga or Ibogaine, there is a traditional technology from how to mitigate the cardiac risk to when, you know someone is having a difficult time, they call in, in the Ibogaine clinics, a temporary confusional state, which is, you know, a very nice way of saying, you know, drug induced psychosis or, you know, all of like pretty much every single kind of issue that you would have that there’s like a medical intervention for.

The Bwiti have plant very specific plants that you work with very specific protocols. If the medicine’s coming on too strong, if the person isn’t feeling the medicine at all and it’s not having an effect, like there’s, there’s different ways of testing and different plants that you can give to make the medicine work exactly the way it’s intended to work and have an effective initiation.

In Ibogaine we. Okay, so you know Howard, let saw. I mean there was, there was all the research that started happening in the early 1900s. You know it was used in France as like an over the counter medication, Lamborine in low doses.

But it really didn’t. You know there was, there was some CIA studies in the Kentucky.

What do you call that?

[00:52:09] Dennis McKenna: MKUltra. Is that.

[00:52:10] Patricia Eastman: Yeah, like in the MK Ultra program in Kentucky. In the opiate. It was like an opiate. They called it the Opiate Farm was the nickname for it.

Which was this, this hospital in Lexington. Lexington, Kentucky where they were, where they were studying addiction, specifically opiate addiction where they, where they did do some research that was destroyed. But there are artifacts connected with it that still are alive today that prove that something happened.

And then you have Howard, let’s off.

And if you follow Letsoph and then you follow the story, it was like fail forward. It was like the first patients they saw, they accidentally overdosed them because they didn’t know the correct dosing.

And then the. Every death that occurred in the space was studied. And then finally the Global Ibogaine Therapy alliance created these guidelines called GITA guidelines. And ICEERS also did some really profound research and has published some research around safety related to Ibogaine. And now here we are.

You know, I’m trying to remember when, when Lutsoft first took. I mean it’s like 50 plus years

[00:53:36] Dennis McKenna: more than that later 60s I believe.

[00:53:39] Patricia Eastman: Yeah. So let’s say 70, 70 years later, here we are where we have some like really good established protocols and it’s generally I think the new numbers. And this is private. Like I’m in a lot of private chats with doctors and clinics and it used to be that people said like 1 in 300 people had an adverse event and that was incorrect information. And now they’re finding it’s like I think 1 in 12,000 which is actually.

[00:54:10] Dennis McKenna: Oh yeah, that’s a pretty good safety bar to there.

Yeah, I’m intrigued by, I mean I guess one of the big concerns about the safety is the cardiac issue.

[00:54:24] Patricia Eastman: Yes.

[00:54:25] Dennis McKenna: You say that the muiti actually have plants that can mitigate this. And I understand in the clinical setting they give magnesium intravenously to sort of counteract this appearance with the electrical repolarization, which is what it interferes with.

We have plant medicines that can be used in this context for that purpose.

[00:54:53] Patricia Eastman: These plants actually are very high in potassium and magnesium. And so it’s basically the same thing as doing the magnesium before, essentially.

And, you know, the polyrhythms in the bliti music itself are one of the technologies which actually are found.

Schuster Strubold published a paper on this about how the polyrhythms in the music actually regulate the heartbeat. And then the other issue or the other thing that’s unique about it is that they have all the participants in initiation in most traditions. And some it’s done like in the fung tradition, sometimes it’s done differently, but generally sitting up, up. And if you’re sitting up like this, it definitely affects your qtc. You know, it’s less of a risk.

And then there’s specific things, like if people are showing specific signs within their breathing or patterns that would kind of put you, like. Like there’s certain things you can see happening.

You know, there’s. There’s specific interventions that are done in the traditional practice. And these are things that. This is why it takes 10 years for the training minimum for a traditional practitioner to really kind of understand the medicine and how the medicine works and how to navigate and see, you know, where the person is at and be able to do that. But one thing I will say is that not everyone does it perfect in Gabon. There have been people that have died in Gabon. It’s dangerous in Gabon. I had a friend that died from malaria in 2018 when he went there, who was someone I worked with at Crossroads.

I won’t even tell you.

[00:56:53] Dennis McKenna: Not the most comfortable place to be for all sorts of reasons, having nothing to do with ibogaine. Yeah, it’s a.

[00:57:01] Patricia Eastman: It’s, it’s, it’s. It’s incredible to be in the villages, to really be connected and really understand what that feels like to be held.

But it is incredibly dangerous. You know, it’s not like, am I going to come home with a parasite? It’s like, how many am I going to come home with? Which I don’t know if you’ve experienced that in Peru in your trips to Peru, but the ones that you know come out of Gabon are extra dangerous. And I feel like, yeah, there’s, there’s quite, quite a few.

But what, what I’m getting at is that on one side of the coin, we’ve accumulated some knowledge collectively with Ibogaine. On the other side, the booty have knowledge. And, and when you look at both, you know, like, like the Western medical framework for Iboga and Ibogaine or any psychedelics, one thing that I would say is that it does a very good job of really addressing informed consent, like really preparing people in respect to educating them, which, you know, in Bwiti, they just throw you off in the deep edge of the pool and they don’t tell you anything that could be traumatizing to someone who has complex trauma.

The Western mind, I mean, the, the, the Bwiti, you know, unless they’ve studied pharmacology, they’re not going to understand the medical interactions that, you know, someone coming in with, you know, taking a specific type of medication.

And so I think really, like, when we look at, you know, how we, how are we treating someone who is coming from the west, and what are the nuances of working with that specific. I mean, the Gabonese mind and the Western, like, American mind are very, very different. You know, like a true person who grew up in Gabon, lived in Gabon, especially if they’ve lived in the forest, very different, different approach. And so there’s, there’s got to be a bridging between those frameworks. And then we do have safety protocols that are of great value.

And I do believe that a lot of the safety protocols that we have in the Ibogaine framework that’s been adopted in the west make up for the lack of real embodied training and experience. Experience, you can’t make up for that. Like, you, you really should have a lot of experience if you’re actually going out there independently and working with this medicine or running a clinic.

But not everyone, especially for the great need that we have right now for this type of healing, is going to study for 10 years before they go out there and start giving the medicine to people. So I think that when we bridge the two together, it’s like, how do we look at time? How do we look at approach related to the cultural differences?

And then I think there’s different things, like ethical, you know, and even sexual boundaries and things like that that, like, are very important in the west that aren’t necessarily honored in Bwiti or other traditions.

[01:00:42] Dennis McKenna: Right, right.

[01:00:43] Patricia Eastman: To be honest, and I wouldn’t even say they’re honored 10 out of 10. And in, in the west either. We’re not like, you Know, doing that at, at the most perfect level. But I think, I think there’s learning from both sides and I really think, you know, Bwiti is the one indigenous medicine that has officially signed Nagoya Protocol to protect Iboga. And what they have asked as signing Nagoya Protocol, not speaking for everybody, but the fact that the country of Gabon has, has done that is free and prior informed consent and a seat at the head of the table essentially like to be part of the conversation. So I would say my answer overall is we have a lot to offer.

Obviously, you know, this beautiful medicine and what we’re missing out on in terms of the vast knowledge is, is profound.

But we really have to start with the first step, which is let’s bring these beautiful Bwiti like we have. You know, my, my organization, Ancestral Heart, has helped to form a council of elders, specifically in the Bwiti Msoko tradition, which are really helping to create a unified voice within Gabon and globally called Maganga Mananzambe. And so this is going to now create that opportunity so that Western, you know, colleges and, you know, universities and practitioners and can start to kind of engage and biotech companies.

And I think what will emerge from that if we truly respect the wisdom that the traditional practitioners have, is, is going to be so immense, we, you know, we can’t even put a value on it.

[01:02:53] Dennis McKenna: No, it’s, it’s, it’s a beautiful thing that’s happening.

Just the bio. From the biomedical perspective, it seems it’s clear that ibogaine is a very special medicine. It’s not like the others. It’s, I mean, not to disrespect the others, but this is in a whole other category. As I understand it, it’s a kind of a global cerebral reset. And that’s why it potentially could be applied to all sorts of things that you don’t normally think of psychedelics as being used for, such as cognitive deficits, traumatic brain injury, these sorts of things.

Other psychedelics are not being talked about in those contexts. And it seems like from what I can tell, the clinics in Mexico that you’re working with are implementing what you talk about. The best protocols are those that borrow from both traditions. So you have highly qualified clinicians who understand the pharmacology and what steps need to be taken from that perspective, but they’re also listening to the indigenous people with all this experience and developing a sort of a hybrid therapy where these two streams of knowledge reinforce each other.

And I think ibogaine, although I’ll probably never experience it myself, because I do have cardiac issues.

But I think ibogaine is one of the most promising psychedelic medicines to emerge in many years because of the potential broad application that it could have.

And it’s really reassuring to hear that the indigenous healers and the biomedical people all are aware of the hazards, but they’re also aware that there’s a pool of knowledge and technologies, techniques that can be applied to mitigate the hazards and maximize the benefits. And that’s kind of the point, isn’t it?

So, yeah, you’re doing wonderful work and I really appreciate your spending this time with us to explain what you’re doing, and I look forward to hearing more. Give us an update on the progress of your retreat center in a few months. Let us know what’s going on and come back and visit. Have we. Was there.

Have we covered most of what you hope to. An hour isn’t very long, but we’ve covered a lot of the high points.

Is there something we miss that’s essential in this country?

[01:05:50] Patricia Eastman: No, I think. I think there’s just such a beauty to, you know, how deeply you understand this work and the importance of it through the perspective of, you know, your relationship to the plants. And that means a lot.

And, you know, I would say one thing that we both share in common, which I would love to engage the outside community when we look at psychedelics and we look at where we stand today, and we know, you know, it was Maria Sabina, it was all of these incredible elders that like, so willingly shared with us these beautiful plants. Ayahuasca gave us medicines to plant in places around the world to keep it safe in case World War 3 happens and we need to have it in other places on the planet just to have that insurance or COVID 19 is another example of why it needed to be planted around the world.

But the biggest challenge of all, and, you know, like, I feel like everyone wants to study serving medicine or, you know, study, you know, different things, but I feel like there’s very few people that are like, how do we solve for stewarding the forests and their biodiversity that allows for these people, plants to flourish? And how do we, you know, like the project that you had shared with me when we were initially talking with the Entheobotany Library in Peru, and, you know, to me, these are the dearest things to my heart.

And I talk to, you know, people like Deborah over at

[01:08:07] Dennis McKenna: Synergetic.

[01:08:08] Patricia Eastman: Synergetic Press. Yeah, Deborah Snyder.

And just like, you know, she’s made incredible contributions to the space as well. With. With her work. And I look at all of these people who have tirelessly served and that there just hasn’t been enough financial support going back in, into really our relationship, where the meeting of nature and psychedelics come together, where the ecological work comes together.

So, you know, my prayer in us connecting and meeting is that, you know, I can help you in everything that you’re doing with your legacy that you’ve created, preserving Coca Cola as a sacred medicine, all of these other medicines, obviously, that are near and dear to both of us, but also like, like putting the call out there to the world, like the, the like sonar Batman signal or whatever you want to call it of, like, like, like, let’s, like, let’s tune in all together. How. How do we really bring those resources in so that this is. You know, because it’s like the, like I’ve learned, you know, and one of the reasons why I keep.

Not even. It’s not even a reason because it. It’s intuitive, you know, but the medicine continues to bless you always. It’s not like you get the blessing from the experience or the blessing from the integration, but the. The medicine is listening, watching. I know that sounds strange, maybe for some people, right? But it’s listening. It’s watching. And when we are acting in that relationship, it feels that and it responds to that. And I’ve just had, like, profound blessing in my life all the way around. And I’m like, yeah, people realize they’re missing out on something really amazing by not giving back to the medicine, even a dollar a month.

And, you know, but it’s just like to think about the millions of people that listen to Joe Rogan or all these big, like. Like if everyone was just giving a dollar here or there, it would make such a huge difference. So that’s.

[01:10:38] Dennis McKenna: It would make a big difference. That’s right. That’s the nature of symbiosis. You know, it’s something that you live with. You have the relationship with these plants, once that’s formed, that continues. I mean, you may take them rarely, you may actually ingest them rarely, but the symbiosis continues. And particularly growing the plants, sharing that knowledge, sharing the plants with people, spreading them around.

As you mentioned, with ayahuasca, it’s become a global entity.

It’s found its way out of the Amazon, and now it’s a global medicine. And that’s a good thing.

Well, Tricia, it’s been a wonderful conversation. We could go on all afternoon, but you probably have things to do, and so do I. So I guess we’ll end it here and have you come back very soon.

[01:11:37] Patricia Eastman: I hope so. And I just. I’m so grateful for this connection, and really just. Just deeply grateful to the plants that. That we get to do this together. That. That this is. This is our symbiosis assignment, which is the greatest assignment you could possibly have. So. Yeah. So. So obviously.

Yeah. My website for my nonprofit is ancestralheart.com. i’m sure it’ll be in the notes, but.

[01:12:09] Dennis McKenna: Right. We’ll put everything up on the episode page. We’ve got a whole bunch of links that can. To your responsible giving us this information. So it’ll all be up there.

And I think people are going to really enjoy listening to this podcast.

This has been a great conversation.

So have a wonderful day.

[01:12:32] Patricia Eastman: Thanks. You too.