161: Experimenting with Plant Medicine

"It's like if you got shot by a bullet and it got lodged in your body. Well you're not just going to leave it in there. You're going to want to excavate it."
- Nick Onken
Hello, my fellow alchemists! Welcome to another episode of ONKEN RADIO (previously NION Radio), the podcast where we explore the soul, mind, and body of the creative entrepreneur. Today, I'm doing something a little different. Instead of interviewing a guest, I want to share my recent journey with plant medicine in Costa Rica at a beautiful place called Rythmia. 

Rythmia provides the perfect space and context to journey with plant medicine. Whether you're a first-timer or back for another one, they are focused on helping you reset the body, mind, and soul. It's not my first time with psychedelics, but it was my first time being intentional about it in a safe space to explore.

About a year and a half ago, I tried 5-MeO-DMT, which was quite an experience. I wasn't in a very good place at that point though, and I questioned the meaning of life and asked existential questions. I read books like A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle and watched Jim and Andy, a documentary on Netflix with Jim Carey where he spoke about his own eye-opening existential experiences. 

After trying DMT, I felt a huge contrast between what I'd experienced and reality that pushed me into a dark night of the soul and a very questionable space in which I spent most of last year. It wasn't until I discovered breathwork as an integration tool that I started coming out of that dark space and utilizing my breath to tap into similar states of consciousness. 

Right now, though, let me take you back to the beginning of my week at Rythmia.
Finding the Magic
Gerard Powell founded Rythmia, and his story is quite remarkable. He wrote a book called Sh*t The Moon Said, which details his journeys with plant medicine and how it shifted, changed, and ultimately healed his life. Part of that journey led to Gerard creating the retreat center Rythmia. 

I had some psilocybin mushroom journeys a few months before I arrived, helping me be more precise in setting my intention. The mushrooms helped me tap into more creativity and get through my different questions about life. Still, ayahuasca is another level, and this being my first time, I entered with a healthy dose of respect. 

Ayahuasca is an eye-opening journey that shows you who you become. It reveals things about your life, but it also takes you to the depths of where these issues and triggers started. When you get triggered by something, you get angry, those triggers are subconscious. Triggers can be from childhood or traumas we experience later in life. 

We all want to be happy and live a great life. I believe that when you're living in alignment with your highest self, and you're using your creativity to build things — that's when you're alchemizing magic in life.

The more we follow our own guiding stars to create magic, I believe we experience beautiful synchronous moments — moments of pure happiness and joy. Living in bliss is beautiful, but we have to dig, excavate, and get to the bottom of what keeps us from experiencing that. Fears, anxieties, stresses — all of it come from the circumstances of life, and it comes from how we were raised and what we saw growing up as kids. Whether you had an excellent or terrible upbringing, we always create our own stories. Our limiting beliefs come from our experiences, no matter who we are.

I had a great upbringing, yet I still grew up feeling judged even though it wasn't my parents' intention. That stuck with me my whole life, and it's what I've been working on letting go of with the aid of plant medicine. 

Suppose you're still not completely sold on the idea of plant medicine. In that case, I can share how grateful I am for learning things like meditation, which has provided me with tools to manage how I feel. Emily Fletcher, who's been on the podcast three times,