Alchemist Recovery Podcast

As I often say, words have power. And when supporting someone in the early stages of making a big change in their life, like getting clean & sober, how we use our words matters.

They can connect us or they can cause unintended obstacles.

For some, the word “treatment” is one of those words. It can imply meanings that are less than helpful and land as:

* A reinforcement for a limiting core belief repeating, “I am broken”

* A professional will do the heavy lifting for me

* When does treatment end?

Whereas a simple shift to the word, “transformation” can imply:

* I see my limiting core belief of, “I am broken” & can transform it

* I will do the heavy lifting

* I will know when I’ve transformed

While these are simplified examples, the shift in how we use words is important. They can carry implied meanings that either reinforce old stories or begin to question the limiting core beliefs we’ve been telling ourselves for years.

We’ll dive deeper into all things transformation on this one. So, let me know how it lands with you, what practices you use and if you’ve experienced anything similar along your path of transformation!

With Blessings,

Randy

Chapters:

* 00:01 - Introduction to the Alchemist Recovery Podcast

* 04:43 - Understanding Transformation vs. Treatment

* 14:07 - Exploring Transformation Practices

* 21:22 - The Transformation of Jing, Chi, and Shen

* 24:45 - Transformation through the Spleen: A Metaphor for Healing

* 29:30 - The Importance of Language in Transformation

* 35:14 - The Path of Mastery: Transformation Practices

There’s no such thing as staying the same.

We’re either moving forwards or sliding backwards; releasing and rising, or attaching and sinking; riding with the flow, or anchoring in and deepening-stuck.

There truly is no such thing as staying the same. This holds true for a life in recovery, as well as applying it to any important area you want to look at: career, relationships, health, to name a few.

In this episode, we’ll not only explore what it takes to keep manifesting in cycles of growth and abundance, but also address the obvious here:

The Sober Shaman Podcast is now Alchemist Recovery!

Please know, we’ll be keeping the content basically the same, and that this change has been done to consolidate, simplify and make it easier to keep bringing quality podcasts to you going forward.

If you have any questions or hit any link-glitches, please let me know and I’ll take care of it for you!

With Blessings

Randal Lyons, Doctor of Chinese Medicine

https://www.alchemistrecovery.com/

Takeaways:

* The essence of transformation in recovery is rooted in the understanding that change is inevitable and continuous.

* Practices for life encompass not just recovery but the mastery of emotional, spiritual, and physical well-being.

* The transition from the Sober Shaman to Alchemist Recovery symbolizes a commitment to simplicity and clarity in healing practices.

* Acknowledging that no one remains static is crucial for personal growth and understanding in recovery.

* The cycles of addiction and recovery represent a three-dimensional journey that is unique and evolving for each individual.

* Emphasizing connection as a vital component of recovery highlights the importance of community and relationships in healing.

I love the line, “and Heaven is overrated?” from the song, Drops of Jupiter by Train, and this week we’ll use it as an entry point to explore how, once again, our A to Z linear perception of time keeps us in patterns that eventually outgrow their usefulness.

This is true, and becomes clear, as we get more & more sober-time under our belts.

We’ll then apply that awareness to The 4 Stages of Recovery, from Lesson #6 of the Alchemist Recovery Program, to take a new look at all-of-this through the perspective of Principle #2: Addiction is a Cycle.

And getting back to Heaven, I acknowledge - and am happy that - shamanic practice is not the only path to the top of the mountain, but rather, just one way to reveal what’s here, now, and right in front of us because...

The disciples asked Jesus, ““When will the kingdom come?”

To which he replied,”It will not come by expectation; the kingdom of the father is spread upon the earth and men do not see it.”

- the Gospel of Thomas

Blessings!

In this episode I dig into the tension between shamanism and appropriation, sparked by a few conversations I had this past week with people in the podcast, mental health, and psychedelic communities.

I explain why I named my podcast “The Sober Shaman” even though I don’t claim the title of shaman myself, and unpack the word’s anthropological roots and current misconceptions.

I introduce the idea of “severed roots,” which is that sense of disconnection most of us in the West carry after losing our intact cultural and spiritual lineages. So, instead of appropriating another culture’s practices to fill that void, I make the case that we all have the ability, and the human birthright, to reconnect with and re-member, our own roots.

* I get into why the word “shaman” both opens and closes conversations, and why I chose it for my brand anyway

* I introduce “severed roots” and “the void” as the core wound behind appropriation and addiction alike

* I use Bruce Lee’s Jeet Kune Do and Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey to make the case for universal truths expressed uniquely

* I connect today’s shamanism to the psychedelic movement, PTSD in veterans, and reconciling childhood religion with present practice

Appropriation happens when we try to fill our own cultural and spiritual void with someone else’s home and that the real fix is rediscovering our own severed roots. And to take it home, I frame shamanism not as a borrowed identity but as a universal, cross-cultural capacity for direct revelation that anyone can reclaim.

Thanks for joining me.

Blessings!

Randal

In this episode I dig into the tension between shamanism and appropriation, sparked by a few conversations I had this past week with people in the podcast, mental health, and psychedelic communities.

I explain why I named my podcast "The Sober Shaman" even though I don't claim the title of shaman myself, and unpack the word's anthropological roots and current misconceptions.

I introduce the idea of "severed roots," which is that sense of disconnection most of us in the West carry after losing our intact cultural and spiritual lineages. So, instead of appropriating another culture's practices to fill that void, I make the case that we all have the ability, and the human birthright, to reconnect with and re-member, our own roots.

• I get into why the word "shaman" both opens and closes conversations, and why I chose it for my brand anyway
• I introduce "severed roots" and "the void" as the core wound behind appropriation and addiction alike
• I use Bruce Lee's Jeet Kune Do and Joseph Campbell's hero's journey to make the case for universal truths expressed uniquely
• I connect shamanic reconnection to the psychedelic movement, PTSD in veterans, and reconciling childhood religion with present practice

Appropriation happens when we try to fill our own cultural and spiritual void with someone else's home and that the real fix is rediscovering our own severed roots. And to take it home, I frame shamanism not as a borrowed identity but as a universal, cross-cultural capacity for direct revelation that anyone can reclaim.

Thanks for joining me.

Blessings!

Links referenced in this episode:

• thesobershaman.com

At Stanford, Andrew Keaveney was chairing the Buddhist Club and trying to meditate. He tried a dozen techniques and kept coming up short. Then he found Sky Breath Meditation and four years later he was living at the source of it, at an ashram in Bangalore, India figuring out why it worked when nothing else had.

In this conversation, Andrew shares how Sky Breath Meditation works with our physiology rather than against it, using the documented relationship between breath patterns and emotional states to bring the nervous system into alignment from the inside out. We get into what the research actually shows, how it fits alongside 12-step work, psychedelic integration, and traditional clinical care, and why it doesn’t ask you to believe anything different than you already do.

* What separates Sky Breath from other meditation techniques and why it’s the most studied breathwork protocol today

* How the breath-emotion connection works, and what a scientific study revealed about running it in reverse

* Why Andrew & I believe addiction is about identity and what it takes to get underneath it

* What a person in recovery said Sky Breath gave him that nothing else had: choice - in the moment before the decision

Website: artofliving.org | Recovery-specific: skyrecovery.org

Please hit the little like & subscribe buttons wherever you get your podcasts.

With Blessings,

Randal

There’s nothing wrong with comfort. Rest, recovery, the exhale after a hard week, these are essential. The problem isn’t comfort. It’s when comfort becomes the goal.

That’s the line this episode draws. Because when we’re working toward mastery and comfort serves the work, we come back Monday morning lit up and ready to give. But when we’re just grinding until Friday, when the drink, the couch, the shortcut is what we’re actually after, that’s when we’ve crossed into something familiar to anyone in recovery: an addiction.

Using the Chinese Five Element cycle, I walk through exactly how comfort-as-goal moves through the addiction cycle the same way any substance does. The fruit looks, smells, and maybe even tastes like success, but it’s hollow calories.

And here’s what that costs us:

* When comfort is the goal, meaning goes out the window. Every time.

* Shortcuts don’t just rob you of mastery, they also sacrifice the heart, which is where inspiration and purpose reside.

* Crisis as a gift. Because rock bottom can be where the belief finally cracks open enough to let something honest and real in.

* Mastery holds the magic to connect you to lineages of the past, to nourish people right now, and then inspire the next generation for the future. No shortcut can deliver this.

Thanks for listening.

Here’s a link to Lesson 6: The 4 Stages of Addiction that we use as a guide in this episode.

Blessings!

Recorded from the back porch along the banks of the Ping River here in northern Thailand, I’m joined by Tucker our Temple Cat and a cacophony of singing birds for this episode of the Sober Shaman Podcast. We get into Qi, and not by talking about it, but by having an experience of it.

The focus is one simple, powerful Qigong exercise: hold the ball. In 13 years inside addiction treatment centers, this is the exercise that lit people up. I loved seeing the light bulbs going off when someone felt the Qi between their palms for the first time.

We’ll explore Qi follows Yi. Energy flows where attention goes. Which means we can direct it, move it, use it. Starting with the basics, jaw, shoulders, belly, we work through three lines of relaxation, build the Qi ball between the palms, and then take that ball of love and light to wherever it’s needed: a headache, a knee, gastric upset, anxiety, cravings, heartbreak. No place to put it? Bring it straight into the Heart.

This is a practice that can deliver palpable relief, not a cure-all, but an absolute component of healing that puts you back in participation with your own recovery.

In this episode:

* What Qi actually is, and why a thousand types of it exist in Chinese medicine

* The three body basics (jaw, shoulders, belly) that shift your state immediately

* The three lines of relaxation as preparation for any Qigong practice

* How to build and feel a Qi ball between your palms

* Directing that ball to pain, discomfort, anxiety, cravings or straight into the Heart

* Qi as a pattern interrupt for fast-cycling cravings like nicotine, scrolling, and stimulants

* Why fighting the interrupting mind makes it worse, and what to do instead

Want to run through it step by step?

Lesson 23 is waiting at thesobershaman.com.

Let me know how you did, tell me about the experience & shoot me any questions you may have - directly or in the comments below.

With Blessings,

Randal

Recorded from the back porch along the banks of the Ping River here in northern Thailand, I'm joined by Tucker our Temple Cat and a cacophony of singing birds for this episode of the Sober Shaman Podcast. We get into Qi, and not by talking about it, but by having an experience of it.

The focus is one simple, powerful Qigong exercise: holding the ball. In 13 years inside addiction treatment centers, this is the exercise that lit people up. I could see the light bulbs going off when someone felt the Qi between their palms for the first time.

We'll explore Qi follows Yi. Energy flows where attention goes. Which means we can direct it, move it, use it. Starting with the basics, jaw, shoulders, belly, we work through three lines of relaxation, build the Qi ball between the palms, and then take that ball of love and light to wherever it's needed: a headache, a knee, gastric upset, anxiety, cravings, heartbreak. No place to put it? Bring it straight into the Heart.

This is a practice that can deliver palpable relief, not a cure-all, but an absolute component of healing that puts you back in participation with your own recovery.

Want to run through it step by step? Lesson 23 is waiting at thesobershaman.com.

Links referenced in this episode:

• thesobershaman.com

“Sobriety Is Boring”

Really?

I’ve noticed this sentiment has been showing up on social media lately, and I’ll admit, I get it. I bumped up against it in those first couple of years and I’ve had many people tell me they’ve experienced exactly the same. It’s common to hit some pretty quick plateaus of the, “Ok, I’ve stopped. Now what?” variety.

But here’s what I keep coming back to: what’s boring, exactly? Life?

Yup, there’s a lot to cover here. Because, as we know, stopping the active addiction is just the beginning.

The Intention Behind This Journey

This episode and journey were born out of both of those things: the “sobriety is boring” feeling and the existential question of, “Now what?" I found that the practices that got me through early recovery are exactly the same ones that also took care of these two challenges. And which is why they’ve become non-negotiables in my present life.

Specifically, I’m talking about the shamanic journey. You, as well, can use the knowledge, information and healing power provided and apply it to what’s working and what’s not working in your life right now. As the practice grows, you grow with it. As you grow, it grows with you. Evolving, inspiring, empowering and definitely not boring.

If you’re ready to undertake this shamanic journey right now, wonderful, here’s the specific intention:

I am journeying to meet my guardian spirits, the ones that protected me in active addiction.

If you’re not in recovery, no worries, you can absolutely still do this journey. If you’ve walked through some kind of life-threatening situation, maybe you want to ask about that specifically. Or maybe not and you just want to meet your guardian spirits, in which case ask: How have you protected me in the past? What do you want from me now? How can we have a relationship going forward?

If you haven’t undertaken the shamanic journey yet and would like a step-by-step guide, here’s Your Guide to the Shamanic Journey. It’s part of the free membership to The Sober Shaman and comes with everything you need to get started.

As usual, I do my best to enter into the journey from a place of emptiness. And as usual, I had some preconceived notions and expectations about what I was going to find and who I was going to meet. But that’s part of the practice. I look at all those expectations and say: thank you for your opinions. You’ve just accurately identified exactly what I need to let go of. And then the drums start. I breathe…what fills the emptiness is wonder. Not knowing. Genuine heart-sourced curiosity.

What I Found: The Upper World and the Lower World

In my journey, I was immediately brought to a teacher I haven’t called upon or worked with for at least a couple of years. It always amazes me how in non-ordinary reality the experience of time is completely different. It was like no time at all had passed since my last visit and we picked up from right where we left off.

This upper world guardian, who’s name is Almethius, showed me how he is a guardian of what the Chinese call the Hun, or the eternal soul. His relationship is to guide and protect me during “soul level” situations, and which I was shown a few that occurred during that active addiction time of my life.

And then, I have to say this with a little humor, I went to the lower world. Where I found my guardians living out the scene from those paintings, you know the ones, found in really cheap hotels in the middle of nowhere where there’s a bunch of animals sitting around a card table playing poker. That’s my power animals, hanging out, smoking cigars, waiting for the Emergency Light to go off signaling I need help, again. All right, whose turn is it? You go save him this time.

In Chinese Medicine, this is at the level of the Po, which is the part of the soul that dissolves back into the Earth upon my passing. It deals with earthly problems, physical directions, and these three-demential-time-&-space situations. And I don’t just see a bunch of cats sitting around one table, no, there’s a whole Lowerworld casino floor. Everybody’s busy. Bells, buzzers, announcements. Dealing with all variety of knuckleheads like me up here in the middle world. A beautiful assortment of compassionate guardian spirits doing what they do best.

What became clear to me in this journey is that it takes a team. A team of helping and compassionate spirits to carry us through the thresholds of an entire life. Birth, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, career, parenthood, and into the wisdom of elderhood. All of it.

I saw between 12 and 15 specific incidents from my life where one simple change…of a steering wheel, of a step, of a word, and I would not be here. And I would have taken people with me.

That was extremely power-full and all I could handle on this one journey.

What This Transforms

What the guardian spirits showed me was this: that search for thrill, that sticking-my-finger-in-the-light-socket, that nightly tight rope walk, was the drive, the burning Fire, the infusion of spirit, that fueled the using in its attempt to fill The Void.

I was a stimulant kind of guy. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was the bible, literally. It never got weird enough for me. And looking back, I recognize it. When I speak to people who cut, it’s the same thing: a way to slice through the flatness. Even if it’s pain, at least I feel something.

And that circles back to the original instigator for this journey: Sobriety is boring. The practice is the answer to that. A practice that delivers connection, spirit, wonder, not knowing what I’ll find, infusing that kind of excitement, and igniting that kind of curiosity. That is what is transformational.

This is what transforms the pain of boring into a practice of meaning.

This is what Opens the Eyes of the Heart and transforms the Phlegmed-over senses that are stuck, ruminating, with gaze turned inward, into the outward opening, senses-receiving abilities to recognize the profound beauty in the ordinary.

Normal rocks. This perspective delivers the notion that right here, right now, I am enough. Right here, right now, you are enough. That’s it. Beautiful.

In the recognition of that, we are given the responsibility to remember this, because now, we have something to protect, something to lose, and something to build upon.

He Who Heals Me Divinely: A 30-Year Mystery

One more thing from this journey, a 30-year mystery and a sticking-point in my belief system, resolved.

When I first met Almethius, about 30 years ago during my time in acupuncture school, I got the name and I’ll admit…I cringed. There was something about my perception of that name, writing it in my journals, even as the years went by and I developed real rapport and trust, that my guts twisted just a little.

Back then, I did some superficial investigation into exactly what the name could mean, but I came up empty, the feelings remained and I kind of just buried it.

So, since one of the most obvious changes lately is Ai, after this journey, I revisited the etymology. I plugged the name into ol’ Gemini, intentionally scrambled, breaking it into its roots so I wouldn’t just get one of those sycophantic answers. What came back was this:

Al from the ancient Greek verb meaning to cure, to heal. Theus from theos, divine, of the gods, sacred. Me, the first person singular pronoun. Myself.

Put together, the name Almethius means: he who heals me divinely. Or simply: my divine healer.

What?!?!

I’ve been carrying around a cringe about that name for 30 years. And now, after this journey, not only can I finally unwind my guts but, dag-nab-bitt that’s just too cool! And while the relationship was always there, the name was always right, I’m just now getting out of my own belief system’s way to receive it on yet another, deeper, level. One that provides even more insights into the origins and continued usage of the substances and behaviors that perpetuated my cycle of addiction. Amen.

Let me know if you’ve undertaken this journey, or if you want to. I’ll be doing live streams and shamanic journeying sessions toward the third or fourth week of June. Subscribe to the Substack so you’ll know when things are going down. Till next time, blessings.

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