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Ari Gronich 0:07  

Welcome back to another episode of create a new tomorrow. I'm your host, Ari Gronich and I have with me, Greg Lawrence and Greg is a psychedelic integration and transformational coach. He's talks about clinical research, micro dosing, the importance of preparation and integration. What would you, Greg, you know, like to share about how you got into this field? And what about it is makes it so passionate for you?

Greg Lawrence 0:38  

Wow. Well, I mean, I got into it through experience about six years ago. Well, I should back up and say that I used psychedelics in my late teens through my late 20s. And unfortunately, in my late 20s, I also got mixed up with hard drugs, my life spiraled out of control pretty quickly. So I managed to scrape myself off of the bottom of the barrel and quit drugs, cold turkey, I realized at that time, I had a lot of unresolved childhood trauma I hadn't dealt with, and I basically been hiding for a long time. So I started working with a psychotherapist, personal coach. And somewhere in there, I was smoking cigarettes and trying to quit. And my coach said, I think so assignment helps with that. So I got some magic mushrooms and took them and had some epiphanies about what was going on in my life and the causes of the misery I was experiencing. And I thought, okay, now that I know where that came from, everything is going to change. And in about four or five weeks or so everything was just the same as it was. That happened a couple more times, then I stumbled across the concept of integration, and started going to integration groups, integration circles. And that's where we take the lesson from the experience, we try to integrate it into our lives by making some sort of shift or change in our lives. And I became fascinated with this. So I started studying it, I began leading the integration circles, I started working with people one on one, I eventually got certified as a psychedelic integration coach, and I've been a full time coach for almost three years now.

Ari Gronich 2:08  

That's awesome. So, you know, tell me what's the difference between the recreational use of psilocybin or other psychedelics and the, the therapy side of utilizing these medicines for taking care of emotional trauma and releasing, and so on, because, like you, I was a child doing certain things, and and I find that as an adult, those experiences are much richer and greater and create more of a permanent change for me. So talk to us a little bit about the difference between the recreational side and the therapeutic side.

Greg Lawrence 3:01  

Well, I first want to say that I, you know, there are a large part of the psychedelic community that uses the word recreational sort of a pejorative, like that's not the way you're supposed to do it. I don't believe that there shouldn't be any shoulds, around psychedelic. And I realized I used the word should to say that. But once you are safe and responsible, which means that you are not bringing harm to yourself or another person, I think if you want to experience a museum, a movie, some movie, or some food and other person's body, nature, whatever you want through the lens of a psychedelic, I think that that's fantastic. People should be free to explore their consciousness in the world in the way that they want.

Ari Gronich 3:40  

Got it. So one of the things that I utilize in my practice has been psychedelic therapy with bodywork and deep emotional release, breath work. And I've, I've always found that the issues are in the tissues. And when you combine those two things, you can really, really get permanent clearing of the issues that are in the tissues, because you're breathing it out, the body's being moved through it, the places where the traumas are, are being literally touched. So there's like a spotlight on those places. And then the medicine does its work of allowing those things and those traumas to release. Have you ever experienced that or heard of that kind

Greg Lawrence 4:39  

of work? Yeah, I do energy work myself. I practice personally trauma release exercises. So I realized there is both a psychological and a somatic component to the issues that people are facing, and that trauma is held in the body. So in the work that I do with people in preparing them or helping them to work with these medicines, because what I do is I work with people before and after, as an integration coach, I help prepare them for any experience. And I help them integrate the experience the middle part they do on their own or with someone else. So in my preparation, sometimes I try to determine which mode which would be better for a particular person. Because there is a way from disconnecting from the story in your head, and just experiencing what's happening in your body as issues come up. There is a way of diving deeper into the story in your head to see what kind of resolution you can get. And there's a combination of the two or you can be experiencing something in your body won't, you know, you can experience the past in your body while you're in the present in your head. So all those can be very helpful. But yeah, there's a significant somatic component. I think, too, especially trauma.

Ari Gronich 5:47  

Absolutely. I've, I think Burning Man was my first experience with psilocybin in a therapeutic healing, you know, manner. And I think I was about 2627 at the time. And we had somebody who couldn't hear out of her ear, since she was like five years old. And about a two and a half, three hour session. We were done, she could hear out of her ear. It was really fascinating. And that's what interested me originally in psilocybin and psychedelics as therapeutic healing tools. What about micro dosing? And I know this is becoming especially within like the Silicon Valley crowd, it's becoming a pretty regular thing to do micro dosing of these, these things, what are the effects? What are the side effects, if any? What is it that you're experiencing with a micro dose of a psychedelic?

Greg Lawrence 6:56  

Well, I just first want to say that micro dosing has exploded outside of Silicon Valley. So I take monitor and take part in a lot of online groups, and a lot of Facebook groups and online forums that are specifically about micro dosing. And there are people coming to these groups every day, dealing with issues like anxiety, depression, OCD, traumatic brain injury, you know, childhood trauma, and these are people who aren't even considering using psychedelics in the classic sense, they just want to take advantage of the effects of micro dosing. And I also want to say that there is scant scientific evidence that micro dosing actually has an effect just because there's been almost no research done on it. It's still in process. But you know, for all we know, a lot of these things are the placebo or placebo effect if they are fantastic. Yay, placebo, I say

Ari Gronich 7:46  

this kind of a medicine, weight reliance, like if somebody is heavier or lighter, or does that not matter much.

Greg Lawrence 7:56  

psychedelics have very little to do with body mass, weight, height, etc. They're sort of like psychotropic drugs like antidepressants, there's a standard dosage, but you know, three grams of mushrooms can really send a 300 pound person into the sky and do nothing for 100 pound person depends on the person's receptors, their own tolerance, etc.

Ari Gronich 8:19  

Okay, so what is the chemistry that happens in your brain when you are micro dosing and when you're macro dosing,

Greg Lawrence 8:26  

micro dosing, we don't have as much evidence about exactly what happens when you take the medicine. But for a standard dose of say, serotonergic psychedelics, LSD, psilocybin, mescaline. They are serotonin agonists. So they will latch on to your serotonin receptors. serotonin is known as the feel good neurotransmitter, it's the feel good chemical. These substances don't release more serotonin into your system, they just kind of mimic serotonin. Once they grab onto that receptor and start mimicking serotonin, what happens on the other side is not exactly clear. physiologically. There are a lot of technical things that happen. What basically happens, though, is that difficult things start to try to come to the surface for you sort of the opposite of the action of an antidepressant antidepressant takes those difficult feelings and tries to just push them down here, so you don't have to deal with them. psychedelics do the opposite. They try to bring them to the surface so that you'll experience them process them.

Ari Gronich 9:26  

So it sounds like it's basically turning the light into the dark. You know, like you put a flashlight in where you've been dark and so all of a sudden, you can see what is going on and spotlight it correct.

Greg Lawrence 9:41  

Yeah, psychedelics are what are called nonspecific amplifiers of consciousness. So what will often happen is something that is bothering you that you've been suppressing something you didn't realize what's important to you something that is a problem for you that you've been ignoring will come to the surface. I'll give you a Perfect example of this young man who who called me he had had a difficult journey on mushrooms. And the following happened to him. He grew up in a small town in the Midwest at the same friends all of his life, went through grade school all the way through high school with them. good looking guy, very athletic, very popular, always had girlfriends ton of friends. He said he never had to try too hard to do anything. The major he wanted to take in college was different than that of his friends. So he ended up going out of state where he knew nobody. Suddenly the guy is 19. And he has no friends and no prospects and doesn't know what do you realize is I've never had to make friends from scratch. It just always has been there. And he's kind of lonely and a little bit desperate. Luckily, he finds these three guys were just great. he clicks with them immediately. They like to joke around with him. They include him as part of their gang. And he's hanging out with these guys for a couple of weeks. And they say, Hey, we're going to go to the forest and do mushrooms this weekend, would you like to go? He says, Yeah, I'd like that. He's been hearing about this, he wants to try it. They go to the forest, they find a spot, they take the mushrooms. And about 45 minutes later, while they're all talking, this guy realizes these are terrible people. They're not joking around with me, they're insulting me and where I'm from. They're racist, or misogynist. They're just not the kind of people I want to be with at all. So he spent about three hours being around these people who made him feel very unsafe, that was the bad experience he had. But that just shows you what happens in our everyday consciousness. There are things that bother us every day that we just sort of put to the side, we take these substances, and that says, hey, this thing is bothering you, you really need to look at it. Because everything looks fine on the surface. But there's a feeling that something's just not right, that might be might manifest as anxiety, depression, just a feeling of unease. Being stuck having to deal with procrastination, maybe I'm not getting along in my relationships with people. These all cause issues, but they're things that we're suppressing and putting in the background. psychedelics will bring those things into light for us, as you say.

Unknown Speaker 12:04  

Awesome. So

Ari Gronich 12:08  

societal effects. So what do you think that the benefit to society itself, is when people begin to experiment more and heal their traumas, more from using psychedelics?

Greg Lawrence 12:30  

Well, I think it's very much like when people start down a path of personal or spiritual development. So there are two theories, I think you could say about when people start down that path. One is that I have 57 problems. And next week, I have 52. And a few weeks, I have 48. And then I have 37. And pretty soon I have 28 problems. And nothing outside of me has changed. All this changes my perception of what is a problem, when I'm making a problem out of it. The other theory is that I still have those 57 problems, it's just not a problem that I have them anymore. But I would say the societal effect is that I stopped perceiving that I have so many problems, ROM das said, the only thing that I can do for you is work on myself, the only thing that you can do for me is work on yourself. So when I have less problems, and you have less problems, there are two things that happen. The first thing is that there are less problems in the world. Now you and I each have you have 28, and I have 35. But there's not 114 anymore, so there are less problems in the world. The other thing that happens is now I know what kinds of things I might want to address, because if I have 57 problems, and I go out trying to solve all of those, I'm trying to solve Phantom problems in there somewhere. I'm trying to solve something that just seems like a problem to me. The more I can cut that down, the more I can focus on what might be real problems outside of myself, what things what kind of things I might want to see change, what kind of things I might want to contribute to what kind of world I want to see. That's the societal. The major one.

Ari Gronich 14:03  

Very cool, very cool. So at the end of my interviews, I always ask the same question. And that's three to four tips, tricks, actionable steps that somebody can take immediately to create a new tomorrow today for themselves and activate their vision for a better world.

Greg Lawrence 14:24  

There are two that I would give. One is to be more mindful whenever possible. So think about what you are doing as much as possible and don't be on autopilot. Move the trash can put your keys in a different place, park your car somewhere else. take a different route. When you go to the store, do anything you can to wake yourself up, brush your teeth with your non dominant hand, change your habits, stop doing things the same way. You've always done them because it has you on autopilot and you are responding to your environment in a particular way rather than thinking about what you're doing. The second is to cultivate an under Standing of the fact that it's okay to feel your feelings that there is no such thing as a wrong thought or emotion. There is no such thing as a wrong thought or emotion. You don't have to act on them. But the fact that you're angry, the fact that you feel hatred towards someone, the fact that you are ashamed of something, all of those things are perfectly welcome. And they will resolve themselves. Trying not to resolve them, is what keeps them in us and keeps us tied up. So learning to be mindful, feeling our feelings, untangle both of those things together a good mindfulness meditation practice would be very helpful.

Ari Gronich 15:39  

That's awesome. Yeah, sometimes I'll play ping pong left handed just to shift my my energy, especially when i get i do i do that with tennis also, just when i when i get stuck in that rut, you know, of playing and I'm, all of a sudden, I'm in this perpetual motion of of not doing what I know to do, I'll switch just to reset myself. So I love that. I also like, you know, writing with both hands at the same time, or shaking hands to write with the opposite hand, works the other side of your brain. And those are all very good things. And I never thought of really trying to do that while while in a psychedelic journey. But that might be an interesting experiment, as well as is switching hands while in the journey because that would trigger that other side of the brain that's maybe been non active or less active or deactivated. So it'd be an interesting experiment as well switch sides and see how well you write with the opposite side. You know, while in that in that space, because maybe cut girl for you.

Greg Lawrence 17:00  

I never thought of that. I definitely write better women psychedelics, for some reason. My writing is more legible. Is it? Is it? Yeah,

Ari Gronich 17:09  

I have doctor writing so. So you can I can hardly read my own writing. When I get into doctor mode, and I'm filling out, you know, forms and things like that. But it's, it's just an interesting thought that that you popped in my head was, okay, so what if we switched hands? while experiencing that? Are we going to switch because we're switching sides of brains? When we switch hands? Do we switch thoughts? Do we switch experiences? Do we switch to the things that we're not that are not in that automatic experience of life? You know,

Unknown Speaker 17:46  

I like that,

Ari Gronich 17:47  

how many people here in the audience have have experienced driving somewhere, and all of a sudden, you're on your way to work, but you were going somewhere else. But just the automatic response of I go this way, and I go to work, and all of a sudden you're like, Oh, wait, that's not where I was going? I

Greg Lawrence 18:06  

gotta go, sir. Yeah, or driving for two hours and realize you don't remember it? one bit of driving?

Ari Gronich 18:14  

Yeah, I always I, I've had that experience. I had that experience. Actually, once. When I did a vision quest, I was up on the mountain for four days, no food, no water, sweat lodges on both sides of the sweat. So I was completely dehydrated and completely into that spirit world. And when I was driving back, I was up in the mountains of Ohio, going back into LA. And if you can imagine the mountains of Ohio a very rural kind of environment, and then you get on the freeway going to LA and it's a very different experience. And it felt to me like I was not driving at all It felt like I was in the middle of a video game. And everything was coming towards me instead of me going forward. It was really fascinating. And then I was like, how did I? I'm like, I'm almost home. How did I get here? interesting experience. But yeah, I like it. Well, thank you, you know, so much for being on Greg. Is there anything? If anybody wants to get a hold of you? How did they get ahold of you? They want to experience or or just learn more about this, this adventure of plant medicines.

Greg Lawrence 19:31  

And you can find me at psychedelicintegrationspecialists.com and on Facebook, I'm psychedelic integration specialists. And you can always reach me at Greg@psychedelicintegrationspecialists calm. It's a lot of typing, but it works. Awesome.

Ari Gronich 19:45  

Thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate you coming on. And, you know, this is a controversial subject. And it's not something that I actually took lightly when I decided to invite Greg on I wanted to give you a perspective of what's possible in the world when we stopped closing our minds and start opening them up to those to those possibilities, and very cautiously and very safely and with a lot of education and research. And I just I wanted I was, I was just very sure that I wanted to have Greg on here because I wanted this perspective to to make it to the audience. So thank you so much for being here. Gray. I appreciate you. Remember, we're creating a new tomorrow today, take some actionable steps. Hopefully you have gotten a lot out of this episode. My name is Ari Gronich. I'm your host remember to LIKE subscribe, review rate comments, we want to start conversations about these things. And you know, just expand on the knowledge and expand on the shift. So let's create a new tomorrow today. And I'm your host Ari Gronich, thank you so much for being here. And we'll see you next time.