How do we stay human and compassionate when the world feels like it's on fire?

In this episode, we sit down with Daan Keiman, a Nectara collaborator, Buddhist practitioner, psychedelic care giver, and someone deeply committed to holding both grief and joy in these turbulent times. Daan brings the wisdom of years of spiritual practice, the honesty of someone still learning, and the courage to face the most difficult questions without pretending to have all the answers.

Together, we explore the tension between spiritual truth and lived experience, between rage and compassion, between the desire to change the world and the acceptance of what we cannot control. Daan shares what Buddhism teaches about responding versus reacting, the fierce energy of anger and how to transform it, and what it means to practice love amid suffering...even when that practice asks everything of us.

Whether you're navigating grief, anger, confusion, or simply trying to stay present in an increasingly turbulent world, this conversation will meet you where you are and invite you deeper into the questions that matter most.

Come join us as we explore what it means to go against the stream with an open heart.

• Struggling to balance spiritual practice with activism and social engagement
• Navigating grief, anger, or despair about the state of the world
• Wondering how to stay compassionate without spiritually bypassing difficult emotions
• Curious about Buddhist perspectives on suffering, impermanence, and compassion
• Seeking to integrate psychedelic insights into meaningful action
• Trying to understand what it means to "live love" in times of injustice
• Exploring the relationship between personal healing and systemic change
• Looking for guidance on working with fierce emotions like anger and rage

• Finding joy amid suffering: Buddhist practice in turbulent times
• Responsibility vs. reactivity: creating space for compassionate response
• The tension between spiritual truth and lived human experience
• Working with anger as compassionate energy rather than spiritually bypassing it
• Going against the stream: individual practice and cultural resistance
• Acceptance and impermanence in the face of death and uncertainty
• The myth of individual problems: understanding systemic causes of suffering
• Integration as engagement with the world, not retreat from it
• Small acts of love as meaningful resistance
• Devotion to compassion while acknowledging our capacity for violence
• The role of community and relational practice in transformation
• Normalizing difficult emotions and violent impulses on the spiritual path

If you’ve spent any time working in the psychedelic space, you’ve likely felt the strain growing beneath the surface. Integration has become a buzzword, yet the actual skills needed to support people after deep experiences have not kept pace. New facilitators are entering the field every week. Training programs multiply. But practical foundations, ethical clarity, and real world competency are often missing.

Many practitioners find themselves navigating complex cases with little guidance. Personal experience gets mistaken for professional readiness. Some trainings offer inspiring ideas but lack depth. Others promise certification without preparing people for the realities of supporting someone through confusion, fear, overwhelm, or unfinished processes.

This gap affects everyone. It creates uncertainty for clients, frustration for practitioners, and a field full of well intentioned people who simply need better tools.

To help illuminate these challenges and the path forward, I’ve included a 30 minute talk in this email where you can hear Marc Aixalà speak directly about the state of integration work today. His reflections come from more than a decade of responding to over a thousand real integration cases through the ICEERS Support Center. It’s a rare chance to listen to someone who has actually been doing this work at scale.

This talk also introduces why the ICEERS Integration Training is so valuable. Unlike many programs on the market, this one is built entirely from practical experience. It gives facilitators and care providers real frameworks, scenario based tools, and a clear model for supporting both positive and challenging psychedelic experiences.

If you work with journeyers, or hope to, this program offers essential grounding in a field that urgently needs it.

What happens after the journey ends? Why do insights fade? Why does healing feel so hard to hold?

In this episode, we sit down with Marc Aixalà, founder of the ICEERS Support Center, clinician in psilocybin research, and someone who has walked beside more than a thousand people navigating the aftermath of psychedelic experiences. Marc brings the clarity of an engineer, the presence of a therapist, and the embodied wisdom of years spent holding space through vulnerability and transformation.

Together, we move past the buzzwords and into the lived terrain where expectations soften, insights meet resistance, and healing unfolds in its own quiet rhythm.

Marc shares what he's learned about inner challenges, the myths of integration, and the support that makes real change possible.

Whether you're a journeyer, facilitator, or simply walking the path of inner work, this conversation will help you understand better how to root your integration into daily life; where the real transformation happens.

Come join us as we step into the heart of integration.

Pascal sits down with Troy Valencia to explore the world of Iboga and the Bwiti tradition.

Troy shares his own journey of initiation and healing with Iboga, offering insights into how ancient practices and modern science can come together in respectful and effective ways. He emphasizes the importance of community, sustainability, and ethics in the use of this sacred plant medicine.

We also dive into the science of Iboga and Ibogaine, their therapeutic potential, and the risks and safety considerations that must be understood.

This is a conversation about healing as both a personal and collective process—where science, spirit, and community all play a role.

🌿 Who this is for

👉 Journeyers curious about Iboga as a healing path, and what makes it distinct from other medicines

👉 Seekers who want to engage responsibly with the Bwiti lineage and support ethical, sustainable practices

👉 Anyone interested in the intersection of traditional knowledge, conservation, and modern therapeutic science

✨ Key themes

• Iboga as a powerful plant medicine with deep cultural roots
• The Bwiti lineage: community, lineage, and spiritual growth
• Sustainability and conservation: protecting Iboga’s future
• Iboga vs. Ibogaine: whole plant and single alkaloid approaches
• The role of intention, safety, and preparation in the Iboga experience
• Integration and community as the foundation of lasting transformation
• Ethical sourcing and questions to ask providers before choosing to work with them

🗣️ Notable quotes

• “The only way to really understand what the Bwiti is, is to sit in ceremony yourself. Words can’t capture the beauty and depth—it’s a way of life, a collective heartbeat.”
• “Life doesn’t just happen to you—it happens for you, with you, and eventually as you. Iboga taught me that.”
• “Community isn’t optional—it’s the soil where healing takes root and blossoms.”
• “Iboga is the rainbow. Ibogaine is just the color red.”
• “The medicine is powerful, but it’s what you do with your life afterwards that matters most.”

⏱️ Chapters

00:00 – Introduction to Iboga and the Bwiti Tradition

03:07 – Troy’s Journey and Connection to Iboga

06:08 – Understanding the Bwiti Tradition

08:47 – Living a Bwiti Life in the Modern World

11:52 – The Earthy Connection of Iboga

14:55 – Sustainability and Conservation of Iboga

17:47 – Finding Ethical Iboga Providers

20:35 – The Science Behind Iboga and Ibogaine

29:33 – Understanding Ibogaine and Its Medical Context

31:29 – Risks and Considerations for Iboga and Ibogaine

34:08 – Navigating the Experience: Control and Intention

36:39 – The Importance of Environment and Support

39:16 – The Healing Journey: More Than Just a Quick Fix

40:12 – Psycho-Spiritual Journeys: Deep Healing Through Iboga

48:16 – Empowerment and Community in Healing

51:19 – Preparing for an Iboga Retreat

55:01 – Integration: The Key to Lasting Change

58:31 – The Role of Community in Healing

Mee Ok shares her powerful personal story of healing from chronic illness through Ayahuasca and her deep relationships with Shipibo teachers in the Amazon. As a queer, transracial adoptee and survivor, her lens is uniquely attuned to the intersections of identity, power, and healing, and how those dynamics show up, often unconsciously, in psychedelic spaces.

Together, they unpack the uncomfortable but necessary themes of spiritual superiority, cultural appropriation, unconscious harm, and the ongoing impact of colonial mindsets—especially in Western facilitation of sacred plant medicines.

This episode is for:
- Facilitators and space-holders who are willing to reflect on how harm, even with good intentions, can still be present in healing spaces—and what humility, feedback, and reparations might look like in practice.

- Journeyers and medicine seekers who want to engage more responsibly with the traditions they benefit from, make conscious choices about who they sit with, and understand their role in the larger ecosystem of healing.

**THEMES**
- Shadows and light in sacred spaces
- Why Mee Ok believes Westerners should not be serving sacred plant medicines
- What “reparations and sacrifice” mean in a healing context
- Cultural and spiritual contamination vs. sacred exchange
- How feedback is an act of love and a pathway to integrity
- The danger of pedestal culture in spiritual work
- Indigenous sovereignty and supporting lineage-led healing
- Ways to be in right relationship with sacred traditions

This is a conversation about truth-telling, leaning into challenging topics, and healing as a relational, not personal, path. It’s about becoming the kind of people—and the kind of community—the medicine has been asking us to be all along.

**CONNECT**
Book a 1:1 session with Mee Ok: https://www.nectara.co/guides/mee-ok-icaro
Join Mee Ok's BIPOC circles on Nectara: https://www.nectara.co/membership
Explore her private offerings: https://www.HoldingCompassionate.space
Mee Ok's Substack: https://meeok.substack.com/

In this heartfelt conversation, Pascal and embodied leadership coach Bettina Rothe explore the deep wisdom of the body and its role in healing, integration, and connection. Bettina shares her personal journey from disconnection to rediscovering the body as a powerful source of intelligence and transformation. Together, they explore how breath, movement, and presence can help us return to wholeness—physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

The dialogue touches on the role of embodiment in psychedelic experiences, how trauma—including intergenerational patterns—can live in the body, and how somatic practices can support healing, self-love, and more grounded relationships with ourselves and others. It’s an invitation to slow down, listen inward, and remember the body as a sacred ally on the path of transformation.

Key Takeaways

1. Embodiment is the foundation of wholeness—true healing comes from integrating body, mind, heart, and spirit.
2. The body is our gateway to psychedelic experiences—staying grounded in the body deepens the journey and supports integration.
3. Movement is medicine—authentic, intuitive movement helps release emotions, regulate the nervous system, and reconnect to self.
4. The body holds ancestral and intergenerational stories—pain or tension can carry wisdom passed down through our lineage.
5. Somatic practices build capacity—they help us stay with discomfort, expand our ability to feel, and increase emotional resilience.
6. Rhythm is a universal language—dancing or moving in rhythm with others fosters deep connection and collective healing.
7. Pleasure and play are part of the healing path—simple joys like dancing in the kitchen or smelling a flower can reawaken presence and aliveness.
8. Self-love starts with the body—treating the body with kindness opens the heart and transforms how we relate to ourselves and the world.

Notable Quotes

• "Embodiment is essential for wholeness."
• "Shared experiences of movement foster connection, community, and self-expression."
• "Psychedelics enhance the connection to the body."
• "Being present allows for deeper experiences."
• "The body is a library of wisdom."
• "There's an energetic imprint that we carry."
• "We hold a lot of stories from our ancestors."
• "We suppress being tired and our hunger."
• "We need to allow ourselves to experience life."
• "The body doesn't lie and it keeps count."
• "Healing is not always pleasurable."
• "Movement is the medicine."

Connect with Bettina

• Join her movement circles on Nectara's Membership
• Visit her website to learn about her upcoming offerings

In this heartfelt episode, Pascal sits down with Nigel Pedlingham to explore the gentle art of “nesting”—a nurturing practice of creating spaces and rhythms that cultivate safety, slowness, and healing.

Through their warm conversation, Nigel invites us to see nesting as an embodied way of life, blending rituals, nature connection, and intentional community. Together, they reflect on practical ways to embrace stillness, integrate transformative experiences, and remember our innate interconnectedness. Join them to discover how simple acts of care and presence can profoundly enrich our lives, helping us build internal and communal nests rooted deeply in wisdom, compassion, and love.

Key themes

• Nesting as a way of being and self-care
• Slowness and presence in daily life
• Weaving practices for transformation and integration
• Listening with curiosity and discernment
• Community, circles, and collective healing
• Nature connection and embodied wisdom
• Nesting as support for preparation and integration of psychedelic experiences
• Remembering our interconnectedness
• Reclaiming nesting as a society

Key takeaways

• Embrace Nesting: Cultivate intentional spaces—both inner and outer—that foster safety, comfort, and nurturing in your daily life and healing journeys.
• Slow Down to Tune In: Prioritize slowness and presence to connect deeply with yourself, making space for discernment and clarity.
• Practice Curiosity and Discernment: Approach life experiences with openness, asking thoughtful questions and listening to your inner wisdom and intuition.
• Integrate through Weaving: Recognize transformation as an ongoing, organic process of weaving experiences, practices, and insights into a meaningful whole.
• Connect to Nature and the Body: Regularly ground yourself in nature and engage with your body’s wisdom as vital sources of healing and guidance.
• Create and Seek Community: Engage in circles, rituals, and spaces of radical hospitality to foster deep connections, belonging, and collective healing.
• Remember Your True Nature: Return consistently to simple yet powerful practices—such as breathing, gratitude, and stillness—to realign with the fundamental interconnectedness of life.
• Keep It Small and Practical: Begin reclaiming the art of nesting through small, daily acts of care and intentionality, positively influencing yourself and those around you.

Notable quotes

• "Nesting evokes a sense of calm and safety."
• "The nest is an alchemical vessel for transformation."
• "Curiosity is an enormous value in this process."
• "There are no shortcuts in building your nest."
• "Listening to the body is crucial for alignment."
• "The breath is our constant companion."
• "Wandering is essential for discovering and growing."
• "You don't need to keep looking."
• "The journey is always one of failure."
• "Every day is a ceremony."
• "There's no separation."

Connect with Nigel
Book a 1:1 session: https://www.nectara.co/guides/nigel-pedlingham
View his website: https://www.maguey.nl

Pascal chats with Jerónimo Mazarrasa, Director of Social Innovation at ICEERS. Together they discuss the critical risks of using Ayahuasca—both for participants and facilitators—as the practice expands rapidly beyond traditional Indigenous contexts.

Ayahuasca can offer profound healing and transformative experiences, but it’s not without significant risks. In this episode, Jerónimo reveals the biggest risks identified through ICEERS’ extensive global research and experience with harm reduction.

This episode is essential listening for anyone involved in—or considering—the use of ayahuasca, emphasizing responsibility, ethical practice, and informed, conscious participation.

Tune in, stay safe, and journey wisely.
‍

🌿 Interested in elevating your Ayahuasca facilitation and client safety in your practice? Sign up for ICEERS' AyaSafety course and save 15% with the code AYATARA. Open until May 1st only. The course is in its 4th cohort and it includes three Nectara guides as teachers.

‍
‍Episode themes

• The very real and important risks of Ayahuasca that all participants should know about.
• The critical difference between desire and vocation in facilitation.
• Why facilitators must deeply engage in personal and shadow work beyond mere technical training.
• The unique challenges of integrating traditional plant medicine practices in modern, globalized contexts.

Show Notes

Top 5 Risks for Ayahuasca Participants:

1. Lack of true consent: The primary contraindication is taking ayahuasca without fully wanting or understanding it.
2. “Runaway Participant”: Individuals who leave ceremonies prematurely, posing serious safety risks.
3. Impact on relationships: How participant’s experiences can negatively affect their families and relationships.
4. Misinterpretation of visions (“Ayahuasca told me...”): Participants mistaking insights for literal directives, leading to impulsive, harmful decisions (e.g., quitting jobs, divorce, radical life changes).
5. Overwhelming or traumatic experiences: Intense spiritual and psychological experiences that can lead to crisis.

Top 5 Risks for Ayahuasca Facilitators:

1. Power dynamics: Mismanagement of the inherent power imbalance between facilitator and participant.
2. Financial challenges: Ethical issues arising from participants’ gratitude manifesting financially in ways that can compromise boundaries.
3. Sexual energy: Increased intimacy and suggestibility creating ethical pitfalls.
4. Isolation of facilitators: Long-term facilitators risk becoming isolated without peers to provide honest feedback or accountability, leading to unchecked ego or harmful behaviors.
5. Intercultural misalignment: Misunderstandings and ethical challenges that arise when facilitators work outside their own cultural frameworks without adequate understanding.

Notable quotes

• I've come to understood thatthese plants are more like flashlights that you can use to shed light on things that were formerly sort of the shades or unknown or dark rather than levers that you can use to push and move things.
• I didn’t expect things to move so quickly, and parts of it have left me with a bittersweet feeling. What interests me most is how the introduction of psychedelics or plant medicines could positively transform our cultures and societies—not how we could reshape these practices to fit into our existing societal structures.
• Certainly, our narrow definition of prescription medicine—and perhaps even medicine more broadly—is challenged by psychedelics. Many of their greatest potentials aren’t strictly medical treatments but rather fall closer to prevention or helping navigate significant life situations.
• If you don’t have someone who plays that role—whether a mentor, therapist, supervisor, or peer—to provide honest feedback, you risk falling into isolation and self-delusion. Even highly accomplished facilitators who’ve undergone extensive training can become dangerously isolated without someone to reflect their blind spots back to them.
• It began in the Amazon, spreading gradually—from one tribe to the neighboring tribe, then to others. From tribes to jungle towns, then to cities within the country, and eventually beyond borders, reaching all the way to us today. Ayahuasca spreads organically, from person to person and group to group, because people find genuine value in it. This slow, organic growth isn’t necessarily a bad thing. After all, we’re dealing with something delicate and powerful—not a consumer product like new food or sunglasses, but something more akin to X-rays, offering us an extraordinary capacity to look deeply within ourselves.
• Many training programs focus primarily on the technical aspects of facilitating ceremonies. Very few, however, dive deeply into personal inquiry—questions like: Why are you doing this? Why do you want to facilitate? What brought you here in the first place, and what truly motivates you?

Join the AyaSafety Course‍

Our friends at ICEERS Academy have opened enrollment for the fourth edition of AyaSafety, the first and only online community for facilitators committed to safety and ethics in plant work in non-traditional contexts.

This 6-month harm reduction training provides essential tools, best practices, and strategies, developed in collaboration with experts in medicine, psychology, ethics, and harm reduction, to help facilitators create safer, more responsible practices.

🌿 Receive 15% off when you enroll using code AYATARA

🌿 Applications open until May 1st 

🌿 Classes will run between May and November 2025

Be part of the first global community of facilitators dedicated to safety, ethics, and responsible plant medicine work. Sign up here!

In this conversation, Pascal Tremblay speaks with Dr. Pilar Hernandez-Wolfe, a counseling psychologist, family therapist, and advocate for ethical and culturally grounded psychedelic practices. Together, they explore the intersections of decolonization, access, and ethics within the rapidly evolving psychedelic space.

Dr. Hernandez-Wolfe shares her personal and professional journey, highlighting her experiences with yagé (ayahuasca), her work in Oregon’s psilocybin-assisted therapy framework (Measure 109), and the challenges of creating inclusive and spiritually integrated training programs.

This episode is for facilitators, therapists, and experts in the psychedelic field looking to navigate the complexities of ethics, reciprocity, and community-based healing.

Key Topics and Themes

• Social Location and Psychedelic Work – How personal and cultural backgrounds shape access, opportunities, and perspectives in medicine work.
• Colonialism and Privilege in Psychedelics – Why the psychedelic industry often mirrors systemic inequalities and how to challenge those dynamics.
• Experiences with Measure 109 (Oregon’s Psilocybin Program) – Insights from working on the initiative, the systemic barriers, and the commercialization of psychedelic care.
• Decolonization and Border Thinking – Bringing Indigenous knowledge, spirituality, and relational ethics into psychedelic spaces.
• The Challenges of Training and Access – The high cost of legal psychedelic therapy training, alternative community-driven education models, and the importance of non-Western ways of knowing.
• The Role of Reciprocity and Spiritual Ethics – Why reconnecting with nature, community, and spiritual practice is essential for the future of psychedelic healing.
•  Introducing Weaving Bridges Natural Fellowship – Dr. Hernandez-Wolfe’s innovative church-based approach to psychedelic education, based on reciprocity, gift economies, and ethical integrity.
• Choosing the Right Psychedelic Training Program – A guide for facilitators on navigating the many available programs, balancing scientific knowledge with spiritual wisdom, and finding ethical alignment.
• The Future of Psychedelic Work – Moving beyond profit-driven models to create truly healing, inclusive, and regenerative spaces.

Quotes from the Episode

• “We need to move beyond the human-centered view and actually ask the mushrooms and the plant medicines what is needed.” 

• “The psychedelic space is still shaped by extractive, capitalist systems—our work is to create alternatives that center reciprocity and ethics.”

• “We don’t all have the answers. Diversity brings richness, just like in nature.”

• “It’s not about the right way or the wrong way—it’s about having spiritual ethics lead the way rather than colonialism and extractive systems.”

Resources and Mentions

• Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass (Book)

• Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera (Book)

• Measure 109 and Oregon Psilocybin Services – Additional information

• Nectara Mentorship Program – www.nectara.co/interwoven

• Subtle Winds Psilocybin Training (Oregon-based model)

In this episode of One-Degree Shifts, hosted by Pascal Tremblay, co-founder of Nectara and Nicholas Powers, an author and Associate Professor of English at SUNY Old Westbury, discusses his new book, 'Black Psychedelic Revolution: From Trauma to Liberation.' Dr. Powers discusses the book's core premise on how psychedelics can address historical, intergenerational, and racialized trauma, particularly within Black communities.

Drawing from his personal experiences and extensive research, Nicholas explores the socio-political potential of psychedelics, emphasizing the need for accessible psychedelic therapy to heal individuals and broader society. The conversation covers a wide array of topics, including the therapeutic impact of psychedelics, the importance of cultural representation, and the revolutionary potential of societal healing for marginalized communities and beyond.

Key themes:

• How can psychedelics heal historical, intergenerational, and racialized trauma?
• Exploring our relationship to the systems of power
• Sparking and scaling a revolution of wellbeing in black communities
• How do we make the space work well for true societal and inclusive healing?

00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:23 The Journey of Writing 'Black Psychedelic Revolution'
09:34 Personal Experiences in Black Communities
25:50 Psychedelics and Societal Healing
37:21 Organizing Underground Psychedelic Therapy Networks
39:55 Addressing Inclusivity and Systemic Oppression
41:51 Challenges and Contradictions in the Psychedelic Community
01:00:42 Vision for Inclusive and Accessible Psychedelic Therapy

Buy the book Black Psychedelic Revolution: How psychedelics can heal historical, intergenerational, and racialized trauma—an Afrofuturistic take on Black psychedelia toward joy and liberation.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/760811/black-psychedelic-revolution-by-nicholas-powers-phd/9798889840626/