Desperately Brave — Series 2, Episode 2

Simon van den Berg is a Dutch-German musician, singer, violin maker and Waldorf teacher who went through a psychotic episode at 23 — not from drugs or crisis, but from years of deep meditation, ancestral grief, and the courage to follow a calling nobody around him understood.

He came out the other side a musician. Studying in Vienna since 2018 under the guidance of his teacher there. Working toward a peace project that aims to resolve the collective hurt binding Germans, Austrians, Israelis, Jews and Palestinians. And featured as one of six protagonists in Luuk Bouwman's documentary The Desert of the Real (Dutch cinemas August 14, 2026).

In this conversation we go deep on initiation, incarnation, and the wisdom that only reveals itself in the dark.

What you'll take away:

• Psychosis as a hero's journey — descent, isolation and return
• How ancestral trauma can live in the body and ask to be finished
• Why the right teacher changes everything
• What wholeness actually looks like — not as endpoint, but as practice
• How music, meditation and surrender can be original medicines

🎧 Subscribe to Original Medicines on Spotify

📚 Wisdom of Psychosis | The Book

🎬 The Desert of the Real — Luuk Bouman's documentary

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📷 Follow on instagram.com/annekesips

Chapters »»»

01:30 | The opening question — what is your original medicine?

03:00 | Childhood and early dissociations

08:00 | Rudolf Steiner and the language of inner life

16:00 | Vienna — studying and the weight of tradition

27:00 | Plum Village and silence as medicine

36:00 | The psychosis — what broke and what it was trying to say

43:00 | Mahler's Resurrection — music as the first witness

57:00 | The dark night as initiation

73:00 | Collective psychosis — when the world breaks too

81:00 | The Desert of the Real — Luuk Bouman's documentary

94:00 | Integration — what wholeness actually looks like

Christopher Grant, artist and filmmaker from Pabineau First Nation, shares his profound journey living with schizophrenia. In this conversation, we explore how indigenous wisdom, connection to nature, and creative expression became his path to healing — challenging everything we think we know about psychosis and mental health. This isn't a typical mental health story. It's about trauma, spirituality, art as medicine, and the courage to exist authentically in a world that pathologizes what it doesn't understand.

»»» Listen for »»»
• How trauma and schizophrenia intersected in Christopher's life
• Why art became his healing tool and voice
• Indigenous teachings on nature, respect, and consciousness
• The role of spirituality in navigating psychosis
• Why "psychosis" might not be what we think it is
• Hope for a more compassionate future of mental health care

—

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https://annekesips.com/the-care-circle/
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»»» Chapters »»»

00:00 Introduction to the Original Medicines Podcast
02:13 Christopher Grant: A Journey Through Mental Health
07:01 The Early Signs of Schizophrenia
11:45 Navigating University Life with Schizophrenia
16:14 The Impact of Trauma on Mental Health
21:19 The Intersection of Indigenous Wisdom and Mental Health
25:17 The Struggle with Identity and Reality
30:05 Finding Healing Through Art and Expression
30:32 Diagnosis and the Journey to Self-Discovery
37:00 Facing Trauma and the Role of Introspection
46:29 The Connection to Nature and Spirituality
01:01:25 Embracing Spirituality and Self-Compassion
01:03:10 Connecting Children to Nature and Consciousness
01:08:31 The Shift in Perception of Nature
01:14:32 Art as a Reflection of the Subconscious
01:21:34 Understanding Psychosis and Connection
01:26:28 Impact of the reaction of misunderstanding others
01:30:17 Navigating Personal Experiences and Societal Perceptions

What if the most powerful medicine for healing complex trauma including DID isn't found in therapy rooms or treatment centers, but in learning to mother yourself?

This is Anneke, and welcome to The Original Medicines Podcast — where healing professionals and wisdom keepers share the medicines that aren't found in any textbook. For thousands of years, healing wisdom was passed down through stories, through touch, through presence — mouth to ear, heart to heart. In these times of collective transformation, we're returning to that ancient way of sharing knowledge that can't always be spoken in professional settings.

Today I'm joined by Anneke Lucas — author, speaker, and founder of the Unconditional Model. Drawing from her thirty-year healing journey, she gives a powerful voice to survivors of child trafficking and ritual abuse. Her story takes us through a secret global network of abuse, where power, rituals, and psychological programming dominated her early life.

But through all this darkness, one force runs like a golden thread through her recovery: the healing power of motherly love. Not just the love from mother to child, but the development of the inner mother — a loving, nurturing, yet boundary-setting force within ourselves.

Anneke shows us how innocence can be reclaimed, how compassion and healthy boundaries together form the foundation for healing, and how motherly love — in its purest, unconditional form — can be the most powerful medicine on the path to recovery.

This conversation explores motherly love as medicine — how unconditional nurturing combined with fierce protection creates the container for healing even the deepest trauma, and what it means to become your own loving mother.

This episode is in Dutch.

Content warning: This episode contains heavy themes around trauma and abuse. Please listen with care.

• Learn more about Anneke Lucas's work
• 🎧 Subscribe to Original Medicines on Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/5SvoeLBF...
• 📚 Wisdom of Psychosis | The Book: annekesips.com/book
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• 📷 Follow on Instagram: instagram.com/annekesips

What if the most powerful medicine for healing deep trauma isn't found in therapy rooms or treatment centers, but in learning to mother yourself?

This is Anneke, and welcome to The Original Medicines Podcast — where healing professionals and wisdom keepers share the medicines that aren't found in any textbook. For thousands of years, healing wisdom was passed down through stories, through touch, through presence — mouth to ear, heart to heart. In these times of collective transformation, we're returning to that ancient way of sharing knowledge that can't always be spoken in professional settings.

Today I'm joined by Chantal van Genderen — permaculture designer, food forest creator, teacher, coach, nutritional therapist, visual artist, exhibition maker, editor, beekeeper, herbalist, Hula dancer, and stargazer. As Chantal says, what's needed depends on the question you bring, but the answer is always multifaceted and full of attention — making every conversation sparkling and refreshing.

Our dialogue begins with the Hawaiian goddess Laka — she who represents the natural forces of life. Like ourselves as human beings, this conversation unfolds in many layers, weaving together Hawaiian Hula tradition, questions of cultural belonging and appropriation, and our relationship with the traumatized earth that feeds us.

We explore how culture connects us to the land, how permaculture mirrors human psychology, and what it means to heal both ourselves and the earth simultaneously. This is a free-flowing dialogue between two practitioners finding their way on a shared path — one that you're invited to walk alongside, both through this conversation and beyond.

This conversation explores indigenous wisdom as medicine — how ancient earth-based practices offer pathways to healing our disconnection from land, culture, and each other in modern life.

This episode is in Dutch.

• Connect with Chantal van Genderen here
• 🎧 Subscribe to Original Medicines Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5SvoeLBFIy0ZUcDNumugJ2
• 📚 Read more & explore the book
  https://substack.com/@annekesips
• 🌿 Join the Care Circle — monthly membership for deeper connection
  https://annekesips.com/the-care-circle/
• 📷 Follow on Instagram
  https://www.instagram.com/annekesips/

What happens when the very systems designed to heal us become sources of deeper trauma?

This is Anneke, and welcome to The Original Medicines Podcast — where healing professionals and wisdom keepers share the medicines that aren't found in any textbook. For thousands of years, healing wisdom was passed down through stories, through touch, through presence — mouth to ear, heart to heart.

In these times of collective transformation, we're returning to that ancient way of sharing knowledge that can't always be spoken in professional settings.

Today's conversation is in Dutch, and it's one of the most powerful medicine stories I've ever witnessed. I'm joined by Charlotte Apeldoorn, who shares her extraordinary journey from surviving a satanic cult in her youth to navigating multiple traumas within the mental health system itself.

After countless diagnoses, medications, and ECT treatments, Charlotte found her way to freedom — not through the system, but by breaking free from it entirely.

This is a story of resilience, sensitivity, and the original medicine of radical self-liberation.

Charlotte's journey touches the deepest questions of how we heal trauma when the very systems meant to help us become sources of additional harm. Her story is both heartbreaking and deeply inspiring — a testament to the medicine that lives within us when everything else falls away.

This conversation explores radical self-liberation as medicine — how breaking free from systems that harm us becomes its own healing practice, and what it means to trust our own inner knowing when everything else fails us.

This episode is in Dutch.

A quick note about the audio quality: we experienced some technical difficulties with the microphone during recording, which our sound engineer has corrected using AI technology. You may hear small audio inconsistencies, but the connection and intention of this conversation was too profound not to share. Sometimes the most important medicines come through imperfect channels.

• Connect with Charlotte Apeldoorn here

• 🎧 Subscribe to Original Medicines Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5SvoeLBFIy0ZUcDNumugJ2

• 📚 Wisdom of Psychosis, the book https://annekesips.com/book/
  
• 🌿 Join my substack for deeper connection
  https://annekesips.substack.com/

• 📷 Follow on Instagram
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The Original Medicines Podcast explores healing beyond labels through raw conversations about trauma, spirituality, and the wisdom hidden in our most challenging experiences. I'm Anneke Sips, and this podcast is primarily in English with select episodes in Dutch.

Emma B from GrowFree and I share a similar path — we both facilitate dialogue and practices that bring together lived and professional experience to transform trauma into connection.

Through her own podcast and therapeutic work, she offers supportive conversations that help us move beyond unconscious reactions and unproductive cycles of fight, flight, and freeze, so we can develop resilient, intuitive habits and deep connection with the fullness of who we are.

I've known Emma for several years, and I knew she was exactly the right person to explore a topic that's both beautiful and, for some, terrifying - the Dark Night of the Soul and how recognizing our history becomes medicine.

This conversation dives into how our past experiences, even the most challenging ones, can transform from sources of pain into pathways of healing and wisdom.

Ready to explore how your history can become your medicine?

Let's dive in.

• Find Emma B here
• 🎧 Subscribe to Original Medicines Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5SvoeLBFIy0ZUcDNumugJ2
• 📚 Read more & explore the book
  https://substack.com/@annekesips
• 🌿 Join Substack for deeper connection
  https://annekesips.com/the-care-circle/
• 📷 Follow on Instagram
  https://www.instagram.com/annekesips/

The Original Medicines Podcast explores healing beyond labels through raw conversations about trauma, spirituality, and the wisdom hidden in our most challenging experiences. I'm Anneke Sips, and this podcast is primarily in English with select episodes in Dutch.

Dr. Simone Ardesch is both a dear friend and colleague — a passionate physician specializing in integrative medicine with a focus on mind-body healing. In her practice, she shares her own journey of consciousness development, personal leadership, and growth, alongside her deep love for nature. She believes that connecting with our heart, body, emotions, talents, and inner wisdom forms the essential foundation for physical health and vitality.

In her medical practice, Simone has witnessed how this holistic approach creates the groundwork for true healing. Beyond her clinical work, she serves as director of the Amsterdam School for Integrative Medicine & Health, a continuing education institute for physicians seeking to expand beyond conventional medical paradigms.

This conversation explores unconditional love as medicine - how heart-based healing transforms both practitioners and patients, and what it means to practice medicine from a place of wholeness rather than fragmentation.

This episode is in Dutch.

• Dr. Simone Ardesch's work here

• 🎧 Subscribe to Original Medicines Spotify

• 📚 Wisdom of Psychosis, the book

• 🌿 Join my substack for deeper connection

• 📷 Follow on Instagram

The Original Medicines Podcast explores healing beyond labels through raw conversations about trauma, spirituality, and the wisdom hidden in our most challenging experiences.

I'm Anneke Sips, and this podcast is primarily in English with select episodes in Dutch.

Victoria Hyndman is my guest today. We first met in Amsterdam's yoga scene, but where we truly connect is in the deeper layers of yoga philosophy and Samkhya wisdom.

Victoria has this beautiful gift of bringing the profound teachings of Yoga and Ayurveda to the surface with lightness and accessibility. This became a nourishing conversation about life, death, and everything in between.

Born in Canada and raised in Amsterdam, Victoria's journey led her to Los Angeles in 1997, where she discovered her calling in yoga and Ayurveda. After 13 transformative years, she studied under renowned Dr. Vasant Lad at The Ayurvedic Institute in New Mexico, becoming a certified Ayurvedic Practitioner and Ayuryoga Teacher. Back in the Netherlands as a mother, she's spent over a decade sharing Ayurveda's wisdom at Delight Yoga & Academy, training hundreds of students. Through her spaces Tory's Livingroom and Bluebirds Oost, she creates sanctuaries for healing. She also hosts "Vedic Talks" podcast and leads annual retreats in Ibiza.

This episode is in Dutch.

• Victoria's work here

• • 🎧 Subscribe to Original Medicines Spotify

  • 📚 Wisdom of Psychosis, the book

  • 🌿 Join my substack for deeper connection

  • 📷 Follow on Instagram

In our epidemic of disconnection, we've forgotten that sensitivity is intelligence and symptoms carry wisdom.

I'm Anneke Sips - community psychiatric nurse, trauma therapist, and yoga therapist exploring healing beyond labels through raw conversations about trauma, spirituality, and the wisdom hidden in our most challenging experiences.

The Original Medicines Podcast dives into the medicines that aren't taught in textbooks — the embodied wisdom that emerges from trauma-informed, spiritually-aware recovery. We explore what it means to reclaim our experiences as pathways to deeper understanding about life... and death.

Today I'm thrilled to start the podcast and welcome Darja Tjioe, who broke the Dutch freediving record by descending 84 meters underwater. We met at The Inner Embassy yoga studio in The Hague recently, and I knew she'd bring profound insights about water as medicine, silence as medicine, and breath holding as medicine. From her unique perspective as a freediver, we explore how these practices relate to navigating the Dark Night of the Soul.

Ready to dive deep into the original medicines that heal? Let's go.

This podcast is primarily in English with select episodes in Dutch.

• More about Darja's work here

• 🎧 Subscribe to Original Medicines Spotify

• 📚 Wisdom of Psychosis, the book

• 🌿 Join my Substack for deeper connection

• 📷 Follow on Instagram