Walking with Jaguars

In this episode of the Walking With Jaguars Podcast, Matt Blanco sits down with Hamid Jabbar, also known as the Mineral Shaman, to unpack why so many Westerners break down on the medicine path, and what actually has to be cleaned in the body before any ceremony can do its work.

From a career as an attorney with a string of letters after his name, to the Shipibo lineage deep in the Amazon, to founding the Huachuma Foundation in the Sacred Valley, Hamid has spent years tracing the overlap between minerals and plant medicine.We dig into why the same practices that heal a Shipibo elder can leave a Westerner dysregulated, how industrialized food, pharmaceuticals and environmental toxins leave us depleted before we ever drink, and why Hamid came to believe that gray hair and baldness are signs of mineral imbalance rather than genetics.

The conversation deepens into Huachuma itself: why the cactus is being depleted faster than it is planted, where the powdered San Pedro sold online really comes from, and the conservation and ancestral nutrition work of the Huachuma Foundation. We also break down thirst, minerals and the body's ability to make its own water, dry fasting, Weston Price and ancestral eating, the paradigm collapse underneath the psychedelic legalization wave in Colorado, and why both men keep landing on the same truth: life itself is the most divine ceremony of them all.

If you want a grounded conversation about minerals, plant medicine, Huachuma, hair tissue mineral analysis, ancestral nutrition, water, mescaline, and why cleaning the vessel comes before the ceremony, this one is for you.

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Website: https://mineralshaman.com

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In this episode of the Walking With Jaguars Podcast, Matt Blanco sits down with Aaron to break down what sovereignty actually means when you stop treating money as a number in an account and start treating it as your time, your energy, and your freedom to say no.

From a kid in Canada who always sensed the money was broken but could never name it, to a hardcore Bitcoiner, prepper, and homesteader tinkering in the shop and chasing clean food. He dabbled in the stock market, lost, and realized the whole thing was rigged. He chased altcoins thinking he had already missed Bitcoin. Then the audiobooks, the meetups, and the slow build of conviction turned a sceptic into a self custody advocate who now sees the same corruption everywhere he looks.

We dig into why the money is broken: the bank fees that make no sense, the quiet truth that it was never your money, and inflation as a compounding theft you never feel because the number on the screen never changes. We break down quantitative easing, the illusion of choice between ten banks running one system, and why, in Matt's words, you think you are the customer when you are actually the thing being harvested.

From there we zoom out to the machine itself. We discuss the stock market as theatre, the 2008 bailouts, the Cantillon effect of being closest to the money printer, and the dark realization that taxes exist to destroy money the government already printed and spent.The conversation deepens into discernment. Follow the money and the whole show cracks open: pharmaceutical incentives, the climate narrative Matt sat through during his physics degree, the LED versus incandescent bait and switch, electric vehicle mandates, and crony capitalism dressed up as progress.

If you want a grounded conversation about Bitcoin, broken money, inflation, self custody, sound money, radical responsibility, discernment, sovereignty, community, and the link between fixing your money and reclaiming your health, this one is for you.

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In this episode of the Walking With Jaguars Podcast, Matt Blanco sits down with Teo Pavlopoulos to unpack what it actually takes to break out of autopilot and start living your one life awake instead of on rails.

From a bro-science approach to health and growing up in Greece, to landing in Canada at 20 and feeling the rat race for the first time, to a mushroom ceremony in Belize that collapsed his entire sense of time, Teo now works as a consciousness guide with the NOAS Collective, helping high performers sync back up with their purpose. He is also a denturist by trade.

We dig into the autopilot: monkey see, monkey do, the routines that quietly swallow years, and why the mind is the last place anyone thinks to look for the problem. Teo breaks down the default mode network, the inner voice that believes it is you, and why so many driven people arrive at the goal only to find a book of bad jokes inside.

From there we get practical. We walk through the simple awareness practices that start to crack the autopilot open: using the car as a bubble of presence, setting alarms to catch where the mind actually is, and why meditation has to leave the cushion to be worth anything. We break down neuroplasticity and neurogenesis, how microdosing softens the path of least resistance, and why real change feels like walking a dirt trail until it becomes the new highway.

The conversation deepens into plant medicine and discernment. We talk psilocybin, LSD, and ayahuasca as a real intelligence that finds you at the right time, the danger of chasing ceremonies you are not ready for, why you cannot help anyone until they choose it, and the tree that grows in two directions: you cannot rise higher than you are willing to root down.

If you want a grounded conversation about the mind, the autopilot, the default mode network, microdosing, neuroplasticity, plant medicine, presence, and what it really takes to snap out of a life you never chose, this one is for you.

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In this episode of the Walking With Jaguars Podcast, Matt Blanco sits down with Brandi Dow to explore what changes when you stop trying to correct people and start building a world they can actually feel safe in.

From raising her younger brother at eleven, to night shifts in residential group homes for children with autism, to inventing a piece of clothing that has now reached families all over the world, Brandi has spent her whole life creating environments where overwhelmed nervous systems can finally settle. She trained as a behavioral therapist and then walked away from it, because the whole model was built around trying to make children fin into a society that wasn't build for them.

We dig into the science she works with every day: deep pressure therapy, full body compression, cortisol, proprioception, and the sensory tools most people have never heard of, from chewy tubes and noise cancelling headphones to sensory swings and weighted input. She tells the story of the Sensory Sweater, the tool she built after a girl in crisis refused everything else.

From there we zoom out to stranger territory: the children Brandi has watched perceive things the rest of us have trained ourselves not to. We get into extra sensory perception, the research behind The Telepathy Tapes and non-speaking children naming words held across a room, savant gifts, and her sense that some of these souls are simply tuned to a realm the rest of us block out. Matt brings it home to the Lakota medicine man Black Elk and his childhood vision, and the two of them sit with a question the medical model has no room for: what if these souls are here to teach the rest of us?

The conversation deepens into plant medicine and the work that comes after it. They break down set and setting as modern dogma, spiritual bypassing, and what Matt calls new age, new cage, the trap of trying to ascend out of your own humanity. He warns about synthetic psilocybin, nasal spray DMT, big pharma moving into the space, and what the coca leaf becomes once it is stripped of spirit.

Finally, we bring it home to money and building things. Both Matt and Brandi make the case that money only amplifies who you already are, that entrepreneurship is one of the most honest spiritual practices there is, and that a business built to genuinely help people can be its own kind of ceremony.

If you want a grounded conversation about autism and sensory healing, the gifts hidden in different minds, plant medicine integration, spiritual bypassing, and why building a conscious business can be a form of prayer, this one is for you.

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In this episode of the Walking With Jaguars Podcast, Matt Blanco sits down with Sarah Lafrenière to explore what healing actually is when you stop treating it as a private clinical transaction and start living it as something a whole community carries together.

From vivid childhood dreams and sweat lodges in Quebec to four years of sun dancing, vision quests and moon dance, Sarah walks the red road as a medicine woman, body worker and naturopath, doing healing work alongside First Nations communities on the land.

We dig into why the Western clinical model gets healing fundamentally wrong, and why isolating a sick person is anti-healing when so much sickness comes from lost connection in the first place. We get into body work as listening rather than technique, why the body cannot lie the way the mind can, and what it means to unlearn every modality so you can become a clear channel and get out of your own way.

From there we zoom out to plant medicine and the path of allies, working with water, tobacco, copal, sweetgrass, cedar and St. John's Wort, the difference between homeopathy and naturopathy, and why spirit itself is the cure regardless of the modality. Matt shares his own turn from atheist intellectual to the medicine path, the trap of new age new cage spirituality that wants to transcend the body, and the ayahuasca vision of the library that reframed his whole life.

Finally we bring it home to the sun dance itself, four days of fasting and prayer and what sacrifice and suffering really teach. We talk about earning your place in an indigenous community, reciprocity and ayni, the Andean Apus and how prayer stops being asking and becomes nothing but thank you.

If you want a grounded conversation about the sun dance, community healing, body work, plant medicine, the red road, sacred prayer and what it truly means to be human, this one is for you.

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In this episode of the Walking With Jaguars Podcast, Matt Blanco sits down with his wife Emily for a long-overdue life update - the story of packing up an entire life, leaving Costa Rica, and answering a seven-year call to the Peruvian Andes.

From the expat comfort of Costa Rica to a self-governed indigenous community at 3,000 meters in the Sacred Valley of Peru, this is a conversation about what it actually takes to leap into the unknown - two cats, everything they own, visa battles and all.

We dig into why Costa Rica stopped feeling aligned: the Americanized expat bubble, the highest pesticide use per capita in the world, the mold that comes with jungle humidity, and a cost of living that rivals the West. And we explore everything Peru has opened up: Quechua-speaking neighbours, offerings to the Apus on every mountain trail, markets exploding with produce, a culture where everyone is a producer instead of a consumer, and life in a place where ayahuasca and the medicine path are woven into the fabric of daily life.

We also go deep on marriage. Why we chose matrimony over a government contract, merging our lineages with a barefoot wedding on the summer solstice, commitment in the age of hookup culture, and why your partner is the mirror that forces your evolution.

Then there's the chaos: rejected visas, endless lawyers and paperwork, accidentally buying a farm, and the lesson that when spirit calls you onto a new adventure, it always comes with challenges you're not yet equipped for, but are absolutely capable of overcoming. The mind can always see the thousand fears. It can never see the thousand blessings.

If you're standing on the edge of your own leap into the unknown - a move, a marriage, a new chapter - this one is for you.

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In this episode of the Walking With Jaguars Podcast, Matt Blanco sits down with Riki to explore what it means to wake up inside systems that no longer make sense, and why Bitcoin often becomes the first crack in the illusion.

We begin with institutions. Government, money, education, media, and the quiet bureaucracy that seems to operate without consequence. We break down how short political cycles create short-term thinking, how unelected administrators hold real power, and why so much of modern life feels performative rather than accountable.

From there, we move into money and incentives. Inflation, debt culture, credit expansion, and the illusion of wealth. We talk about what happens when you start questioning the monetary system, how Bitcoin reframes time preference and sovereignty, and why opting out can feel like regaining clarity rather than making a financial bet.

The conversation deepens into plant medicine. Riki shares his first ayahuasca ceremony and how it confronted him with blind spots around love, fatherhood, and self-worth.

Finally we explore faith. Riki describes how ayahuasca unexpectedly brought him into Christianity, not through doctrine or performance religion, but through direct experience.

If you want a grounded conversation about institutional illusion, Bitcoin as a realignment tool, plant medicine, faith, family, sovereignty, and long-term thinking, this one is for you.

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In this episode of the Walking With Jaguars Podcast, Matt Blanco sits down with Aga, also known as Akaiyah Fortune, to explore Kambo as both a physical medicine and a consciousness practice, and what it looks like to work with it responsibly.

We dive into physical detoxification and what people are actually carrying in their systems. Candida overgrowth, mold exposure, heavy metals, parasites, and how compromised detox pathways can impact mood, energy, clarity and resilience.

Then we dive into the wonderful world of Kambo. Aga explains how Kambo interacts with the body’s detoxification pathways through peptide signaling.

We break down preparation and integration, contraindications and unpack a controversial but important topic: tapering off SSRIs and opiates with the support of Kambo.

From there, we zoom out to ethics and access. We talk about the current free for all with psychedelics, potency culture, bad dosing advice, and why proper screening and guidance matter more than ever.

We also explore the tension between lineage and direct revelation, when tradition is essential, and when the plants can teach you directly, which is a topic I love to ponder.

Finally, we bring it home to voice and creativity. Aga shares her journey of vocal liberation, how years of inner work opened the channel, and how healing eventually becomes play. We talk about why music and medicine are inseparable, how sound moves energy in ceremony, and what it means to finally live as an artist.

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In this episode of the Walking With Jaguars Podcast, Matt Blanco sits down with Bram to explore what sovereignty actually means when you stop treating it like a financial concept and start living it as a moment to moment practice.

We unpack why Bitcoin is not the destination, it is the anchor. Bram breaks down how Bitcoin creates a shared, verifiable truth in a world of narratives and manufactured uncertainty. We talk about why sovereignty is really the ability to make conscious choices, why outsourcing your decisions is the quiet form of slavery, and how opting into responsibility is the only way out.

We also bridge Bitcoin, plant medicine, and the importance of having children despite fiat money being one of the greatest spiritual crimes of the modern era.

If you want a grounded conversation about Bitcoin, truth, sovereignty, plant medicine and building a life with clarity and responsibility, this one is for you.

Get my free reading list of 50 books to awake the spirit: ⁠⁠⁠https://mattblanco.xyz/books/ ⁠⁠

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In this episode of the Walking With Jaguars Podcast, Matt Blanco sits down with Nell Hunter to unpack what it actually takes to build a real Bitcoin circular economy and live with sovereignty in a world designed to make people outsource their power.

We dig into the Bitcoin Basin in Queenstown, New Zealand and why building peer to peer community is both inspiring and brutally hard. Nell breaks down how circular economies solve the chicken and egg problem, HODL vs spend, and how 43 local businesses accepting Bitcoin becomes a living proof point that the money can work in real life, not just on Twitter.

From raw milk regulations to cash bans to broken incentives in farming and business, we explore how central planning quietly rewrites entire economies one rule at a time. The thread running through it all is simple: when you insert a third party into every transaction, you delete the free market and you delete responsibility.

Finally, we bridge Bitcoin and plant medicine as parallel initiations. Both demand proof of work. Both reveal how much you cannot explain to people who have not lived it. And both push you toward the same destination: radical responsibility, clearer perception, and a life you actually chose.

If you want a grounded conversation about Bitcoin adoption, circular economies, sovereignty, and the deeper psychology behind why people refuse to see what is right in front of them, this one is for you.

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