Romanistan

Azul DelGrasso on Ecopsychology and Psychedelic Healing

• Jezmina Von Thiele and Paulina Stevens • Season 5 • Episode 30

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Dr. Azul DelGrasso is a Denver-based Romani scholar-practitioner, artist, and ceremonialist whose work bridges public health, ecopsychology, and psychedelic studies. With 28 years in STD/HIV capacity building and national training, Azul’s research explores 5-MeO-DMT and unitive consciousness as pathways to healing and ecological identity. Rooted in the Southwest and guided by culture and resilience, he integrates rigorous scholarship, ethical facilitation, and creative practice to support individual and collective transformation.

Resources on Roma in Mexico / Romani + Chicano cultural exchange:

Los Gitanos en Mexico

Gitanos en Mexico

Mexico Flamenco

El Costumebre Lorenzo Armendariz

5-MeO-DMT education resource: theconclave.info

Find Azul at https://www.azuldelgrasso.com/ and @ascendedvoices

Our Romani crush this episode are all the Romani writers and creators. 

You can book 1:1 readings with Jez at jezminavonthiele.com, and book readings and holistic healing sessions with Paulina at romaniholistic.com.

Thank you for listening to Romanistan podcast.

You can find us on Instagram, TikTok, BlueSky, and Facebook @romanistanpodcast, and on Twitter @romanistanpod. To support us, Join our Patreon for extra content or donate to Ko-fi.com/romanistan, and please rate, review, and subscribe. It helps us so much. 

Follow Jez on Instagram @jezmina.vonthiele & Paulina @romaniholistic. 

You can get our book Secrets of Romani Fortune Telling, online or wherever books are sold. If you love it, please give us 5 stars on Amazon & Goodreads. Visit https://romanistanpodcast.com for events, educational resources, merch, and more. 

Email us at romanistanpodcast@gmail.com for inquiries. 

Romanistan is hosted by Jezmina Von Thiele and Paulina Stevens

Conceived of by Paulina Stevens

Edited by Viktor Pachas

With Music by Viktor Pachas

And Artwork by Elijah Vardo

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SPEAKER_01:

Welcome to RomaniScent. We're your friendly neighborhood gypsies. I'm Paulina. And I'm Jez, and today we have a guest, Dr. Azul Del Grasso.

SPEAKER_02:

Dr. Azul Delgraso is a Denver-based Romani scholar, practitioner, artist, and ceremonialist whose work bridges public health, eco-psychology, and psychedelic studies. With 28 years in trauma-informed public health capacity building and national training, Azul's research explores five MEO, DMT, and United Consciousness as pathways to healing and ecological identities. Rooted in the Southwest and guided by culture and resilience, he integrates rigorous scholarship, ethical facilitation, and creative practice to support individual and collective transformation. Hey, welcome, Masul.

SPEAKER_01:

We're so happy to have you here.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here with you all.

SPEAKER_01:

So let's start with the basics. We love to ask where are you from? Where is your family from? What's your visa? Anything you want to share about your background, just to start off.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. So I was born and raised in Denver, Colorado, which is Ute Cheyenne, Arapahoe land. Um, and grew up here uh for a large part of my life and have had the opportunity to live in multiple places from New York to LA. Um, my mother arrived here in the 60s from Texas, and she was born in Arkansas, and that lineage is my Romani lineage on my mother's side. Um, we know that our family arrived in Mexico sometime in the late 1800s and made their way to Nuevo León in the northern part of Mexico. And so in Mexico, there's the Calais and there's the Calderasi clans. Um, and because once you cross the border, uh homogenization begins instantly. And so I grew up with this Romani kind of Chicano identity. Knowing that I was also Italian with a dash of Scottish, but um really didn't get to know my biological father, and uh had been on my own since I was 14 just because life in Colorado in the streets was a little rough, it was rough at home, um, and then started to reconnect with my um family later in life as I was pulling myself out of um street life. And so uh during college is when I started to reconnect um with people um of my lineages and of my background and ancestry. Um, I can say that you know, my mother's side, they really crossed the border um under the guise of the Bracero Program, um, even though Romani were not allowed to apply or be part of the Bracero Program, which was a program started by the United States to bring in day laborers from Mexico to work in the agricultural fields. And my grandmother uh made it across, um, where she met my grandfather, who had also made it across, and was working in the cotton fields in Arkansas for many, many years. And as they um built a life together, um they ended up in Texas of all places. Um, so that's a little bit about my my family background. My uh father's side is from southern Italy in a town called Iboli, which is an hour outside of Naples and was part of the two Sicilies. So Naples and Sicily were sister cities uh back in the day before the reunification of Italy. Yeah, so it's just a little bit of background on my ancestry and um who I am.

SPEAKER_02:

So cool.

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, that is very interesting. So we'd like to ask this question: Do you consider yourself a rebel?

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, absolutely. You can't um grow up the way I did or have the uh genetic memory that that we do not to be a rebel to live a life of resilience. Um so being a rebel is absolutely something I've always been. Whether I was a kid doing um tagging and street graffiti around uh Denver and parts of New York City when I was there, um, but also being a rebel in the sense that I was able to be the first in my family to make it to college. Um, it was one thing to do my undergraduate work, um, which was in fine art and Chicano Studies, but also to continue and do two master's programs after that and eventually wind up with a PhD. Um, so for me, that academia was always an act of rebellion for me. So absolutely a rebel.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, we can both relate to that in our own ways.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, 100%. Um, that is really interesting.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, like anyone that went to school in my family was like, oh no, like yeah, it definitely wasn't easy, but it it's it's what I believed helped me survive. Um, you know, getting off the streets and just being having something that I could dedicate myself to for sure.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and you know, speaking of Chicano culture, um, we are such nerds about cultural influence within the diaspora, cultural exchange. We were so excited to learn about, you know, there's Mexican slang that's also Romani language. And so, from your perspective, what is the cultural exchange like between Romani and Chicano culture?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, when I think about Chicano culture and Romani culture, it's really a culture rooted in resilience. And when we think about, you know, in the early 40s and 30s, the Pachucos, the Zutsu of Chicano culture really adopted this a lot of language that was already there because of the Romani influence from the arrival of Romani in Mexico. And if you think about in Mexico, really the Romani referred to as gitanos mexicanos, right? Un pueblo nomadico, a nomadic pueblo, a nomadic tribe. And so, of course, there's going to be this cross-cultural exchange as families and clans are moving from the port of Veracruz, which is where the Romani arrived, but also making their way to Mexico City, from Mexico City to Guadalajara, from Guadalajara to Nuevo León. Um, there's a cultural influence, not only in language and so forth, but when you think about the socioeconomic uh places where Romani landed in Mexico, linguistically, there's always going to be a cultural exchange. One of the things that really hit home for me is listening to Dr. Goldsmith from Mexico. She's a Mexican Jewish scholar, and it was important for her to do a lot of research on the Romani because of these cross-cultural connections, especially thinking about the Holocaust. And as she did her research, she was really looking at these comparisons of culture and language, but also lifestyle. And there's a great um uh photographer named Lorenzo Armendares. I think I sent you all some of those links, and he talked about Romani in Mexico for decades and just telling the story. And you see this kind of this cross-cultural of mix of religion and uh and culture and identity and song, which I believe is where our mythology and in our creation story lands. And so I also think about um the first Romani who arrived in Mexico, and you know, perhaps embracing this idea of St. Serra Lacali, right? And arriving to a land, unlike other parts of the world where Romani fled, and seeing La Virgen de Guadalupe and seeing another black Madonna, you know, uh kind of over as mother protector of um the Mexican people. And so when I looked at and comparing um Saint Serra la Cali and Guadalupe, and you look at their origin stories, you know, Saint Sarah is the anointed one, the blessed one, but also she's referred to as the Black Madonna. And so is Guadalupe, another version of Black Madonna. But when we break it down even more, Guadalupe is this uh the story of Guadalupe comes from Tonan Sin, the idea of Mother Earth, the Mexica Mother Earth, but at the root is Kolikwe, whose mother destroyer, um reminding us that life isn't permanent. Um, and when we look at the root of Saralakali, it's Kali, right? And so you start to see these similarities. Uh for me, that would probably be the first cross-cultural exchange was this idea of this being big, how should I say this? Kind of that spiritual grab of seeing someone who looks like you when you're arriving in a place you've never been.

SPEAKER_01:

That's beautiful.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

If you don't mind just asking, how was Seracali honored within your family?

SPEAKER_00:

For me, it was Guadalupe. I grew up with Guadalupe, and so as I started to dive deeper into my uh cultural identity and my ancestry, and really learning about Serra Lacali, I for me it was there was no difference. You know, in my ceremonial practice, I keep images of both Guadalupe and Serra Lacali in my in my ceremonial space. In fact, you know, I brought a couple images out, but you know, these are the images that I keep.

SPEAKER_03:

Oh beautiful space.

SPEAKER_00:

Um, and then I know the view the listeners can't see this, but here's uh image of Kolikwe.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh yeah, cool. I think we can find that and post it um uh like in an Instagram post or something, that would be awesome.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. I'm gonna take off the blur on this video effects real quick. Um but you know, when you look at these images, you know, and you see the similarities between coligwe and gali, and I start to think about you know this idea of colonialism and how people have had to adapt and change or you know, kind of in this idea and this uh breath of resilience, you know, it's not only within our saints or our goddesses, but it's also within our language. And so when we get to like words like vato or ese or or javo, right? Um, and then you have pachukos and and chicanos say that the slang, the spanglish, is called kalo, right? Um there's an absolute influence, and it makes me wonder one of my masters is in Latin American studies, and I really wish I had researched, you know, over 10 years ago, the relationship between uh chicanos and romani, um, especially when we think of the concentrations of uh border culture where folks would gather back in the day. So yeah, so so back to answering your question, uh Walina, like uh she showed up for me being in my grandmother's kitchen as my grandmother was cooking and seeing a portrait of Le Vietnam de Guadalupe right above the stove. And so now it shows up in my home with portraits of both Guadalupe and Sara Lacali as part of my religious and spiritual practice, yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

I also kind of just want to ask a little bit in simple terms, just because I've seen so many videos on how kind of Roma kind of Roma and Chicano culture, Romani culture and Chicano culture really merged, especially here in the US, I he literally just randomly see like TikTok videos and stuff like that. Um, can you kind of explain how that happened?

SPEAKER_00:

I guess the way to uh really think about it, you know, I kind of gave a complex answer of some cultural iconography and so forth. But when you are with people who have cultural norms that are similar, that are like yours, there's especially being in a new country, there's gonna be some level of bonding, um, some level of safety, some level of learning, familiarity as far as how family structures operate. You know, we look at if you look at traditional Romani family structure and you look at Chicano family structure, even Mexican family structure, very similar, um, meaning that it's intergeneration intergenerational, that there is shared knowledge, there is shared song, there's shared mythology. Um so communities who share those types of attributes tend to merge and bond together, um, especially in places where there is a level of colonialism and oppression. And so resilient communities often find themselves um binding to one another.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, perfect answer. Thank you so much. Of course.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it's so interesting to me because I I mean I grew up in the Northeast and I've lived around. I've been in like Florida, Virginia, New York, and Ireland. I wasn't really exposed to any kind of border town culture between the US and Mexico. And so learning about this from you and the sources that you sent over, I'm just like, oh damn, this is a whole world I didn't know about. I love this so much. And so, yeah, I can't imagine I'm alone in that. There must be listeners who are really excited to find this out too.

SPEAKER_02:

You gotta come here to San Diego, Jes. No, I did on the border.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, you know, definitely border culture is is a whole different experience. You know, I'm I live in Denver, I'm eight hours away from the border, so it's something that you know I always uh kind of grew up with. Um, but I also think that's one of the fantastic things about the new content creators, and especially this podcast, is being able to get exposed to these new ideas of resiliency and survival, especially cultural survival, and learning about Romani in the Northeast or Romani in San Diego or Romani in the southwest. It's it's a beautiful gift that um we now have in this digital age.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah, it's wonderful. I love I love the information. Let's shift into your work. Okay. Yeah. How has your spiritual and cultural background influenced your path in life? But also we're wondering if it played a role in your work researching five MEO DMT.

SPEAKER_00:

That's a great question. Um, you know, I grew up in ceremonial magic, it's always been part of my life, um, which is one of the reasons why I loved your book.

SPEAKER_03:

Uh, thank you.

SPEAKER_00:

It gave me a little bit more context um to some of the practices that my grandmother would do, uh, being an empath and clairvoyant herself. But, you know, it's something I've woven into all aspects of my life. You know, I treat life as ceremony, and um, you know, living your life as a rebel is ceremony itself from this foundation of resiliency. And so it's really influenced my ceremonial practices, um, especially in my offering of uh psychedelic assisted therapy, uh, because I do have like images of um my saints and the goddesses and um my spiritual kind of upbringing. You know, I open ceremony with oracle cards, I have a prayer of Saint Sarah that I open up with honoring Botona and Sinco Lique and Guadalupe within that in that same breath. Um, so it's hard to differentiate or separate or compartmentalize spiritual practice um from the way I move, not only in ceremony, but also um academically. And so, with my research, one of the things that was very important to me was to find a program that integrated the person. And so I did a program at the California Institute of Integral Studies in transformative studies and consciousness. And that program really allowed me to uh talk about the narrative of um cultural resilience of spirituality. Um, I got to talk about, and I even wrote a big section on the merger of Guadalupe and St. Ceralacali as we just spoke about, as part of that spiritual practice, as a foundation of who I am and breathing into my academic work. Um and then being in this psychedelic space, you know, I never thought offering sacrament or psychedelic medicine uh would be part of my spiritual practice. I know when I set with the medicine uh back in 2014, uh it was this aha moment of healing, where I woke up the next day and my worldview had shifted. This idea of ontological shock, where we experience these profound moments in life that the next day we're just not the same. You know, and this can be compared to childbirth, uh, uh a wedding, a divorce, a loss of a loved one, where they you have these experiences that really deeply impact you. And that's what I experienced when I first uh worked with 5MEO DMT, and really found myself afterwards compelled to know more. At that time, there was only two books. There was called Triptamine Palace by the late James Orock, and then there was The Toad in the Jaguar by uh a brilliant uh professor named Ralph Metzner. But there was nothing that spoke to how this impacted my consciousness, how it related to the mythology and songs of ancestry. Um, and that's where I really became curious. And that sent me on a course of events that led me to Burning Man of all places, um, which was fantastic. And I still participate at Burning Man. But I also ended up at Standing Rock with the Dakota Access Pipeline back in 2016. This is when they were trying to put a pipeline uh through Sovereign Nation. And so there was a gathering of over 300 um indigenous tribes um on the land protesting the pipeline. And I found myself going there because Denver was a main hub of people going, and I took my Romani flag, my Roma flag with me because people were taking flags of of their tribes and their groups. Um, and one of the first questions I asked, or I got asked when I was arrived at Standing Rock is who are your people? And I broke out the Roma flag and they said that's important. Know your people, honor your people. And um that really started the shift when I knew that I wanted to, after leaving Standing Rock, who are my people, what are the songs, what are the prayers of my people? I knew some, I know a little bit. I mean, I've had Oprah Roma tattooed on my arm since I was, you know, 17. But um, you know, this idea of there are clans that arrived in Mexico, who are them, and what are those prayers? And that was the rediscovery of Saint Serra Lakali in that process and bringing her into my spiritual practice and eventually leading me to do my PhD, um, looking at uh this idea of unitive consciousness and five MEO DMT, and within my dissertation, within my work, I talk a lot about this idea of decolonizing. How can we decolonize ourselves and re-indigenize ourselves with our with um cultural sovereignty, with the sovereignty of our mythology and our song and prayer? Does that answer your question, Desmeen?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, that's so interesting. And I just realized we might want to back up for some listeners who are not at all familiar with this chemical. Like, how where is it found? How is it used, just in case anyone is like, I'm sorry, what?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, that's a good. We should probably back up for that. So 5MODMT, 5 methoxy dimethyltryptamine, is considered the Mount Everest of psychedelics. It is the most powerful psychedelic um known to man. And it is found in 36 different places in nature, uh, including the human body. We actually produce it in our lymphes in our pineal gland. Um, and it was popularized um by the toad, the bufo alvaris or encilius alvaris toad. And uh folks started milking the glands of the toad about 40 years ago and smoking the bufo toxin, the venom, not the venom, the bufo toxin of the toad, and having these profound experiences. Um, but it's actually been used um all over the world, more historically in the context of uh snuffs found in from the Caribbean to Latin America, called like Yopo snuff or in Puerto Rico, where I did a lot of my research, cohuba snuff, and it comes from the seeds of a particular tree, the cohuba tree, they're ground up, mixed with a ground-up caracole shell, and then uh snorted through the nose. Nowadays it's administered primarily by vaporizing uh the molecule and inhaling. And once people inhale and exhale, uh it's fast acting. It's not like any other psychedelic where there's this slow, gradual come on, or like smoking cannabis and you kind of feel high a little bit later. It's actually instantaneous. And it has the potential, not in everyone, but it can create this idea of ego disillusion, meaning you are now separate from yourself. And people have experiences, some do, of being in the ancestral plane or being one with all of source, creator, spirit, um, universe, uh, God, Christ consciousness, however you want to frame it. Um, so it has a it's a very powerful uh compound, fast acting, and I wanted to really research it um, not only from uh the experiences I had with my own healing, but also this idea of how can we expedite people's relationship to spirit to the natural world.

SPEAKER_01:

I had an experience with Buffo because I um I don't know if I've talked about this on the podcast before. I might have, but I when I got really, really sick with long haul COVID, um my partner at the time was like, oh man, I don't know what we'd I don't know what to do. We'd just take you to the Amazon. Um if like he's like back back home uh or back in uh where you know where his fan folks are from trying to like protect uh privacy and identity. But um and I was like, Yeah, yeah, or maybe I could figure that out here. Maybe I could find someone here. So I ended up sitting with Combo and uh because I was reading about how it was really helpful for um autoimmune issues and it helped me recover enough so I could like walk with a cane. It was a really big thing, and the um the healing process that I was um doing also was part of this like bigger container where my practitioner was also offering buffo. And it was it was incredibly profound and instantaneous. And I was um given some really interesting answers about what I was supposed to understand about chronic pain and illness and what I'm supposed to do with this. And it was really extraordinary and also helped me find a lot of peace during a time when I was um really just deeply struggling with being like very burdened by illness. So it's it, I mean, it it was profoundly therapeutic.

SPEAKER_00:

Beautiful. I love that you you've had a chance to experience it and kind of know what I'm talking about as I'm explaining it. Um, it can be very profound for folks, and and there's a lot of insights to where we store trauma in our bodies. And when I think of resilient communities and resilient tribal folks, you know, trauma is stored in our bodies. And so, how do we utilize something that can help unlock that? Um, and the beautiful thing about 5MEO DMT is science, when we look at it scientifically, it creates new neuropathways in this idea of neuroplasticity, meaning that it is literally overriding old trauma, um, unlike you know some other the classic psychedelics. This is actually doing the work biologically, neurologically in the brain. Um and so that's one of the things I love about it because it's not not only is it really has temporary leaf relief for some folks, but with proper integration, folks can really benefit from it really long term.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah, it's so this area of research is so fascinating.

SPEAKER_00:

And there's so much going on with this research and this psychedelic renaissance.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, and actually, uh to kind of run off that, why do you think psychedelic therapy is having another cultural resurgence? And who do you think is a good candidate for it?

SPEAKER_00:

I think the first thing I say is psychedelics are not for everyone. You know, some people don't have the emotional, mental, or spiritual capacity to integrate some profound experiences. Um, that said, it's having this resurgence because there's a void, um, especially within Western culture, it's almost a spiritual sickness of people who've been homogenized and taken from their own mythology and their own song, um, while at the same time they don't know how to have a relationship with their ancestors. And so for me, that's the underlying meaning why so many people are running towards or celebrating psychedelics. It's not just about healing trauma that you experienced as a kid. For me, it's about a reawakening of ancestral knowledge, of ancestral relationship. And so I think the people who can benefit first and foremost from it are people who have suffered the impacts of um colonization. I think communities who stem from resiliency can benefit from it as well by being able to deal with these neocolonial structures in a way where we can address the history of medical mistrust, we can address the history of explicit and implicit biases and systemic racist systems that traditionally have kept people oppressed. So for me, I when I think about who can really benefit, it's people who have been on the other side of those oppressive systems. Um, and then when I think about uh white-bodied Western individuals who are really rushing towards um the psychedelic movement, it is really kind of this spiritual sickness. You know, they want healing, they want a remembrance of sorts, if you will. They want to remember who they are. Um, and I think for me, that is at the root of it. And I'm pretty sure there's a lot of different opinions about why we have such a uh uh psychedelic renaissance, but when I step back and I ask the why behind the why, that's what I see as part of the the movement.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, that's fascinating. I've definitely met a lot of people of European descent who have said like they felt like they didn't have a culture, and I was like, Oh, honey, you you do.

SPEAKER_03:

You just gotta look for it.

SPEAKER_00:

It's it's interesting because. When I talk to folks, I'm like, you have to realize Europeans were the first to be colonized. You know, 1500 years before the Americas. Your people had songs, they had nature-based practices, they had mythology and creation story. And instead of calling people out, it's a calling in of you need to know what it is and rediscover what it is to re-indigenize your sacred practices. And it's not going back to your grandparents. Sometimes I say it might be going back 2,000 years, you know, before your people were colonized. You know, when I look at people of Ireland or Scotland, you know, they have sacred practices that are still um being kind of in remembered even to this day. I was giving a lecture at Oxford last year, and I was at this conference, and I met all kinds of Europeans who were, you know, kind of appropriating American type medicine practices. Um and but I the majority of people I met were pagans, Wiccans, Druids, people who were reclaiming practices in kind of this Neo-European indigenous movement, if you will. Um, so like you like you said, yeah, they do have the song. And then I also bring in this idea of epigenetics, which is this idea that our ancestral memory lives within our our genetic body, and so the songs and stories are stored literally within our body. And so, what is the process to unlock that? And then I follow that up by inviting saying, and this is where my nature work comes in is nature is the biggest cathedral, it is the biggest church, it is the biggest sanctuary that you can be in. So by being in nature, nature will tell you what your sacred songs are, what your prayers are, you know, in a space where you're not culturally appropriating, but you're listening to nature. And it's also this idea like um you know, the seasons are part of ritual practice, the directions are part of ritual practice. There are things as above so below that are universal that people can start with, you know. And if people have the abundance to travel, you know, if they're if they're of ancestries from Ireland to travel to Ireland just beyond the land, talk to people, listen for those songs of mythology.

SPEAKER_01:

So yeah, I mean, tell us more about the ecological component of your work researching five meod, because that is really fascinating. I love the ceremonial aspect of it, but I imagine there are other parts too.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so I after Standing Rock, um, I started spending a lot of time in in nature, and I started doing a lot of deep healing in nature and realizing that people are really disconnected from a relationship with nature. And so my work is based off this idea is that knowing that earth is home to the soul. And when I start in that space, and that comes from this term by uh eco-psychologist named John Seed, eco-psychologos, knowing that earth is home to the soul. But how many people don't think that way? As nomadic people, you live off the land, you know the land, you are of the land. Um, but so many people have lost their nature practices of being in nature, of knowing nature. And so I decided to go back to school. I thought I was done, and I did a degree at Naropa University in eco-psychology, which is really studying how our mental, spiritual, and physical health is directly related to the health of the planet. And so, if we have a sick planet, then we have sick people. And it's not getting into this idea of global climate crisis or anything, it's just people don't have a relationship with nature, not taking care of nature. And so the way we take care of nature is how we should take care of our own bodies, and really in that process, discovering this idea of ecological identity, which is how we are our identities are directly connected to our relationship with nature. And so my thesis at Naropa was five MBO DMT and nature interconnectedness, interconnectedness and understanding uh ecological identity. But I knew right away that it was gonna, I I wanted to do more research and bring in more concepts. Um so at the end of the day, it's really about embracing this idea that our our physical, spiritual, mental health is directly related to our relationship to the planet.

SPEAKER_01:

That's so cool, so important.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, this has been just such a good um episode. I almost feel speechless. I feel like I really just feel so connected, just emotionally and spiritually, to everything you are talking about. Like sick planet equals sick people, 100%.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, absolutely. And I remember doing the program at Naropa and I had this professor, and one of the assignments was go spend time in nature. And I said, Well, I live in the city, I there's there's no nature around me. And she gave me a task, and maybe this is uh an assignment or uh uh an ask of the listeners, but she says, you know, if you live in a city, go on the sidewalk and look for the weeds that are coming through the concrete. Look for the dandelions, look for the flowers, look for the weeds. Think about the resiliency that it took for those weeds or that dandelion or the flower to peek through the urban jungle and the concrete. That's nature. That's that's resiliency in nature. And so I started doing that. And I would take long walks through downtown Denver, and I would be looking at the ground the whole time, and I would just follow the vines or the weeds. And eventually I started going in the alleyways and finding trees and all these two-story big high vines, and I realized nature is found everywhere. It's that we are just so disassociated from seeking it, and yet we're so connected to it. You know, there's research that kind of has come out of uh Japan recently that says for every three hours you spend in nature without technology, it's like doing a month's worth of therapy.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh wow, that feels true. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And that really kind of gave me this idea if people can do psychedelics, in particular 5ME or DMT, in a nature-based setting, and coming out of that experience and being with nature, how would that expedite their healing and reconnection to their ecological identity?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. I I love what you're saying about the weeds too. My grandmother was obsessed with weeds. She always felt like Roma and weeds are one and the same. They try to kill us and they can't. And it was very exciting for her. She loved Dandelion. Like whenever we saw wildflowers, she loved it. Absolutely. Yeah, and I grew up in the woods, so I was spoiled. I did, I spent my childhood playing in the forest, and it was wonderful. And when I was living in Brooklyn, I was teaching middle school, and we took the kids on um a little field trip, actually, a huge field trip. We went to Williamsburg. They it was like this really lovely private Montessori school, and we got to take them on a really big trip. And we they went to Colonial Williamsburg, and as we were walking around, I was showing them like, oh, this is wild mint, you can eat these clovers, and they were like, You're a witch. They were so excited though to understand the natural world around them. And I was like, Yeah, no one's teaching them this. And like it made me really happy to just show them the plants that I knew. And I was like, we should do this with kids, like just all the time. This is so good for them.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. I mean, just think of the benefit of especially at-risk youth. Yeah. What that would do for their mental and spiritual health, you know, coming from difficult um living situations, you know, but but for all children, of course.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, absolutely. I know that this isn't a universally available therapeutic experience. You know, different states have different legislatures, different countries. How would people work with this um with 5MEO DMT legally safely?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, um, so I have the benefit um of living in the state of Colorado, and we legalized psychedelics uh three years ago. So I can legally work with 5MEO DMT. Um, I think we also legalize D Boga, uh psilocybin, MDMA, synthetic masculine, and uh all forms of DMT.

SPEAKER_01:

Wow, I actually didn't know that. I I knew some of them were, but I didn't realize all of those. That's fascinating.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and you know, it it is very difficult. Um, and I'm looking up a source for the listeners. It's difficult depending on where you're at. You know, a lot of this is still very underground. A lot of this is you know, you can do life in prison in certain countries, you know. So it's it's really knowing your local state, federal laws around usage. A lot of this work is gonna remain underground for the time being. You know, I know there's other states that like Oregon and California that are really trying to make this push. Um, but you know, be safe, know how it's regulated. But most importantly, um, there's a wonderful website of an anonymous group called theconclave.info. And they are practitioners and facilitators of 5MEO DMT, and they have guidelines on the website to really talk about best practices, integration guidelines, code of ethics, uh considerations for guidance relationships, um, but most importantly, how to choose a facilitator who's moving in right relationship with these uh types of sacraments or medicines. I mean, it is 5MBO, as I mentioned earlier in the podcast, is considered the Mount Everest of psychedelics. It is one of the most powerful um sacraments um that we know of. You know, if there's others we haven't discovered, you know, so be it. But this is the one that we know of, and it can be life-altering and life-jarring. And so I tell people you have to be in the right mindset uh for the experience, you have to be in the right setting um for the experience. There it needs to be a level of trust um of the facilitator, but that facilitator needs to earn your trustworthiness um to be able to facilitate an experience like this. There are a lot of people practicing psychedelic medicine in this country, um, regardless of local or state laws. You know, look at the code of ethics, the code of uh of guidelines by the conclave and just get an idea of what you should be looking for. You know, um make sure that there's safety involved, that you feel safe, um, but most importantly that you're ready for an experience. And whether that's anything from cannabis, uh psilocybin mushrooms, or five MEO DMT, an individual needs to be really ready um mentally and spiritually for what can come up.

SPEAKER_01:

That's really good advice.

SPEAKER_02:

For sure, do that now or who is your Romani crush? This could be any Roma person who you admire for any reason and would like to shout out.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, well, I mean, right now it's y'all.

SPEAKER_01:

Ah, thank you.

SPEAKER_00:

No, it really is. You know, uh secrets of Romani uh fortune telling, the book. Um, the fact that you hit on the the cultural and spiritual components for it, um for me is really important, you know, as someone who's an academic, who's a ceremonialist, to have these resources available. Um you know, I only have one other book in my collection by Romani, which is Bury Me Standing, um, which is another book that talks about mainly European Romani. And so what's missing in this space are our, and the void is starting to be filled, I'll say, are the writers, are the creators, the content creators, whether that's on TikTok or Instagram or YouTube or people doing academic and scholarly work. There's a void. And I see that what you're doing, the book for me, is feeling the need of not losing lineage. It's concrete, it's it's making it concrete so that future romani have access to knowledge and language and mythology. And so my biggest crush right now, whenever I'm on TikTok or YouTube, is listening to the content creators or picking up your book and knowing that there's a foundation where, you know, people like me who grew up in the barrios and in Chicano communities can say, wait, I have a clan, I have a tribe of folk, you know, and even though the language might be different, the root of who we are is being solidified in the content creation. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, we are honored.

SPEAKER_01:

We are. Yeah. And how can people follow you and support your work if they want to work with you or just you know, best get the word out about you out there? What is the most helpful? What do they do?

SPEAKER_00:

Um, you know, I don't when I use social media, I think I use Instagram the most. So you can find me at Ascended Voices on Instagram, um, or you can find me on my website, which is my nameasuldelgrasso.com, um where I talk about all the services uh that I provide. Um you know, my big thing is I believe that before psychedelics, that community is medicine first. And I'm a big component of harm reduction and community education. And so if our community has questions um or needs guidance around um where they're living or what they're seeking out, you know, they can absolutely reach out. Um and I'm happy to do that educational component for them.

SPEAKER_01:

That's so nice. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02:

We appreciate that.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, this has been such a pleasure. Thank you so much for taking time to speak with us. We're so excited to share this with everyone. And yeah, you're doing amazing work, whether you're you know in public health or like with harm reduction or the good work of therapeutic psychedelics, like it's all so powerful.

SPEAKER_00:

Beautiful. Thank you for having me. It's been um such a pleasure to be able to speak with you and see your faces beyond the the words on the pages of your book. So thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh yeah, our pleasure.

SPEAKER_02:

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01:

To support us, join our Patreon for extra content or just donate to our coffee fundraiser, ko-fi.com backslash romanasan. And please rate, review, and subscribe. It helps people find our show. It helps us so much.

SPEAKER_02:

You can follow Jez on Instagram at jezmina.vontila and Paulina at RomaniHolistic. You can get our book, Secrets of Romani Fortune Telling, online or wherever books are sold. Visit Romanistan Podcast.com for events, educational resources, and more. Email us at Romanistan Podcast at gmail.com for inquiries.

SPEAKER_01:

Romanistan is hosted by Jasmina Vantila and Paulina Stevens, conceived of by Paulina Stevens, edited by Victor Pachitz, with music by Victor Pachitz, and artwork by Elijah Barado.