Ep. 70 Angela Ivy Leong

On this episode, I am joined by Angela Ivy Leong. Angela is a Registered Clinical Counsellor and Founder of An Elegant Mind (AEM) Counselling Inc., a private practice that specializes in relational intimacy, sex, and psychedelics. 

Angela holds a Master’s degree in Counselling Psychology from the University of British Columbia. She has over 10 years of experience helping people from the lowest to the highest rungs of society find meaning in life. At AEM, clients are taken through three levels of healing: individually–where you carve out your authentic sense of self, relationally—where you learn relational skills, and sexually—where you learn to use pleasure as a form of intimate relating and a way of being. The AEM method involves a deep acknowledgement of core wounds, the development of key skills for functional, loving relationships and the psycho-education required for the embodiment of the sexual self. Clients who have worked with therapists using the AEM Method  have experienced deep emotional release, compassionate strategies for becoming unstuck, and transformation into more authentic versions of self expression.

On this episode we discuss the stigma and shame that can be associated with sexuality. It can start in childhood when curiosity around the topic can first start to develop. Angela shares her experience of going to the library to read books on puberty and always being interested in sex. Plant medicines and her education taught her self-love on a deeply profound neurological level which allowed her to seek out partners that were on her same level. Coming from a place of open-ness she wanted to hold space for others that are struggling to feel comfortable in their sexuality and unlearn the feelings of shame and guilt. 

She also shares her experience with psychedelics as a consumer and clinician. Psychedelics can have such a profound impact on mental health and emotional healing. We discuss what incorporating ketamine into therapy is like at AEM and what considerations you should have prior to receiving that type of treatment. 

An Elegant Mind Counselling: Vancouver Clinic for Psychological Counselling
Vancouver Psychological Counselling Clinic (@anelegantmind) • Instagram photos and videos
Angela Ivy Leong (@angelaleongrcc) • Instagram photos and videos

Ashley (@filledupcup_) • Instagram photos and videos
Filled Up Cup - Unconventional Self Care for Modern Women

Transcript

0:00

Welcome to the Filled Up Cup podcast. We are a different kind of self care resource, one that has nothing to do with bubble baths and face masks, and everything to do with rediscovering yourself. We bring you real reviews, honest experiences, and unfiltered opinions that will make you laugh, cry, and most importantly, leave you with a filled up cup.

Ashley: 0:26

I am so excited today. I have the founder of an elegant mind joining me. Thank you so much for being here, Angela.

Angela: 0:33

Thank you so much, Ashley. Pleasure to be here.

Ashley: 0:36

Can you explain your education background and what made you want to get into this field?

Angela: 0:42

So I'm a psychotherapist, so this is a general universal term for a master's level clinician. I did my master's degree in counseling psychology at the University of British Columbia. So that's my academic background. But I'm also trained in sex therapy and tantra level 2.

Ashley: 1:03

What made you want to get into the field of helping people or get into sort of the science of our minds?

Angela: 1:10

Yeah, that's a really good question. It really started with healing from trauma as a young person. So as an adolescent, I, You know, having grown up in an immigrant family, there was lots of disadvantages that I was struggling with as a young person, like, not feeling popular enough, not feeling good enough. And the perfectionism that results from that, all the pressures from your immigrant family to achieve and excel but luckily when I was in grade 12, I discovered psychology and that was the one thing that really made me. Light up and click and like, wow, finally, I have a tool like I have a sense of control. I have something that's going to be able to help me navigate this world. That's like, so difficult hard. There was some pretty horrendous bullying that I went through as like 14, 15, 16 year old. I mean, it's quite misguided as having lots of sex and doing lots of different kinds of drugs. when I was a young person. So it's definitely mom's worst nightmare. Thankfully, I healed from all that. Yeah. And it was a long journey and a lot of it was done in graduate school as I was learning to become a therapist. So one of the things that people think that, if you have a bachelor's degree, then you know about psychology and healing. Well, you don't. Like, if you have a bachelor's degree in psychology, you know, next to nothing about how to be a adequate space holder and how to do the sophisticated work of, helping someone with whatever issue they're presenting you with like, when you do an undergrad, you essentially all you can do is like, spit out the research on like, what. was studied and how it was studied and what were the limitations of the study? And then sort of drawing the patterns within these studies and make general conclusions about human psychology. But we didn't really learn anything about healing and healing the psychology of someone until I went to do my master's degree.

Ashley: 3:03

Which is really Kind of mind boggling when you think about it too, because you'd think that that would be such a big part of it and not that it's great that anybody goes through trauma, but it must make you a better therapist in a way of coming from that place of having all of these life experiences to be able to be, more open minded and more of just a better healer.

Angela: 3:28

Yeah, I mean, when you speak of open mindedness, that was something that probably really helped me. I score really high on the ocean, ocean test. I don't know if you know it, but it's a big five personality test, openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. So this is one of the most common ways that you can divide up the human personality. So. I mean, the fact that you want to talk about sex and psychedelics tells me that you're a pretty open minded person yourself. And for me, like, I'm, on the farthest end of that spectrum. I'm like 100 percent open. And I think that's probably helped me. The first time I experienced a classic psychedelic was in 2016. And that was with ayahuasca and at that time, no one had really heard of what ayahuasca even was like, you know, you have some, a few stories of people going to, do this in the jungle and then kind of coming back. From that to North America and so that was sort of my experience was that, I was the only person in my social group who had experienced a psychedelic and I had no context in which to talk about that. With anyone and no context in how I could explain to someone that look I experienced this thing where I drank this plant medicine and this shaman was like singing and chanting all this stuff. And now I'm like magically healed from all this depression and anxiety.

Ashley: 4:59

I think ayahuasca could be super interesting and is definitely on my bucket list of things that I would want to try. Have you done it more than one time if you feel comfortable answering that?

Angela: 5:11

Yeah, I've done it three times about a year apart each time. And since then, I've kind of moved on to different medicines, although I do feel that there's a call to kind of return to sitting with that specific medicine again. But the reason I bring this all up is because this is what initiated me on this path I felt like psychedelics was this missing piece. In, the frontier of, how we help people as mental health professionals, like, when I had drank, I ayahuasca it for the 1st time. I was in my practicum and I really knew nothing about, spirituality, even at that time. But I kind of got the gist that spirituality was, this important part of, this overall sense of self care. And as I understand it, self care is a really big part of your brand. So when I was in graduate school doing my training, they had broken up self care into these six parts, right? Physical self care that you can do for your physical body, psychological self care, and then there was emotional self care, and there was spiritual self care, and then your career, and then your personal self care. And then when I was evaluating how I was doing in these six different ways that you can address self care, I realized that I didn't really have spiritual self care and the fact that my professor was bringing it up. I mean, like, it just was telling me that, this is an essential part of her overall well being. I remember filling in that handout of like, okay, how are you going to deal with your spiritual self care? And the only thing I had on there was I guess I go to yoga. Right. I guess yoga is considered spiritual. Even back in 2016, yoga was this industry of like, it was like a workout was part of this workout regimen that people had. And it was really seen as like part of fitness rather than the spiritual practice. So I think a lot of the Western world, they tend to shy away from using that language because they're concerned that they're not going to reach the largest customer base, right? Essentially. But I think when we ignore that part of our wellbeing, like we're really doing ourselves a disservice. And so you mentioned my brand an elegant mind. It's a private practice based in Vancouver. We specialize in sex therapy and psychedelic therapy. We're bringing these. Difficult to understand spiritual concepts in this scientific manner, because at the end of the day, they're explanatory models of how to understand what's going on in our overall being. And just because there wasn't a randomized controlled trial to test these things, it doesn't mean that they don't work because they absolutely do work in terms of helping us heal.

Ashley: 7:50

If somebody was. wanting to try ketamine therapy, who would be a good person to try for that? Is it sort of anybody? Is it somebody who has certain conditions? What would that be like?

Angela: 8:04

That's a really good question. So ketamine assisted psychotherapy, I mean, let me just talk about ketamine just on its own. So it used to be just an anesthetic, something that you take. To put you to sleep so that you can have surgery and go through kind of like difficult procedures like colonoscopies and so on. Right. And then it was used, shortly after when it was approved to be this anesthetic when they were giving it to people for chronic pain and other sort of issues in the hospital, they noticed that people's depression immediately would lift. As well. So, since then, we have been looking at whether or not this could be used as an antidepressant. So, before I specialized in sex therapy, I used to work with a chronic pain population. Some people who had gotten into motor vehicle accidents and they were suffering, essentially. They had multiple injuries and, really struggling with chronic pain. I did have a few clients on my caseload who because their injuries and their suffering was so severe that they were approved to receive ketamine infusions at the hospital. And so I would ask these clients of mine, like, well, did you have a psychedelic experience? Like, how was it? Did it help? It certainly is a very different thing when you're getting it as an infusion for chronic pain, and then it is a totally different medicine when you're setting up a certain setting for you to have a mystical experience with ketamine. What my trainer tells me is that, ketamine is a shape shifter. It can be many different things, right? It can just be an anesthetic. It can just be a chronic pain. Reliever, it could be just an antidepressant. Or it could take you through this mystical experience where you access God and you connect with your deep subconscious and you can really process some really deep things that you've been covering inside for a really long time,

Ashley: 10:04

which is really powerful that we have the ability to use the medicine with so many different tools. I really do like that there is more emphasis publicly anyways. On it being something that's great for depression and great for the mental health aspect of it.

Angela: 10:23

Totally,

Ashley: 10:24

What does an actual session look like?

Angela: 10:27

So the whole arc of ketaminosis as psychotherapy would require you to start with psychotherapy with a therapist. I mean, given that you are safe to receive it, there's no contraindications, the psychiatrist has said like, okay, you're good. You can have it. Your GP is like, okay, you're good. you can have it. And you would start with therapy with a therapist like myself. And I'm sure you've heard of this protocol, but you want to be clear about your intentions. What are you looking to uncover? The research protocol, I mean, sometimes it would be 3 sessions. In the research that I'm doing right now, it's kind of more like 6 sessions before you receive the medicine because you want to have a time to develop a relationship with your therapist. You want to have time to be able to spell out the entire arc of your childhood, your life so far, your core struggles, your core issues, and the more. You spell this out and the more, you know, yourself, the richer your experience will be, right? The more time you spend in this assessment phase, like the information gathering phase, as we call it, the richer your overall, Psycholytic therapy session will be with ketamine and with your therapist and beyond, right? Ideally, you're not just like, going in having what I call a, Psychedelic tourism experience, like, oh, cool. I saw some shapes and colors and oh, cool. Like, I had a vision but you're really using the relationship that you have with your therapist, which is an intimate relationship, right? You have to be kind of willing to, talk about some difficult things. And really it depends on, how uncomfortable are you willing to make yourself right now? How willing or how motivated are you to really address? It's difficult to talk about vulnerable things in your life. You could very much as a client, decide that you're only going to address superficial issues and that's all you're going to get. For sure. That's what any medicine, any medicine at all, like ayahuasca, ketamine, general psychotherapy without medicine, psilocybin, it's really up to the client. We cannot force it out of you. First of all, it's unethical. We can't force you to do anything that you're not ready to do or don't want to do, right? It's really up to you to define, like, what are your goals? We can only suggest as much as you're willing to receive.

Ashley: 12:38

For sure. I think like you said, with any therapy, there's not really any point to pay for surface level, because really you would grab, a girlfriend or a spouse and go for coffee and kind of not really scratch the surface. But when you really are interested in healing the root cause of any trauma or any experience I feel like that is a really good point that you have to be brave enough or willing enough to kind of go there.

Angela: 13:03

Mm hmm.

Ashley: 13:03

With ketamine therapy, is it like a one and done type of deal, or how many sessions would somebody typically get?

Angela: 13:11

So the science is still trying to dial this in, and I have my own ideas about this. So what the science understands so far is that ketamine creates a neuroplastic window that can last anywhere between two days and two weeks. So in my practice, I believe that you shouldn't receive a ketamine session any more often than once every two weeks. And I will teach you the practices in which you can continue to ride out the neuroplastic window for as long as possible for that full two week window. So that you don't want to have to waste time going to therapy that you don't need and you don't want to when you could be doing other things like going to work. In the research, they have found that sometimes people do need up to twice a week because they have sort of this treatment resistant. Depression or anxiety or what have you, or they have an addiction or something like that. That they're trying to work through and so there is. Documented research based evidence for that model. And do I think it's like the most efficient model for actual real life practice? No, because I think in actual real life practice, like you have other practices that you are allowed to do and you're encouraged to do to really ride out that neuroplastic window. I don't know if I need to explain that neuroplastic window a little bit more.

Ashley: 14:36

Yeah, let's do that a little bit.

Angela: 14:38

Yeah. So essentially what's happening in the brain, Is that ketamine acts on the glutamate receptors in your brain, and it's one of the most abundant receptors in your brain specifically, it acts on the NMDA receptor. And what this does is that it releases BDNF, so BDNF, I'm not sure if you've heard of that before, but it's a pretty common term, brain derived nootropic factor so exercise will release it. Doing something novel will release BDNF. Going on a vacation doing psychedelics releases lots of BDNF. So this, you can think of it as brain fertilizer, and when you release lots of BDNF as you're doing the psychedelic, it kind of helps you carve new pathways in your brain. So I'm sure you've heard of Michael Pollan talk about this before, like, psychedelics, what it does is it carves new pathways in your brain. And that's the. Neurological mechanism behind how that's happening,

Ashley: 15:36

which I think a lot of times when we think about trauma It's like we almost close off those receptors or close off those pathways So the more that we have them open really would

Angela: 15:47

yeah Actually, it's when your brain experiences a trauma you remember it because your brains like oh my gosh This had a really negative impact on me. I better not do that again. I better not get in that situation again I better not approach it again You know, you touch your hand on a fire, you retract immediately and you learn immediately. Don't touch fire. Right. And that's essentially what our brains are hardwired to just naturally do so that it ensures our survival. That's why we have a negativity bias. We have a tendency to remember the negative stuff way more than we do the positive stuff because it helps us survive. So essentially, your brain has gone down this pathway, as Michael Pollan says, you've gone on this pathway many, many times, like a million, gajillion times of like, Oh, that was a bad thing. Don't do that. Don't do that. Or you know, you have this negative reinforcing loop in your brain of like, I am bad. I am awful. I'm not good enough. If it happens once as a child, because you, for example, didn't win an art contest or you didn't win your gymnastics contest. And then you kind of internalize this idea of like, Oh, I'm not good. I'm not good at stuff. If you don't have a helpful adult that's able to help you dislodge that belief, then you're just going to go down that pathway a million times forever and ever until you're 55. And then you believe that you're just like this unworthy person, right?

Ashley: 17:10

It's so hard that stuff that happens in childhood that we really do hold on to that. And that really does become a lot of the issues that we end up having to deal with as grown ups if we don't tackle that, like you said, before it becomes sort of a permanent place in our brain.

Angela: 17:27

Yeah. I think the awareness is starting to emerge here with people saying like, Oh, I need to work on my childhood trauma. Right. And this is how it happens, you have this one event. Usually, right? That was significant to you and you remembered and then became lodged deeply in your subconscious. And like, because you're an adult, you kind of like start to dismiss your childhood experiences. Like, Oh, that was so silly. Like, why would I even be relevant right now? And I'm like, well, it is like, it shaped your brain at a very early stage of your life,

Ashley: 18:00

It's so mind boggling and it almost puts so much pressure on. I don't know. I guess like bubble wrapping kids that it's like you just

Angela: 18:07

don't. Yeah. If you recall that I said, like, we don't have the bubble wrapper kids, like stuff's going to happen to them and you can't control it all. Right. For sure. But the thing that I said, there was like the healthy adult that is attuned enough to notice like, Oh, my child went through something upsetting. Let's help him or her understand that doesn't, mean that they are overall bad.

Ashley: 18:32

That's true. Give them the tools to kind of work through it so that it doesn't become permanent in their brain.

Angela: 18:37

Exactly. Yeah. And that's attunement, right? You're attuning to your child and their emotional changes on a moment to moment, day to day level. And that's secure attachment. That's all, parents need to do, really. You don't need to make sure that your kids don't go through negative stuff.

Ashley: 18:54

That's true. Even though the impulse really is to try to save them from the things that you went through, but then it does, it always ends up backfiring.

Angela: 19:01

Exactly. Yeah. I'm so glad you asked that question.

Ashley: 19:05

How did you decide to incorporate not only ketamine therapy, but also sex therapy into your practice?

Angela: 19:11

I was always really interested in talking about sex. I remember picking up sex education books that were meant for children at the library when I was a kid, and then also feeling really guilty about the fact that I discovered this you know, the conditioning that we get in society.

Ashley: 19:29

There's so much shame around sex unnecessarily.

Angela: 19:32

Yeah, and so part of the therapy is about addressing that shame that you acquire. From these early experiences. So how did I end up specializing it? So I actually took additional training after I finished my master's degree at the University of Guelph. This is in the East Coast in Canada for those of us who are listening in Canada. My worldview totally shifted to seeing my professor. Sort of talk about all these areas within the diversity that we can have within sexuality and relationships that really excited me and piqued my interest in terms of like it was part of this overall picture of how can we create more freedom for ourselves? That's the antidote, I believe, to feeling sad and bad to feel that, like, I'm not a weirdo for, having this specific fetish, right? Or this specific way of, being in my sexuality. It can be this overall picture of, like, diversity.

Ashley: 20:34

It's like sex is meant to make you feel good and bring joyful, feelings in your body. So it's like you really should lean into what feels good and really make that a big part of your life. As long as everybody's happy and consensual it shouldn't be, you know, such a stigma around kink shaming or fetishes or any of it, it should be that. If it feels good, you should just do it.

Angela: 21:01

Totally. I'm an advocate for pleasure. Right? And so that's how, my practice started. In terms of, like, the sex therapy component. Originally, I was working with couples, and when you're talking to couples about their connection to each other, and you're trying to help them enhance their connection to each other. You can't not talk about sex, right? It was like avoiding the elephant in the room and I very quickly realized. When I was working with couples, I was avoiding the elephant in the room. Like, how is your sexual connection? So, therefore, I saw that additional training and, learning about this so I can learn how to talk to people about sex, in a clinical way, right?

Ashley: 21:37

Can you explain what Tantra is for anybody who might be unaware?

Angela: 21:41

Yes. So Tantra is, I think the simplest way to put this, it's about connection between two people. That is the unseen and the things that you do not physically feel like on a physical matter level, right? Yes. You can smash bits. You can put a penis into a vagina. You can call that sex. And that can be just sex, right? But Tantra involves this energy exchange between two people. So in, Tantra, which is from India, it's about the unification of the Shakti and Shiva energy. So usually the masculine Shiva and the feminine Shakti and the two people when they lean on their polarities. They can merge as this unified consciousness. I don't know if this is getting too esoteric for your listeners. No that's essentially the goal and there's many steps to get there. Right. One of the main steps is like about bringing the energy from the root chakra, all the way up to the crown chakra by squeezing your root lock, as we call it. So the muscles is your PVC muscles and bringing this. You can bring this energy up from your spine all the way up to your crown chakra, and people can have a psychedelic experience by concentrating on bringing this energy up the crown. So that's Tantra. And then the Chinese took a lot of originally the Tantric Buddhists in China had, they were the first ones to actually write about Tantra. So before that Tantra was a spoken tradition that was passed on an oral tradition. And then the Tantra Buddhists in China started to write about it and put it into text. And then they also then developed Taoism. The first writings were around 600 BCE, but then they started writing about Taoism a little bit around the same time. Taoism is a little bit different in the sense that it is still about the exchange of the energy between the masculine and the feminine. And they call it the microcosmic orbit. It's exchanged through breathwork. At my practice and my practitioners will teach the microcosmic orbit breathwork practice. It's about again, bringing the energy up to the crown chakra, but also like storing some of the energy into the organs. Mantak Chia, who's a very famous Chinese Taoist. Sexual kung fu practitioner, he says that you wanna smile at your organs and store the energy. And I've heard people say that bringing the energy up to the organs rather than the crown chakra feels a lot more grounding. And it feels better than throwing it up there.'cause then they start to feel kind of like too bloaty, if you will.

Ashley: 24:26

I think a lot of the times when we think about sex, It really is just the bits that it's like, it's just that action, but it's like the energy really does play into it. And it can be this whole connection piece with your partner or partners that it doesn't have to just be that. And I think that it's almost the intimacy like thinking for couples, potentially it's like finding that intimacy again, that isn't just about the act that I think the energy and the chakras and all of that would really make the most impact.

Angela: 24:59

Yeah, in my life path, somehow... I just started to dig really deeply into what makes for attraction and the sense of really good sex with someone else. I essentially just kind of stumbled upon a lot of these things, right? I had a lover who really taught me about explicit consent and how sexy that was and how much I wanted to just surrender to him when he was so explicit about. Can I make love to you, right? And I think these are, again, really essential components that we have to teach people like, how to have really ecstatic, magnificent oneness with the, universe sort of sex, multi orgasmic sex, like, it really has to start with, this explicit consent process of, really honoring each other as, divine creatures, if you will And so that was what I learned with one of my lovers and then I had another lover who taught me about telepathic connections that you can have like really deep energetic connections so deep that there's telepathy. And if you ask around to many various couples which I did right like every time I meet a new couple in my life I asked about how did you meet like what is your connection like it's like I just get all like clinical therapists on them. So Which it's just like a neuroticism of mine.

Ashley: 26:19

How it comes with the practice though, it would be really hard.

Angela: 26:22

I mean, it's hard. It's hard because I'm just so curious about knowing about all these different kinds of couples in my life, because I don't want to just talk to couples that show up in my practice, because that's a certain type of couple, right? Cause there's certainly very healthy couples that will never end up in their practice. And I'm curious about them too. What makes their connection possible? Like, my parents are still together, and I'm just now putting together how they're doing that, even though, like, sometimes it seems like they want to kill each other, but

Ashley: 26:50

I think that every long term relationship I think goes through that chapter is my grandparents were like that they spent five minutes a day together. They lived in two separate houses, essentially on the same property. They would fight for about five, 10 minutes a day, and then they would go back to their separate quarters, but they stayed together until they died.

Angela: 27:09

Yeah, yeah, it looks like my parents are going to be staying together until they died. So back to my thing about connection. Okay, so energetic connections. So this is what started me on a tantric path was like I had this one particular connection which I just couldn't put my finger on what the heck was it about him that I couldn't put down. It wasn't a proximity thing, which I learned about in my undergrad was like, if you have someone who lives Down the hall from you in your apartment building, because you have this opportunity to see them so often, like, you're more likely to fall in love with them. Right? This person, you know, kind of lived in a different country, but we have a very intense, connection where we always felt like we were in each other's consciousness and it was like, how is this? Right? And so that's how I got into studying Tantra, because I was curious to see whether, honestly, I didn't even know what I was looking for, but. Somehow, like my curiosity had led me to some answers about the ways that we can sort of connect with with someone energetically and have the shared consciousness as they talk about in Tantra, the Shakti and Shiva consciousness. And that as you become more advanced in your spiritual practices that you can really tap into. Hearing and feeling another person's thoughts, emotions, like their deep soul. And using these as vehicles to connect rather than just mashing bits.

Ashley: 28:40

Is that something that people can kind of start their own practice or is it something that if they're interested in it, that they really should seek help from a professional first?

Angela: 28:51

So my tantra teacher says that you don't want to activate this energy too much, too quickly, and that you should give yourself two years to activate this. It's Kundalini energy is what she says it is when you're bringing the energy up from the roof to the crown. So, in my case, I believe what happened was I had a very spontaneous Kundalini awakening when I met this person. It was very intense and it was very overwhelming and I felt like I was going crazy. I was having all these like internal experiences that I couldn't explain. I couldn't really sleep. I was having very intense dreams. Because I was so connected to this person's consciousness that, because he was in a different time zone, I was awake when he was awake, and he was awake when I was awake. So, essentially, for months, we were not sleeping and so that can start to make anyone crazy if you're not sleeping, right? For sure. I didn't even know what I experienced at the time was a Kundalini awakening, but through my sort of exploration of this esoteric world of Tantra is that like, it was all the symptoms of it, every cell in my body would start to vibrate when I was in the presence of this person, like, when our eyes met, it was like falling into, a vortex, Of nothingness and oneness at the same time, if you know what I mean so I believe that this is an aspect of intimate relating that psychology hasn't well defined, we don't really talk about it, but it's an integrated part of, wellness of clinical practice. We can teach people these things when they're coming to us and they say that I want to feel more connected with my spouse or my lover. Want to be on the same page as them. Like, I want to have a better sexual connection. These are skills and strategies that I don't think many people know about. I

Ashley: 30:35

don't think that sex in general is talked about as much. I just feel like there's so much stigma unnecessarily around it that I think that it's so important that whether you're in a couple, whether you're not just really trying to find that connection. To deepen that relationship because we all are supposed to feel like our, best selves are our highest selves that I think we should be striving to make that an always thing.

Angela: 31:02

Yeah, I think you said something really important there, which is that a lot of people believe that once they're married that they're supposed to expect their sex life to just slowly dwindle to nothingness. I do encounter, because I'm in this weird world, right, like I do encounter people who tell me that once we discovered Tantra, everything changed. Or once we incorporated kink and BDSM, we had novelty in our sex life again. And so it doesn't have to die. It only dies if you let it die. If you say that this is the way it is.

Ashley: 31:37

It's brave just that couples will come to you and be open to trying. Now you had touched on kink and BDSM. What does that look like as far as your practice and helping people sort of get into that a little bit more?

Angela: 31:50

Well, the type of folks that show up in the clinical practice are folks that have like an incongruent kink or fetish, right? Let's say they have a long term partner and they really want to be with this person, but like, you know, they... Have this kink or fetish that's that kind of incongruent with, like, who they are as a person. And it's just about helping them either learn about each other and, accept each other or, kind of get closer to the same page and, like, sort of coming up with strategies of, how can I get this need met if, my partner is not going to not able to meet this need for me and, like, kind of normalizing this whole. kink BDSM world for them. So that's how they show up in the clinical practice. Like I'm sure there's lots of folks out there who are like in happy and congruent kink relationships where they are never going to show up in my office.

Ashley: 32:36

I think it's important that people find a safe space for them to talk about these things and understand that they might have misconceptions about it. So knowing that their partner's are into it, if they feel like it's a different thing, I think it would be really beneficial to have somebody kind of find that middle line or the explanation in the safe space for them.

Angela: 32:55

Totally. That's it. It's just about guiding them to safety.

Ashley: 32:58

Would the sex therapy be sort of on one side and the ketamine therapy be on the other side, or is it really kind of interlocked?

Angela: 33:05

They are on the same spectrum. I'm sure you'll notice somewhere on my Instagram page, we talk about states of altered consciousness. So, sex... And psychedelics are within the spectrum of altered consciousness. So on the lighter end of altered consciousness could be anytime you close your eyes and you start to kind of meditate deeply, you could start to really go into a different place or state. There might even be some visualization happening, like you might be visualizing your safe space or your favorite vacation destination or whatever, right? If you add some breathwork to it, you can start to induce like a very light psychedelic experience. And if I say, let's do some breathwork in this very specific way and also let's concentrate on squeezing your root lock and bringing your energy up from up your spine to your crown chakra, then that can be like an even spicier. State of altered consciousness or psychedelic esque experience. And then you have like, again, you're more intense psychedelic experiences. Like what's like a lighter one? Happy. Okay. So happy is a tobacco is tobacco from South America and it's been described to be psychedelic in its properties or even lighter than that is cacao, right? Sometimes people say that cacao can be psychedelic. So you have cacao have a and then you have psilocybin, right? Let's say psilocybin where you have visions, right? And same thing. And then you have ayahuasca, which is way more intense in its visions. And then you have something that is like near death experience, which is Bufalovirus. I remember the first time I received Bufalovirus, the way that I would describe it was like this tantric oneness, the universe. And that was before I had ever done any Tantra training, but like, that was the kind of words that would come to my mind about, I was trying to explain the breakthrough dose of Bufalovirius, which is a toad that you smoke toad venom. So it was like dying and then experiencing this Tantric oneness with the universe is like the best way that I can describe the psychedelic state. And then my facilitator, my space holder, I had asked him, he's a really good friend of mine, I was like I could kind of remember that I was, like, rolling over and I was making some sounds or maybe some vocalizations. Like, what was I doing? Right? And he said that I would describe it as moaning and pleasure. So this is where I started to kind of put these things together with my recent tantra training that this is all part of the same spectrum. I didn't talk about sex, but what I put sex on the spectrum, I would kind of put it in the middle. In terms of how intense the state of altered consciousness is because you do experience this is a state of like timelessness, which is psychedelic, right? There's oneness with something or someone, which is a psychedelic state. So sex, when you're doing it properly, when you're doing it mindfully, where you're able to stay in the present moment with your partner it is a psychedelic experience.

Ashley: 36:14

Which is really, I think, important for people to realize, because I think that they wouldn't necessarily, in their mind, think of both, but it definitely would be. It's like, when you are sharing that space with somebody, and when you aren't thinking of, what do I need to do at the grocery store, thinking of all these other things and just going through the motion, I think it is really beautiful to think about it that way. That you are having sort of a once in a lifetime. Energy sharing session.

Angela: 36:42

Mm hmm. Yeah, you definitely can. Like I remember having this lover of mine we had just consumed maybe like half a gram of psilocybin. So, which is not a lot for me. It's a microdose. Like it's a perceptible microdose, but it's not. Necessarily one in which I could see visions and stuff like that. It's definitely just like a still walk around and like at a party setting sort of thing. He was a new lover of mine and there was all this like sexual tension building and there was all this flirtatiousness and then finally, we had sex and I told him, do you want to have, like, a little bit of, psilocybin to kind of, enhance the experience, right? By the way, it's like a totally legal thing in BC where I'm from to possess it and to have recreational amounts of it. So we had this and the sex, the sex that we had was just like, because we had a little bit of psychedelic as an enhancer, it was literally like a oneness with God sort of experience. It was like having sex with God, it was the most orgasmic, I didn't actually have a clitoral orgasm, but it was like the most. It was the most pleasurable, orgasmic thing I have ever experienced, like, I think it was part of it was that the astrological signatures were in alignment. We had built all the sexual tensions of the day there was so much like flirtatiousness and touch but not actual having the cake if you will. It was just. Divine, like it was truly about being with the divine in the other.

Ashley: 38:23

I think that people realize like we get caught up in that newness of it and the tension and the unknown, but I think it's so important, like you had touched on too, that people that have been married 10, 15 years, you can still build that energy and still use these tools that you can still be having that amazing sex.

Angela: 38:44

And I think that actually the biggest relationship killer might be, no, I can't, no, I won't change for you., it's the unwillingness, like, so those are the folks that are not successful in my practices because they're just flat out unwilling to consider as part of their self care.

Ashley: 39:05

That's just so important to you because sex is such a big part of humans and brings us so much whether it's physical health, that emotional health, and really that spiritual health that you're talking about, that it's like, we shouldn't be having bad sex.

Angela: 39:22

Yeah, I mean, the World Health Organization is a healthy sexual function as part of like overall general health. It is without a doubt important to being a healthy human, but some people's conditioning around sex can be so intense. That they're just flat out, no, won't do it, won't go to therapy, won't change for you.

Ashley: 39:43

Which hopefully hearing more conversations like this, that people realize that even if you are seeking help through a sex therapist, it doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with you. Or if you want something that your partner isn't offering, it doesn't mean that your partner is bad or that there's something wrong. I would imagine that people's sex life, like everything else, ebbs and flows and people deserve to try everything that they're interested in experiencing.

Angela: 40:09

Totally. You said it so well, which is that just because you're coming to see a sex therapist, like it doesn't mean that there's something truly dysfunctional about you. It's about pleasure enhancement. It's about learning these esoteric strategies that we have long kind of like relegated to being unscientific. And just playing with it and seeing if it works for you.

Ashley: 40:31

Thank you so much for having this conversation with me today. If anybody is looking for you online, can you let them know where they can find you?

Angela: 40:40

Yeah. So our clinic website is an elegant mind. com. And even if you spell that wrong, it'll still link it back to us. So the practice Instagram is an elegant mind, which is where you found me, but my personal Instagram account as a therapist is Angela Leong, RCC. So what I'm trying to do is really show the world that there is a diversity of being human and that you don't have to be ashamed of your sexual self. I think the best thing that we can do for our clients is to model to them how to be human.

Ashley: 41:16

Thank you so much thank you so much, Ashley.

41:19

Thank you so much for joining us today for this episode of the filled up cup podcast. Don't forget to hit subscribe and leave a review. If you like what you hear, you can also connect with us at filledupcup.Com. Thanks again for tuning in and we'll catch you in the next episode.