Episode #150: Heroic Hearts Project - Help For Veterans

INTRODUCTION:

In today’s episode I have the sweet opportunity to share about my healing journey with Heroic Hearts Project. Research is showing that plant medicine is increasingly beneficial for people worldwide but especially for military veterans who are suffering from PTSD, suicidal ideation and other ailments. Please check out HHP and share their information with a veteran in need.

 https://heroicheartsproject.org

https://stopsoldiersuicide.org/vet-stats

https://www.mentalhealth.va.gov/suicide_prevention/docs/FSTP-LGBT.pdf

*This episode is not a paid promotion. This is an independent and non-solicited testimonial. 

INCLUDED IN THIS EPISODE (But not limited to):

·      My Testimonial On Heroic Hearts Project 

·      Veterans Mental Health Statistics

·      Retreats For Queer Veterans

·      Military Conditioning

·      All About The Research

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Transcript

Episode #150: Heroic Hearts Project - Help For Veterans

De'Vannon Seráphino: [00:00:00] Oh my beautiful, beautiful sweet little children's out there and welcome back to the Sex, Drugs, and Jesus podcast. My name is Devan and Serafino. I'm your hostess with the absolute mostest and I am here today to talk to you about a lovely organization known as the Heroic Hearts Project. Before I get started, our website is Sex Drugs in jesus.com.

De'Vannon Seráphino: My lingerie website is down under apparel.com on YouTube. We are Sex Drugs in Jesus podcast. Thank you all for your likes, comments subscribes for supporting down under apparel and for checking out all the resources and the blog and everything over at Sex Drugs in jesus.com. So Heroic Parts Project is an organization that exists to help veterans.

De'Vannon Seráphino: Who are struggling with PTSD and various mental health issues and things along that line. Their website is heroic hearts project that board and, [00:01:00] briefly, I I was able to, I was selected for 1 of their programs and I was able to travel outside of the United States to go and partake in plant medicine.

De'Vannon Seráphino: Experience and, why didn't I say it worked? It really, really, really, really worked. It was a, it was a, it was, it was a glorious time. And so I wish for more veterans to be made aware of this. It seems like every veteran I talked to, even when I'm at the VA, the different VAs, like up in New York, and we have about four or five different VA hospitals in New York City.

De'Vannon Seráphino: And, everyone I talked to, nobody's, I had yet heard of the Heroic Hearts Project. So this is me doing my part to spread the word about this wonderful organization so that my fellow veterans can get help. I dare say like I did, but whatever this sort of plant medicine help might look like for them.

De'Vannon Seráphino: [00:02:00] So, I was in Mexico when I, partook of this program and so I thought it was enough time had passed and that it would be appropriate since I'm currently in Guadalajara, Mexico, just hanging out this time. I'm not down here doing any, any plant medicine. Specifically, well, I haven't done it yet.

De'Vannon Seráphino: Next week, I will be partaking of the, Bufo, Bufo, Bufo Toad experience and everything like that. And I'll be doing a different show on that. That's me on my own going off into the woods with a shaman. As I do, I come down here and, and hire shamans, shamans from time to time, but could like do my own thing out in the wilderness with them.

De'Vannon Seráphino: But, anyway, so let's talk about Heroic Hearts. On Heroic Heart's website they have it stated that PTSD [00:03:00] has killed more soldiers by suicide in the United States than were killed in the war since 9 11. And so then I, I saw that statement and then I thought I would look a little bit further into this.

De'Vannon Seráphino: And then I went over to stop a soldier to suicide. org in order to pull some statistics. And so that website, and I'll put it in the show notes and in the YouTube description, states that veterans are at 72 percent higher rate of suicide than those who haven't. served.

De'Vannon Seráphino: So, I mean, I don't think that I had really looked up the statistics before today, before I got ready to record this show, but all of that makes sense to me. I had heard that veteran suicide was higher. God knows I've been in more than, well, our team has helped me my fair share. of Veterans Administration, the VA hospitals, the psych [00:04:00] wards, and, and, and things like that in several different states.

De'Vannon Seráphino: So, I've, I've seen, I've been a suicidal veteran, I've seen suicidal veterans , but I didn't know that the numbers were quite this astronomical. Now, this retreat that I went to was one of the one of the heroic parts that I started doing specifically targeted towards queer veterans. This is a beautiful thing because those of us who served especially during Don't Ask, Don't Tell had a completely different military experience that heterosexual veterans did.

De'Vannon Seráphino: I served during Don't Ask, Don't Tell. It was a hot mess from the standpoint of repression of my self expression and, and being picked on and, and fear of getting kicked out and things like that. With this in mind, I trotted My little butt right on over to a website called mentalhealth. va.

De'Vannon Seráphino: gov and pulled some [00:05:00] more information So i'm gonna i'm gonna read Let the library now be open my children So this here says from mentalhealth. va. gov i'm going to put this in the show notes in the youtube description as well It says suicidal ideation may be more prevalent among LGBTQ veterans than among heterosexual veterans.

De'Vannon Seráphino: One study found that although there was no difference between LGBTQ and heterosexual veterans and prevalence of suicidal ideation in the past 12 months, LGBTQ veterans had significantly higher odds for a lifetime. suicidal ideation than heterosexual veterans did. It goes on to say that transgender patients in the Veterans Health Administration have a significantly greater hazard of death by self poisoning than their non transgender counterparts, 28.

De'Vannon Seráphino: 8 percent versus 11. 3 percent respectively. So, what this is [00:06:00] telling us is that The negative impacts, impact experienced by queer veterans tends to linger, longer and be more of like a chronic issue than something that being like may may be more like on the acute spectrum. And, these statistics help to solidify the reasons, in my head and in my reasoning, why, the special emphasis has to be placed on, on queer veterans it's not just us trying to be special or have some sort of unnecessary cry for help or anything like that.

De'Vannon Seráphino: The struggle was real. The struggle is still real, even though we're no longer serving in the military. When we go into the military, we're conditioned. Through basic training and [00:07:00] tech school and all of those different things they they when I went in, I know they told me intentionally in basic training in the Air Force.

De'Vannon Seráphino: I was in the Air Force from 2000 to 2006. Electronic warfare system journeyman and then enlisted a sessions recruiter. I was in. Tucson, Arizona and Southern California, respectively. No, I did not lie to my recruits. I had a better sentence than to do that because I did not want to get caught up in no foolishness out there in Los Angeles or anything like that, lying to nobody's children.

De'Vannon Seráphino: I absolutely did not lie. That causes me to have clashes with the Air Force that they told me to lie to recruits and I told them to go fuck themselves. And, so, but in boot camp they told me like, we're going to break you down and strip you of your identity. We're going to make you who we want you to be, et cetera, et cetera.

De'Vannon Seráphino: Now I'm 17. We're from the country in the military. I'm going along with this. I don't personally feel [00:08:00] like all of the over the top chaotic methods employed during military basic training and were necessary in order to generate people who are going to be productive for the United States military. I don't think they had to take it that far, using all the tactics and doing all the things that they did.

De'Vannon Seráphino: Nevertheless, they did what they did, and they conditioned us to be soldiers, airmen, Marines, seamen, whatever the case may be. The issue I take is that when we got out, we were not conditioned to go back and integrate with society. And the conditioning is so deep that many veterans who haven't been in the military in decades still talk to us.

De'Vannon Seráphino: Like they're still in the military, they still speak military jargon. Some of the veterans are not even happy. It's like, it's like they can't find happiness now that they don't have like the same military camaraderie around. This is not to [00:09:00] their discredit. That's just how deep all that conditioning and everything can be within us.

De'Vannon Seráphino: And so we get out of the military, we're looking at this world differently, the world has changed as we've been in the military, we have changed as we've been in the military. But we weren't properly prepared to be reintegrated into society. So there's PTSD, complex PTSD from whatever our experiences were in the military, going to war, having stress on our jobs, and different things like that, like I did, fighting with the recruiting supervisors.

De'Vannon Seráphino: And then there's PTSD once we get out, because we can't relate, we can't relate with our friends, we can't relate with our families, we can't relate with our significant others, and we're left to deal with this in any way that we can.

De'Vannon Seráphino: And besides like, for me battling with supervisors that I work for. When I was enlisted, [00:10:00] the queer harassment was real. There was a lot of it but when it started, like, from day one people were, like, picking on me because I was 17. I was the youngest person. Clearly inexperienced in life, probably the only person in there who was still a virgin, and them boys, it's like they could tell, and they were just, I mean, we were still in civilian clothes and basic training, and they started in on me.

De'Vannon Seráphino: It was just like, kind of like, fucking ridiculous. And, I get to Tucson my first duty station working on C 130 Hercules aircraft out there in the desert and in the aircraft graveyard in the deserts of Arizona, there's one guy whose dorm was next to mine, like across the street from mine, but the way the dorms were there, the laundry rooms open from either side, the laundry facilities were in the, small laundry facilities were in the middle and you could [00:11:00] enter from either way because these are long horizontal dorms.

De'Vannon Seráphino: And so this fool would stand out on the balcony of his room, wait for me to go do my laundry, yell homophobic slurs clear across the street. Everyone could hear and everything, and everyone knew this guy liked to pick on me. But then whenever he would see me walking down the street, he would walk right by me and put his head down, cut his eyes open, and look at me.

De'Vannon Seráphino: absolutely silent. That's the type of foolishness that I, that I had to deal with. I couldn't go tell anybody, then I'd get put out and all of this foolishness would ensue. And that went on for like years, that, that sort of thing right there. What I love about Heroic Hearts Project is that they're actually doing something to try to remedy the post traumatic stress and other issues that veterans that deal with.

De'Vannon Seráphino: They're, they're, they're doing what they can because the VA will [00:12:00] put veterans on pills and all kinds of medicine in a New York minute. They are quick to describe, to prescribe something. For me when I go to talk to any type of VA therapist, it's like, hi, how are you?

De'Vannon Seráphino: And it won't be long before they're trying to put me on 200 milligrams of this, a hundred a hundred milligrams of that. And then, if I take it, it makes me feel like a zombie, or if I stop, then the issues come back. The beautiful thing about these plant medicines is they're working to uproot the issues, so that you either don't have them anymore, or you're greatly alleviated from it.

De'Vannon Seráphino: Like, it's more like a healing and a remedy, rather than numbing it and patching over it. With pills because that doesn't work. And then they get a strong gun on way too much medication at the VA. And then what they do is switch medicine or [00:13:00] they switch doctors on you or something like that. It's almost like they don't.

De'Vannon Seráphino: Sometimes I feel like the, like the VA and certain doctors out there, if this is my opinion alone, they don't really want us to get home. I just don't get that sense. It's almost like, it's almost like they've seen veterans. They kind of feel like they've seen it all. Some of them are so numb to what we're going through.

De'Vannon Seráphino: They're like, here's another veteran. I'll write this script, get out the door next kind of situation is my experience in dealing with veterans affairs and across many different states. The library is still open. I haven't closed it. So I'm going to read a little bit more from Heroic Hearts website because it's very well written and they've set this up better than I can.

De'Vannon Seráphino: I want to give you a little bit of history on Heroic Hearts. Jesse Gold, the person who founded Heroic Heart. So Jesse Gold, a former Army Ranger, was plagued by severe [00:14:00]PTSD after he returned home from combat. After quitting his job as an investment banker, selling all of his possessions, and wandering the world, he found himself in an ayahuasca retreat in the jungles of Peru.

De'Vannon Seráphino: To his surprise, Jesse found that his symptoms of PTSD disappeared after the retreat and his life was forever changed. Jesse started Heroic Hearts Project in April of 2017. To quote Jesse from the website, because I wanted to give my fellow veterans a way to heal their PTSD that had worked for me. That ends the quote.

De'Vannon Seráphino: I'm gonna read a little bit more. Heroic Hearts Project hosts retreat programs throughout the year. and has helped over a thousand veterans and veteran spouses, as they have programs for veteran spouses, to reduce or eliminate their PTSD symptoms. The majority of our retreats are held in countries where psychedelics are currently [00:15:00] legal, such as Peru, Mexico, and Jamaica, in partnership with retreat centers there.

De'Vannon Seráphino: All of our programs were designed by veterans, for veterans, with the needs of this unique community in mind. Select retreats are available in the USA in states where psychedelic treatment has been legalized. it's a beautiful thing when programs are designed by veterans and for veterans, because, I mean, honey, just really didn't get much better than that. When somebody's walked that walk, they know how to talk that talk. Again, And

De'Vannon Seráphino: that I think is some of the problems that like the VA and other organizations that try to deal with veterans faces that I don't think one psychiatrist or social worker that I've had at the VA has actually served. I'm glad that they're there and trying to do what they can to help [00:16:00]veterans, but You know, honey, if you ain't been through it, you just ain't been through it And that's all that there is to it, it is what it is it's a very beautiful thing that this organization Was founded by veterans and this is designed for veterans like that sort of passion and zeal and gusto and fire You It's, and that's sort of like a veteran bond.

De'Vannon Seráphino: It's something that really make, makes Heroic Hearts project work. The intention is right. The motivations are right. The mindset is right. And it all works out.

De'Vannon Seráphino: It's a, it's a 12 week program and what Heroic Hearts is doing, and it consists of three Phases, and I'm just going to read these from the website. I'll preface this by saying I've done ayahuasca, I've done psilocybin, I've done a couple of different psychedelics [00:17:00] in a ceremony, not in a ceremony.

De'Vannon Seráphino: I think Heroic Arts Project has the most preparation that goes into preparing veterans before, the retreat itself is very thorough and the integration after. I was quite impressed with the way that all of this transpired and played out. The preparation phase, preparation includes three one hour private sessions and three one hour group sessions with an HHP Heroic Horse Projects coach to help set an intention for the retreat, safely follow the preparation diet, and get answers to any questions you have about how to approach the experience.

De'Vannon Seráphino: It's a time of reflection, awareness, and becoming aware of the patterns in your life that you hope to change. This helps us to not go into the process of blind and it's really putting pen to paper coming up with who, what, where, when, why, what it is, why it is what you [00:18:00] want to work on. Because with plant medicine, you got to have your intentions.

De'Vannon Seráphino: Right? You don't just go in. Doing plant medicine all willy nilly not, for, for like an experience you're actually supposed to be trying to work on something and so that makes it very productive. You go in with that intention. Hopefully you get the results that you want.

De'Vannon Seráphino: And that's pretty much. The best sort of foundation that you could have to work to to to work from this for me was done over zoom. I I don't know how how they do this with every single group of people that they send because they, they do a lot of a lot of groups throughout the year, but it'll probably.

De'Vannon Seráphino: Look somewhat similar this was all over zoom so it was beautiful. It was convenient. I had a very excellent coach. In the group sessions help us [00:19:00] to get familiar with each other. I think it was something around like 10 people. Who went down to Mexico when I did when I, when I was having opportunity, the fabulous opportunity to participate in this heroic hearts program here.

De'Vannon Seráphino: The psychedelic retreat itself is the next phase. It says all of our retreats are private retreats for veterans and they were designed with veterans in mind. You'll have the support of retreat facilitators, HHP liaisons, coaches, and indigenous healers at international retreats. You'll experience between one and five psychedelic ceremonies, typically using ayahuasca or psilocybin on the ground, coaching and activities to help you connect with your community.

De'Vannon Seráphino: To the beautiful environment of the program participants and yourself, there were so many like healers liaisons, coaches, facilitators, it felt like it was almost like at least like 1 person for each participant. Like, there was at no point in [00:20:00] time where I felt like if I needed help, it wasn't going to be there.

De'Vannon Seráphino: This, like, I felt like it was very well done, but I'll talk more about that, like, in a second here. Integration, it said that the work truly begins after you come home from your retreat. Integration is the work of slowly making sense of your experience and understanding how the lessons you've learned apply to your everyday life.

De'Vannon Seráphino: Although integration never truly stops, the first four weeks are critical. You have three, one hour private sessions and three, one hour group sessions with an HHP coach that set the stage for your ongoing integration process. It is said in psychedelic circles that the healing can be more quick or it could take years or anything in between that.

De'Vannon Seráphino: That's why it says that the integration never stops. But the way the medicine works, it gets in you, it brings things up. And the way you show up to your relationships and to various aspects of your life. can change suddenly or it might take time. [00:21:00] They teach us how to do breath work, meditations, breathing.

De'Vannon Seráphino: We're encouraged to do things like journal or whatever the case may be. We're given a, we are given a litany of options to see what's going to work for us. And the ability to talk 1 on 1 with the coach, the bounce ideas around in a group. It's just absolutely invaluable. I wanted to specify the research aspect of this.

De'Vannon Seráphino: This is another beautiful. Beautiful, beautiful part of this is that for those of us who choose to we volunteer to be a part of the research program here, which I did because the research helps. future veterans. It'll also help people globally, probably, who aren't veterans because data is data.

De'Vannon Seráphino: This is specifically being gathered for veterans, but I could see it being helpful in a multitude of spaces so we're going down do these retreats to help heal ourselves, but research is being done [00:22:00] and data is being collected, also to help. Further the use of plant medicines globally in all aspects of society in a great many places.

De'Vannon Seráphino: And so I also want to read this as we have to elaborate it over the years for the researchers at some of the world's leading scientific institutions to study the impacts of psychedelics on the psychology and physiology of veterans with PTSD traumatic brain injury and other military and combat related trauma.

De'Vannon Seráphino: Organizations we've worked in partnership with include, but I'm not limited to Imperial College of London, University of Texas. Kings College of London, university of British Columbia, university of Colorado, Bo Boulder, and so on and so forth. I, I love heroic heart's, willingness and ability to collaborate with these organizations and make the maximum use of the data that is collected to help [00:23:00] the, help the whole globe that, that, that's, that, that, that's a great way to pay this all for it.

De'Vannon Seráphino: And I'm, I'm here for it. So I'll get into like something with that. I'm closing the library. I don't have anything else to read to you. Thank you so much for your patience with that. So just, I'm going to talk a little bit more about, my experience down there. And then that'll be pretty much what I came here to say, but just remember each retreat will be different.

De'Vannon Seráphino: They happen in different places. Where I was was my experience if somebody gets selected, who knows. Where they may end up going to, it it took a little while for me to get selected because people were trying to get in there and do it, but you got to put your name in the hat because otherwise you'll never be selected.

De'Vannon Seráphino: So I encourage any veteran out there that's struggling to look up this website and, and [00:24:00] try see, see, see what can be send this information to veterans if you're not a veteran. And veterans by all means send it to other veterans. This is how we help each other out.

De'Vannon Seráphino: But it doesn't, what's what is offered the facilities and all that can be quite nice. But for me, how I, how I benefit is being sure that my preparation is right. These are my mindset is right. And going there and telling the truth, it would be vulnerable. Your roller carts, I think, has done an incredible job with offering facilities and space.

De'Vannon Seráphino: and experiences to heal veterans, but where it is is not as important as to how you show up. And so when, when we started after all of the integrations and everything like that, I thought the dieta, the diet program that they were telling us to do was, was quite detailed laying off of [00:25:00] caffeine.

De'Vannon Seráphino: Detoxing in many different ways, watching what we eat, letting the red meat go so on and so forth was very, very thorough. The, the, the, the 1 Iowa experience I had done before this 1 wasn't, wasn't nearly that thorough. They were kind of like eat really healthy a few maybe like a few days or a week before it was very, left up to the participant in general.

De'Vannon Seráphino: So the way Heroic Garden did it, it was like the whole. To think about a 30 minute PowerPoint presentation that I think the program operations manager may have done with somebody else. And they really, really went, went like on a good breakdown and they had like, recommendations to help. To give people like alternatives to drink and coffee and things like that and timelines stop this this many weeks out and things like that.

De'Vannon Seráphino: And then [00:26:00] veterans can reference that meeting up to it. I thought that was absolutely brilliant and I thought it was, Was, was, was super, super, super, super useful. So we went through the integrations and everything, individual coaching, group coaching, really felt strong and prepared leading in there.

De'Vannon Seráphino: I wasn't really nervous at all due to all of this preparation beforehand, flying to the airport. Oh, gosh. Oh, yeah. I don't think I even mentioned this. And so many people, Lord help me. So people are. Are selected for this for this program. There's donors and everything that helped to find this.

De'Vannon Seráphino: And so these programs costs, like, I think, in between, like, 3 and 5 brand or something like that per participant. With the help of the very generous donors, veterans. Pay like a minimum contribution towards that, and it can be paid over many, [00:27:00] many months. And so I think it might be something like five hundred dollars.

De'Vannon Seráphino: I do believe and then I know when I was going through doing all of the paperwork and I mean that could be paid like ten dollars a month over 50 months. They're not really coming after veterans like that, but that contribution helps to keep the program running for other veterans in the future. But you know, it's very generous that we don't have to pay for the majority of it, which makes it possible for a lot of.

De'Vannon Seráphino: For a lot of veterans to be able to go and, so that includes the flight, the program itself, and everything leading up to it, all the integrations after it the food while you're there it includes everything and so we fly in to the airport and people start showing up kind of like one by one or whatever the case may be.

De'Vannon Seráphino: In my head, I was looking at this happening as people show up [00:28:00] and it reminded me of, like, the opening episode on, like, RuPaul's Drag Race and all the queens show up into the workroom and they show up there and they're from whatever state and they come in there and do their death, death drops or whatever.

De'Vannon Seráphino: I was having a very comical time and I was exhausted because I had to get up at, And, and at a super early hour to make it into Mexico from New York City. And so I was tired and stretched out on the couch with my head. I was like, kind of like laughing eternally because of how RuPaul's Drag Race's first, these first moments of meeting were.

De'Vannon Seráphino: I loved, like, not having any electronics for the week. I was down. We were down in Mexico a week. We did 3 ceremonies and I didn't have my phone on, no laptop, no iPad, no nothing like that. It felt wonderful. And the electronic detox is also something that's recommended in order to, to devote full [00:29:00] attention to, to the medicine and let the medicine work and do what it's going to do.

De'Vannon Seráphino: So, so, so these plant medicines work to heal mental, emotional, spiritual, physical things. Personally, I went there to, to, of course, work on military trauma and things like that, but I wanted to, to focus on inner child work. I was, I was molested sexually as a child, and so my thinking was that I was going to do, like, session one, working on inner child since that's like the foundation of everything, the military trauma and everything like that hurt me in that present moment, but it was still hurting and hurting that inner child too, because my inner child had unprocessed And an unhealed emotional trauma, but that inner child for all of us is the foundation, [00:30:00] upon which the rest of our emotional life is set. So in my head, I was thinking, let me get this inner child dealt with 1st and then I can better deal with the military stuff after that. That is what I went in with. That was my main intention that I that I said, and so. I personally feel like that I was granted what I went down there to seek, by the time the medicine was done working.

De'Vannon Seráphino: And I mean, I first time I did ayahuasca, I didn't see any sort of, and psilocybin I didn't see any kind of, like, psychedelics too much or anything the way that I did. The way that it's the way that this was done and everything was very effective for me and I was seeing, very heavy visuals this time around and they were, they were far too heavy for me to keep my eyes closed.

De'Vannon Seráphino: So I kept them open and was able to [00:31:00] work with them that way. And I saw things that speak to change and transition like spiders and rainbows. And it felt for me more like a type of ecstasy. It people in and I was and I was a different psychedelic ceremonies tend to purge and vomit and everything like that.

De'Vannon Seráphino: My body don't work that way, but there's other ways that a person can curve. So I was yawning a lot in different things like that. And in, in working with the visuals and just really leaning into it that way. By the time the ceremonies were done, I felt like that my inner child was healed and it felt like that he had been brought to the front into the surface.

De'Vannon Seráphino: And I thought he was struggling anymore. And that's the beautiful thing that I love with this medicine is that. It can help you to have a problem and not have a problem because I'm not about nursing a problem for [00:32:00] the rest of my life. I don't believe that we always have to be drug addicts or always have to be a victim of something.

De'Vannon Seráphino: And the mentality of this medicine is to move on from problems. And like, And like Jesse was reporting in his testimonial, he was able to be healed of his PTSD. I've heard of veterans being able to be healed of like drug addictions and even one of the shamans that I know personally here in Guadalajara was once addicted to ecstasy.

De'Vannon Seráphino: And she said she did one, I think it was a suicide bin ceremony. And she said from that day forth, she never fooled with ecstasy again. And so, and so this medicine and powerful that it, it can definitely work. Let me say another interesting thing down there that happened with me was I, I started reading tarot cards for [00:33:00] other people.

De'Vannon Seráphino: So, The way the medicine works, it opens you up to, to spiritual forces, it opens up like your emotions, like your third eye and everything, you're super, super, super open when you're dealing with things out of the earth, like various plant medicines and things like that. So I took my tarot cards with me and like a tarot book that I had been reading them for like about a little over a year.

De'Vannon Seráphino: And so my thinking was that I was going to use some of the downtime. To see if I can make the most of already being open spiritually and infuse this with working on my clairvoyant and, and, and, and intuitive gifts, because it is also known that when you play around with tarot cards and things like that, it can also work to open your third eye and to help heighten your clairvoyant sensitivity.

De'Vannon Seráphino: And so I thought, let me see what might happen if I put those two together. And so, [00:34:00] something clicked and switched and I felt more confident in using my, my giftings as a tarot reader. And I, for the first time, felt confident and bold enough to do that for other people, and so that was a very, very beautiful thing.

De'Vannon Seráphino: We had a group circles in between the ceremonies to talk about what was happening. I thought it was very beautiful to check in like that. If we needed to talk to somebody individually, then we could do that too. And I definitely did, like I said earlier, at any time help, I felt like if I needed help or to talk to someone during the ceremony, outside of the ceremony, it was definitely available.

De'Vannon Seráphino: It wasn't even like an issue. We did nature walks, nature walks. We did like hiking, like, like the first time. I don't know how tall that mountain was. Something like 6, 000 feet. This girl here don't [00:35:00] hike. Okay. I don't hike. I I ride horses. I will plant huge gardens and different things like that.

De'Vannon Seráphino: That's my form of nature, but I accepted the challenge and I got my ass up that. up that mountain and it wasn't cute. I was like the last person. My personal coach and like the, like the overall group leader and everything and another participant basically had to hold my hand. You'd have thought I had on a pair of my stilettos or something trying to try to get up that mountain but your girl made it eventually and I was holding on to all of those rocks and everything for dear life.

De'Vannon Seráphino: And I felt phenomenal after I had done it, I'm glad that I was able to get through it. And everyone from heroic hearts was, was, was right by my side, the whole way watching over me, making sure that nothing happened and everything. And so for that reason, I felt safe and I pushed through that and got it done.

De'Vannon Seráphino: But we would do things like that out in nature. We did somatic [00:36:00]exercises and breath work and things of that nature to help get us ready for the ceremonies and help with the integration after the ceremonies. And if we needed, like, private stretching, that was available. They brought in massage therapists for us, too.

De'Vannon Seráphino: To help with different help the body, with the integration process as well. I'm going to tell you a massage and then and I'm a licensed massage therapist too, but I had no idea that this would be integrated into plant medicine. I didn't even cross my mind and it was beautiful to see that done and to experience that it's something that works with massage with, with, with, with releasing body aches and trauma and things like that come up.

De'Vannon Seráphino: It can manifest. It's pains and aches in the body and having a massage in the midst of a ceremony week is brilliant. I mean, that is some platinum stuff right there. [00:37:00] The food was, was, was decadent, eating off the land off the garden chicken homemade breads and fruits and vegetables and everything was absolutely exquisite.

De'Vannon Seráphino: You gotta eat very light when you're going through this type of ceremony. The first time I I did, I was, I felt like I was starving, at this other place in this other city and stuff like that because there was a. That wasn't barely any food or anything. And I thought that that was how it was supposed to be, but you know, the way heroic hearts did it taught me that you can eat a lot, as much as you need to like fruits and vegetables that you don't have to feel like you're about to pass out, for the medicine to work.

De'Vannon Seráphino: So I had a stronger ayahuasca experience and I didn't feel like I was starving the whole time. So. I'm happy that I did this, because my opinion of the way ayahuasca had to be done was not, it wasn't as [00:38:00] clear and acute as it could be. Doing this with her roller course helped to, to give me a wider perspective on the ways that ayahuasca can be done.

De'Vannon Seráphino: I'm, I'm I'm here for it. I'm very here for it. Two thumbs up and all of that. There was music time. There were instruments there to play. People went to sing. We had bonfires at night and sing music around the fires. It was, a fairly full schedule with flexibility and rest time it was Gosh, we had art time, too. If people wanted to draw something, maybe they had seen a visual or anything like that. I have here on my desk, let me see if I can get this to come up. This, this is supposed to be a peacock feather thing, but it kind of looks like star, some cosmic, I don't know, stars flying.

De'Vannon Seráphino: It's supposed to be a peacock feather [00:39:00] because in one of the ceremonies, I, I was seeing, like, peacock feathers and things like that, and the visuals that I was having in peacocks are a very auspicious sign it's something that you definitely want to see. Feathers, in general, are a big thing in Hispanic South American cultures, feathers go a really, really long way, as do birds, so I chose this beautiful, beautiful bird that you see behind me right here, I raised birds growing up.

De'Vannon Seráphino: I love birds. Again that's my type of nature, hanging out with animals and plants on level ground. yeah, that's pretty much what I wanted to do is just give you an overview of my experience with the Heroic Hearts project. Being my first experience, I do recommend it. I do think that it was helpful.

De'Vannon Seráphino: I do think that my life changed. physically, I had body aches and like This [00:40:00] kind of like numbness on the, on like, like a portion of my body because I've been going through a lot of stuff over this last year and my nerves were like, they, they could be in a better, better position that numbness and all of that, that I was feeling went away after I took, took plant medicine.

De'Vannon Seráphino: It wasn't there anymore. And so this is what medicine heals physically, it heals mentally, it heals emotionally, it heals spiritually, when things were coming up, it was some parts of it was a bit of a struggle it wasn't all, easy and seeing peacock feathers, but you know, what came up needed to come up and then my, my HHP coaches right there to help me through it.

De'Vannon Seráphino: You don't need the ceremonies and in the group sessions, individual coaching, there was no time that I felt alone.[00:41:00]

De'Vannon Seráphino: I would say that the problems I went through, went to the ceremony where I did not take out of the ceremony. And so I encourage veterans everywhere, if you're struggling in your mind, It's not worth hurting yourself over because there is help. I know you two probably have had problems at the VA And other doctors offices and facilities trying to get help, but those are not the only options.

De'Vannon Seráphino: There's other options available There's the growing research All over the world in regard to plant medicine, even in the United States government, especially under the Biden administration, there is more emphasis being placed back on psychedelics, which it was decades ago before the war on drugs happened anyway, it was just quieted when that nonsense started.

De'Vannon Seráphino: we're just, we're back at where we, what we were supposed to be anyway. The divine God, however you want to look at it. [00:42:00] Planted these things on the ground and gave them to us and then showed us how to use them. This is us accessing natural things to feel better, to get better, to go out and show up better in our relationship with our kids, cats, dogs, birds, whatever you have, parents, loved ones.

De'Vannon Seráphino: Go to heroicheartsproject. org, I'll put that link in the show notes. See what you think. My name is Devan and Serafino, and thank you so very much for taking time to listen to what I have to say about plant medicines and heroic arts projects work and great contribution to the veteran community.

De'Vannon Seráphino: Until next time.

De'Vannon Seráphino: Thank you all so much for joining us today and for taking some time to invest into yourself and into the lives of your loved ones, please visit us at sex drugs and jesus. com and check out our resource page, our [00:43:00] spiritual service offerings, my blog, my books, and other writings that God has partnered with me to create.

De'Vannon Seráphino: Find us on any social media platform, stay strong, my people, and just remember that everything is going to be all right.