Love & Your Truth

E8: Special Guest Laura Dawn – Human and Earth Flourishing through Creativity, Resilience, and Adaptability

• Dr. Sabrina Hadeed • Episode 8

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In this episode of the newly rebranded 'Love and Your Truth' podcast, the host welcomes Laura Dawn a mentor, friend, and expert in the intersection of psychedelics and creative problem-solving. Laura Dawn, who holds a master’s degree in creativity and change leadership, discusses her work in guiding leaders and teams in using sacred plant medicines to enhance creativity and cultivate heart-centered leadership. 
 
 The conversation begins with an exploration of the reasons behind the podcast's name change, shifting from 'Microdose Your Marriage' to a broader focus that includes all aspects of personal truth and alignment. 
 
 Laura Dawn then helps us understand the importance of connecting with one's inner truth, belonging to this earth, and the role psychedelics can play in this journey. The discussion also touches on Laura D.’s impactful training program, 'Transilience,' which aims to support human flourishing through creativity, resilience, and adaptability. Both Laura and the host advocate for a shift towards a more relational and purposeful engagement with psychedelics, stressing the importance of aligning personal and collective efforts to create better solutions for humanity and the planet.
 
Check out Laura Dawns training program, podcast, and other resources on her website: https://lauradawn.co/

Stay connected with Dr. Sabrina Hadeed on Instagram @dr.sabrinhadeed

Learn more about Dr. Hadeed and the legal psilocybin program for individuals and couples operating in Bend, Oregon on her website:
www.loveandpsychedelics.co

I am so delighted to have a very special guest today, a dear mentor and inspiration and friend, Laura Dawn. Laura. Has a master's in science specializing in creativity and change leadership. Her degree explores the intersection between psychedelics and creative problem solving, helping leaders and teams consciously work with sacred plant medicines to think more creatively and cultivate heart centered leadership in order to unlock innovative solutions to complex challenges we collectively face. I am particularly excited to have you here, because I just, I feel so aligned with so many things that you are doing and the way that you are putting it all out there. And I myself have listened to your podcast, which we're going to hopefully get an update on. I know you and I are starting to collaborate even, We submitted a proposal to present. We don't know if it's approved yet for psychedelic science in Denver this summer, 2025. So there's lots of really amazing things happening even between us. And I'm just so glad that you're, that you're here. So with that, I would love to just hear more about what, what you're doing now, what's lighting you up and especially this pivot that you made in your podcast. And then some of the offerings that you have.

Laura Dawn:

Okay. That's a lot to unpack. Um, I, I actually just, can we start with, uh, why did you change your name?

dr--sabrina-hadeed_1_07-19-2024_133821:

Yeah. Why did I change the name of the podcast? So, you know, I started the podcast, It's maybe like 13 or 14 episodes. And it was called microdose your marriage because that is something it's sort of arm of my business, here in Oregon as a licensed psilocybin facilitator working specifically with couples, with the focus of, you know, conversations about not just big doses of psilocybin and psychedelics, but also the micro doses. And because they, it was so helpful in my own journey. And in my own, in my own life, you know, I consciously uncoupled with my partner and microdosing and psychedelics were such a big part of being able to do that from a place of love and compassion and honesty on it. I just kept coming back to, my truth became so much more amplified with the support of plant medicine and microdosing in particular. And so when I started the podcast, it had that sort of narrow focus of like, I'm going to really open up a conversation and talk to experts and thought leaders and inspirational humans out there in the space that are excited about microdosing and psychedelics in general, for relationship wellness. Just in general doesn't have to be with your partner and it went really well and, and it was, and it was really fun. And I hit this sort of roadblock where I was like, well, this feels too narrow. The scope, this, this focus feels too narrow You know, we're talking about relationship wellness and psychedelics and micro dosing, but I'm actually talking about something much bigger, which is any and all things that can help you reconnect with yourself, with your truth. And with what you really want and how to set your life up to align with that. And so that's my long winded way of saying, like, I, I really felt constricted by that narrow focus and decided it would, it would serve me better. And also, you know, the direction that I want to head if I opened it up and cast a wider net. And so that's why I shifted to love and your truth, um, as the title and as the, as the focus.

Laura Dawn:

How many episodes did it take you to get there? It took about 13. Yeah, it took a bit over. Just over a dozen. That's, yeah. That's good. It was. It was, yeah. Yeah, because when you emailed me and I offered that perspective, I was like, oh, that's very narrow focus you might want to consider, you know? Did you listen to the episode I put out on the upside of psychedelic censorship? Yes. I loved it so much. Yes. It's interesting because a lot of the conversations that I'm having with my closest friends, like all of my closest allies are guides, ceremonialists, you know, people who have been walking this path alongside me for decades, you know, at this point. And it's just so interesting that the conversation that's up for all of us and, you know, this, this circle, because it is a little different than, you know, someone just stepping on the path when you have decades of perspective, it does shift, you know, how we're viewing these conversations and holding them. But I did find it really interesting that simultaneously a lot of us were coming to the same sort of conclusion. And the more that I started talking about it and articulating what I was coming to, other people were like, wow, you're really putting words to what I've been feeling. And, you know, it's interesting because I had 69 episodes of the psychedelic leadership podcast. It was extremely successful. I have like almost a half a million downloads with only, under 70 episodes, but I was also just getting the message. I mean, I have a regular practice. I sit with my meta teacher, my medicine teachers regularly. And in ceremony, it was really just, you know, that bigger picture of, Focus on the outcomes of you walking the path. Part of it was because I was really hitting a wall on social media and feeling like, wow, I'm really, you know, bringing so much education and awareness. Uh, and that was a big blessing for me actually, because it was what allowed me to step back and look at, okay, you know, what is the right approach here to. Amplify the message that I want to share. And what is the message that I actually want to share? And in ceremony, it was just so clear, you know, looking at my lifestyle, I've been living in open air living for almost 20 years. It's completely changed the way I perceive reality, the work that I do, how I walk this life. And as soon as I started sharing, You know, some of that, those aspects of my lifestyle, it was wild. It was like hyper virality and that's not the aim. And so I don't want to like name that as like, that's the goal. It was more just a reflection of, you know, resonance with the vision and the prayer and, you know, my truth and what I'm here to do and what I'm here to amplify and the message I'm here to share. And it was actually, you know, uh, a different kind of destabilizing. It was really interesting to go through like the ceremony of going like repeatedly viral and growing where very, very quickly feel like I'm finally just like recalibrating after that, actually. And so I paused on the psychedelic leadership podcast and, you know, It's one thing to say a line with your truth and to receive messages. And then it's another thing to walk that path and to make shifts, especially when you are public about it. You have an, uh, an audience, you have an email list, you have a, you know, a quote unquote supposed to be consistent and, you know, beat the same drum over and over again. And so it is a real dance, especially for anyone, you know, birthing a body of work or bringing forth a message that is, you know, niche enough so that people understand what you're talking about, but also broad enough that people like, you know, come to you. So that's a whole other different discussion about how to really nail that. And I talk about that in the context of really owning your niche of one, which is it. full alignment with your truth. And I think medicines have the capacity to really show us that path. Actually, you were in one of the earlier cohorts of your messages, your medicine and a lot of that work came through, you know, a lot of years of sitting with these allies and really leading from that place. Um, but it's, it was, it was It's like once you hear the whisper of truth, it's really hard to keep carrying on with it. And I did for a while with the psychedelic leadership podcast until I just hit a moment where I was like, I need to pause and put this down. And I had also at that time launched my first cohort of transillions, which did extremely well. And I was just putting all of my focus into that cohort and the people showing up to be on that journey with me. And, After some time of just letting it sit, I was, you know, at my altar in prayer and ceremony, and Dear Humanity came through, and when it came through, it was just so clear. And, and my, my message has always been in the context of this collective rite of passage that we're moving through. I mean, Transilience, my body of work, was birthed out of, the most devastating lifequake that I went through after the volcanic eruption in 2018. And we're all being initiated, you know, on this path right now, all of us who are on the medicine path, really feeling a sense of the inner initiate waking up to help lead other people. I'm so grateful that this is the training and even before the volcanic eruption happened, I knew that my medicine teachers were like, we're training you. This is, this is the training, this is the curriculum. And I'm so grateful that I had that training when I was catapulted into the most disorienting, confusing dark night of the soul that I ever could have possibly imagined, like worst nightmares coming through. True. And many people are living in their worst nightmares right now from L. A. to, you know, North Carolina, and the planet is shifting, and it's like, for me, I just came to this conclusion, you know, I made this post a while ago on Instagram, it's like, I don't want to talk about, you know, Business, health, wellness, psychedelics, any of it, unless it's in service to how we are in support to humanity living in a better way on this planet. Because what's the point of any of it, you know, as Dennis McKenna says, these are the neurotransmitters of the guy in mind telling us to wake up, they're telling us to remember our belonging to this earth and these shifts take time. I've been living outside for many, many, many years and I'm still restructuring my psyche to understand my belonging to this earth. My inherent connection doesn't just happen overnight. I've And so this is a time for us to wake up and to actually start making those shifts in a better direction. And I think it's going to take a lot of effort for us to get there. And I do think that medicines play a very specific role and a crucial, necessary role. But if they're not surrounded by wisdom teachings, by a body of work that actually supports human flourishing, then I do think that it's, it's potential for more misalignment amplification of, you know, more narcissism, more misdirection of innovative efforts. And so that's, for me, it's like, how do we align the capacity to innovate and create with these medicines, with this earth that we're living on in service, to better solutions to humanity's greatest challenges.

dr--sabrina-hadeed_1_07-19-2024_133821:

Absolutely, absolutely. So many points that you shared. I had these thoughts pop up that I wanted to interject. And so I'll just start with the one that's most, most resonant. And that is, you know, what you're describing is emblematic of a shift that I believe desperately is desperately needed and has been for a really long time, which is fundamentally to come from this place in everything that we do, how we are living and understanding the world to have it come from this place of reverence for the earth that holds us, the earth that holds us protecting it. We are a part of it. Um, we, you know, it's sort of like we are nature living in nature. And to pause, you know, I think the medicines often do encourage us to pause and to slow down rather than go fast, which is the, you know, antithesis to the messaging. And yet we live in a world that is so fast paced and a lot of times we have to like go at that pace to keep up. But that slowing down and, and having respect for and having, you know, sort of intention and ritual. Um, and then there was something else that you said, the waking up, you know, that awakening. I think that, You know, your reference to the 2018 that, volcanic eruption that you yourself were in, I mean, you were in it, your property, um, that you had been stewarding for years and years and years, you know, devastated and you had to write evacuate quickly and then, and then make sense of it all. And I think that, that everyone in the world experienced in some way, you that during COVID 19, lockdown days and what I noticed is that it was the wake up and awakening. And I think a lot of us in the, in, you know, that work with psychedelics saw an uptick as well, because there's this existential pause that was forced upon us. We were forced to literally just stop and sit with the discomfort. And so there's this existential, you know, universally across the world awakening that happened and it, you know, to varying degrees, of course, but I think that, you know, we all as humanity, that dear humanity, right. We have so many things in common and, it's being amplified more so than it ever has before. And I love this idea, full circle back to what you were saying, like, how can we take advantage of that? You didn't say that, but I'm saying that. And, and Take that energy and use it to the, to the benefit of the collective of humanity in general.

Laura Dawn:

Yeah. It's interesting because it's like amidst this time of amplified division, you know, and there's just an amplification in all directions right now. Yeah. Yeah. And that's why the polarities amplify. It's so important to walk in alignment with center, with truth. Yes. Cultivate that.

dr--sabrina-hadeed_1_07-19-2024_133821:

Yeah. I kept coming back to that, you know, so many times that it shifted for me what that even meant and how I feel it in my body and how I know it. It's like a muscle that was, that had atrophied, like I thought I knew. And yet my truth was so muddied. by the noise of all of the things, right, that we all experience in life. And I think that, you know, psychedelics do oftentimes help. And I know you've spoken about that. I've spoken about that. Soften that noise that those, you know, there's the things that muddy our ability to connect with ourselves and our truth and that, You know, even my focus, which is on relationships, right? Relationship wellness. And I often argue that like, everything that is healing work is relational. like even in my psychotherapy practice, you know, when I treat, when I'm working with individuals, I never just working with an individual I'm working with everyone that they are bringing into the room, you know, that they're holding in themselves and eventually, and I'm a really big fan of like inviting people to join along the way, literally not just, you know, not just parts work, but like literally, um, because it is so relational. Yeah. And, and to that end, you know, being in relationship with medicine is a completely different way of being particularly in the Western, you know, sort of medical model. We just don't think of it that way. We think of it as this outside external thing that's going to make us better. We take it. We're not, there's not, we don't think of it as a relationship. And yet this is a part of the shift as we are in relationship with These medicines and with the earth and with ourselves and each other. And yeah, I would love to hear about if it's, if it feels okay to shift, more about transilience, for those that haven't listened. Cause I know there's tons of information and you've talked about it on your podcast, but I'd love to hear just an update on that

Laura Dawn:

yeah, thank you for that invitation. Yeah. Transilience is 120 hour training program. It moves away from the medicalized lens and actually just helps people embody that metacognitive awareness that these are very multidimensional uh, allies, tools, instruments, whatever word works best for you. And that the way that we approach them, most importantly, really influences the outcomes, how we think about preparing someone, how we think about holding space for the experience, how we think about integration. And right now the majority of education and materials are coming through a Western lens. And that Western lens is obviously very heavily influenced by the medical model. And the medical model has deeply entrenched assumptions, right? And those assumptions become hidden, but they become embedded in how we prime people for the experience. And really it's looking at, you know, how do we get people back up to a baseline of normal. And I really want to look at, you know, how do we support human flourishing? How do we actually prepare people? And You know, to, to embrace emotional mastery, learn those skill sets, learn the power of adaptability, learn how to listen and walk in alignment with truth. These are all the necessary skill sets of our time. How do we enhance creativity? You know, so for people who are really wanting to work with specifically leaders and high performers, although, you know, it's really applicable to anyone because you'll really learn the skill sets of how to support people through this meaning crisis. That's a term coined by John Verbeke. We are witnessing an amplification of the meaning crisis. You know, COVID didn't help. It really amplified it. It's marked by, you know, disconnection, isolation, confusion, lack of significance in life. And it's at a pervasive all time high. And that's going to keep accelerating as we move through this. We're, we're. We're moving into a new chapter. We're going into a new era, and even understanding that larger frame is really important for people to grasp. And so, you know, a lot of the work that I did in graduate school was looking at connecting dots that weren't explicitly there, because, you know, A lot of the research is really focused on, you know, the big four, anxiety, depression, PTSD, addiction. And it's great. That's helpful. I have a really deep root, my background's in addiction. Psychedelics really helped me. I wrote a book on addiction, so I have a really strong base in that understanding. And yeah. When I looked at the research through the lens of creativity research, it painted a very different story. And I really understood that the same reasons that allow us to heal addiction, the same reasons that they're so efficacious on a neurobiological level for healing addiction are also the reasons that help us enhance creativity. But if we're not approaching it from that place, then we completely miss All of these opportunities to prepare people differently to help people integrate differently. So instead of, you know, tools to help people, you know, heal depression or addiction, actually empowering people with a framework. And that's what I call transilience. That's really rooted on connection, adaptability, resilience, and creativity. And it's a very different starting point. And so, and I think it's, it's, it's, I don't want to say like the most important story, but I think, you know, we are living in a mental health crisis, so I don't want to diminish that, but I want to share something with you actually that you might find really interesting. So I created a free eight day micro dosing course. You might've gone through it. I mean, many people, I had thousands upon thousands of people sign up for this free day micro dosing course. And I never actually looked at on the first day. I invite people to submit their intentions for microdosing. And, uh, I looked at the results. I had 700 people submit the results. 490 people out of 70 out of 700. So it was about 70% Uh, said that they wanted to microdose to enhance creativity. 1 percent said healing trauma and coming off of SSRIs. The second one under creativity, guess, guess what, what that was? Sense of purpose, direction in life, meaning and direction and purpose. Yes, I find 1 percent was trauma and SSRIs combined was

dr--sabrina-hadeed_1_07-19-2024_133821:

when I hear that it gives me great hope, you know, that we're starting that, that perhaps what it means, and it can mean a lot of things I know, but perhaps what it means is that people are starting to think about, you know, what can be helpful differently. Because for so long, the messaging was what's helpful is treating a symptom, whatever the symptom is, right? Joblessness. Okay. Give you a job. Homelessness. Give you a home. You know, PTSD. Let's treat the symptoms of that. Let's treat the symptoms of your depression. And when I hear that people are looking for a sense of purpose, a direction and create creativity to spark creativity, I think we'll now we're talking about targeting the root of most, if not all of these issues.

Laura Dawn:

Yeah, but here's the thing. Here's the thing. This is why I actually, and I positioned myself as a microdosing coach for many, many, many years and I was not as successful as I am now in my career. And I actually don't recommend people position themselves as microdosing coaches if they want to become irreplaceable in this movement for the long run. A. How to microdose is readily available. I offer it for free. It's super easy. I don't know any microdosing coach who is actually financially thriving because all of that's super easy. I can literally today build a bot to offer suggestions on weaning off SSRIs, all of that. But as per your point, you know, we can't replace relationality and healing is relational. And if you have a client that comes to you and says, you know, I want to microdose for creativity and you say, okay, great. Point one grams. Here's a, you know, the stamets protocol. Then what? That's the whole point of like this whole conversation of focusing on the, the medicines It's not even 1 percent of the equation. It's not even the point of what we're talking about. And so actually learning the skillsets, like how do you support someone in dropping into more flow in Reese retelling the story of their lives, which is fundamentally creative of finding deeper levels of meaning and significance of enhancing. Purpose and, you know, re identifying who they are. That is a very high level of skill sets that really actually requires understanding multidisciplinary framework for transformation. And, you know, it's taken me many, many, many years to offer transilience. It's the culmination of walking this path for over 20 years of my life. So it's not something that you can just, you know, pop out overnight. This is something that actually, it, it, it really takes a long time to actually put together a curriculum that is comprehensive enough. That's actually held with what does it mean to cultivate more wisdom? How do we, How do we enhance wisdom as a primary metric for what we are doing here and this work that we're doing?

dr--sabrina-hadeed_1_07-19-2024_133821:

And that requires healing people's internal compass because there has been so much, so many people that I treat that have lost connection with their wisdom. They don't even know how to connect with it because they have been conditioned to believe that the wisdom has to come from outside themselves. And so I think that is a part of what I, I also love about what you're doing and at all of this messaging is that it is also healing that relationship we have with ourselves. You know, that, that the intuition, if you want to call it that the internal compass, you know, the inner wisdom, we could talk about it in so many different ways first. Connecting, reconnecting with that, remembering that so that you can use it as a way to help guide you rather than this external, you know, you go see this person and this person is the guy, this person leads you into the path you're meant to be. That's not the way that it even effectively works in the longterm. Um, which is again, an exciting shift. Um, yeah.

Laura Dawn:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and that's, I think there's a lot of different ways that we can approach it. And I'm not saying that, you know, this lens is, you know, better than another lens. I think the medical lies model is really helpful for certain people, but I argue that it's actually a very, very, very small percentage of people who are actually, you know, really looking at like severe depression, um, In terms of coming to psychedelics, I think the vast majority of people are coming for psycho spiritual reasons for healing, for growth, for connection, for community. And that's, and yet all of our education and all of the training programs are so hyper focused on mental illness, mental quote unquote illness, you know, and so that was really the call. To, to fill what I felt like was a huge gap and need in this space.

dr--sabrina-hadeed_1_07-19-2024_133821:

Yeah. I mean, I think that even what drew me to you from the beginning was just the alignment in, you know, there's my, my, the degree of my graduate training, that I completed in 2006 was actually an existential phenomenological psychology. And that is really very heavily influenced by sort of Eastern philosophy and, you know, logo therapy, Viktor Frankl, meaning making, and this idea that in order to understand ourselves, that psychology lens, right, the psyche, that internal, what we can also now call spirit, um, or have. Stopped calling it that now we get to return to that, understanding that from this lens of how we make meaning in the world and how we understand that and our existence and, and, you know, I think Viktor Frankl spoke to that really early on, like, how do you, cultivate meaning making even in the most extreme suffering conditions? He really demonstrated that and wrote about it so well. And I think that, um, it's. An efforting that it is. Should be, and I know should is a tricky word, ever present for all of us. It's how we live. Um, it's how we go from surviving, which he talks about, to, to flourishing, to thriving, to sustaining. I mean, I think that for a long time, we didn't even consider sustainability in any way, shape, or form. Sustainability of our bodies. Sustainability of, you know, our, I don't know, I don't know. Our mental health, our spiritual health, our planet, our family units, whatever that is for you. It was, it was mostly this messaging around, immediate intervention, almost this crisis intervention mentality that, many cultures have taken on, which is not serving us. And so shifting to this other way of, of thinking and being. Yeah, I'm just so delighted to hear always. about how that's manifesting in, in the work you're doing. When is the next cohort for Transilience?

Laura Dawn:

Is it, is it coming up? Yeah. January 24th. Yeah. And this is likely going to be the last time I facilitate it live. The whole thing really just takes, uh, you know, pretty much a whole year. One cohort, even though it's seven months, it's really pretty much, you know, a year. And after this take three or four months off to just really decompress.

dr--sabrina-hadeed_1_07-19-2024_133821:

Again, walk in the walk, you know, role modeling, the importance of taking breaks and slowing down, reassessing. Well, thank you so much for your time and for everything that you're bringing to the world and for, for, you know, I just continue to truly, truly, genuinely be inspired by you and, and, and look to you often to not lose sight of what's important and to believe in the power of manifesting if you're living in alignment with your truth. So thank you very much. Thank you. I appreciate you.