The Truth About Ayahuasca: Psychedelic Trauma, Nervous System, & Integration | Francesca Barone

On this pod, I chat with Francesca Barone for one of the most unexpectedly grounding conversations around psychedelics and healing.

Francesca runs a retreat center (Anam Cara) with Shipibo healers from the Amazon and describes a way of sitting with ayahuasca that feels like a warm, peaceful journey.

We unpack:

•  Francesca’s journey from addiction & autoimmune illness into plant medicine work 
•  What ayahuasca actually is without the spiritual fluff
•  How modern psychedelic culture sometimes creates more dysregulation instead of healing 
•  Poorly held ceremonies & psychedelic trauma 
•  Why nervous system regulation matters before the ceremony 
•  The role embodiment plays in healing 
•  How women disconnect from intuition 
•  The difference between performing spirituality vs. embodying truth 
•  Integration after ceremonies & why support matters 
•  The exhaustion of hiding parts of ourselves 

Timestamps
00:00: The intuitive nudge that started it all
11:29: Embodiment before ceremony
26:00: Psychedelic trauma 
31:55: Fear of Ayahuasca
44:06: Integration: what it is, what it isn’t, and why community is everything
50:29: Listening to your intuition
53:35: Showing up in the mess: feminine connection, authenticity, and blocked intimacy
58:49: Embodying the full range of femininity

Connect with Francesca:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/followyour_bliss_
https://www.instagram.com/anamcararetreats/
https://www.anamcarahealingretreats.com/

Transcript

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Kristin 0:00

Hey y'all, today I'm back with a breakup haircut. So I'm still trying to figure this out. And I have Francesca Barone on. We don't really know one another. So it's kind of a cool conversation. We were just talking about that before we sat down and like kind of feeling out what we want to chat about, but I don't have any questions, so we're just gonna flow. I mean, I have like some percolating in the back of my mind. But yeah, I was like just drawn to you and trying to follow that intuitive nudge and invite you on the podcast.

Francesca 0:28

Amazing. I'm happy to be here.

Kristin 0:29

Yeah.

Francesca 0:30

Thank you.

Kristin 0:30

I was chatting with Amy last week or the last episode, and she had said something about uh drugs or psychedelics like feeding or depleting our soul. I know that I have a lot of personal experience with that. Like I was seeking or doing all these kind of different substances. And from what I gather, you may can relate in some way. So I'd love to share maybe personal story or to get to where you are today and maybe explore some ayahuasca 101 or absolutely. Yeah, I'm open.

Francesca 1:02

Yeah, I mean, where to start? I mean, I love that I love that reference because it's true, right? The difference between a medicine and a poison is often just the dose. And it's really for me less about what medicines we're working with or what substances we're working with, but the intentions behind working with them and how we are working with them. That really determines, yeah, is it a is it a life-giving practice? Is it creating more life and aliveness in the body? Or are we using it to numb, to cope, to disassociate, to continue to seek safety or seek love outside of ourselves, um, and weakening, you know, our our inner sovereignty and our inner power. So we can get into all of that. For sure.

Kristin 1:47

No, I was like, calling out younger Christmas myself.

Francesca 1:52

I mean, there's a lot that led me to my journey of, you know, running an ayahuasca center. And um I guess the short story is I was born, you know, in America, in in the Midwest, really in a place where there's not a lot of life at all in a family that didn't have a lot of life, a lot of trauma. And my whole life I became a professional addict. I was on a chase to feel anything, I think, to feel alive, and also numbing a lot and coping a lot to not feel all the things that happened in my childhood and everything I was carrying ancestrally, and just a lot of disconnection of growing up in a place where there was no culture. There was no aliveness, there was no ritual, no community, no connection, um, which set me on a really long path. I mean, in my younger years, I was a professional chef, which is how you know you have a lot of trauma. You find your way, you find your way working in a in a commercial kitchen. Um, and I struggled a lot with autoimmune disease and got really sick in my early 20s. And I was a really intense, you know, kind of party drug addict, alcoholic in in my early 20s through my mid-20s. And yeah, basically got myself to a place in a massive existential crisis where my body was completely shutting down and turning to Western medicine, being completely gaslit and told nothing was wrong with me, and wanting to be put on on, you know, antidepressants and sleeping meds and the whole thing, and and eventually kind of found my way to naturopathic medicine and and became a psychological nutritionist. Eventually made my way to living in Indonesia and Southeast Asia and getting really into the heart, um, the you know, the brain and body connection and Eastern practices, and started studying some Buddhism and things like that, but still was really grappling with a lot of addiction energy. And for a long time believing that if I was sober, I was free and I was healthy and realizing over the years through my sobriety that the places in my body that were very much still living in suffering and disconnection where the addict energy and and pain really still lived hadn't been liber liberated through sobriety. And eventually found my way to an ayahuasca retreat in 2018. I was gonna ask, I was like, what year to feel grounded in space and time. Okay, 2018. Wow. And um, it was a beautiful friend, my partner at the time, that that gifted me a um a plus one, a free space to go. And basically, my my own personal journey with ayahuasca the first couple years is everything that I tell other people not to do. I did I did just about every single thing wrong that you can do. And living by learning. Learn the hard way. Yeah, exactly. Really learn the hard way. And my business is really born from that. All of the care that I wish I would have received, the knowledge that I just had no idea about, the mistakes I made, the ways that I abused the medicine in the beginning. I didn't really know how to integrate it and work with the medicine in my body that actually brought more softness and more relaxation and more regulation. It was a lot of pushing and driving and belief that I was broken and really like driving my nervous system farther into the ground and into dysregulation through the use of plant medicine. Um, and so everything I do now with Anamkara is really born from that. And I've been, yeah, kind of doing this full-time for the last seven years and now really weaving in the personal work I do with women in the feminine embodiment space and sexual polarity space, of learning how to use dynamic embodiment practices and different things that help us really express the truth of our bodies, the truth of our hearts, the truth of the energies that we're holding inside of us, how to weave that into work with plant medicine and with ayahuasca to find our way to being able to be fully expressed as ourselves and fully alive in our relationships and embodying our authenticity, because I think ultimately that's what we're all really deeply searching for is to inhabit ourselves and to fully be ourselves in the world. And plant medicine, like ayahuasca, can absolutely help us do that. And it can also be used to escape who we truly are.

Kristin 6:35

Yeah. I think that's a good point too. There's a there's so much things that you said that I was like, okay, this thread, this thread. Um one, like if I'm going to embark on a journey of like self-discovery, healing, harmonizing, I I prefer that someone that's been through the path or walked the path and can like have some of that personal experience. And here are the reasons why we relate. Like I know it from firsthand account. And um, I'm curious too, like with the ayahuasca, like that first journey to now. Like did you have any inkling then when you sat with the first time that you would be where you are today? Yeah. Like guiding other people in a in a journey. And I'm all like there's so many other little things. Um, we could talk about like the uh like what unconscious or just like frivolous use of psychedelics um or the intentionality. And there's they're just like a sidebar that I kind of feel that's like called me at times, and I'm like, ah, then I'm like, oh, maybe it's you. Yeah. This is why she's on the podcast. Yeah. Cause you talked about bringing the body into it versus just the mind. And I think so much of the psychedelic, I think of like psychonaut or like journeying in the mind. But I think that the embodiment piece or like moving the body would be so key. So I love that you touched on that too.

Francesca 7:59

I guess, wait, what was the first question? It was around numbers. Oh, did I have an idea that I would be doing it? You know, I hate to to be stereotypical and say that I did have a vision. But I did have a vision. And it was in my third ceremony that I had. You know, at the time it didn't really seem like that significant of a vision. I mean, I was getting my ass kicked in my first ceremonies because I wasn't prepared and I wasn't ready and I didn't have the nervous system training and I didn't have the support that I needed. And um there's a lot of suffering that I went through that I would love to say is necessary, and part of me feels like it wasn't necessary, but I had this beautiful vision of me kind of in this room and I was sitting everyone down on these mats and and just really like starting to open up a ceremony. And at the time I really didn't think much of it. And I've been in many retreats that I've held in the last couple of years where, you know, I'm I'm lighting the candles and everyone's coming in for ceremony and I'm guiding everyone to their mats, and I'm like, oh. Yeah, there it was. And I get in this little joke with ayahuasca sometimes, like, do I have free will? You know, like I'm in this forever question with ayahuasca of like, do I have free will? Um But yeah, and you know, the embodiment work is something I've only gotten into in the last probably three years. And uh, my first couple of years working with the medicine, I kind of grew up in a very corporate, um, profit-driven, kind of standard medicine center, very well known, where it was a lot about the volume of people coming in and out and providing this very, you know, formulaic experience for everyone. And everyone was kind of one in a number in a way. And it was a lot of sitting around, it was a lot of talking, it was a lot of verbal processing, it was a lot of sitting, smoking tobacco, talking about our stories, talking about our trauma, which of course connecting with people and and sharing your story can be really helpful. And one of the reasons why I think ayahuasca is so powerful is that it's working in the body to scrape and clean and start to loosen up the energies that have become petrified and stuck and crusty ancestral energies, traumas, things that are, you know, stuck in the brain, stuck in the energy body, stuck in the sexual, sexual body. And she's sifting up and agitating all of that energy in the same way you would kind of chisel ice off of a windshield in order to liberate it and move it through the body. And so people are in ceremonies, you know, they're doing different movements, they're making different sounds to move energy. And I started to have this question around like, why are we sitting the whole retreat talking with our minds, trying to analyze and understand? Yes, this very interesting psycho, not psychedelic perspective of this wild medicine. Um, and I could talk about the medicine all day. It's it's absolutely fascinating. And what happens when we actually shut up and lay our story down and get into the body? And I started to notice in my own practice with ayahuasca working with the medicine, how I was becoming really dependent upon the medicine to get me to move my body, to move my hips, to soften my jaw, to make sound out of my mouth. And then when I was outside of the ceremony, there I was in my closure, shut down, jaw clenched, up in my mind, talking, talking, talking, you know, yoni clenched. And so I had a really big epiphany a couple of years ago, like, oh, we got to start to move. And I started to get really into feminine embodiment work and masculine practice as well, of what it would it actually look like on these retreats to do very little talking, very little processing, a lot of vocalization, a lot of getting into like what is it like to move like an animal? What does it look like to move as the anger and the rage of my inner child? And um, what does it look like to really embody the sensuality in my hips and to start to learn how to relax the tissues and the fascia and my womb space and my yoni and my jaw and starting to get people to do very weird things, make weird sounds and take weird shapes and start to actually express the energy that's inside. And when I started implementing these practices into the retreats, I remember um one of the first, one of the first retreats where I started doing a lot of embodiment practice. We went into the first ceremony and we're in the ceremony and four hours in, and I'm like, no one's purging. Like a little purge here or there. A little purge here or there, like definitely tears, like they're purging, but way less intense vomiting, way less intense struggling and holding on. And the medicine just came through so beautifully, and she was like, everyone moved the energy already. So people were having a lot more of these peaceful experiences. And and what I believe is happening is that as we're doing our own sovereign work to clear energetic and psychic trash from the body, we're creating more space. And ayahuasca is a spirit, is a consciousness that likes to go where there is space. And so when you're coming into an ayahuasca retreat with heartbreak and trauma and ancestral things, you know, it's like the body is full. There's no space. And yeah, we can we can go in totally full and locked up and closed and drink a big cup of ayahuasca and the medicine can blast us open. Or we can actually do the reps and do the work for weeks, for months before the retreat, during the retreat, to start to open the body and open the heart and open the voice and soften the tissues of the body, and we create all this beautiful space that now ayahuasca gets to come in and yes, of course, still clean, but she gets to like dance in the space that we've created in the body. And I find the ceremonies are so much more gentle and so much more easeful by offering the medicine that space to move. And um, instead of the medicine kind of getting in there and like, you know, jabbing at the cobwebs and everything that we haven't touched. And so, for me, one of the most important things for anyone that wants to work with plant medicine, I mean, specifically ayahuasca, at the end of the day, it's a cleanse, it's a cleaning. And so, if you want to go in and you want to be really, really deeply cleaned, we have to start to loosen up all of that in the weeks before and get really familiar with the material that we're holding in our bodies and start to let go and liberate ourselves and express as a practice to prepare us for ceremony.

Kristin 14:26

I love this. Yeah. And this sounds way more like my vibe. Yeah, like peaceful, easeful, easeful. Yeah and like the prep work beforehand. Like I know there's been a lot, I've heard like a lot of focus on like the diet before. But I like how this like weaves in like other elements. Because it's part of the cleanse, right?

Francesca 14:42

Of course, of course, the dieta is so important of what foods am I cutting out, reducing social media, reducing all of the things that come into my field and fuck with my energy, or of course, right? Can I say that? Yeah.

Kristin 14:53

Oh, for sure.

Francesca 14:54

Like anything that comes into my body, because as I'm relating with the world, every store that I'm in, every person I'm talking with, every food that I'm eating, the music I'm listening to, those are energies that are penetrating the field of my mind and my body. And those are the energies I'm showing up to in ceremony with. And so if you don't want to meet, you know, some really nasty stuff in ceremony, you got to be really discerning of what is what am I interacting with and relating with in preparation? So the diet is massive, but the diet is also emotions. What old stagnant, crusty, resentful, you know, rotting emotions am I holding on to behind the armor in my heart, behind the clenching in my womb, all the psychic material that I'm holding on to and my projections of other people? And how can I actually start to loosen the grip and relax and open and start to process some of this material in preparation for ayahuasca? And what I have found in these last couple of years is that the plant is very grateful and responds very well to us doing that, that prep work in the same way that if you were gonna go run a marathon, would you train? Yeah. Otherwise, it's not gonna you're not gonna do very well. It's you know, you're gonna get injured, you're not gonna feel good, you're not gonna be able to finish, you're not gonna actually have the the resilience. And so building emotional resilience and nervous system resilience in preparation for plant medicine is for me arguably one of the most important things we can do.

Kristin 16:22

I love that. And what's um I maybe we need to like rewind a little bit to give people that they're like, okay, what is this ayahuasca? Like I'll maybe define what it is. Um and also I'm like, what's a day? I guess like the goal. Yeah, true. Yeah. What could what kind of is the lead-in process? Yeah, like like is it months? Is it like a group thing, individual thing, like personalized? Because I'm like, I could see myself like signing up for this podcast. I'm like, wow.

Francesca 16:53

So ayahuasca is uh is a brew, technically. It's a tea that's brewed from two plants that come from the Amazon basin, which is a whole the whole Amazon region of Peru and Colombia and Brazil. And the ayahuas is made up of two plants, which is the ayahuasca vine, which holds kind of the wisdom and the intelligence. It's a very feminine vine that needs another plant to grow up around, so it's a very relational plant, and then the chakruna leaf, and the chakruna leaf is what has the DMT. And so these two plants come together, which is a whole story in and of itself because they they originally grew thousands and thousands and thousands of miles apart, and there are hundreds of thousands of species of plants in the Amazon, and it's very interesting that many, many, many hundreds of years ago, these you know, indigenous people somehow found these two plants that didn't even grow in the same area, knew to bring them together. Do we have free will? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Knew to cook them. And so there's been many different origin stories of how ayahuasca came about. But in the Shipibo lineage, which is the lineage I work with, um, which is one indigenous group, the Shipibo Kanibo Nation, um, those are the only two plants in the brew. And so there are many different traditions that work with ayahuasca, many different indigenous traditions through Colombia and Brazil that add other plants and add other energies and do different things. There's a lot of ceremonies that are very um celebratory and concert-like with singing and dancing and lots of instruments. The Shepibo lineage that I work with and am, of course, partial to, is a lot more surgical. It's a lot quieter of a ceremony, it's a lot more introspective. And so there's no instruments, there's no dancing, you're you're really introspective alone on your mat in the dark with ayahuasca, and then you have the Shepibo healer who is doing an individual energetic healing on each person through the medicine of the ikero, which is uh an ancient sacred song that the healers they diet for many years in the jungle through isolation diets where they're cutting out food, cutting out sex, cutting out some all kinds of things. They're not speaking to anyone else, they're in total isolation. And they drink ayahuasca and they drink other master plants, and the body actually gets so sensitive and so quiet from lack of stimulation, lack of foods, lack of salt, lack of sex, lack of all these things that the plants can actually start to hear the language of the plants. And the plants start to come in and they start to teach them how to heal different ailments, heal different illnesses, how to heal people through these beautiful spiritual songs that are channeled through the dieta. So drinking Shipibo medicine is very different than drinking with other lineages, and of course, very different than more Western circles, where people have kind of extracted the brew of ayahuasca and are serving it here in Austin, here in the States, but have lost the actual technology, the healing technology of the shaman, of the curendero that's actually holding the ceremony and guiding the healing. And so sitting with a Shipibo healer is a lot like going to a surgeon, sitting down in front of them in the ceremony. And yes, you're connecting with the ayahuasca, but the healer is the one that's actually looking into your field, looking into the tissues of the body, looking into your genetics, into your thought patterns, into all the different energies you're holding. And they start to weave this song like a needle that's going into the body and it's finding anything that's expired out of alignment, out of balance, and they're starting to pull it out and pull it out and pull it out and reorganize the central channel, reorganize the mind, the body, and the soul back into alignment and coherence. And once that's aligned again and everything's kind of put back into its original place where it was before trauma, before all the different, you know, dissonance that comes of living in this world, um, our channel is kind of fully aligned. And then from that place, we're just absolutely flooded with divine love and compassion and creativity explodes, and our sexuality comes into alignment, and so many beautiful things that can happen, but it's it's really a pulling out of anything that's causing interference in the system. That's what the purge is all about, and then putting you back into your right order so that you can really feel like your truest self. And that's how we work with ayahuasca.

Kristin 21:21

Yeah. So I'm like, this sounds like music to my ears. And I'm curious, the healers, is this like something they're born into? That they choose the path, like Yeah.

Francesca 21:30

You know, they're so amazing. Like some of them choose, and a lot of you know, it is their ancestral medicine. So the healers that we work with, you know, their their parents were were ayahuasqueros and their parents and their parents. And so in the middle of the Amazon, you have to think before the last, you know, 60, 70 years where white Westerners started to go down into the Amazon and experience this, you know, you have the entire Amazon rainforest, this wild place with no electricity and no interference from outside. Man, there was no hospitals, there was no pharmaceuticals, no medications, no vaccines. Ayahuasca was the medicine that the communities used to heal. It was given to sick children. It was given to mothers that lost their child. It was given for addictions, for traumas, for dengue fever, for cancer. Like they worked with the plants because that's what they had access to. There was an abundance of plants. And so these ancestral healers are just absolute wizards at knowing the entire apothecary of the Amazon and all the different thousands of plants that can heal different ailments in the body. And ayahuasca itself actually isn't the medicine that heals. She's kind of the medicine that lifts the veil. And so when you're sitting in front of a Shipibo healer and they're singing you the icaros of the different plants they've worked with to heal different things in your body: PCOS, infertility, heartbreak, trauma, insomnia, cancer, anxiety, whatever it is, they're singing the different plants into your field to heal those ailments. And ayahuasca is kind of like the door that opens to the apothecary. And then they're actually using the songs of different Amazonian plants to channel those songs and those healing frequencies into the body. So it makes me really sad when I think about people that that drink ayahuasca here in the States.

Kristin 23:19

And that's never appealed to me.

Francesca 23:20

I'm like, it doesn't have like there's so many things about it that are dangerous and out of integrity. But but for me, that the deepest sadness around it is people think that it's just drinking the cup of ayahuasca and experiencing the psychedelic effect that's so meaningful. And yeah, you can see crazy visions and see, you know, all these cool things, but it's the medicine of the ancestral healer and their apothecary of knowledge and their surgical-like ability that they've gained through decades of training that's actually doing the healing in the body. And so many people are drinking ayahuasca here in the States and not actually seeing the results of healing that they want to see. And so if you really wanna, if you really want to experience the depth of that, there's really nothing like being sung to by a by a Shipbo ayahuascaro. It's it's it's unlike anything else.

Kristin 24:14

And the way you describe it is just fascinating. And like I can see I can see the apothecary and it just like lands too whenever it's like related in that way. And so I know we talked briefly when we were in the lobby about how now you're seeing an influx of people that are coming with psychedelic trauma. Yeah. So maybe like we'll bridge to that with the Trevor Burrus, all the ways not to do it.

Francesca 24:35

Yeah, you know, when I first started and I was working at this larger center about seven years ago, and and I was answering the phones and doing guest process, you know, I would say about one in every 60 to 70 people I spoke with would be calling, interested in coming to drink ayahuasca because they had they had sat in a mushroom ceremony or they had taken LSD on their own or they had some fear around drinking ayahuasca because of a negative psychedelic experience they had in the woods or at somebody's house. And I would start to hear these stories a little bit, you know, and I would talk about how different, you know, the healing ceremony is that's safe and protected, where you've got doctors there, these ancestral doctors that are working on you. And then over the course of the last seven, eight years, it has just exploded to the point where now, as I was saying to you earlier, probably around 40 to 50 percent of the people that reach out to our retreat center and are wanting help or wanting to come to a retreat or just need someone to talk to are calling because of the trauma they have endured in psychedelic experience experiences with other shamans. Yeah. You know, and um just horrific stories. I mean, it could go on all day, but women that have been absolutely abused and taken advantage of, people that have been struggling with insomnia for years after a poorly held mushroom ceremony. I had a guy earlier this year that was drinking in New York in a circle, and the healers there, they weren't working with tobacco, which is one of the most important parts of the ceremony to keep everyone's energy off of you. It's it's what keeps the energies clean in the ceremony. He was serving the ayahuasca and he kind of cut out the plant baths and cut out the tobacco and cut out all of the other healing tools. So everything that everyone was purging was sticking to all of the people. And this guy was just covered from head to toe in black psoriasis, just rashes all over his body, his hair was falling out, he was having suicidal ideations, he had seen every doctor in New York, he had taken steroids, all the things. He came to a retreat, and in the very first ceremony, the maestros sang to him and they cleaned him of the energy of those ceremonies. And his psoriasis was gone about three days later, it all scabbed and and healed up, and he's completely fine. And so, you know, when we're going into these more modern ceremonies where they're not held in the appropriate way, maybe you're gonna have a great experience, but you have no idea what the other people are bringing in, and what you're doing is you're using ayahuasca or mushrooms, just as powerful, to lift the veil, and you're mixing with everything in that room, the porn that everyone has watched, the traumas that they have been through, their ancestral energies they're carrying in their family lines, um, ev everything, ever all their stories, all their thoughts, all their energies, and you're mixing. And if you don't really have a highly skilled, highly trained healer there to clean the energies that everyone is purging, you're in a big toxic soup. And so you might even have a beautiful experience in the ceremony of seeing things and connecting with your heart. And then you go home and you start feeling anxious and you wonder why you can't sleep, and you have energetic parasites attached to you, and you have, you know, these very negative energies that want to come in and want to suck your soul, want to steal your energy, want to stay alive. And they start using your life force to do that. And so I, you know, I'm kind of at the far end of extremists when it comes to psychedelics. I mean, I've been working with ayahuasca for eight years, full-time. I don't drink the medicine without my healers there. I don't drink it casually, I don't serve it here in the States, even though it would be much more convenient. You know, plant medicine is really not meant to be convenient. Yeah. It's a rite of passage. We're meant to pilgrimage to these faraway lands and find ourselves in these foreign places amongst the cultures that have been safely holding these traditions for thousands of years. And it's really only in the last 100 years that we actually start to hear horror stories of ayahuasca, fear stories, and crazy things happening and people trying to kill themselves. It's not the ayahuasca. Ayahuasca's thousands of years old. It's been used to heal people through throughout the whole Amazon region for a long time. It's the way that Westerners have taken it out of its context and are using it. And, you know, there's I know people here in Austin that have sat in my retreats that have, you know, seven, ten ceremonies of experience and think they're ready to serve the medicine. And it's it's very dangerous. It's very dangerous.

Kristin 29:16

And when you talk about like all the energy and parasites and all the things that people carry, I'm like, that is not something I want to gamble on. And like not my God, yeah. I don't like going to the grocery store.

Francesca 29:29

And you see what they're holding. And it's not because they're bad, you know. When you're in a ceremony that's well held, it doesn't matter what pre-people are bringing in. The healers are gonna clean it. It's gonna be organized, it's gonna be cleaned, you're gonna see people liberate themselves from just the heaviest, heaviest traumas, energies, wrongdoings that they've done in their life. It's beautiful. But um, if you don't have that kind of energetic surgeon in the room, you have someone that, you know, thinks because they have a meditation practice and they've done a couple plant medicine ceremonies and they've done a course online about the science of psychedelics, or they're a nurse that they can hold a psychedelic ceremony. They have no idea how to clean energetic parasites. They have no idea what to do if the ceremony starts being spiritually attacked by an energy coming off of someone else. They have no idea how to perform an exorcism if it's necessary.

Kristin 30:19

Wow.

Francesca 30:20

And so being a nurse, doing an online course, learning about the science of psychedelics, learning about therapeutics, psychology does not qualify you to serve psychedelics. You have to be energetically, shamanically trained. And that's the work that most people don't want to do because it takes over a decade. Wow. It's a decade of work.

Kristin 30:41

Like a commitment. Yeah, I feel like we want things so at our fingertips and convenient. But I feel like there's like a certain level of reverence, like going on the journey, prepping for it. Like to me, I'm wondering if there's like even a connection between like a level of honoring the medicine and like the more peaceful ease that I've experienced versus like, hey, just give it to me when I want it and like this is how I want the in result and da-da-da-da.

Francesca 31:08

And you know, I I we have a lot of people that come through. I mean, our retreats, because we have a minimum one month preparation period. I would say that most people do two, if not three. Some people, some women, I work with long-term in a somatic coaching container for three to six months before they're actually ready to come drink the medicine, which is amazing to put that kind of time in. But you know, we have people that call and bucket listers and people that just want to have the blast off experience. And I decline them because I don't want that in my circle. And ayahuasca is is deep, deep truth medicine. And we have to be really ready to face the truth. And when someone tells me like you, which is everyone that's scared to drink ayahuasca?

Kristin 31:51

That's serious.

Francesca 31:52

It's like that was a commitment, 12 hours, maybe? I don't know how long. No, it's only about it's only about seven or eight, but you know, I don't think we're really scared of ayahuasca.

Kristin 32:01

Yeah, it's what what it's gonna show us. Or like what's scared of our mirrors. Yeah. True. And that when you mentioned like the peak experiences, I was like, oh, that was totally me. Yeah. But now I feel like I would go through the reverence and the journey and and have more honor, honor and I don't know, to my little pilgrimage. Intentionality. Yeah, intentionality versus like, yeah, give me this peak experience because I want a cool story because I was so influenced by Hunter S. Thompson. Yeah.

Francesca 32:28

To like tell a good story or you know, and we're chasing, you know, those of us that live in the modern world now are so desensitized and so numb and so over busy and all these things that we've lost, you know, connection with the subtle body. And so we're looking for this really intense experience to help us feel aliveness. But working with ayahuasca for me is a lot like learning to make really beautiful love. It's learning to be sensitive again, yeah, to feel the subtlest of energies and to rebuild my connection to my subtle body so that I can be so attuned to how I'm feeling and find where is that in my body and how do I express that? And um, it's very much like putting the vibrator down and learning to touch myself again with attunement. It's like, can I actually resensitize myself in order to be deeply connected to life instead of searching for a bigger and bigger and bigger and more intense thing to continue jacking my nervous system through the roof? And, you know, especially the work I do with women, modern women like you, like me. We are so fucking exhausted and so overwhelmed and so disconnected from our sensitive, soft, supple, oxytocin-driven nervous systems. And the last thing I do with a modern woman when she comes to my retreat is serve her a large cup of medicine because it's not what we need. We don't need another explosion. What we need is rest and care and nurture and to feel held and to learn to soften and relax the tissues of our body to the point of emotional release. It's not a striving, it's not a pushing through, it's a relaxing into and opening into the gentle arms of ayahuasca. And ayahuasca is like a high-resolution mirror. She shows up to us in a language that we speak. And so if we're a pusher and a driver and really intense, it's often that the medicine is going to show up like that in ceremony. Whereas if we can start to connect to the more soft and vulnerable parts of ourselves and really arrive to ayahuasca, like, fuck, I don't know, I don't know, help me, help me. I'm scared. She responds to that with beautiful, gentle energy. And so she's really just mirroring back the parts of ourselves that we need to see. And um the intelligence of this medicine is unbelievable.

Kristin 34:59

Yeah. Yeah, I love even when you're just like describing it. I'm like, oh my god, I just feel even more soft, just like sitting here.

Francesca 35:05

Who do you know that talks about ayahuasca in a way to create relaxation?

Kristin 35:09

No, but I always hear about the purge, always hear about, you know, like the the intensity. Yeah, the intensity part of it. Yeah, it doesn't have to be that way. I mean God, I did not do that. Yes. Well, because I I went to Egypt in 2024, and like a girlfriend of mine was going from Egypt to uh ayahuasca retreat and she had a plus one because she has a big following. And I was like, I feel like Egypt is gonna be ayahuasca in and of itself. I don't think I need to like go over there. Um like I'm just like glad that I listened to the hesitancy. I'm like, was that fear? Was that intuition?

Francesca 35:43

I don't know, but now I feel like a little more grounded, or just like it just feels more aligned now versus you know what I'd like to say to people, which which I never thought of when I was first seeking out plant medicine, is like when you're when you're speaking to someone interested and sitting in their circle or working with them in the space, how do they feel? Do they feel relaxed? Do they feel grounded? How are their relationships? How are they doing? Are they like talking all the time about the podcast they're doing, the psychedelics are doing, and I'm doing this, and they're dysregulated and they're jacked up on coffee, and they're like relationships are a fucking disaster. And maybe they have the spiritual garb and they're wearing the hat and they're wearing the feathers and they've got the lingo, but like, how do they feel in their body? Because that's actually what you're co-regulating to in the space. That's I don't care what they talk about. It's what they embody. Anyone, a breath work teacher, a yoga teacher, a therapist, a coach, an ayahuasca facilitator. It's what they embody in their body that is the transmission that they are pressing into your body and your nervous system. And so look past their garment and look past their vocabulary and feel into them is the frequency of what they embody something that you want more of in your life or not? Because when I speak to a lot of plant medicine facilitators, I feel like I need to go throw up.

Kristin 37:09

Yeah, that's a good clarifying question. Yeah. It's like, do I want more or less of that? Yeah. And um, what you said, I don't know why this spurred this thought. But I was like, yeah, what version are they showing their dog? You know what I mean? Like when you're at home, you don't have any pressure, like how do you feel at home?

Francesca 37:26

I just wrote a post about this the other day, you know, it's like, okay, so when we're taking ayahuasca or mushrooms or psychedelics or even a breath work ceremony, right? Where we're reaching these expanded states, where we're having these wow moments and we're opening the body and DMT is being released. And it is so easy in that space to attach a projection of excellence to anyone. We're in these heightened states of consciousness. And my number one discerning factor is like who is my teacher at the grocery store when they speak to their wife, when they're feeding their dog. And that's why I really work with the healers that I do because Maestro Teo Marina, who are the main, you know, Shibibo healers I work with, they are, you know, 45 years of marriage, completely in love. They have seven children. Their whole life is dedicated to taking care of their children. They live in the middle of the Amazon. These people have nothing, you know, and they're feeding their horses and playing in the garden, and they're always planting ayahuasca and giving back to the community. And um, I've had a lot of beautiful ceremonies with maestros and healers that gave me an incredible experience in the ceremony. But then the way that I see them relate with their intimate partners or relate with money or relate, you know, outside of the ceremony is their ego, like what's going on there, is their weird, distorted sexual energy. That's not the transmission that I want to receive. And so who is, you know, your coach, your mentor, your healer? Who are they in the ordinary moments when they have nothing to prove?

Kristin 39:01

Yeah. And like whatever. Yeah, besides what they're showing you at this given time or the height. Or like more of the totality of a person versus like this little sliver. Yeah. Um yeah, that's so fascinating to me and like such a good question to ask too. I feel like with any kind of thing, whether it's ayahuasca, coaching.

Francesca 39:17

Oh, I mean, the amount of women, the amount of women that I work with in my private practice doing integration work and feminine embodiment and trauma, you know, trauma work like that have come from other therapists or healers where I'm like, you know, inquiring about the work that they've done, they absolutely feel like shit in the face of these people. They don't feel safe in the sessions. They're not feeling inspired by the transmission of their teacher. And yet they're paying them thousands of dollars for courses. I mean, there's so many influencers and courses and groups and memberships and all these things. But like, do you feel good when this person is speaking to you? Do you feel relaxed? Like that is really the most important question because healing happens when we are in a relaxed and regulated state. Do you feel relaxed in their presence? Do you feel comfortable being yourself? Do you feel like you want to actually soften and open your heart? Or is this person screaming in your face and telling you all about how to make more money and how to be better and blah, blah, blah, and making you feel like you need to buy a bunch of products and supplements? And actually, when you get off the call with them, you feel insecure and unsafe and exhausted and drained.

Kristin 40:31

Yeah. Yeah. When you were speaking, I got an image too of like, or like, you know, those big cathartic moments or something that you know someone has like or I've seen online because someone's taken a picture of it in that moment. Yeah, it's like so tender and vulnerable. I'm like, and that just doesn't always jive with me.

Francesca 40:47

Yeah. And I always I always have this thing around when I see people in like breath work ceremonies or plant medicine ceremonies where a facilitator takes a photo and they're like right up against the person's head, you know, this photo where they're like touching them. And I'm like, why are you touching them? Their body is in a massive process of liberating energy, whether that's through the medicine of breath, the medicine of kundalini, the medicine of ayahuasca. You should not be touching their body. You should not be imprinting yourself into their field. And a lot of facilitators, I mean, we all have a God complex. We all love the feeling of feeling powerful and being a part of someone's journey. The God complex is a real thing that those of us that are spaceholders have to work through and get a really keen eye on like where are the forces in me that get off on feeling powerful. And being conscious of that is actually a lot safer than the people that are out there pretending like they don't have a God complex. But people shouldn't be touching you while you're having cathartic somatic release. They shouldn't be getting in your face. They should not be speaking to you while you're under the influence of mushrooms or ayahuasca. I mean, a little check-in, are you doing okay? But you shouldn't be doing verbal processing. You shouldn't be doing trauma inquiry, they shouldn't be giving you advice, they shouldn't be touching your body. They're messing with your process and they're imprinting their own ego into your process because they want to feel like they played a hand in your transformation and is fucking with your process.

Kristin 42:18

That's interesting. I'm curious now, too, about um when the when you are coming home and at the baggage care. And you start over here. Yeah. I just saw one of those towels that's a little hood. I sent one to a friend of mine that's having a baby, had a baby, and I'm like, I kind of want one of those. Um, but yeah, it was like the integration piece. Because I think I mentioned to you like I just did this Wachuma slash San Pedro slash masculine journey. And um it was kind of like that meme where all right, swim. Like, you know, in the pool. And I was like, we're still like, I'm like, I only had I only drank one cup, but there were women there that had two, three cups. I was like, how are they even? Like how many days did you have after before you traveled? Um, a couple. Okay. Yeah. I think we did that on Thursday, I think I left Sunday. Yeah. And um I but I just was like, wow, there it was just like, okay, your your tuk-tucks are almost here. Yeah. And then you got a journey to get on the boat. It's a lot, which is an adventure, but it was a lot. I was like, wow, I think, you know, if I were gonna do something, if I were gonna participate or sign up, and maybe that was not my discernment going into I wasn't asking a lot of questions, right? I was like just kind of trusting my friends and the process. And you learn, yeah. That I was like, I would have would have rather have been parked or just walked to like where I need to be versus like kind of like trying to find my bearings and do it. And like there's been, I know I mentioned to you too, like where I was like, oh, there's been like pieces that have come up since then. I'm like, oh wow. That connected to that moment when I was just like sitting up against that tree, looking at the looking at the clouds. Um so I want to speak to like the integration process. Like what that looks like for you, or like how um you guide people or recommend.

Francesca 44:05

Yeah, I mean integration is such a big topic. Everyone's talking about integration. It's a little bit like, what is it? Like how we weave it in our day. But what even is it? You know, people talk about like a yoga practice or a meditation practice, and those things can be, you know, supportive of your integration. But for me, at the end of the day, integration is not something that we can do. It's something that we create the space for. And so when we have the discipline in our lives and the tools and the support to pause, to clean up the schedule, to start to simplify, to slow down, and we start to come more into that same frequency of the ceremony where we're slower, we're more present, we're connected with nature. The more time we can spend in that slow and low embodied frequency, integration starts to naturally take place. So this is kind of like a both and, you know, there are the very practical kind of protocols for after a ceremony, what to do, what not to do, giving yourself time and space. Um, you know, I recommend after a week of ayahuasca, I mean, we really make sure everyone's landed, but it's it starts a process, you know, you're you're reconnected to this massive sensitivity and you're porous and you're sensitive and you're alive and it feels amazing. But yeah, coming through the Dallas airport is a bit of an initiation. And I recommend when people get home, you know, your new, cleaned out, open, beautiful, expansive body and mind, it's now yours to protect. The ayahuasca for you, the Wachuma, that lives in your spine, that lives in you now, that is like a plant that lives in your house, that lives in your garden, that it is now your responsibility to tend to. And so as you go home from an experience like this, you go out to lunch with that familiar friend, and you're like, oh, I just like don't feel good after I talk to them, or you start sipping coffee again, you feel a little bit anxious, or you engage in something, you're like, oh, I'm just not feeling good. That's the medicine. That's the medicine communicating communicating to you. This is no longer for you. And when we leave a plant medicine experience, like we're not the same as we went in, right? And so foods don't land the same, relationships don't land the same, even just our own thought forms of the way that we speak to ourselves, we can start to make ourselves really sick because we're in that medicine space and the medicine is giving us these beautiful gifts. We're making contracts. I'm learning this wisdom. I'm saying yes to learn this wisdom of seeing the damage I've done to my body, seeing how having casual sex or relating with my sexuality in this way has done harm to my womb. And the medicine's like, okay, my love, I'm gonna help you clean that out. We're gonna restore vitality. But if you go home and start to engage in the same patterns again, you start to feel sicker and sicker and sicker. And some of that's unavoidable, right? We have to learn through trial and error and and experiencing things. But that I would say the first six months after a big plant medicine ceremony is everything you need to know about what is working in your life and what's not working. And now the medicine isn't here to do the work for you. Now it's your responsibility to be in tune with yourself, to notice what's working and what's not, and to have the self-love and the discipline to start cutting shit out that is robbing you from having intimacy with yourself and from feeling good. And so, in my experience, the most important thing for a successful integration is support and community. Because if we could make all of those changes on our own, we would have done it without the plant medicine. And so, you know, people come to a retreat with me and they think they're gonna leave and everything's tied up in a bow and it's healed. That's the beginning of the journey, is when you leave. You're gonna need a coach, a facilitator, a mentor, your community, your allyship as a major part of your integration process because we do not heal in isolation. We don't. We're we're community-based, connection-driven beings. So having people in your corner to hold you accountable, to be the safe space for you to continue to work through the wisdoms that you learned is the most important thing. We can't do it alone. And every time, you know, I serve hundreds of people a year. Almost every person that I see leave my retreat and not invest in coaching and integration, not want to spend the money, not have the discipline. I get a call in six months. Oh, to want to come back. Everything's back to normal, the addiction's back, the relationship's gone to shit again. Like, can you help me now? And of course, we're always learning, and some of those resurfacing of patterns needs to happen. But we need people in our corner and we need people to hold us accountable. And so that's really the work that I do with women is after the retreat, okay, you came into contact with these really, you know, deeply intimate, confronting truths about who you are, about the love that you are, about the type of relationship you want to have, about all the ways that you're settling, all the ways you're showing up inauthentic. Okay, now let's work together. Three to six months of really learning to integrate this through many different tools. Um, and and there's an element to plant medicine integration that just requires time and space. There's there's a ripening process, like a fruit that just can't be rushed. It can't be meditated to, it's not some achievable place we can get ourselves to with diet and exercise. It's a maturation and an evolution of consciousness and energy that just takes time to mature.

Kristin 50:02

Yeah, I've been feeling like the desire for like, okay, why don't I just want to like clear days? Clear days. And like I've been giving or been receiving like clarity on what is working, what's not working. And less just yesterday I received one that was like, oh, should I listen to that little intuitive nudge like that happened a few days prior, or like maybe even a a week or two. And then I was given evidence of why I should have looked listening.

Francesca 50:28

I'm like, okay, clocked that.

Kristin 50:30

Yeah.

Francesca 50:31

And and most of us are just so terrible at being honest with ourselves. Like there's this whole epidemic of women that are disconnected from our intuition. Like, sure, we are. We've been, you know, it's been kind of flagellated out of us to live connected to our intuition, but 99% of the people I work with absolutely know the truth. And they are spending so much time and money trying to search outside of them or change what they know to be true. They're searching in some other coach or some other healer or some other modality or some success-driven, you know, goal that they're fixated on, that they can change what they know to be true. And actually, what I find is the most powerful thing is like, okay, now that now that I've been shown this tender truth, this hard truth that my relationship's over, or I need to change careers, or I've been abusing myself. Like, once we come into contact with that truth instead of fighting it, that's the time to seek help of, hey, can you be here for me while I learn what to do with this really confronting truth? And that's the work that I think most women need is support in living the truth that they already know. But most of us are out here grasping, like trying to pull another tarot card because we didn't like the first one. You know, it's like clarifying. No, no, no, no, no, no, next one, next one. And then you pull the same one again.

Kristin 52:00

I want the drive-thru video where they're just like, I want a number seven. Eleven? Seven. Oh wow, yeah, that's interesting. I've had a thought. Oh, yeah. It was kind of like what I shared with you before we even got started. It was like, I was like, I like to bring a level of like energy and um just to like infuse or excitement, but this morning I was like, Wow. I was like driving here, I'm like, I don't have to be anything other than what I am right now. Yeah. And that's okay. Yeah, and like distrust that what needs to be said will be said. And even like, and how do I accept that? I can accept that.

Francesca 52:33

And even just feeling into like what was the deeper truth in your heart as you were driving this morning. Okay. Well, yeah, and there's there's all the story of like I'm tired and what about the podcast and all this. There's all the story. That's not the truth. Story is just a couple or the truth is just a couple of words. Like a lot of times if we really drop in and drop down under the story and the pattern and the pushing, it's like, wow, this morning, like I'm I'm afraid. I'm tired. Like I'm I'm feeling some loneliness today. Like the truth is very simple. And then there's all the shit that we pile on top of it, but like probably there was just a truth this morning of like fear or loneliness or disconnection. We can actually just drop into that. There's so much liberation that comes from that instead of all the stuff that we do trying to function over it, pretend over it.

Kristin 53:33

Yeah.

Francesca 53:34

Go try to go go through it.

Kristin 53:35

Yeah. Go through it. There's like such a get away from it. Um more space to breathe, though, when I've just like allowed myself that. Yeah.

Francesca 53:43

And like groundbreaking. No, I think one of the most incredible things we can do as women, especially women in business and in this work, is like to show up in connection to one another when we are in the mess, when we are in the grief, when we are in the loneliness, when we are not feeling like our most powerful selves, because that gives permission, but it allows ourselves to actually receive the connection that we need and the moments that we need most. And so much feminine connection in modern day is just built off of performance and competition and judgment and jealousy and needing to show up in some empowered way, but that that other half of who we all are, insecure, jealous, lonely, the big hot fucking mess that can't get it together, like those parts of our hearts and our being are aching to be loved and aching to be accepted. And most of us in our intimate relationships and friendships are not allowing those parts to be seen. And we are destroying intimacy by not showing up in relationship, revealing the truth of our hearts to the people that we want to love us the most. We are blocking intimacy, we are capping the relationship, and I'm also subtly teaching you to do the same. I don't feel like I can show up here this morning bleeding and vulnerable and a little bit tired and didn't sleep great. I'm through my body language, through my embodiment, also making it unsafe for you to be your vulnerable self. That's so beautiful.

Kristin 55:19

Yeah. I'm like, wow, I just want to like so true though. Like if you're like the honoring of the truth of like the what is like versus comparing it to what you want it to be. Or like, yeah, the intimacy thing. Like, how can you really feel that if you're not honoring what is true in that moment?

Francesca 55:36

If if you're not giving yourself permission to let those messier, uglier, more human parts of yourself be okay, number one, you are disintegrated. But number two, if you're a spaceholder or coach or anyone in a in a position where people are following you, listening to you, whether or not you're saying it, that's what you are transmitting to other women is that those parts aren't welcome. They are not lovable. And I don't care how many fucking practices you do, you're not actually teaching people to embody their wholeness and this world, AI, everything, all the crazy shit that's going on. Like, people are starving for authenticity. Oh, so true. Starving for authenticity. Our relationships are just aching and yearning for us to show up in our wholeness. And there's a risk in that. There's such a risk in being vulnerable, coming to a podcast and being like, oh, I haven't slept well, and I don't feel like myself, showing up to your lover and being like, oh, I'm bloated, I don't feel like myself, and I'm just not feeling good. I'm feeling jealous. Can you hold me? Can you, can you tell me my jealousy is beautiful? Can you, you know, can you be here with me while I feel my own insecurity? We actually take that risk in relationship and reveal the truth of our hearts. We really get to find out who our people are. Who rises? Like who actually sees our vulnerability as an initiation and an inspiration to rise and meet us? And who is actually not interested? Yeah. Yeah.

Kristin 57:11

Scary. Like some real life stuff, like a a birthday brunch with a mom, and then, you know, like a baby shower, but then all of a sudden it's like nope, that's too real for me. I'm like, okay, all right.

Francesca 57:28

And it's like, I think as women, um just the most liberating experience we can have in this life is of course how deeply we love, but it's also embodying the full range of our femininity. And that's actually really what ayahuasca is teaching us, both men and women, is how to embody the the darkest dark and the lightest light, the the control and the just totally feral, like primal animal that we are. Like we're we're aching to embody that full range. And most of us are like operating within the prison of our little personality, who people think we are, who we think we can be, and we're just tucking away and exiling all the parts that don't fit that identity. And number one, the amount of life force that it takes to keep those parts hidden is massive. That's our creative, sexual, authentic life force that's not pouring into our children and pouring into our careers and pouring into our love making. It's going to keeping parts of us in exile. It's exhausting, but it's also creating ripple effects in everyone else and teaching everyone else how to show up. And so for me, I love the embodiment work with the compliment of ayahuasca because I'm so fucking sick of my personality. Like, who am I? Do I even want to know? Like, I'm so tired of the limitations of all the different labels, ayahuasca facilitator, woman, girlfriend, all of this. Like, we are raw primal nature. And as women, we are everything and nothing. We are matter and we are space and we are creation and we are destruction. And my biggest joy in life is teaching women how to slowly increase that range and embody more and more of the raw, wild nature that we are, because that's true femininity. It's not being beautiful and looking a certain way and performing spirituality. It's being authentic wild nature.

Kristin 59:32

The storm.

Francesca 59:33

That's what we are. The storm and the comb. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's the endless possibility of all the different things. And um yeah, ayahuasca is just one of many amazing tools that, if used properly, can help us increase that range and just be more and more and more of who we are. And most of us think like, oh, that's not me. You know, like, oh, like the helpless damsel, like that's not me, or like, oh, the spiritual one, that's not me, or um, oh, the generous lover, that's not me, or oh, wow, like the sexual Tantrika, like that's not me. We we box ourselves into the the couple of flavors that we're most comfortable being. And one of the most amazing things that's happened for me in my embodiment training with John is like, you know, I'm literally given assignments to do embodiment work in front of 60 people in front of the whole class of embodying the textures that are the hardest for me to embody, the ones where I feel like that's not me, you know? And through being Barbie or, you know, uh Daddy's little girl, or, you know, controlling ice queen, like different textures of personality. I'm reclaiming these parts of myself and I'm bringing these parts home. And my being is expanding.

Kristin 1:00:48

Yeah.

Francesca 1:00:48

Yeah. That's just, I'm like, oh yeah, I'm that healbilly part of me.

Kristin 1:00:54

There's so much is so true. Like, oh my God, I love this so much. I'm like, damn it, we're out of time. I know. It just flew by. Yeah.

Francesca 1:01:02

I'm like, I'm so curious. I'm like, I want to get in there with you and be like, what are all the things?

Kristin 1:01:06

There's so many. Yeah. Um, wow. I don't even know how to end this right now because I don't want to. Um, but thank you. This has been such a freaking awesome conversation. Yeah. Thank you for having me.

Francesca 1:01:20

Um maybe we'll get to do some some work together in some way, whatever that is. And I'm curious to hear the ceremony that you just did, like starts to really weave its way through your life and all of the all of the change that is just kind of seeding and sprouting and and will come from being courageous and doing what you did, even if it wasn't in the most perfect way, showing up for the medicine and fully participating and surrendering. We're gifted for that.

Kristin 1:01:48

Yeah. Yeah, there's some definitely gifts within that experience too. Yeah. I'm excited to see where this goes. So stay tuned.

Francesca 1:01:56

Round two. Yeah. Thank you, sweetheart.