Good Neighbor Podcast: Cobb County

E40: Plant Medicine Wisdom with Blvck Lotus: Reconnecting with Your True Self

• Milli M. & Lo • Episode 40

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Lo from Blvck Lotus Wellness takes us on a journey through the transformative world of plant medicine, challenging widespread misconceptions while sharing her profound personal path to becoming a holistic healer. What began as her own search for wellness outside traditional pharmaceutical routes evolved through extensive travels across Africa, Asia, and South America, where she learned from indigenous healers whose knowledge spans millennia.

The conversation unveils how disconnection has become our modern pandemic - disconnection from ourselves, from the earth, from spirit, and from one another. Lo explains how plant medicines, particularly psilocybin mushrooms, work not by "healing you" but by "bringing you back to you, so you can heal you." This crucial distinction reframes our understanding of these ancient substances from recreational curiosities to powerful tools for restoring our natural state of harmony and balance.

After experiencing profound personal losses, including her partner in 2018, Lo fully embraced holistic healing modalities to process her grief. This transformative experience now fuels her passion for guiding others, particularly Black women, through their own healing journeys. Through consultations, workshops, international retreats, and her line of herbal products, she creates sacred spaces for reconnection and liberation. Her message resonates with unwavering hope: experiencing freedom, wholeness, and everyday bliss isn't just possible - it's our birthright. Whether you're battling depression, feeling disconnected, or simply seeking a more integrated way of being, this conversation invites you to consider ancient wisdom as your pathway forward.

Speaker 1:

This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Millie.

Speaker 2:

M. Hello everybody, welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast. I'm your host, millie M. Are you in need of a holistic wellness guide? Well, one might be closer than you think. I have the pleasure of introducing your good neighbor Lo of Black Lotus Wellness. How are you Lo? I am great. How are you Lo I am great.

Speaker 3:

How are you doing, Millie?

Speaker 2:

I'm quite well. Thank you for asking. We are excited to learn about you and your business.

Speaker 3:

Tell us more about Black Lotus. So Black Lotus Wellness went live in 2020, and it was just a combination of experience of me working with local and natural herbs, entheogenic herbs and medicines, working in indigenous settings, especially in Tanzania and Kenya, as well as other spaces, and really helping what started as primarily women but, you know, turned into my community to experience freedom spiritually, mentally and emotionally, to experience liberation, to experience wholeness and to be able to show up fully as themselves and show up in their wholeness and in all of their power. And so Black Lotus Wellness does that through several ways. First of all, consultation, where I'm able to connect with people personally and just hear about what their goals are and to hear all the things they've tried already that haven't worked, and hopefully be able to usher in a new understanding of plant medicine, indigenous and herbal medicines and how these things can help them to be where they want to be.

Speaker 3:

I also do a lot of workshops and education around plant medicine. You know there's a lot of misinformation, but also just no information about these things, especially in my community, in the communities I serve, which are primarily Black, brown, indigenous people and with a lot of the interest these days in plant medicine and a lot of what's seen online or on media, it always doesn't. It can be quite exclusive, making people think that these medicines aren't for them when, in fact, a lot of the original people who were utilizing these medicines and these ancient healing techniques looked more like my community and so really erasing the taboo, bridging the gap through a lot of information. Also hosting retreats, guided events, guided meditations and healing events and local personal healing sessions. So I do all that. Aside from the service base, I also have my own product line, which is a line of microdose herbal blends and different herbal blends.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that sounds fascinating. I know a lot of people are looking for alternatives because the way we've been doing things hasn't always worked for them. So how did you get into this business? Just speak to what led you to Holistic. Yeah.

Speaker 3:

So I mean, it definitely was a matter of healing myself and just knowing that you know the traditional pharmaceutical route, as well as Western rooted ideals, weren't really where it was at for me. Probably 2013, 2015, I just got introduced to the idea of holistic wellness. I was living in Virginia at the time and just happened to be in a really great healthy community that was doing a lot of things. I had never heard of using copper, just making herbal teas, things like that, and then fast forward that to international travel. I've spent a lot of time in Africa, east West, north South Asia, south America, and so north, south Asia, south America and so learning a lot from older you know, learning a lot from ancestral. You know healers and people who have these ancient techniques and things that they've been doing for hundreds of thousands of years that were 70 years old and moving around better than some of the people in my peer group.

Speaker 3:

And or just doing things in spaces where they didn't even have access to you know a Walgreens or something like that and it's like okay, well, what are you doing when you're getting this or getting that? And I remember one of the first times I got sick in Tanzania and this mama you know this older mama was like come here, and you know she pulled out my tongue, looked at my eyes, did some stuff, went outside with some leaves and roots and stuff, but did something that was like drink this. And I'm like what? And that was right, because someone I'm used to someone giving me a capsule or a pill or having air flow.

Speaker 3:

NyQuil all that, and so I was like, oh, this is amazing.

Speaker 3:

And so I had the biggest realization that everything that we need to heal our bodies and to be well is already on this earth. You know, it's not made in a lab, though great things that are very helpful can be made in labs, you know, with the right intention. But even those things are a reflection of things that already grow on this earth. And so that, in combination with just my own spiritual journey and getting more into what at the time I would have considered alternative spirituality I grew up in a very Christian environment and a lot of different religious inflected environments, from Christian to Jehovah Witness to Islam and so choosing kind of my own path of what connected with me the most and learning about different spiritual practices that have been around hundreds of thousands of years and that felt a lot more right and a lot more balanced and a lot more centered in harmony, connectivity with this earth, with other people and with source, is what also kind of impacted my journey and formed this practice, which is Black Lotus Wellness.

Speaker 2:

What a beautiful transition and realization that you had. And I'll just say travel changes you. It really really does, and I won't get on that soapbox, but just I've heard so many stories of people, even famous people Malcolm X, muhammad Ali, kendrick Lamar, like the list goes on of people who were just changed by travel specifically to Africa and certain places in Asia, and I will say that I also had an experience where I had strep throat and I didn't have insurance and I concocted a tea with garlic and lemon and honey and all of that drank it for three days, cured myself of strep throat without any antibiotic.

Speaker 2:

So I'm a I'm a big believer as well. So let's talk about you touched on it a little bit what are some of the myths and misconceptions in your industry, or what you do?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so first of all, so I work with lots of different plant medicines, but there's a primary one that I work with that there's a lot of gray area around, especially in regards to legalities here in Georgia, but I work outside of Georgia as well, in different spaces, and that is psilocybin mushroom. You know, known as magic mushroom or psychedelic mushroom. I've worked with mushrooms personally for almost 20 years and in the space of serving, guiding, facilitating for others and, you know, using them in products for about seven years, and there's a lot of misconceptions just about you know their safety, their, oh, those will make you go crazy, or you know, at least in my community. That is for those other people, that's not for us. You know our type of thing and so you know. Or just again around you know, will I be seeing flying elephants? Will I be seeing colors, like you know? Am I going to jump off a building, like, oh my gosh? You know, and I tell people you know most first of all, there's a lot more toxicity in everyday products and things that you use that you need to worry about.

Speaker 3:

When it comes to safety, and with anything, information and intention are the guiding things. There's people who drink regularly all throughout the week who consider themselves pretty safe. They do that without intention and that's harming their body. There's people who smoke cigarettes. They smoke cannabis. That's harming your body.

Speaker 3:

So, anything with intention and information and also with the idea that it's something that's coming to help your body. So psilocybin is one thing that literally has been used for hundreds of thousands of years in cultures all around the world for different types of healing, realignment and well-being. Traditionally, in indigenous cultures, it wasn't necessarily used from a treatment standpoint like we approach it now, excuse me, which is very necessary, but it was used more proactively, you know, as people were coming into adulthood, woman or manhood, as people were coming into motherhood or coming into new cycles of life. They might go through a ceremony, sit with the elders and, you know, eat mushrooms or drink this brew in order to help align them and help them to prepare to be more contributing members of the community or tribe, or help them to tap into their power, help them to see and connect deeper with source or connect deeper with-.

Speaker 2:

An empowering thing, not a mind altering thing.

Speaker 3:

Absolutely, can definitely alter your mind, but what it's going to do, more than anything, is help you to be more connected, more harmonized, more balanced and show up more fully. Most of us, especially in the Western world, are living in a very disconnected state. That's a disconnection from ourselves and who we are, a disconnection from the earth, from source or spirit, whatever that means for you, and a disconnection from others. And that disconnection has been fostered and been impacted by both external factors like the way we live in the West, the way things have quote unquote evolved over the years, technology, so many things kind of foster that disconnection.

Speaker 2:

Your intentions like just our focus being so money driven. Get the bag.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, what is the conditioning? It has a lot to do with the structures that we live in and it's a conditioning which we think that's the norm, but it really is taking us so much away from the core of who we are. And when you begin to work with this medicine, so people talk a lot about its capacity to heal things. Now, granted, I've worked with people with, you know, depression, ptsd, different types of addiction, adhd. I work with a lot of white collar corporate folks that's a heavy part of my clientele who are wanting to pivot, who are feeling lost, who are feeling burnt out, and so many things. A large spectrum of folks and people attach the idea of like, oh, mushrooms healed me. No, what they did was bring you back into a place of connection, of harmony and of balance, which is our homeostasis. That is the normal.

Speaker 2:

Brought you back to you, so you could heal you Seriously.

Speaker 3:

And when you do that, when you come back into that place, it's a lot harder for the depression to thrive. It's a lot harder for you to be scattered when you're back into this place of harmony, connection and balance, and that is what this medicine does and has done historically and traditionally. Yes, if you go and party with your friends and take four or five grams, you're going to see some colors and you're going to be in a totally different space. But when you sat with someone and consulted and talked about what it is that you need and you've worked out what dosage is right for you, what route is right for you, you don't have to be on Zoloft. You don't have to be on these 50 different prescription medicines that are hurting you and harming you many times more than they're helping you. And I have people who've been fighting for eight to 10 years with the same thing and then they come and start to tap in with this and it changes them.

Speaker 2:

Ooh, you have. You have laid it on me Like this is, this is. This is amazing. So I know you talked about having such a wide variety of customers. Is there a target person that you work with and how do you attract them?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I would say by default, you know who has become my target audience. You know, or you know my target client and, just in general, my largest client are Black women, especially Black women, I'd say mid 30s up into early 50s. I get in within that. There's definitely a spectrum. You know different walks of life. There's definitely a spectrum. You know different walks of life. I get a lot of veterans and former. I get a lot of veterans and former law enforcement officers and former military officers. Yeah, black women. I get a lot of corporate, corporate Black women and just women in general who are looking to tap back into their power or experience levels of themselves that they just never have. And I think it speaks a lot to the times that we're in and just what has happened to us historically and just where we're at, and so that's probably my biggest clientele. I definitely have a lot of love and compassion for my sisters, my mothers, my aunties, you know, my nieces and building that community.

Speaker 3:

A lot of the retreats I do are focused on Black women. I have a retreat, I have a retreat coming up in Kenya, morocco and Colombia this year with some stuff in South Africa and it's us, it's Black women and obviously I am a Black woman. That's how I identify and a lot of my journey, like I said before, a lot of my healing started with myself. You know, doing a lot of wound work. That was kind of my intro into holistic healing and then, just you know, opening my heart and healing myself mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually need this type of work because they're look, the 92 percent have felt it for a long time so I'm just real quick outside of work.

Speaker 2:

What do you do for fun?

Speaker 3:

um, so probably definitely travel and just experience new places. Um, I really enjoy. I am a for fun girl. I will go sit at the spa all day. That is like a fun thing. When I, everywhere I travel to I just came from Thailand I am always in the mode of how can I be served and how can I treat myself? No, seriously, because as a person doing this work and as the demographic that I described, a Black woman we are almost perpetually, you know, in service and so I constantly seek to be served. I love to be served, so I will go literally and do like a facial, do a full body scrub, massage, sauna, hand scrub, foot scrub, like that is a day of joy for me. I also love dance, especially Afrobeat, african style, afrobeat dance. Yeah, I love cooking, playing games.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, beautiful, beautiful. So let's just really quickly can you describe a hardship or life challenge that you overcame and how it made you stronger?

Speaker 3:

So many, so many, I would say something that has been. I'll talk about something that was really impactful and just connected to this work. I've experienced a lot of loss, you know, which has definitely impacted me and influenced me to work a lot. So I also do part time, I volunteer in the hospice space and I do a lot of work with folks who are nearing transition, and I'm rolling that more into an extension of this work that I do with plant medicine in supporting those who are nearing transition, them and their families. But two people there's probably three I can say that were really important to me was my uncle, was like a father to me and really close and I kind of was at his bedside as he was, you know, transitioning and was a part of his care team. A dear aunt, my auntie Ruthie that was my girl.

Speaker 3:

That was my girl and then my partner.

Speaker 3:

I lost my partner in 2018 as a result of a car accident and he was just very instrumental and a lot of self-development for me, brought me closer to God than any religion has ever brought me, and just was a person who truly inspired me, believed in me, and that was my right hand. I mean, we had really big dreams of all the things that we wanted to do and we were starting some you know ministries and projects in Tanzania and, yeah, right after my birthday, he got in a car accident and he passed a couple of days later and that was huge for me. That was like, yeah, you know, I think that we can experience a lot of loss, but the loss of a significant other or partner is a different. It's a very intimate loss. It truly changes you and it was kind of the beginning of me fully stepping into all the woo stuff that I'm into now in efforts to heal myself. And to this day, I'm really so grateful for the love we shared in my experience with him, because it impacts everything that I do.

Speaker 2:

I do, wow. I'm fighting back tears that are so, that are so beautiful, and I know that, even though he's not with us in body, I can tell that he's with you in spirit, in the work that you do and even in this conversation right now. So can you please tell our listeners one thing you would.

Speaker 3:

I would say that, excuse me, I would say you know, the thing that I want folks to remember and to realize is that it is possible to experience liberation internally and externally. It is possible to live life in a space of freedom and wholeness and to experience bliss in everyday life. It is possible. And if you are in a space where you don't see that, where you don't see a way out of where you are, or you are just wanting more and you can't figure that out, black Lotus Wellness is here to support you in experiencing that and achieving that, and that is literally why we exist.

Speaker 2:

What a powerful message to leave everyone with. How can our listeners learn more about you and Black Lotus?

Speaker 3:

You can find us online or Instagram at okay, I need you guys to listen to the spelling it is blacklotuswellnesscom, but the black. There's a V in place of the A, so it's B, as in boy L, V as in Victor CK, lotuswellnesscom. And on Instagram it's at blacklotuswellness, with that spelling, so you can reach out. Send me a message, send me a DM, you can book a consultation. We do offer complimentary consultations as well as paid options, and, yeah, be happy to hear from you.

Speaker 2:

Your liberation is just a consultation away. Thank you so much, Lo, for being here. I really appreciate you being on the show. I'm going to find out how I can go to Kenya with y'all. Yes.

Speaker 3:

Yes, yes, yes.

Speaker 2:

We wish you and your business the best moving forward. I'll be in touch, thank you so much, bye.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to GNPCobbCountycom. That's GNPCobbCountycom, or call 470-470-4506.