Transcript #002 - Microdosing

#002 - Jakobien van der Weijden - Healing with Microdosing - Transcript

Amanda: [00:00:00] Welcome to Don't Step On the Bluebells, the podcast where personal healing and transformation take center stage. I'm your host, Amanda Parker, and I'm a fellow seeker on the journey of personal growth. Join me as I delve into the stories of gifted healers, guides, and everyday people who have experienced remarkable transformations. Listen in as they share their practical wisdom to enrich your everyday life. And don't forget to hit, subscribe, and never miss a new episode.

Hi there, and welcome to today's episode of Don't Step On the Bluebells. I'm thrilled to bring you this incredible conversation with holistic coach, psychedelic guide, and microdosing educator, Jakobien van der Weijden.

Jakobien is the founder of the Microdosing Institute, as well as the co-host of the Microdosing Table Talk podcast. And in today's episode, we're diving into all of the different benefits that you can actually get from [00:01:00] working with this incredible plant medicine, from some of the challenges that people face and learning a lot about Jakobien's own personal story and how she got here. I'm so excited to bring this to you and can't wait to dive in. Let's start now.

Hello everyone. I am so excited to be here today with our incredible guest, Jakobien van der Weijden, who is going to be sharing with us so much wisdom and insight in this world of plant medicine and microdosing. So she has so much knowledge to share and I cannot wait to really bring some of this information, especially to those of you who maybe don't have as much experience in this world and don't know as much about what are the benefits that you can really get here.

So I am really excited Jakobien, to have you here with us today. Thank you so much for joining.

Jakobien: Yeah, same [00:02:00] here. And I’m super grateful to be part of your community of healers.

Amanda: Thank you. And yes, that is really the goal. We're looking to help build up that presence of healing in people's lives.

So whether they're helping others to heal or really seeking for themselves, we're looking to, to find ways that people have access to this information that can so often be confusing and overwhelming, or they don't know where to begin. So I would love to get us kicked off just hearing a bit, maybe you could explain to us, imagine that you're telling your five-year-old self what it is that you do in the world today, and tell us how would you describe that?

Jakobien: Yeah, this is such a fun question. Besides things like, you know, playing and sleeping and being in the world and eating and [00:03:00] hanging out with my friends, I also have, a professional life, which is very much intertwined with my personal development path.

And, so yes, that all revolves around microdosing. And microdosing is taking a tiny, tiny amount of a psychedelic mushroom or another natural product. We call them sacred earth medicines. And people do that, these tiny amounts so that actually they feel better, they feel happier, they have more quality of life.

And, yeah, there are a few things to know, such as how much to take and how often, and, and also how does this work because a lot of people feel that it could be some kind of miracle cure. You know, they tried everything [00:04:00] else, they tried other therapies, or they went to all the doctors they know, and somehow their problem keeps, you know, being there or keeps coming back.

So in order to really understand what do these sacred earth medicines do to us and what do we do with them on the longer term as well, that's where I'm, I'm guiding people.

Amanda: I think that your five-year-old self is gonna love this.

So I know that you have this really strong focus in so much of the work that you do and what you've been bringing into the world around the microdosing space and. On this podcast, we're really talking about all things personal transformation and healing. So I'm curious to hear from you, what does healing mean to you?

What does it mean to heal or even to transform, if that feels better?

Jakobien: Yeah. What I, what I really know to be true is that [00:05:00] actually, you know, we are not broken. We don't need to fix ourselves. We are already whole and the problem is of course, that we experience this lack of wholesomeness and we experience sometimes lack.

We experience, as one of my teachers would would say, we are these souls in the human body and we have an operating manual to know how to function as humans. But, for most of us, it's quite a challenge to really understand what is the operating manual? How do I actually work? How can I actually be my best self, my most wholesome self?

And how can I be in my natural order? Which, which I think is the equivalent of healing. You know, that's what we're always trying to get into that [00:06:00] balance place into that wholesomeness and fully embracing ourselves, fully embracing life. That is one thing. And the other thing is, of course, we are living in this world of duality and there is, you know, love and fear.

We see so much. We see so much problems here in the world. There are so many challenges, but there's also the other side of that always, right? So how do we navigate this world and how do we navigate the duality that we're, that we're always facing? You know, when when we love something, when we have something we know we can also lose it.

We know it's not gonna be there with us forever. So how to really navigate the, the duality and the polarities. I think that is another big thing of, you know, what we also call healing.

Amanda: I love that understanding that healing is really bringing us back to our natural order. [00:07:00] So we actually have a way of being naturally in the world.

And then we have the human experience where, as you said, we have that operating model that we're working from, and that often leads us to feel out of alignment or to not really feel well.

Jakobien: Yeah. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And, and this is also where microdosing comes in. So people come to Microdosing for a whole range of different reasons and people experience a whole range of different benefits from, you know, some people get more energy more focus, more motivation they feel more joy, they feel more kindness towards themselves, which I think is a really important one.

, less r ination, you know, better sleep. But then also we found out that it helps with sometimes it helps with headaches and even with cluster [00:08:00] headaches, you know, the suicide headaches. So we are like, how is it even possible that that one thing that people take can work for so many different, you know, conditions and, and problems and.

, up until this point, the only explanation that we keep coming back to is like, it seems to balance whatever is out of balance. So it helps us somehow, our system, and this doesn't, you know, this is completely subconscious, I would say to go back into that natural order or to help us even take some of the decisions that we need to make or change some of the habits that need to be changed for allowing us to go back into that natural order.

Amanda: So just, I wanna clarify one thing because for a lot of people who are listening, this world will be really new. So people might be searching for answers or they've been struggling with something and feel a bit at a loss and don't really [00:09:00] know how to move forward, and they're listening from a place of curiosity, what is this?

Can it help me? Basically? Mm-hmm. you just mentioned a term that I'm not sure most people will be familiar with, which is cluster headaches and then called it the suicide headache. Could you give it a bit more context for those who don't know what that is?

Jakobien: Yeah, yeah. So within, within the wider context, right. ,. Maybe I should start with, with microdosing in general. as I said, so many people come to this practice because they've heard that it could give you some benefits that most people actually, they, they do it for a while and they just feel better. They just feel better and they sort of, like I said, naturally make healthier choices as if they sort of understand that operating manual a little bit better already.

And so this is also one of the things that we facilitate at Microdosing Institute. We basically offer education and [00:10:00] guidance and community for people who want to microdose. And we've been doing this since 2017. And in, at that time, there wasn't that much information available. there was actually only one researcher Dr. James Fadiman, who had sort of let's say he, he discovered in the western world that in Silicon Valley some people would take these very small amounts of, of psychedelics, you know, not to trip or to have some sort of altered state experience, but because actually it gave them more focus and more energy and more motivation.

He found that so fascinating. So he started actually calling people to say like, "Hey, if you're also going to try this send me a report with your experience because like, do it maybe for a month and then I would like to gather all this data on you guys." So he had been doing that for I think about six or seven years at the time.[00:11:00]

, and then we met him and , and, and he ended up writing books about it and talking conferences about it. And we've been exchanging a lot of information. So we also started building our own community in the Netherlands where microdosing is actually legal. we have , one main primary substance, which is the psychedelic truffles very similar to magic mushrooms that are legal in the Netherlands and a handful of other substances that are not as well known, but , also used in the plant medicine space. So we created a community in the Netherlands. People also started microdosing, and we also started collecting their experiences. And this is kind of how we found out that.

Microdosing did not only help with, you know, motivation and, and feeling, feeling better, feeling less depressed having better sleep, having more energy, et cetera, but also that it helped for some [00:12:00] conditions. That, and here, cluster headaches is really, I think, the best example because it's it's a terrible condition to have.

There's not much known about it. but it's basically worse than migraines. They come in, in attacks, in clusters. So for usually several days the person gets these very strong headaches and they last for several hours mostly, and they're completely debilitating. You, like, you cannot think anymore. And they call it suicide headaches because literally the only thing you wanna do is bang your head against the wall.

And there is there, there's, you know, there's a bit of medication available, there is an oxygen, you know, Getting extra oxygen to sort of abort these attacks. That helps only to a very minor degree. For some people it doesn't help at all, and there's no preventative medicine whatsoever. So yeah, for most of these people, this is a lifelong suffering path.

And it was already known that psychedelics [00:13:00] in the higher doses because kind of until, you know, 2016, me and the other co-founder of Microdosing Institute, we, we only knew about taking higher doses and we knew about tripping and about ceremonies and , and we also had heard that every now and then having a psychedelic trip for people who suffered from cluster headaches, it would keep the clusters away sometimes for like, up to six months or, or even more.

So that was like a huge gift for these people. And actually My partner's best friend was a cluster headache sufferer. So they used to do this together every now and then, and he would, you know, be his trip sitter and facilitate that for him. But you know, this is not the lifestyle that everyone wants.

Of course not everybody's looking for having these psychedelic experiences. most people just wanna, you know, get rid of their cluster headaches. So basically, [00:14:00] , yeah, his best friend eventually passed away. He took his own life. It was, you know, it, it ended up being too hard for him. and yeah, my partner still up until today, I think if back then we had known about microdosing and we had known that actually with smaller doses taking them more regularly, The clusters can also stay away or they can also greatly be prevented.

And so that's what we discovered later. And , so this is I, one of the medical uses of, of microdosing. And then some of the other things I've been talking about are more, yeah, we would call it therapeutic use. Yeah.

Amanda: So it sounds like there was really this space where some people were starting to experiment on their own and trying it out in the Silicon Valley world perhaps.

, predominantly. And there was a researcher, so this was Dr. James Fadiman, if I got [00:15:00] that right, who started taking this research even deeper. And then you, you Jakobien, you and your co-founder basically founded the Microdosing Institute to bring this knowledge into the greater world, let's say. And what I'm fascinated by, and actually really impressed by that you've done, you haven't just produced research or funded research or anything like that. You've actually created an entire community around helping people to work successfully with this type of, well, let's say natural medicine. So someone who might have been suffering, let's say from cluster headaches, or I'm sure there's many other use cases, might have tried to figure out how to do this on their own with very varied results. And you've actually found a way to help, yeah, bring this into a system of sorts. [00:16:00]

Jakobien: Yeah. I mean, this is still the ongoing process. Like we feel like we're mapping the territory we're mapping the territory specifically of microdosing because, you know, psychedelics have been researched since the fifties.

You know, in the fifties and sixties there was this, there was a lot of research done. Then the war on drugs started in the United States and everything got banned. All the substances, all the research got stopped, and then it picked back up in the, actually around 2012 or so, but with microdosing, there's still not that much research going on, but there are so many user cases, like, it's incredible.

It's almost every day we keep discovering, you know, sort of new benefits and this is just from people trying it out. So so yeah. Dr. James Fadiman as well, he calls it citizen science or community Science, and he said, you know, this data we're collecting, it literally helps people today. [00:17:00] And scientific research is also very much needed, but those projects take years and they cost a lot of money, which is not always available.

And then it still takes more years after the research has been done. It needs to be confirmed in so many, you know, different settings and in so many different populations. And until it actually becomes a medicine, you are talking about decades. So, yeah, that's that's the difference and that's why we feel so passionate about it, because we get these reports as well and we talk to people every day and we see how much it can.

Amanda: You're incredibly generous with sharing the information that you have. So just from, you have a podcast that's live, the Microdosing Table Talks. Yeah. You also have an Instagram channel that I've been following ever since you and I met, so mm-hmm. Really sharing a lot of education and wisdom and also tools and resources that people can just learn more [00:18:00] or take master classes or just hear others' experiences.

Jakobien: Yeah.

Amanda: So there's really a very generous sharing of wisdom and insight and also helping people learn some of those best practices.

Jakobien: Yes. I wanted to say, because I think this is also from the paradigm, like I feel like we're in this greater paradigm shift. that personally I feel is, is important. You know, we used to go to the doctor and say, I have this complaint, and then the doctor was sort of the gatekeeper of all that medical knowledge and all the medicines, and then would provide you with the medicine that.

We'll hopefully do the job for you. Right. And now we're shifting, and this is, I think, very much nature and the plant medicines inviting us and showing us h ans, actually you have your healing in your own hands. you just need to learn your operating manual. You need to learn how nature works, how the natural cycles work, how all of this works.[00:19:00]

And then you can be your own healer. You're your own healer. So, yeah. I think this is the paradigm shift that we're also in. I mean, I don't wanna say there's nothing wrong with, of course, doing healing work and providing people tools, which is also what these are psychedelics. providing people tools.

And, and there's nothing wrong with like, charging money for that or having an exchange, of course, but we feel like, yeah, the more generous we can be with this knowledge. The more educated people get and the more lives will improve and yeah. Yeah. This is important.

Amanda: So I definitely wanna dive in and maybe in a few moments, 'cause I'm really curious to understand, you know, a lot of people might have stigma or be afraid of psychedelics, or it sounds like you're doing drugs or things sound scary.

Jakobien: Mm-hmm.

Amanda: I definitely wanna go there, but I'm really curious [00:20:00] first to understand how did you get here, how did you get into this work to be where you are today? So a little bit of your story and, and what brought you here?

Jakobien: Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's wow. Yeah, it's always funny. I find it super funny, like paradoxical because I was always anti drugs.

Like, I thought also like, hmm, that's not my world. Those are not my people. I, you know, I grew up in a, a small town, not too far from Amsterdam. You could get weeded you could get cannabis. It was the most normal thing, but I would like really stay away from it. I didn't feel like it was for me. However when I moved to Amsterdam for my studies, I was very much sort of like open to new things.

And especially like, you start to study, you go to university, you know, like everything's gonna be new. So I found a job at at a smart shop. [00:21:00] Smart chips are known as the places where magic mushrooms were sold at the time, and all these other things. They would call it herbal ecstasy and all these other legal natural psychoactive plants and seeds and pills and whatnot.

And it was also the early days of the internet and they were actually one of the first web shops that were selling these things online. And so I started working for them and we also started going to festivals and trade shows. And so really this whole world, funny new world opened up to me. And , and of course my colleagues introduced me to the magic mushrooms, and we started having some trips together.

Yeah. So this is kind of, in a way, the practical story of how it all unfolded. It took me a long, long time, really many years until I could see this was more than. Just a curiosity, just a recreational drug, just a [00:22:00] thing people do. And it was a very gradual process. So at one point I noticed that I wasn't always completely at ease when I did these trips with other people.

Like it made me so self-aware and so it, it sort of hold up a mirror for me. Like, oh, actually you are very conscious of what artists people think of you. And, you know, we're all high, we're all on drugs. So I would, would be more afraid to, you know, say something to speak because you, your mind goes in all kinds of directions.

And I always wanted to make sense. I always wanted to be that person who's sort of steady and grounded and just myself, so. I noticed that sort of tension in myself, and then I said, you know what? I will take a, a heroic dose, which is a, a bit more, which is, you know, around five grams of magic mushrooms.

And I'll do that by myself. I know now kind of what it's like and I'm curious what happens when I'm, when the others are not there, and I can just let the experience unfold. [00:23:00] And that was really the first super powerful, I would say, mind blowing experience where I suddenly felt I had access to so much intelligence, like a greater intelligence than myself.

And also that it was sort of limitless, that there was this, yeah, this infinite notion to it. And, and I think that sort of set me off on this. Path of exploration. And then I wanted to understand, okay, so how does this work in the, in the shamanic traditions in Latin America, where in the Amazon where people do ayahuasca.

And then a few years later on a travel, I st bled into a tribe where they were literally showing me around and I saw this vine growing up. Like it's a, it's a sort of untangled vine. And I was like, I said, Hey, is this the ayahuasca vine? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you wanna try it? We can do it tonight. And I was like, okay.

Yeah. great. [00:24:00] Yeah. So over the course of like, I think, well now it's been more than 20 years, and I think the first 12 years or so, I was doing all these things. I was going after my curiosity, but still, I feel like I had no idea what was really going on and. Yeah, there, and there are some lessons that I got actually back in those days from traveling in South America and working with the shamans and things they said to me that only made sense like a couple of years ago.

So I think we need life experience. We need to go through our own life experience in order to yeah, sort of understand those, those deeper lessons that these plans can definitely bring to us. And so I feel like it's, it all gets interwoven and it's all a gradual process and it's, it's, it's cyclical so things keep coming back and at the same time, yeah, I worked in total for nine years for this company that was the smart [00:25:00] shop, and they grew and they started ranching off with other shops and it became all more international.

Later I worked at a retreat center. They offered legal psilocybin retreats here in the Netherlands. And I also became part of some initiatives like the Psychedelic Society of the Netherlands, bringing people together, creating community, just having like healthy exchanges about, you know, psychedelics and the experiences people would have.

And inviting also lectures and doing movie nights and all those things. And then later, also the Open Foundation, which promotes psychedelic science. And yeah, along the way I also learned that for me doing things professionally, so like taking it really serious and going there as a professional and saying like, Hey, you know, how, how can I help you guys?

Or how can I serve in this environment? That, for me, has provided like the best learnings. And yeah, it, it, it made me connect really deeply [00:26:00] to it. Yeah.

Amanda: Well, I was gonna say, actually listening to your story, it sounds, I. I'm sure at the time it didn't really feel that way. 'cause as it's unfolding, I love you were just following your curiosity. What is this? What's happening? But in the retelling of the story, there is really a lot of intentionality there of what you're exploring. Like even that moment where you have that, that moment of recognition that you are maybe so focused on the outside world, you can't even enjoy or understand what's happening within.

And then deciding to do this on your own so that you can get an experience of it on your, on your own by yourself. That's also, I would say, incredibly brave. A lot of people might be afraid to do that on their own, but really you had that understanding that, okay, I need to know what this is like when I don't have all this noise and outside chaos surrounding me and see where I can really go here.

Yeah.

Jakobien: Yeah. And this is also what I'm saying [00:27:00] when I say like, it is so intertwined with my personal developmental path like it was. First, yes, there is the curiosity and like you said, just wanting to take it one step further and just checking it out. But on the other hand, like I, I grew up and I, I was like the most shyest per the shyest person alive.

Like I was seriously afraid of people. And I was like, how the hell am I gonna make it in this world? I just felt super alienated. I felt so different from everyone. I thought there was something wrong with me. I think they call this the wound of separation. Like you feel separated from everything else.

You don't realize that, you know, we're essentially all the same and everything is connected and we really need each other. Right. And we're constantly in relationship. But that all, I learned that with psychedelics and this example of, yeah, me preferring to do that trip on my own was also so that I could just let go of that shyness [00:28:00] and that, you know, sort of peeling off those layers of.

Just not wanting to be in contact with the outside world at that moment. But it helped me, yeah, it helped me go deeper. And then from there I could, you know, slowly understand so much more that I also overcame the shyness and the, the people fear.

Amanda: Well, it's, it's fascinating because I, I talk about this a lot in my own work, this sense of so much noise around me that it's really hard to tune out that noise and go within, and this is just another way of accessing that.

So that recognition that you have, I can see myself in my own, you know, personal or professional growth journey, looking for the experts and always trying to find that outside voice that's gonna tell me the right way to do things. Yeah. And give me a formula and every moment of epiphany when I realize I have to tune it all out [00:29:00] and just go within, so, There's a lot of correlation, what I'm hearing to your story, and also just a spiritual growth path.

Jakobien: Yeah.

Amanda: This ability to realize how much emphasis or importance we give to the world around us, and then that moment of kind of realization or reckoning, h . I wonder if there's more for me here, if I just quiet all that outside noise and go within, yeah. And, and for you, that path has coincided so deeply with the field of psychedelics and microdosing and all of this.

And people might also be able to access that in a different way as well, so on their own.

Jakobien: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, it's all, it's all correlated. And I resonate very much with what you're saying. Like, we tend to look in the outside world and we think, oh, there's another self-help book, there's another training I could do.

There's another yeah. Lineage of healing or [00:30:00] tools, modalities that I could look into. And, and only recently also, I had this realization actually where I thought, yes, it is the outer journey, right? And it, it's, we, we sort of complete, we first complete the outer journey. We look in the outside world for all the answers and the learning and.

Just mapping that territory. And for me also, literally I went through traveling through the whole world because sort of traveling was always my, my medicine and I thought I would find the answers. I would probably land in some foreign place once where I would, you know, find the answers. And for a while I thought I did.

But then I eventually ended up back in Europe and in Holland and kind of like same place where I started. So, and then after that outer journey we realized it's actually a journey within where we continue our learning process and our, our growth. And yeah, finding that stillness, you said it's so beautifully like [00:31:00] shut off all the outside noise and this is also, yeah, I think this is why today so many people are, Struggling with their mental health and with burnout and with A D H D for instance, we have also a lot of clients with A D H D and it's like we get so much stimuli and we constantly wanna bounce off those stimuli.

And if we can really calm down and slow down and shut off the noise and go within and try to stay there for a bit. Yeah, that's, That's a whole different experience. Yeah.

Amanda: And even as the teacher or the healer or the guide, or in my case the coach, it's very hard to do that in my own day-to-day. So I'm very well practiced and I understand, you know, best practices and how to feel well and how to go within and then all of a sudden yesterday I am telling my husband, I have been on my phone way too much in the last few [00:32:00] weeks. What's going on? And then I have to, you know, set external limitations to get me off there so I can keep doing the inner work that I know actually feels good. So it's a continuous journey.

Jakobien: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I think we're always rebalancing. Right? And it's, and it's also good, like honestly, we cannot expect in this, in this world that we're living in. It is so challenging, we cannot expect ourselves to do it always right or to constantly be in alignment. we also need to go out of alignment so that we feel again, like, "Hey, now there's friction. Oh, now there's tension, or now too much on my phone, too much..." , but it's, it's about, yeah, what, what do you call this, like calibrating ourselves so that as a compass needle, we can sort of shift back towards the center over and over again.

And yeah, I think I can say that it gets easier, but definitely there's always, you know, traps and pitfalls. So we're, we're never fully there.

Amanda: I think what also gets easier [00:33:00] is just your ability to recognize it, and maybe when you're younger or maybe on a different part of your journey, you just feel trapped in it and don't necessarily know how to come out. And so the more experience you have with bringing yourself out of that, Space of external stimuli kind of driving your day to day.

, yeah. The more experience that you have, just learning what are those signs? Where am I out of alignment? Because I guess as you're saying, all of us fall out of alignment and then have to rebalance even, even the most wonderful spiritual teachers or whoever that we know will have this experience of needing to recalibrate.

I love that visual that you've given. I'm gonna try to draw that out for the pod sheet as well that really showcases exactly that process. 'cause I think it's so human and so [00:34:00] relatable. And I think in my own journey I can say that I often reach a point where I'm like, yes, I've made it. Mm-hmm. I got to this place.

Look at everything I know. And then when I, when I start seeing. I don't know if it's old practices or things that pull me out. I'm like, but I thought I was so far.

Jakobien: Yeah. Yeah.

Amanda: And just realizing actually this is just part of the human experience as well.

Jakobien: Yeah. Yeah. This is also, actually, this also reminds me of psychedelics also, especially if you do a higher dose journey, you get sometimes these cosmic jokes, like it literally could be the universe or, or mother Earth or something telling you like, oh, you thought you made it there, right?

Hey, but you know, that's, that's the ego. You thought you got rid of it, you thought you it's, it's, it's, it's constantly actually telling us and showing us the paradox of that. We're trying to reach a certain point, but actually it's all about, [00:35:00] Moving and dancing. The dance. And there's also some really that spiritual teachers that I like very much to say it's all play it's constant motion.

And the energy constantly wants to just kind of try things out and move in different directions. And then we feel when it goes too far, we feel, but we need to experience these things. Like this is also the, the thing of being h an. So yeah, it's , I mean it's a spiritual understanding and at the same time it's like, how does it play out here in our lives here on earth?

Amanda: So on this journey to where you are today with the institute and you know, the speaking that you do and everything, what, what's been one of the biggest. Challenges or setbacks that you would say that you faced getting here?

Jakobien: Yeah, good question. The challenging part is that actually the challenging part, I see it more in, in the community itself, that people come to psychedelics and because it is, you know, [00:36:00] it's kind of one step further, it's a bit out of the ordinary.

They really expect this sometimes to be a miracle cure or they are still in that mindset of, I go to a doctor and I get my medicine, and then let's see if it's, if it's gonna work. So, basically the expectations of people, that it'll heal them, it will cure them. This one cycle of microdosing or this one big psychedelic journey, this one single retreat that is gonna give me my final breakthrough, just what we just talked about actually.

Oh. Then I will reach that stage where everything will be so much easier. And, and, and specifically with microdosing. It can feel that way during the first day or weeks or period. But actually it, it is really a tool and it is also, psychedelics are known to be non-specific amplifiers. So they amplify what is alive inside of you. What is wanting to [00:37:00] be felt? Wanting to be known or understood or Yeah, just felt, I would say, so oftentimes at some point, irritation will come up, sadness can come up, grief can be felt much more intensely or emotions that were pushed out. Any, basically any emotion that were pushed down for a. can actually come up and just show itself and just, Hey, you know I, I want to be felt and then maybe I can be let go of.

But the more you keep pushing me away, the more you keep pretending I'm not there. It's called, it's called shadow work as well, sometimes in some traditions. And that is also happening, that is also part of this journey. So yeah, I feel like a lot of people start with this and they really start off on such a positive thought and it's all going great and they think they have found it, or they are like in the first couple of weeks, like it's not doing anything.

It's not, I don't think it's working. I don't think [00:38:00] it's working for me. So, you know, everything has to be immediately and directly in a linear way and yeah, that's just not how it works. So we have these tools and we help people with access to these tools and understanding how these tools work, but then you still have to do sort of your own work and.

Walk the path and go through the door and face whatever is there. So, and, and, and I'm, I, I really enjoy giving also that sort of guidance. So that's part of the job. But , I feel like there's in the sort of greater in society this paradigm is still not seen enough. Yeah. And then of course on the other side, side there is still stigma.

So people feel resistance to psychedelics. They don't understand it very well, or they just feel a lot of fear and resistance. I also see it in a very practical sense, sometimes, like we could not just open a bank account at [00:39:00] any bank of our choice. Payment systems and other systems are not always wanting to work with us.

If you, if they know what you're, what you're doing, and of course the substance themselves are not legal in. Many places. There is a big, you know, decriminalization wave going over the world right now, and some legalization is also happening, but governments are still trying to find out like, how can we make this legal? But in a controllable and responsible way, it's gonna take many more years until that's sort of really figured out. So a lot of people are having to sort of put themselves a bit at risk to find mushrooms or to buy some LSD or, and that also makes it sometimes a bit more difficult and that that's also probably a very important reason why a lot of people who could benefit from this simply don't have access or simply just don't wanna go there.

Amanda: So I hear, I think three main [00:40:00] points, like three big challenges that well, that you are facing, but really in bringing the word out and helping people, there's on the one hand that it's not just a miracle cure. It's a tool in someone's toolbox that can greatly support them on the journey to healing.

And it still takes that personal work. It still takes that inner work and going on the journey. So even if you're experiencing what I was always taught by my Reiki teacher, like a healing crisis. . When you saw these emotions and suppressed. Feelings start to surface and sometimes you actually feel worse before you feel better.

Or the alternate side, which is that you're not really feeling anything and you're ready to give up, but it also just takes time to build up and develop a relationship with that. Yeah. Then this area of like systems and [00:41:00] stigma. So the systems are not always set up to support this and there's a lot of stigma still.

So even for you in getting the support you need to keep the business running, there's a lot of stigma around that. And then look at the people who are actually brave enough to step outside from maybe what their community thinks is normal or what society says is okay. And find that support that way. And then of course there's the legal question, so it's not legal in every country and that varies so people need to actually check in, is this okay where I'm living? And if not, what might be alternatives that I can look into to support me without creating undue risk for themselves?

Jakobien: Yeah. And there are more. There are more, but I wonder if we should go in there because it can get really like the, the world of psychedelics since you know, the last 10 years or so and since there's more research coming out, it's really becoming a diverse [00:42:00] field. And but a lot of things start to play out there also. So, you know, differences in access. You know, there are retreats that cost about $5,000. so access problems, whereas people who are, let's say, let's face it, people who are poor, they probably need it the most.

You know, like poverty, mental health issues are kind of interlinked. Then there's the whole race, gender. there's also big pharma is now entering the psychedelic space. So they are developing compounds that either mimic the existing psychedelic molecules that the ones that cannot be patented because they are natural.

They are, they, they're just in nature. but they develop other compounds that can be patented. And, you know, they're, they're sort of all sorts of strategies that are just part of capitalism actually, that are also playing out now. Yeah. And in the end, how I see it is [00:43:00] it is not just a medicine that you start handing out to people.

It's actually, it requires community guidance, relationship, like sort of going on this path of learning and really understanding yourself. Ideally you don't do that alone, but you do that with some guidance and some support and in a community, and that's just people coming together like that is not something that can be monetized or, you know, it's, or the same as therapy.

I'm really a, yeah, a proponent of, of therapy when you feel that you need it, go and see a therapist, really. But yeah, that cannot be scaled or, so it's like, how many sessions do you need? And it's just the time between you and the therapist that that cannot really be capitalized on. But there's a lot of big companies that are now in the stock market that are trying to find models where they can, you know, heal as many people with as little psychedelics and as little , therapeutic supervision as possible.

[00:44:00] Yeah, the United States is a good example actually. You have ketamine clinics where people just basically get ketamine every. For or every two weeks or so for a period of time. And oftentimes it's without any preparation, without any integration work. So it's, they just get this yeah, substance. They have a little bit of an experience for the time that they are in the clinic and then they just get sent home and, and then that should be a cure for depression.

And, you know, depression is such a more complex thing that just cannot be solved with, with some ketamine infusions, but that's where they make the money and the, the moment that they start to add more therapy and more therapy hours to it, it becomes more expensive. People won't pay for it anymore. People also want to believe that they will be healed after a few sessions. So yeah, that just in a nutshell to illustrate that there are definitely some [00:45:00] challenges ahead.

Amanda: Yeah, definitely. And I think it's really important to say, And this'll be all in the show notes and on the Podsheet. But for people who are looking for more information on what they can do, what they can access, how they can work with different types of microdosing or the different options that they have, really going onto the Microdosing Institute website is going to give you 90% of those answers that you're looking for. Maybe even a 100%. But I don't wanna make false claims. Mm-hmm. And you'll have the links to all of that in the show notes as well. So for someone who's listening, who's, you know, their curiosity is now peaked and they say, okay, this sounds like this could be something for me, it might really be able to help me.

Mm-hmm. What does that look like? So for someone who's starting out and decides they really wanna engage in this journey with microdosing, what's the best [00:46:00] way for them to start?

Jakobien: Yeah. I, I think I would say also follow your curiosity and see if it really, what sparks your curiosity? What makes you interested in, you know, using this tool. and I would say really go on the internet and Google it and see if you can find stories like, so for instance, I, I, I said before, we have a lot of people in our community with A D H D, and they come to Microdosing because they, they heard it helps 'them focus, but again, there's so much more to it.

So it would be really good to read some more stories, go on Reddit, you know, and check what the other ADHDers are saying and the same goes for if you have depression or you are looking to regulate your hormonal cycles or PMS issues more or any of the things that, that microdosing could, could potentially help with.

And then [00:47:00] when you feel like this is, this might be something you wanna try? , yeah, we have a couple of things to offer. We have education, we have a video course so people can technically do it on their own and just follow all the steps and yeah, have everything they need and start the experience, track the experience.

So keeping a journal, keeping a log of what you're noticing, what you're sensing, what physically is, you know, happening for you, what's happening psychologically spiritually, emotionally. And so we also offer guidance. And the best way to do that would be with our six week program. So the six week program is where basically there is this arc, which also start with a preparation with practically setting yourself up for microdosing and also working with an intention.

And I do wanna mention this because being intentional with anything, with any new tool or practice, [00:48:00] it makes all the difference, right? It, it tells you and your system, okay, I wanna go in this direction. Like this is where, what it's really about for me, and this is who I want to be become. So, And then everything that happens on the way also will be in service of that intention.

Even the things that might not be, you know, super welcome in the beginning or you know, like you said, things may get worse first before they get better, but with your intention, you go there. And so in the six week program, yeah, we offer this, this arc, this journey. And that is a group program. So you'll also be sharing that with, with others and learning from each other.

And we always say it's our stories are, are medicines and. Sharing is also a medicine. Another thing that I want to mention, which I'm also really passionate about, is, so we work with facilitators. So we really believe that if this is a facilitated process and you're receiving some guidance from a professional, also you get [00:49:00] much more out of it.

And we are very passionate about working not only with Western , facilitators, but also with indigenous facilitators that come from a lineage where magic mushrooms were being used for generations in the household. You know both in ceremony, but also in micro doses in, you know, it was sort of like a household medicine it would be taken when someone in the family wasn't feeling well, for whatever reason. It could have been a physical reason, it could have been a spiritual reason, it could have been some sort of blockage. and so we're working also with facilitators who can teach more specifically about this and also more specifically about how these medicines actually connect us deeper to the earth, to ourselves, to our ancestors, to the greater fabric of existence, to spirit, and how you can even communicate with these [00:50:00] medicines or through these medicines. So it is, it is a really a cool deepening that I also think that was, you know, once it was here in Europe as well, before the church came and before the witches got burned, and like we also had this really, really deep knowledge of the natural world.

All the natural medicines, all the rituals that were part of it, that would, you know, they were part of the same paradigm. They would not isolate us from the natural world or from spirit. So yeah, we, we wanna make some effort in any way we can before it's too late to also bring that because it's for everyone.

You know, it's, it's not just something that our way past ancestors did or that the people in Mexico do or in the Amazon know, it's, it's really for all of us. So I know there was a very long answer, but this is why the six week program is really my favorite. And so if [00:51:00] someone really wants to take a deep dive and do intentional microdosing, then, yeah, they're more than welcome to join.

Amanda: Yeah, it's, it's amazing that you're also bringing this back to where some of the ancestral roots actually come from. So it's not just using it in the western sense, it's also actually bringing in that wisdom. And I know that you are working with different facilitators who have more of an indigenous background and have been using this either throughout their families or learning more about the lineage and how they bring that forward.

Jakobien: It's it's, it's not just something new that came into our world, you know, there was just a newly discovered, like all these practices are actually very, very ancient. Yeah. And that also includes things like, you know I would say non substance modalities. You know, breath work is very, very ancient Yogic traditions are very ancient [00:52:00] dancing, you know, ecstatic dance. Like go to African communities and this is exactly what they do and this is how they heal.

Amanda: I love that. I'm gonna add that to the list of an episode for the future. Yeah. So there's a lot of information and wisdom in this space. Where would you guide people to maybe listen, if there's podcasts or books that you'd recommend where people can get some more insight and information, what would you say is worth checking out?

Jakobien: So if you're completely new to psychedelics, but curiosity is sparked I would say How to Change Your Mind, which is a Netflix series, and it came actually from a book from Michael Pollen. both the book and the series are really, really good, really good starting point. It goes also very much in depth into, yeah, working with psychedelics.[00:53:00]

Another very inspirational documentary is Fantastic Fungi. So it's all about the magic of mushrooms in the widest sense of the word, also very inspiring. Hmm. And, yeah, let me think of, and when it comes to Microdosing specifically, we have our own podcast, Microdosing Table Talks. I also, I think the podcast I probably recommend the most is Huberman Lab - and it's actually about the science of how our body and mind works. So it's completely science-based, but it's so easy to understand. and it, it talks about dopamine, it talks about sleep focus, cravings and they, they do also talk about psychedelics. So there are some episodes basically on any issue that you can find [00:54:00] in yourself that you would like to fix or that you would like to understand better? They have, they have multiple episodes, so I recommend Huberman Lab very much.

And I think the last one, so one of our indigenous facilitators, her name is Xochitl Ashe, she just started her own podcast on psychedelics and she's gonna interview all the people who she worked with were inspiring to hear to her. So it's about psychedelics and ancestral wisdom combined. And I will just look up the, the exact title because the podcast has just been launched and that's perfect.

Amanda: We'll link it. So don't worry. Everyone will be able to just find it very easily. And is there anything that you are particularly looking forward to for the future? Something you're creating or that you're really excited about when you're looking ahead?

Jakobien: So I am very excited actually about the whole, you know, sort of [00:55:00] wave that is happening now. And this wave is very much also happening in the world of research now. So I wanna name that because I said research can be very slow, and oftentimes it's confirming things we've already seen in the community, and that basically any person who took psychedelics can sort of confirm, but it's also taking a, it's, it's, it's taking a new direction now.

So they have already discovered that psychedelics such as LSD and psilocybin, magic mushrooms, can actually regenerate brain cells and repair the damaged brain and also sort of repair the aging brain. So there are now some studies being set up with people who suffer from dementia, Alzheimer's Parkinson's disease, tra atic brain injury, and they're just giving them micro doses for like a month or two months.

And it is really astonishing. And there's even some, you know, some video [00:56:00] evidence from a woman who has dementia who was completely, basically, she had no more contact with this world and they gave her some LSD in the morning, a microdose. And as the hours passed, she started to become more vital. The light came back into her eyes. She started to recognize the world around her, and people around her, like just for, so this is really serious stuff. And , I know that there's still so much stigma around like, oh yeah, like even I would not give psychedelics to my grandparents if they were still alive. I would really reconsider that so many times, but now the researchers who are doing this, they really know what they're doing and they really know what, why it makes so much sense and that it's now being sort of, you know, experimented with. I think that's super exciting.

So I hope, I hope so much more. Research is come, gonna come out also for A D H D, which is such a big [00:57:00] population and there's not so much research we only see it sort of in the community. the same with autism. People with autism who have, you know, difficulties understanding emotions and relations and also microdosing really switches that for them. And they suddenly understand, they suddenly get it. Like, you know, all the social interactions that are normal for so many of us, they suddenly get it.

So yeah, my big outlook is really in the, in the field of research and a little bit closer to home. I look forward to actually bringing out microdosing workbooks. So basically just educational materials that are even better and easier to use than the ones we have right now.

And we're also beginning 2024, so we have a facilitators training, and so we're training our second cohorts soon for people who want to become a microdosing coach or who want to add [00:58:00] basically the practice of microdosing to their toolbox.

Amanda: That sounds amazing. I am sure a lot of people are gonna be really excited about that news. So for anyone who wants to get in touch with you, what's the, the best way to either get in touch or stay up to date with what you're doing.

Jakobien: Yeah yeah, so the website is microdosinginstitute.com. our Instagram, you said it before, is a really nice place to wander around and explore a bit and, and engage with us.

So, @microdosinginstitute. And from there you could also find us on Discord, where we have a community channel and Facebook where we have discussion group. And basically from there we are reachable.

Amanda: Jakobien, you are such a fountain of wisdom and knowledge. I've been taking notes the entire time we've been recording here because there's so many [00:59:00] snippets of wisdom that are just, I mean, incredibly valuable for anyone who's listening or just starting in this world, but also for me, who's continually on the journey of growth and discovery and learning and understanding.

So I am so, so thankful that you've been here and really, once again, so generous with all of that insight and wisdom that you have. I really appreciate the time that we've had here and think that people are going to have a very different perspective of this world and this work just by listening to this conversation.

Jakobien: Oh, yeah. Thank you for the affirmation and , and for all those words. yeah. I also, I love doing this and yeah, sometimes it feels a bit like, you know, going from one world into the other, and at the same time, I also get the confirmation all the time that actually people find it very natural and that they, yeah, this, this exploration that we've been mentioning a couple of times is so [01:00:00] natural for so many of us.

And yeah, we're all just kind of helping each other to take another step into. A direction. And yeah, I, I feel like this is actually what's going on and it's yeah, it's just really good, good energy and yeah, I'll just hope we can keep doing this and yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for inviting me.

Amanda: I have a million more questions, but of course we're going to complete for today and I am sure this is not going to be the last conversation that we have. So thank you so much, Jakobien, for being here and to everyone listening and you can find all the information that we talked about today in this episode's, Show Notes and download the Podsheet, which is gonna give you some more detail and information in a way that you'll be able to actually work through this and, and see how it might apply to your own life. So thanks a lot and see you next time.

Thanks for joining us on this week's [01:01:00] episode. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss a future episode. To dive deeper into today's conversation, make sure to visit www.dontsteponthebluebells.com and grab your exclusive Podsheet. It's packed with valuable takeaways that will enrich your listening experience.

Until next time, stay curious and keep exploring.