088 Dr. Sarah Foster: Integrative Medicine Specialist

Dr. Sarah Foster is an integrative medicine specialist who specializes in the Hakomi Method and IFS. I had the pleasure of meeting her when I went to Costa Rica earlier this year and got the opportunity to sit with her in ceremony. I'm blessed to be able to sit down and have this conversation with her.

The conversation begins with a discussion about  the importance of being present in each moment.  The conversation then shifts to the topic of medicine work, specifically ayahuasca, and the transformative experiences it can bring. Dr. Sarah Foster shares her journey of disillusionment with traditional medicine and her decision to explore alternative healing modalities. This helped her come to the realization that decisions should come from the heart first and analysis can follow.  Sarah and Cam discuss the importance of self-work and holding space for others. They explore the concept of untriggered grounded nervous systems and the journey of finding balance and growth. They also touch on the tension between traditional medicine and alternative healing practices, and the need for trust and acceptance in the process. Sarah shares her experience with IFS and Hakomi as powerful modalities for healing and integration. They discuss the critical period after a deep medicine journey and the challenges of measuring and understanding the effects of psychedelics. Lastly, Sarah mentions her upcoming retreats in Costa Rica.

If you are interested in learning more about her upcoming retreat, you can find more details here: https://yoxonim.com/costa-rica

Connect with Sarah:
Website: https://yoxonim.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yoxon_im/

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Transcript

Today's guest is an integrative medicine specialist who specializes in using the Hakomi method and internal family systems. She is a retreat facilitator and she is a dear, dear medicine sister who I had the pleasure of joining and sitting with back when I was in Costa Rica. And she's just an amazing individual. So please welcome Dr. Sarah Foster. to the TripSitting Podcast.

I did get like a couple little like bookmarks that happened while you're giving that meditation that I just want to drop into the field, whether or not they go anywhere or not. One is on presence. And there's two aspects of that that I realized I've been really rabbit holeing lately and noticing lately. So a good friend of mine who was coming to my trip to New York

She's actually my executive assistant and I know her really well. And she was coming to Seattle first and we were going to fly over to New York and do all these things and really have a chance to connect in a deeper way where we don't usually get to do that because she lives across the country. And while she's in flight to Seattle, she gets the news that her mother is dying. And her mom's in Montreal and my friend

is in the process of immigration. She just married, I did turn those off, but my computer's not working. Just do it, that's great. It's all good. So she's in the process of immigration. So to go to Montreal is like a big deal. And so she had to set in motion all of these things in order to get like an emergency exit visa so that doesn't negate the whole process.

was really, really stressful for the whole thing. She did end up getting the waiver and she's there now. And it made me hyper present to witness her going through this because what had set in motion was this like, limited time idea, right? She's like, I have to get back before

my mom passes, I have this like ticking clock now that I'm really aware of. And while that makes sense to me that she wants to be there and have some last contact and words, there's this idea, right? That like, we should be doing that all the time.

that that sense of urgency somehow speaks to the gap between where we're maybe not meeting that personal expectation of intentionality with the majority of our moments during each day. And not to say that that like should distract us or that we should feel guilty if we aren't completely present all the time, because I think that's difficult too.

but it really made me think about like, how do I want to be in each moment? And even if it's an in -between moment, you know, like I'm going to the grocery store or whatever, what can I notice along the way or while I'm there that can nourish me? You know, the color of produce or a smile from someone or a not smile from someone, all these things. then, then I feel like.

What happens in that is there's a further ability to drop in to the present even more because you've extracted this idea of regret. It's like, what if I miss this? What if I go through this chapter of my life or my whole life and I didn't get to do this thing that that like pulls you into the present or the or into the future of the past? Right. It's either like a regret that you didn't do it or anxiety that you may not.

And if you kind of like keep being present, those things don't come into play at all anymore. So you can stay more present. Does that make sense? Yeah, 100%. I feel like I'm honestly going through something very, very similar. And I think this happens often after deep medicine journeys, the idea of presence and what it actually means to be present to what is going on around you because...

time is always moving at the exact same speed. It's just our ability to notice how much it's moving and how fast it's going or whether or not we're just coasting through life without noticing all of those things. And then it feels like you go through an entire day and you're like, where the hell did the day go? Because you're so wrapped up in everything else. You're never truly present with what you're doing and what's there and what is. And being able to come to that moment of presence is

you know, it kind of takes things to really get you there. And like another example of that is two very dear friends of mine right now, last week, they broke up with each other and like, you know, being there with friends as they're going through a moment like that, like a very earth shattering event in their life brings so much presence. Like I noticed how much more present I was

because of that, you know, basically noticing like, well, what am I, what am I not being attuned to right now? Because, know, whenever things like that, whenever two people decide they don't like want to be with each other, you know, it's typically because they were not spending much time being truly present with each other. Like they were just letting time pass by and not taking care of what was important, what was really coming up for them. And noticing the reaction that that had with me and then noticing.

in what ways am I doing that? Not just with my relationship, with myself, with my relationship to the work that I do, with my relationship to going to the grocery store and being in my car. And like, you know, it's like that 20 minutes that I have to drive to get somewhere. Like, I can either think of that as dead time and then it just happens and then I'm basically from here and there.

Or I can use that time and take a very intentional break and an intentional pause to be like, isn't this nice? For sure. my gosh, absolutely. So two things come up with that for me as well is that if you're really present in that way and you look at each of these moments, whether they're banal or not,

productive, which we could that's like soul sidebar, is, is that like, you'll get to the end of the day, having like, really, like, lived the day. And so those those moments aren't going to make you angry, you know, because like, you were, you were there for them, even if they were pejorative in some way, you know, like just the fact of like being with them.

is the thing and like as you're speaking about being with your friends and really noticing like what they're going through that this like hyper attunement right and like when I do therapy work with people like a huge chunk of my work is getting them to reparent themselves when they were little because and no fault to any any of my clients parents.

because they were not given parent 101. Well, you know, and it was probably because their parents in turn didn't have the skills taught either. But so much of it is about exquisite attunement. And there's not like a try to fix or try to dampen or, you know, like make a judgment around but can you just really be present and really be with and something magical happens in that.

There's like an opening and an allowance and like a... The allowance, that's the word that comes to my mind is like, can you just allow it to be without trying to change it, without trying to fix it? And if you sit in that allowance for long, you'll notice it doesn't last forever. That thing doesn't want to always be there.

It wants to continue to move. Like it wants to continue to be fluid. it's in those times when we're trying to deny it. We're trying to deny it from having the experience. That's when then it sticks and then it stays and then you can't get out of it. I'm just looking up a poem that I sent to a client the other day that's so relevant along these lines. If I can't find it quickly, I'll grab the book. Cause it's just behind me. Perfect. Yeah. But yeah, the it's,

It's just so interesting, like the times when you notice that you're truly present and then like sometimes you could even get so caught up in that. mean, I know, I know I can, I can then get so caught up in being present that then essentially I'm trying to hold on to what's there in the present moment, which is taking me away from being present again. And then you get to the point where like.

Who's watching? Totally. Yeah, it be kind of a mindfuck sometimes. Totally, totally. Which again, if you just bring levity and joy to it, can be humorous too, right? It can. Like all these levels of our conscious selves and, you know, like there's this like really sweet part of us that wants to get it right. Yeah. That just wants to do it well and feel gratitude for being here. And I think that that deserves honoring too.

Yeah. Yeah. And, trying to, trying to get things right. Like there's, there's genuine humor just in that statement too, because like there is no right way to do it. Like it, again, if things just are like, there is no right or wrong, there is no good or bad. There just is. So like our wanting of trying to get everything right is.

is the problem, it's not the fact that you're getting it wrong. Absolutely, there's an insanity to that. It's such a human concept. And I think it took me a long time to get there, but I think it's a place where you can extract yourself from the idea of suffering too, because we look at all these things going on, particularly right now in the world. And there's this idea of like, well, how can these like,

harmful or painful or like suffering experiences be happening. when you extract the idea that like the absence of suffering is the good and the suffering pieces, the bad and they just are all experiences. Then you can like you can move away and you can notice like, where am I in relation to observing it? Like, where am I on the scale right now? Am I in the less suffering piece or in the more suffering piece and then

not necessarily have like guilt around where you are, right? And not feel that you have to atone somehow for the other people that are in another place on that scale. just, if you can just say like, it is again, allowance happens again in this place. Cause if you, if you, if you feel like you have a responsibility around it, it narrows your field. It really does. that's interesting to think about it like that. Yeah.

Well, I want to change the topic a little bit and talk a little bit about your medicine work. So I know that you have done a lot of medicine work yourself and not only that, but you now actually lead others into your own retreats, take them down to Costa Rica to lead people to medicine. What made you want to start doing that? Because that's a whole nother level of responsibility and space holding and

logistics to think about like, what was it about doing that? That really drew you to that experience.

So when I went to medical school, there was a deep calling for me to help people, right? And the further I got into that education, the more disillusioned I was with what was expected of me to show up in that role that felt so antithetical to what wanted to like naturally occur. know, like there was a

an automatic separation between you and patient. They were called patients, you know, not just like other humans. And there was a top down hierarchy. There was an idea that the people that you were treating were broken and that you had some magical knowledge to fix them. And there was a destination of fixing, which for the most part involved expensive pharmaceuticals for long periods of time. And

You know, I kept feeling like I thought that as I progressed through the hierarchy of that system, I would have more autonomy over the way I wanted to practice that work. And the more that I went down that road, the more I felt that it was the opposite.

And I was really beholden and more entrenched in this like large moving medical system that's really a business in the United States anyway. And I almost retired several times, you know, was like to the point where I was like, this is violent to myself and to others to continue to practice. And I felt like I was like on a treadmill just trying to like

make enough money to kind of have the time to then in my outside life do the things that felt more aligned with me. And through what I can only now use the word serendipity for, which I really like. I think there's less of like coincidence, but when again, when you're really present and you notice like there's serendipities everywhere, these synchronicities, sorry, is what the word I want to use.

And a colleague of mine who I'd been working very closely with for many years, I knew had a dear friend in Costa Rica. And that's all I knew. knew that this friend, they were friends since like high school. And one year for some reason, I had started to notice ayahuasca. And

It's still unclear to me like what it was about her calling. Initially, maybe it was just like this uniqueness and this curiosity. I had a few friends starting to do it. And then I started to hear it and see it everywhere. And it was like she was throwing pebbles at my window or something. And I

up this friend of mine, colleague, and I explained to him, we were just having, you know, not a business conversation, just a general one. was like, I'm just really intrigued by this. And he listened quietly and then we hung up and he didn't really say much. And then the next day he sent me Michael Pollan's book, Through the Mail, How to Change Your Mind. And I called him back and I was like, huh, that was an interesting book to send me. And he said, well, you know, my dear friend in Costa Rica, I visit

all the time and I said yes. He said, well, he is the head medicine man in Costa, in this area of Costa. And I thought, wow, you know, like, and he said, I was just waiting. I kind of knew that at some point you would hear, but it wasn't for me to bring it up. And like all of these pennies kind of dropped in one moment where I realized that like,

the universe in this lovely way was like lining things up for me to notice. And so I literally bought a plane ticket like the next week and I went down and I sat my first sessions and this is a medicine worker that you have also sat with. It's exceptional as a being. True, really true empty vessel like

like I don't think I've encountered before. And I did a retreat and there were three journeys. And the third one was in a cave behind the Diamante waterfall, which is an exceptionally high frequency place in the world. did not get to sit there.

I sat in the first two just in Well, that's fine, because when you come to my retreat in the spring, we will go. And I'd had these progressively opening experiences over the first two nights, and then we got to the third night.

It was dawn and the medicine man asked me if I wanted to do rapé and I said yes. And he took me down to this spot near to the closer to the falls. And up until then I had not purged. I'd had, you know, like a lot of lot going on, but not like some like huge thing.

And so he served me the hape and I immediately perched. And I had never had an experience like that of something that I no longer needed within me, leaving me completely. And I sat back up and I could feel this like energy on the right side of my body.

And for some reason for me, my right side symbolizes my female side. I know that's flipped, but I've always just felt that. And I've had like the hardest relationship in my world, in my existence is with my mother. She's a very asleep person. And that's been very frustrating for the period of time that I was also not aware of that and like being like woven into that tapestry. And then

And then the anger, right, of like having not been present and not seen it and now have to like work out like, how do I untangle that? And that it was causing me a lot of suffering, that relationship, like a lot. And it was in some parts that I felt that even perhaps she had steered me into the way that I ended up practicing medicine. And so there was a lot of anger and a lot of, a lot, just a lot.

So I could, anyway, so I sat up and I could feel all this energy on the right side of my body that was clearly about that relationship. And I was facing the medicine worker, we were sitting on a bench and he had a condor feather. And I went closer to say, like, there's all this stuff here. And he just did this and he said, I see it. And he started working with the feather along the right side of my body.

And it felt like lava was being extracted out of me. know how there's like the shell and then like the center is like still molten. was like, was coming out of my limbs and like, it went on for a while. And then it was just like this freedom through that whole side of my body. And it didn't matter that it was any particular story or thing. was just like, it was just, he was lightening me up from this.

burden that I'd been holding because I no longer wanted to hold it. He left me there to integrate and I had like all of this like body integration happening. There was like move, you know, like a lot of shaking and a lot of some vocalizations and things and like the waterfall was like really cleansing for that period of time. And I ended up going back to my mat afterwards and regrouping.

And it was in that moment that I realized that all of these like facts and data about the body and all the things I've learned in medicine, not to say that those are not extremely valuable. And I really cherish that I understand our system or our anatomy in the way that I do now and all of its complex physiology.

But the thing that was really like holding my system in a disease state had nothing to do with that. And none of the traditional methods that had been learned were working. And the pieces of the healing that I found were so

flipped from the Western medicine that I'd learned was that there was no hierarchy of power in the relationship with the medicine man I was working with. He was merely holding space in this extremely present but extremely neutral way, beckoning what was to happen that wanted to happen. It was like, what wants to happen here? Let me help that. And so it spoke to this idea that

my system knew what it needed to do to heal that. It wasn't imposed on me and it was allowed to roll out over a series of nights in a cadence that it wanted to. Nothing was forced. And because of that, there's like a long, there's a longevity to the healing as well because it's so organic and

And then it's like, it's kind of like, you know, it's not done. still not done for me. I still have a hard relationship with my mom, but it's dramatically different ever since that moment and the progressive things that have happened since speaking again to process, not destination. And so after that, it was just very clear to me that like, this is how I want to show up for people. This is how I want to be for people. This is healing. And,

It still makes me emotional because it was just such a beautiful landing, know, after a long time. And so I rolled up my sleeves and I did a lot of things to gather what I needed to be helpful for people in that way. you know, like that journey also is like an interesting one.

something to drop into the space is I then trained it with Gabor Matei with Compassionate Inquiry. I did a formal Hakomi training and also IFS training and all of those modalities are more somatic psychotherapy techniques. They're much more about like what's in the body and what wants to happen as opposed to psychoanalytical processing.

And I felt that those were tools that would really serve me as opposed to going back and doing a formal psychiatry residency, which would stick me more into the system I was trying to paddle out of. and then, you know, I needed to work with the medicine too. So I worked with underground guides where I live and I spent long periods of time going back to Costa Rica to work with this medicine ma 'am and team. It's a whole team.

At the end of a long stay there, I had been there for three or four months, several years back, and I sat down with the medicine man right before I was ready to come home. And I knew that I'd reached a place where I was that I felt finally like I was going to start considering guiding people myself.

and holding that space. And I remember asking him, you know, basically if I was cooked, like, am I ready? And with all of his graciousness, he just sort of nodded and didn't say anything. I love being like, little grasshopper. And I had a last ceremony that night before I was leaving and I sat in the ceremony and

I was so helpful. And she really, what she showed me was that, you know, really, Sarah, it's not about like, book learning and all the things she's like, decisions are from here. First, can analyze it later. That's number two, this is number one. And, and I came away from with it.

and I went back up to the medicine man the next morning and I apologized and he's like, it's fine. Thank you for him. He's like, everything's perfect. All in its normal, perfect time. There's no All in its perfect cadence. I didn't get there eventually. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. With no shaming. I said to him what I realized last night.

And it was probably because of the awareness of what I'd said before in the conversation that there was like something not aligning there, right? About like, I ready? Is that like I'd gone to Costa Rica with this like, hunger to learn and absorb as much as I could, you know, like learn all the different hape's learn about the Temescal, learn about Aya, learn about the music and the frequency and like, you know, all of it.

And I thought, you all of these things are bells and whistles.

They're just ornaments. And the real training that I've been doing is on myself and to have like a completely untriggered grounded nervous system so that I can hold space. Yeah. Wow.

as powerful as hell. And it's been really fun ever since, know, like really like, and I hold space for people that are in like a lot of suffering, but it's still, it's still fun because I can see that their system wants. It wants to be balanced. wants to in alignment. Like all of our systems want that and are giving us tiny little subtle hints.

every single day on how we can do that. I think it gets really daunting for people, especially in America, when they realize that there is no quick fix. Like it is a journey and like that's the issues. We've been fed this idea of, you take the pill, it gets better. You get the surgery, it gets fixed. You do this and then that.

Right. Because you have to get back into your life because if you don't, fall off the thing. You fall off the wagon and then you're screwed for good and all that. this is the exact opposite and it's having to attune your body back to the fact that it's always going to be a process in which there is never any end goal or destination. It's wonderful, right? Yeah. You're already in it.

That realization for me, that was one of the most powerful things on my first journey with Ayahuasca was like the innate sense that there is nothing more I need to do right now to accept myself exactly as I am. I am exactly where I'm supposed to be right now at this moment in time. Right. And where, when I came back, it was then easy to kind of get caught up in that it'd been like,

Well, I don't need to do anything. And then so it can be like, okay, cool. So I don't have to do any more work on myself. can be dumb, but like, no, no, no. Like you're perfect right now in this moment. Yes, you have to accept that. But then that needs to get transmuted into growth. Like we are meant to grow and change. So like you can't stop that process of being so caught up in right now because I'm exactly who I am right now. Okay, now one second has gone by. I'm now a different person. There's now something else that has happened. Like you have to take in.

what's going on in the present moment. It's a call to passivity. Yeah. For sure. like, you know, like you speak to something that's like the core of Buddhism is that nothing will stay the same. Yeah. And having to accept that, as you say, is very, very, very difficult in Western culture, you know, like, I'm not allowed to age, I'm not allowed to like, all this stuff, right. And also like,

what I've noticed even within my lifetime is the acceleration of the frequency of data coming in and through our systems all the time. And to the point where like I'm guilty of it too, because I'm caught in it, I can't completely extract myself from it, you know, continually bombarded by emails, if I cave and I'm on any social media, it's like dopamine, dopamine, like more puppy videos, please, you know, like,

And so we become like our calibration changes in how we feel normalcy, quote unquote normalcy. So when I myself ask myself or my clients to slow down, it's very uncomfortable. Very uncomfortable. They literally get agitated and like...

don't know what to do. Like I'm supposed to do something like am I supposed to have like, am I supposed to act or is there something that's supposed to be acting on me? Yeah. You know, like if I, if I have in my playlists, I carve in moments of silence, like minutes of silence. And it's so fascinating to me to watch people's reactions to that. And it's usually that at first they just like don't know how to manage it.

But almost always afterwards, they thank me for those moments because like something happens where they're, they're called to notice that they're uncomfortable with that. And then something deeper flows. I'm, I'm curious, given that obviously you're so involved now in this medicine work in this way of thinking of really connecting the body in the mind and working in that way.

do you struggle and is there any tension in your body with the fact that you do still do work within the traditional medical system and are also doing this work on the side and how do you balance that? No, you're such a bastard for asking that question. Now I feel guilty. Cool. So, like look at this.

Yeah, it's not it's not my favorite thing that I'm still in. And this is where I make my peace with it a little bit. But I love that you bring it up because it does challenge me when people like hold up a mirror, you know, and

I've been teaching an IFS course over the last few months and one of the head trainers, Anne Cinco, who's just fucking fantastic. I just love this woman. She said, we can only go as fast as the speed of trust.

And there's so much in that. Meaning trusting all of our parts. All of them. Not just like self in IFS language, right? But like the one that's like the productive one or the one that's really worried about poverty and scarcity or the one that thinks that you'll lose your status if you walk away from your job and what would people think of you. And the one that's like, I don't think you could like go and live in the jungle forever. You would just, you know, like all of those parts.

you can't go faster than they're ready. And no matter how much like you think that your higher self should, it's just not the right game. Like, no, none of our parts are bad, right? Like this very again, like Dick Schwartz, IFS, and it's really true. It's like they're concerned because they want your well -being. You're concerned that well, something will happen if you extract yourself, Sarah, from that medicine system right now. And so until I

completely address them and get rid of their fears in a real way. You know, go back and say like, hey, this really isn't serving our whole system anymore. And I understand why you think it is because you're still caught in like the old way of thinking that you were brought up in. Can we unburden that? And so I found that like the place where I can like have a little more.

for myself around the slow extraction is that, you know, and it's getting faster as I go forward. Like I just reduced my shifts and which allows me to sleep a little bit more. I'm a neuroradiologist, so my shifts are in the evening, which is tiring because then a lot of my clients want to come before they start work, right? And then I want to be there for them. And being like, where do I want my energy?

Like I want to wake up refreshed so I can really be present with my whole self for these people and that's really important. So I need to like dial it back. And, you know, with the golden handcuffs idea, even though I don't want to, I don't want to admit that I need money, right? Like that there's a lot of guilt and shame in that too about like, what do you need? What do you really need? Is that,

You know, it really has been at least helpful as I've started to increase my offerings, especially like retreats in Costa Rica, which are actually really expensive to run. It's like, have a cushion and I can provide like the full experience that I want to give to these people and not have to cut corners. And I'm really grateful for that. So I think, you know, if I, if I step back, I know that it will wash out in the right cadence. Yeah. Yeah. So.

vulnerable share time for me as well as I've, I've been dealing with a lot of the same tension. Let's, let's, let's call it between that because when I first worked with Ayahuasca, when I came back, I did the 180 and I stopped working in the corporate life. I moved across the country and did the podcast and like dove in as much as I could at the time and had, had a safety net, but

didn't have as much of a safety net as I would have liked in the sense that I had a pretty decent amount of savings at the time. So like I could afford to do that. And this past year from what I'm realizing now since my last journey three weeks ago is I've been trying to force this medicine work and just doing this to be able to support me.

Right. And because I've been trying to force it, because like, that's what I know I want to do. Like how great of a world would that be in is if I could do this all day and I could talk to people who want to come on ayahuasca retreats and have that pay all of my bills and I could still go to concerts and travel and do everything I want to do. But the reality of the situation is that it has not been able to do that. And I've been really, I just, I, I haven't been wanting to accept that.

And so now I'm doing the 180 again. I wouldn't say, you know, going full all the way back, but, essentially the medicine was like, you got to take care of yourself. Like you can't, you can't just take yourself out of the matrix completely and expect it and still be able to live in the matrix. know, like the medicine worker that we've been speaking about in this podcast. And the only reason I'm not mentioning his name is for his privacy.

is he completely extracted himself and his whole family. There's like 1 % matrix left, right? Like the dude walks around with like 0 % on his phone battery most of the time, right? That's been really hard for him and his family and his two teenage children and all of that, like, because the

majority of the world is the matrix still. Yeah. And so like to speak to balance, I think that really resonates with me as like, where can I, like if I'm going to have my foot in both camps, I need to find a balance in both camps that feels okay for me. And also let that be fluid. Yes, absolutely. It doesn't have to be a fixed 50 -50 or 70 -30 or whatever that is. Like at the moment, can I lean into that? And

And the other piece is like, Kim, like, as you reenter the corporate type world, and as I stay in the Western medicine setting, as long as I will, is that now there's a distinct difference in the way that I approach it, and all the conversations with my colleagues, even if they're not aware of the medicine. And I believe that that actually also is therapeutic.

to the greater system. I believe that as well. And that was also one of my downloads was that now having this awareness and having been so involved in this work, the only way to create change to the system as a whole is to have, you know, little mini soldiers that are plugged in, doing their thing, not preaching at people, but just existing in such a way that is embodying the medicine leading by example.

that it invites people to have that conversation. And then you get to have those little conversations. Just the tiny moment where they notice how they feel in their body and they're like, gosh, every time I have to have an interaction with Sarah about a patient in the emergency, I just, feel relaxed or I feel like that there's a flow or something. some of those...

People, not all of them, but some of them might have an aha moment where they're like, I'm curious about that. And that's going to, not necessarily to the medicine, but like we'll open them up to looking at other ways of being. And that's, and again, it's like, it speaks to like, you can only go at the speed of trust, right? Like you have to go at the speed of the slowest component. Always. The, the quote that keeps repeating in my head that for

whatever reason, like since I've really started to integrate and is just like Rome wasn't built in a day and just realizing that this is a process that is going to take time and it's going to unfold. And I literally repeat that to myself multiple times a day, every day. And it's not even one of those that like I chose like, I like that. It just keeps on coming up in my head. Like, okay, slow down, slow down. You don't have to have all the answers right now.

you get to take your time and like you get to experience all of it and like be present with the whole experience of like now I'm applying to jobs again and boy does that suck. like, you know, but at the same time I've been feeling so much better. It feels like there's been this weight lifted on my shoulders because I'm not trying to force the thing that's not.

And what you might find is that in the approach and the ease is that the job that you end up getting might actually feel different too. Yeah. So for sure. I'm open to all of it now. And just knowing that I have that genuine sense of openness already feels better. And now it feels like all the other work too is flowing way easier too. It feels like I'm having better conversations with people, better podcasts. Like everything is opening up because

because I'm allowing things to flow and accepting what is. Absolutely. And like that, I think is the definition of freedom. Yeah. You know, when we say like, we want all beings happy and free, that's the freedom. So in learning these different modalities to help people with, you know, kind of more along the lines of

of the medicine work, you said IFS and you said there were a couple of other courses that you've done. Yeah. Hakomi in particular, just huge shout out to Hakomi. What, what, what is Hakomi? me get, let's, let's, get into that first. Yeah, for sure. Hakomi is a somatic psychotherapy methodology was developed by an individual named Ron Kurtz, who I think was originally from Colorado. I'm not incorrect. Shout out. And,

extremely present person, extremely present. And he developed it after he was a therapist and he'd gone to some conference and he was doing a demo with one of the participants up on stage, you know how they do and like everyone's watching whatever. And he totally zoned out, completely zoned out. Didn't listen to word this person was saying, but was attuned.

to them, was still like with them, but like his brain was like not listening to the thing, right? And so this person finished their story and he was like, fuck. And what happened next was he started to work with them from what he was experiencing in his body from witnessing this person because their attunement was so high. And he realized that like,

and they had this beautiful session, like beautiful session. And he realized like, the power of all of this is in like, it doesn't matter what our story, we can have a million different stories as humans, but it boils down to these like core experiences of like belonging, love, acceptance, no shame, like, you know, like these neighborhoods of territories.
An
d if we can be with people and really with them in those core states, there's a lot of healing that can happen. And so we developed the system from there. So it's really about refining how to be with another. And I feel like that skill has served me so well with IFS.

as IFS is like the scaffolding of like what our internal systems are like, we have all these characters, all these parts, like, you know, inside out part one and part two, the movies. And we have relationships with them or don't. And as I sit with people going through those relationships, being able to be with them and all of their parts allows them

to be with their parts, you know? It's not me analyzing what does this part say or how does this part want you to be? It's like, can I be with that part? Yeah. Can you just sit there and allow the part to exist? Yeah. It's like my experience with therapy in general, and like I've certainly had, I'd say overall a pretty good experience with like traditional therapy.

But sometimes it feels like I just talk in circles and talk in circles and talk in circles and nothing actually happens because I'm analyzing what all of this means and what it is. And the medicine work has taught me like, kind of doesn't matter most of the time. Like if you can figure it out, you're in control of it. And if you're in control of it, you're safe. So that's like a really ingrained paradigm.

So when I work with people that have never worked in this way before and they start to go into the analyzing like, I see it now that if my mom made me feel guilty and like, can you ask that thinking? want to thank that thinking part for trying so hard to figure it all out. But could you ask it to go in the kitchen and make a sandwich? Yeah. While we're doing this, would that be okay? And it's so hilarious because like 99 out of a hundred times they'll like go inside and they'll be like, yeah.

That's cool. It'll go in the kitchen. And then it's a totally different experience. They're in their body and like, you know, and sometimes they'll like come back into the living room and be like, Hey, I thought about this. And I'm like, can you ask them to go back and put more mayo on the sandwich? Like, they're like, yeah, sure. And it's just, it's like, it's a practice of like, because that's a part, that's a part of us. It's not us. And so if we also honor it though, it's not like we're telling it you're bad.

We're telling it to go make a delicious sandwich. Right now, it's just not necessary for you to be here, but thank you. Thank you for trying to help. Yeah, and also giving each of your parts power too in the system because they're all important. So saying like, if you have something that you really want us to know while you're listening, while you're making the sandwich, you can absolutely pop in and tell us, let us know. So we're not saying like, get out.

That's also really, really served me well is like noticing like the more I can love everybody's parts up, the better it goes. And the more space we get created and the more than they allow us to go to the really tender, painful places for healing. Cause otherwise, trust. Would you say that IFS in general has been the most powerful like modality that you've really dove into?

In terms of like understanding as far as we know it now as humans in this evolution the structure of our internal worlds, which I'm sure will be disproven or change and change and that's totally fine. Absolutely. know, gravity is not fixed. But yes, so like it's one of those things that once you see it, you can't unsee it. I see everything through that lens now. And that's yeah, it's been.

tremendous for how I work with people in the medicine because what happens when you go into a medicine space is all of those parts we've been talking about, the one that might shame you or is scared and wants to protect you or wants to analyze or all that, they tend to go a little offline so that you can go back to the little ones, usually an exile of some kind or a legacy burden, an ancestor burden, whatever it is, the one that's hurting, you get more direct access there.

And so when I'm holding space, I'm aware of that. You know, I'm aware that these parts have like parted the curtain a little bit and we're doing some really tender work. And then as the medicine releases people, those parts start to come back online. And how that is managed is critical to how they move forward with what just happened in the space into their real lives.

Because if there was not enough permission in the system, or you don't allow those parts that are coming back in that are usually protecting us to check it out and see if it's okay, what we just looked at, what we just moved, what energy just happened, they will backlash. They will get louder. You might see more addictions coming up, more depression, more suicidality. So there's a real tenderness in how to work with those people's parts.

in that like golden hour after they're coming out in the medicine or in the first integration sessions, either a day or a few days later. Yeah. Yeah. What do you think is like the really critical period after deep medicine journey that people need to be like really hyper aware of that? Because like life happens, it'd be great if we could be super aware of it all the time. It's not realistic. like, what do you see as like the really critical period?

So that's medicine dependent. Each of the, if we're talking about the classic psychedelics, each of them has a different signature, meaning that the experience you have while in that medicine space is going to feel very different for the most part, even though you're, you're having under the blanket of a, you know, mystical experience there, they feel different.

the characteristics of the information you're given is different, the sensations are different. And the period, and this is me putting my science hat back on a little bit from how we're starting to analyze what's actually happening on a biochemical and a physical level in terms of people talking about neuroplasticity, right?

Where are we forming new synaptic connections? Where are we altering some of the biochemistry so that those connections can form and solidify in a different way than what was previously happening? Those seem to occur at different timeframes depending on the different psychedelic. In general, there's a wonderful researcher and I will look up her names. I'm not gonna pronounce it correctly. She's done them.

really brilliant piece of work on this. presented it at MAPS last year. It was published in Nature. She compared the five classic psychedelics and what she found was that the duration of the mystical experience within each of the medicines was directly proportional to the period of time you have afterwards for the neuroplasticity to be persisting. So for something like ketamine, you need to be integrating that day or the next day.

That's your like juicy time. And it also might mean that you might be dosing people at a more quick cadence to start to like when things are happening versus something like psilocybin or ayahuasca where you're looking more in the range of like six, eight hours. We might have like a week or two weeks, you know? then - happens, I'm sorry to interrupt you here, but so like for ayahuasca, for example, like I

that's it's typically done multiple times over the course of this. So if I'm doing three ceremonies over the course of five days, that's now instead of six hours, that's 18 hours. So does that now give me more time for that neuroplasticity or do we not necessarily even know scientifically what that's doing? I'm not going to pretend we know. I don't know the answer to that. So I'm just like thinking in my own body about those experiences and I know that they build. Yeah.

You know, so like when you do three ceremonies, for example, over a week, they almost always when you look back, have a cadence that's like very circular and the first one applies to the last one. It's like a book. And so I think that there's probably synergy in the ability for that neuroplasticity to happen. I don't know if it means that like after the last one, you have more than two weeks that I don't know. They're synergistic.

Okay, gotcha. Yeah. I think it's, it's, there's so much research to be done. And yet at the same time, I feel like with, with the scientific tools that we have available to us today and trying to come at this from such a Western lens of looking at medicine, I'm not sure it's going to be able to accurately capture what's actually going on like ever. Like there's so much indigenous wisdom that is there.

and we kind of just have to accept it. We're only going to get data based on our measuring tools. Yeah. We're probably not measuring a whole bunch of stuff that's happening because we don't even know what to measure. Yeah. So what we can look at, though, is outcome data. We can look at like how how is your we have depression scales. We have.

You know, like all of those types of things that can be biomarkers is what we use. It's new column in science, to see, like, are we, are we hitting certain endpoints that imply that even if we don't know the exact thing of what's happening, that there's a change, right. then go from there and then see, I mean, humans are curious. We'll keep trying to figure it out. Right. So Sarah, before we end, I want to ask you, what are you?

most looking forward to right now in your life.

In the immediacy of my life, just squeezing every little last bit out of the end of summer in Seattle, because it's beautiful. It's the magic time to be in the mountains and be around trees and water. And in a slightly larger lens, continuing to structure my existence so that I can spend more time.

working with people in a way that I'd like. And as we've spoken to in this podcast, continuing to find the balance of what that is so that there's some ease in that as it still feels a little bit like an exhausting rat race right now. But I know that, you know, the more intentionality I put into that,

I, we manifest our realities. Yeah. And I know also too, you, you do have a retreat that you just recently announced that's coming up next year. I do. I actually will have two in the spring. One is in the last week of January and the other one's the last week of April. They're both held in Dominical in Costa Rica in the south of the country. I.

will not serve the medicine and bringing people to work with decades of practice of medicine workers, their whole wonderful team. The same medicine man we've been speaking so highly about throughout this podcast. Correct. And I integrate, I do integration work with everyone that comes before, during and after the retreats are heavily

catered towards integration, think that's exceedingly important. And that's things like yoga, sound journeys, acupuncture, massage, art projects, all of it. The retreats are 10 days, they're a little bit longer, again, because I'm really emphasizing the integration, I think it's really critical before people come back to the matrix.

And they can find out more of that on my website, which I'm sure you'll put in the show notes. Well, Sarah, thank you so much for coming on the podcast and sharing your wisdom and your knowledge with everybody. So much gratitude and also so much love. Same. I'm so, so honored that you asked and feel really blessed that we have crossed paths in this life.

That's all I got for you today. Thank you everybody for listening. Thank you, Sarah, for coming on the podcast. Make sure that you're following us on social media at underscore Tripsitting underscore. Make sure that you are also following my sub stack, which is just called Tripsitting. If you were to go on sub stack and check that out. And then if you want to get in touch with me, shoot me a DM or send me an email at Tripsittingblog at gmail .com. That's it. We'll see you next episode.