SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Welcome to Tried and True with the Dash of Woo, where we blend rock solid tips with a little bit of magic. I'm Renee Bowen, your host, life and business coach, and professional photographer. At your service, we are all about getting creative, diving into your business, and playing with manifestation over here. So are you ready to get inspired and have some fun? Let's dive in. Hey friends, welcome back to Tried and True with a Dash of Woo. I'm your host, Renee Bowen. And two really quick things before we get into today's episode and my awesome guest. So, first thing is that this episode is a little different than I normally do. I have someone on who is going to be talking to us. She is a cognitive psychologist, but we're going to be talking about a very specific thing, which is psycholytic ketamine therapy. So I just want to offer really quickly before we get into even the introduction for her, that that could be a little triggering for some of you, right? So I just kind of wanted to lead in with a slight trigger warning, if you will, that we are going to be talking about uh ketamine. We're going to be talking about using medicine in treatment for mental health. So the episode could be slightly triggering for some people. And I just really wanted to name that really quickly before we dump jump in. I think it's a fascinating topic. And I'm, you know, it's one of the reasons why I love doing this podcast. I didn't realize how much I was going to love doing this podcast, but this is one of the reasons why I love doing it, is because it I learn. I learn so much. And I'm kind of one of those people, like I just constantly want to learn. And this is such a great opportunity for me to do that. I can have different people on and guests that come on and talk to us about all of these different modalities and therapies and treatments. And some of them may be great for you, and some of them are not. So use your discernment as always. But yeah, for me, I think it's just very interesting, right? I just like to kind of like to know what's going on. And so that is my little trigger warning for you. And then we will get to her, my my guest, we'll get to her introduction in just a second. The other thing I wanted to remind you guys of is that enrollment for my January through June Elevate cohort is officially open. So Elevate is my small group coaching experience for photographers who are not beginners, but know that they're ready for more actual momentum in their business and also for more support. The kind of support that helps you stop hiding, start being seen, and finally run your business like the version of you that you keep imagining in your head. Okay. And because you've listened to this show, I already know that you value depth and clarity and mindset strategy and building a business in a way that doesn't fry your nervous system. And Elevate is exactly that. It's a blend of business strategy, content clarity, belief rewiring, nervous system support, and real accountability without the shame or the hustle culture that so many of us are already exhausted by. It is by application only because I curate the space very intentionally so that everyone is supported at the level that they need. And if something in you is lighting up right now, just hearing that, then I invite you to apply. The link is in the show notes. Do it soon because I am closing down applications shortly. All right. So let's jump into today's episode, shall we? So I am always trying to find spaces where science and spirituality intersect, right? It's kind of the whole point of the show. And where data and intuition stop being, you know, enemies and they start like dancing together. That stuff lights me up. So today's guest is somebody who's doing that in a very interesting way. Her name is Dr. Sharon Niv, and she is a cognitive psychologist and she's the co-founder of Joyus, which is a public benefit corporation leading the way in psycholytic ketamine therapy, which is essentially a gentler, more grounded approach to mental health treatment that's changing how we think about healing. When she first told me that Joyce had treated over 83,000 patients with response rates higher than most antidepressants and none of the disassociation people expect from psychedelics, I knew I had to get her on the show to talk about this. And again, I know this can be a polarizing and triggering subject. So I just invite you to have an open mind and listen because I feel like there's a lot of education here for sure. But what I love most about Sharon's work is how it honors both the clinical and the mystical. And it's it's not about checking out. That's not what this is. Okay. It's literally about waking up. So I'm super excited to share this conversation with you guys. Let's jump right in. Hey, Sherry, thanks for being here. I'm really excited about this topic because I feel like this is something that has been on people's minds. Like I know, like in my own circle, like we've we've sort of been talking about it a little bit, uh, but there's not a lot of understanding about it. So I'm very excited that we're gonna dig deeper into it because you are the pro in this field. You started your career in cognitive psychology, which is very evidence-based, very structured. What first pulled you toward this type of work and ultimately the psycholytic therapy?

SPEAKER_01: 5:36

So before Joyous, um, I had decided I would dedicate my life to healing suffering and raising human consciousness through whatever means are possible. And I was fairly agnostic on the means. Um and since then I've I've joked that if I could make the world meditate two hours a day, I would certainly do that, but that's not realistic. And uh this opportunity presented itself uh through the team that ended up being the co-founding team. And I just thought, wow, that's that's a huge opportunity because people do have an interest in working with alternate stints of consciousness. And especially when they do it intentionally, it can be quite profound. So when we started Joyous Out, and uh, you know, we we launched officially in early 2022, but we, of course, the ideation process is always a bit longer than that. Really started talking about it the summer of 2021. And our original thinking was to do something in the high-dose space, which of course already exists. There are uh certainly clinics and there are individual doctors, but there are also several other telehealth companies that are providing the opportunity for higher dose ketamine experiences. And we're very pro the range of experiences that are possible, but we wanted to do something that's different and that is better matched to at least some, if not a substantial portion of the population. And so these lower doses that were um that are called psycholytic, not psychedelic, or not dissociative, but partially dissociative, are a pretty different animal when it comes to working with states of consciousness and working with psychological content. Um we think of it as a skill-building approach rather than like as a journey to insight, which is often what you get with higher dose uh psychoactive medications. You're kind of your mind is the one setting the pace, and you have to sort of submit into that. And there's a beauty to that, and there's a power to that. This is different. There's still a strong sense in which the individual on the psycholytic dose is able to be quite intentional with their intentional system. They can decide what to focus on, they can decide what they want to touch, investigate, work with, grow comfortable with. And the psycholytic state is a strong supporter of that. So we really do think of it as a quote of go low, go slow. One of our collaborators gave that to me. And it's it's really true. It is a piecemeal, uh, gentle, gradual approach to getting into a better relationship with yourself and with states of consciousness.

SPEAKER_00: 8:07

That's okay, it's really fascinating to me because yes, I had heard about the higher dose, like you said. Um, I've even had a couple of people, just in my personal life that I've known who have done that type of work specifically for depression, you know, chronic depression. And they rave about it. It literally, like they've said, you know, it saved their lives. Um, and I think that just like anything else, right? Like until you really experience something like that, it's really hard to like for people who don't deal with these types of mental issues that, you know, like severe depression, right? Like, unless you've really kind of dealt with it, it's really hard to understand what would bring someone to this place. But I feel like this this conversation is really important to open people's awareness to that and dig into these different options because yeah, those higher doses might feel a little scary for people. And what you guys are doing is very different. So I want to just touch on that very quickly. You guys do this low dose. I mean, if is it fair to say something that it'd be kind of like microdosing, or you know what I mean? Like, are you working with a therapist as well? So, kind of like give us a little bit of a framework of like what that looks like from the consumer side of joyous, real quick before we dive in.

SPEAKER_01: 9:24

Awesome questions. Okay, so I think there were at least two separate ones on there. Is that microdosing is a great conversation? Um, some people say that microdosing, by definition, is self-perceptual, meaning like you don't notice the changes. You you may uh you know, take some microdose psilocybin and realize, oh, I've been a little bit more creative today, but it doesn't necessarily feel all that different from a psychoactive perspective. And those are not the doses that we're working with here. So they are psycholytic. I don't really you know have a strong opinion about microdose or not microdose. Certainly, I think we come up on microdosing as a uh search term, for example. Yeah. And I think it's appropriate because it's it's it is small enough that it's manageable in a day-to-day way. Whereas, you know, with higher doses, you might want to block off three to four hours to go to the clinic and be with your provider. Um, some of it is ketamine assisted psychotherapy where there isn't a therapist or psychologist there. Some of it is just ID ketamine where you still want to block off that time because you're quite altered and then you want someone to drive you home. So this is this is not that, but it's not subperceptual. People do experience um phenomenology around it, right? So people will experience a sense of spaciousness. If you've done a lot of meditation and you've grown familiar with the state of like open, open awareness, spacious awareness, there are some similarities between the state of psycholytic ketamine and spacious awareness. There is a sense in which you're bigger than your body. It's it's a mild associative, right? So that partial association kind of helps you be both inside and outside your body. There's a permeability there. And it's actually through that permeability that's the sensations of the nervous system that got stuck there during moments of emotional difficulty or trauma. That's how they can release when there is that openness and spaciousness, which we assume is a relaxation of the micromusculature that kind of holds in resistance, not wanting to let go of and fully experience the overwhelming sensations that are associated with negative emotionality and trauma, right? Like we do brace against these deep difficult emotions for good reason. Like they're extremely challenging and they can be quite overwhelming to the system. And then ketamine provides this spaciousness, at least in the psycholytic state. I mean, there can be a full release with a high dose stuff, and that we're again not opposed to high dose at all. There's a place for it and it can be transformative, like you said. But um, to really slowly develop a relationship with some of these patterns and nervous system um activations, it's useful to be able to go there again and again and practice with. So that was the first question you asked. I think was about microdosing. And then the second is what is the involvement of a clinician? So um we opted to be the most affordable ketamine treatment that we could find, which is$129 a month for a month worth of medication, plus just being the program, which I can describe some more. And that means that, you know, for$129 a month, there's no therapist. They deserve more than that. Yeah. So uh what that means for the roughly 50 to 60 percent we're estimating patients who don't have a therapist is that we create programming for them. There is currently a course on nervous system regulation. There are courses on techniques they can use in the moment to when you're triggered. And we're making courses on self-compassion, we're making courses on understanding parts work framework. Or uh we have a lot in the pipeline that I think will be continuing to serve the needs of the patients who don't have their own therapists. We also have an online platform where there's a forum that's very supportive. The patients who participate in that really derive a lot of community value from it. Um, I lead some live sessions weekly for meditating together in community, and I think it's going to grow soon. Thinking of making offerings like let's do a community greeting. Um I think that would be really beautiful. There are things we just don't make space for in our society that it's useful to at least make as an offering. So that's about 50% of the population that comes to assistations probably don't have a therapist because they can't afford it. About 9% of our uh patient base actually has financial aid because we really want to make this available. Now, the 40 to 48% who do have therapists, um, I say this uh a lot, but one thing we heard from a patient that really rings in my mind was on my own, I use this medicine to build positive habits with my therapist. I dig into the dark stuff. And we um are coming out with a therapist collaboration program called Joyous for Therapists. And it is a free program for therapists to belong to. We did put together a certificate program that's like fully APA accredited, continuing education units, full shebang, real deals coming out at November. It is coming out this month, and it'll allow therapists to learn how to use these lower doses. There are several existing programs for higher dose work with Ketamate or with psychedelics in general. There are various excellent training programs for that, but this psycholytic model is a little bit of a different animal. And in a sense, you know, first we thought, is this even necessary? All they're doing is the same work they're already doing. It's just that the patients, their clients, are coming in better able to engage in the work. They're less resistant, they're more open. The academy is a neuroplastic agent, so they there's a sense in which doing the work impacts them in an even longer term way. Just do your work. But that wasn't enough. You know, it is understandably, therapists are cautious. They have this weighty, precious thing of uh a human life in their hands. They also have licensees to protect, understandably. They want to know what they're doing. So we did put together a whole program um led by experienced clinicians who know how to use these doses that examines all of the scientific sides of things, protocols, um, best practices around safety, ethics, the legal stuff, all of it. It's it's a full program that's coming out. And so the hope is to have patients be able to go to their own therapists and say, I want to bring this medicine into our work together. Would you want to participate in this program so that we can make the most out?

SPEAKER_00: 15:48

That's really cool. Okay, so yeah, that's coming out. That's for therapists, and that is coming out this month in November as the time of this recording. Not sure when this the episode will air, but just want to make sure if you are a therapist and you're looking into that kind of work, that's really fascinating. And I think it's really it's great that you guys are making it so accessible, I think, and also doing that deeper work of training. Because yeah, I mean, I feel like there is a lot of misunderstanding, misconception. So let's kind of like get into that real quick. Um, first of all, what is ketamine? Like a lot of people are like, isn't that what Matthew Perry died of? And isn't that what you go, you know, like when you're in surgery? Don't they give you that? Like, you know what I mean? Like there's a lot of things that you hear online. Um, what is ketamine? And then also, like, what would someone maybe possibly even experience a little bit with these low doses?

SPEAKER_01: 16:41

So, yes, ketamine is a dissociative anesthetic. It is, it doesn't repress the uh respiratory system at all. So it's considered one of the safest. It's considered a battlefield anesthetic. It's routinely used in surgeries with children because it's so safe. It is, it has a remarkably high safety profile. But what another thing that's interesting about ketamine is that there are different tiers of dosing that all lead to really different experiences. High enough, and you are anesthetic. Yeah. You are out. And one of the interesting things and heartbreaking things about the Matthew Carey case, uh, first of all, he drowned. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, exactly. It wasn't that ketamine killed him, it's that ketamine anesthetized him enough that he drowned in a hot tub, which is an it's a known phenomenon that used to be a problem in the 70s and 80s. People took it and got into their um uh uh sensory deprivation pods, and people died. And don't do that. Yeah. So um the other thing is you can look this up in the New York Times, Matthew Perry is found to have anesthetic levels of ketamine in his system when he died, which is insane. Like a not it not a judgment, it's it's incredible how much he had in his system. And a person with who was more naive to the medicine would just have been out completely. Um so high enough dose anesthetic, go a little bit lower, and you get into what is kind of known the K-hole territory. Okay. So there's still it's an ego death, which you know, I I personally believe ego death always has a benefit to us. It's sort of it's like a information to the system that our current way of constructing reality is not the only available one. And I have a friend who said, and I think he's I think he's right, that the high, high dose psychedelic state of ketamine, which maybe is a little lower than K-hole, is actually what he imagined a psychedelic experience would be like when he was a teenager. And really, when he took LSD or psilocybin, it ended up being quite different. But ketamine in its like psychedelic state, and there is a conversation in the academic field about whether it's psychedelic or not psychedelic because it doesn't work on serotonin, which is what LSD and psilocybin and ayahuasca and and I'm again all classic psychedelics, all are serotinergic. They work on a particular receptor called 5-HT2A. Ketamine doesn't touch serotonin as far as we know. It's it's so complex that it might, but its primary mechanism of action is on the glutamate system, which is the primary excitatory uh neurotransmitter in the brain. So it's like one of the most uh prevalent neurotransmitter systems in the brain. Every time a neuron activates, there's some uh some involvement of glutamate in there. And so the fact that ketamine works on glutamate means that the effects can be really quite widespread. And that's why, for example, uh, I was reading about it from the perspective of like psychonauts, people who go on psychedelic journey for more less therapeutic and more consciousness uh based activities. And it just seems like it amplifies and changes the effects of like most other psychoactive medications, psilocybin or mDNA. They they have an interaction that's very interesting. It's probably because of this widespread nature of glutamate. Um, so you asked about what. Is ketamine. So we we got from anesthetic level, K-hole, psychedelic, and then you get to psycholytic. And in the psycholytic doses, psychiatrist psychologists have the term fully oriented. That means oriented to self, who are you, to situation, what are you doing, and to location, where are you? You're fully oriented with these lower doses. Okay. You know exactly who you are, what you're doing, uh, who you're talking to. It makes it really perfect for therapy enhancement. It's just that in addition to all of that, there are effects, as we mentioned, that are quite spacious. So there is a sense in which you feel like you're both inside and outside your body. You can observe the sensations of your system almost as though you're suddenly a big room and they're happening within. Our general experience with difficult emotions is that we feel really fused with them. You know, we feel really identified with them. They can be quite overwhelming. It feels like they take over the entire system. Ketamine makes you the size of the room, the sensations stay there, and you're able to observe them, to understand them, to relate to them in ways that produce much more safety and much less vulnerable. One of the therapists in our community described it as a blanket of safety that allows her patients, her clients to go into places they haven't been able to quite before. And so, yeah, the experience is there is a somatic experience. Um, and people differ in how they uh relate to it. It's kind of buzzy, and some people quite like it. Some people take some time getting used to it. There is a spaciousness which can lead to some lightheadedness that's kind of normal if it's too strong, or we have a full nursing staff that's like there to help work through any preventive side effects, any like mild dizziness, any um nausea, which isn't terribly common, but can happen mostly because I think it's more of a uh like car sickness effect, more emotion sickness than it is, um uh stomach sickness. So we have a full nursing staff to help you get through that into the place where you feel kind of at ease with it. There's a relaxation component to it too. It's been unbelievable how many people I've spoken to in our program who said, I no longer need that glass or tooth wine a day. Yeah. Just take this and it helps me get back into a state of relaxation, but that that's so much less harmful to my body than alcohol.

SPEAKER_00: 22:29

Yeah, and so many other pharmaceuticals too that people take for sleep because they maybe have anxiety and depression and they can't sleep because of the burden of that. You know what I mean? Like so many people deal with sleep issues because of what they're dealing with on the daily. So they can't get into that deep sleep, that restorative sleep that we know is so incredibly important. So I imagine that that also just in and of itself would have a really positive effect in as well as the the psycholytic effects, you know, as we were talking about before. But what I find interesting is this this sort of like spaciousness, right? Because yeah, there's a lot of different ways that people can't, like you said, like we started off talking about like I wish people could meditate for two hours a day. Like, yeah, but that's not really something that a lot of people can do. But also the body really does hold so much. I mean, I was a massage therapist for years, a long time ago. I'm a very big believer in this mind-body connection. And I mean, I just got back from a retreat where one of the other retreat members that this is what she does. She's like a body alchemist. Like she's a psychologist and a massage therapist, and she's created her own system of like helping people access what you're holding in your body, how it is affecting you and helping you move through it. But that's not really easy for a lot of people to do. You have to sort of get, as you know, especially if you're dealing with like major trauma, right? Like we know that that this would be, I'm sure, really super effective for those people to get to that conscious observer where it's not like judging, because a lot of people with major depression have the cycle of self-hatred that runs on that loop. And that in and of itself is feels almost impossible for people with major depression to stop to get to the point of a conscious observer to even do the work. So that is like, I think amazing that it is a facilitator for that. Um, and so I know that you've said in some of the talks that you've done that you're seeing like a 68% response rate for depression in general, which is really huge. Do you think that that's what is the major effect? Like, what do you what do you think about it? Um, and is that the the bulk of your clients, right? Like, are do people come to you for anxiety, for instance, too? Like, or or do they kind of like kind of go hand in hand?

SPEAKER_01: 25:00

Um, yeah, the major indications that we see patients for are uh depression, anxiety, and PTSD. 68% is I think a bit of an understatement because that's how we clinically define change, which would ends up being about two drops in game severity on either the depression or anxiety scale that we use to get uh if you're gonna look at anyone, I I think it's uh to be honest, kind of a silly metric. But when we looked at even one point drop, we got to 92%, 94, 92 percent. So either you're kind of staying where you there's very little deterioration, it was under 1%, uh, either staying where you are or or achieving some sort of benefit. And so, yes, the people who come in have depression, anxiety, and PTSD. And I think as you said, uh part of what's happening there is a respite from the spacious awareness that we talked about that shares uh qualities with psycholytic ketamine state. Um, another shared experience there is a quieting of the narrative mind, for sure. And as you said, with depression, you get this ruminative and self-critical voice that can be extremely active. With anxiety, it's you know, sometimes a little bit of a different flavor, more catastrophizing, more of like an obsessive evaluation of the danger zone, but still there's a very loud voice that then's undefined dominating. And what the cycleitic ketamine state provides is a respite from that. And it endures too, right? So you have about the 40 to 16 minutes that are quite psychoactive, not quite. I mean, you're you're able to function, don't drive, right? You're able to function, but still there's a quietness that happens there. But it that quietness can endure three to four hours at least post each dose. And over time, as patients begin to develop to stronger relationships and more self-compassionate relationships with themselves and their parts, the baseline shifts. So they no longer have to be taking this medicine on a regular basis, at least the vast majority don't, to still feel um a reductive change in just how loud the voice in the head is. The mechanism of action, as we said, is that it is highly neuroplastic. So what's happening there is formation of new dendritic and synaptic qualities in the brain. So dendrites are the pieces of the neuron that sort of um receive uh neurotransmitters from the presynaptic neuron, and then synapses are just the connections between the neurons. So both of those increase. Both the postsynaptic neurons' ability to receive and the connection between neurons increase as a result of ketamine. And so what this does suggest is that if you're taking ketamine and then like watching horror movies and beating yourself up the entire time, you know, you could cause some damage. But what seems to happen naturally because of this spaciousness and the quietness is that people do enter into a state that allows for release of long-held emotions and an experience with the quiet mind. And that's what gets reinforced.

SPEAKER_00: 28:15

Okay, yeah. That makes so much sense. I really am fascinated by this um this sort of bridge melding of like the scientific rigor, right? And then honoring this like mystery of consciousness at the same time. Like, I I love that that conversation a little bit. Um, and also like you mentioned, the brain's ability to change. Like that is so incredibly interesting. Like, someone might be a little hesitant maybe about doing this because they might feel like, okay, this is like a uh forever sort of thing, or but now, like, let's kind of dig into that a little bit about this neuroplasticity and how you know, you mentioned the the actual physical changes that can happen in the brain, but then also like, what about the soul's ability to also evolve from there? And like, how do they dance together that you've seen?

SPEAKER_01: 29:11

Love that. Um, so we talk a lot in the guidance that we give with the digital therapeutics. As you remember, like over half of our patients don't actually have therapists. So we do try to provide them with guidance. We talk a lot about inner wisdom, true nature, and that this medicine gives you an ability to connect to that much more directly. And just spontaneously, it seems like what we've sort of seen in the neuroscience literature is that when there's a reduction in activity of what's known as the default mode network, and that is a network of brain regions that seems to get active when we are in self-referential states, like when you're stage reading, when you're evaluating, should I have said that, when you're thinking of yourself, when all of that is the default mode network, and it's called default because that's if you're not like actively working on solving a task, that's what sort of happens. It was funny how it was discovered in um the big fMRI magnets. They told people, yeah, just lie there and do nothing. And it turns out we don't do nothing, you know, we like think about whether or not we should have said that thing and kind of evaluate ourselves and have that you know negative talk, self-talk happening. So that's how they, you know, discovered this default thing. Um, now psychedelics in general appear to reduce activity in the default mode network. They appear to change the balance from top down, which means you experience life through your beliefs to bottom up, which is experiencing life through the senses. And ketamine also has the property of quieting the default mode network down. Now, again, it's it's very dose dependent. If you're having an ego death in your K-hole, then your default mode network is by definition just offline. But um, with these psycholytic states, you still have a sense of self, you still know who you are, you still can process the world, but it is quiet. The voice is quieter, that network activity is quieter. And goodness, where are we going with this?

SPEAKER_00: 31:12

Um I don't I love though that the bridge between the two, right? Like so Oh, I'm sorry. Evolution, I know.

SPEAKER_01: 31:19

Yeah, I totally remembered. It seems to be that when that network is quieter, people have more spiritual experiences, right? Which so accords with Buddhist philosophy. When you quiet down the mind and the ego and you see what's underneath, what's underneath is more truly you than that voice ever was. And it's compassionate. IFS certainly sees this too, wise mind from DBT. Your true nature, what's underneath the egoic thinking mind, is always going to be more peaceful, truer, more compassionate, more caring, more connected, and better functioning. And ketamine gives people, sometimes for the first time, people who were really not raised in spiritual circumstances, an experience that many people consider quite spiritual. Some people really talk about connecting to a higher power, experiencing life through these very new lenses, but if nothing else, it quiets down the thinking mind enough to connect to a deeper part of you, to a wiser part of you. So, you know, we can forget metaphysics for a moment, right? I don't, I don't know what's real and what's not real, but I know that these medicines can help us to connect to something within us that feels deeper and truer.

SPEAKER_00: 32:35

Yeah, that makes so much sense because I mean, literally, I always say this, especially with my coaching students, and just reminding myself is like the secret to life is just kind of letting go, right? Like that's the letting go, letting go, letting go, letting go is so powerful, but it's so, so hard for so many of us, especially these high achieving women that I work with. Um, the the pushing, the hustling, the living in our masculine. There's so, so, so much of this. It's rampant. I'm in a lot of female founder spaces. And, you know, I see it working with creative women, especially and that active mind. I just want to kind of touch on that for a second because I have, I have gone through a period of deep depression once in my life. But really, what I have dealt with my entire life that I didn't really even know that it was called that until much later was severe OCD anxiety. And it wasn't really talked about like when I was a kid, but I can remember, like even as a child, having just like these, like the loop, the loop of the catastrophizing, I call it the anxiety highway. I have to go all the way, all the way to the end of the highway, and just like see, okay, and then we die. You know what I mean? Like comes to like everything and then and then we die. Um, because that's like the worst thing. So I can imagine that. I mean, I've never done this type of work myself. And I'm gonna be honest, like I've been terrified about the whole like microdosing psilocybin thing anyway, just because like a lot of people say that it's just so freeing and opens, but I am a control freak. I have anxiety, you know, that's not something that I'm gonna feel really good about doing, honestly. But I can imagine that giving yourself the space and to quiet that loop for people who live with anxiety. I I know this we touched on depression, but like those of us who deal with that type of OCD anxiety, I can imagine how truly life-changing that could be to just even have your first moment of that quiet. Like people live their whole lives, not even really knowing that that's kind of like they just feel like the well, this is how I am. And then they do something like this, and I can imagine how powerful that is for people. I'm sure you see that a lot.

SPEAKER_01: 34:48

Yeah, there's there's a direct vote of uh I didn't know how much anxiety I was carrying to like lift it for the first time. Just the layer there and it lifts. There's this we feel like 10 pounds lighter. Like you took them backpack off the shoulders.

SPEAKER_00: 35:03

Oh that's that's awesome. I mean, honestly, like as someone who has dealt with that and have I have clients who deal with that, I can imagine what relief that is for people. Like, yes, I've been able to get to that place to other methods of meditation and hypnosis and unconscious work. But I mean, it is it that represents over that's like 30 years of work for me. You know what I mean? Like that's of like work and like digging into it and being willing to go there and getting to the point where I'm I'm yeah, honestly, being in massage therapy school was like my first taste of it in the early 90s because I was getting body work all the time. We were practicing on each other. I had no idea that it was gonna crack me open.

SPEAKER_01: 35:46

You were caring, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 35:47

Yeah, I had no idea. I was like, oh, I'm just learning how to be a massage therapist. And and like within like a couple of months, I was just like like a mess because I had been holding so much in my body, and it had no choice but to get out now because I was getting work on every single day. And I had to like really intentionally process the things that were coming out. And it was like a I had to trust that this was like what I signed up for. You know what I mean? Like I had to really kind of go there with myself. It's like, nope, I was guided to this for a reason. Yes, this is scary, this is terrifying. I'd never cried that much in my entire life. And I had been in therapy before, and I was like, this is this is a lot. So I can imagine people who had never really even dug into that. And I love that this is bridging, like you said before, um, this gap of people who and making it accessible to people who may not otherwise be able to really afford it. So I do want to touch on that for a second before we start to, you know, kind of wrap up. And I, and we definitely will be, you know, I want to before we wrap up, I want to talk about how people can find you and and and work with this and all of that, and and therapists as well, like you said before. But you co-founded Joyce as this public benefit corporation, which is not really something that you hear about every day, right? Like, so I want to talk to you a little bit about the mission here.

SPEAKER_01: 37:13

Totally. Um, so public benefit corporation is not a nonprofit, but it does mean that we uh in our charter, we put mission above shareholder value. So right now we're privately owned anyway, but should we ever IPO, that is a signal to the market and to any potential shareholders that we will make decisions that benefit our patients because that is the mission of the company, the mission of company is to enable commun individuals and communities to live joyful lives. And so there, if there's going to be some decision about, oh, we can raise the price a little bit and opt, nope, that's not going to happen because part of our mission is to make it accessible. Um, so yes, we are living in accordance with our mission. And um yeah, being a public benefits corporation is something we feel really good about. And then you had a second question about how people could find us, or was there one?

SPEAKER_00: 38:08

Yeah, I want to talk a little bit about that before you wrap up. Um, you know, especially like I kind of wanted to just mention because like even therapist burnout is a thing, you know, and especially now. I feel like since the pandemic, I mean, there's so many people who need the mental health help in general. And I see a lot of young people going into psychology and going, you know, wanting to become therapists, which I think is great. But burnout is a real thing in in the healing world as well. So talk to me a little bit about how you guys are helping the therapists as well, stay regulated and inspired while holding this space for people as well.

SPEAKER_01: 38:51

So we just started this program about two months ago. We've already had like 250 or 300 therapists sign up, which is really exciting. And I think as the as the training program comes out in November of this month, then we'll be able to advertise more broadly. Just come learn about this. How do we support the therapists? There is a module in the training that's all about the importance of self-care and remembering that when you take on the energy of such deep suffering and like really the soul struggles of your of your clients, like this is sacred work therapy. Yes, you absorb some of it, and you need to be able to be supported by your peers, by your loved ones. You need to engage in deliberate self-care, you need to do the body work to release what your tissues are holding. Um, and we do um we do encourage the therapist who join the program to try out the uh protocol themselves. We provide them three months of completely at cost treatment. We need like what it costs us to have them meet with the provider twice in that first month and ship out the medicine. Like, we're we're not making any money off the therapists who want to try. This for at least a couple of months because we do want them to know that's a resource for them as well. I am holding um weekly sessions of meet space for the therapists to get to know and support one another. We're going to start doing like breakout groups this week, which is something that they requested. Um, if the program succeeds to the extent that we're hoping we'll post the certificate program, we'd love to host workshops. We've had some amazing practitioners offer to workshops for us on how do you combine these doses of academy with EMDR, with IFS, with working with LGBTQ populations, with you know with um OCD, different modalities, different populations, different uh conditions. How do you work with all of that? How do we support one another through this? And yeah, I mean absolutely so important for therapists to be able to take care of their own systems when you're holding others, you know, the foundation needs to draw.

SPEAKER_00: 40:55

Yeah, that's so important. This is so exciting. Thank you so much for sharing all of this. What is one thing that you hope every listener to this would walk away with, whether they're a therapist or creative or just somebody, you know, looking to feel a little bit more whole or you know, work some things out. What do you hope that they walk away with?

SPEAKER_01: 41:15

So this is not self-interested, because I think uh, you know, if it was self-self-interested, I would just say it's the silver bullet, but it's not so bullet. That's what I want them to walk away with. It's a profound tool. It's a getting to know yourself from a new perspective. It's being able to gain um insight into your situation because of that mild associative piece, because of the quieting down of the narrative thinking. But you need to be doing this with intentionality. If you come and you're with us for six months and you take this thing every day and just watch Netflix, you are just not gonna get as much out of it as if you take it, you set an intention, you do a meditative practice, you journal, you take it to your therapy sessions if you can afford to be in therapy, and you do the work that you want. Take this period as a reset, take it as an intentional time in which you are hoping to get to know your true self, get to have a better relationship with your inner wisdom, with your self-compassion, with your ability to connect to self, other in the world in a better way. It's not a silver bullet, but it's an extremely helpful tool, a friend on the path. Wow.

SPEAKER_00: 42:23

Yeah, that's that's awesome. I love it. Love to end on that note. And then people can find you guys at joyous is joyous.com. Joyce.team. Joyous.

SPEAKER_01: 42:35

Joyce.com is someone's wedding site, which is cool. Okay, yeah. Love that. Yeah, joyous.team. And if you're a therapist who's interested in learning more, it's joyous.team slash therapy. Real easy.

SPEAKER_00: 42:46

Okay, awesome. I'll put the links for people in the show notes so it's easy for you guys to find and just click. Thanks so much for being here. This was really insightful. I think it, like I said, it's super exciting for me on a personal level just for various reasons. I've always I've wanted to know more about it, and I'd never seen it in this way. Like, this is an interesting protocol, right? Like, so it and I I think it's gonna be pretty life-changing for a lot of people. So thanks for being here.

SPEAKER_01: 43:11

Thank you, Renee. It's been a really enjoyable conversation. I really appreciate you. Thanks for having me on.

SPEAKER_00: 43:16

Okay, wow. I don't know about you guys, but I think that conversation was just really super interesting. I think what I love most about this kind of work is that it reminds us that healing doesn't have to mean losing ourselves. And it's not necessarily about escaping reality or, you know, blowing your consciousness wide open just to prove something happened, right? It's about softening the edges of your mind enough to actually hear what the heart and soul maybe have been trying to say all along, right? Because, you know, ayahuasca has been like the conversation for the last few years. And and we talked a little bit about, you know, uh psilocybin and things like that. And I have friends who who microdose regularly. I have friends who have gone and done ayahuasca journeys, and there is no judgment, judgment for me. You know, I think there's a lot of benefit to plant medicine. And for some people, that is a really amazing and powerful experience. For me, that feels incredibly terrifying. And maybe I won't feel like that down the road, but I have felt like that most of my life. And that's that anxiety brain, right? It's like, I can't release that control. But this feels a little more accessible. Um, I feel like there's something really powerful about that idea of mind loosening, right? Whether you ever experience ketamine therapy or not, that concept is something that we can all play with because so much growth and creativity comes from loosening our grip on how we think things should look and allowing space for something new to emerge. We cannot let anything in if we are so tightly constricted. And those of you who are those creative, powerful women who have a lot of control, but self-described, by the way. Like people come into my coaching all the time and say, I'm a control freak. Okay, well, if you know that about yourself, you also know that that isn't the space where things can drop in. Right. We have to loosen the grip for anything to even drop in to us because if we're constantly tight and constantly trying to control everything around us, that doesn't leave any room. That doesn't leave any space for ideas, for creativity, for progress and growth. And I think that that's kind of the sweet spot, right? Where science meets the sacred, where we can measure the data and still make room for mystery, where we honor the nervous system's need for safety and the soul's desire for expansion. So here are just a few takeaways I want you to sit with after this episode. Healing doesn't have to be dramatic or profound. You don't have to have some amazing journey to Costa Rica to do this. Sometimes it's as simple as just creating a safe space to feel what's really there. And neuroplasticity isn't just a buzzword. Your brain and your life are designed to evolve when you give them new gentle inputs. Another takeaway is that integration is everything. The insight is only the beginning, and how you live it is what really creates the lasting change. And lastly, presence is a portal. You don't have to check out to tune in. Staying conscious in your healing journey is a fabulous way to rewire whatever it is you're looking to rewire. But also, maybe this one too. You don't have to choose between logic and magic. You can live right at the intersection of both. And that's, I think, where the real transformation happens. If this conversation opened something up for you, go check her out and her team and her work at joyous.team. I'll put that link below. And as always, if you're craving your own version of that mind-loosening clarity, whether it's in your business uh for creativity or personal growth, that's exactly what we do inside of my coaching containers. And also inside of Elevate, which is my membership for female photographers. I don't uh I don't open that group up to a large number of people. Most of the women who are in that group have been coaching with me for years. And it's like my little inner circle that I'm very protective about. So we would need to have a little conversation beforehand to make sure it's the right fit for you. I'm also signing up one-on-one clients right now inside of my coaching for January. Again, I'm not sure when this episode is coming out, but you'll find that link below as well to apply for coaching. If you've been feeling the pull or the push that something is there, something is bigger, your soul's ready to evolve. That's kind of work that I do. Yeah, we talk about strategy, but we can't really talk about strategy until we get you sort of out of your own way. And that's the main reason why I became a coach. And I don't call myself like a mentor necessarily because I'm not just teaching you what worked for me. Yeah, we're gonna dig into some strategies, but it's gonna be customized to you and your business based on who you are, your level of self-awareness, and how deep you're willing to go as well. Because yeah, I have a degree in psychology. I feel like I bridged the gap a little bit between therapist and coach. I'm not a therapist, so I don't call myself a therapist. However, most of the work that I do inside of coaching containers, especially with one-on-one clients, goes very, very deep. I'm a human design two-for. I'm not designed to stay on the surface. I just can't do it. It's just not how I'm made. And so I tend to attract women and a few good men who really, really, really want to dig deep. That's the kind of stuff I love to do. Okay. So if that speaks to you, let's chat. I'm happy to assist you on that journey as well. As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this episode. Hit me up, let me know. You can find me at Renee Bowen on Instagram. You can always just email me as well. All the links you need are below. And thanks for tuning in to another episode of Tried and True with the Dash of Woo. I appreciate you. And I'll see you next time. Love you. Bye.