Episode 60 - Dr. Elizabeth Shuler: From Mainstream Medical to Psychedelics

Curious about psychedelics and healing? Join Dr. Elizabeth Shuler and I in this fascinating conversation about mental health, healing, and the questions to ask before jumping into psychedelics.

More about Dr. Elizabeth Shuler👇

Dr. Elizabeth Shuler, AKA Liz, is a psychedelic integration coach and yoga therapist who helps those who feel stuck in chronic stress & embodied trauma to reset, reconnect, and rediscover who they really are.

Liz believes that we all have darkness within us, and that it is not something to be feared but embraced.

Liz's credentials include a Master's of Science in Mental Health Counseling, Yoga Teacher certification, and Reiki Master certification. She has also completed a PsyD and Yoga Therapy certification.

She has lived abroad for over 9 years, from the US to Jordan, China, and now Belgium!

Connect with Elizabeth👇

Website:http://www.innerevolutioncoach.com

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/innerevolutioncoaching/

IG:https://www.instagram.com/innerevolutioncoaching/

Other Links:https://linktr.ee/innerevolutioncoach

If you want to break free from the 9 to 5 or spend more time with your family, then check out this FREE webinar that goes over exactly what I'm doing to create time and financial freedom.
https://www.breakingfreewithlindsay.com/learn

If you ever have any questions or want to reach out - I'd love to connect with you. Send me a DM on Facebook (it's the best way to reach me!)

Transcript

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Lindsay Ford: All right. I have Dr. Elizabeth Shuler with me here today. Aka Liz, we're going to go casual today, and she is a psychedelic integration specialist and Yoga therapist. Welcome to the podcast Liz.

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Liz Shuler: Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to have this conversation.

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Lindsay Ford: Me, too, because you started out in the traditional medical model in that space. And you've moved into more of like the holistic psychedelic space. So why don't you walk us through your experience in the traditional medical system, and and why you ventured out of it.

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Liz Shuler: Okay, yeah. So I want to be really clear, like, before we start. If somebody has had a really good experience with some of the things that I'm like, you know, saying I don't like, or that I'm shitting on, or whatever that's not to say that your experience isn't valid. I'm just going to be talking about the other side of it, for you know some clients and therapists that I've talked about, because I know that this can be kind of a divisive topic. And so I just want to let people know that

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Liz Shuler: if you've had a good experience, that's your experience, and you get to keep that. I'm not challenging any of that.

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Liz Shuler: So I started out. I wanted to be when I was like.

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Liz Shuler: you know, 7 or 8. I wanted to be a vet.

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Liz Shuler: because I was like, Oh, I really want to, you know, help heal things. And I had a lot of animals. And then at 1 point I had one of my animals die, and it was kind of a traumatic death, and I was like, Oh, my God! I can't do this like on a day to day basis. This is not something that I think I can handle. So I was like, Okay, but I still really want to heal. I want to be a healer that was always kind of something that was inside of me. And

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Liz Shuler: I was like, Do I want to be a doctor. No, I don't really want to like.

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Liz Shuler: you know. See people for 15 min, and then give them a prescription, or whatever it is that you have to do where like wasn't interesting to me. I want to sit with people, and I want to be with people. And so therapy and clinical mental health seem to be, you know, the way to go.

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Liz Shuler: So in high school I did. A bunch of like psychology courses

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Liz Shuler: went into university for psychology, and after my bachelor's, I ended up working in adolescent residential treatment, which is.

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Liz Shuler: I mean, there's a little bit, maybe overlap of like, you know, we call it troubled teen industry.

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Liz Shuler: This was like a licensed medical facility. It still was not great, and it still was not something that I felt was

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Liz Shuler: helpful for a lot of kids.

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Liz Shuler: The things that went on were not as therapeutic as

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Liz Shuler: you know, or healing as I thought they would be, and I was like, Oh, God, this is not great, so not impatient for me.

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Liz Shuler: Right? This is not where I want to be.

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Liz Shuler: and I ended up doing my master's in clinical mental health counseling during that time, and I remember one day

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Liz Shuler: we were watching a clip of

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Liz Shuler: Carl Rogers doing therapy, and this was he's

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Liz Shuler: kind of the father of what we call person centered therapy, just sitting with people and being with people and asking the right questions to help them come to their own answers.

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Liz Shuler: And I was still working in residential treatment. And I walked outside from my class, and I had to go to work.

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Liz Shuler: And I was like, Okay, but I gotta get

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Liz Shuler: gas on the way, and as I'm pumping gas I just start bawling. I'm like, I can't.

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Liz Shuler: I can't keep going from this thing that feels like it's healing to this thing that feels like it's harming.

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Liz Shuler: And that was my 1st like inkling of. Maybe this isn't for me.

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Liz Shuler: but once you've gone through your Master's degree, and you've gone through your internship, and you've gone through the 3,000 h of supervised training after you've you know, graduated. It feels like, well, what else do I do? Right. I've done all of these things.

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Liz Shuler: This is this is where you should go. This is what you should be doing.

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Liz Shuler: but it never really felt quite right for me. And again I'm like.

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Liz Shuler: even from like a really young age. I was like the witchy child right. I was out in the the grove of trees like

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Liz Shuler: making little altars, and, you know, doing little magic stuff.

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Liz Shuler: and all of that kind of got tamped down in university. In graduate school.

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Liz Shuler: There was even one professor that was like kind of into that kind of stuff. And she was like, you know, let's talk about some of the research on like parapsychology and some of these other things, and she got complaints from students. And you know she got a lot of pushback from other professors, and it was very clear that, like no, psychology is a science, we are going to be a hard science, and that's where we're going with this.

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Liz Shuler: So

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Liz Shuler: that's where kind of my journey into that went, even though I knew it wasn't a hundred percent kind of what I should be, or what I

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Liz Shuler: what I wanted to be doing, I guess.

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Lindsay Ford: Okay. So I I love that you brought up like almost this idea of sunk costs right? Like you.

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Liz Shuler: Okay.

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Lindsay Ford: Invested so much time and so much money and so much effort into this career.

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Lindsay Ford: And

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Lindsay Ford: you know, I think we have a lot of examples in our life where we feel like we're too far down the road to stop. So we just keep going, even though we know it's not right.

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Lindsay Ford: And so as you're going through this, you know you're not. This isn't quite right. You're you're feeling like you kind of have to go in this direction. How does it then start to unfold for you? Because, do you go into that career? Do you start to make some shifts? I love that, you said. You know these things that were.

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Lindsay Ford: you know, part of your life when you were a kid. This like witchy stuff, this

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Lindsay Ford: almost this pull to a

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Lindsay Ford: well, a different intuitive side, really like less logic, less reason, less hard science. But it felt right. And I think so much of us experience this like this tamping down of this, these natural things that are are within us, and.

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Lindsay Ford: So many of us in our adulthood, then start to uncover and go back to.

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Lindsay Ford: You know that that original part of us.

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Lindsay Ford: So what was your journey like from from there.

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Liz Shuler: Yeah. So I I did my internship with

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Liz Shuler: a clinician who was kind of a little more open to some of these things, but in a in a way that wasn't necessarily

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Liz Shuler: ethical, I guess. So

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Liz Shuler: I ended up doing yoga like my Yoga teacher certificate. I ended up working with her and doing like my reiki level one level 2 level 3.

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Liz Shuler: But it was always like this.

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Liz Shuler: either we're we're doing therapy, or we're doing these other things. There's no like

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Liz Shuler: coming together of all of these things, and it felt very disconnected. It. It felt like there was a way to have all of it come together. And then my partner got a job in Jordan, and I'm not in Jordan. And we're like, Okay, well.

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Liz Shuler: we're going to leave now. So I'm going to have to figure this out at some other time, because now I have to figure out living abroad and finding a different job abroad, and the 1st job that came my way was working in international schools.

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Liz Shuler: And so I had that, you know, adolescent residential treatment. Experience worked really well in schools. But then I was having the same sort of issues in schools where the focus was not as much on helping people be okay and helping people heal and more about. Well, let's get them through right?

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Liz Shuler: let's make it so that they can get back to class, because that's what matters.

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Liz Shuler: And education is important.

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Liz Shuler: and we can't have a good education. We can't learn if we're not okay, right? We're not okay, physically, if we're not okay, mentally.

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Liz Shuler: And I ended up being like, Oh, maybe maybe it's just this school, right? Maybe it's just this school. And so I applied for another school. I ended up in China

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Liz Shuler: in 2,019. So right before pandemic started, and we ended up there for the whole pandemic. So all all 3 years of the border closed down. So we were kind of stuck in China for a while.

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Liz Shuler: and I started my psyd.

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Liz Shuler: you know that sunk cost policy? Okay? Well, maybe if I just go deeper. Maybe I'll find the answer right. And I did.

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Liz Shuler: But the answer was, I was taking mind-body psychology, right psychology of chronic illness.

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Liz Shuler: All sorts of these interpersonal neurobiology classes that were like

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Liz Shuler: outside of the mainstream of psychology that were considered electives. And like

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Liz Shuler: people were like, maybe you don't want to take those. Maybe you want to take something a little bit more useful. And I was like, no, I'm interested in this. I'm going to take these classes.

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Liz Shuler: And that led me to psychedelics.

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Liz Shuler: And that's what I ended up doing. My dissertation on was psychedelic Assisted therapy.

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Liz Shuler: But as I did the research, it was a whole year of writing this paper. I was like

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Liz Shuler: this whole medical model, this idea of.

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Liz Shuler: you know, we're going to have this diagnosis, and then we're going to give you this drug, and then we're going to process that. And then you're going to be cured, or you know, you're going to have to continue doing treatment doesn't fit with how psychedelics work.

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Liz Shuler: Right? Psychedelics. Open your mind. They're mind opening drugs, but they also work in your body in different ways. You might see. You know your dead grandmother, you might see an alien. You might die like, have an ego. Death right? Have that near death experience.

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Liz Shuler: and none of that is like

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Liz Shuler: fits within this box of the medical model of

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Liz Shuler: psychology and of counseling. It's like, okay. But this is what calls to me this consciousness stuff this idea that there's an inner healer, that if we just learn to tap into that, if we just support each other in a way that we can

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Liz Shuler: find that and and open that for ourselves.

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Liz Shuler: That's what really heals. That's what we really need.

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Liz Shuler: So when my partner was like, Well, I'm gonna go back to school now.

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Liz Shuler: and we moved to Belgium. I was like, I'm right next to the Netherlands, right? We're in Europe.

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Liz Shuler: I'm just gonna go for this. I'm gonna go for it. And I'm I'm gonna

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Liz Shuler: try. And, you know, shift away from that medical model and and move into more of a holistic model a model that isn't, you know. Mind and body are separate. We're not dualists. We're working on everything. And that's also why I got my yoga therapy certification, because then I can use, you know both. I can help with

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Liz Shuler: physical symptoms as well as mental symptoms, which is.

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Liz Shuler: I mean, it just makes sense, I guess, intuitively.

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Liz Shuler: But in the science it's hard to deal with that, because you can't. You know portion things out for an experiment.

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Lindsay Ford: Yeah, there's so much there, there's so much there I want, like, my mind's just like, I want to ask this. I want to ask this but you're right like the size. The way we've been conditioned is like X plus y equals Z, or

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Lindsay Ford: you know, isolate one variable and only change the one variable for the experiment, and

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Lindsay Ford: and like right from what you said about you know, you not being able to really integrate like therapy and and reiki

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Lindsay Ford: that they they had to be separate, and you want it to be able to integrate them because they felt like they should be.

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Lindsay Ford: but they were still in these 2 columns, separate columns. And

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Lindsay Ford: one of the things that I love love love that you, you said was just this.

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Lindsay Ford: you know that psychedelics

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Lindsay Ford: it? No 2 people are probably gonna have the same outcome or the same experience. And

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Lindsay Ford: you know, I feel like so much of the growth we are going through as a humanity is coming back to ourselves. And what's that wisdom inside of us that that God essence inside of us?

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Lindsay Ford: And we all have this wisdom to heal and to grow and expand.

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Lindsay Ford: And you know, with the psychic, with with

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Lindsay Ford: what I'm hearing you say with respect to the psychedelics is.

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Lindsay Ford: you know, as a facilitator, or even as someone undergoing that sort of treatment.

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Lindsay Ford: You really have to be

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Lindsay Ford: willing to walk into the unknown, and sit with all of the discomfort that comes up with not having these, like exact solutions, present themselves.

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Lindsay Ford: So am I. Am I capturing it like this is this is what I'm hearing. Okay.

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Liz Shuler: Yeah, yeah, it's a lot that it's. It's also just that, like, science is great for a lot of things.

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Liz Shuler: Science is not great for the human mind, right

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Liz Shuler: and consciousness, and these things that we don't have the tools or the knowledge, or whatever to be able to test. Yet right? I think the the thing that does it for me is that science has told us

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Liz Shuler: that in clinical therapy the best outcomes positive outcomes, 50 to 90% of them are from the quality of the relationship between the therapist and the client.

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Liz Shuler: But that's not what we focus on. Right when we're looking at. We focus on the treatment plan. Okay, what is your goal? What are your symptoms? What is it that you're looking to do and like these things are important. But what's the most important is this relationship and this connection and this resonance that we have

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Liz Shuler: with each other, and that is healing because it leads you to that inner healing wisdom. And so science has a place. But we've gotten to a point where it's like, if it's not scientific, then it has no worth. If we can't measure it, then it doesn't exist.

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Liz Shuler: That's not necessarily true.

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Lindsay Ford: Right. And I think what you just said about that

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Lindsay Ford: that connection piece being the critical ingredient, I think.

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Lindsay Ford: you know, if if you look at what is happening in our society, in our culture, like, I'll say, Western culture. It's really one of disconnection where we're not. We're having these short little conversations through text.

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Lindsay Ford: or we're not even comfortable striking up a conversation with a stranger in an elevator.

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Lindsay Ford: Especially if we're in big cities.

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Lindsay Ford: And there's this, this trend towards disconnection. And yet we see all these mental health issues rising, depression, anxiety, all of the things. And you know, even when I flip back to my parenting coaching days when I was doing that. Like the behavior issues in our our toddlers and kids.

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Lindsay Ford: it all stems from this disconnected feeling. This like, we're too busy to even see our kids and be with our kids. And they're reacting to it. And the solution was always

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Lindsay Ford: connection. And I know anytime I have been struggling with.

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Lindsay Ford: I don't know if I've said, say, I've struggled with mental health issues. But you know, like the connection piece with even just one other person, one other person seeing you and witnessing you, and just allowing you to express yourself as you need to be expressed in that moment

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Lindsay Ford: like that. That is massive.

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Lindsay Ford: and I feel like that is so underrated because we're so busy. We're just caught up in the do do hustle, hustle, hustle. It's not that important or like, hey, how are you? Is like sufficient. But so many people I find, and I don't know if this is true, for men and women. I talk more to women than I do men, but like so much of us.

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Lindsay Ford: so many women are craving meaningful connection.

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Lindsay Ford: It doesn't even have to be with their friends. It's just like someone. See me, someone witness me. And and then there's the beauty in witnessing the other person and holding space for that other person.

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Lindsay Ford: So I think that's just beautiful. How did you?

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Lindsay Ford: How did you get into psychedelics like? Is that something you had personal experience with before you started your dissertation, or like what was what was the piece that led you into that.

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Liz Shuler: Yeah.

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Lindsay Ford: Space.

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Liz Shuler: Really quick. I also want to just say it's really difficult to to be there and be witness to somebody's pain when you're not being vulnerable and and okay with your own stuff that comes up right? Empathy is you feeling the same stuff that they're feeling. And so I think that's a skill that's been lost. And I think that's I mean.

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Liz Shuler: that's why we we pay clinicians now for that time and that effort and that skill that they've developed. Not that we pay them well, which is a whole nother issue of why I left. But but to answer your question, my dad is a Hippie, right?

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Liz Shuler: He did all the drugs, and he was always very open with me, like, Okay, if you have any questions, let me know, like, here's what it feels like to do cocaine. Here's what it feels like to do. Lst, here's what if like, and he would tell me these stories, and so I always knew, because he was always like, you know, there are these drugs that like

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Liz Shuler: they get you high, and they do these physical things to you.

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Liz Shuler: But they're not like. I don't know why people he was always like. I don't know why people use them more than once, because they don't do anything but like Lsd.

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Liz Shuler: Made my life better. Right? I I noticed something like it was crazy. There was some like TV melting stuff. But I also ended up

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Liz Shuler: learning something about the universe and about myself that I didn't know before, right? So I always knew that this was out there, and this was possible, but growing up

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Liz Shuler: really poor in a state that's very.

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Liz Shuler: very into the drug war and prohibition.

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Liz Shuler: It was like, if I'm going to go this route of like going into psychology. I can't have you know. I can't risk it. Like if I if I do that stuff.

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Liz Shuler: I'm not going to be able to get the license and do the things that I need to do.

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Liz Shuler: Yeah, so has I part of my like

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Liz Shuler: letting go and shedding of some of this is just letting go of that need to like follow the rules so that

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Liz Shuler: I am somehow

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Liz Shuler: safer, right cause cause I'm I'm not like I it it doesn't help me, and it doesn't help anybody else to follow rules that aren't ethical to follow laws that hurt other people. And and that's been a huge eye opening thing for me that like.

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Liz Shuler: okay, sometimes you're gonna have to step beyond your comfort zone, beyond the things that you know are safe for you to be able to do things that are helpful and that are healing, and that help other people.

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Lindsay Ford: So can you just repeat that last part? You just have to step beyond your comfort zone and do what was the safety piece? There.

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Liz Shuler: Yeah, it might not be safe for me.

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Lindsay Ford: Be safe!

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Liz Shuler: Right, and I might have consequences for that. But for me

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Liz Shuler: it's more important for me to be able to help other people and to be able to

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Liz Shuler: open up this world for people and be there for them, than to live in fear that I might, you know, be arrested, or get a fine, or whatever it is.

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Lindsay Ford: Yeah, it's really keeping that bigger picture in mind. And.

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Liz Shuler: It comes down to your willingness to assess, risk, and take risk? And is the is the benefits worth.

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Lindsay Ford: Worth that risk.

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Lindsay Ford: I would love to. I would love for you to explain, you know, if someone has never used psychedelics before and grew up being told. Drugs are bad. Drugs are bad, drugs are bad. And I know this whole space is opening up now where it's like.

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Lindsay Ford: you know they're actually like, like your dad experienced. There's some benefits to this, and like your dissertation, I'm sure showed there's benefits.

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Lindsay Ford: How help? Help me understand like

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Lindsay Ford: how to transition out of that, drugs are bad into this is potentially really helpful and potentially life changing.

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Liz Shuler: Yeah, I, I try and tell people that like, we take drugs all the time.

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Liz Shuler: tylenol is a drug right, ibuprofen is a drug Zyrtec, you know, any sort of antihistamine is a drug.

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Liz Shuler: So we're taking drugs all the time. They're just these

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Liz Shuler: other substances that have been stigmatized for whatever reason. And in the Us. You know.

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Liz Shuler: it was racism quite a bit, and xenophobia that started this drug war for specific drugs.

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Liz Shuler: and that has been sort of imported, as America does out to the rest of the world.

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Liz Shuler: So why are these drugs? Not okay. But the drug that you get from your doctor is okay, right? And we need to. Instead of looking at.

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Liz Shuler: It's just a random, you know, classification. What harms do these drugs do to people? And if you look at that chart, there actually is a chart from the lancet

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Liz Shuler: that shows that alcohol has the most harm to self and others. But it's legal

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Liz Shuler: right, and lots of people drink alcohol.

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Liz Shuler: whereas Lsd. Mdma mushrooms way down at the bottom of that chart. So when you're talking about risk benefit the risks of most psychedelics are really really low, like

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Liz Shuler: there is no documented case that I am aware of of somebody dying from psilocybin mushrooms.

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Liz Shuler: Right? But alcohol. That's not true, Tylenol. That's not true.

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Liz Shuler: Right?

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Liz Shuler: So really, it's it's good to educate yourself and to find those stats, and to look at those things a little bit more holistically. But also.

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Liz Shuler: you know, you take Tylenol because it helps. You feel better. Right?

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Liz Shuler: These psychedelic drugs.

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Liz Shuler: drugs, right? Or plants depending on what you're using. Some are synthetic, and some are are natural plants.

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Liz Shuler: They have very, very powerful healing properties that

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Liz Shuler: human beings have known about for millennia. Right? And it's just in the last few 100 years that

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Liz Shuler: we've been told. No, that's not true. No, they don't have any benefit to society.

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Liz Shuler: and I think that's a travesty, because it's not only cut off a lot of ancient knowledge and wisdom and lineages

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Liz Shuler: that were passed down through indigenous people, but it's also made it. So that we have these other

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Liz Shuler: treatments and drugs and things that

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Liz Shuler: can be helpful for some people, and can be really, really not helpful for other people.

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Liz Shuler: And when we have this alternative, that is more helpful, I think, for more people. That's not to say that it's like a magic cure or anything like that.

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Liz Shuler: But it's less harmful than a lot of things like antidepressants and antipsychotics. There's a lot less risk, and there's a lot more even scientific proof of benefit.

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Liz Shuler: So I I know that in a lot of places it's illegal, and that's, you know, a little bit of a risk.

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Liz Shuler: And I think for somebody who's really, really suffering. Sometimes that risk is well well worth it.

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Lindsay Ford: I love. I appreciate that you did that direct comparison to that. Those like medications that we're used to, because, yeah, so many of us. Don't think twice about even giving our child Tylenol. Yet there's deadly consequences potentially to giving your child Tylenol.

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Lindsay Ford: And so yeah, I appreciate that you know how you frame that there with just like there's more benefit, less risk, less risk. And

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Lindsay Ford: yeah, I just, I feel like.

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Lindsay Ford: from everything I understand about it. I have not had personal experience with any psychedelics, but I have friends who have gone through it, and their lives have

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Lindsay Ford: shifted tremendously after.

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Lindsay Ford: And for some. It's been like they've just gone and destroyed their. It's like burned it all down. So I know there's some

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Lindsay Ford: what is. I guess what what the the I guess counter to doing psychedelics is that it might be too much too intense in terms of like that, that mental emotional shift that that happens. And

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Lindsay Ford: what would you? What would you say to that piece of it?

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Liz Shuler: Yeah, I mean, psychedelics are what we call nonspecific amplifiers. Right? So whatever is in your environment, whatever is in your your set, so your mindset. Whatever's going on within you and and around you. When you take that drug, it's going to amplify right? So

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Liz Shuler: we do a lot of work in the psychedelic

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Liz Shuler: industry. I guess you could call it working on trying to get people to do more preparation. Now, if you're going to use this recreationally right?

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Liz Shuler: Then there's not as much that needs to be done because you're probably just gonna go

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Liz Shuler: to, you know, like a rave, or whatever it is that you're doing. You're going to be in a good mood. You're going to take the drug, and you're going to be in a better mood. Right? Might have a fun time, and you might get some sort of therapeutic benefit from that.

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Liz Shuler: just because sometimes that happens it's sort of the nature of the drug. But you don't have to right. It isn't always. But if you are looking for healing right, if your intention is okay, I've got this stuff inside of me that I really want to work on, and it's dark.

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Liz Shuler: and it's scary.

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Liz Shuler: You can't do that without a lot of preparation and getting yourself into the right space for that for it to be

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Liz Shuler: a safe place for you to go. Now.

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Liz Shuler: The great thing about psychedelics is, if you do the preparation.

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Liz Shuler: it's a lot safer. It feels a lot safer to go into those things while you are under the influence of psychedelics than it would even

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Liz Shuler: in like something like trauma therapy, or you know anything like that

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Liz Shuler: in a lot of trauma therapy. We we have this thing called

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Liz Shuler: a window of tolerance. If you go outside of that window of tolerance. If it's too much, it can re-traumatize.

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Liz Shuler: But when you're in something like a psychedelic, it's

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Liz Shuler: a lot of people go outside of that window of tolerance and go into like I said those things like ego death, and that all of that stuff that's very, very scary. But if you've done the work to prepare beforehand. You know that that could happen. You know that that's your intention that you're going into it. You've worked with your practitioner, your guide to figure out. Okay, if that happens, what are we going to do? What's what's the plan? What are the things that you're going to say to me, or that I'm going to say to myself to make sure that I'm getting through that. And it feels safe to do that.

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Liz Shuler: And mostly people come out feeling like

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Liz Shuler: that was really scary, and that was horrible.

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Liz Shuler: and that was what I needed to do.

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Lindsay Ford: Yeah, I I really appreciate that. You said like the amplifier. So it's not throwing stuff at you that's not already in you.

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Lindsay Ford: So you mentioned preparation a couple of times like

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Lindsay Ford: it be, it seems like, you know, just from the outside, looking in, not knowing anything about how this works. It seems like there's no way to prepare, because it's just like, potentially some chaotic like. There's no like

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Lindsay Ford: for sure guarantee that you're gonna experience one thing so like, how does one prepare for the unknown.

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Liz Shuler: So you don't prepare for the unknown. You prepare for the knowns right? So that means that we make sure that whatever substance it is that you are working with that. The person that you're working with also understands that substance and knows what the contraindications are and what that's going to be like, you know, they've they've gone through it themselves, or they've helped other people go through it. So they have kind of an idea of what that looks like.

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Liz Shuler: They know that you know that substance

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Liz Shuler: doesn't have any contraindications for you, right? And then it's all about controlling the set and the setting which is your mindset going in and the environment around you. So what I always tell people is you want to be in the place that you feel safest with the person that you feel safest with, and in a place like with, you know, stuffed animals or pictures, or whatever, and the music everything there is safe.

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Liz Shuler: because once you start going into those scary things, when you if you open your eyes, there is nothing scary or unsafe around you. Right? So a lot of people

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Liz Shuler: have visuals like I talked about with my dad, you know, he saw the TV melting.

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Liz Shuler: and that's a little bit disconcerting. But there's nothing. Once you open your eyes. There isn't a lot of that inner work. As soon as you close your eyes you go in.

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Liz Shuler: so you always have a little bit of that control as well that you can kind of

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Liz Shuler: come out of the deeper stuff if you need to.

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Liz Shuler: And again, if everything around you is safe. Then, you know, you're in a safe place.

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Liz Shuler: You know that you've been taught, you know, like breath work or some meditation techniques, or even like doing some yoga when things get really intense, right? Doing some movement. You've got a whole plan laid out for the things that could happen

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Liz Shuler: for and not like. Okay. Well, if this specific thing happens, you do this. But like, if you get scared.

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Liz Shuler: you know these are your things that you can do. These are your resources and nothing around you is scary. So you're fine.

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Liz Shuler: That is how we amplify that feeling of safety. Right? So even when things are scary, you are safe.

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Lindsay Ford: Right? I feel like there's like exactly what you described is

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Lindsay Ford: sort of the the recipe that we can use in any situation in life where we know we're going into like a big change, something uncomfortable and just.

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Liz Shuler: So.

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Lindsay Ford: I love what you said. You're not preparing for the unknown. You're preparing for the known and what you can control, and and really consciously thinking through. Okay, if I'm feeling fear, these are my tools.

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Lindsay Ford: And I know so many people get

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Lindsay Ford: not in the psychedelic space, but just in general in life. They get overwhelmed when they're faced with these big big changes, and sometimes they're overwhelmed with small changes. And because there's that out of control feeling.

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Lindsay Ford: And you know this is something that I have worked through so much in the last few years of like, how to feel safe and steady in the midst of a lot of uncertainty.

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Liz Shuler: My whole life is living this way. Now, in this state of uncertainty and.

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Lindsay Ford: Before I used to like the smallest change to my schedule used to send me into overwhelm. So I feel like what you're really describing here is like a recipe for

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Lindsay Ford: walking into any unknown situation which pretty much happens on a daily basis can happen.

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Liz Shuler: Yeah. And the cool thing about it is okay. So you've done this preparation. And then you go into this. If you're doing a Macro dose. Right? You go into this thing where there's a lot of things that are out of your control, and you come out on the other side. And you're okay.

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Liz Shuler: right? And more than okay. A lot of people come out and they're like, Oh, my God! That was the hardest thing I've ever done. And I feel so amazing, right?

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Liz Shuler: And then, you know, oh, okay. So those things that I was afraid of not being able to control I don't have to control those to be okay.

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Liz Shuler: So it gives you. It's almost like

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Liz Shuler: I don't. This is just a metaphor, but it's almost like jumping into the deep end where you don't know how to swim and like

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Liz Shuler: forcing yourself to do it, but having, you know, like a life jacket there, or you know something, so that if something goes wrong you still have that way to make sure you don't drown right. That's kind of what this is like. It's pushing you into that place that's showing you. No, actually, you're okay, like you don't have to control of this stuff. None of this stuff is is actually going to hurt you. There's some stuff that you might want to change. And there's some stuff that might need, you know, tweaking. And whatever you're okay.

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Lindsay Ford: I love that. You just shared that because you're right like like you, you do the hard thing you do, the thing that was scaring you.

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Liz Shuler: Yeah.

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Lindsay Ford: Through, and you get through it. And you're like

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Lindsay Ford: I'm still alive, and maybe even better for it, or maybe able to reassess. But like I'm still alive.

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Lindsay Ford: I survived that. It wasn't as bad usually as I thought it was, and

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Lindsay Ford: I think the more we can get outside of our comfort, zone and experience the that it is okay that we that we can face our fears

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Lindsay Ford: and feel. Really, you know, sometimes it is exhilarating. It's funny that you said jump off the deep end, because right before I was thinking about jumping off a bridge this summer, and the fear that came up with it.

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Lindsay Ford: and just feeling like, after you jump

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Lindsay Ford: and take the dive and go like on the other side. You're so proud of yourself, and you're just like I just did something really scary, and it was fun. And

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Lindsay Ford: I'm gonna do it again.

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Liz Shuler: Yeah, yeah, I think a lot of people come out

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Liz Shuler: like again. I think a lot of people come out with that feeling of like. Maybe that was the most horrible experience of their life. But it's also the most freeing experience of their life.

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Lindsay Ford: Yeah. Because then, if you can get through something horrible.

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Lindsay Ford: the other stuff might just seem like a breeze, or you know, you can get through some of the easier stuff.

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Lindsay Ford: Oh, my goodness, okay. So why don't you take us back to? You know you're in Belgium? You're you said. Oh, the Netherlands is next door.

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Liz Shuler: Yeah, what's your experience from there?

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Liz Shuler: Yeah. So it's been interesting. So

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Liz Shuler: there are a lot of it's I'm licensed in Wyoming

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Liz Shuler: in the United States, and there are a lot of legal and financial things that go along with

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Liz Shuler: getting rid of your license in one way or another. So I'm still sort of in the process of that and moving through that.

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Liz Shuler: But here I have just been focusing on, you know, working with other people in the industry, making sure that I have my own relationship with.

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Liz Shuler: I mostly work with psilocybin and cannabis, so making sure that I'm working with that and doing that for myself, so that I understand when somebody goes through it, what that's like, and can give a little bit of personal experience, but also

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Liz Shuler: to do my own inner work and be able to be vulnerable and to be really with people when this is happening and not have stuff come up that might that I haven't like dealt with, that's, gonna you know.

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Liz Shuler: Blur onto them and make things bad for them, you know. Yeah,

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Liz Shuler: and just doing a lot of of yoga and figuring all of that out. It's it's a difficult prospect when you're, you know, an immigrant in a country where you don't necessarily speak the language fluently. So it's a lot of online work at the moment. But eventually that will that will end. And

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Liz Shuler: yeah, so I'm doing a lot of

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Liz Shuler: like work with other therapists kind of trying to help them understand psychedelics a little bit. But also

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Liz Shuler: there are a lot of other therapists. Other clinicians who

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Liz Shuler: are like man. I don't know that, you know, this is the model that I want to work in anymore. And I'm like, yes, let's connect. Let's talk about it. Let's be open about it. And because there's a huge, huge stigma about doing something that isn't evidence based right? Or stepping outside of your licensure

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Liz Shuler: outside of the that legal framework

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Liz Shuler: in in the clinical space, and that it can be lonely.

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Lindsay Ford: Yeah, I imagine, as as a therapist in that space.

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Lindsay Ford: you know, you're risking your credentials. You're risking sort of the backing of your your licensing, and

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Lindsay Ford: I could see where that would be.

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Lindsay Ford: even if you know it's the next right step that there's a just like an added level of fear to it.

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Lindsay Ford: I'm curious to know, like

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Lindsay Ford: if I was someone looking for

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Lindsay Ford: to work with a therapist with psychedelics.

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Lindsay Ford: what should I look for in a good either therapist or a facilitator, because I have heard that.

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Lindsay Ford: you know, you want to make sure you're choosing someone who's able to hold that space. Who's able to really have this safe container for you. So how do you go about figuring that out.

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Liz Shuler: The best way, I mean, for for me. I always meet somebody, at least on Zoom before I work with them, ever, because if, for whatever reason, like.

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Liz Shuler: we don't jive right. If there's there's a vibe, and they're like, you know, I don't know. I wanna make sure that I have that before we even talk about like

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Liz Shuler: psychedelics. Right? I'm going to talk with them about what's going on in their life. We're gonna get to know each other. Because if you don't have that connection, it doesn't matter the person's credentials. It doesn't matter, you know, whether they've

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Liz Shuler: been with the medicine themselves, or whatever. If that connection isn't there not none of that matters. You're not probably not going to get as much out of it as you want to, or even anything out of it.

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Liz Shuler: So I think that meeting people, you know, having a conversation with them that isn't necessarily a hundred percent about your problems and psychedelics is a a good idea, just kind of having a chat. And then also, I think

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Liz Shuler: there's a huge, this huge idea that

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Liz Shuler: you have to have had a psychedelic experience to know what it's like to work with psychedelics.

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Liz Shuler: I don't necessarily agree with that because I did a lot of yoga and a lot of meditation for a really long time before I ever tried, like Psilocybin or Lsd.

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Liz Shuler: and there are a lot of similarities between a really like consciousness altering meditation, Yoga session

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Liz Shuler: and Psilocybin right? Or Lsd, there are things that are different, certainly, but

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Liz Shuler: I think the biggest thing to know is that somebody understands altered consciousness

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Liz Shuler: right in some way, shape or form.

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Liz Shuler: Because if you don't know what it's like

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Liz Shuler: to have that experience of not yeah, I

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Liz Shuler: not being yourself right. You're not this body. You're not this person. You are out in the universe and kind of a part of everything. If you haven't had that experience.

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Liz Shuler: it's gonna be really difficult to help somebody process afterwards what that experience was.

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Liz Shuler: And you're gonna be like. Oh, my God.

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Liz Shuler: what do you mean? You you saw an entity. What kind of entity, you know, and it's going to kind of get a little bit fearful for you. So it's important to have experience with altered consciousness. And then, you know, if you're working with a therapist.

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Liz Shuler: somebody who has a license.

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Liz Shuler: I think the most important thing is that you talk with them about their comfort level with.

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Liz Shuler: you know, utilizing psychedelics. Most therapists at this point who are advertising that they're working with psychedelics, are going to have a lot of training probably have done psychedelics themselves at this point, so I wouldn't be too worried about that. But there are a lot of underground. We call it underground practitioners, people who don't like advertise because it's against the law, and it's illegal that have been doing this for, you know, 30 40 years, and who are really really great at it.

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Liz Shuler: So.

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Lindsay Ford: Okay, and I'm curious. You said you work primarily with psilocybin and cannabis we have.

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Lindsay Ford: So you know, in choosing your I'll say drug of choice.

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Lindsay Ford: What would one? What? What's like? Psilocybin? Good for? What is cannabis good for like.

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Lindsay Ford: if you were helping someone choose? What? How how do you go about this.

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Liz Shuler: Yeah, so what we've learned recently. And again, this is where science comes in, which is great is that cannabis has a few different mechanisms that end up working together to be sort of like what psilocybin and Lsd. Do. So psilocybin, Lsd. Are what we call tryptamines. They work on a serotonin receptor in our brain.

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Liz Shuler: Cannabis wasn't thought to work on that same receptor until recently, and it doesn't do it in the exact same way.

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Liz Shuler: And so when you do a psychedelic cannabis session.

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Liz Shuler: it's a lot different because you have a lot more control. So for somebody who is really really worried about feeling out of control.

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Liz Shuler: Cannabis might be sort of that doorway in before you go into something like psilocybin, like Lsd. Or Mdma.

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Liz Shuler: Most of the time, however, I think that we have kind of

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Liz Shuler: decided that. Well, psilocybin is good for this, and Lsd is good for this.

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Liz Shuler: because that's those are the studies that have been done right, and I think

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Liz Shuler: it's more about. Are you comfortable taking a synthetic?

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Liz Shuler: Or would you rather do something natural? Right? Are you

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Liz Shuler: feeling like something that's illegal is not something that you want to do.

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Liz Shuler: Cannabis is legal in more places. So maybe we can try that right? So there are a lot of other things to think about

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Liz Shuler: with psychedelics than just the mechanism of action, because, again, like with Lsd Dmt psilocybin, they all have similar mechanisms of action, and they're going to do similar things. So it's not a huge.

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Liz Shuler: It's not a huge difference in where you're going. With that, except for some of these other things I talked about.

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Lindsay Ford: Right, and then terms of the integration after, or like the follow up after how long would

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Lindsay Ford: maybe this is not the right question, but like, How long would you experience the effects? Not necessarily from like the quote, unquote high perspective, but, like.

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Liz Shuler: I'm good.

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Lindsay Ford: You know, you say it's like it changes your perspective.

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Lindsay Ford: or you're shown different things like.

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Liz Shuler: In terms of.

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Lindsay Ford: The follow up that's needed. You know how much follow up is needed, because I've heard that like that integration like, Make sure you have support after this is what I have heard from numerous sources as well. So what is

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Lindsay Ford: yeah, what's your perspective on on that piece of it?

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Liz Shuler: Yeah. So I for me, that preparation piece is part of the integration. Because if you haven't done the preparation, you're not going to be able to integrate. Well, because, you know, you weren't in the right space to get what you needed out of it. So there's that 1st that always has to happen. And then afterward it's

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Liz Shuler: different for everyone.

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Liz Shuler: and depending on what it is that you're looking to get out of the experience right? I think for a lot of people.

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Liz Shuler: They think that they can just do. You know, a couple of integration sessions and be fine. But then they realize.

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Liz Shuler: oh, actually, this opened up a lot of stuff for me that I'm gonna have to. You know, it can be years for some people like they've had one experience. And they're working with.

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Liz Shuler: you know, either the same practitioner or different practitioners, you know, trying to find

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Liz Shuler: a way to integrate that in a way that feels authentic to them, for you know, a year, maybe 2 years.

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Liz Shuler: We know for a fact that, or at least

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Liz Shuler: 2 weeks to 4 weeks. Your brain is plastic, more plastic. So

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Liz Shuler: when when you're an adolescent right, you can learn things a lot easier if you can. After you. You know your prefrontal cortex matures. Psychedelics. Give that back to you right.

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Lindsay Ford: Cool.

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Liz Shuler: Yeah. So you've got that 2 to 4 weeks, and that is a good time to start

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Liz Shuler: developing new habits. Right?

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Liz Shuler: So that's a good sort of chunk of time that you can say you have to have. At least, you know, I would say

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Liz Shuler: I would say 6 weeks right of

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Liz Shuler: in integration support is probably the minimum that I would say. But it can go much, much longer. And it like I said, it's not just, you know. You're gonna sit down with your guide or your integration specialist. You might be like, okay. So now I need to, you know, do some cupping, or I need to go to somebody who can, you know, do more massage kind of stuff. That's what I'm really being drawn to. But that's what your integration specialist gonna work with you on. Okay, here, here are the things that you have come up with. This is

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Liz Shuler: your intention. These are the meetings you're making out of that. Now, what are we gonna do? And we're not. We're not no offense. But we're not gonna pick up and move to Bali next week. Right? We're not. Gonna we're not gonna do that.

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Liz Shuler: We're gonna make small changes, right? So because when we're in that really expansive, like, I am the universe, you know

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Liz Shuler: space. We forget that we're also in this physical body in this physical reality right now. And we still have to deal with those things. After all, of this afterglow goes away. So we don't want to make any like huge big decisions until you know, I would say good 6 months afterwards to make sure that we're thinking things through right?

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Liz Shuler: And I think that's where a lot of people go wrong, right? They come out of it, and they're like, I am completely changing my life, and then they do it. And they hadn't gone through all of the mundane details that we have to as individuals and

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Liz Shuler: things go very wrong.

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Lindsay Ford: Yeah. And I imagine it would be really hard to wait if you have had this like, yeah, you've you've been shown this like whatever life changing thing

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Lindsay Ford: can't to not take action on it.

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Lindsay Ford: I imagine that would be the hardest piece for me.

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Lindsay Ford: yeah, but I love. I love that you said that like that brain elasticity piece, because that's just like that's kind of mind blowing to me that like.

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Liz Shuler: That's see.

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Lindsay Ford: Can actually

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Lindsay Ford: not get back to that adolescent states. But like you're changing your brain chemistry and how it works and functions. And that's super super cool, and I feel like I have a million other questions on, like the implications for like health and lifestyle, and all of this stuff like that sounds really, really exciting, but I feel like that's a whole other pod.

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Liz Shuler: Yeah, where are you?

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Lindsay Ford: Where? Where can people find you if they want to connect with you and work with you?

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Liz Shuler: Yeah, I am on Linkedin. Under, was the Schuler Society. I think my handle is inner evolution coaching

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Liz Shuler: I'm also there on Instagram.

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Liz Shuler: I'm open to emails like, I email people back pretty easily. So we'll put my email down there. And anybody can reach out to me.

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Lindsay Ford: Amazing, and I'll have all those links in the show notes. Thank you so much for this conversation like.

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Liz Shuler: Thank you.

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Lindsay Ford: Loved it.

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Liz Shuler: Yes, I I really appreciate it, because, you know, there's only so much I can tell my partner about these things before he's like, okay, yeah. And the neuroplasticity. So I really enjoy being able to talk to somebody else about it and geek out.

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Lindsay Ford: Yeah, well, me, too, and you're such a lovely, lovely being to talk to. So thank you so much for being here.