Transformative Journeys with Psychedelic Integration Coach Greg Lawrence - 1

Welcome to another episode of the Transforming Lives panel podcast, hosted by Sharmin Prince and Mitzy Dadoun. In this enlightening episode, we delve into the world of psychedelic integration with our special guest, Greg Lawrence. Greg is a Certified Psychedelic Integration and Life Coach, NLP Master Practitioner, and HNLP Master Coach. He specializes in guiding individuals through transformative experiences, helping them integrate insights and create lasting change. Join us as Greg demystifies the concept of psychedelic integration, shares his personal journey, and discusses how psychedelics can be a tool for personal and spiritual growth. Whether you're curious about the potential of psychedelics or seeking ways to unlock personal freedom and transformation, this episode offers valuable insights and practical advice. Tune in for an engaging conversation that explores the intersection of psychedelics, mindfulness, and self-improvement.

Speaker 2
Welcome to another episode of the Transforming Lives panel podcast. I'm one of your hosts, Sharmin Prince.

Speaker 3
And I'm your other host, Mitzy Dadoun.

Speaker 2
And before we continue, just join us in a deep breathing exercise so that we can be centered and grounded together for the next 45 minutes by taking deep breath in and out. Deep breath in and out. Take a deep breath in. And as you exhale, let go of everything that didn't serve you today.

Another deep breath in and out. and breathe normally. Thank you for joining us in that brief breathing exercise. Today, our guest is Greg Lawrence, who is a Certified Psychedelic Integration and Life Coach, NLP Master Practitioner, and HNLP Master Coach.

He guides individuals through transformative experiences, helping them integrate insights and create lasting change. Greg, welcome. Is there anything you would like to add to your bio?

Speaker 1
No, I think you covered it pretty well. Thank

Speaker 2
you. So I am so excited about this episode. And my first question for listeners who don't know what psychedelic integration is, can you define that for us?

Speaker 1
Yes. The role of a psychedelic integration coach, I'll first say, because people often mistake me for a facilitator, someone who provides substances or guides ceremonies or something of that nature. A psychedelic integration coach will work with a person before and or after they have a psychedelic experience. And these are in cases where people are coming to psychedelics for personal or spiritual growth or healing of some kind.

It doesn't necessarily have to be a serious experience. I'm all for someone being able to use psychedelics just to have a good time if that's what they want. But if they're looking to get something from the experience and make it a part of their lives, it's my job to help them prepare, first of all, and afterwards to take the lessons they may have learned from that experience, and there are always lessons in the psychedelic experience, sometimes they're not so obvious, and help them make those real and integrate them into their lives.

And often that's through a process of what I will call realization. That's taking something from being a fact that I know in my head or a concept or something that I've read or want, and being able to actually know it, have a felt sense of it at a cellular level in the body, which is a very important component of this. Psychedelic integration is basically the process of taking any insights you may have gained during a psychedelic experience and then doing something with those, whether that be something mental, something physical, or something in your surroundings.

Speaker 2
Okay, so the pre is preparation and the post is the actual integration.

Speaker 1
Yes, that's correct.

Speaker 3
So can you give us an idea, because I'm not familiar with psychedelics at all, and you said there's always some kind of lessons and integrations that come through. So could you maybe give us an example of you know, maybe walk us through what it was like for a client who went through the sort of the pre, then did the psychedelics and the post just to kind of give us an insight into what the journey might look like or experience for those of us who know literally nothing about this.

Speaker 1
Well, there's no way, I'll say this first, once you've had a psychedelic experience, there's a very strange phenomenon that happens. And that is that although everyone's experience can be completely different, you now understand what that person's experience was like. So there is almost nothing that you can compare it to. Like people often ask me, is it like smoking weed or getting drunk?

And it really doesn't compare to any other experience. Other than things like very deep meditation or breath work can be very similar. Cannabis work can be very similar sometimes. But what psychedelics tend to do many times is to take something that's been on my mind, in the back of my mind, that I've been sort of pushing back there and not paying attention to, and dumping it on the table.

So that people might suddenly realize, wow, I didn't really realize that I liked that, didn't like it, wanted that, didn't want it, needed that, didn't need it as much as I now realize. And I'd like to do something about that. People will often see that relationship dynamics in their environment might have to change, be those personal, interpersonal, intimate relationships, they may need to set boundaries, they may need to change things in their lives. They may come to the realization that something that they thought was wrong outside of themselves is actually more the reaction inside of themselves.

There are a lot of things that people can come to an understanding of during a psychedelic experience. However, We have so much programming in us throughout our lives, our brain automates things, and we have triggers and we have physical responses that really like us to do things the way that they've done before. It's very important to understand that your brain thinks it would be a very bad idea for you to change. Your brain's primary mission is to learn things, remember things, and to automate things whenever possible.

That's why we can pick up cups and use phones and drive cars and all these things without thinking about it, because those are automatic processes. There are also automatic processes that dictate how we'll react to a particular situation. And just because I understand that something has a lot more to do with me than that other person, that doesn't take away that automatic reaction I have to it. So sometimes there's work to be done in integrating these things with our bodies or with our brains by taking away or maybe giving less control to the brain or the automatic responses that we have in something.

But I hope what I'm answering your question was saying that a lot of times people will realize that there's something that they want different in their life, which really hadn't occurred to them or they didn't think it might be as important beforehand. Does that answer your question, Mitzi?

Speaker 3
Kind of. I guess, what makes somebody wanna sort of do a psychedelic experience and what does somebody, take or do to have a psychedelic experience? Because again, I know nothing about this.

Speaker 1
Well, I'll give you my experience. So when I was in my teens, my late teens to late 20s, I took psychedelics quite a bit along with just about anything else I could do to get out of my head, to not feel what I was feeling. And in my late 20s, I became addicted to hard drugs, not psychedelic to other substances. And I had to pull myself out of my physical environment.

I had to actually change where I was, cut off contact with the people I knew, and really just sort of cold turkey, stop using all substances, except for cannabis, which I abused for quite some time after that. And I lived just a regular suburban life. And I owned a business and bought a house and did all the things that you do. And then 10 years ago, My wife at the time passed away unexpectedly.

And it sort of turned my world upside down. And in the middle of all the grief, I realized that I had a lot of childhood trauma that had never been addressed in any way, shape or form. Hadn't been talked about. This is what we did in my family.

We just put things aside or swept them under the carpet. That was how we solved problems. And it didn't want to stay down anymore. So I started seeing a therapist and I was seeing a coach.

And at the time I was smoking cigarettes and I told my coach, I'm trying to quit smoking. And he said, I've read a study that said psilocybin helps with that, which is true. There have been government-sanctioned research studies where they showed that people who are trying to quit smoking were very much helped by having experiences with psilocybin, or magic mushrooms, as they're generally called, in a therapeutic setting, in a lab setting with therapy before and after. And I should say that in all of the research that you'll see about psychedelics, there's a significant therapeutic component that happens before and after.

But my coach told me this and I thought, well, I know about mushrooms. So I looked around and I found some and I took them. And the thing about psychedelics is when you're looking outside yourself, as I was when I was a young man, that's what will happen. You look outside yourself and notice what's going on and all kinds of different things.

As soon as you're looking inward, that's where the substance looks. So the night I took that psilocybin, I didn't stop smoking, but I saw many, many things about my life that I hadn't really realized before. And I realized a lot of things were my own doing, and I had control over them, and other people's role, and my role, and the patterns I was following. And I thought, at the end, well, now I've seen all this, so it's going to be different from now on.

And in about two weeks, everything was the same. I had all the same problems. Nothing had changed, except I had seen that things should be different. And rinse, repeat a couple of times, I was wondering why I would have these epiphanies and insights, but nothing would change.

And I started looking around, I found out there was this thing called psychedelic integration. And learned that if I wanted things to change, I had to make some sort of change myself. How I did that I wasn't sure about, so I started looking around and I found psychedelic integration circles. where people talked about their experiences.

So I can tell you that's my case. And when people come to me, they're often not feeling well. They don't know why, but something just doesn't feel right. People may be at some sort of existential crossroads or on some sort of spiritual search, and they're looking for something to help them maybe get outside themselves a little bit, which is what psychedelics sometimes help us do, see things more objectively.

It's very hard to be objective about yourself. You may have noticed that. And sometimes people are actually looking to heal some sort of wound within themselves. But probably about, I think it was about five years ago, four years ago, that Michael Pollan's book came out.

Michael Pollan was a very well-known writer, mostly on the subject of food. And a few years ago, he wrote a book called How to Change Your Mind. And it sold very quickly. And at that time, a lot of people read about the things that psychedelics may help you do.

And it became much more popular. I started receiving calls from people who had never done psychedelics, who wanted to know about it. And I have dealt with people who have terminal diagnoses, people who have since passed on, who wanted to get some sort of insight before they passed away. people who were related to people who had terminal diagnoses, people who had anxiety or depression, people who were sort of stuck in their path of personal or spiritual growth.

There are a lot of different reasons people come to psychedelics. A lot of them have to do with growth and healing.

Speaker 3
Now, are psychedelics addictive the way, like you mentioned, hard drugs and things like that? Like when I think of a psychedelic, my first thing is like, oh my God, I'd never try that. I'd be terrified I'd get addicted to some kind of drug.

Speaker 1
Well, I mean, anything can be psychologically addictive, even if it's unpleasant. But psychedelics have within them a sort of an anti-addictive property. I'm going to set aside ketamine, because that's something that's been used as a party drug and people often abuse. And there's just about nothing that there won't be someone who does too much of it.

And there certainly is that. But it's much more common for people to have a psychedelic experience And there is sometimes some discomfort involved. And sometimes you're a little unsure of what's going on. People often say, well, I'm not doing that again anytime soon.

And they may in a month or two or three decide, maybe I'll try that again. But very rarely does someone come out and say, I want to go right back in and do that again. They seem to have more of an anti-addictive property. Now, when I speak about that, I'm generally speaking about, and you asked about what people would do.

Well, probably the most common substance that people take is psilocybin or magic mushrooms. And the reason it's so common is because people can grow them themselves. You don't need a laboratory. I mean, mycology is not my thing.

I wouldn't care to grow mushrooms, but it's a very easy thing to do and you can learn how to do it online. And psilocybin is physiologically one of the safest substances you can take. There are more 911 calls every year for over-the-counter medication and things like cannabis than there are for psilocybin. It's very safe physiologically to take.

People should be prepared psychologically before they take it, but it's very safe physiologically. People may take LSD, and the mechanism of action for psilocybin and LSD are very similar. They work on a particular receptor in the brain. They may take a substance like DMT, which is a short-acting and very powerful psychedelic that'll last about, you know, 15 minutes to an hour.

And there are other substances they might take, but those are like the main players, I would say. There are substances like Ibogaine, which is used in addiction recovery, which has shown great results in helping people get off of opioids and stay off them. But that's a very powerful substance and I think should only be used in a clinical setting if someone's trying to kick an opioid habit.

Speaker 2
Thank you so much, Greg. You answered part of my question, but I'm going to still ask the question. If a single psychedelic experience could reveal your deepest purpose, How can someone make sense of it and turn it into real change? Because I remembered you said you did it and you saw all the things that needed to be changed, but a week later you were the same.

And it took a few, I guess, sessions before. So how can someone in a single experience be transformed?

Speaker 1
Well, it wasn't the number of experiences I had. It was learning about integration and learning that I needed to make some sort of change, whether that was an internal or an external change in my life before my circumstances would change. And in my work with people, whether that's whether that's standard transformational coaching, you know, I work with people who are not taking and haven't taken and won't take psychedelics or just looking they're on a path of personal or spiritual growth. And the work that we do there is very similar to the work that we might do in psychedelic integration, because it's more about becoming more of who you are.

And then we get back to that idea of being programmed automatically by your brain. In order to improve your life, you don't necessarily have to change the circumstances outside of you. You can always change your experience of life. And through certain types of mindfulness and certain practices and certain ways of getting rid of the programming and working around the things that keep us stuck in life, we can change our experience of life.

And that brings relief and happiness to a lot of people, or at least reduces the amount of frustration and unhappiness. I'll give you an example. So there is one ingredient that you need in order to have a disappointment. That is an expectation.

So if you were to create some sort of visual representation of that, that might say that here is my expectation, and here are the results I got. And this delta in here represents the level of disappointment I might experience. And the smaller that delta, the less disappointment I'll have. Well, It's true that these results are here, and when we think of things being better for us, like our expectations being met, we usually think of these results getting better.

But the question remains, who put this here? I've placed this expectation here, and if I need to keep myself safe or something's important, it absolutely should be there. But how many situations in our life are there, especially when these results are repeatedly here, and we have a very good idea of this, where it's going to be that we keep these expectations here and frustrate ourselves? Sometimes we can move this a little bit, and as it happens, usually when we do that, for some reason, this moves up a little bit as well.

So there are things that we do sort of automatically during our lives, during the course of our lives, that don't help our experience of life. And because of the sort of programming we have, this can look like a lot of different things, but there are things that we do that we believe will bring down the anxiety of a particular situation. And those things tend to raise the anxiety and we don't like the result. And then we tend to do it again later and feel bad about it.

But it's not easy sometimes not to do that thing. That thing is sort of compulsive. You can feel it within you. That has to do with triggers and automatic programs within the human.

Speaker 2
Oh my God. As you're speaking, I'm thinking of our negative self-talk. The things that we say to ourself silently that is keeping us stuck or in that frozen state. How can rewiring our thoughts like NLP does unlock the freedom, liberate us from those things and help us to know that there is something on the other side.

Speaker 1
Well, one of the reasons, so there's another reason that people come to psychedelics and one thing they're trying to do is they're trying to quiet their ego. The ego is the thing that has negative self-talk and is judgy about other people and tips us into anxiety. And that is really the default mode network of our brain. It's a region of our brain that kicks in when we're sort of on autopilot, when we're doing things automatically.

And when we're in autopilot, we're not noticing what's happening around us. So to first answer your question, it's very hard not to believe your brain and the thoughts that you have. But it's very important to understand that while thoughts may come and go, thoughts will always arise. But there are thoughts, and there is thinking about our thoughts.

Again, this is not easy to do, but we should realize that thoughts are things that arise. Thinking about thoughts is what Almon Watts referred to as talking to myself inside my head. And those are two very different things. Now, in meditation, as in the psychedelic experience, every lesson that you get is not a lesson about that experience.

It's a lesson about life. And what meditation teaches us, when we have sometimes, depending on the type of meditation you're doing, we have a satisfying experience, we've been able to sit quietly and see thoughts come up and just watch them go by and not do anything with them. That's one training that's very valuable in life, because if you can let yourself know that thoughts come up, but I don't have to engage with them, and that anytime I am engaging with them, at any time I can stop and I can back up and be at sort of the metal level and think, okay, I was doing that again.

I don't have to. You'll get yourself into a state, but there are some things we can do. And I'll share a tool with you before we get off the call of what we call recovery strategy. But it's very important to remember that thoughts come up, but I don't always have to think about them.

I'll also say that we're often judging ourselves because we seem to be doing good and then, oh, something happens and now we're not, we're kicking ourselves for it. Well, if you look at a chart of the United States stock market from across the room, it's going to look like a line that's headed up at 45 degrees. But that's only been measured for about 100 years. And I think most people know that around 1929, that was going up and it went way down.

And the whole country was in turmoil. Then it went up a little higher, then it went down and up higher and down and up higher. That's what happens on a growth path. And out of 8 billion people on this planet, there's not a single one who's ever decided, I would like to improve myself in some particular way and just been on the up.

you are always, always, always going to fall back into old habits and patterns. And one of the worst things you can do in that case is to beat yourself up about it, because that does absolutely nothing for you. In fact, it makes you unresourceful. So if you can endeavor to believe your thoughts less, or at least back out of thinking more about them, whatever, And if you can realize that I'm always going to have setbacks, and what I do in that case is I step up and I move forward again.

That's always going to happen. Those are two things that will help you very much in your endeavor to improve.

Speaker 2
I'm happy you said that because there are two techniques that I use with my thoughts. Leaves on the stream. or leaves in the wind.

Speaker 1
Yes.

Speaker 2
So if this thought, if I am engaged with it, I'm like, OK, this is a thought for leaving the wind, where this huge wind just come and take it away from me. So when you share

Speaker 1
that. That's a perfect analogy, I think.

Speaker 2
Yes. Thank you.

Speaker 3
Well, thank you so much, Greg. Can you please let everybody know how they can get in touch with you?

Speaker 1
Yeah, you can go to my website, which is at greglawrencecoach.com. And my email is greg at greglawrencecoach.com. Excellent. You can always find me on Facebook and Instagram.

Facebook, I'm Greg Lawrence, and on Instagram, I'm psychedelic underscore integration.

Speaker 2
Thank you.

Speaker 3
Thank you so much, Greg.

Speaker 1
Thanks to both of you. It was a lot of fun.