Dr. Michael Ryoshin Sapiro (3:41)

Thank you so much for having me. It's an honor for me to be here.

Leanne Whitney (3:46)

That honor goes in both directions. I recently read your book Truth Medicine and I really enjoyed it from COVID to cover. So I'm very excited to have this dialogue with you today. But for those of who are watching and listening, who are not familiar with you or your body of work, could you give a little bit of a background and what personally and professionally brought you to your career as a psychedelic psychotherapist?

Dr. Michael Ryoshin Sapiro (4:17)

Yeah, I think the honest answer is I had some mystical experiences when I was younger, about 15, did try LSD, started trying psychedelics at a very young age. And I'm not recommending it to anyone listening at this point. I'm not saying teenagers should be doing that, but I certainly did. And it showed me things behind the masks of reality. We would say, you know, you see behind the veil, and gave me a sense that there was something greater in. In life, in myself and other people that I could start seeing. And of course, I didn't know how to express myself then as a teenager, but I found Buddhism around 18 and that started to give me some of the language of the universe, of the cosmos, of my own psyche, my heart that has influenced the way I work in the world. And I also come from a Holocaust surviving family, so we had tremendous trauma in our background that has passed through the generations to me. So of course I have my own traumas, but I have theirs in my body. And the way that they handled their lives, which was with tremendous strength and resiliency, but also lots of fear and dread that that also passed down to me. So those are really important pieces. And that also fueled my. My longing and love of service. I started serving my community pretty young, did AmeriCorps, I did peace Corps, worked with homeless population, people in prison, kids in the foster care system, combat veterans. In the last five years have been working pretty extensively with first responders. So all of that has really fueled my drive to serve, but also help people heal and touch that innate, innocent place within them. I think I'll just leave it there for now.

Leanne Whitney (6:16)

Well, that's a lot. Thank you. Yeah, there's a lot in there. The intergenerational trauma aspect as well as your personal traumas. And that's happening for all of us. Would you say, like. Yeah, those intergenerational. Yeah, you don't escape. That's not a piece that we escape.

Dr. Michael Ryoshin Sapiro (6:35)

You can't. Yeah, not at all. Sorry.

Leanne Whitney (6:38)

Well, I was just going to say if something hasn't been cleared in the lineage, it's all of a sudden One generation kind of shows up to do that work.

Dr. Michael Ryoshin Sapiro (6:49)

Yeah, I think we're called. Some of us in our families are called. We carry the burdens of the traumas or we carry the strengths of our lineage, going through difficult experiences, and sometimes we don't know it's ours. Sometimes we. Sometimes we're. We don't know we can rely on that strength. I'm often, strangely enough, talking to my grandmother who survived Auschwitz. And when I'm facing something really difficult, I'm. I'm often finding myself talking to her and going, how can I show up in this circumstance that I'm struggling in right now? And I do hear words, I hear wisdom that seems to be beyond my own experiences in life, that, you know, there's a wisdom that I haven't had, but that's coming through or to me. So I attribute it to intergenerational wisdom, not just trauma. We talk about trauma, but we also need to talk about resiliency, tenacity, and wisdom that comes through the lineage as well. So that is part of the work that I do in psychedelic psychotherapy because people are visited by their ancestors while they're on medicine often. And so we want to know how to talk to them, how to. To assess. Do you need something? Do I need something? Let's have a relationship here, because you're with. You're in me. Let's. Let's do this. Work together.

Leanne Whitney (8:14)

Beautiful. Especially calling in the. The. Well, ancestors for support that they're right here around us. Well, I'd like to actually hone in on this word truth. It's in the title of your book. And what does it mean to live truthfully? And how does truth itself eventually become its own form of medicine?

Dr. Michael Ryoshin Sapiro (8:42)

Yeah, originally I wanted to call the book truth serum, but then there was too many ties to government and, you know, CIA stuff. And I do work in the intelligence agency with former intelligence people. So we. We decided that's not the direction we. And. And the truth is, when I'm working with all. All of my clients, when they discover what's true for themselves, beneath conditioning and programming, beneath any intergenerational culture that is passed through us, there's something that seems to be true for us. Only us, our own unique heart, our own unique psyche that emerges, or we discover it, and when we start speaking it and eventually living it, I see people's depression go down. I see anxiety go down. I see trauma responses go down. My job is not to reduce symptoms, but to help people thrive. And. And I hope those symptoms are reduced. But what I discovered in all my work is that when people really feel their truth, that rings like a bell in the body. When you speak your truth, you're like, this is true for me. And we say it. There's empowerment, embodiment, confidence. These things start showing up in a much more robust way. And we walk around the world going, this is who I am. This is what's true for me right now deep in my own heart or my psyche. And so I called the book Truth Medicine because I believe the two medicines are unconditional love and truth. Not the substances. Not ketamine, not psilocybin, not dmt, not ayahuasca. Those are powerful substances. But I think the truth is unconditional love and speaking and living our truth.

Leanne Whitney (10:38)

And we know from neuroscience, right, Especially the work of Robin Carthart Harris, like, where the self, the ego, the patterns of energy and information flow, the mind, whatever, you know, we'd have to have a whole discussion to probably agree on definitions. So let's also maybe put that here between us and our conversation, that there aren't really great definitions of a lot of things, mind, consciousness. But we know from the research into the medicine that the mind comes down to sort of base camp, if you will, and we're able to unravel a little bit of the patterns, the conditions that we've grown up in that bind us and cause the suffering. It's not necessarily an easy task, but that process of integrating the information is what you're pointing to. So again, the substances allow us to surrender and work with the medicine, but it's ultimately the information that the medicine brings forward that you're pointing to.

Dr. Michael Ryoshin Sapiro (11:54)

Yeah, so I'm a lot. Our field right now is really hyped up on the experience itself, and I'm more interested in what arises in the experience that we can use for healing and growth. What information during a psychedelic session presents itself, and how do we use that information to move toward the life we are longing for, as well as healing old wounds, core beliefs that hurt us to very clearly see conditions and habits of mind. That's more important to me as a psychedelic psychotherapist, as a clinical psychologist, is that we're using that material for those goals.

Leanne Whitney (12:45)

Interesting, because I would think it's the Buddhist in you in the sense that it's not about the flashy phenomena per se, but could we say truth and reality are synonymous. There's something that happens that's beyond fragmentation, that the linkage. There's a communication. Yeah, I'm not quite sure how to articulate it. Maybe you could take it from there. But yeah, Buddhism certainly points to the constant arising of phenomena. It's not about the flashiness per se, it's about the awareness. And then, yeah, that lived embodied perspective. I don't know if you can sort of riff from, from that point.

Dr. Michael Ryoshin Sapiro (13:35)

Interesting. The non dual perspective within lots of Buddhist traditions point to a fundamental awareness that is undisturbed by any content that arises in the awareness. And that awareness itself is ineffable. It's, it's wholesome, it's full of peace, it's full of unconditional love. And it actually exists in us as something innate that's innocent, that's unconditioned. So when we're on medicine or in deep meditation, because I'm not always, I don't think medicine is the answer for everybody. I don't think these psychedelics should be used for everybody. I think everybody could meditate equally for the most part. And deep meditation points to very similar. That field of awareness that is not marred by anything that arises in it. We touch that, we can touch that in psychedelic sessions. We can touch our innate wholeness that's undisturbed by anything we've been through, that's undisturbed by any mental state. And so a lot of my job, I'm doing a couple different things. I'm helping people use what's arising in session, whether it's a memory or a crazy psychic image or psychedelic image, or we're using emotions that are stored in the body. We're using the body itself. We're looking at where in the body is tight, restrictive, hurting, wherein the body is open, unrestricted light. We're doing all of those things and I'm hoping they touch that ineffable presence of the universe that is pure, peaceful, has love embedded in it. Because that's our nature too. That's our most fundamental nature. So those things are always simultaneously happening. I can't make somebody have that. I mean, I can lead them in meditation to touch that for sure. But what's more important is they discover it in themselves and start touching that innocent pure nature. Because that in essence is the most healing thing you can do is touching what's pure and innate and wholesome in us. Most people don't like themselves. Most people struggle with themselves, who they are. I don't like this. I don't like my body, I don't like my personality. And that's very toxic and hurtful to us. So that, that's more the Buddhism is that what's pure, what's wholesome and unstained by any condition.

Leanne Whitney (16:21)

In yoga psychology, very similar. We want that differentiation between pure consciousness and the contents of consciousness. Also in Patanjali's yoga psychology, the first of the Eightfold limbs is the. The yamas, which are the ethical precepts, so to speak. In truth is the second one. The first one is nonviolence. So in the yoga tradition, we always want to make sure we're pairing truth with nonviolence. So I really want to highlight what you're sharing there about the inner terrain and how negative and self defeating a lot of the inner voices for people can be.

Dr. Michael Ryoshin Sapiro (17:08)

Yeah.

Leanne Whitney (17:08)

I don't know if you have any specific examples or a little bit more to share on that because it's so important, right? Yes. We want to be. It's, it's within and between. We want the loving kindness, but we have to make sure that our inner terrain is a really beautiful, nurturing, soothing soil.

Dr. Michael Ryoshin Sapiro (17:28)

Yeah, yeah, that's the practice is how do we help people? And I'm included in this. You know, we were, we were trained by parents or culture or society. We're, we're generally maybe at least in the West, I didn't find that so much living in Thailand, but definitely in the States. We're not, we're not enough unless we da da, da da. And if we're not enough, we have to do something to get there or we have to earn being enough. We have to earn unconditional regard and love from people or we're literally just told, you're a piece of crap. You are, you were told that. Or we're hurt by being hit or violated. And then we start having this inner relationship going, well, you're no good. People are treating you poorly. They're telling you this and that. And then we internalize those kinds of messages and I call them lies. And even being told you're very smart is actually not always helpful. I was told, oh, you're so special, you're so smart. Well, that is so hard to keep living up to, you know, does that mean I can't fail? And if I fail, how do I think about myself? Every single person who comes in to me, whether they're working on childhood trauma, first responder trauma, combat trauma, regardless of all of those things, we have messages we tell ourselves about ourselves, that we are attached to and believe, and those beliefs and the attachment to those beliefs create so much pain for ourselves, so much deep suffering. And that's usually what we're cleaning up in our Work together more than anything. We're cleaning up. Can you love this thing? Can you love your body, yourself? Even the mistakes you've made? Do you have grace? Do you have patience? Well, no, I don't deserve that. I mean, I can give a million examples of people showing up, doing this work. That's part of the truth, too. Are you kind to yourself? No. Well, that creates a whole cascade of really negative behaviors that you're doing to yourself, thinking you deserve it.

Leanne Whitney (19:35)

Concentric circles, I think, is the best way that. At least the way that I'm seeing it right now. You're pointing to this idea that there's family, there's culture, then there's this deeper truth. And it's important that we differentiate perhaps where those messages are coming from and name them.

Dr. Michael Ryoshin Sapiro (19:53)

Yeah. So I do several things at once there. I define in the book at least what I think different levels of truth are. There's. There's truth of nature, sunrises, sunsets, water is wet. You know, there's things that are truthful by nature, just laws of science. We have personal truths. What's true for me, it's not going to be the same. What's true for you? We might have different politics, beliefs. We might have different religious beliefs, and something is personally true for me may not be personally true for you. And then we have what I think of as spiritual truths that do come out of spiritual traditions, like the concept of interdependence, that all things depend on everything else to exist. There is no mic without sunlight, soil, food. My parents. If my parents didn't exist, I don't exist. The concept of interdependence says that I'm really made up of all of these things in the universe. And without one of those things in the universe, I don't exist. If there's no sunlight, I don't exist. So there's sunlight in here. That's an interdependence. And that. That can then lead to a greater relationship with things around us because we realize, if I take poor care of this, I'm taking poor care of that. If I take poor care of that, I'm taking poor care of that. Of me. So these are more spiritual truths. I don't determine what my clients come up with while they're in session. I'm watching and waiting and working with. Is a personal truth arising? Does a spiritual truth emerge? Does a universal truth present itself so that we're always working with, fluidly in session? Because I'm not there to teach them a spiritual truth that's not my job. Even though I'm a Buddhist psychologist. I have Mormon clients, I have Christian clients, I have atheist clients. I'm not trying to teach them what I know or what I believe. I'm trying to help them access what's true for them and can they then start tapping into the greater woven fabric of the universe, the cosmos, and find their. And find those truths for themselves which they'll live out of. And then I'll speak to your concentric circles or of influence. And then there's for sure we what I. I have an activity where I ask a client or a group I'm working with to point to a limiting belief that they might have. I am only worth. I'm only. I. I only. I'm only worth what I earn or I earn love by accomplishing. So if I don't accomplish something, I won't be loved. We look at that belief which is really harmful because it drives us to overwork, it drives us to burnout. You know, if I think I'm worthwhile only if I'm producing, then my whole life's going to be spent producing and overworking to get that my worth. It's a terrible system. It's a bad setup, right? So I'll look at one of those beliefs worthwhile if I'm producing. And then we're looking at concentric circles of how did your ancestors. Where did that come from? I like pointing to. I have Irish clients, clients with Irish ancestry. And they have a belief that I have to work. I can't stop working, I'll die. We look at the famine in Ireland. There was. There was a. There was something true about if we're not working, if we're not producing, people did die. The famine did kill people. And so in Irish ancestry, there may be a belief you have to keep working very hard so that we don't die. That's passed down through the lineage, through our ancestors. So we're looking at that circle. Then we look at how did your parents teach you? What did they model for you? What did they tell you? And then we look at our immediate culture. What is your immediate culture saying? And then I look at my own self. What, what is. What am I saying to myself? Do I still believe those things? Because I. We don't operate in a vacuum. That's also interdependence. So our culture, our ancestors, our parents, and our own beliefs are all operating simultaneously. And we start seeing that when we do this work, whether we're doing psychedelics or not, we can do this Just talking about it like here. But psychedelics do tend to make things more clear because you can see more of it without being in it.

Leanne Whitney (24:16)

Right. It's like, yeah, long term meditation and psychedelic use have some similarities with them for sure. What about, what are some ways that people block themselves from living truth? Maybe addictions or dissociative experiences like the mind runs way faster, the mind is often in flight. Are there pointers you could give that may indicate to any of our listeners or viewers that, hey, these are maybe red flags to look out for. This might be something that you've picked up that causes you to run from the truth.

Dr. Michael Ryoshin Sapiro (25:00)

And the truth might be, I have value, I'm worthwhile, I matter. The truth might be I was innocent, I didn't deserve what happened to me. These are truths that I see coming out in people in this work. Oh, I don't have to earn my worth. I am worthwhile. Whether I make this money or not, whether I get good grades or I don't, I still have value like that. That's the deeper personal, that's the deeper truths we tend to come to doing this work. I would say that symptoms of not liking ourself look like addiction. Symptoms of not caring for ourselves look like choosing abusive partners. I would rather start inward and ask all your listeners, do you like yourself? Do you love yourself? Do you take care of yourself? When do you see yourself making poor decisions that hurt you? Instead of looking at the symptoms on the outside, I'd like to go to the inside and ask those questions because everything comes from that. The choices I'm making come from the answers of those questions. And also, why am I attached to my family's way of doing things? Why am I attached to the culture's way of doing things? What would be more true if I discovered that in myself? My own values, which might mirror some of our culture, it might mirror some of our parents values, But I'm choosing it now consciously and intentionally rather than just unconsciously moving forward in the world based on my conditioning. So those are the ways that I'm working with people and asking questions to say, are you aligned with your heart's values? Do you know your heart's values? Have you ever listened or talked to those that part of yourself? And if you're not, why aren't you doing that? What's in your way? What are you committed to instead?

Leanne Whitney (27:04)

What are you committed to instead? Or what taught you? What was the alternative teaching that led you far away from these questions and the behavior patterns that, yeah, drove you Away from these really crucial and important questions to ask.

Dr. Michael Ryoshin Sapiro (27:23)

So.

Leanne Whitney (27:25)

The heart is open. I mean, you already pointed to unconditional love as a basis. And it's hard to hate ourselves and be at war with ourselves and offer ourselves that nurturing care at the same time. So rooting it right out there is what you're saying. Pluck it right there at the root of the self love question and it's a really rich place to. Yeah, begin.

Dr. Michael Ryoshin Sapiro (27:52)

Yeah, that's where I begin. Do you like yourself? Do you love yourself? Are you caring for yourself? How do you show up for yourself when things are difficult? Look, it's not easy for any of us. This is such hard work. People want to feel better, they want to thrive. But to me, this is the level that we're playing on. This is the field we're playing on.

Leanne Whitney (28:15)

And I know you bring up Carl Jung in your work and shadow work, big term in Jungian psychology. Did you study Jung throughout the years or how were you exposed to Jungian psychology?

Dr. Michael Ryoshin Sapiro (28:31)

I would say I'm not a Jungian. I do have some training in depth psychology which comes from that tradition. I mean, it's a more modern version. I would say I do have some training in archetypes and some many years exploring archetypes because I write about a case for archetypes. You know, even though I'm a modern scientists and I do research there, there is a real clear, evident evidence to me of archetypes coming up in our, in our person, like the Personas we are wearing in our life or we're using the archetypes that show up when we're strong and when we're in alignment and when we're thriving. But I didn't have formal training in Jungian psychoanalysis or Jungian psychology. That's not my background. But I, of course, as a yoga and Buddhist person and a psychologist, I love where Jung often goes with the merging of those two.

Leanne Whitney (29:30)

Yes. Yeah, you bump into Jung along the way. Depth psychology actually is what the psychologies were called at the inception. When Freud and Jung first worked together, it was so that turn. Depth psychology has been around since the beginning. People often use Jungian psychology, but both Jung and Freud and Adler, those are all depth psychologies and the founders of the tradition.

Dr. Michael Ryoshin Sapiro (30:01)

Yes, pretty modern for us, but compared to the yogis and. But I, I love the concept of depth psychology. I love the feeling of it. I have, I. My own therapist is a depth psychologist. He's trained as a Jungian therapist. And so I get a benefit of being with him as he's having me navigate and search out my psyche for all of these things. It's quite incredible, the discoveries that I make in myself. So I'm not doing that per se with my clients. But it does emerge and arise in sessions so we can point to. Point to those things.

Leanne Whitney (30:36)

Yes, in Jung's frame of the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. I mean, that's what we're pointing to here with the intergenerational trauma this vast. And we have it in Buddhism, right, as well. Like the vast storehouse. Well, maybe they would call it the storehouse of karma, but the. That, yes, that there is this collective unconscious that is. I'm not sure what preposition to use there beneath, between, amongst all of us and to face into that and to acknowledge it. Like you're saying it's no easy task, but you do. I love your mnemonic. I think it was cost. Curiosity, openness, surrender, trust. That curiosity and openness. What a rich frame to offer to people. I don't know if there's anything else you have to share around that, because that trust piece, it, you know, it's. It is important. If we don't have experience yet, facing into the shadow or working with medicine, there can be fear, for sure.

Dr. Michael Ryoshin Sapiro (31:48)

Yeah, so I. I didn't. I don't think that cost originated from me. I can't find where I got it. And I've asked all my colleagues, I've looked it up extensively. Somehow I started using it years ago and caught in. For the listeners, curiosity, openness, surrender and trust are the stance that I teach. The stance. How do you go into an experience when you're facing the unknown, when you're facing potential dysregulation of the nervous system or a defragmentation of the ego or the self or whatever we think, you know, the default mode network is where we're used to being Mike. When you're on a psychedelic, Mike does not exist in that same way. There's no Mike. Dissolves into spaciousness, into dragons, into stars, into warriors, into nothingness. And how do we prepare ourselves to encounter the mystery, to encounter dissolving? Well, it's a process of what is being curious. Can you just be curious about. Oh, this is different. This is interesting. What is this about? Are you open or closed to it? No, I don't want to. I don't want to see that. Which is a. You know, when I'm. When I'm with a client who's on ketamine and they're like, I don't want to see that. I'm like, well, do you remember your commitment to being open now? If they're super dysregulated, if they're panicking because of what's arising, we're going to do a different intervention. Okay, let's calm down. Let's, let's hand to the heart. Let's bring yourself back into regulation. But we're here to explore things in you. The shadows are not negative. The demons are not negative. In many cultures in Tibetan Buddhism, demons bring messages. They have important things to bring you that help shake up your normal waking consciousness. So I often ask, can you turn toward the thing? Can you remember to be open? You committed to being open? Is, can you be okay that this is here right now? And can we turn toward it and have dialogue with it? Can you ask why it's here? What does it want from you? What does it think about? So you need openness to do that. You certainly need trust, right? Most of us who have significant trauma or trauma at all find it hard to trust not only ourself, but other people and circumstances. And so I'm asking a person to show up when they're very vulnerable and be. Can you trust that what's showing up is for your best interest? Do you trust me to help you, and do you trust yourself? These are really hard questions for people with trauma that we work through even before you get into medicine and then surrender, especially in my line of work with first responders and combat veterans, that word alone is triggering. But the concept of letting yourself be taken and not have control, that is opposite of their training. And so surrender becomes an incredibly important practice of letting life do what it will. So stop fighting. Stop fighting. Stop fighting. Life doesn't mean don't advocate or show up for yourself, but it does mean can you lay back and let life take you where it will? And that's a hard practice, and it's something you do on medicine because it, it, it almost makes you surrender. And if you don't, there's a lot of fighting, A lot of fighting. So I'll just leave it at that for now.

Leanne Whitney (35:19)

Brings me actually right back to the heart. Because when the heart is closed, there's a lot of contraction there and therefore fear. And the heart has to be open to all those concentric circles to be able to perceive. And again, through a lens of loving kindness and compassion, all the wounds and the pain, the cultural stories, the family stories, So trusting that that deeper layer of love and compassion is there when so much in the external world has been maybe fierce. Yeah, it can be a bit of a bridge to cross.

Dr. Michael Ryoshin Sapiro (36:13)

I have to teach that. That's an active skill before we get into medicine is, is learning to go, hey, you're going to be in a circumstance. You may be in a circumstance that is frightening, scary, dysregulating, disintegrating for you. How might you show up for yourself? And most people who come to me have don't have compassion practices built into their life. They don't have loving kindness practices built in. They don't have awareness that they treat themselves poorly. Instead of grace, understanding and patience, they're punitive, shaming and punishing, punitive and punishing. We punish ourselves for our mistakes instead of going, I'm here, I know you did that. I wish we didn't do that, but we did. So I'm going to apply grace, understanding, patience, tolerance, support. These are not words my clients come in with. They have shame, ashamed, embarrassed, you know, they have the poor language they speak. So I'm trying to help people, before you even get into medicine, recognize how do you handle yourself when you're scared? How do you handle yourself when you make mistakes? And then I'm trying to help teach a little bit. What would encouragement, grace support look like instead? What would those things look like so that in session, when things get unruly in their minds and the cosmos shows up and it's a fiery dragon, how do we go, oh, I'm really scared, and my hand comes to my chest, my hand comes to my belly, like, we're going to practice that before we get there. Or I might teach it in session. And the irony is those are much more important practices than doing psychedelic psychotherapy. If I can help people do this on a regular basis, they're going to show up for themselves in a regular day and go, oh, don't be a jerk to yourself, Mike. Dude, be patient. I'm learning, I'm learning. Let me make mistakes. Or I'm scared, you know, maybe I'll wrap myself in a blanket and I'll tend to myself instead of use drugs or flip out on phones. So that this is essential, that we learn to relate to ourselves with grace, understanding, compassion, so that when we're in life but psychedelic sessions, we can apply that when we need it, right?

Leanne Whitney (38:34)

Both on and off medicine, that self compassion, the loving kindness again, the inner terrain end up being so crucial and as well as the tools of resilience that you're pointing to. What happens when you're at the edge of your window of tolerance and you start to really panic or shut down. What tools do you have? Yeah. And how important those are in everyday life, not just on the medicine. Some people come a lot more contracted or bound than others. So the pace, everybody has to find their own pace with it. Yeah. Just like your yoga mat, right? Everybody, don't compare. Show up on your own yoga mat, do your poses.

Dr. Michael Ryoshin Sapiro (39:14)

Yeah, yeah. And people are kind of right now, they're, they're looking up psychedelic therapy, psychotherapy, and they're looking up retreats and, and they see a lot of words like ego death. And they're, they're coming to me and going, I want an ego death. And I go, I, I don't think it is what you think it is because I don't think you're gonna like it. It's not something that most parents, people are like. It's where the part of you that's dominant, making choices, is in charge of you, is no longer in charge of you. And that part is not going to like that. That part that is controlling you, your behaviors, your thoughts, to keep you safe more than not. But also it's pretty punishing at times and makes you know, when you're making mistakes in an unkindly way, you think that thing's going to go easy. Like that thing does not go easy. That thing can scream and fight and spit and cry and yell. So I'm like, you know, be careful what you're asking for because if it happens, it's not always a very like, oh, I'm one. There's not even I am one. One is one. There's no that might happen. You can have that. There are medicines that give you a complete dissolving, blissful experience where there's no I and other, there's no I am that. It is that the non dual state of just being arises. For most of us, that's not how it often goes. So I'm, I'm often asking, why are you coming with that goal? Where did you learn? Why is that the thing you're coming for? Let's, let's see the thread of what you're really here for. What do you want more than anything? And mostly it's peace, love, empowerment, embodiment, confidence. Let's go for that then.

Leanne Whitney (41:03)

And those non dual experiences aren't the easiest to integrate either. Right. That goes to the spiritual emergence and the spiritual emergency. So the skillful means of the practitioner can be, need to be very helpful in that.

Dr. Michael Ryoshin Sapiro (41:20)

I would say anyone doing my job should have a basis, a grasp on emergency Spiritual emergence issues, spiritual emergency issues. But most importantly, how do you help someone integrate an undual experience into their daily waking lives? It's great that you had it. I mean, in my journey I've meditated 30 plus years and there's many instances of dissolving, of just becoming, just being. There's no mic left. But I didn't, I would come out of that not knowing what to do with it because a lot of my time I was in, I did a lot of solitary work. I lived in temples, I've lived in monasteries. I have a lot of training, like formal training from Buddhists and yogi, yogic teachers, but actually none of them, except for one monk I was with, where I dissolved. I was a, I was a monk in Thailand and I, I had a dissolution experience and I came out of that and it happened when I was sweeping, I was sweeping the temple grounds. He was a hermit, it was a hermitage, it was just him and I. I was sweeping and I dissolved completely. No mic, no emotions, no thoughts, no feelings. It was just wind, sounds of life. And I. And, and from very, very far back, somewhere in my psyche, I heard, who am I? And I just kept sweeping, sweeping, because it's just a sound. And then it got louder. Who am I? And it started freaking out, who am I? Who am I? If I'm not any of these things? I thought I was, who am I? And it kind of then flooded me and I woke up, I'm like, oh shit, who am I? I don't know. What am I? What am I? And I went up to the teacher and I said, I just had this experience. And he just laughed and he said, go back and sweep some more. That was his teaching. Just go back and sweep. Don't make it a big deal. But there was no training for me to go. I have to learn how that non dual state of just pure being and Mike merge together. So I take it very seriously as a psychedelic therapist and a clinical psychologist. When they have these experiences, I want to help them integrate it into their waking, daily human life so they have more freedom and spaciousness, but also they can now attend to their kids. Because in the non dual state, you're not attending, you're not like you're, you're, you're, you're not here here as a person, you're here. Here is the vast cosmos. You don't operate that way in the, in work. Jack Kornfield's after the Ecstasy, the Laundry. Great book. There's many good books that point to what happens after you have these experiences. How do you just go back and do the laundry? Because you can get very lost in. In the non dual state as well.

Leanne Whitney (44:14)

Yeah. What's coming up for me is it's both the being and the becoming. Excuse me. And again, it's like there's both the differentiation and the linkage with the being, the oneness, there's the interdependence, but we also want the differentiated aspects. I say it in a lot of my interviews because I love it. Dan Siegel, his work in interpersonal neurobiology, he says, you want the fruit salad, not the frap. So you want to be able to differentiate the parts and have them linked and all working. Yeah. In harmony and together.

Dr. Michael Ryoshin Sapiro (44:57)

Yeah. He does a great job of having the potential that field and then things that arise in the field. And we do want to have a link between those, because we can get lost in what's arising, and we can also get lost in the undifferentiated potential of all of life, where there's nothing's happening, but everything's potential to happen. And it's very hard to navigate when you're in that state, because there it doesn't. But we have to have come back into the. Where we discernment, clarity, insight. That's why I'm spending a lot of time with my clients, developing their insight, having clarity and discernment so they know what choices. Because in the psychedelic state, so many things can erupt and arise. And then you come out of that, you're like, well, what do I go toward? Well, what does your heart value? What does your heart long to go toward? And let's then start discerning. Out of all the things that just happened over one to seven hours, how do we want to integrate what's arising? How do you want to use that material to move forward in your life? That's a whole other practice. We have prep work, we have the day of ceremony, day of work, and then we have integration work. And they're all just as equally important to me personally. It's not just the psychedelic session, is what do you. How do you prep for it and then what do you do with it afterward? Is probably the most important piece that we. We could spend more time on as a culture doing psychedelic work now, definitely.

Leanne Whitney (46:28)

As it becomes more popular, for sure. And it brings me back actually to like the Eightfold path, like the skillful means developing those skillful means of, you know, right livelihood, right speech. But those are all learned behaviors in most cases.

Dr. Michael Ryoshin Sapiro (46:48)

Yeah. We have. This is a training I tell everybody the therapy we're doing is really a training. It's more of a mental training. It's a heart training. It's also a training of awareness of the body of sensations. Therapy for me is training. It's. It's undergoing, building awareness. It's training on tending to what we see. Compassion, love, kindness. It's training of clarity, wisdom, discernment, the way we think. It's training how we speak. Is how I'm speaking creating violence in the world? Is it creating peace in the world? Does it. Is the behaviors I'm choosing, are those energizing or are they depleting? So these are, this is the kind of way I think about this work is we're training ourselves. Like you said, those eight. That Eightfold path is there are, there are ongoing practices. So people who come to me, we're doing all this so that they leave with one or two practices. Not all of like you and I are talking big picture. We're looking at all of many millions of pieces. They might leave with one or two things that they practice for months and months at a time. Mm.

Leanne Whitney (48:01)

Yeah. And what's coming up for me is sort of the check in. You know, we're talking about truth and loving kindness and even just leaving with that one nugget of boy, if, if this is true and I want to speak it out loud, but can I do it kindly? And is it going to be beneficial if I say it and is the timing right that I say it now? So truth is important, but especially in the field between, there's some parameters around that we don't just sort of rush around with truth and, and blurt it out everywhere, that there's also other environments or steps to follow to make sure that that truth and again, non violence or loving kindness are absolutely coupled together.

Dr. Michael Ryoshin Sapiro (48:56)

100. So I often will say, now that you've discovered your truth, you know, the next thing is knowing how to engage it or deploy it or communicate it. Because a lot, just a lot of my patients learn something about themselves. Hey, I don't like how my spouse does that to me. That doesn't feel good. Normally I just shut up and, and I don't like conflict. So I'm not going to say this to my spouse. Hey, I don't like how you're talking to me. It doesn't feel good. I don't feel respect, respectful. I'm hurt by it. They'll just take it. And then of course, resentment builds toward themselves and the spouse. And so when they discover a truth Like I want to be treated this way, not that way. I want to be talked to this way, not that way. The next step is how do you communicate that? How do you let someone know this is true for you in a way that actually increases the likelihood both of you grow? How do you communicate in a way that increases the likelihood both of you heal?

Leanne Whitney (49:56)

That is such a beautiful and rich insight that you just gave. Right. Because of interdependence. That yes, it's for me, but it's for us. How is it that I can move forward with this? So whatever my family, my community, the globe, how do we all move towards that? That there's. Yeah, lots of impacts. Well, you know, we talk about love and unconditional love and loving kindness. I love that you brought up the demons. I'm a big fan of Tibetan Buddhism myself and I love simple frames. And I love the simplicity of like the peaceful and the wrathful deities. Like these wrathful deities have their place in this realm. This is a realm of polarities. Even though it's non dual. Well, yeah, it's non dual. But you see multiplicity, you engage with multiplicity. I don't know if there's anything to share or drill down in because we are all of it. We are the peaceful and the wrathful. Shame to me is the vortex or the nadir of the psyche. You brought up shame earlier. And I think those wrathful deities and shame are linked. They are very decompositional to love and kindness and compassion. They're anything but. So we're learning to master or harness really, because both energies do exist. Is there a frame that you can offer there or just anything else to share?

Dr. Michael Ryoshin Sapiro (51:41)

Everything everywhere, all at once is always true. I write that in the book. Beautiful movie, one of my favorites. Now, just the concept in non duality that everything exists simultaneously. Opposites coexist, opposites arise together. My teacher, Richard Miller from Irest he, he does such a beautiful, lovely job of bringing our attention to opposites simultaneously. Cold and hot simultaneously exist in different parts of our body. My hands are cold, but my belly is warm. And I can hold space for both. So my awareness grows. I'm going to start simply. That's a framework for my non dual framework is that everything coexists and arises simultaneously. And the more we practice expanding our awareness beyond simple thought or breath. Koshas are a framework. I like to use the various levels where we put our consciousness, the body, the breath, emotions, thoughts, joy, wisdom. We put our consciousness into these levels when we're paying attention to sensation or breath or thought. But in non dual meditation, you're expanding it to include all of it at once. But that also includes like we're saying demons and angels or it includes virtue and things that are harmful because we want to just acknowledge all that exists within us to begin with. So the framework is all of it's arising. We don't want to put anything out. We don't want to kick anything out because you're not whole if you do that. We want to welcome Pema Chodron has a beautiful book welcoming the unwelcome. Welcome that in. Invite that into t the thing you don't like about yourself or others. Invite it in, see it, be with it. And on psychedelic psychotherapy it's arising all the time. There are literal things in you you do not like that are coming up for you to look at. The demon is bringing you something precious. Now I don't. I think shame is the immature version of remorse. Shame is a non wise version of I wish I did it differently or I. I have growth to do. Humility is a beautiful opposite of shame to me. I'm a person who had tons of shame in my life for things I've done and who I am or what I think about myself. And I've really shifted that to being human being having humility. Oh, I'm fallible. I make mistakes. I'm going to make tons of them. I'm not perfect. And shame disappears naturally in the embrace of humility. And so the message of shame I want to listen to. But how shame is doing it, I, I don't. I'm not going to enact or. And allow for anymore. But I. The message of hey, I could have done that differently. I'm not a bad person. Shane wants to go, you are a bad person. You've done that wrong and you're bad. I'm like, that's not even true. But I will hear what you're saying and yes, I can work on that. So that's all happening at the same time. When we're doing this practice, I'm leading people to understanding that within themselves. I'm doing it on myself, not with people, but in my own work so that I can offer that to others.

Leanne Whitney (55:07)

It goes back to our dear, our. Our idea of the concentric circles or the differentiation. Different things are seen and named. I want to say it at different times, but you're pointing to the everything everywhere, all at once. Which is a beautiful movie and a beautiful truth as well. Yeah, for sure. Well, I am mindful of time here I'm wondering if there's anything else you'd like to share in general, but also perhaps like what gives you hope right now about the evolution of consciousness or the healing of fragmentation and the remembering of wholeness? Is there any overarching hope that you have to share or any. Yeah. Any other wisdom you care to share with us?

Dr. Michael Ryoshin Sapiro (56:04)

Oh, that's so interesting. I don't know if I have lots of hopes. I do believe in the work and I believe I've seen tremendous change in humans that I work with, that are doing their work, that are committed to their well being. And I see tremendous growth in organizations I work with that are taking these kinds of practices into their organization. The concept of interdependence into organizations. But we're humans and for all of humanity, I, you know, we have, we're driven by greed, hatred, delusion. Those are core fundamental parts of the human psyche that seem to drive a lot of behavior. We see it in our culture right now. What I do have faith in is that those of us doing our work and those of us wanting to do work are going to be the pillars of what happens in our future. And so when we come to wake up our own love toward ourself and we, and we literally start pouring it outward naturally, hey, I, I recognize I need to take care of this better naturally. Want to help do that with other people. That's the antidote. That's the antidote to a lot of what we're seeing in our social media and in the politics, which is so hurtful and it feels, it's distasteful, it's, it's toxic, it hurts. But when we love and care for ourselves and then we naturally start doing that for others, that's the met. We're bringing medicine to the world that is hurting. The world is broken. So I do have faith that everyone who comes to my office that does their work, all the organizations I work with, that is the platform for extending peace and healing outward as much as we can. With the reality of those demons of hatred, greed and ignorance surfacing. We're, we're meeting it, we're holding it, we're loving it. I'm not, I'm not combating politics. I don't talk poorly about it. I don't add to it. I just show up and do my work. So that's what I'm asking of people. That's what I'm teaching and what I'm bringing myself to.

Leanne Whitney (58:31)

Right, you walk your talk that. Yes, yes, try. Absolutely. If we want a world of loving kindness and compassion. We have to be it and emanate it and have a lived experience of it inside if we want to interdependently continue to flow it, you know, flow outward and therefore experience that in our communities.

Dr. Michael Ryoshin Sapiro (59:04)

Yeah. So for me, no matter the politics, no matter who's in the mayor's seat or the governor's seat, my job is the same. I show up to my community. I say, how can I help you? What can I do? What can I do for you? No matter who's in charge of our governments, I can go to myself and go, mikey, what do you need those things? I'm not putting my attention and effort into divisive stuff out there because it's a distraction to the work, which is, what do you need today? What does my neighbor need today? What do my police officers need today? Day to feel safer, more at peace in themselves, so they're treating community better. You know what? That I feel is my job, regardless of circumstances. How am I showing up to take care of myself and then my neighbors and my community, my state and my country and my world? And it doesn't matter the. The context, and it matters how I.

Leanne Whitney (59:58)

Show up in the context and would balance. Balance or wholeness. Coherence. That's the term I don't even think we've weaved in here yet, but I know you use in your book, and I think it's such a beautiful term. Any of those words resonate or anything else to riff off of that. Ideas of wholeness or coherence.

Dr. Michael Ryoshin Sapiro (60:22)

It's really interesting. I don't think I'm doing this to balance the world. I think I'm doing it out of the wholeness, to. To. To the wholeness. When my teacher and I left a retreat, we were so deep into quietude and we just saw each other and eye contact, and it was just like, oh, love. Meeting love. There was just this innate meeting the innate beyond. Richard and Michael at the time. I'm not doing this to balance hatred in the world. I'm doing it to bring wholeness to the world. I'm bringing wholeness to the world, not to mitigate the imbalance. It's because wholeness is what keep. I don't know how to explain this. This is a question. I've never really been asked that quite that way. I'm not trying to restore or balance anything. I'm not doing it for that reason. I'm bringing love because love is what I'm bringing.

Leanne Whitney (61:19)

I love that. But would we say one has to be balanced in some way in order to do this work. Like it's, it's again like getting on your yoga mat, right? Like in, out, up, down, right, left.

Dr. Michael Ryoshin Sapiro (61:36)

That core balance be the whole incorporates all those sides. That's what I think I'm saying. I want to do practices that bring wholeness because in wholeness you have the sides, front, back, left, up, down, in, out. It's already there. I want to practice wholeness and I want to bring people to wholeness because then they, all their fragmented parts are already included. All the directions are already included. That's what I was saying. That's. I didn't know I was saying that until I just said it. That in a practice of wholeness, nothing's excluded ever and everything's included.

Leanne Whitney (62:21)

Correct, correct. And it could just be semantics here for sure. Because just like, you know, right hemisphere, left hemisphere, I, I do think that balance is an important part. Or if you see the yin Yang symbol, you know that balance might not be your focus. I totally honor and appreciate what you're saying. Your focus is the wholeness. Yeah, yeah. But you know, is balance something that is like, you're saying it's inherent.

Dr. Michael Ryoshin Sapiro (62:52)

For sure, for sure. And I think yeah, because that's the relative to the absolute. So my wholeness is the abs. In non dual terms or yogic terms, we say relative and absolute. And what you're saying is, hey, there's the. We still need to do the pieces themselves. I love the yin yang for that sake. So yes, of course we want to have daily practices that do put us into balance. And when people are. I'll give an example. When people are trying to drink less. It's the actual piece that I work with them is, can you. What's just enough. What would be just enough of a drink of alcohol where you're just getting. Are you going for a buzz? What are you going for? Are you going to be drunk? Are you going to be incoherent? Do you need the buzz? I do want to help people have balance, which is a spectrum. There's like, don't over drink and don't if you're not going to quit. So let's just have a little balance of that. What would just enough be? And that brings it in from like, oh, I'm drunk all the time to complete abstinence, to like, what would balance look like here?

Leanne Whitney (64:00)

What I'm hearing you say is the balance is in the techniques or the tools or the practices. Maybe the wholeness is, is more of your vision, but a Lot of, again, inside the window of tolerance. We don't want to bank up on rigidity or chaos. We want to make sure in order to have that flow of integration, it's balance happens to be a important feature. And what I'm hearing you say it's in the techniques and the tools.

Dr. Michael Ryoshin Sapiro (64:26)

Yes. In the way we show up to our life and where we're not rigid and we're not chaos. I love Dan. That's Dan too. I think he has those two, two sides. I love that. I use that also. Like we don't want to go to those extremes of chaos and rigidity. And so balance is a little bit more in here where you have flexibility and spontaneity play in some wildness, but you also have some restraint. You also have some mindfulness and intentionality. So you have some wildness. One of the books I want to write is called Wise Wild Abandon. And it's literally about that. How do you still allow the primal to be to manifest in your life? How do you still allow yourself to be wild, but do it wisely, with some restraint, but still keeping spontaneity and flexibility? So, yes, that is the balance that I agree in wholeheartedly in practice and want clients to know. You can still be some wild version of yourself, but in a way that's not hurting and it's still wise. So that's the way I work with balance.

Leanne Whitney (65:29)

Well, thank you so much, Mike, for everything that you've offered to us today. Is there anything else that's coming up for you that you would like to share?

Dr. Michael Ryoshin Sapiro (65:39)

One, I think I got tripped up, which is awesome. And I appreciate your in depthful work with me. And just like this conversation, I'm only an expert in some things in life. The rest I'm just a dog with a dude and learning and trip over my own stuff too. So I really appreciated just being real together. That's a beautiful way of having an interview. I know we're talking about my work in my book, but really this is life. We're talking about life and how do we do it? Well, so thank you for that. Something else I always like to leave with and just talking to the listeners that I think you as listeners are important enough to do whatever work is calling to you, you're. You're valuable and you're worthwhile and put effort in because you'll, you'll get so much out of the effort you're putting into your own well being more than you can imagine and more than you would ever have hoped for. The effort you put in is like tending a garden. You'll get so such a beautiful version of yourself just with some effort so you're worthwhile and definitely put time and energy into yourself. That's my message to most folks.

Leanne Whitney (66:51)

Rich insight, rich insight and so heartwarming. Mike, I appreciate you deeply. I think your book is fantastic and yeah, your your body of work speaks for itself. So thank you so much for joining me here today. And for those of you watching and listening, thank you for being with us. You're the reason that we're here in community exploring our common unity.

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