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Mental health is treated just like general health. You take medication to lower the symptoms versus address the root cause often.
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Currently, how we're treating mental health is like a lifelong commitment to pharmaceuticals. So there's not really necessarily like a treatment and maybe they've gotten some relief, but there's still something feels off. But once you go into psilocybin and once you have that experience, that deep inner work experience within yourself, it can shift and change everything.
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Tara Portelli is a transformational healer, former paramedic, and the visionary founder of Arcadia Healing Sanctum. Specializing in psilocybin therapy within intimate retreat settings. She guides individuals through profound mental and spiritual healing, blending clinical knowledge with intuitive care. Someone's listening. They want to experience it. Is there something they can do now at home?
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Yeah. So you just go through like.
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It spans the globe like a super high cold Internet. Elvis Presley. Today, Apple is going to reinvent Lefon. It's not over until I win. The Living youg Legacy podcast.
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For those who live to leave a legacy that's extraordinary.
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A
The impossible has been. Oh, that is sensational. Jordan Open Chicago with the lead Usain Paul is the fastest man on the planet. You can live your dream foreign. Welcome back to another episode of Legacy Makers. Sat here with Tara today and she focuses on changing your life in less than seven days. It's very simple. People come to her with depression, anxiety, feeling lost, not knowing what's their future. And in less than seven days, they fly into this tropical location, places like Mexico, and leave with a whole new outlook on life. And it's pretty fascinating. The transformation story she has. So excited to dive in. She's building a legacy, changing lives, which is what this is all about. Welcome to the show.
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B
Thank you for having me, Ludy.
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A
Of course. So. So seven days, it's really cool. You know, some people suffer with these traumas for years, right? Anxiety, depression. You know, people are lost for 5, 10, 15 years saying, what am I doing with my life? And they show up seven days later, they. They're fixed. Right. It reinvented. So can you tell us how that works and how you got into this?
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B
Yeah. So a lot of times with my retreats, people will come who are struggling with ptsd, anxiety and depression, and they are usually like, just feeling lost. Maybe they're treatment resistant for medication, pharmaceuticals, or they've tried everything and now they're going into alternative methods. So when they come, we do a lot of deep work. So first of all, prepare people properly so they're ready to come to retreat. So usually that's about a five week process. And then when they come into the retreat, they're basically going really deep into your own stuff. And we do that through shadow work, meditation. We use sound healing and psilocybin therapy, as well as integration. So it's this synergy of modalities that seem to work really well together that are helping people to get to the core of their, their stuff that's holding them back from being the best and most authentic version of themselves.
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A
Got it. And what, what is, you know, what got you into all this? Right? Like, when did you say, I'm gonna start these retreats in Mexico, fly a bunch of people in and change their life?
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B
I have my own transformational experience with psilocybin therapy. I was a paramedic for nine years. I struggled with mental health. I was ptsd, anxiety and depression. I found a path to end up on a beach in Mexico and literally met this mushroom healer there on the beach. And I had this experience and it just helped me to understand myself on a different level that I than I would have without trying. Psilocybin also helped me to get really clear on like, where am I going? Why am I doing the things I'm doing? What's holding me back from being my biggest and best version of me? And so I was just like, I was already kind of starting on a path with working with an addictions mental health facility. And I was like, this is what people need. I also have family with struggles as well. So I just really have always connected deeply with, with mental health, but always looking for a solution because currently how we're treating mental health is like a lifelong commitment to pharmaceuticals. So there's not really necessarily like a treatment, but this can be for certain mental health issues.
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A
Yeah, well, mental health is treated just like general health, where you take medication to lower the symptoms versus address the root cause often. Right. You have bad blood pressure. Well, medication or help lower it versus getting, you know, helping you lose weight or whatever is needed to, to fix it. And I think mental health sadly much the same. So, you know, I've seen in the last 10 years a lot more of this, what I would call alternative medicine and alternative routes pop up. Right. It's becoming very popular, mainstream, more. So if someone doesn't understand it. Can you explain a little how it works?
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B
Yeah, absolutely. So psilocybin works in the brain much like an antidepressant. So so it's working on the same receptors in the brain. What it's doing is actually causing the brain to break out of its regular pattern and then create new synapses, which is neuroplasticity. So it's creating these new neural pathways in the brain. So when we do this, we interrupt the way that we already think and experience life, and we're changing that and creating a new way of. Of experiencing things. It also helps to bring emotions to the surface. So a lot of us are suppressing all of our grief, and, you know, because as we go through life, things happen, and it helps to bring it to the surface so that you can actually release it, so then you're not carrying this big backpack of emotions on your back anymore. And so when we. When you have these experiences, it can be so profound. They say it's the equivalent of 20 years of therapy.
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A
Okay.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And what. You know, let's talk about a couple of examples. Client shows up. You don't have to obviously, give their real name, but let's say Jeff. Right? Tell me about Jeff. What. What's he suffered with? Why? And then how. How is he after the retreat? And then a year later or two years later.
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B
Yeah, so Jeff has ptsd. He comes. He's a former police officer, and he was trying everything. Nothing worked for him. Came to retreat as a last resort. And then, without even having a psychedelic experience, shifts and changes his relationship with himself and the world around him. And all of the symptoms that he was experiencing from PTSD no longer exist anymore. It's like now he understands why things affected him the way they did. It's almost like he has this bird's eye view of his life and understanding what happened. And so now when Jeff leaves retreat, he goes home, back to his regular life. With the support of integration, he can now function differently in his life. His relationships start to change. His path forward, maybe shifts and changes in a more alignment with himself. Four years later, he's still thriving because the way that psilocybin works, it's like peeling back the layers of an onion. So you've dealt with the things that you experienced in psilocybin therapy, and then now you're this version of you. If you integrate properly, it's kind of.
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A
Like, you know, you. Reminds me, I have a bunch of real estate, and one of my properties when I was younger had mold issues because of the outside wall. And you keep trying to fix it, and it just grows back, and eventually you have to go screw it, you know, rip it out to the brick and redo it. All right? And I think that's the difference with some treatments and therapies than Others, a lot of them are doing what you know, I was doing originally, which is just repaint it or you know, replaster maybe. And then it. But it keeps eventually coming back to the surface. Right. And then like you're saying, if you actually address the problem, that's when it becomes more long term and everlasting. So if someone's listening to this, what are they, what are they probably going through right now? What are the regular options that they're probably experiencing or going through before they come to you? I imagine like you said, a lot of people have tried everything and then they come to you.
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B
Yeah. So a lot of times people have tried like pharmaceuticals therapy, maybe some of these other alternatives like EDMR therapy, and maybe they've gotten some relief, but there's still something feels off, they just still feel like something's missing. Also, sometimes people will go through their whole life, they check off all the boxes like, I've done this, I've done this. All the things I'm supposed to do to make me feel good inside, make me feel excited about life and happy and they just can't seem to accomplish that. But once you go into psilocybin and once you have that experience, that deep inner work within yourself, it can shift and change everything.
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A
And what's the people wondering, what's the safety aspect like?
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B
Yeah, I mean as long as you're screened properly. So obviously there's going to be contraindications. Like most things, psilocybin should be used in a way that is with a guide that can first of all decide if you're right, fit for the experience and also to see what medications you might be currently on and if there's going to be interactions with them and then from there you're, you just come into the experience and.
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A
Yeah, and what about. I don't want to glance over it. There's several other techniques used too, not just that. Right. Do you want to just talk about the sound, heal, healing and all the other bits?
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B
Absolutely, yeah. So shadow work, for example, is just a way to find deep acceptance of self because we all have aspects of ourselves that we don't want people to see. And when we can actually go into those parts of ourselves and accept them and see the gifts that they bring us and our wins, then we can fully accept and love ourselves. So a lot of the work we do is around that, but it also complement psilocybin because psilocybin will take you into your shadow sometimes and then sound, healing, vibration.
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A
So let's talk about the shadow work first. That's maybe an easier one for people to understand. Someone's listening. They want to experience it. Is there something they can do now at home to start? Like, is there an exercise or anything to kind of sample how that would go? Or is it something that they have to fly out and really do properly?
- [11:05]
B
I offer some shadow work meditations. So you can just do them at home and you can start.
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A
And that's just recorded listening along, or is it live or.
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Yep, recorded listening along. Yeah.
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A
And that just. You just kind of speak them through it, and then they just.
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B
Yeah, visualize. Yeah. So you just go through, like, for example, you might go into part of yourself where you were a manipulator in your life, you know, so you see this aspect of yourself and you're like, okay, well, where did being manipulative actually serve me? So there's like, that piece, and we can do that through a guided meditation.
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Oh, nice. And then next one.
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What's sound healing?
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A
Sound healing, sure.
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B
So sound healing works with your own energetic body, and you can open up different chakras through sound. So when we. Before we go into ceremony, we do a sound healing so that we can help allow you to be open to receive the experience. Because sometimes when people say, for example, you come from New York, you drop in, you just like, I'm just gonna do this thing, like, for one day. Like, it's not like that. It's actually like, you have to be prepared energetically.
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A
And is there a third one that you use a lot?
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B
A third modality? Yeah. So the sweat lodge. So there's a sweat lodge. So you go into this sweat lodge with an indigenous. It's an indigenous ceremony. So just helping us to reconnect to the wisdom of the indigenous. And in a weird way, that really does help you to feel fearless, because it can be such a challenging experience to be in a sweat lodge. It's like, you come out of that, you're like, okay, like, I can do psilocybin. That's no problem. You know, like, I'm not afraid of my shadow. I just sat in a sweat lodge for two hours in the dark, you know?
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A
Yeah. And you have, you know, you mentioned New York is a lot of your clientele, obviously past traumas and stuff, maybe police, military. But you have a lot of CEOs, entrepreneurs, more a type people coming in as well.
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B
Yeah, I do. I work with a lot of people who, you know, have their life together, but there's still something feels like it's missing. So it's those people that check all the boxes. They've done all the things like, you know, marriage, kids. I'm the CEO of the company. I'm doing all these things, but they're still like feeling really unhappy. And so those are the people that I would work with outside of, you know, ptsd, depression, anxiety, and.
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A
Let's talk about your story a little more. How did you know? Just the next couple of minutes. What's the backstory? I know you'll talk more about it in the full episode, but what got you into all this?
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B
So after my experience with as a paramedic and I had my own mental health struggles, I watched my family struggle with mental health and seeing that there was really no solution, it's just treatments of the symptoms. I and had my own experience. I was like, this is something that I feel like I really want to explore a little bit deeper. And so I ended up packing up my whole life after having my first experience of psilocybin, realizing that this was my path I wanted to follow. And I went west because I knew everything is more accepted out in the west.
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A
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think Austin as well. Like a lot of what you mentioned, half my friends in Austin, you know, do it all the time.
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B
Yeah, that. Well, I actually didn't even know that, so that's news to me. But yeah, so went to the west coast, aligned myself with an organization that was working on the legal path, trying to get legal access for terminal cancer patients. So we were working with them and then I was like, I don't really feel like I. I really connect with the clinical way of using the medicine. And that's when I took it out to Mexico.
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A
Great. Okay. And let's talk a little more about you, you know, your story in your episode, people watching this maybe before, what are they going to get from your entire episode, what are they going to learn and story wise, et cetera.
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B
So I came from an upbringing of domestic violence, abuse, and mental health. And I didn't have a strong foundation as a child. We didn't have a lot of money growing up, and it was always a struggle. So I kind of came from this lack mentality that and also like not loving myself. And I went through a relationship. Career started at 13 and it was just failed relationship after fail relationship because I was the healer trying to help people and always looking for love outside of myself. And so, you know, so that is kind of my backstory. And then I end up in a car accident that almost took my life, which was the catalyst to my career as a paramedic because the paramedic saved my life. So I ended up in nine years as a paramedic. And I talk all about that experience, good and bad, and then from there my path into mental health and how I really tried to save, like my family through my work in a way, because I couldn't save them. So I wanted to, you know, to help people as best as I could with struggling with mental health.
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A
Yeah, I mean, common trend for a lot of people in legacy makers is, you know, they. They've come to something because they experienced it. Right. They saw the impact it had on them or the pain they were in and then transitioned. So last couple of questions as we wrap. What what does a legacy mean to you and what do you want to be known for?
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B
I think a legacy is something that you want to create that maybe you feel the need for change. So for me, I want to leave a legacy, maybe changing the way that we deal with mental health. Maybe there is an option that is a symptom or is a root cause change as opposed to symptom relief. And to really help people to trust that psychedelics are actually ancient medicine, that they've been around way longer than we've even existed. They are working with our body's chemistry because they are nature's medicine. And if we can shift our perspective and perception on how they are used and what they can be used for, then I'm hopeful that this will shift mental health for the greater.
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A
Yeah, I think it's going to change a lot over the next 10 years. 10, 20 years, right? It's already changed. I mean, in the last 10. So last question, someone maybe wants to come on and experience it virtually. Right. Do at least some of the meditations or something or look into a retreat and maybe attend or ask you questions. How do they find you?
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So you can find me on I Am Tara Portelli is my Instagram handle or you can access me on my own personal website, tarapartelli.com and there you can sample some of my meditations and see some of my courses that I'll be offering.
- [17:45]
A
Love it. Well, there you go, guys. Another episode in the wraps. Someone here obviously helping change lives and work through a lot of mental problems that people suffer. Right. And it's great for all the work you're doing. So go check her out. Hopefully you can get to a retreat one day if you really need it, or at least online. And of course check out the full episode to hear a story. I'll see you soon as always keep changing lives and building a legacy.