Transcript of Episode #156:  Featuring Dr. Stefanie Kleine!  From Human Doing to Human Being: A New Approach to Wellness New

Your biology may not be the same in your 40s as it was in your 20s, but your standards and goals can be even bigger. We're at a time where we have more tools and methods to not just live longer, but also healthier with better results as we age. Aging is no longer viewed as a decline. It's about optimization and time efficiency. Training smarter and more efficient is a new standard, and we now know how to get more from the workouts we are already doing. Now chances are your supplement stack is missing a much healthier foundation, so enhance it with Mitopure, a targeted supplement that revitalizes your mitochondria, the powerhouse of your cells. Mitochondria are crucial to overall health, not just energy production. Protein builds muscle, creatine supports power. Mitopure helps support the cellular engines that power both. When your cells thrive, everything follows. So claim your free aging muscle protocol guide and free sample of Mitopure gummies from Timeline at timeline.com/dylan. It's the science-backed breakdown of exactly what's happening to your muscles as you age and how to fight back. All right everybody, welcome back to the Dylan Gemelli Podcast. I, my guest today and I have had some tremendous conversations.

She's blessed me with her book early and just different words of encouragement when needed, and she is just a gem. And I can't wait to talk to you about her today, about her book, about everything she's got going on. She and I relate quite well, and we'll get into that, but she is a doctor of psychology. She's a psycho-spiritual coach. She's got 23 long years of experience and she's the author of 3 books, but one we're going to talk about today, which is her newest release, which is the one I've been looking into. And it's called Be the Work, and that is the shift from human doing to human being. As she's been featured in Time Magazine, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, and she works with executives, physicians, athletes, and high performers on the pattern underneath the drive. And she's the co-founder of the Sacred House of Eden, which is one of the top-rated psychedelic retreat centers in America. So my friends, I don't have enough accolades to give her, but I can't wait to talk to you today about her. And that is Dr. Stephanie Klein.

Wow. Thank you, Dylan. That was beautiful. And I felt every, every word of that. And it's been, it's been such a beautiful surprise to connect with you in the ways that we have. Like, there's so much overlap and I can also feel like your pure intention in, in the work that you're doing. And as a person who has pure intention, I really recognize it and respect it in you. And thank you for having me.

Absolutely. I love your work. I love the things you talk about and they really, like I said, it resonates with me because I find that so many of the things that you're trying to address and help people on all fall into my bucket of struggles. And, you know, I, I think that likewise with you that you've had to overcome. So I'd really like to get into that first because there's a lot of what you do, but I think this book, from what I've gathered so far talking to you, really ties into you, like it's your baby and who you are. So let's talk about the premise first before we dig into the, I don't know, psychoanalysis of things that we're gonna get into a little bit.

Yeah. The premise, the premise of the book.

Yeah.

Yeah. So you can see from here that I took do the work and crossed it out, right? Because do the work is the most common phraseology that we hear in the wellness space, right? Do the work, do the work. And I can tell you after over 2 decades of working with people, mostly high performers, that the transformation happens on the being level, not the doing level. And that's not to say that we stop doing, but the work where I live and where I help people is understanding who are you being as you do any of it. Because we can do the same protocols, we can do the same breathwork, the same cold plunges, the same supplements, the same workouts, the same optimization. But we can do it from very different places. And so what I have found, 'cause I've worked with, like you said when you introduced me, like I've worked with C-suite execs, founders, top, top, like pro athletes and people who have, you know, optimized the heck out of their life, right? Out of everything from like their calendar, their sleep, their nutrition, their wellness protocols, their productivity in, in work. And a lot of the times, not always, A lot of the times underneath that drive, there is a wound.

And that wound oftentimes sounds something like, I'm not enough as I am. And which is tethered to like a self-worth thing. And so my work is to help people. The book is about helping people understand the being underneath their doing. And if we can work on, I work on, people say I work on like the underneath the underneath. So we can get to who are you being underneath all that you're doing? And if you are being driven by a wound, like I am not enough, or I need this specific result, this specific outcome, I need to execute exactly this way, otherwise I have failed, or otherwise I am not worthy, then I help people on that level heal that. So that we, not so that we stop doing the practices. All right, I'm a big fan. I was an Olympic-trained athlete. I'm a big fan of like discipline and, you know, showing up and doing what is yours to do. But there's a different way to do it that actually lets it be fulfilling. And so my work helps people not stop doing the things necessarily, but to lose the desperation that's often underneath the doing.

Do you find— and, and I will correlate this to some of the things that I found within myself— that sometimes we get so caught up in doing that we forget to take the time to rest and recover, and that there's a lot of either burnout or regression in what we're trying to do because we forget that the all— like, all gas, no brakes mentality sounds great and it sounds cool when you tell people, but in reality it really lowers productivity and honestly not just physical health but mental health.

1,000%. That a lot of the people that I work with usually end up coming to me because they've reached burnout, right? Or they're on the brink of it. I'm not usually people's first stop, right? I usually work with people who have done some sort of inner work, some sort of like have some sort of wellness vocabulary or fluency. And oftentimes their burnout is not just at work, but it's around their wellness practices, right? Because we have like, we have taken this whole overperforming, overdoing, overoptimizing that we we might often think of only happening in the workplace, but we've now installed that internally, and a lot of people are doing that. They've turned their wellness into another project, right? And so I actually, one of the core distinctions in my book is that I look at two different engines that can drive high performance, and they can look identical from the outside. So one is grasping and the other is generative. So grasping is chasing the next thing in order to prove you are enough. Grasping is desperate. It's exhausting. And it's never satisfied because no external accomplishment can fill an internal absence, right? That's why when you can achieve the thing and you feel good, you, you, there's a high from that that's very temporary and fleeting.

And then that internal absence comes back and then you go chase the next one. And that's what we call grasping. Okay. Alternatively, there's generative drive, which is where you are creating, you're generating from a place of already knowing you inherently are enough. Mm-hmm. So you still build, you still lead, you still optimize, but the energy is different. It's clean fuel and it's sustainable. It doesn't deplete you. So that is one of the ways. What are the key ways to stave off things like burnout?

Do you think that when people go so hard, because I, I tried to figure out for so many years, what is it? And it was like, I have to prove this to, like, I always have to prove this point to somebody else. And then it became, I don't care about what anybody else is thinking, but why am I still going hard? And it's like, well, I have to prove it to myself and it's like this prove it, prove it, prove it, prove it. How do you overcome that? And is that a reality or is that just me? That's prove it mode.

My whole book is prove it mode, Dylan. I am like, I, my chapter 1 of my book is called Exhibit A where I use my, I think you know this, I use my own life as the example of being like a world-class doer who neglected her being for decades because I was running on that. Like I had to prove, I had to prove, I had to prove. And at some point it can transition from proving to other people to proving to ourself, but it's still coming from that same place, right? And you are not alone in that at all. Okay. And I think your question— at all, at all. Like, like, I— and I'm not alone in that. I mean, I've worked with hundreds and hundreds of high performers at this point who have largely been optimizing from grasping. And the tricky thing, right, and I think you'll really relate to this, is that we can think that we're being disciplined, right? And that might be true, but there's often something underneath that that is quietly asking to be met. But what happens is we hover above that and we stay in the optimizing, in the doing, in the achieving.

And so the reason that that never actually gets us to the arrival that we think we're chasing is because we're hovering above the very thing that actually needs to be tended to. And I know that because I did it for most of my life. But here's, here's one thing I do want to say also, because I know for your listeners in particular, right? So, and it really matters for anybody that's like investing in like optimization protocols. A nervous system that is chronically grasping in that grasping state does not receive any of the biohacking protocols as fully as a nervous system in a generative state. So when you shift into generative, your nervous system actually opens to receive everything that you're already doing. Mm-hmm.

One of the things that I have learned recently which I, I'm, I'm not upset, but I was seriously lacking the neuro side and the nervous system side. Most of my life and study and understanding was always, I have to figure this out, how I can eat better and how I can train better, and that's gonna fix everything. And in reality, I can do all of that and it's not gonna matter if the nervous system's off, if the nervous system is stuck in fight or flight, or you have these different problems mentally. And I, when I say mental problems, I mean You, you lose focus because you're so worried about everybody else or being on the go and never stopping and thinking if you take a break that you're gonna fail. And you, that's when you see inflammation. That's when you see like a lower immunity, gut problems, everything. It, it all correlates. How do you get somebody to shut that down or to realize that they're actually degrading themselves and they're lowering their quality of life? What, from your perspective, what are some of the ways that you talk to somebody like me that gets 'em to chill, chill out and like start to realize, man, you're, you're going too hard and it's overdrive.

It doesn't work forever.

Yeah. So there's, there's a lot of different ways to approach that. And I appreciate the question because it's that, because I work with people exactly like that's the exact population I work with. Right. And so there's a lot of different ways, as you mentioned, like I, I do, I, I'm the co-founder of like one of the top-rated psychedelic retreats in America. And so some people come to me wanting to work with plant medicine and the other people come purely for coaching without medicine. And, and what I work, how That's why work works on both of those levels. Okay. Largely, like, I'll end up combining the two, but even the people that don't work with psychedelics, like, there's deep transformation that happens. But your question is like, how do you get someone who's like that to kind of stop, right? Stop. Just even just stop. Because I, I can tell you that I ran, I like outran myself for years until I finally, like, I call it hitting the wall. You can't, you can't do it anymore. And it's like, okay, so, so hopefully people can get, you know, arrive at a place where they work with someone, you know, doing the kind of work that I do before they hit the wall.

But a lot of times it ends up being, you know, where people hit the wall. But how do I help people do that? First thing is you have to have some degree of desire and awareness that this is happening. Okay. And your body knows that. And if you're a person who's tracking things like, you know, if you're, if you're tracking your. Your nervous system, right? It like with different tools and apparatus and stuff, there's ways to tell, right? Like, like for example, if you track your HRV, this, the grasping energy I'm talking about will show up in the data over time because chronic grasping keeps your baseline HRV suppressed even on rest days because your sympathetic system never fully powers down. Mm-hmm. Right? Because you're running a low-grade threat state even when you think you're calm. So that shift in degenerative shows up as better HRV recovery between activities or higher morning readiness scores, right? And a deeper parasympathetic dip during sleep. So same protocols, same lifestyle, but different underlying nervous system state. And the data like tells a completely different story in as short as a few weeks. So that's one way that people can tell, right?

Like scientifically, like, you know, objectively with numbers, right? Measurements. But also people can feel like one of the early chapters of my book talks about, you know, I could, I have ticked off all the boxes, I've done all the things and, and it, and I've built this life, but it doesn't feel that I, the way that I thought it would, right? They're like, is this it? That to me is a person who's arrived at this place where it's like, okay, there's gotta be more to this than, than what I've been doing. And so how I help people is just the recognition of that and the permission that that it is okay to stop. Not forever, not irresponsibly, but just long enough to stop abandoning yourself, right? Just to take a couple seconds to come back into your own body, into your own being. We have to create some pause. Like, one, one of the primary things I teach in the book, the framework I call the being pause, and it's based off of Viktor Frankl's quote of between every stimulus and response, there is a space. And in that space is where you can choose your response.

And that is what gives you your freedom. So I help people realize, okay, I can take the pause. I'm gonna be okay. And notice what comes up there. And most the time what comes up in that pause is the very thing they've been optimizing over or hovering above. And it's usually something in the spirit of a wound of not enough, and that gets us into the proving, which just keeps going and going, and the cycle repeats. So there's a lot of work that I do with people, but it's— I go deep, you know. I, I, um, I'm known for identifying the pattern in the chaos and getting there very quickly with people and helping tend to them on the level that most therapists, psychologists, and coaches don't ever really get to.

Okay. I, I wanna ask this, and I, and I, I don't like to do generalized stuff, but I think that in, in this circumstance, there'll be certain characteristics that are, that are similar for a lot, I think. And I could be wrong. You tell me. I'm making an assumption here just based on what I've observed. So I'm looking at characteristics of people that just go way too hard, work too hard, like get consumed with everything, overtrain. I find that sometimes they're doing this to take their, their minds away from something else that, like a wound or something that's bothering them to, to consume this time or to prove something like we said. But I feel like it's a cover for something else and they sometimes don't even realize because it's something blocked away. And I think then once it's released, it allows you to calm the fuck down, you know, like a little bit, like to just to realize, okay, this is a problem that I didn't even know was there and I'm trying to run from it, hide from it, or block it. And this is, can it, because sometimes when people get in silence, things start to, to come up to fruition, like.

The, the voices or the memories or the instances and what they don't wanna slow down cuz they don't wanna think, they don't want to think about any of it. Is, is that true or is it, is it just for some?

I'm gonna say for the people that I've worked with, so, you know, over, you know, 23 years, so we're talking hundreds if not thousands of people at this point, that if you, you hit the nail on the head, like that's exactly right. That they're outrunning their own experience by keeping busy. Yeah. In a multitude of ways. Right? Because that's a way of ejecting out of what's actually alive in our system. And so if we keep running, running, running, running, we don't actually have to not just think, but feel, right? People are afraid to feel because we're not really taught what to do with that, right? We're, we're taught, do the work, do the work. But nobody really teaches us to take notice of who are we being as we're doing Any of it. And I will tell you, Dylan, I went to grad school for 13 years. That's a lot of time with professors. One professor, one, actually talked on the level that I'm talking about. 13 years of studying human behavior, but they don't teach you how to be with yourself. They might teach you, you know, different outcomes or different motivational theories or why people might do certain things, kind of.

But not the underneath and definitely not the underneath of that. And how to just, how do you, how do you meet yourself in the moments where you're ashamed? How do you sit with your pain? How do you tune into the wisdom of your body, right? People don't teach that, not just to the masses. They don't teach that even to the practitioners. This framework that I've been teaching now for 10 years didn't exist. I built it. I built this, like, because it didn't exist and nothing was working for me either, right? I'm not coaching from, like, the sidelines. I've been in the trenches. I've walked through fire, you know, and this is what has worked and saved myself. And I've watched it work for the last 10 years. My clients have proven this works. This works.

Do you find that a lot of people that are in that state, that overdrive state, that go, go, go and constant, do you find, because I'm, I'm thinking in terms of like blood panels and health-wise what we see from these type of people? Because to me, they're not the epitome of health. And that's why part of my struggles a long time were I can't get this, this right or this right. It's because of me. I can't get out of my own way. It's not that I'm not practicing healthy habits, eating or training, but it's like it's too much. Do you find that these people are like, for instance, you talked about HRV, have a worse HRV because they're, they're in that fight or flight mode? Do you find that they sleep less, they recover less, they look maybe their skin's not as good, like do you start to see aging and even their attitudes, less tolerance, maybe more quick to kind of be snappy and snippy and things like that? Are those kind of similar attributes you see?

Absolutely. Yes. So we're talking some physiological and then also psychological presentations. So yes, yes, absolutely. Like a lot of people that come to me struggle with sleep. Like some people haven't had great sleep in years or decades, right? So sleep's a big tell. They don't know how to just unplug. Even if they're on vacation, they're still working, right? There's just this fear that if I unplug even for a day, that like the world is going to end, right? Which is a story we keep telling ourselves. It's a story. It's a belief. And all a belief is, is something you've told yourself enough times that you believe it. And I tell my clients all the time, if you look at the middle of the word believe, L-I-E. Okay. The lead has L-I-E in it. Check your beliefs for lies. Check your beliefs for lies. Okay.

That's a good one.

So yes, sleep. Yes. Not being able to unplug even in times that you've scheduled to unplug, like vacations. Absolutely. Yes. Skin. Yes. Cortisol levels. And then yes, attitude. If you are, it's like you're constant. It's like your nerves are like fried all the time. You're edgy, you're impatient, you're irritable. You're not usually really listening because is slowing down long enough to actually listen feels like you're gonna fall behind. And then falling behind equals failure, right? These are all the stories that we tell ourselves. And so that impacts not just our own health, but also our relationships, right? The way that we show up with the people we work with, with the way we show up with our children, the way we show up with our partners, our friends, right? It's, it's, it's cumulative. The impact is everywhere.

Do you feel like I would term it a mental prison? Do you feel like that? Something like that where you're just confined, like you can't escape it and it's like you're locked in and you can't unlock it. And I've been there for so long and that, you know, I had to keep saying this, I have time, it's okay. And like through breathwork and through all of this to really get myself to stop feeling like I had to be at the mercy and will of everybody else at all time. And I feel like I've become married to the work and to the life and everything. And I was like, okay, I'm done. That's it. I'm done. I don't, I don't want to do this anymore because I'm, I'm not happy. And then sure enough, there's a lot of joy in letting go of a lot of things that you think are actually making you go.

Yep. Minimize, minimize, minimize, minimize, minimize. I think it was like Henry David Thoreau that said that, or simplify, simplify, simplify. That was it. Yeah. And yes, you're okay. Again, you're not alone. I would tell you that like every single high performer that I work with is running the same pattern, you know, they're, and then they, they're, and then they're depleted. But, and a lot of times it comes from that fear, like you said, of stopping. But the thing is, you're still stopping. You're just calling it burnout. Yeah. Right. Or you get so depleted that you get sick. So then you're down for the count anyway. So the work that I, one of the things that I teach in the book is the being pause, which takes like 5 seconds. So it's basically putting that stopping or that pause, it's front-loading it before your actions instead of the accumulative effect of never stopping equating to absolute burnout, shutdown, and illness.

I always say you can't outwork a bad diet, but you know what I realized too is you can't work out all of what we're talking about, all the stress. And here's what I wonder when we have these high performers that they start to maybe understand what they're doing wrong, do you find the ones that you're able to get through to, do they become more productive? Do they have more longevity? What really happens when they release and let go?

That's what you had said a few minutes ago that I really wanted to touch on. You talked about how your own productivity increased.

Yes.

When you let yourself have a little bit more, I don't know, rest or downtime and certainly some more sleep. Yeah, it's so true. So that goes back to that grasping and generative drive that I was talking about. Grasping is not sustainable. It never gets you where you think you're going. So it absolutely equates to things like burnout. Now, generative is sustainable, and because you don't lose the drive, you, like I said, you lose the desperation, which then allows for what you're doing to actually be fulfilling because you stop using what you're doing in order to prove something, you do it from a place of already being enough and you move from that place. And so then what comes back, like what you actually then receive as a result of what you're doing actually lands in the system. Because if you're doing it from a grasping place, it's almost the analogy I use is like putting coins into a piggy bank with a hole in the bottom. It doesn't stick. It just falls right through and it never fills up. It's like this endless abyss that we're just putting all of this energy into, but nothing really lands.

And so then we wonder why we're exhausted or why we built, you know, what we thought we wanted, but we don't feel the way that we thought that we would.

Yeah, 100%. It's hard when you train yourself for so long to be a certain way to then just turn it off because in, in my head, especially I'm like, man, if I don't do this, then somebody else is going to get this, or something else is going to be better than I could have done it, or I'm going to miss out on this or that. And then I started to realize, man, that is just nonsense, and I am trying to force something that may not even be meant to be. And I think that that's when all of the mistakes start to happen and people kind of fall into that line of regret. So let me ask you this then. We didn't really get into anything on the psychedelic side, and, and I don't necessarily want to go there unless it falls into how we fix this problem. Where do those medications come in? I like to do stuff as much as I can without supplements, without medications, but sometimes in all aspects we have to turn that route. When does it get to the point where you go that direction? And if you do go that direction, can you explain?

Because one of the things that is very confusing when it comes to something like psychedelics is how it works. How does it actually fix an addiction? Because an addiction doesn't have to just be alcohol or drugs, an addiction like iPad addiction to work and working out and training. How, how does that actually help?

Yeah. Before we go to the psychedelic, which I wasn't sure if you wanted to talk about it or not, I'm happy to. I've been working, I've been a coach for 23 years. I've been working with psychedelics the last, like almost 10. But before we go there, there's just one thing I wanna say because you've said it many times about you recognizing yourself in this and kind of like a part of you kind of wondering if It's just you, or if this is, you know, if I see this a lot and what I want you to know is that it's literally the central framework of my book because our entire culture, Dylan, teaches us the formula for a good life is do, have, be. Do enough, then you'll have enough, and then you'll finally be enough, right? So do the degree, do the career, do the marriage, do the house, do the biohacks, do the therapy, do the certifications, and then someday When all the doing hasn't produced enough having, you'll arrive at being okay with yourself. But that day never comes because do, have, be is a formula that's built for a machine, not for a human.

It treats you like you're a project to be optimized rather than a life to be lived. So the inversion I teach is flipping the whole paradigm. Be, do, have. Start with being. Let your doing come from that ground, and the having takes care of itself. So same doing a lot of the times, but a different engine.

I love that. Now that makes so much more sense, and I— that's like complete reverse order, right?

Yes, I flipped the whole paradigm. So I was just in Time Magazine like some 2 weeks ago, and they basically said that I wrote The book the wellness industry wished was never written, which to my mind is the greatest compliment ever because I really have flipped the paradigm because I, I lived backward my whole life, right? Until I didn't. Mm-hmm. You know, but that's what we're trained. That's the conditioning, that's the programming, but it doesn't work. So we wanna start from being, starting from the place of knowing we're already enough. We do from there, the haves take care of themselves because they're no longer the ways that we prove our worth. And people go, okay, well, how do you just start from, you know, being enough? Like, what if I don't feel that way? And that's the work I do. And so, and so that kind of can segue into the psychedelics, but it doesn't require psychedelics. Like, I've been doing this work for many years and still even now without plant medicine, right? You don't need the medicine in order— you don't need the medicine, period. Okay. It's a beautiful gift that we're given that can unlock and show us our patterns very quickly.

But they don't fix you. You still have to— it's what you choose to do and be with what it shows you. That's where the transformation happens. It's like, there's a lot of stuff going on in psychedelic space that makes me very uneasy. It feels a bit reckless, feels a bit opportunistic, and it feels like people are putting so much emphasis on the medicine, on the psychedelics, and not enough on the integration and like, what do we do with what it shows us? And that to me is the whole point of working with psychedelics. Is what we then do with what it shows us.

And that's what, yeah, that's what I wanted to go with is the understanding of it's, it's like what I battle with supplements where people become reliant on them and I'm, I'm telling them this is a supplement to what you're supposed to already be doing and you don't become reliant on this. It's maybe you're lacking something or it's going to enhance something you're doing. And that's what I wanted to discuss on the psychedelic side because is, you know, most people that aren't in the know or understanding, they will always look at something like a psychedelic and all they'll think about is, man, I'm gonna go trip, or, you know, I'm gonna start seeing visions and crazy shit. And they don't understand like the benefits, how it works, how they're supposed to be used, and what the— what is— what is going to happen here. Because, you know, media has a way of doing things, social media has a way of doing things, and things get portrayed in a light that they should not. Or they take an instance where somebody's abused it or done something wrong and they, you know, most of the time the, all the, only the negative will get the review or the public, uh, the publicizing, but the positive stuff will just, nobody will ever say anything.

You know what I mean? It's kind of like people that pray, they only pray when they're desperate, but when they got everything they want, they forget. And so I'm curious, you know, your experiences there, the things that, like you said, that are bothering you or the misconceptions that need to be overcome. I, I'm really curious. I had good discussions with Dr. Dave Rabin about this, and I'd love another, uh, outlook on it from you because I know you have experience with it and not enough talk about this in, in my community and other communities. It's kind of in the niche environment and I wanna kind of spread the word more and give it a better understanding.

Yeah. So at this point I have guided close to 2,000 psychedelic experiences. Yeah. Somewhere between 1,800 and 2,000 ceremonies and integrations. So yeah. So I've seen a lot and, and I've heard a lot. And so when, when high performers, cuz that's again, even in the psychedelic work, that's largely the people that I work with. When they come to psychedelic work, they usually come because other things have plateaued, right? So they've done the therapy, they've done the biohacks, they've done the executive coaching, but they feel like they— there's a sense, maybe they can't name it, but there's a sense that there's something underneath that is asking to be met. So medicine work can reach the places that traditional talk therapy can't. Okay. Here's what I've learned and what I know with every fiber of my being. The medicine is not what makes it stick. Okay? The ceremony itself opens the door. The coaching is what walks people through it and helps them build a life on the other side of that. So that is why I hold ceremony inside of what we now call the Be the Work journey, which is a 6 or 12 month container with coaching before, ceremony in the middle, and heavy integration afterward, because a one-off ceremony without integration might at best produce a temporary breakthrough, but the structured container is what produces lasting change.

And that, that's the only psychedelic work that I'm interested in. And there's a lot going on right now in the space. It's getting a lot of attention. There's a lot of people that are coming in working with the medicine that don't have— I, I love Dr. Dave Raven. I was just talking to him like a couple weeks ago. A lot of respect for him, a lot of alignment in how we work. but there's a lot of people who aren't trained, don't have the clinical background, don't know how to truly be with a human when they're cracked open in the way that these medicines can crack people open, which is incredibly vulnerable. Like, safety is number one, and I mean physical safety, emotional safety, psychological safety, spiritual safety. The work we do, like the, the pride I take in the work that we do at the Sacred House of Eden is is safety. Like, if you read our testimonials, that is probably the most common theme, is safety. People feel genuinely safe. They know that they can let go. They know that they're, they're going to be held. So this medicine can drop you underneath a lot of the patterns that you've been running your whole life.

That's what happened for me. I healed 25 years of disordered eating and body dysmorphia through medicine. I healed perfectionistic— I'm still working on it, right? But perfectionistic performer tendencies from, from from a very young age that I carried, I healed on that deep level that I now walk people through. It's the only thing that worked for me. And it's a lot of times what works, you know, for, for many people. And, and it's not just about the medicine. It's one, that's one piece of it.

So I have a question for you, and this is, it's, some of it's going to be a little goofy, but I'm going to compare it and relate it. So I always have said in my head, man, I wish I had the Men in Black pen to turn my head or my mind off of things that have plagued me, right? So, and I, I use that as a synonym here to ask, what sort of mechanism or what way does a psychedelic kind of help you with an addiction or something? Like you're saying it helped you overcome with— is there something that it does that flicks a switch off or something that helps you to like mentally overcome? I understand you can't be reliant or depend on it, but it obviously gives a starting point or some sort of way that is shutting something off or maybe helping you embrace it. I don't know. I, I'm curious as to how that works.

Yes. So without getting too sciency, it shuts down the default mode network of the brain, which is like, if you kind of think of the default mode as like the crossing guard of our, of the brain. Okay. That kind of is the frontline of making our usual decisions and, and our habituated conditioned responses to how we navigate life. It quiets that. So then other parts of your brain communicate that aren't usually in communication with each other. Okay. So new levels of your psyche, of your consciousness become available and come up through the ceremony. And it depends on what medicine you work with. Okay. Because different medicines have different mechanisms of action and, and there's different, you know, outcomes from that. But to answer that specific question, yes, it quiets the default mode, which is exactly what it sounds like, our default mode, the way that we generally most frequently navigate, a quiet set. So then other ways become available to us. That's why integration is so big because otherwise it's like, okay, well, these other things came to me in my ceremony, but how does that map? What does that make possible or available to you in your day-to-day life now?

Right? That's the gift in the medicine. And that can open up new ways of navigating. Other things become illuminated and revealed. And one of the greatest things that medicine also does is takes us right to the part of us that's actually ready to be healed. And it forces you to stay. You can't just stop in the middle and be like, I don't want to feel this. I don't want this anymore. It takes you, which is like the, it takes a lot of courage to do this, but it takes you right to the thing, like with unbelievable precision. And it forces you to stay. So we can't distract out, we can't get busy, right? We're in ceremony, so we have to be with what comes up. If done well, it is the most powerful thing you can do for yourself. And I will tell you that incorporating my coaching with the psychedelics is the most transformative work I've done in my entire life. Like, I've never seen anything like it. The rate at which people are able to have breakthroughs and truly transform is, it's unlike anything I've ever seen. And it's not just the medicine.

It's not just the coaching. It is the combination of both of those that just takes it to a whole nother level.

Let me ask you this. So, one, are there any potential like side effects or problems that could occur with those? And two, and this is for people listening, how careful do they need to be with who they allow? Because I know, like you said, safety here is on a multitude of levels because I think the obvious is the safety in terms of how much you're using, but the other is the, the personal safety that you feel within, the emotional safety, because I have to think that if somebody's not giving you that as well, that a lot of things could go wrong here.

Yes. So you asked a couple different questions, but I'll just start with the safety. Yeah. So that's why I said everything from physical safety, emotional safety, psychological safety, spiritual safety. Things can really sideways, really fast for people. And I sit in a seat where a lot of times the, the messages that come to me through whether it's email or phone calls come from people who have gone to other places to work with medicine and it wasn't safe. And so they've been retraumatized. So whatever they initially went to work on now has a whole nother layer of trauma on top of it. So then they come to me and I'm like, okay, we need to heal that first before we could even get to the baseline trauma. You were initially wanting to work through. I mean, I'm not going to go into the horror stories that I've heard, but I'm, I'm, they're so horrific that I, it turned me off from this work for a while because it was so alarming what was going on. But then the other part of me was like, no, this is even more reason you need to step up because you're doing this safely and responsibly and competently.

So people need that. So it's very important to me that I be that voice. In this space because it can be incredible or it can be catastrophic. And then you asked about side effects. So, so we screen everybody that comes to us. There's certain contraindications with very med— various medications, certain mental health conditions and family history that will screen out because we don't think that it's safe for you to work with the medicine. Yeah. Right. And so we rule that, you know, that's kind of like a hard and fast rule out from the beginning. But people that are cleared to, that are determined to be safe, we do psychological and medical screening. So if you're determined to be safe to work with the medicine, in terms of side effects, do you mean like in the ceremony or ask, how did you, what did you wanna know specifically?

Are there any side effects to the medications themselves that people could experience? 'Cause you know, some people don't handle that kind of just the, the state that they get put into. And is it, is it dangerous in any way or is it pretty, you, I'm, I'm assuming you have it controlled on the dosing. But even then, is it, are there people that it's not for, like people that have preexisting conditions? I mean, I'm just curious as to all of the different aspects there. 'Cause like I said, a lot of people just look at it like an illicit street drug still, even though that's just the furthest thing from the truth. That's kind of how people get programmed.

Yep. So that's why it's really important that if you're gonna do, if you're gonna work with medicine, that you make sure that you are screened, that people are looking at what are you taking, what is your family history, what is your own mental health history. Because there are certain conditions like schizophrenia, bipolar with mania. Yeah. Right. A family history of those things, delusional disorder. So anything like that, that we don't move forward with working with people, that doesn't mean healing isn't right for you. It just means not working with medicine. Right. And then there's certain heart conditions that, that we also, you know, screen for. And, and, and of course, you know, different interactions with various medications as well. But then in terms of in ceremony, yes. Like you can't, depending on what you're working with, people can experience different forms of purging. So sometimes that means like, you know, vomiting, what we think of traditionally as purging, but it can also mean like frequent urination. It can mean crying, laughing, yawning, stretching, yelling, like just release, like the body needing to release energy in, in different, different ways. We, we don't work with ayahuasca.

Ayahuasca is a bit more violent on the body than the medicine we work with. So with ayahuasca, for example, people have like a lot of bowel movements and vomiting at the same time. We don't work with that medicine. We work primarily with psilocybin, um, and then a heart-opening blend. And so the most common stuff we might see is people might have, you know, maybe some nausea, but it usually passes with water, temperature fluctuations, nothing, nothing too intense physically. Now emotionally, yes, it can get very intense, but we provide guidance instruction before and then throughout your ceremony. And then even most importantly on the other end of it. So we can unpack what was that? What is, you know, what do we do and be with what was revealed to you? What is the meaning of that? Because we're not here to just have a one-off, you know, like peak experience. Like this is transformational work, right? How does this then map and translate into your day-to-day life and actually bring value to, to everything that you're up to?

Awesome. So you're the, the place that you do this at. Do people stay like for an extended period of time? How long do they stay with you? Is it like, I'm wondering, do you just treat them and it's like they go on their merry way or do they stay there with you for a couple days or how does it work? Is there some sort of other type of treatment that you do where you're discussing things and talking them through things or how do, I'm, I'm curious how it works.

Yeah. So we do privates, couples, and groups. And so you can stay anywhere from like a full day. It's all inclusive up to 4 days with us, just depending on, on what you book. But yeah, we're heavy on the integration, so we don't, we would never be like, here's your medicine and like send anyone on their way. Definitely not. There's a lot of protocols and, and, and exercises and tools that we work through. It just depends on the person and like what they're coming, what their intention is and you know, what we're, what we're up to. But it's a very robust, very comprehensive experience. Like I said, close to 2,000 experiences at this point. So it's a, it's a fine-tuned machine. But now what I'm doing, we were doing a lot of group retreats. Now I'm doing mostly working one-on-one with people. And like I said, 6 or 12 month containers. So it's coaching. The center is ceremony and then coaching on the back end. So I can really go deep with people and have true lasting change.

That's amazing. So that's some, some really in-depth, intricate treatment then where I understand because I've done this, I've gone through nervous system resets and it's phenomenal, but then it's like, then what? Because you're kind of on your own and it, it helps to have, it's the coach is like the mentor, the person that you can keep going back to for help or encouragement or whatever the case may be. So that I, I think that is very important. I think sometimes people just want things, a quick fix, which just is not the reality, especially if you're dealing with years and years and years of trauma, man, this is a marathon. It's not a sprint. You can't expect quick fix on anything like that. Think about the time it took to build up to have this problems, right?

Yeah, no, exactly. It's like we're unwinding and untangling patterns that had been there a very long time. So even though the gift of the medicine is like the rate at which it can take you right to the thing, it's, it's then the follow, like that's, I call that the, you know, that's the breakthrough. What I'm really interested in is the follow through. Yeah. Right. And a lot of that actually is is another paradigm flip in my book, which is the distinction between coping versus healing. Because most wellness practices, most self-help protocols, like honestly, a lot of that, that we're seeing also in the psychedelic space are elaborate forms of coping. Coping manages symptoms so well that you never actually have to meet the cause. Right? But what happens is like that ache, that hurt, that wound underneath, it goes quiet, it goes underground, but it doesn't go away. Right? It always comes back. It's still there. Right? And it will continue to express itself in new ways. Right? Whether it's in relationships, in your body, like you said earlier, you know, in the mood, but real healing. Is different. Real healing addresses the wound underneath.

It doesn't manage the symptom. It meets the cause.

All right. All like something about my hand goes, go ahead. All I keep thinking is cortisone, cortisone shot. That's what that is. It's like a Band-Aid to a wound that you never heal.

1,000%. I had so many of those in my shoulder when I was a pitcher. It's exactly right. It's like, let me shoot you up. It hurt like hell, but then I could go out and throw. It was like, did not. And then till I finally completely destroyed my shoulder and that, you know, game really over. But yeah, exactly, exactly. Yeah. That's like, there's a massive shift between— there's literally an entire chapter on healing versus coping because the wellness industry needs to keep us coping. That's how they make their money. Like they built the perfect machine for it, right? Like the, their machine is working for them.

I don't, I'm not, I'm not a put you on the spot guy, and that's not what I'm trying to do here, but I do wonder your thoughts on, and I hate to even say this term because I don't find this to even be a reality and I'll explain why, but conventional medicine, cuz I call it non, I call the, the conventional medicine non-conventional because of the way they make the drugs and you're taking something natural and altering it. I find that to be non-conventional myself, but let's just look at conventional medications and what I call turning people into zombies just to keep them on medications when it's unnecessary. How do you feel about overuse or misuse of medications as opposed to, to your methodologies on helping people when they're suffering with mental strain, health, whatever you wanna call it?

Thank you so much for such an important question. 'Cause I am not anti-Western medicine or, or, you know, conventional medicine at all. I think it's a combination of both is where we have, like, you know, there's a lot available to us. So my thoughts, I, I think that there is a place for traditional psychotropic medication for some people. I do think it's more a Band-Aid. I think it numbs you. I don't think it actually allows you to heal what's really going on. It's another form of keeping us hovering above the actual thing going on. And if you want to talk about side effects, man, with psychotropic medication, there's so many side effects that people experience. It's like, it's like you think of those commercials where they're like, it'll make your mood better, and then it's like 7,000, you know, things that it's going to do to you, right? It's like, is it really worth it? For some people and some conditions, yes. Okay, you, you, you do need to be on something. Those— that's not the population I work with. Okay, I don't work with like schizophrenics, for example. But I do work with people that have anxiety.

I do work with people that have depression, and I've also helped get those people off of psychotropic meds and either on no meds at all or onto microdosing where I set them up with actual microdosing protocols and no side effects, no dependence, no withdrawal. So yes, there's a time and place for some meds. I think we're highly overmedicated in this, in this population. Yeah. Even, you know, drugging young children. And I think it's like people are, you know, wanting a quick fix, but it's not a quick fix because we're not fixing anything. And we're oftentimes then having to take something to like mitigate the side effects that are coming in from the first thing. So we're now, we're on like a drug sandwich, right? When a lot of times we could actually get underneath and really the real work, right? So that a lot of times people find they don't even need— I can't even tell you, Dylan, hundreds of people that came to me that were taking some sort of SSRI or SNRI that are not on medicine anymore because they really did the work, the real work.

I will temper what I'm going to say and not get into it too much because I get so frustrated. I am not anti-medicine, by the way, in any way, shape, or form, but I am anti-abuse and anti-misleading. And it's just like what they just did with cholesterol, changing it again. And now two— I, I don't know how many millions of people now qualify for statins. And so here's what I want to ask Is there such a thing in reality as a chemical imbalance?

You say it, but you're shaking your head like you don't believe it. So I can tell you that there are certain conditions. The one that comes immediately to mind, schizophrenia. Okay. Also bipolar. So I have seen people who could not function, right? Have a relatively normal functioning life without the meds. Okay. And so, and that is something chemical that's going on. I also am in the school of thought that believes underneath even those things, there is trauma because trauma fractures us, right? And then we're split into different parts. And the work that I do with people is moving them into true integration, into true wholeness. That's what healing is. Yeah. Right? So some people, yes, they, they do need that. That even to just live in the world. But I, I go back to what I said, a lot of people are on medicine that don't need to be on medicine.

When, and when I said that, I said that because it's like when doctors, they're programmed, and that's just like one of those things that they tell so many, I mean, the thousands of people that they have. And it's like, come on, man, like, that's just not, that's not it. And it's, it's either lazy, like lazy diagnosis or whatever you want to call it. I, I don't know. I want to be fair because I have a lot of doctor friends, but I also know how they're taught, and it's frustrating. And a lot of them, it's just what they know, and it's not— they, they have the right motive, but they don't have the right education, and it sucks.

Yes, exactly. And I was trained that way too, right? Diagnostically. And, and what I find though often is that when people get a diagnosis, then it becomes their identity, and then it keeps them stuck. And they're like, well, I'm— I have depression, I'm depressed. Depressed. It's like, so now I just kind of like hang up my hat, like I'm depressed, as— and then they're stuck there. And it's like, and then it gives them almost like— not to say that they don't— they're not hurting, obviously they are— but then it kind of gives them like this excuse. Yeah. To then not— it keeps them so stuck. And that is— and then they're— and then they're medicated, which is then coping, which is very different than actually healing. And I've worked with a lot of people with depression and a lot of people with OCD and with anxiety. And I'm here to tell you people can heal and it's not through the ways that we're taught as practitioners. And it's not through the ways that the, that culture and the, and the pharmaceutical and the medical industry are teaching. That's why so many people are medicated and so many people are sick.

This is not working.

It's giving them a crutch and it's kind of like, again, like fibromyalgia when it's It's, they're suffering through all these pains and it's like, man, there's a multitude of things that could be causing this. It's probably something toxic, toxicities that you're around that they just don't want to look for or don't have a clue how to find. And I'm not saying there's not something wrong with you. Clearly there is, but categorizing everybody into this one group because you can't figure out what's wrong and then just giving it a fucking name and not knowing even what it is without looking diligently. And that's why like naturopathics and holistic doctors are able to discern and find the actual core root problem. As opposed to just being lazy and going, oh, this is what it is, and you're kind of screwed. And that's just not the reality. And it's so frustrating. And, you know, I'm sorry to act a little pissy, but it's the most frustrating thing I see because I see people doing just what you said. I— it's— I'm just depressed. Or no, no, bro, you're not just depressed. You have something going on here that could be fixed and treated.

And don't let anybody tell you otherwise.

Yeah, no, exactly. I love you that you're passionate about it. Don't apologize for that. I love I, I, I wish there were more people that understood it the way that you do because I have seen a lot of people get stuck there. People even will call me, reach, you know, and be like, you know, I've been diagnosed with this, this, this, and this. I go, okay, well I don't work with diagnoses. I have a very like salutary approach and I, and I'm, and I work with the whole being, but I'm interested in the different parts of you. So maybe one part of you is depressed, but there are other parts of you that are other things. Right? And it's also not the truth of who you are. The truth of who you are is underneath all of that. The true self. That's what a lot of the work I do with people with also with the medicine and without is connecting to the true being you are underneath, which comes from a greater being. I call it God, call it spirit, call it source, the universe. It's ultimately love. That is what we come from.

That is what we are. That is why we know we're already worthy. And that is who we truly are underneath the depressed part or the anxious part or the proving part or the performer or the perfectionist or the inner critic, right? Those are different parts of us, but underneath is the true self. And that's the part that I get people to because that part is whole and healthy and already enough.

And I will say this. This before I touch on your book. If God is love, which we know him to be, and we were created that way, that's what we have inside. And when we're able to, to feel that, to show it, and to have it, all of these other problems seem to correct themselves. And I'll leave it at that.

Amen. Agree, agree, agree. I've had a lot of people come to me that are initially atheists, and I'm not here to convert anybody to anything, okay? My mom is Jewish, my dad's Christian. I grew up exposed to I have a very deep personal relationship with God. I can't imagine not having it. Everybody's on their journey. People have come to me that are initially atheist, and I'll just say that they leave believing in something greater than their separate self. And I will also tell you that in that journey, there's a lot of healing that happens.

Well, it's an entirely other discussion, but my premise is that you cannot have total health alignment if it goes mind and body if you don't have God. And that's It's where it is. And so I think that most people that find that reality, and I just try to put it inside of their heart, even if they don't believe it, just because if you start to think, it'll hit your heart. If it even gets into your mind, it goes directly to your heart. That's not by chance or by accident. That's his work and his design. And that is how you get on the road to recovery.

So anyway, say something that you just inspired in me that I do when I speak in any presentations. Please. Okay. Will you play? Will you go with me on this?

Yeah, go for it.

Okay. And anybody that's listening that wants to do this too, you just like, I'll just ask that you just, if you're somewhere that you're able to do this, gently close your eyes and just take a couple of breaths. And I want you to point to yourself. And now open your eyes. And notice where you're pointing. Like, you're, you're not pointing to your head, okay? You're pointing to your heart, right? And that is what we are. That is who we are. We don't lead from our head, even though we're conditioned that way. The truth of who we are is right here.

That's right. Well, I appreciate the work and all that you're doing, and I always appreciate when somebody is able to relate it to themselves, their own problems, humanize themselves, and let that inspire them to do their work. A lot of people become their problems as opposed to embracing them and then making their life's work helping people that are probably going through the same things. And it's hard because a lot of the things that you and I have gone through and others, you don't want to talk about it. You feel alone, you feel isolated. So it takes people like you to embrace it and to comfort into others to help them actually heal. So I thank you for that. Tell everybody where to get your book and where they can come and follow you, and we'll link everything in the description.

Okay, awesome. Well, thank you for that. And I appreciate you similarly. Like, I, I can feel your heart and your spirit in, in everything that we're up to. And, and also your sharing of your own. I mean, even today in our talk, like, there are many times where you shared, you know, like, I do this, am I alone in that? And it's I was like, 100%. No. If I had, if I had a dollar for every time someone came to me and said, this is gonna sound really weird, but I do this. I'm like, I promise you whatever you're about to say, I have heard many times just this week. And that's not to minimize it, but what I'm actually then pointed toward is you thinking that you're alone in that. That becomes the conversation when, when we work together. It's not even the thing that people follow that with. It's the thought that they're alone in it. It because we're never actually alone. We're never actually alone. And I mean that on multiple levels. So, yep. So the book is on Amazon. It's Be the Work: The Shift from Human Doing to Human Being.

So you can get the book there. And the website is thesacredhouseofeden.com. And I also made a gift for your listeners, which is a 14-minute guided meditation. And it's very much like a lot of what we talked about, just kind of calming the inner system, quieting the proving, and moving from that grasping energy to that generative energy. So if you go to thesacredhouseofeden.com/dylan, there's a gift there for your listeners.

Excellent. Well, I appreciate that very much, and I hope everybody jumps on that and takes advantage of it while they can. I would encourage you to do so. So thank you again, Dr. Stephanie. You are greatly appreciated and I will do everything I can to get this book out into people's hands for you.

Thank you so much. I wrote it so that we all know we're not alone. I've been there. I get it. I see you. I am you.

I love it. I love it. Again, greatly appreciated. And everybody, again, check the descriptions, take advantage of that free gift that Dr. Stephanie's offering.

So.

So that being said, stay tuned for plenty more to come. Dylan Gemelli signing off.