Psychedelic Exploration, Origin Movement etc.

Dear Community,

This newsletter is coming in a bit early, because a very busy Monday is waiting to unfold tomorrow, and I don't like leaving things to the last minute and hoping "it will all work out".

First of all, thank you to all who responded to last weeks' newsletter.

I found Emma's response particularly thought-provoking. Here's what she said: "Here are my simple thoughts: vulnerability is so interesting because a truth that felt quite vulnerable to you, (from reading all of your wonderful news letters), was not shocking to me. I read it and thought “yep that makes sense that, that’s how you feel given the things you’ve written.” So as I was waiting for a “shock moment” I actually got an “oh yeah, that tracks” kind of moment. Which made me think about how vulnerability can be so subjective to who we are and the things we have been through. Things that may be vulnerable for one to share may not be vulnerable for others to share, so what makes something truly vulnerable? Is it that we’ve never shared it before, is it because it holds emotional weight and identity to that person? Those are my thoughts, as always I look forward to reading these news letters! I didn’t think of any truths I haven’t shared… maybe I didn’t try hard enough, or maybe I’m an open book, or maybe none of the above. Who knows, but those are my simple thoughts.

PS I don’t want you to think I am demeaning your moment of vulnerability, I do believe it was vulnerable for you to share and I thank you for being so open with us readers. So please don’t take my thoughts as harsh or cruel as they are not meant to be… just being honest !!"

Dear Emma, I really like your thoughts, and I didn’t experience them as harsh or cruel at all. In fact, you’ve made me think about vulnerability in a slightly different way. I think you’re right that it’s incredibly subjective. What felt like a significant threshold for me to cross may have been completely unsurprising to someone who has been reading me for a while. And that in itself is interesting:  maybe vulnerability isn’t necessarily about shocking someone or revealing something they didn’t know. Maybe it’s about the internal experience of crossing the line between “I know this about myself” and “I am willing to say this out loud.” And your “yep, that tracks” response  made me smile. Apparently I have been inadvertently revealing myself quite thoroughly all along!

I also love your question about whether being an open book means there are no vulnerable truths left to share, or whether vulnerability moves somewhere else once we’ve become accustomed to telling the truth.

Thank you, again, Emma for your continued presence in this conversation! I love receiving your responses and reading your thoughts.

A lot of you, Dear Readers, have been wondering what happened to my medical practice and why I have become a psychedelic coach/guide.

Short answer: in the beginning of the pandemic, in 2020, when the frailty of the medical system in the wealthiest and most powerful country in the world became obvious, and when it was clear that the "experts" had no answers, I felt a strong calling to read Michael Pollan's book "How to change your mind", and to start exploring the edges of my consciousness. I felt that I owed my children a better answer as to what this life is about than the thoughts I previously had.

Here's a story I had written in 2021, at the beginning of my training as a psychedelic guide training with The Synthesis Institute.

MY FIRST PSYCHEDELIC EXPERIENCE

I grew up believing that altered consciousness belonged to degenerates.

Then, I crossed the country to deliberately alter mine, and discovered that the most destabilizing thing wasn't what I saw (even though my "hallucinations" were pretty awesome, I gotta be honest), but realizing how much of reality I had been taught not to question.

I always had a fascination with creative people. I distinctly remember when my favorite high-school teacher brought into the school a very creative, talented Romanian poet to talk to us 11th grade students . The poet talked about his creative process, and it involved lots of alcohol and prescription drugs! (I am not implying that all creativity involves alcohol and drugs, I am just stating the facts of the story, and trying to communicate my shock at learning such vulnerable disclosures, especially in the presence of my math teacher, a highly respected and respectable figure in our medium-size town community).

Growing up in a fearful, conventional family, we perceived our communist way of life as a tragic jail. Alcohol? Fine, perhaps some sour-cherry liquor in the house for guests, to be served with dinner. Drugs? Prescription drugs were avoided like the plague. Street drugs were for degenerates living on the fringes of society, uncivilized and feral. You couldn’t possibly end up anywhere good by putting something into your body that interfered with its natural processes. This was simply a given.

And then BOOM: this man, a poet, adored by many, completely immersed in his own personal depths, was talking  to 11th graders about surrendering to forces bigger than himself, invoking spirits, and creating beautiful works of art from darkness, tears, and DRUGS.

How does one reconcile these contradictions?

Fast forward 30 years:

I had traveled for almost two days to get there: from the East Coast of the United States to a remote, little-known, rugged corner of the West Coast, with dramatic views of the Pacific Ocean and capricious weather.

I had come to meet the woman who was going to guide me into my first psilocybin trip.

The ocean was unsettled. The waves kept crashing against the bouldered shore in the same rhythm they’ve had for most of the history of the world. It was hard to believe this was the same ocean that had been so gentle and tranquil only a few hours before. Thick mist swallowed the landscape, making any kind of clarity difficult.

Was I projecting my inner world onto the ocean, or was the ocean taking over my emotions?

I had been dreaming of getting my hands on a psychedelic for a while- don’t even remember how it all started. The burning desire to “pierce the veil”, to tune my brain and my body into a new frequency, to explore, to evolve- it might have all started with something I read long aga- but I am not sure. I just knew this was the next step I had to take.

To say that I was scared is an understatement. I brought all the baggage of my communist, oppressed upbringing with me.

Drugs? They are for degenerates. Normal, healthy people do not need to escape life by doing drugs. There is only pain and suffering after the initial high. Go down this abominable road and you can expect hardship, destitution and, obviously, a harrowing and hideous death, terror-stricken and alone.

In spite of all the horrid pictures my mind was racing to draw for me, I had to go ahead. I felt like I had no choice. I was curious. I had to know.

The mushroom was given to me unceremoniously, by a tiny woman who carried psilocybin mushrooms  with her everywhere she went (Mary, “the mushroom girl” as she was known in her circle). There was no chalice, no chanting, no rite. Just a big, dark, dried-up mushroom that I  chewed and swallowed, despite feeling slightly disgusted and nauseated.

As the psilocybin started making its way through my system, two fingers on my right hand started growing. Overall, my right hand was bigger than my left hand, but particularly the second and third fingers were much longer than the rest of the hand. The walls of the room started undulating, each wall slowly transitioning into a different direction, three dimensionality rebuffed.

Objectively speaking, nothing much happened, other than me staring in  the eyes of my guide (different than Mary)  for 6 hours.  To an outside observer, this could have been excruciatingly boring to witness. To me, this was the most fascinating voyage I’ve ever been on.  On her face, which appeared to be at times, severely scarred (like the skin of burn victims), made out of cow hide, or moss, I saw, in no particular order: a cat, an elephant, the Sphynx, a shrunken hanging head, a witch burning at the stake, The Devil, Shiva, an active volcano while all the while she was shedding crystal tears.

I was excited. Ecstatic. The doors of perception, as Aldous Huxley had named this phenomenon, had not merely been cleansed. They had been thrown wide open, and I had stepped through. Nothing was quite what it looked like anymore.

There were hidden symbols and meanings everywhere. The world seemed suddenly charged with significance. Life was pulsating with color, sound, movement. Everything felt more vivid, more mysterious, more alive.

And the strangest part was this: I wasn't afraid.

I had spent my entire life being told that anything that interfered with the body's natural processes was dangerous. That drugs led to degradation, suffering, destitution, and death. That a sane, healthy person had no reason to seek an altered state of consciousness.

And here I was, on the other side of that supposedly terrible door, looking at the world as if I had just been given the keys to a secret passage. The mystery was ON!

Nothing outside me had changed, and yet the certainty with which I had known what was real had been quietly demolished.

And I couldn't stop but wonder what else have I mistaken for reality just because I was taught to see it that way?"

This is the end of the story I wrote in 202, but really, this was the beginning.

I've been a proud (and outspoken) psychedelic explorer and guide since. I do believe, with all my heart, that, as humanity, we won't be able to find the answers to our current ecological collapse, wars and suffering from the current mindset that is prevailing in our collective consciousness.

For those hungry for some science and facts, let's explore a bit the neuroscience of psilocybin:

How Psychedelics Change the Brain

Classic psychedelics such as psilocybin have a chemical structure that resembles serotonin, allowing them to interact with certain serotonin receptors in the brain. One of the most important is the 5-HT2A receptor.

Psilocybin itself is not the compound that primarily produces the psychedelic effects. After we ingest psilocybin mushrooms, the body converts psilocybin into psilocin, the active compound. Psilocin crosses into the brain and binds to 5-HT2A receptors, setting off a cascade of changes in brain activity.

1. Psilocybin increases glutamate signaling

Activation of 5-HT2A receptors increases the activity of certain neurons, particularly pyramidal neurons in the prefrontal cortex. This increases the release of the neurotransmitter glutamate, one of the brain's major excitatory neurotransmitters.

This increased signaling may also influence BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor), a protein involved in the growth, maintenance, and adaptability of neurons. BDNF is important for neuroplasticity, the brain's ability to change in response to experience.

So, in simplified terms:

Psilocybin  leads to 5-HT2A receptor activation and that leads to increased glutamate signaling and that leads to changes in plasticity-related processes.

This is one reason psychedelics are being studied as potential psychoplastogens, substances that can temporarily increase the brain's capacity to change.

2. Psilocybin changes the way different brain networks communicate

The effects don't stop at individual neurons. Psychedelics also temporarily change the way large-scale brain networks communicate with one another.

Research using fMRI and other neuroimaging techniques has shown that psychedelics can disrupt some of the brain's usual patterns of synchronized activity. Rather than the brain simply becoming "more active," certain established patterns become less rigid, while communication between regions that don't normally communicate as strongly can increase.

This brings us to one of the most interesting discoveries in psychedelic neuroscience: the Default Mode Network.

3. The Default Mode Network: the brain's familiar storyline

The Default Mode Network (DMN) is not one physical structure. It is a network of interconnected brain regions, including areas of the prefrontal cortex and posterior cingulate cortex. The DMN becomes particularly active during things like:

• self-reflection

• autobiographical memory

• imagining the future

• mind-wandering

• repetitive thinking

• worrying

• thinking about what other people think of us

It helps us construct and maintain a continuous sense of "me."

In that sense, the DMN is part of the machinery that continually tells the story of who we are, what has happened to us, what it means, and what we should expect next.

This system is extremely useful. Without it, we would not have a coherent identity or the ability to draw on past experience. But the same predictive machinery can also become overly repetitive or rigid. In depression, anxiety, addiction, and other conditions, certain patterns of thinking can become deeply entrenched.

4. Psychedelics temporarily loosen these established patterns

Early neuroimaging research by Robin Carhart-Harris and colleagues produced a surprising finding. Researchers expected psychedelics to simply cause widespread increases in brain activity. Instead, they observed decreases in activity and connectivity within important resting-state networks, including the Default Mode Network.

Under psychedelics, some of the brain's usual rhythms and patterns of communication become less synchronized. This does not mean that the brain "shuts down." Quite the opposite: a way to think about it is that the usual organization of the brain temporarily becomes less dominant.

The brain becomes less constrained by some of its habitual patterns, creating conditions in which different information and associations can emerge.

5. Entropic Brain Theory: loosening the brain's usual predictions

One way researchers have tried to understand this phenomenon is through Entropic Brain Theory, associated particularly with Robin Carhart-Harris.

"Entropy" refers broadly to increased variability, randomness, or uncertainty within a system.

Our ordinary waking consciousness tends to be highly organized. The brain constantly uses previous experience to predict what is happening and what is likely to happen next. This is called top-down processing. For example, your brain doesn't encounter every experience as completely new. It uses everything it already knows to interpret incoming information. This is incredibly efficient. But it also means that our previous experiences can become filters. We don't simply perceive the world. We perceive it through the models our brains have already constructed.

Psychedelics appear to temporarily weaken some of the influence of these established top-down predictions while increasing the influence of incoming, bottom-up information. In simplified terms:

Normal state: "What I already know influences what I see."

Psychedelic state: "What I am experiencing right now may have more influence on what I think and believe."

This may help explain why psychedelic experiences can sometimes produce powerful insights or a sense of seeing something familiar in an entirely new way.

6. Relaxing old beliefs creates a window for learning

This is particularly interesting when we think about depression, anxiety, and addiction.

A person may develop deeply entrenched beliefs such as:"I am broken.", "Nothing will ever change.", "I am unlovable.", "I always have to be in control."

These beliefs are not simply thoughts floating around in the mind. Over time, they can become deeply reinforced patterns involving perception, emotion, behavior, and prediction. Psychedelics may temporarily relax the grip of these established patterns. That does not mean the psychedelic experience automatically replaces them with healthy beliefs. Instead, it may create a window of increased psychological flexibility in which new information can be experienced and learned from.

This distinction is essential! The psychedelic may open the window. What happens through that window depends on what the person does with the experience.

Therapy, reflection, relationships, behavioral changes, and repeated practice may help consolidate new ways of thinking and behaving.

7. Think of it as creating new tracks

A useful metaphor is a ski slope. Over years, we tend to travel down the same mental and emotional tracks. The more often we travel them, the easier it becomes to follow them automatically. Psychedelics may temporarily make those tracks less dominant, creating a period in which the brain is more flexible. Imagine a snowplow flattening an old ski track. For a brief period, the snow is relatively undifferentiated. You have more freedom to choose where to go. But simply flattening the old track does not create a new permanent path. You have to ski the new route repeatedly.

In the same way, psychedelic experiences may create a period of increased flexibility, but lasting change requires subsequent experience and practice. New ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving have to be reinforced if they are going to become established patterns.

8. Neuroplasticity: the brain's capacity to change

This brings us to neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity is the brain's ability to change its connections and functioning in response to experience.

Research suggests that psychedelics can rapidly activate molecular and cellular processes associated with plasticity. In laboratory studies, psilocybin and related compounds have been associated with changes in dendritic spines, synaptic signaling, and other mechanisms involved in neuronal adaptation.

Some of these effects can persist beyond the period of acute ingestion. BDNF appears to be one component of this process, although the relationship between BDNF, neuroplasticity, and therapeutic outcomes is complex and still being studied.

Psychedelics have also been investigated for possible effects on inflammation and immune signaling, although this area remains an active field of research.

9. The therapeutic opportunity: not just the psychedelic experience, but what follows

Perhaps the most important point is that the psychedelic state itself may be only part of the therapeutic process.

The combination of: temporary loosening of habitual patterns followed by increased psychological flexibility followed by heightened openness to new information and experience followed by increased capacity for learning and plasticity followed by  integration and repeated practice may create a window of opportunity for change.

This is why psychedelic therapy is not simply about giving someone a psychedelic and waiting for something profound to happen. The experience may temporarily make the brain and mind more flexible. The therapeutic work is what may help transform that flexibility into something lasting.

In other words:

Psychedelics may temporarily loosen established patterns of brain activity, cognition, and belief, creating a period of increased flexibility in which new learning and behavioral change may become easier.

I am planning on officially offering psychedelic coaching- preparation and integration later on this year, as well as forming accountability groups for those of us who do better when we're accountable to someone else. More details to follow!

And all these new offerings will happen after I finish my travels for the year.  I am planning on attending the Origin Movement In South Africa  in mid-October (and the next two newsletters might not happen at the usual time because of questionable connectivity while in Johannesburg).

Origins is a social movement uniting millions of people across every culture, community and continents, that invites everyday people to become active participants in a new story for humanity — one rooted in shared purpose, collective care, and the belief that ordinary actions, taken together, can shift the course of our world. At the heart of ORIGIN is a call to act — to plant seeds, restore soil, and tend to the living systems that sustain all life.

Regenerative action means moving beyond sustainability toward actively healing the Earth. Through planting ceremonies, community projects, and the global Seed the Dream initiative, participants take tangible steps to become caretakers of a thriving future. There will be a global online broadcast for the ones that can't attend in-person, see more details here (you can attend the event from the comfort of your living room, or you can organize a neighborhood event as a call to action, where you mobilize the people you know and love, to a higher consciousness for all of us).  This is considered the world's largest synchronized gathering of ceremony, music and regenerative action.

Here's the link: https://ourorigin.earth/origin-global-broadcast/

Wishing you all a wonderful week ahead, and, as always, would love to hear your thoughts, prayers, astonishments.

With love, (a tiny sprinkle of) rage, and reverence, Your disorganized, recovering people-pleaser, community-dreamer, hope-filled activist in the making, deep-sleeper, clean compliment giver and receiver, not-a-true-exhibitionist, 21-day resetter, recovering prostitute, courageous by practice, trusting by skill, always with my head in the clouds, but loving my feet on the ground, soul worker (!), inner voice listener, pleasure list maker, Aquarium sleepover organizer, beginner-level meditator, wabi-sabi contemplator, self-fascinated observer, giving-up-machismo supporter, hot soup-slurper, enthusiastic and tired traveler, death by Yellowjackets antidote and higher consciousness dreamer, aspiring human rights warrior, zielschmerz-stricken, nap lover, mostly Romanian wine-drinker, Persephone-adjacent, always asking-for-permission, psychedelic explorer and guide,

Corina