Introduction 

All right, welcome to Super States. I’m super excited to be here with a friend, a mentor, someone that has really made an impact in my life, she’s a medicine worker, she’s a coach, she’s a trainer, and she is here with us live today. Jess Marion, how are you doing?

Hey, thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited to see you’re doing this podcast and I could participate. I think it’s gonna be a lot of fun for us and really amazing for the audience going forward, even beyond our episode. So I’m really excited to be here.

Yeah, thank you. I appreciate that. And I’m excited to see where this goes as well. Just to kind of get started so people can get a sense of, you know, like who you are. Can you describe to us what you do, how you transform lives?

Sure, so I have lots of various masks I wear in my professional life. I started out as a hypnotherapist and coach and then went on to become an NLP trainer, a coaching trainer, and a hypnosis trainer, and author. And these days I still do those things. They’re still near and dear to my heart. But the bulk of my current work right now is working with sacred medicines or psychedelics as a facilitator, as a guide.

So myself and my amazing lovely friend and business partner, we run multi-day medicine retreats together for people who want to engage with medicine for healing or personal exploration and growth.

Journey to Medicine Work 

That’s a really interesting change. It seems like from the outside that you might think, oh, hypnosis, now you’re doing psychedelics and medicine work. How did you get to this? What was that journey for you?

It’s actually that there is a continuous thread because before I was a hypnotist, I was a medical anthropologist and these substances are found in cultures all around the world. We have evidence of the earliest humans using psychoactive substances to explore consciousness or for ceremonial and ritual purposes. So this is a part of human legacy that any decent anthropologist will affirm.

When I got into hypnosis and coaching, I was really interested in how the mind works, how we craft reality, both on the positive side, as well as on the self-limiting side, and how can we undo the self-limiting side. Then in, back in 2019, a very close friend of mine, was

talking about the new science of psychedelics, mainly the research coming out of Johns Hopkins and Imperial College in London and all these fantastic studies about how psilocybin and DMT, those two in particular, and then later MDMA, were changing lives. For people who didn’t have diagnosed problems, high dose psilocybin could predictably induce mystical states of consciousness, which had piqued my curiosity.

Interesting.

And for people who had things like complex PTSD, even simple PTSD, treatment resistant depression, substance use disorders, all of these difficult problems that we see in our coaching practices, people come in with this stuff. And it’s a tremendous amount of time and effort, both on the coach’s part and on the client’s part, to begin to resolve these issues. It is not like an overnight fix.

However, a single high dose psilocybin journey can undo substance use disorder. For alcohol, one high dose IBOGA session, which is a very lengthy trip, can undo opiate use disorder. Psilocybin helps to undo depression. LSD helps to undo depression. There are some studies now looking at how LSD can be a part of a treatment program for people with neurodegenerative diseases,

Wow.

Parkinson’s and some forms of dementia. So these are really amazing substances. Oh, and MDMA, which is, as through phase three clinical trials now with the FDA, is shown that a handful of sessions can undo severe post-traumatic stress. These substances are literally saving lives both physically and emotionally.

And this is very different from the message, at least that I grew up with in the 90s, in the 90s in school, we had the DARE program. And if you took a drug, that’s it, your life is over. You’re a terrible person, you’re a drug on society, and you’re gonna destroy your brain. MDMA eats holes in the brain, one bad trip, and you’re gonna go insane forever. All of that absolute nonsense that was frustratingly intentional.

The people who were putting out this content, people who were a part of like the Just Say No campaign, Nixon’s war on drugs, then carried on by Nancy Reagan, and then carried on through Bush and Clinton, they knew that this wasn’t true because the government experimented with these substances, but they still pushed a lie that set back science for decades and set back emotional and spiritual wellbeing for decades.

So all of this got my interest and I got to a point where I was like, okay, I’m really curious. I want to try this. And the field kind of has an interesting way of responding when there’s something really important that we’re about to step into in life. And I had a bunch of people, I had mentioned Michael Pollan’s book back in 2019 on a Facebook post and how to change your mind, which is fantastic.

I’ve seen some of the Netflix series.

Yes, it’s very good. The book is pretty much the same. It follows the same strand. I posted about it and a bunch of people had messaged me on Facebook and DMed me and like, hey, if you want to try this, you can reach out. We’ll do a journey together. And it was all of those offers were really kind. And I deeply appreciate all those people for their vulnerability and sharing something that they’re into that is still highly illegal, according to the US

And then my dear friend reached out and he’s like, hey, you know, I do this. And then I was like, okay, this is, this is meant to be. And so I started working with psilocybin first. And psilocybin is, is my, my spiritual love. Uh, and I’ve tried and, and I enjoy, and I find lots of other substances highly useful for personal and spiritual growth as well. Uh, but about a year ago, actually just over a year.

because I was in Mexico and I had attended a traditional cacao ceremony. I had texted him and I said, let’s start doing retreats. Let’s get a retreat center. Let’s start doing this. And he said, okay, let’s do it. Uh, so a year later we held our, we just came out of our, our first retreat. I actually just flew home yesterday. It finished on Saturday morning.

Congratulations.

Thank you. It was awesome. We had eight days of personal transformation, growth, exploration, magic, both in the figurative and the literal sense. So it’s really amazing. And we’re both very excited for what’s coming ahead because we have many more lined up.

Synchronicities and the Field 

My wife and I had an experience with mushrooms and the message that came back through her was to set up the conditions to have the abundance that you want so it just happens, so it just flows for you, right? Set up those conditions, so it’s not about wanting the thing, it’s what do you do to set up the space so that those things happen, which is kind of what you’re talking about. The field opens itself up to you.

Yeah, 100%. And there are, okay, so I should preface this because some of your listeners will know me more from the coaching side where I do like science a lot. This is kind of beyond science in that, and this quantum field that we all exist in, whatever you wanna call it, communicates through things like synchronicities. Or sometimes if you’re in a highly altered state, like through mushrooms, it can communicate really directly.

which is beautiful. And in my own case, we had lots of very, very strange synchronicities, things like showing up in each other’s dreams and stuff like that, where we could compare notes the next day and like, yeah, that happened, that all kind of led in this direction. So there’s something that, you know, for those who walk the medicine path, there’s something about paying attention to those synchronicities and trusting.

You might not know what the end goal is or what the full purpose is, but if you just take a step and trust, things begin to unfold.

Changes in Coaching Approach 

Yeah, you’re talking directly to me right now. So tell me, and I know you’ve touched a little bit on this, but you’ve kind of had the, you’ve gone through this journey. So what, what would you say has changed about how you approach your coaching now? As opposed to when you started this, uh, it started as a hypnotic coach.

Right, this is a really good question and it’s something that I often think about because it’s difficult to put it in words. But I’ll do my best. So typically in hypnotic coaching, we have a structure, we have the meta pattern or the coaching pattern that is the foundation of what we do with clients looking to attach positive states onto negative triggers to simplify it. You know, somebody who has a phobia of dogs, they come work with me.

We attach resources onto the image of the dog. Now they see the dog and they feel empowered. That stuff is great and it’s really powerful. It’s great for kind of simple coaching things like stop smoking or simple phobias or fear of flying or nail biting, kind of these automatic compulsive emotion behavior cycles. But I get a lot of clients that are looking for something more. They don’t have that kind of level of issue.

they’re wanting something deeper, they’re looking to get more out of life. They do have things that they need to let go of, things like traumas and ingrained unconscious patterning. But they also want that kind of bigger picture, like what is my purpose, why am I here? And the hypnotic coaching approach can work through things like working with values, archetypes, that sort of thing.

However, I found as I integrated my own medicine experiences and as my coaching skills began to open up even more, that when approaching those types of things, I’m more reluctant now to do a pattern and more interested in a real basic state elicitation from the clients, getting them into a resource state, and then just exploring and looking for

the points in their life where there is interconnectedness, where things seem to come together and where things don’t come together because when they don’t come together that says, okay, it’s either time to let that go or we need to do some refinement. If like happiness and job are not coming together, we can do some work with that. So it’s made me more expansive and far less rigid in how I coach. I’ve also become a lot more woo woo.

So it was a lot more, much more of a magical foundation in my working these days.

Yeah, I love that. And you know, what’s interesting to what you just said is, because I’ve done training with you, you’re a trainer, and I credit the training that I did with you as helping me get to be that way more flexible than I was before. So even as this continues, I can see how that more ability to open up more and more, continues to happen to really step into your own flow, whatever that is, right? And that’s gonna be a little different for everybody.

Absolutely, and you know medicine work is not for everyone it is not a panacea and there are certain populations and certain individuals Where it is like contraindicated big time So in the back of my head when I’m working with a client the question that I am asking myself is How can I bring the medicine work into this session without actually giving a chemical? How can I bring that energy that essence that? That way of thinking into the session so the client can have a taste of that without having to eat mushrooms or drink ayahuasca.

Mentors and Influences 

Yeah, yeah, that’s a good frame to start from, or to be in for sure. Where do you, where do you educate yourself? Like how do you self-educate yourself on these different ideas and thoughts?

Experimentation. I do read a lot. I listen to a lot of people’s experiences. Those are more experienced than me. I continue my own training. Last summer I trained with a Mazatec Corundera and how to hold traditional Mazatec mushroom ceremonies. When the conquistadors came in and as the Aztec Empire fell, mushrooms were a big part of the Aztec Empire, the Mazatec people took the medicine and went into hiding and they maintained the tradition over hundreds of years. So they’re like the uh, the OGs of mushroom work if you will. Uh, so I learned from them. I’m currently actually doing a year-long intensive uh with uh Paco, an Incan priest from Peru. Where I’m training in their ritual practices and how they approach medicine work. They use primarily ayahuasca and huachuma or san Pedro. I don’t work with ayahuasca. It’s not the medicine for me, but I do work from time to time with Whatshuma as well.

Start and Stop Doing in Transformation Industry 

Wow, great. What is, this’ll be a little bit different of a question, but so you’re in kind of the transformation industry with, you know, with a hypnotist, coaching, NLP, medicine work, we’re all trying to help people change their lives for the better. What’s something that everyone in your industry should either start doing or stop doing?

Oh, that’s really tough. I would say what everyone should start doing, whether in my industry or not, is some form of daily practice, meditation or some sort of daily ritual to make your time sacred. For people who are interested in medicine work, both facilitators and explorers, I highly, highly recommend a daily meditation practice because that builds the muscles and the tolerance.

for the journey because journeys can be arduous. They’re not always sunshine and rainbows. It’s great when they are, but it’s good to have skills for managing when they’re not. And having a daily meditation practice gets you comfortable in your own mind. You start to unravel, you start to witness and then unravel your own compulsive thought patterns and we all have them. In terms of what people should stop doing, people in my industry should stop promising one session cures.

If you’re like the general public listening to this and somebody’s promising a one-session cure, you might wanna keep looking for other options. There are certain issues that, in my personal experience, tend to clear in a single session. Smoking cessation is like the primary example. It’s a particularly easy one. But I never promised that because each individual and their relationship to their presenting issue is different.

So there is, at least the hypnosis world, and fortunately less so in the psychedelic state of space, but in the hypnosis world, there is this culture, this culture of rushing. It’s like the McDonald’s hypnosis culture where it’s, I can make you do blah, blah in five minutes and your life will be cured. Well, human neurology doesn’t work like that. Physical existence doesn’t work like that, and our spirit doesn’t work like that.

If you have that, that is awesome. I’m not ever going to say, I’m never going to deny somebody who says that it was a single session cure because it very, very likely was for that individual. But I think we as a culture need to step back and start valuing taking our time. Because at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what technique you use. It doesn’t matter what medicine you use. It’s about the relationship.

So in psychedelic terms, we call it set and setting. In coaching, we call it rapport. But it’s the same thing.

powerful message to remember. It took you how long to get to where you are now? So let’s be kind to ourselves and gentle and give ourselves enough time to shift that.

Misunderstandings about Plant Medicine 

But what would you say is the most misunderstood aspect about plant medicine, psychedelics?

I think there’s two prongs. One is just incorrect and one is insidious. The incorrect one is that it’s just hippies who do this stuff. Okay, I might have like a little bit of hippie in me, but I also like science and, you know, have a life beyond the mushrooms, although they do heavily influence things. It isn’t just a hippie party thing. There are some people who will use the medicines in

And some of them who have respect for it will be able to use the medicine that way and get whatever it is they need in that time from the medicine. A lot of people though who treat it as like a hippie thing or a party thing, those people can get into trouble. And I think that colors a lot of public opinion about medicine work that simply isn’t true. The other, which is more insidious is,

Just drugs. Well, you know what? Culturally, we seem to have some drugs that are more than welcome and other ones that are demonized. You know, why is it that alcohol is celebrated, but mushrooms are not? You know, there are lots of cultural reasons for that, partly because of prohibition starting in the 70s. There are political reasons for that.

And I think there are also internal reasons for that something like alcohol dolls and numbs and lets people escape Whereas something like mushrooms or LSD are going to put you face to face with The best parts of you and the worst parts of you and you have to face it So I don’t like the term drugs for this class of substances because I think it diminishes it diminishes their importance

both for the human race, historically, culturally, spiritually, and it diminishes their healing capacity. These are not drugs in the colloquial use. Sure, they have molecular chains. Now, you take psilocybin, that is a very specific chemical chain, but even that in the body, it’s not the psilocybin that makes this journey.

Psilocybin is turned into psilocin and even that isn’t it because then the psilocin as it interacts with our neurology becomes 4-ACODMT. So you can’t even call it one drug because you have one drug going through three stages. So I would definitely hope that as it becomes more mainstream people begin to separate it out from substances that are really dangerous like fentanyl and

you know, heroin, all the heavy opiates, meth, crack, those types of drugs that are really physically, psychologically and spiritually dangerous for the person taking it, and also dangerous socially. Whereas things like cannabis, psilocybin, ayahuasca, LSD, Ioboga, MDMA, and the list goes on.

they don’t have the same safety profile, or the same danger profile, I should say. Psilocybin and LSD, neither of them have a known LD50. LD50 is the dose at which it becomes lethal for 50% of the people. There’s no LD50. These are some of the safest substances we can consume. So yeah, I will step off my soapbox about that. These are sacred substances.

You know, they aren’t party substances. You can use them recreationally. I think there’s absolutely nothing wrong with recreational use. Because recreation is the act of re-creating. That in itself is a spiritual practice.

Reaction to Psychedelics

I remember you said that to me a while ago, and that really stuck with me, that concept of recreating and what that actually means. It’s pretty powerful. I have had the experience in talking with… I don’t want to say uneducated people, but people that just don’t have any experience with these kinds of medicines. And many times the instant reaction is like fear, it’s shut it down, I don’t do drugs, it’s all these different dare responses, right? Stuff that comes from the propaganda. And it can be hard to move past whatever the… negative connotations is around all that.

Yeah, you know, it’s going to take time culturally because people don’t think of, you know, their prescription painkillers or alcohol, or even some people don’t even think of cocaine as drugs or herbal supplements. I am a big fan of both Kava and Kratum. And they’re not advertised as drugs, and they certainly are. They’re advertised as health supplements.

So I think it’s going to take time for culture to begin to shift and for people to become more educated about what’s possible with these substances. And I have hope and I have faith. If you just look at the people in the political world who are pro-legalization or at the very least pro-decriminalization, this is an issue that spans the aisle, both Democrats, Republicans and libertarians.

contingencies of all those parties agree on this. So if we can get them, if we can get these diametrically opposed parties to at least some to agree on this, I think culturally things are beginning to shift and you know I’ve encountered it in my own life, you know, people who were like, well that’s just, that’s dangerous, you’re doing drugs. But if you just have patience with them, have love, if they want to learn more,

then share. If they don’t want to learn more, then it’s not an argument worth having. And also for those who are on the medicine path, it becomes important to keep your own boundaries because thoughts and beliefs and feelings, especially really strong ones, can be contagious. So that individual can believe whatever they want about mushrooms, however know that like in your own experiential life, the reality is very different.

Role Model and Mentors 

So, who is your mentor, your role model right now?

I guess, you know, in the medicine world, my mentor is my wonderful friend and business partner. He’s been facilitating, he’s been using psychedelics for 34 years, he’s been facilitating for 30 years. I’m definitely still a neophyte in comparison and still learning a tremendous amount about the art and science of facilitation.

Yeah, fantastic. I look forward to having a conversation with him at some point as well.

Practical Ways to Access Super States 

So, based on your experience, what are some practical ways that someone could use these types of, uh, we’ll call them super states cause that’s the name of the podcast, uh, to, to improve their lives, like any kind of technique or approach that you would recommend.

So again, it’s kind of a multi layered. For those who want to explore the medicine path and explore those super states, and they are super states without a doubt, I highly, highly encourage you do not go alone, especially the first time. Work with someone who has experience on the medicine path, who can guide you, who can help you prepare for set and setting and help guide you through some of the more.

trickier components to journeys because when you take psychedelic doses, you are opening the vault of the unconscious and it’s good to have someone who’s walked that path before. So definitely work with someone and in those states you can do all sorts of things. You can release traumas, you can open your heart more, you can let go of things that have been blocking you in life. You can come to a deeper understanding of the unconscious patterns that up until that moment had been influencing and controlling your life and begin to release those. And then there is some really interesting things that happen even beyond the state itself. There’s something called the afterglow. These substances have a knack for making you feel really good for weeks after. And we actually know now that biochemically, these, particularly psilocybin, iboga, and LSD unlock, and I think MD at night was in that category as well, unlock the chemical chains for neuroplasticity. It actually activates 49 different genes related to neuroplasticity. And that window stays open from anywhere from 48 hours in the case of ketamine up to six weeks, I think in the case of LSD. So you’ll keep learning, you will keep rewiring your brain and healing those neural structures well after the trip. Then there are going to be times where, you know, it’s not ideal to take the substances. It’s good to have some downtime. And not ideal, like I said earlier, for everybody to take those substances anyway, in which case the number one technique that I suggest is breath meditation. And there’s lots of different ways to do this, a really simple way is if you sit with your back straight, and you can sit with your legs crossed or your feet on the ground if you’re in a chair, and just close your eyes.

And with your eyes closed, just relax your jaw.

Allow your tongue to rest on the roof of your mouth.

And pay attention to the tip of your nose, right where your nostrils are. And track the flow of cool air in as it goes up through your sinuses, down the back of your throat, down into your lungs and all the way down to your belly.

Track the warm air out, following that same path up and out.

And just continue to.

Be with the breath.

That’s it. And you’ll notice that as you do this, that your mind tends to wander. This is normal, this is a good thing. The only thing you need to do once you notice that the mind has moved away from the breath, is to return it back to the breathing.

And to start small, do this for like two minutes or five minutes a day. There’s no, you don’t need to sit for an hour. Start small and just practice continuously returning your consciousness to the breath. And once you finish the meditation.

Pay attention to when your mind wandered, in what ways did it wander? Where did it go? Like what was the content? And how were you doing it? What was the speed of the thoughts? Were you seeing pictures? Were you hearing sounds? That sort of thing, or were you talking to yourself? Because when you do this, you’ll start to uncover those unconscious compulsive patterns that keep you out of the present moment and also tend to run our lives.

The secret here though is to be patient and be gentle. There’s nothing else you need to do but track the breath. If you want to get fancy as you increase time, you can actually, it’s a very traditional yogic practice with this meditation, is to follow the inhale through one nostril and follow the exhale throughout through the other and then switch. If you want to get like a gold star, another thing that you can do to enhance this is at the same time as you’re tracking your breath, begin to, even with your eyes closed, expand your awareness out beyond your body. But just keep bringing your mind and your attention back to that practice. And what will happen over time is the space in between the compulsive thoughts will begin to expand, and you become absorbed in the breathing. And it becomes like the most fascinating, most…

hypnotic relaxing experience one can have.

So that is a really easy way of accessing a super state. If people are interested in a more psychedelic super state, for me that’s kind of like the precursor and the everyday practice in between psychedelic sessions. There is a technique called holotropic breath work, which comes from Stan Grof. Stan Grof was a world renowned LSD therapist and wrote a lot of books on it, got amazing transformations, and when the US government clamped down in the 70s and prohibited access, he developed this technique or co-developed this technique to begin to elicit a psychedelic state through the power of breath by changing the balance of blood gases. And there’s lots of resources out there on that. It’s a hyperventilation technique.

Just like with psychedelics, if you have certain medical conditions, it’s not going to be advised. So do your research and find out what’s going to be safe for you. But that’s another access point for people who are interested or curious about the psychedelic state but aren’t quite sure yet that they want to, you know, take an ace of mushrooms or something.

Sure, yeah. And having done that type of breath work, it is also very, I can verify that it’s very powerful and does take you into your own super state.

Yes, it certainly does. We actually in our retreats, we integrate holotropic breath work is one of the kind of continuous practices because it is something that you can do daily. And you can do it, you can do it for short periods of time. I know, like, when you go to a formal training for it, they do like three hour sessions, which you will definitely trip doing that breath for three hours.

Yeah. I mean, I do that for like a half an hour and it takes me away.

Yeah, if we could take just one time out, is that okay? I just need to grab my tea. Thanks.

Future of Psychedelics for Personal Growth 

So what do you see about, how do you imagine the future of using psychedelics or altered states of consciousness for personal growth unfolding? What’s giving you hope right now about the future?

What’s giving me hope are the number of people like me and who are working both openly but also underground. You know, this is illegal. This is, you know, a schedule one substance. It is legal in certain states and in certain cities, fortunately. So, you know, state law trumps federal in many instances when it comes to this, as we’ve seen with cannabis.

But it gives me hope that so many people now are speaking up and have the courage to say either, you know what, I use these substances on the regular and they change my life, they’ve saved my life. Or people say, yeah, I am facilitating this because this is so important that I am willing to risk it. And the level of congruence that a facilitator needs to have to do that is both astounding and what is going to energetically change the tide. What also makes me hopeful are the states that are considering legalization. California is considering legalization. Rhode Island is one step away. They’re probably going to get it first. Massachusetts, they’re very close to it. New York currently has two bills for legalization. One is for widespread legalization of plant-based psychedelics. And then the second bill is to give access to psychedelic therapy for people with diagnosed disorders, people who would not be coming on my retreat because of the severity of the disorder, who really need to be in a medical setting. New York State has a bill that would pay for those treatments because insurance federally can’t pay for it. So that makes me really, really hopeful. I think the more that we talk about this, get this out in public, public consciousness The more lives will change and I think responsible use and that’s a real key here is responsible use Has the potential to change people’s lives in profound ways, you know a lot of the underground movement Really came out of the underground in the 2000s thanks to Silicon Valley Because a lot of those guys those super creatives are using it to solve problems.

LSD, for example, is notoriously good for solving problems. LSD use was responsible for the development of the PCR test, which going through COVID, we all know, was a really important discovery. Also the imagining of the double helix was thanks to LSD. So for creatives who are living their best life and feeling amazing, don’t necessarily need a lot of therapeutic change,

Want more, want to expand more to find out what else is possible, what is their next big step in life, or if they have some sort of practical problem-solving thing like science-y thing. These substances hold tremendous potential. And then we also have on the spiritual side, you know, I, for my own personal use, I use this both for healing of my own traumas and I also use it as a part, as a very important if not crucial part of my spiritual practice.

I think the more people use this for spirituality, it’s going to make better people. There was a study that came out, oh gosh, I think it was 2021, that looked at psychedelic use, and it measured people who use psychedelics, it measured them for seven distinct qualities that are known to be directly correlated to the committing of violent crime.

And I found that people who use psychedelics score significantly lower on these seven points than the general public. So psychedelics will make you a better human being.

Learn More 

I love that. How can people learn more about you?

Sure, you can learn more by visiting me at jess-marion.com. You can also join my Facebook group, The Psychedelic Sanctuary. You can friend me on Facebook. You can email me if you have questions about an upcoming retreat. We do have a fall retreat lined up that we’re very excited about and we’re going to be holding it in a very special place, which I won’t disclose here, but you’ll find out when you find out and you can find out more about that by emailing me at philahypnosis@gmail.com

I’ll make sure all of those links are in the show notes. And, what’s one last insight that you want the audience to leave with today?

Everything is conscious. Consciousness pervades everything. Trees, plants, molecules, you, me, animals, it’s everywhere. And the language of consciousness is love. Just remember that.

Beautiful. Thank you so much.

My pleasure, thank you.