Unconventional Ways to Power Up Your Brain & Perform Like an Elite Athlete

Nick Urban [00:00:05]:
Kambo, Rape, rapay, Sananga, Ayahuasca. Rape plant medicines a cure all for nearly everything, or risky drugs that throw people into psychosis and, ultimately, the mental hospital. In this episode, we are delving into the world of exactly that, plant medicines, their uses when they are appropriate, when they’re inappropriate, the parallels and differences between plant medicines and meditation, megadosing with a relaxing and flow state inducing nootropic known as L theanine, my controversial take on tobacco and nicotine Mind my experiences with it, upgrading the meditation experience with neurofeedback and modern technologies, ancestral uses for the plant medicines Mind animal medicines and everything in between. Oh, and can’t forget cannabis. Does that drug fit this list of sacred and special revered plant medicines? Stay tuned, and we’ll cover all that and much more. Guiding us through this journey is plant medicine veteran and Planet Combo cofounder, Jonathan Gold. He left an unfulfilling 10 year career in IT to pursue a higher path of healing, self discovery, and enlightenment, uniting him serendipitously with the transformational healing power of Kambo frog medicine. And, by the way, if you want to learn more about Kambo specifically, I suggest you go back to episode number 136 that I recorded with Caitlin Thompson, where we discuss the benefits, the peptides, and other bioactives of combo specifically.

Nick Urban [00:01:55]:
And as we mentioned in this episode, combo is non psychedelic, non hallucinogenic, and often a great place to begin your foray, albeit a bit uncomfortable compared to some of the other plant medicines. And, yes, combo is technically an animal medicine. Anyway, Jonathan is a skilled facilitator with thousands of testimonials and great experiences with those that join him on his retreats. The show notes for this episode and links to everything we discuss will be at mindbodypeak.com/thenumber151. And if you wanna check out some of Jonathan’s products, you can go to Planet, and use the code URBAN at checkout to save on your order. As I mentioned in the episode, I personally have their Rape and Sananga and use their hap a semi regularly, but haven’t got around to trying their sananga yet. And do note that we discuss Hapai quite a bit in this episode. Hapai contains nicotine, which is an addictive chemical.

Nick Urban [00:03:08]:
So proceed with caution. Do your own diligence first. And if you have an addictive personality, steer clear. This podcast episode is brought to us by the Outlier Longevity Challenge. I created this mini program because most of what I see around longevity is either complicated and confusing or extremely expensive. Some of the biggest longevity biohackers, famously on record, state that they spend 100 of 1,000 up to the 1,000,000 to slow down their biological aging process and to live higher quality years for longer. I think this is wrong, and you shouldn’t have to spend a fortune just to get some of the most impactful tips, protocols, and strategies to make it into your centenarian years. So what I did is I did ample research.

Nick Urban [00:03:58]:
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Nick Urban [00:05:06]:
So, in order to take advantage of this limited time offer, go ahead and click the link in the show notes below and use the code LAUNCH at checkout. If you have any questions, you can leave a message on the contact form on outlier.com/contactoremailhello@outlier.com. Let me know what you think. I’m always working to improve it. So I look forward to hearing your thoughts and, most importantly, seeing your transformation. Alright. Ladies and gentlemen, sit back, relax, and enjoy this interview with Jonathan Gold. John, welcome to MINDBODY Peak Performance.

Jonathan Gold [00:05:43]:
Thank you. Thank you. It’s great to be here.

Nick Urban [00:05:46]:
I’m looking forward to this conversation. Let’s dig into all things plant medicine and non duality and so much more. But before we get started today, what are the unusual nonnegotiables you’ve done so far today, it’s a couple hours later over there, for your health, your performance, and your Bioharmony?

Jonathan Gold [00:06:06]:
Wow. Okay. That’s quite a question. Right. Nonnegotiables that I’ve meditation, I did an hour this morning when I woke up. That’s my preferred I find it easiest to do, actually. As soon as I wake up in the morning, my mind’s already kind of peaceful from sleeping. I just that’s the perfect time.

Jonathan Gold [00:06:24]:
So before I get out of bed, I usually do 45 minutes to an hour of meditation.

Nick Urban [00:06:30]:
How do you settle on that amount of time? 45 minutes to an hour is a lot longer than most people do.

Jonathan Gold [00:06:36]:
Yeah. I know. It depends how often I’ve done it the previous day. Ideally, I find with meditation, frequency is more important than volume. Right? So if you if you meditate if you meditate once a week for 7 hours, that’s not as good as doing an an hour a day. And by the same token, if you meditate once a day for an hour, it’s actually better to split it up. 3:20 minutes would actually be better than 1 hour long session for sure because it’s the more often you get in you put your mind in that state, the easier it is to get into the state.

Nick Urban [00:07:10]:
Interesting. I’ve I’ve heard the opposite case too. I heard people meditation that it’s better to have Nick concentrated session because oftentimes the first 10, 15 minutes, you’re just dropping in. You’re, like, getting into the zone. And then after that, it’s like where where some people view the actual benefits as occurring.

Jonathan Gold [00:07:26]:
Yeah. But that’s where the frequency comes in. Because for me, it’s when you when you do the frequency, it doesn’t take you 10 to 15 minutes to drop in. It saves, like like, 1 minute to drop in. If you don’t do it that frequent frequently, then, like, if I’m if I’m only meditating once a day, it takes me about 35 minutes before it really clicks. And then the second the last 25 minutes of the hour is when it’s really working. In a perfect world, when I’m really on it, I do it 3 times a day. Like, 3 3 20 minute sessions a day or maybe an hour in the morning Mind then a 20 minute in the afternoon and then another 20 minute before bed.

Jonathan Gold [00:07:58]:
If I consistently do that, it it just clicks. Like, I can fall in really, really quickly. But, you know, it’s it’s easier I say easier said than done, but

Nick Urban [00:08:09]:
that’s why I

Jonathan Gold [00:08:10]:
do along in the morning because in the morning, it’s it’s I’m not occupied with other stuff, so I just do it. Whereas in the middle of the day, you know, I’m doing stuff and it’s like, oh, well, I’m gonna meditate, you know. So it’s, but I I find when I get in the zone with it, when I’m doing it regularly, it’s not a chore. It really isn’t. It’s like you look forward to every session, you look forward to doing it. And I’ve just kind of got out of out of sync with the regularity. I always do it in the morning. But for me, doing it once a day is not enough for it to actually really do something.

Jonathan Gold [00:08:40]:
It’s it’s for me, like, twice a day, eve 3 times a day is where it’s where it’s at for me.

Nick Urban [00:08:44]:
What do you feel are the main benefits you get out of it? Because I meditate also every day in the morning first thing. I’ve done little stints where it was 45 minutes an hour, and now I’m usually around the 20, 25 minute mark. But I’m curious what you feel you get out of each session and why it’s such a nonnegotiable for you.

Jonathan Gold [00:09:01]:
Because if when I don’t do it, then I notice the rest of the time throughout the day, my mind is a lot more nervous, anxious, kind of disorganized all over the place. So the benefit actually is not while you’re meditating. Even though it can feel really good while you’re doing it, for me, it’s actually the benefit comes from the space that it gives you, kind of headspace it gives you of being nonreactive to stim you know, it creates space between stimulus and response. That’s one of the things it does. I’ve heard somebody else actually describe it like that.

Nick Urban [00:09:36]:
Yeah. What does your actual practice look like? Are you following any system or just sitting there with your eyes closed and letting your mind wander?

Jonathan Gold [00:09:43]:
I just try to focus my attention on I usually just use my breath or or something. It could be the feeling in my hands. It could be the breath, but it’s just something to kind of to center the the attention. And, I mean, I could actually I’ll I can talk you through what meditation is for Peak I can kind of I’ve got this thing that I’ve made a video ages ago about it. I can Mind talk you through the same thing. So, in normal life, you’ve got objects in the foreground of our experience. So we’ve got thoughts, sounds, sights, all these things going on. And in the background, you’ve just got this stillness.

Jonathan Gold [00:10:23]:
You could call it deep sleep or consciousness. It’s just this stillness in the background. But the mind is constantly grabbing at the different things. It’s grabbing at the thoughts. It’s grabbing at the sounds Mind attention your attention is doing this all the time. It’s just human nature. The mind does that. And with meditation, what you’re doing is you’re training your attention to focus on one thing, not all of these things all the time.

Jonathan Gold [00:10:47]:
So you’re training your attention to sit still. I like to think of it as almost like balancing. Right? So you you’re trying to balance your attention on a point. Right? And it just keep it keeps falling off, just keeps falling off. And you pick it back up when you put it back on Mind it Nick it back up and you put it you get over and over and over again, and it drives you mad. But then when it clicks, it stops falling off and it just stays. With no effort, the attention just stays on the thing that you’re focusing on, and then it clicks. And then usually when that happens, what I feel, it’s almost like, like a blanket comes down.

Jonathan Gold [00:11:22]:
It’s what it feels like. Like a blanket comes down into it feels like being in deep sleep while I’m awake. That’s the only way I think describe it when that actually happens. And what that is, it’s the changing places of the the stillness in the background that you weren’t you didn’t notice before, that is actually moved into the foreground, and the objects that you were grasping at, they’ve moved into the background. So they’re not gone, but the mind isn’t grasping at them anymore. It’s it’s focused on the the stillness in the foreground. So that’s through the technique of balancing your attention, what you’re doing is you’re getting the those two things to swap places. The the stillness in the background comes into the foreground.

Jonathan Gold [00:12:01]:
Your objects in the foreground go into the background. They don’t disappear. They’re still there. They just float by, but you’re not grabbing at them. And when that happens, the feeling that I get, it feels like deep sleep. It’s like when you wake up in the morning when you’ve had a really good sleep and you’ve got kind of that dozy feeling, that’s what it feels like when when meditation is is clicking. And it feels it feels so healthy. It feels like, you know, healing the brain.

Nick Urban [00:12:25]:
That’s a great explanation of it. It’s very simple to understand. Do you have any tips for people looking to get started to make the process easier or more efficient, especially when you’re starting out? I know when I was starting out, the first number of sessions felt like I wasn’t making any progress. I was beating myself up for not clearing clearing my mind the way I thought I should. And then eventually, it got much easier. But do you have any tips to shortcut that process?

Jonathan Gold [00:12:49]:
Well, number 1 is you saves to accept it’s gonna suck for a while. You are gonna hate it. It’s gonna feel like nothing’s happening. It’s gonna be boring. Right? It’s gonna feel like it’s it’s very much like going to the gym. When you first go to the gym, like, you Gold for the 1st week, nothing happens. Your body doesn’t change. Right? It takes a long time.

Jonathan Gold [00:13:06]:
It’s very much like that. It takes your tray you’re training your brain. You’re training that part of your mind in the same way that when you do yoga, you’d you know, or you’re or you’re training the gym or whatever it is, some skill that you’re learning, it doesn’t happen overnight. And even when you do it and it feels like nothing’s happening, like, even when you go to the gym and it feels like, well, nothing’s changed, actually, something has changed, It’s just so imperceptible that you you can’t quite notice it yet. But, the only advice I would give is is start small. Right? Even if you just do 5 minutes, do it more than once a day. That’s for me, once a day doesn’t really it it it doesn’t click often enough. It if you just do, like, 1 20 minute meditation a day, you’ll get benefit, but you won’t get to that place that I’m talking about.

Jonathan Gold [00:13:56]:
That amazing feeling when when you get the deep sleep feeling comes, that doesn’t come for me. Doing meditation once a day for 20 minutes doesn’t even get me close to that. So I would say just stick with it, accept that you’re gonna not like it for a bit. It’s gonna suck. It’s gonna be boring, but just keep doing it. And one day, it will click, and you’ll know what I’m talking about when it happens because you’ll feel it happening Mind you’ll think, ah, that was what John was talking about. It it like a blanket coming down. And when it’s there, it’s like, oh, yeah.

Jonathan Gold [00:14:24]:
Here it is. And it feels it feels so good.

Nick Urban [00:14:26]:
That’s a great way of describing it too. It it does feel like a really restorative sleep. You just feel good during it for at least for me. And then afterward is when I feel even better. And for me, it used to take about, like, 30 minutes to actually really drop into that zone and to feel like I was getting all those benefits. But then I started playing around with neurofeedback, and I feel like after I don’t know how many sessions I’ve done, maybe 200 sessions, I can now access that same state with only 15 minutes instead of 30. Have you played around with any technologies to enhance Is

Jonathan Gold [00:15:00]:
that is that one of the things that you wear Mind, like, a device you wear on your Health that when you say neurofeedback?

Nick Urban [00:15:05]:
Yeah. So you wear it on your head, and there’s different modes. You can, like, choose you wanted to Rape focus or relaxation. And based on the mode you choose, it Rape your brainwaves to certain states. Well, it provides cues. It provides auditory or visual cues and then, like, rewards your Rape. I said Nick quotation marks because it teaches your brain that, like, okay. When I’m sitting here in this state, then the music gets a little louder or a little clearer, and this is the state that I wanna go towards.

Nick Urban [00:15:34]:
And that’s when you reach that certain brainwave pattern dominance that you selected. So for meditation, it might be an alpha brainwave dominant state. And then over time, like, after you do it enough times, you start to tune out the music that’s even there. You forget it’s there, and your brain is just, like, learning how to access that without anything. Because then when you take it off, you can sit down there and emulate those same brainwaves without anything.

Jonathan Gold [00:16:04]:
No. I’ve I’ve seen them. I’ve never used one. Actually, now I’m really intrigued to try. Actually, now I’ve spoken to you about it. But I know what you’re talking about, those devices. I’ve no I’ve never I’ve never used one myself. Something I’ve used, a product, like a nootropic, L Theanine, actually is incredible.

Jonathan Gold [00:16:26]:
Incredible. It puts your brain in that state. I’m not actually when it comes to nootropics, I find a lot of them to me feel like stimulants Mind they they mess up my sleep. Even when I Rape, like, tiny tiny doses, microdoses of them, I find myself lying in bed wide awake. Even if I do it at, like, 5 in the morning, I’m I’m lying in bed at midnight wide awake, and I’ve had, like, the quarter of the dose. But l theanine is not obviously not like that. L theanine is actually when I’ve taken the high doses of it, it’s unbelievable. I’ve had some insane, experiences with l feeling alone.

Jonathan Gold [00:17:04]:
Just just l feeling where I’ve taken a reasonably large dose. I’ve sort of I’m talking about over a gram. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it’s so that the the capsules I’ve got are 400 milligrams. And if I take 400, I mean, I I I take it every day. I don’t really feel it. But when I take if I was to take 3 of those, if I was to take, like, 1.2 grams, I have a very noticeable psychoactive effect from it, and it’s very, very powerful.

Jonathan Gold [00:17:32]:
It does feel like like you’ve been meditating for, you know, 12 hours.

Nick Urban [00:17:37]:
I’ve never taken that before meditating, at least not intentionally like that. When I use it, you when I usually use it, it’s like 100 to 300 milligrams in the morning blended into my coffee because it’s a natural amino acid found in high concentrations and really high effects, the tightness, the constriction, the jitters, all, like, the negatives of coffee and caffeine and stimulants, it helps to offset those as well as, like, encouraging I think it’s alpha brainwave production, which is great for relaxation and for meditation and for all those kinds of things. But I have not tried megadosing it. That could be a cool experiment to do that on a weekend when I’m not having any caffeine or anything else to offset it, and then try a nice long meditation session. How far in advance are you consuming it ahead of your meditation?

Jonathan Gold [00:18:26]:
I I mean, to be honest with you, on most days, when do I I normally meditate first thing in the morning, and then I take the theanine after that. If you’re gonna make a dose it, I would say, yeah, like, if you’re gonna make a dose it and use it for meditation, I’d say take it maybe half an hour, 40 minutes before take a gram. Try try taking a gram. It’s not harmful. Like, it’s really not harm. Some people take it some people could take, like, a gram and a half a day for months. So it’s like it’s it’s not harmful to take that larger dose. I mean, I’ve I’ve taken it also over a longer period in higher doses, and there’s definitely an antidepressant effect for sure.

Jonathan Gold [00:19:01]:
Like, it it it definitely I’ll regulate serotonin, dopamine. You feel really good on it. But then anything like that, when you’ve used it, when your brain gets used to to these new high levels, if you suddenly stop taking it, there’s a rebound effect. Not it’s not I wouldn’t call it like a brutal withdrawal. It was like a for a day, I felt kind of agitated and a bit like brain foggy for a day, and then it just goes away.

Nick Urban [00:19:23]:
Yeah. It’s also really helpful in the evening. It can, like, again, stimulate alpha brainwaves and help you get to sleep better, especially if you’ve had stimulants or coffee later in the evening. It can help, like, blunt that effect keeping you up, but it does also induce lucid dreaming in some people. So if you saves, like, very intense dreams and you don’t want that, it might be bad to take before sleep. But, yeah, I’m a big fan of L theanine, and I’ve used it in what I thought was higher doses at, like, 400 milligrams, but now it’s gonna be cool to experiment with trying really high doses before meditation in the morning Mind then maybe in the afternoon or evening as well.

Jonathan Gold [00:20:01]:
And, also, as a as an emergency, plant anxiety medication. Right? So if you’ve got I mean, I’m trying to think of an example for me, but maybe, like, when I’ve had there’s something I’ve gotta do, and I’ve had a terrible night’s sleep, right, and I’m stressed out, and I need to perform. I need to be not anxious. Right? You make a dose some some take, like, 800 milligrams of L theanine or gram of L theanine or more. You code even take more, and it’s you it’s gonna give you, like, 4, 5 hours of no anxiety. Like, you’ll be fine. You might crash after a little bit. You know? Like, when you say we take the high doses, there’s definitely a rebound effect.

Jonathan Gold [00:20:36]:
But if you have an emergency situation where you need to be not anxious, right, and you don’t wanna take beta blockers or, you know, you haven’t got access to anything like that, right, L theanine, totally safe, none really more addictive, then it’s it’s amazing, for that. So it’s always good to have some always good to have some in the house in case.

Nick Urban [00:20:56]:
No. I agree. I’m with you on that. So let’s switch gears a bit now. And I’m curious about your background and how you got involved in the work you do because you do a lot more than just use L theanine and mix it with meditation.

Jonathan Gold [00:21:09]:
Yeah. So I, used to work in office for many years. I was in in IT for a long time. Ended up not enjoying it, didn’t wanna be stuck in an office all day. Then I played professional Peak, actually. That was the thing that got me out of the the rat race out of the 9 to 5 was I started playing poker online. I got good at it. And then one day, I just quit my job.

Jonathan Gold [00:21:35]:
I was like, yeah. I can play poker for a living. And then, got into plant medicines, kambo, which I did for the first time, maybe 2010. I did it at an Ayahuasca retreat, actually, of all Planet, and I’ve never heard of Kambo when they had it there. And I did it and felt benefit from it, and then I would do it periodically after that. So I’ve I found a practitioner, who was actually in the Netherlands at the time, and, I would travel there, whatever, every few months to to go and receive Kambo. And yeah, and then in 2017, my business partner and I, we were looking at setting something up, and it just suddenly occurred to us. Well, there’s no professional Kambo outfit.

Jonathan Gold [00:22:33]:
There’s no brand. You know, there’s practitioners, but kambo to the untrained eye just looks dangerous and unhygienic. You know? Just like people burning these sticks and putting frog, you know, frog poison on them, which actually, it’s not actually poison, but talk about that later. But that’s what it looks like. And to the to the layman, it just looks awful and dangerous. So we wanted to set something up where someone could look at that who has no idea. They’re not in that community. They’re not in the plant medicine community.

Jonathan Gold [00:23:04]:
They could look at it and think, okay. This looks legit. Maybe I’ll I’ll try it. So a lot of people have actually said to me that they like that’s what they like about Planet Cannabis it it looks professional. It looks, legit. And, yeah. And Mind then the rest is history, really. So

Nick Urban [00:23:21]:
There’s definitely a through line between meditation and the plant medicines and even animal medicines in the case of Kambo. I actually interviewed, I don’t know if you know her, Caitlin Thompson on episode 1136 Nick little while tobacco, and we talked more about the, like, bioactives and Nick peptides and everything in combo. And she stressed that this is not your typical psychedelic. It’s not a hallucinogen that you would get from other common plant medicines. But she also mentioned that when she was in front of large audiences speaking about this, people would ask her what her favorite, like, medicine was, and people were shocked that it was combo Mind that she had thought that was the most healing and therapeutic out of all of them. Sounds like you came to similar conclusions.

Jonathan Gold [00:24:08]:
I wouldn’t say it’s my favorite. I wouldn’t put it like that. It’s just like even though I’ve definitely got a lot of benefit from it, I I don’t yeah. I wouldn’t say it’s my favorite. I definitely more more a fan of the kind of psychedelic medicine. Not to say that I’m not taking anything away from it, but Kambo is yeah. It’s it’s a purging medicine, really. So I’ve developed a method for for how to use cambo, which is kind of based on the there’s something called Code, which is what some of the Peruvian tribes call Kambo.

Jonathan Gold [00:24:41]:
Sapo just means means frog or toad in Spanish. And when they do it, they don’t drink any water. So they do it dry. Right? And the one I’d always done Kambo is with water where you drink the liter and a half, 2 liters of water before you put the kambo on. And then you feel so awful all the way through the process right from the beginning before the cambo even goes on, you feel sick because you’ve got an empty stomach and 2 liters of water in your belly. You put the camo on Mind it feels so harsh. It just awful, unpleasant feeling. And I used to dread doing it.

Jonathan Gold [00:25:16]:
Right? And then the first time I tried it without water was in was on one of our retreats in 2019, November 2019. And, I’d heard about this this Rape method. I’ve, there’s a guy called Peter Gorman who sadly passed away recently. He he wrote a book called Sappho My Soul. He brought Kambo over in the eighties to the west, and he was very much a Sappho guy. No no water. So the first time that I did it like that, I had no idea what it was gonna be like. We had water on hand just in Rape.

Jonathan Gold [00:25:48]:
So I did it with some of my other practitioners on the retreat. We had water there, but we put the camo on dry. And within 10 minutes, I knew this was the way to do it. It feels completely different. When you don’t have water in your stomach and you take cambo, it’s gentle. It comes on soft. It’s slow. It doesn’t feel harsh.

Jonathan Gold [00:26:09]:
It’s completely different. And I remember in that moment, it was literally like an enlightenment, like a epiphany when I was like, clearly, this is this is the way to do it. Why would you wanna drink 2 liters of water at the beginning? It doesn’t do anything. It doesn’t add to the process. It just makes you feel sick. But then I got to the point towards the end of the process where I I felt like I wanted a purge, but but there was nothing to come out because I, you know, I didn’t have water in my stomach. And at that point, I reached for the water Urban I drank, and immediately, I purged the bile. It just came up.

Jonathan Gold [00:26:43]:
And in that moment, the Planet Kambo method was born, which is a kind of hybrid method of of the doing it with the water, the kind of the Brazilian method of drinking the water at the beginning Mind the dry Rape method. You just you just drink the water later in the process. And now, I mean, I can’t I couldn’t even imagine doing it drinking 2 liters of water at the beginning. It would just be it’s just to me, it’s just stupid. It doesn’t it doesn’t add anything to the process. And anybody that’s done it this way, that’s tried this way without water, everybody says the same thing. They’re like, obviously, this is this is the the better way to do it. And while the thing is, well, when you wouldn’t drink water at the beginning is usually you throw up that water before it’s ready to come up anyway, and you need to drink more.

Jonathan Gold [00:27:25]:
So to me, it’s it’s Mind pointless, but there are plenty of tribes that do it that way. So I’m not, you know, this is to me, I say it kind of seems pointless to me. But I’m, you know, I’m I’m a Western guy. There are tribes that have been doing it that way for 100 of years. So there’s there’s no right one right way to do it. But for me, there’s a way that seems more logical and common sense, and more Planet, actually. And and the other thing when you do it this way is that when you do it with 2 liters of water in your stomach, the water to me acts like a block in that it blocks you from really feeling what the Kambo is doing. Kambo has actually got a very subtle feeling in the body.

Jonathan Gold [00:28:07]:
It comes in really gently, and it can do certain things. It’s it’s Mind nuanced. It can actually even, not not bring on visions, but it can make you think about things. When you’ve drunk 2 liters of water, you feel so unpleasant that you you don’t you can’t focus on the actual feeling because you’re just you feel so awful and you wanna get this thing over with. Right? When you do kambo without the water, it’s it’s like a meditation. It’s a completely a completely different, different experience.

Nick Urban [00:28:38]:
John, will you summarize? Because we alluded to the previous episode recorded about Kambo, but people tuning in now may not have seen or heard that. And so can you describe what it is, just a quick summary, and then also why people are using combo to begin with? Yeah.

Jonathan Gold [00:28:54]:
So combo is the secretion of a of the giant monkey frog or the phyllo medusa, follimedusa bicolor frog. That’s the the sort of Latin name. It comes from the Amazon jungle, and it has a secretion on its skin that the indigenous tribes have been using for centuries as a as a medicine. And the way that you use kambo is you have to make these little burns on the skin using, they use vines or they’re called I think they’re called tashimi vines in the in the jungle. We just use incense Nick, and you you make a little bird on the skin, and then you take the top layer of skin off, and you put the Kambo secretion from the frog on the wound, and it enters the body in that way Mind it puts you through a sort of half an hour to 45 minute deep purging process. So it it does lots of different things in the body. It essentially puts you through a short and intense flu. That’s Mind what it feels like.

Jonathan Gold [00:29:50]:
It’s like a fever, vomiting. You might need to toilet. You might, you know, you might have diarrhea. So it’s like putting you through the healing process the body goes through when you get sick without actually getting sick.

Nick Urban [00:30:00]:
Very interesting. There’s a lot of parallels between that and other ways people have artificially induced similar type symptoms of, like, sickness for or to elicit a healing response. Like, there’s the famous Code toxins where he introduced toxins to the body, which had the the goal of stimulating a really intense high fever, and that was able to, like, rid the body of certain parasites and diseases and everything. And there’s, like, a bunch of different examples of, like, cultures and tribes amplifying the bodily responses. So, say, you have a fever instead of suppressing it with a artificial man Rape drug or even a natural plant that will bring the fear down. Instead, you work with it to make it more productive within safe limits and boundaries, of course. You’re not gonna induce a coma by just keep bringing it higher and higher. But by making the body less hospitable to pathogens, then you’re stimulating, like, a healing response rather than opposing it.

Jonathan Gold [00:31:02]:
Yep. That’s how I think Kambo works. That’s one thing that kambo does. Right? When you do Canbo regularly, you don’t get sick. Right? And I think the way that it works and that’s the other thing. I’m sure you Caitlin told you this as well because I I I recorded an interview with Caitlin on our channel, and I asked her loads of questions about the science, things that I thought were proven scientifically, and she said they weren’t. It’s all theory. Right? Most of it, we don’t know.

Jonathan Gold [00:31:26]:
We just it’s just like people theorize certain things. So I was actually really surprised when I spoke to her, and I and I hit her with these, science questions, and she just said, yeah. Yeah. We don’t know. So one of the questions I asked her was why does Kambo have this effect on the immune system? Why is it when people do kambo, they don’t get sick anymore? And we don’t really know. But I think what it is is when you take when you take kambo, you’re essentially, you are getting sick with kambo. It’s it’s it’s putting you through the same process that you go through when you get sick. So if you do kambo sort of semi regularly, you’re getting fever.

Jonathan Gold [00:32:01]:
URBAN how you do kambo every 3 months. Right? Every 3 months, you’re putting your body through a fever. Instead of it lasting a week, it’s lasting half an hour. And when you have that fever and your body flushes the bile from the gallbladder and you go through the Kambo process, you’ve essentially gone through a sickness without getting sick. Now I recently got got very sick. Right? And I I in the last since I started doing kambo, I could count on one hand the times I’ve actually really got sick. And I recently, I’m talking about just a few weeks ago, I had the worst fever I’ve ever had. I mean, it was awful.

Jonathan Gold [00:32:35]:
And I remember thinking when I was going through it how much it felt like kambo actually. When I was lying there in the fever thinking this really feels like kambo, but except with kambo, I know it’s gonna be over in 20 minutes. This went this went on for days.

Nick Urban [00:32:49]:
Yeah. Well, I’m glad you’re feeling better now, and this makes me reflect on what we were talking about earlier and hypercompensations because Caitlin was telling me that are a lot of different bioactives, including many different peptides that have, like, immune enhancing activity and immune modulating activity. But then also the idea of hypercompensation where it’s like you introduce something strong to the body. And sometimes after that ends, then the body will hypercompensate, and it’ll go to the other end of the spectrum, bioregulators your defense pathways and your antioxidant systems and all kinds of stuff like that to make it not happen in the future. It doesn’t want to be disturbed. It wants to maintain homeostasis. And by introducing combo or other things, then you can help the body, like, adapt without having to spend a week or 2 weeks sick.

Jonathan Gold [00:33:42]:
That’s interesting. So what you’re saying is by when you introduce kambo, there’s almost like a rebound effect the other way in terms of your immune system. So you you introduce something that’s really strong, and it makes you Mind kinda Nick, and the body reacts by super boosting the immune system as a kind of reaction to that.

Nick Urban [00:33:58]:
That’s what it seems. Pure conjecture theory, but it’d be cool to see more follow-up on that.

Jonathan Gold [00:34:03]:
Absolutely. Yeah. Makes sense to me.

Nick Urban [00:34:05]:
Okay. So we’ve talked about combo a little bit, but there’s also other things. You you were nice enough to send me some stuff in the mail, and I have these in front of me. Can you describe what it is that I’m holding and why you decided to carry them in your shop?

Jonathan Gold [00:34:22]:
Yeah. So what you’re holding in the the v shaped pipe that you’re holding is called a kuripe, and the little tin that you had is one of our, Rape or Peak tins. And what hap is, it’s a tobacco snuff. So it’s a it’s jungle tobacco. This is not cigarette tobacco that’s processed in like a, you know, factory with chemicals. This is like raw jungle tobacco that’s been ground into a powder. It’s dried, ground into a powder, and then it’s mixed with ashes. So it has this kind of gray sort of texture.

Jonathan Gold [00:34:55]:
And then it’s blown into the nose either with, like, a longer pipe or with one of those v shaped pipes, which is like a self applicator. So you can yeah. So for the indigenous tribes in in the Amazon jungle, tobacco is actually their most sacred medicine. It’s more it’s it’s the spirit of tobacco is the grandfather, and it’s actually above Ayahuasca. It’s like the original medicine. So it’s it’s sort of like the head honcho spirit. So tobacco is a very, very sacred plant. And for them, it’s not like they don’t use it in the same way that we’ve done in the west where we just start making cigarettes or kind of, you know, top use it in a toxic fashion.

Jonathan Gold [00:35:32]:
The money more they use it is as a snuff, so it’s blown into the code, and it’s extremely strong. Like, it can be it can knock you out this stuff. If you do a really big dose where somebody blows it blows it for you with a with a pipe, it can be incredibly powerful. It can be used for different things. It can be used they use it for protection actually. Like, tobacco is the spirit is is for protection. So they use it in in ceremonies or Mind or the the shaman will use it during an Ayahuasca ceremony. If he needs to clear so, like, during an Ayahuasca ceremony, he may he may feel like there’s some, like, negative energy Mind he needs to clear it out.

Jonathan Gold [00:36:10]:
So then he’ll take up a and he’ll purge your vomit as a way to clear. Because purging, similar with Kambo, with Ayahuasca, with these medicines, purging is a way of, like, the body clearing, whether it’s actually physically getting rid of something or whether it’s just energetic purging. So tobacco is a purgative medicine. It’s also used you can it’s great for meditation. It really centers the mind. They also use it socially Mind of like we do with cigarettes. A lot of the tribes people do, but it also can be used, you know, as a sort of ceremonial medicine. So it’s one of those things, you know, like with Ayahuasca, with Kambo, hapaecus Mind comes along with it.

Jonathan Gold [00:36:54]:
It’s it’s another one of these these jungle medicines. A lot of people get get benefit from it. So it’s something that we decided to to stock in the store. We came up with our own blends.

Nick Urban [00:37:05]:
How many different ways is it traditionally used? Like, I’m imagining it’s smoked. It’s also there’s, like, the snuff, the version of the hot Peak that’s blown to the nose. How how else do they use it?

Jonathan Gold [00:37:17]:
So yeah. So it’s it’s smoked. They use when they smoke it, they they use Tobacco, and it’s used more as a, like, a smudging tool rather than inhaling. So they Rape the smoke into their mouth and they blow it on things to, like, bless. You know, like a as if you were gonna use like a, you know, like an incense to kind of cleanse. They use it like that. There’s the hapaea Mind then there’s also, you can take tobacco in a drink like an oral mixture, which I haven’t done, which is apparently horrible, Mind it makes you really Nick, really, really sick, but you feel amazing after. I’d imagine it’s it’s probably I think it’s worse than kambo because when I’ve I’ve been given very large amount of Rape before in a ceremony, and it was probably one of the most difficult experiences I’ve gone through.

Jonathan Gold [00:38:04]:
It was awful. Really, really bad. It’s like, yeah, taking a huge amount of of of hop Peak. It’s because there’s so much nicotine going in at once. It made me so I mean, it floored me. Do you know what I mean? I was just rolling around the floor, then I vomited, then I was in and out the toilet, like, 10 times. It was really unpleasant. I would imagine that drinking tobacco is probably like that.

Jonathan Gold [00:38:27]:
I haven’t done it, but it’s that’s, yeah, that’s another they call it a tobacco dieter.

Nick Urban [00:38:32]:
Yeah. That’s intense. And it the tobacco is much stronger when you’re inhaling it like that because it’s bypassing a lot of the body’s safeguards so that it’s absorbed very quickly. It’s a very, like, high, like, spike Mind, like, nicotine concentration in the in the brain. And the subjective effects of it, I’ve used it a handful of times, and it is intense. I noticed that yeah. I guess, what Rape people notice from using it? I’m curious how my experience compares.

Jonathan Gold [00:39:00]:
I would say the main thing is it it senses you. It’s really good. It shuts off that kind of, like, monkey Mind, and it just like when you take it up, you just you just come it’s it grounds you because tobacco is like Health, so it’s very, very grounding. Other people have reported benefits, like psychological benefits, less anxiety. I mean, some people more anxiety because it’s it is a stimulant. You know, I mean, it’s like, it’s like somebody smoking loads of cigarettes, right? If you’re not used to it, it can make you a little bit anxious, because it’s quite a lot of nicotine. So, it can also be quite cleansing for the nasal passages. The problem with it though the only problem with Rape is you gotta be very careful that you don’t go into chronic use because it has got nicotine in it, so it can be addictive.

Jonathan Gold [00:39:48]:
So it’s one of those things where you just have to keep yourself in check. Because if you’re someone that could just get addicted to smoking easily, you know, Mind of has that quality to it. So for me, I think Rape is is much better to do it less frequently in a higher dose where you get a really strong effect. If you do it multiple times a day, just little bits, it’s gonna become like cigarettes. So you have to have some discipline with that.

Nick Urban [00:40:16]:
What would you say the threshold is to prevent it from becoming a regular habit? For me, my rule is to never do it multiple days in a row. In fact, I usually use it, like, less than once per week. But, like, where would you saves, like, where’s the limit you wouldn’t wanna cross?

Jonathan Gold [00:40:30]:
I think everyone’s different. Some people can use it could use it maybe, like, once a day, and they’re okay, and they could just stop. Some people can. I URBAN, for me, no. I think even if I used it once a day, it would it would I’d start to get the craving for it. I I’d say if I just had to pluck a a figure out the air, maybe 3 times a week. If you use it 3 times a week, right, that’s Mind you’re having days off in between, I think you’ll be okay. But, like, if you’re unlike yourself, if you’re using it once a week or less, then you’re then you’re you’re totally fine.

Nick Urban [00:41:03]:
When I use it, like, saves, 3 times a week, even then, I noticed that I start to build a tolerance pretty quickly to it, and I do not get the same effect from the same dose. So I figure why that I don’t see much benefit in this. I might as well just space it out even more.

Jonathan Gold [00:41:17]:
I think a lot of a lot of plant medicines Mind work like that. I know that’s definitely the case with cannabis with people. It’s a chronic cannabis use. People they’re just high all the time. And if you don’t have it for a few months and then you have some, it absolutely blows your head off.

Nick Urban [00:41:32]:
Yeah. Before we go on, I wanna underscore one thing. And if we look at, like, a lot of the longest lived populations around the planet throughout antiquity, there a lot of them use tobacco, and they use tobacco a lot. But the difference is the quality. They’re not getting we’re going out of the store and picking up a pack of commercial cigarettes. They were sprayed with radioactive isotopes and frog and contained formaldehyde and 100 of different chemicals. And it’s very evident if you actually, like, were to burn the 2 side by side, like a good clean, wild harvested, wild forage, whatever it is, tobacco versus what you buy in the store, like, one feels and tastes completely different than the other. And we have a a volcano vaporizer here, and we have some herbal spirits that we’ll use that are, like, different blends.

Nick Urban [00:42:26]:
And we have some of the, like, the really clean tobacco. And we use the actual leaf even though I have, like, the genetic predispositions towards higher propensity for nicotine or tobacco addiction, I can do it 3 days in a row, 4 days in a row, 5 days in a row, and then completely stop cold turkey without even, like, the slightest, like, desire for it. Like, completely forget about it. But the but in my younger years when I lived in Spain, I try to fit into the local culture, and I smoked their commercial cigarettes. And it was not at all the same experience for me. When I started that, I got hooked, and eventually I kicked it. But it was night and day different, and the real differentiator there for me was the cleanliness, the quality. And, of course, I still do your diligence.

Nick Urban [00:43:15]:
Anyone listening in, I wouldn’t recommend you just pick it up and experiment with it. It’s still playing with fire. But know that the the quality, as with everything, really determines the effect, whether it’s positive or can be positive or very negative.

Jonathan Gold [00:43:30]:
I think Body this is the intention, and Mind if if you treat these things as medicines, right, then with respect Mind you use them as medicines, then they work as medicines. If you just start to use something chronically because it makes you feel good, like, smoking is just a dopamine. It’s the reward thing that it gives you. And it’s similar with cannabis. Right? Is cannabis is very I’m not used I used to smoke it every day years ago. And and you’re not really using it. It’s just, you know, it’s using you. You know, you’re just getting high.

Jonathan Gold [00:44:01]:
But actually, I’ve had some incredible experiences with cannabis like in terms of, like, insight. Most profound insights I’ve ever had. Some of the most profound have come from cannabis even more than, like, some of the psychedelics. Actually, cannabis is an incredible teacher, but it’s just that it’s it’s abused. People just smoke it like, you know, like cigarettes. And really, it’s actually an amazing teacher, but it it needs to be treated as such.

Nick Urban [00:44:28]:
I have dabbled with it here and there, and my experience has been all over the place. I’ve had, like, really profound experiences with cannabis and then also, like, some very negative experiences. And I found one thing that generally helps is when I get a full spectrum Health product that has all of the other cannabinoids and phytonutrients, xenonutrients in it, and I combine that, then it offsets and balances the levels of THC that are ubiquitous in commercial cannabis these days. Mind, like, the the whole experience is different. I don’t feel the same hangover the next day either, and I just feel better and more clear while I’m using it also. So that’s one thing to to note that the actual the composition, I guess, in in a way, quality, again, makes a big difference with cannabis as well.

Jonathan Gold [00:45:17]:
And one thing I would say as well was I used to smoke I used to smoke it with tobacco. Right? And then then I stopped. So I was I was using it chronically for a long time. Like, 13 years, I smoked it every day, and then I stopped completely. I didn’t touch it for 5 years. When I went back to it and used it as a medicine, I used it. I would not smoke it. I would vaporize it, and I wouldn’t mix it with tobacco, and it’s completely different.

Jonathan Gold [00:45:38]:
Tobacco actually actually contaminates it. The feeling gets contaminated with the feeling of of the the smoking Mind actually makes it addictive, makes it really addictive when you combine those two things. So if you use cannabis in a vaporizer without, without tobacco, it’s a much cleaner feeling. And obviously, not smoking it as Health. Vaporizing it on its own is a isn’t it is the way to do it. Frog me, if you’re gonna use cannabis and you’re gonna smoke it or vaporize it, yeah, vaporize it. Don’t mix it with tobacco. And then also what you find is you use way less.

Jonathan Gold [00:46:10]:
Right? If you’re smoking it, you people enjoy smoking a joint. You know what I mean? They’re gonna smoke like they’re gonna fill a joint up like that big or maybe have 2 or 3. You you put some in a vaporizer, you have 1 or 2 hits, you’re good for a whole evening. You know, it’s it’s it’s a much, much better way to do it.

Nick Urban [00:46:25]:
And one thing that stood out for me is I’ve noticed that depending on my circumstances, where I am in life, like, what’s going on around me, that in addition to obviously the strain and other, like, biochemical constituents, they all have, like, really different effects on my overall experience. Like, I’ve I’ve had chapters in my life where using any cannabis has made me feel anxious and paranoid, and then I’ve had some where it’s just, like, profound, like, idea generation and some clarity and new insights. And I’m wondering if part of, like, the anxiety and fear and paranoia that I used to experience was around, like, my own personal evolution where I was perhaps not seeing something, a part of my shadow that wanted to be seen, and that was, like, my body’s way of, like, exposing that to me. Complete conjecture and theory also, but it seems to me that there’s probably some Mind significance to the side effects and unwanted, like, symptoms that so many people experience when they use cannabis?

Jonathan Gold [00:47:25]:
Mind this would not just cannabis, all these plant medicines. What they do is they don’t create a new problem. They put a magnifying glass on what’s already there. Right? So if you you know, I mean, if you’ve got anxiety issues, right, and you take psychedelics, they’re gonna come up. You’re gonna have to fight. That’s what they do. It’s like, this is how you process this stuff.

Nick Urban [00:47:45]:
That’s what it was for me. I think it was just a a magnifying glass because I’m not an anxious person. I don’t really feel anxious throughout my day or life, and I would specifically avoid cannabis because it would induce those feelings. And that’s what makes me think that there’s, like, a a message there. And it might not necessarily be about, like, anxiety in general life or anything, but something that I needed to confront. And it’s I seem to have confronted it because now when I use it, no matter the strain, the THC content, whatever, I most of my experiences are positive and enjoyable without that that clouding of paranoia.

Jonathan Gold [00:48:23]:
I had an incredible, I would call, like, a mini awakening on Theanine recently. It made me see this, like, what you could call the present moment or whatever this saves a singularity. Right? So the the illusion of being a separate person moving through an environment with other people, right, which is what the Mind, you know, generates that. I suddenly saw this as one one singular thing Mind and the future and the past didn’t exist. There was just this singularity. And I realized all of my worries and all my stresses, all of them have nothing to do with this, with the singularity. They saves they’re to do with other ideas. They’re not actually to do with this because they can’t touch this because this is already full up and complete.

Jonathan Gold [00:49:13]:
So I know if Body never heard this stuff before, it’s gonna sound just like gobbledygook. Right? But it’s like for people that are into, like like, you know, spiritual kind of enlightenment stuff, they’ll kinda know what I’m talking about. It’s not it wasn’t it’s nothing new. Right? I kinda knew that already, but I got it on a visceral level with Elle Theanine. I really, really felt that there was no past. There was no future. It was all in my mind. And all that there is is just this singularity, almost like this bubble, whatever you wanna call it, Performance was all that there was.

Nick Urban [00:49:44]:
To me, that’s what wisdom is, though. Wisdom is the crystallization and embodiment, the felt visceral experience of knowledge, Because knowledge is one thing. We all know so many different things. But until you actually feel it, it doesn’t stay with you. It doesn’t have this, like, lasting effect. It’s just, like, intellectual. And I’m thinking about it as each of the medicines, the practices like meditation, each of these give us different perspectives, different views on objective reality. It gives us, like, more vantage points, a better clearer picture of what it is or what the potentials are instead of just going through life and going forward with a linear perspective.

Nick Urban [00:50:26]:
This is what I see. This is how I relate to and understand it, and therefore, like, I’m fixed in my ways. Like, the more you incorporate these other things, the more you’re able to see, okay. I have these very strong beliefs, but when I look at it from this perspective, they don’t hold as true. So perhaps there’s something deeper than what I initially thought, and you can get confirmation by using multiple tools available to us.

Jonathan Gold [00:50:47]:
Absolutely. Yeah. I would agree with that.

Nick Urban [00:50:49]:
Well, speaking of tools, we haven’t touched at all on this one I have in front of me. Oh. I have not tried this. I’ve been

Jonathan Gold [00:50:56]:
You haven’t tried it yet?

Nick Urban [00:50:57]:
Honestly a bit nervous to try it because it sounds like a very intense experience.

Jonathan Gold [00:51:01]:
Oh, Sananga. Yeah. I actually I really like Sanango. A lot of people hate it. It can take you on a journey. It’s it’s so what it what it is, sun anger is it’s like a tea. You might it comes from a particular shrub, the bark of a tree. And we we get it as like a powdered bark.

Jonathan Gold [00:51:20]:
And what we do is you you mix it with hot water, and you make it into like a brew. And then that’s essentially strain it. And then we also add colloidal silver, which is like a strong antibacterial. It’s also a preservative. So when we add a little bit of colloidal silver to the to the Sananga, it means that it lasts for sort of 3 to 6 months in the fridge. When they make it in the jungle, they just make some and they use it and then the rest they throw away because it will it will lose its potency within days. So, anyway, it’s just it’s like a it’s a it’s a a boiled plant mixture that’s been strained. So it’s there’s no bits in it.

Jonathan Gold [00:51:56]:
It’s just sort of clear liquid. And it’s an eye drop. Right? And it stings stings that you can believe. But the key to some anger is you’ve got to be able to just relax into it. If you if you really resist it, it’s gonna be very, very uncomfortable. But if you could just relax and breathe and just like similar to Kambo, what? You just gotta you gotta let it in. If you fight it, it’s just gonna be uncomfortable. You kind of relax and you let it in, and then it really can, like, take you on a on a on a journey.

Jonathan Gold [00:52:27]:
And actually with Sananga, I feel it. I actually feel it through my whole Body. Even though it’s like Urban eye drop, there’s a real energetic feeling. It Mind of flows through me.

Nick Urban [00:52:38]:
Yeah. So my friends have been telling me that the key, as you just mentioned, is to really just relax into it. It’s like, okay. Well, something painful goes in my eye. Imagine, like, I’m imagining a lime times 10 squeezed into my eye. Relaxing into that sounds pretty difficult. But then what is the reason people use this? Like, what is the traditional use of it, and what do, like, people experience who aren’t in the Amazon, who are just, like, living a relatively normal western life? Like, why why would they implement this?

Jonathan Gold [00:53:08]:
Yeah. So in the jungle, it’s used as a like, a medicine for the eyes. So anything any eye problems, they just they use Sananga for. And it’s also used as a sort of, cleanse that plant, you know, the the kind of third eye area, which gives you their foresight, that kind of thing. It’s it’s it’s said to enhance that as well. So it’s kind of as a as a as a a tonic for the eyes and also as a 3rd eye opener kinda cleanser.

Nick Urban [00:53:37]:
When you say any eye creams, does that include problems with vision or vision deterioration?

Jonathan Gold [00:53:43]:
Yeah. It’s it’s it’s it works literally with vision for your eyes and figuratively with vision for your kind of third eye, you know, that kind of thing. So I think I also use it for hunting in the in the jungle, like, as a so they could they use it, and then they can in their mind, they can see the the the the hunt, like, the prey before before it happens, like the kill, that kind of thing. So it’s working on your vision literally and figuratively.

Nick Urban [00:54:09]:
What’s the, like, recommended protocol? Of course, it varies, but is it, like, one drop in each eye every 3 days or Peak or whenever you feel called?

Jonathan Gold [00:54:19]:
peptides a week. So you do oh, yes. So the process itself is you put you you put a drop in the corner of each eye. So you close your eyes. You you do it laying down. It’s easier or put your head back. You put a drop in the corner of each eye, and then you blink your eyes Mind it goes in. And it’s gonna just the stinging starts.

Jonathan Gold [00:54:36]:
And then you’re gonna close your eyes again Mind then ride that wave of stinging. When the stinging subsides, then you blink your eyes again and move them around Mind then you’ll get another wave of stinging because more of it kind of moves about and goes in. Rape that wave and then you just keep repeating that process until it’s until it’s done. You just when it stops, you blink your eyes, move them around, it will sting again. Usually, usually you get 3, maybe 4 waves turns how much you’ve used. When the indigenous do it, they actually keep their they try and keep their eyes open the whole time I I’ve tried I can’t it’s it’s imagine having like lime juice in your eyes and then trying to keep your eyes open like while you’ve got it in there. It’s just impossible. So as I was saying, that’s the process 3 times a week, or you can do it every day for a week, but then you have a week off.

Nick Urban [00:55:23]:
Are there any other medicine we haven’t discussed that you or plant or animal medicines we haven’t discussed that you find interesting?

Jonathan Gold [00:55:30]:
Oh, I’ll tell you something I did recently, which I wish was actually amazing. Right? Because where I am in, in Poland, it’s actually you can you can do it in a clinic. I did a ketamine. I did I did a ketamine infusion, with in under a doctor’s care. You know, you can actually do it in a proper clinical setting with a doctor, and and it’s like it’s it’s assisted psychotherapy. It’s it’s ketamine assisted psychotherapy. Absolutely amazing. I I blown away by how powerful a proper ketamine session is.

Jonathan Gold [00:56:05]:
I mean, probably one of the most meaningful experiences, like, psychedelic experiences I’ve had. Not visual, wasn’t visual at all, but insight that I got about my life and what I’m supposed to do, things I kind of already knew but became very, very clear. Similar I kinda have had this on Ayahuasca as well where you just get clarity about your life. But this was this was like a direct link to your subconscious because, you know, ketamine is a dissociative. Right? So you really do feel that feeling of, like, stepping back from yourself. And when you step back, all the clutter is kind of it moves the clutter out the way. And then this this thing comes through for all of courses. Right? That’s what I’m supposed to do.

Jonathan Gold [00:56:45]:
That’s how I’m supposed to do it. It’s like, there you go. There you go. It’s like that that’s that’s what I’m supposed to do, and this is the way that I’m gonna get there. And that was just obvious. And then later on in the experience, I, touched on what I think was some trauma. So I’ve got, you know, got everybody has trauma. Right? But we’ve all got childhood trauma.

Jonathan Gold [00:57:07]:
I’ve been working on it for years. I’ve got PTSD from my childhood, which is one of the reasons why I am actually doing the ketamine. And when you do ketamine, the the defenses come down. Right? So when we have trauma, often we can’t get to it because it because we’ve built these, subconsciously, we’ve built these defenses to to not allow not allow you to get to the pain, right? When you do ketchup, I mean, this is my first only experience with it. It does feel like the walls come down. And in the experience, there was this kind of, like, nagging feeling in in the experience I was having. And I was like, what what is that? What is this thing? It’s like a worry feeling. I’m just like, what is that? And then I just put my attention on it, and then suddenly I just burst out crying.

Jonathan Gold [00:57:52]:
I cried so hard in this in this experience. I don’t know what it was that I was actually crying about. It was just the raw the raw feeling that I was able to access. I mean, incredible. Like, it it I felt like it opened it opened something in me, and I’m gonna do I’m going to do more sessions. So it was that was just the first one. But as a tool for for therapy, amazing. I was blown away by how good it was.

Jonathan Gold [00:58:18]:
Now I’m not you know, ketamine is not something I’ve done much of in my life. I mean, I probably did it years ago, like, in a recreational fashion. Like, when I was in my teens, didn’t really like it. When you do an infusion, right, so it’s it’s, you know, in your in a cannula, the needle, you know, drip feeding it to you for an hour. Yeah. Yeah. It’s it’s it’s completely different. But it has it has a very, I mean, because it is it’s an it’s an aesthetic, right? So it has a very synthetic feel, it doesn’t feel organic, it doesn’t feel like doesn’t feel like IOSCO.

Jonathan Gold [00:58:50]:
It’s not like that. It doesn’t. It feels very artificial. But the actual effect for dealing for people to heal trauma and get insight was was incredible. I mean, I was absolutely blown away by how good it was. So and these, that’s another thing, these medicines, even ketamine, which is not really you can’t call it a plant medicine, because it’s not. But MDMA is is going to be used either it’s being used already or is happening very soon for PTSD. I think mushrooms is starting to be used in America.

Jonathan Gold [00:59:22]:
Ketamine is the future is the future of, psychotherapy is is using different plant medicines and also other substances like ketamine. And you can go to places Mind you can get to things like get to to trauma that you just can’t get to without it. If someone is really, really badly traumatized, there’s there’s certain things that you just you’ll never be able to get to because the walls that that the person who do a sub the defenses are so strong because it’s life and death. That’s what the body is doing. It’s protecting that it thinks it’s protecting you from from death because it’s it’s it feels so dangerous to go to those feelings. I believe that that there’ll be certain people that are so badly traumatized that they’ll they’ll never be able to really get to those feelings without some kind of medicinal tool, whatever it be.

Nick Urban [01:00:11]:
Yeah. As you’re speaking, I was just reflecting on the fact that it’s interesting that the primary medicines to help lower the walls and the the shields are both synthetic. They’re both man Rape, MDMA and Ketamine. And, of course, there’s others, but it seems to me those are the 2 big ones right now.

Jonathan Gold [01:00:32]:
Yeah. It’s interesting. I think also it’s probably because I could be wrong in this, but because they’re man Rape, it feels like the the doctors that use them have more control over them. I don’t know. Something like Mind of like like, I don’t know, like a BOGO or ayahuasca. It’s a it’s a lot more like uncharted territory. Whereas like ketamine is an anaesthetic, the doctors know exactly what it does. They’ve been using it for years.

Jonathan Gold [01:00:57]:
They’re not yours. Yeah, saves sense. So even like MDMA, it’s also I feel like they’ve got the doctors have more experience and knowledge with it. Whereas some of these other more exotic psychedelics, it’s just like, they don’t really know. And they haven’t done enough enough research with them to kind of use them effectively. But I think in the future, 20, 30, 40, 50, a 100 years, I think all psychotherapy or the majority of it is gonna be medicinally assisted with whatever whatever medicine that is.

Nick Urban [01:01:30]:
Yeah. Well, I’m sure part of the reason is also that the doctors feel much more comfortable with substances that have been mechanistically evaluated. We understand, like, which biochemical pathways it influences, and there’s a lot more, like, research done on these. Less human Performance, maybe the same at this point, but, like, humans have been using other, like, plant medicines for millennia. But despite that, there’s far less research on any one plant medicine than there is on some of the most common, like, medicine substances.

Jonathan Gold [01:02:01]:
Yeah. I mean, I heard that they’re doing at the moment I think it’s at the moment with DMT somewhere in the UK. They’re giving people their drip feeding people DMT over long periods and letting them, you know, Mind of map out the the territory. I mean, that’s crazy. But but, yeah, I mean, even like DMT code be made synthetically, which is I’m sure what they’ve done for what they’re giving people in the in the UK. I think the psilocybin they use in in the whatever they’re doing in America with it, I think that’s also probably synthetically made. So, yeah, I mean, Mind actually that it’s it works in the same way. So I don’t I think just because something synthetic doesn’t mean it’s not it doesn’t work, you know, because some people say, oh, well, if you use if you eat the mushrooms, right, then the mushroom spirits gonna be in it.

Jonathan Gold [01:02:51]:
But if it’s synthetic psilocybin, then it’s not. I I don’t I I have a feeling that it’s it’s the same. Now whether that means there isn’t a mushroom spirit or not, I don’t know. Or whether it means that it’s in the I I you know what I mean? I’m not gonna go comment on that. But I just know that when people saves used synthetic versions of these medicines, plant version.

Nick Urban [01:03:16]:
I would think that there would be a difference whether it’s, like, perceivable, I’m not sure. But, like, if you look at anything that you find in nature, there’s never just one active ingredient. There might be one dominant active ingredient, but there’s, like, other analogs of psilocybin. They might not be as psychoactively active as psilocybin is, but I’m sure if you eat the mushroom, even if it’s just a fiber, all of these are gonna change the way the body metabolizes the substance and in sub to some degree, the effects of the experience. And it might not be very distinguishable to us, but it definitely has some kind of effect on a cellular level.

Jonathan Gold [01:03:52]:
I think what will happen is I think at the highest doses, when if you have a breakthrough on psilocybin or on a substance, it won’t matter. It it like, when you get to that level of experience and you actually break through, it’s the dominant alkaloid is the thing that’s gonna gonna be the experience. I think at lower levels, that’s where the other stuff is gonna gonna code into it.

Nick Urban [01:04:15]:
But here’s here’s the other thing. Even if it you break through and that is the dominant alkaloid, there could be other alkaloids or other things in it that are going to reduce the, say, next day hangover or the side effects you feel during the experience itself because, like, that’s the way 10 things tend to work in nature when they’re picked Mind or harvested and used. Well, John, we gotta start winding down because we’ve been going for a long time already. If people want to connect with you, they want to try some of the products you have in your shop or just follow your work. How do they go about that?

Jonathan Gold [01:04:49]:
Sure. You can check out, our website. That’s, www.planetcampo.com. Any questions, you can send me an email. I’ll answer them all personally. That’s info at planetkambo.com. What else? We’ve got a Facebook as was Planet Kambo. We’ve also got an Instagram.

Jonathan Gold [01:05:07]:
We’ve got a YouTube channel. So there’s lots of stuff going on. We run, you know, we run events. I run retreats, plant medicine retreats, Kambo retreats. We sell products in the store. We do training. You know, we do we run cambo training. So, you know, head over to the Planet Kambo website.

Jonathan Gold [01:05:24]:
There’s a lot of information and things going on there. And as I said, you can always, send me an email. I’m always happy to answer questions.

Nick Urban [01:05:33]:
And I totally forgot we guys we didn’t have time to touch on the responsible use of everything we’ve discussed today and to be safe about it, but that’ll have to be tabled for another time. But how would you like to wrap up our episode together today?

Jonathan Gold [01:05:51]:
Health, I think responsible use definitely is a is a really good point that we’ve talked about a lot of different medicines and substances, and we’re by no means, I’m not advocating anybody should go ahead and you do these things. Do your own research. Right? That’s another thing. Take Nick take responsibility for yourself. That’s a that’s a good way to it. It’s right. Don’t do anything that because somebody’s told you. Take responsibility for yourself.

Jonathan Gold [01:06:14]:
Do your own research and make a decision about what you’re gonna put in your body or what you’re gonna do with your body and your mind. And that way, you’ll always you know, you you make an informed decision Mind you stay safe rather than just doing things because so and so told me to.

Nick Urban [01:06:30]:
Well, John, thank you so much for joining Nick in the podcast today. It’s been a blast chatting with you and discussing some of your experiences and the products you carry. And after this chat, I’m gonna have to give Sananga a try to see if I get that clarity that we talked about. Until next time. I’m Nick Urban here with John Gold, signing out from mindbodypeak.com. Have a great week, and be an outlier. I hope that this has been helpful for you. If you enjoyed it, subscribe Mind hit the thumbs up.

Nick Urban [01:07:05]:
I love knowing who’s in the 1% committed to reaching their full potential. Comment 1% below so that I know who you are.

Jonathan Gold [01:07:14]:
For all

Nick Urban [01:07:14]:
the resources and links, meet me on my website at mindbodypeak.com. I appreciate you Mind look forward to connecting with

Jonathan Gold [01:07:27]:
you.