00:00 - Aaron (Host)
Thank you for joining us, Dr. Jeff.
00:02 - Dr. Jeff McNairy (Guest)
You're welcome. Thanks for having me. I'm excited. I watched your guys' website and I checked out everything and I'm stoked.
00:08 - Mel (Host)
We did the same thing. We totally did the same thing.
00:14 - Dr. Jeff McNairy (Guest)
I even looked up the lyrics to I Need a Miracle, because that's what we talk about at Rhythmia. We talk about getting a miracle, yeah.
00:22 - Mel (Host)
I love that After you introduce yourself, I want to hear about the miracle. Let's start with that after. But for everybody listening, let's hear who Dr Jeff is.
00:34 - Dr. Jeff McNairy (Guest)
So I'm the chief medical officer at Rhythmia. I have a doctorate degree in psychology. I'm from Los Angeles. I went to UCLA and got a master's in public health and I managed a bunch of healthcare facilities in California for a long time. In LA ran a rehab called Passages Malibu I was the director for eight years, got fed up with the Western model and discovered plant medicine and then opened up a place down here in Costa Rica with a medical license to do ayahuasca in a safe, legal way. So that's when I've been here 10 years.
01:08 - Mel (Host)
Do you mind just going back a little bit? You said you got fed up with the medical model and found out about psychedelics or Western sorry, was that hand in hand? Did you find out about psychedelics and get fed up with it, or were you like looking for something else or like, how did that transition happen?
01:34 - Dr. Jeff McNairy (Guest)
Well, when I was at UCLA, I was applying to medical school after I got my my public health degree.
01:38
And I was managing OBGYN clinics as like an administrator and what I saw is that a lot of the women patients that were coming in had trauma and it wasn't being addressed. It was just kind of brushed under the rug and just minimized and maybe give them some meds and that was kind of it. That maybe see a therapist it just I was starting to see at a young age I was in my mid 20s that the symptomology approach for health care wasn't something that was really connecting with me. So I was kind of already hesitant about a lot of the health care stuff. So then I got into medical school at UCLA but I decided not to go ultimately because I didn't want to be controlled and trapped, basically because that's what I was seeing in the physicians I was working with and I moved to Hawaii my wife was from Maui and I worked for the Department of Health and I saw that there's and I moved to Hawaii my wife was from Maui and I worked for the Department of Health and I saw that there's a different way to do things that can be more cultural based, because I was working with Native Hawaiian families. So I saw that the tools I was given in public health weren't resonating with any of the locals you know, like, for example, you know group therapy is something that you're supposed to be doing, but nobody in Hawaii wants to talk about their problems to strangers. It's like it's more family based, and so there's just these, a lot of these things that I was noticing that weren't working.
02:53
So I dove into some research and found that, um, empowerment, um self-esteem and and sort of like sovereignty of the mind, are things that help you improve all your health behaviors, kind of like as an as an indirect effect and a direct effect. So I started doing that with my clients and it was really cool, like we would do cultural activities and it would help them ground and become empowered and they in their all their behaviors improved. So it was really nice. So I said I want to get a doctorate in psychology. So then I went and got a doctorate in psychology and then I'm like man, I'm still just getting given all these tools that are just not working, like they're just kind of, you know, if somebody, if somebody is suicidal or really depressed or has a really bad addiction, you know the model is really good at stabilizing those people and keeping them from you know, kind of just getting them at a baseline.
03:44 - Aaron (Host)
Right.
03:44 - Dr. Jeff McNairy (Guest)
And then that's kind of where it ends. You know, and I was I was seeing my patients, like in my private practice in California and LA, just for years coming to me with the same stuff. I'm like I don't know what to do. So I was getting frustrated at that level too. And then that's where I was, so I was kind of already sort of not feeling it.
04:05 - Aaron (Host)
Right, yeah, yeah, yeah.
04:06 - Mel (Host)
So you were feeling, not feeling it, even before you got your psychology degree, like you saw it off the bat for what it was. But you still can, you still want it to be in that field.
04:17 - Dr. Jeff McNairy (Guest)
Yeah. So I I saw a lecture by ice tea of all when I was in college and Ice-T said to us young undergrads he said use the opportunities you get in college and in business to get into these positions of authority and empowerment and make a change and go off like a time bomb inside these organizations. So that stuck with me and was kind of my motto. So I thought you know, I'm going to get a doctorate, I'm going to move into these high level, whatever that leads to, and then I'm going to actually try to make a change. So when I was getting my doctorate in psych I was I was looking more administratively to like run facilities as opposed to do patient care.
04:58
Now I had to do patient care to get my my postdoc hours. But that wasn't my goal. My goal was to like run facilities, you know.
05:06 - Mel (Host)
Right on, I mean that so. So this is kind of like a dream come true for you to be able to actively help somebody and not keep them at like a baseline, which is kind of the saddest and worst thing that you could do for somebody. Like you said, that's like trauma, suicidal, having these issues. If they're at a baseline, that's their baseline. Do you know what I mean? Like they're, it seems as if all that hard work has paid off into this miracle situation.
05:40 - Dr. Jeff McNairy (Guest)
So let's hear about these miracles yeah, so like jerry as a jerry powell is the ceo of rhythmia and he was one of my patients at the rehab in la and him and I hit it off and I worked with him for about five years and he was still having all these issues post post recovery. You know he he was funny because he had like multiple substance abuse issues, but in his mind he only went to rehab for Demerol, he didn't go for cocaine or alcohol or anything.
06:09 - Aaron (Host)
No problem, there Got it. I don't have a problem with those things, just the.
06:14 - Dr. Jeff McNairy (Guest)
Demerol Totally. So he was actually successful in stopping Demerol, but he still continued with all the other behaviors, you know. And so I worked with him for five years. I was like man, you know, I don't know what to do. Dude, you're getting suicidal again, you're, you're miserable.
06:29
And he was this he had retired early, he was a super successful business guy and and he heard about some plant medicine in Costa Rica and and he just went on a whim and I was kind of like you know, I didn't know a lot about it at all, I didn't even really know what he was doing, I just figured I've tried everything, so why don't you go do it? And he, he went down to Costa Rica and did it and it completely flipped them. And I was really hesitant to believe it because I had never seen something like that happen in a week. And I went down the next, like two weeks later with him and did it and he tried it and I was like whoa, this is, this is what I've been looking for. Wow, and through various plant medicine ceremonies, um, we've had intentions about. You know, what do we do with this information? Like, do we open a place that's safe? Do we open? We stay in costa rica, like what do we do?
07:20
And all of our business decisions have come through sort of like these downloads, through medicine, and one of the things was about your miracle. We call it getting your miracle and it's about realizing three intentions Show me who I've become, merge me back with my soul at all costs and heal my heart. So those three intentions are what we teach the guests and those came through to us on plant medicine, kind of like his goals to work on, and we teach that to the guests when they come here. But that was kind of the first thing that happened to Jerry is that he saw that he'd become this completely miserable person, this, this crook, this bad guy in his mind, and then he merged back with his true self. He healed, did inner child work on the medicine, healed himself and then got a new heart and meaning that, you know he, he turned over a new leaf and he healed the pain that he had from his childhood, which is really brutal, you know. So that's kind of what the miracle thing is for us.
08:15 - Apple (Host)
How? How long ago was it that you went down there and tried the plant medicine for the first time?
08:20 - Dr. Jeff McNairy (Guest)
It was in July of 2014.
08:23 - Apple (Host)
Okay, okay, wow, so it's been fast A decade, almost it's been fast, but that's fast.
08:29 - Aaron (Host)
10 years is not a long road.
08:32 - Mel (Host)
No, Sorry for that. And how old is Rhythmia?
08:36 - Dr. Jeff McNairy (Guest)
We've been open for eight years, wow. So yeah, we've seen 16,000 guests through here.
08:42 - Aaron (Host)
Holy smokes.
08:43 - Dr. Jeff McNairy (Guest)
Yeah, we see we can max out at 100 a week. We have a very big facility here, but right now, for example, we have 40 people here, like this week, so it averages between 70 and 50. And then sometimes we'll get 100 if there's like a really good guest speaker that everybody likes. So we have guest speakers come.
09:06 - Aaron (Host)
You know we've gotten a few centers have reached out to us to be on the show. You're actually the first that we that we vibed with oh cool, that's a big compliment.
09:13 - Dr. Jeff McNairy (Guest)
Thank you well thank you.
09:13 - Aaron (Host)
Well, I mean, who are we? But?
09:15 - Mel (Host)
the thing is is that, um, I think from our experience we we none of us have done ayahuasca, but we have all collectively done psychedelics, and we, we know that that space is very special and delicate and our thing is always like the capitalist side of the. You know, helping people. You know, like we understand, everyone needs to make money. Who doesn't? How can you live without money? There's nobody that can do that.
09:49
So so that money's always going to be somewhere in it. But then when you talk about people's souls and their traumas and their emotions, these are things that are intangible and to have authority over that or any type of like you mentioned the word sovereignty over that, that's a very scary kind of delicate space to be in and if it seems you know from our end, if it seems too commercial or too, I don't know what the word would- be Commodified.
10:23
Commodified. That's not attractive to us. We're not the only game podcast in town. You can go to any other podcast and talk about it. But if we're not feeling it, the three of us together then I just I don't want to put that out there. They can find out about it in some other way, which is great and fine, and it may be great and we just don't know. But like it's not for us. But we want to have some type of connection and some type of like um, you know, let's see what this is about. Let's see if we want to even know what this is about, because, again, that space is sensitive.
10:56
Man and people can be really pulled by the nose in a sense and, and I'm not down with that. I don't want to be pulled by my nose. If I'm coming to someone for help, I'm asking for help for that thing, not for for it to be steered into some weird direction. I think all three of us have had experience with cultish kind of weird stuff.
11:17 - Aaron (Host)
So we know, you know what I mean me oh, this seems cool and then weird stuff starts happening. The thing that really struck me about Rhythmia other places that I've seen the facility itself didn't seem inviting, and I know that plant medicine I've done other plant medicines can be very uncomfortable. So to be somewhere uncomfortable while being uncomfortable doesn't sound healing to me at all, that just sounds like a part of my language, it sounds like a fucking nightmare and so so the thing with Rhythmia.
12:03
That struck me was how beautifully intentional all of what you've put together is and how how nice the spot is. Can you talk to me a little bit about the intention behind that and and the thoughts behind putting the grounds and everything together?
12:25 - Dr. Jeff McNairy (Guest)
the grounds and everything together, definitely. So. I'm glad that you noticed that, because that's a big part of what we do here. We know that everyone coming to Rhythmia has some serious things they're working on, like you had mentioned, the trauma. There's an addiction history for some people. There's a lot of depression, anxiety, lots of things. We have a lot of veterans in military and in order. All of those people in their life are very guarded and they don't trust much and I don't blame them. Yeah, they've been disappointed in a scary way abused, abandoned, neglected, participate in plant medicine somewhere and they don't feel safe and they don't feel protected and that there isn't the support there. They're not going to open up and be vulnerable in the ways that are required to get that healing that they need. Yeah, and so we understand that and because we don't, when jerry and I first drank plant medicine, we were at a very shady, um, very sketchy place and, and the whole time you know know I'm looking around like what's who's going to sneak up on me. I kept thinking, you know, and I didn't get to like really dive in deeply as soon as I maybe should have, and so I was guarded for a lot of it.
13:39
So we have a very high ratio of staff to guests. We have medical doctors. We have four medical doctors, 12 nurses, two paramedics. They're actually quite bored because this medicine is very safe, especially because we clear everybody medically prior to coming here. And the rooms are beautiful. There's AC, the food is amazing, there's a really nice spa, there's body work, there's hot, cold plunge saunas, et cetera. So it's like going on a really nice vacation. You know but, but. But it's not a vacation because there's deep work happening. So you're kind of like in this resort environment, but then at night you're going into the maloca and having a really amazing experience. So there's a. We have an urgent care on the property. You know, if people need an iv or they're a little bit overwhelmed, they get scared because these are all first-time drinkers.
14:26
You know of ayahuasca we have a very small percentage have done this before, so we're we cater to the first time people. That's a big part of what we're doing, yeah so how?
14:38 - Mel (Host)
this is the way that you're um eight years now. The way that you're getting word out is word of mouth, or how in the past have you you know?
14:48 - Dr. Jeff McNairy (Guest)
let people know that this is available so we used to have um I don't like this word, but I'll use it because it makes sense to people, like we used to have thought leaders okay, that's what I was talking about earlier.
15:01 - Mel (Host)
What does that even mean?
15:02 - Dr. Jeff McNairy (Guest)
I still don't even understand what that means. But but we have. We have people that um lecture out in the world and have like, uh, people that like like a joe dispensa I think it's a thought leader yeah, okay he teaches meditation and things like that.
15:23
Now, he hasn't come to rhythm yet all of his people have, but he hasn't. But people like that, like michael beckwith from agape, or bruce lipton or graham hancock, yeah, or um, you know people like that, like um uh, I could go on and on, but you know a lot of. We had um, yanla van sant, who's like this really interesting lady, and so all these cool people. Martin Luther King, the third, came and he taught. So when the way we did marketing at the beginning was we would invite them and then they would tell their following and then they would book, and then from there it kind of spread word of mouth and then it kind of just took off and so now we're not doing a whole lot of marketing.
16:03
I mean, we're doing some, but it's more about like interviews on podcasts and we have a social media presence, but it's not like huge marketing spends. You know, it's mostly word of mouth now I learned.
16:14 - Aaron (Host)
I learned about rhythmia long before I ever heard from from abby um through instagram and seeing um some people's stuff there and also youtube, of seeing a few people's experience there, and it was the first time, honestly, that I thought to myself, okay, I could do that.
16:34 - Mel (Host)
You know what I mean.
16:36 - Aaron (Host)
That doesn't look like what I was talking about earlier. That actually looks doable.
16:41 - Mel (Host)
So what, I wonder, from your part? You said that you and the first time you did it you were in a kind of like sketchy um, let's just say, you know a very authentic way of doing it, but you went back, you went, you went multiple times. Yeah, what was it that was calling you back personally?
17:01 - Dr. Jeff McNairy (Guest)
I think, um, once, cause people always ask me like, well, how many plant medicine ceremonies have you had? And I've had like hundreds, but the real impactful ones were the first like seven. And what led me to those first few journeys was my own work from growing up in LA in a very violent neighborhood in East Los Angeles and just kind of the culture of my neighborhood and things that I went through. That was a big part of like my trauma and working on that and I saw that there was light at the end of the tunnel because of what Jerry had gone through and seen himself for him and he had shifted and I I didn't even think I needed any work, you know, but I but I very much did a lot. I was very guarded, I just wasn't really aware of it.
17:45
So it was the self-discovery aspect that was blocked. That it was intriguing because when I was in school for my doctorate I had to receive 65 hours of individual therapy for myself before graduating. So you would think that all these new psychologists are pretty self-aware but we're just not, because we're kind of just going through the motions with that therapy and I was too. I just was kind of like this is a requirement of school. Whatever I'm checking the box, I'm going, but I didn't really do deep work, and so when I drank plant medicine and participated, that's where the work happened. So I was intrigued by it and that's kind of what kept me coming back.
18:20 - Aaron (Host)
So for the folks that come through arrhythmia, that have, you know, their trauma healed or start the journey to healing in themselves, what kind of support is available to them after they leave Rhythmia? Because I know that for myself those months after a big psychedelic journey and those downloads are the most critical to integrate what I just got.
18:47 - Mel (Host)
So, or and it's, or is it even needed to, you know, cause we've, like we said, none of us have done ayahuasca, so maybe it's a little bit different from other plant medicines in that way.
18:57 - Dr. Jeff McNairy (Guest)
Well, we um, you know, everyone's different, as you know, and some people need a lot of support post um ayahuasca sessions, and some are kind of okay and they kind of already have a network. That's healthy for them. We have a. We have an app that we give everybody. It's part of the program, it's included, and that app lasts for three months. Afterwards that includes it's three months worth of content. So there's weekly content for three months that helps them kind of transition and integrate. So there's there's weekly content for three months that helps them kind of transition and integrate. So there's breathwork sessions that they can do online and there's meditation, guided meditations. There's also individual therapy and group counseling. It's available on the app. So we have all these counselors that they've met here that are on the app and they can just click and make an appointment with them.
19:44
And so I'm on there, for example, on some of our other staff, and I have sessions all the time. Like you know, people that have been here a month ago, I have sessions with them on zoom and what's. How are you doing? What's happening, you know, and when they're here, I teach a class on near the end of the week that helps them develop a practice for themselves when they get home for integration. So we know that aftercare is a huge deal. When I was in the rehab world it was everything for sobriety People had to do aftercare or else they were almost guaranteed to relapse. So it's a big. They say that the data shows that three years of aftercare post-treatment are like ideal, and that's. Most people don't ever do that. But. But the more you can get is months going on and on and on for at least up to three years, the better that it will stick and you can be on your path.
20:32 - Aaron (Host)
Right, I, I uh 27 years ago.
20:39 - Dr. Jeff McNairy (Guest)
I was a heroin.
20:40 - Aaron (Host)
I was a heroin addict for for years and went through rehab in California actually and a couple of times and, yeah, there was no aftercare after that and it never stuck. Personally, psychedelics were the thing that healed me.
20:57 - Mel (Host)
Well, and having a son.
20:59 - Aaron (Host)
Yeah, and having a family.
21:01 - Mel (Host)
That too that does it.
21:02 - Aaron (Host)
Those are great, those are great things, yeah. And NA stuff too. That too, that does it, those are great, those are great things yeah.
21:05 - Dr. Jeff McNairy (Guest)
And NA you know NA NA stuff too can be triggering for some people like NA meetings.
21:11 - Aaron (Host)
It was difficult for me man.
21:12 - Mel (Host)
You know this. I want to talk about that because you know NA is kind of like the gold standard for anybody coming out of recovery and I, you know, after going a few bouts with him of relapsing and not and whatever going to meetings with him and blah, blah, blah, you know one day one day he came to me and was like look, mel, I know that you don't trust me, but I can't do those meetings.
21:38
I know that it works for some people, but it does not work for me. I don't belong there and I don't feel like those are my people. I don't feel like I need that. And like that was the first time that my lying addict husband was telling me the truth. You know what I mean. Like I felt it, you know. You know the truth when somebody is telling you the truth. You know when they're bullshitting you.
22:02
And it was the very first time and I had gone. If I wouldn't have gone to those meetings I would have been like Nope, sorry, you gotta, you gotta go. If you want to be with me, you gotta go. But I went to those meetings and I was like it keeps you in this, and maybe that was just a few meetings that I went to. I'm not going to say across the board, because NA and AA help for people and I know that they do and it's great. But, like I, I saw what he was talking about. It was a constant keeping, it was a disempowerment. That's what I felt when I saw it when I was there.
22:35 - Aaron (Host)
For me it was a constant affirmation of sickness yeah, that's what I'm saying, like never allowing me, allowing me to be well, and once I stepped out of that, I took responsibility for myself. And you know, I think that for a lot of people that are hurting and have trauma, we don't know how to do that on our own from the get-go. It's, it's, there's, there's a lot of triggers in there when it comes to that, and so finally making the decision to do something like plant medicine is is really terrifying and and and and. I think for a lot of us it's, um, maybe a last ditch, try. You know what I mean. Do you see a lot of that coming through with me?
23:30 - Dr. Jeff McNairy (Guest)
Tons of that all the time. Yes, and you know when, when, when I was at passages, we were a non. When I was at Passages we were the first mainstream non-12-step rehab. So I caught a lot of flack for that in the 12-step community. It was funny. I used to go to my friends' meetings. They would get a cake or something or get a chip and I would go and that would be in Venice Beach, right, and somebody would see that's a guy from Passages.
23:55 - Apple (Host)
And they'd get all pissed off.
23:57 - Dr. Jeff McNairy (Guest)
They'd chase me out of there. It's pretty crazy.
24:00
Yeah, I'm running down lincoln boulevard in my life, you know in venice, imagine rough crowd I grew up down there too, man, so I know so you know the thing about the 12 step too and, as you mentioned, this stuff is, like you know, the the whole model is based on. Obviously, the strength of it is that it's a lay community. So, your brother, you know fellowship is a big thing because the lay community doesn't know how to work on trauma and they don't try to. It's almost like you know.
24:33
That's why step three is always so hard for people, because it brings up the traumatic past, the making amends part, and that's really hard. That's where most people relapse or quit. I think that the 12-step thing has its place for some people, like we were saying. But to really get the healing you have to dig down and resolve that unresolved trauma and and that emotion that was present, you know, that caused the pain and when there's using my, my supervisor, dr Dr Bobby Carlson, amazing psychologist, famous lady, god rest her soul. She was my postdoc invited, a beautiful person. She said addiction is stems from trauma or trauma stems from addiction. They're very much related yeah they're hand in hand
25:22
no matter what, without the other for sure, yeah, exactly so. What's beautiful about plant medicine whether it's psilocybin, uh, iboga ajawaska, all these different ones, um is that it allows, it goes in to the brain and, through epigenetics, it adjusts the SIGMAR1 receptors on the endoplasmic reticulum, the cytoplasm cells of the neurons, and then it releases these memories and these emotions that we've been holding onto in our amygdala. And that's where they come forward, and then you can reprocess them in a in a healthy way, in a safe way not when you're experiencing the event of the trauma and and then you can let it go and that's where the real healing is. And so there's no more like white knuckling after that. Right, it's just, you're at peace and you're not always an addict, as the 12 step will say. Like once an addict, always an addict. I don't believe in that, I never did. Um, I don't like that identity. It's negative. So I think that's. I think we're all on the same page.
26:20 - Aaron (Host)
Yeah, man, 100% what you just said about the amygdala, that's the lizard brain, right? That's where our fight or flight is, and if that's where we're storing our trauma, getting inside that thing on our own seems really tough, because the second you touch it it triggers the fight or flight, whether that's emotionally, physically, spiritually, whatever.
26:48 - Dr. Jeff McNairy (Guest)
So it seems like what this medicine would do would create a bridge, kind of yes, in a way yeah, the only kind of therapeutic intervention I've ever seen, that's talk therapy based, that even touched it a little bit, was hypnotherapy. And I'm not talking about hypnotism, I'm talking about like hypnotherapy, like a doctor level person that got that, I've got a fellowship in this, and so it's more trained, more advanced. That's the only thing I saw that kind of could access it sort of but, um, but that bridge is very strongly occurring because the sigma one receptors are involved in synaptic plasticity, so that's where it allows the new neuron connections to happen and that's why you can go deep into your subconscious with this. So it's that's why this is so great for trauma, in my opinion.
27:38 - Apple (Host)
It's amazing for it one of the things I love that you do too is where you talk about, uh, pts instead of ptsd, because that is an annoying term, the, the disorder, and that's been around forever and usually associated with soldiers. People have seen war and I've had it upset me in the past with people that say they have ptsd and it's like not from you know, going to war or something. Pts is much nicer term for it much nicer.
28:12 - Dr. Jeff McNairy (Guest)
I love it. I. I drop the d down here all the time and people are like, really like it when they hear that they go. Oh yeah, it makes sense. You know it's not a disorder, it's a condition and it's something you can heal, you can get past it. It also empowers the veterans because you know they've been told all kinds of crazy things you know in their post, you know war stuff and they're, you know they're hurting big time.
28:43 - Apple (Host)
And if all of a sudden they think, well, what I get from going to war? I got a disorder. Now I mean it's just, it's just so not okay, you know, yeah, it's like stacking something else on them. Yeah, I I'm curious too about something down there. I mean, obviously the plant medicine is uh approved and legal down there, with government and everything. I'm just curious of like how how they and the community around you in costa rica views the clinic and also, do you get many people like locals from Costa Rica that ever seek treatment?
29:06 - Dr. Jeff McNairy (Guest)
yeah, we do um, at first we didn't, because it was sort of a new sort of thing to everybody around here.
29:11
But once we um kind of established ourselves and obviously we have all Costa Rican staff that work here, word spread and we do get quite a few people from Costa Rica. And we also, um mentioning kind of the corporate thing earlier, we, our goal as a company is to have 25% of our population of guests be scholarship based. So every week we have a very high number of people that don't that, don't pay, that we've that, we've scholarship. That you know they have to fill out a form and you know their reasons why, and so it's like they can win a trip, you know, and so we, that's very important and a lot of the Costa Ricans are in that program not all of them, but some are in that and we gift a lot, of, a lot of trips to people that are local, because the government here is very supportive of what we're doing and the reason is because we have a medical license. So we went about it the right way.
30:03
Costa Rica is an interesting country because it's not Peru, it's not Brazil, it's not the Amazon. Those are places that okay, ayahuasca is kind of part of the culture. But in.
30:17
Costa. Rica this is ecotourism central right. They love eco-tourism and it's very much like that here. So the identity of costa rica to the board of tourism and everybody isn't necessarily like this is a plant medicine haven. Um, it's sort of become that a bit, but um the the reason why the government's on board with us is because we're highly regulated and we're complying and we're working collaboratively with them, so they're big fans of us.
30:41 - Mel (Host)
What about the shamans themselves in Costa Rica that maybe were there before you or there beside you? How is that relationship?
30:53 - Dr. Jeff McNairy (Guest)
Yeah, so a big part of why ayahuasca is legal in Costa Rica is because there are indigenous tribes in Costa Rica that have used it for thousands of years, and the shamans that we have are most of them are from either Costa Rica or Venezuela, and we have a few that are from Colombia, and so they're all trained with this guy named Taita Wanito Chindoi. He's a Taita from the Amazon basin that comes himself here once in a while and trains everybody. He serves medicine here too, and it's been a really cool experience. You know, it was funny at first because, like I'm used to managing doctors and nurses and psychologists, all of a sudden I got to manage shamans. That's awesome, it was super cool, but hard like I. You know they're on a different, like uh, you know time scale. It's like they're meetings at nine. It's like, well, uh, where are you? Well, I'm talking to somebody. It's like dude, like they're they're not watching.
31:51 - Apple (Host)
They're not looking at their watch having a meeting with the jaguar I'm curious with that.
31:57
I mean because like once you try plant medicine, kind of like, what I can relate it to is like doing you know, psilocybin, things like that you do it and then you get the calling from it again, you know, maybe a week or a month or months or a year later with like all these shaman. I would imagine like once you've done it, it's like I want to go on his tour, because they did. Do they all handle it in a different way and does it provide a different experience with each shaman? It does?
32:25 - Dr. Jeff McNairy (Guest)
it definitely does. And, and you know it's interesting about the ayahuasca in particular, because the shamans make the ayahuasca based on their tribal recipe, and so all these ayahuascas have, um, the vine in common, the ayahuasca vine, which is the monoamine oxidase inhibitor, and that is important because it turns off the stomach enzymes in the, so the DMT can get absorbed, and so the DMT plant that's what's regional, based on where the shamans live. So in some countries it's mimosa tenuflora and others is chacruna. There's all these different DMT plants and so that's what kind of like gives it its flavor and its sort of uniqueness to each shaman is the way that the DMT is interacting, the concentration DMT and also just the cultural ikaros and the songs and the chants that they're singing. It all kind of like has different intentions. So what we've done through our data collection of the guest experience is we have Monday is a we call it a general introduction and it's a very mild. So it's. The guests would probably punch me in the face if they heard me say it's mild.
33:29 - Apple (Host)
How dare you, sir, how?
33:31 - Aaron (Host)
dare you, but it's mild for the beginning of the week.
33:35 - Dr. Jeff McNairy (Guest)
It's yeah, we don't want to scare anybody and have people leave day one, so it kind of like intros them in, gets the medicine used to them, then used to the medicine, and then Tuesday night is a very emotionally deep we call it going deeper and you get to really dig into the amygdala and kind of what are you here for? Let's get it sorted out. Then Wednesday is a very strong feminine energy night and the medicine matches that. We have our female shamans running the running the night and all the female staff are up there working and that's a beautiful night of healing. That's like my favorite night.
34:07
And then thursday is the night and that's the traditional colombian ayahuasca and all the shamans had a vote and they all said yah is the oldest ayahuasca. I mean, I'm kidding, but that's kind of what they say. Is that yah, from the at this certain part of amazon basin is like the original blend, and so we serve that on thursday night kind of like as the final ceremony, you know, and that goes until early morning, around eight or nine in the morning, and the other ones ended around one or two in the morning. So there's there's a different vibe to each night, but there's intentions behind it all, and so every day, we're teaching the guests how to use the process to their benefit.
34:47 - Mel (Host)
So this is like a hybrid of you know, ayahuasca ceremonies Cause, like, if you go, um, I'm I don't know, but when you first went, and when people go, it's not usually a week long, right, it's, it's maybe a day or two days, you know, maybe a long weekend, but not necessarily a week. So you're you're creating something that's kind of fresh and new.
35:11 - Dr. Jeff McNairy (Guest)
Yeah, we call it the rhythm away, that's what we call it. It's like, cause people, people at the beginning, would say what tradition are you following? We're kind of like you know, I'm like I don't know, I really don't know Like we're kind of making our own tradition. Um, we have traditional healers, we have traditional ayahuasqueros that are here, curanderos, but um, it's it's our own process, because most ayahuasca facilities are just in the jungle. It's one or two nights and then you're done and that's really powerful because because one night is usually they call it the, the bitterness, the first night like it's the harder night, and then the second night is the sweetness, where it's the healing and the love and the filling up of all this cool stuff. So we have we we draw it out a little bit longer because we've seen um through our sort of the way we look at the data, people's outcomes, that it's beneficial to kind of go up and down with it over four nights. So we're studying this whole process while it's happening, you know.
36:07 - Aaron (Host)
So you're collecting all kinds of data based on like, what people people that say they got their miracle, that didn't, what classes they attended, what classes they didn't. So you can like exactly, you can like plug an algorithm into that and tell if somebody's going to be successful or not, based on what they did while they were there exactly we have.
36:31 - Dr. Jeff McNairy (Guest)
We have mandatory classes and they're mandatory. I say that in air quotes, right, nothing's mandatory but classes that we really recommend they go to. Then we have um optional classes and so, um, we monitor who, who attends which ones they go to. Are they in yoga in the morning or not? Are they in meditation or not? Did they eat lunch? Did they eat breakfast? Um, how was their mood? What was their? What was their um mental status exam about? At the beginning, on the front end, you know, did they have depression symptoms? Did they have anxiety? Did they have a history of addiction? And then we follow up with people six months afterwards. Well, for, before the six month followup, there's a, there's an exit survey where they fill out all these questions about how they, how their, their week was.
37:19 - Mel (Host)
And we all know they're in the pink cloud at that time, so you got to take that with a grain of salt right.
37:23 - Dr. Jeff McNairy (Guest)
Everything's amazing Is that when you get them to fill it out, everybody loves it, right, so so. But six months out is when we really get some great data that I like to look at, and that's where we see if it's still working their life, if they're still doing okay. If they had not, as which are ceremonies where nothing apparently happened how do they feel now? Like so we look at all this different stuff, so, um, the program was very different at the beginning. We used to serve ayahuasca every single day and we served san pedro every single morning of peyote right, we've done.
37:59
We've done, san pedro, yeah yeah, so we imagine like being in an ayahuasca ceremony at night and then in the morning, boom, san pedro. And then we would do that every single night and you could check in whenever you wanted to, any day, stay as long as you wanted to, so like that was just chaos. You know, that was at the very beginning, we were just figuring out how to figure it out.
38:17
Yeah, we had to figure it out, and so then we fine tuned it over, like you know, took us like three and a half years, and then, boom, we got it down to four or five years. Then now it's where it's at now. So now you can check in on a Saturday or a Sunday and you leave the following Saturday or the Sunday. People can leave before that, but we don't recommend it because they've shortchanged themselves of the whole process. So we have this really specific program that people go through. Do you feel like you've found the sweet spot? I think so. Yeah, because now we're looking to expand in other jurisdictions and I only wanted to do that once. We had like a very solid base of what this would look like and we could just kind of bring it somewhere else and do it there in exactly the same way. So we're I believe we're at that point now.
39:09 - Aaron (Host)
Yes, so go ahead. So, for however many thousands of years, indigenous folks were taking plant medicine and it was integrated into the fabric of their culture. It was part of their everyday. It was like we look at Christmas it's just a thing, it's part of everything.
39:31 - Dr. Jeff McNairy (Guest)
Yeah.
39:32 - Aaron (Host)
Do you think that ayahuasca itself brought itself out of the jungle to people like us on purpose?
39:43 - Dr. Jeff McNairy (Guest)
I love that question and that's something I've been thinking about lately. Um, one of our one of our head shamans said that that's exactly what's happening is that the medicine itself is right now trying to heal the world, yeah, and it's bringing it forward to other cultures that don't have connection or lost connection to those medicines. You know, I'm Scottish, so in Scotland, back in the day, you know, generations ago, there was all kinds of plant medicines happening and I don't know what any of those are. I've lost that Right. So there's all these different parts of the world that really, really, really need this healing and I do believe that that's what's happening and it's interesting because everybody, you know not us here, necessarily, but a lot of people think, like it's black and white, like you know, it's either happening or not. I think it's a mix, because there are some very unethical shamans and unethical people that are out there peddling this stuff and not honoring it and not respecting it and not making it, not keeping it sacred or honoring the traditions, and so I think that's um problematic, and so what we've always tried to do not not perfectly, but tried to is is just say, okay, what does the medicine want from us? Like, what is? What is it? What does it want from us in this company, with the way we're interacting with guests, the way we talk about it on a podcast, the way we go with other places like?
41:08
I think that's a big part of what has allowed us to stay open, to have success and to move forward, even when all odds have looked like this is impossible. How are we doing this? I mean, I all odds have looked like this is impossible. How are we doing this? I mean, I pinch myself all the time. This is crazy.
41:21 - Aaron (Host)
Yeah, cool, you got the coolest job I mean.
41:24 - Dr. Jeff McNairy (Guest)
Definitely so cool. I love it.
41:28 - Aaron (Host)
The reason that I ask that, it's just because it seems like that's the case. The world that we're living in right now is a very tumultuous place and if your perspective is pointed in that direction, it can seem very dark. But I think that there's balance to everything, and part of that is these medicines making their way out of the jungles to people like us that wouldn't have had the opportunity to come in contact with them, and that energy is is rippling out into the world and and causing an awakening. I see it, I feel it. I've gotten the downloads about it. Like it's, it's a thing, that's that's really occurring.
42:18 - Mel (Host)
I heard an interview with you and Ben. It was like a podcast that I think maybe one of your doctors did, and Ben was mentioning that world is going through like a mass awakening. Can you tell us your thoughts about that and why you either agree or don't agree with that and kind of like maybe what your role is in that?
42:40 - Dr. Jeff McNairy (Guest)
yeah, well, I think you know what I've learned here. I never learned this at ucla and all the physics classes I took, they never taught us this. What I've learned about vibrational frequencies is very interesting, and the more I've looked into this for my own personal life and other things around me, it really makes sense. And I think the awakening is that we're we're being given opportunities as humans to make a choice and to be on a path of improving our frequency and raising it. And we raise it by not drinking alcohol in excess or at all. We raise it by having positive relationships. We raise it by making good decisions. We raise it by having positive relationships. We raise it by making good decisions. We raise it by all these different things.
43:21
Plant medicine is already at a very high frequency. It's at a perfect frequency of nature. We take it into our body and then it helps our body raise too. So the awakening that's happening, I believe, is happening right before our very eyes and I think that when you see people that are like not awake, they're kind of like robotic in a way. Once you have this new perspective you know I grew up in Los Angeles and there's very, a lot of robotic people there.
43:49
You know, all over the world there are, but in LA, I mean, it was just like there's this industry there that's at a very low frequency and and I think the choice then for people is to kind of like follow the things that are resonating with them, that are making them feel better and giving them peace and happiness, and it's it's. It's almost sort of too easy in a way, because you should do things that feel that feel good to you and feel right and feel peaceful and full of love, and I think that's kind of like the navigation point. The compass are those emotions and anything that leads to greed or anger, that's not appropriate, or trauma-inducing things, that's going the other path. So I definitely see people from all over the world to come through here Arrhythmia.
44:41
We have people from all over Asia, all over the middle East. We have people from Israel, we have people from Dubai, we have, I mean, you name it everywhere. They're coming here from Russia. We have lots of Ukrainians come here that live in Kiev. I mean it's crazy and they're coming and they're just like getting this healing and then they're going back home and they're creating a ripple effect. It's really cool to watch. Yeah, man.
45:06 - Mel (Host)
That's amazing. Another thing I wanted to ask you about is the IKOROS, the musical component, and I mean in medical school was there anything about music to help heal?
45:20 - Dr. Jeff McNairy (Guest)
Well, when I was doing the, when I was doing the psychology doctorate, my buddy Carlos Protzel he's one of my best friends in school he actually did his dissertation on the therapeutic benefits of music frequency. So now there's much more about it than there was when we were in school. But I think that you know, when you're lost or feel sort of like you're stuck in a plant medicine ceremony somehow and you're maybe feeling overwhelmed, the music brings you back to yourself and it brings you back to the medicine. And it's because of the frequencies. I believe the and everything that's involved in the music and the ecodos are our prayers and their, their chants, their prayers to for safety and for guidance and all that kind of stuff protection. So the musical part is very important, very, very, very you know.
46:10 - Aaron (Host)
So we love having the live music that we, that we show here at rhythmia you know, after having folks from all over the world come through Rhythmia, and I'm sure that you have a million stories, but is there maybe one miraculous story that you can tell us about that really stuck with you, that you've seen?
46:33 - Dr. Jeff McNairy (Guest)
Yeah, we had a lady from Vietnam come and she was about my age, so I'm 54. So she was about my age and you know her family had been, her generational lineage had been decimated in the Vietnam War and all kinds of pain, and her parents and nobody. She was running the family farm in vietnam and you know just, you know she had some workers and but she was just living a very agricultural life, very connected to the earth. But she was just alone and and sad and had lots of trauma from a little girl going through all that stuff over there during that time, even though she was very little, still affected her obviously greatly. She was in foster care for a bit and then returned to vietnam, out. She was in la for orange county for a while as a little girl and then returned later as a teenager.
47:26
So a lot of pain, a lot of trauma. And so she came through our program on a whim, because she just saw some of our facebook live videos, you know, and she just had this feeling that she should come to rhythm. She didn't really understand where, she didn't speak English, she didn't really know what we were talking about, but she just felt something. Oh wow, it was calling her. So she came here. She was this beautiful, amazing person, very spiritually strong and powerful, but she didn't feel that she was. You know, she felt very, very weak. Actually, she felt that way, but she was just this amazing person.
48:02
She went through the whole thing, drank ayahuasca all four nights, had all these breakthroughs, and now she's back in Vietnam serving medicine to her local community. Yeah, and she's. She's doing it in a, in a great way, and it's like a. It's like a you come to her place and you can live there and work there and participate. I mean, it's just this really cool. It's like, it's like almost like uh, an indigenous experience, you know, for her. So that's that's something that really stands out for me. It was able to almost like a satellite experience that she can create over there in her part of the world well that that speaks volumes too.
48:38 - Apple (Host)
To like like she didn't even speak. You know she didn't really quite understand, but she felt the frequency, the plant medicine, calling her like you need to come here, wow do you?
48:48 - Aaron (Host)
do you hear a lot of folks coming through saying that they're called?
48:52 - Dr. Jeff McNairy (Guest)
yes, that's a big part of it, and that the medicine is working on them before they even get on a plane to come here. Right, it's the wildest thing, like they'll say. I've had all these lucid dreams. I'm even purging a little bit. I'm like, wow, you know, we hear about this as they prepare to come, because we give them recommendations before they come, like to follow a certain way of eating Right and certain things, and then they'll just be like man, the medicine's already working and you know, and it's definitely something that that is hitting them before they even get here.
49:25 - Aaron (Host)
Well, we did dieta for for San Pedro, and I know just that dieta. Very elevating, you get you get tweaked just from that, like, oh yeah, that was, wasn't before we ever even drank the medicine.
49:36 - Apple (Host)
And we learned to. We learned to do because we all followed it and did good. But there was somebody else in our group that was a friend of the person leading it and was like oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I did the dieta and he kind of like we'll see, and he had a rough time.
49:53 - Dr. Jeff McNairy (Guest)
It was throwing up.
49:53 - Apple (Host)
Yeah, he was not. Well, we're like oh yeah, follow the instructions when you do this stuff.
50:00 - Dr. Jeff McNairy (Guest)
There's a dieta for a reason.
50:02 - Aaron (Host)
Yeah.
50:04 - Mel (Host)
So for those, I want to ask one more question, because you mentioned the app that you send that everybody gets when they go there and that's for like three months. So you mentioned meditation, breath work and therapy. Can you just lightly touch on why that's important for integration? For people who don't know why breath work would? I mean I think that it's a lot more out there now that people understand that it can be important. But for people who maybe haven't practiced it or haven't really gotten their, you know, meta meditation training wheels on, you know, like, why is that so important for the integration part?
50:45 - Dr. Jeff McNairy (Guest)
Good. So we believe that all disease, all mental health issues, all addiction, all unrest that's personal and emotional that we have is because we are unplugged or dissociated to some degree from our true self. So we're living in a in an unplugged state, kind of naturally in life, and not everybody, but a lot of us. And so when you, when you connect with yourself and heal all of that and you're plugged in, you're no longer dissociated. The goal of integration really means just to stay in that space as much as you can. Now it's not necessarily practical because you're working, you got the family, you got bills, you got traffic, there's stressors of society which are normal. So having a practice where you can connect with yourself periodically, even if it's for five minutes once in a while, is a huge part of integration, because when you're connected, you're no longer looking for reasons to stay unplugged or looking for reasons to kind of plug in that might be substance abuse related, because that's what substances do They'll connect you to it superficially or they'll push you away. So there's kind of this push-pull thing.
51:52
So breathwork, meditation, all of these things that we offer in the app, they help people connect to themselves and breathwork is the ultimate because you're just, it's part of you. You can run it yourself, you can self-regulate. Takes 10 minutes, the way we teach it here and it's just this beautiful practice that helps you just have a lot of self-physical awareness, and so it's connecting, it's aligning your body and it's funny if I even say the word chakras, because I don't even really know what all that means but it's just aligning all of the energy sources of your body in an intentional way will help you not be unplugged and help you integrate everything you've learned and the tools that you've gotten at Rhythmia. You can start to employ them.
52:36 - Aaron (Host)
Yeah, totally makes sense so.
52:38 - Apple (Host)
I want. Can I ask one line? I want to ask one last question to this this kind of a sidetrack on that guy I work. I'm also 54, will be turning 55 in May.
52:50 - Dr. Jeff McNairy (Guest)
All right.
52:50 - Apple (Host)
You said that early. Really, it may also.
52:57 - Dr. Jeff McNairy (Guest)
Oh right on I'm May 26th, right on.
52:59 - Apple (Host)
All right, cool, my question. I, I I work in the cannabis industry up here in we're in Portland Oregon and my my whole life I've used cannabis since I was 13,. You know, and I I'm on no medications. I'm relatively healthy, other than you know, and I I'm on no medications, I'm relatively healthy, other than you know, not exercising enough things like that. And I've always my whole life. Uh, cannabis was always looked at as like a gateway drug. What I see now, eight years of doing this, it has become it's a gateway drug, but it also it's the most common, commonly known like plant medicine, the most commonly abused. But I, I'm seeing people come in and they, you know, they they get a lotion or something. Next thing they're taking gummies and then they then they're questioning about mushrooms.
53:47 - Dr. Jeff McNairy (Guest)
Since I'm just curious, as a doctor, what your take is on cannabis and society and opening things up or not I think cannabis is an amazing uh medicine and it's a blessing and there's so many benefits of it and I believe that all plant medicines and all all things in general that the earth gives us, when they're used intentionally, they're they're good. And there's lots of people that use cannabis unintentionally, meaning they'll just use it to veg out and do nothing, and sometimes that's okay too.
54:19 - Mel (Host)
Sometimes you need that.
54:22 - Dr. Jeff McNairy (Guest)
Better than liquor. That's for sure. That's for sure. Now the shamans will say that all of these plants will compete with each other for your attention. So I found that very interesting. So there's no danger in having a cannabis practice and then drinking ayahuasca. There's no contraindications, nothing like that. But what we recommend for people that are going to drink ayahuasca is that if they can taper it off or use it a little bit less than normal, then that's good and then, just because they're full, the full experience of ayahuasca will be able to take through.
54:58
Now we've had lots of people that smoke a lot of cannabis right up until the day they come and they have an amazing experience. So it's not like, it's not like that's a requirement, right. But I believe that, um, you know, especially like, for my mom would never in the old days ever think that cannabis would be anything good until her nephew had a seizure disorder, my cousin and then the CBD and the cannabis and all those cannabinoids were the only thing that helped him. So that's what shifted her opinion, of course, and now she's totally on board, and there's a lot of people are that are maybe more conservative about it, and so I think that cannabis, when it's used intentionally is a gateway into lots of healing modalities if you want to be on that path.
55:45
So I'm a big, big fan. I don't actually smoke it very often. I have, but it's not kind of I don't do it that often. Um, even though the weed here in Costa Rica is really good, um, I don't want to keep one more questioning you to death, but um you, you mentioned um contraindications.
56:07 - Mel (Host)
Can you um talk about um not only contraindications, but some of the challenges of ayahuasca, not just the benefits, but a few of the challenges, and maybe contraindications as well?
56:20 - Dr. Jeff McNairy (Guest)
Absolutely so, because the vine component of ayahuasca, as I mentioned, is what we call a monoamine oxidase inhibitor. What MAOIs are for in deadGES, so naturally, is what they're for is they turn off the stomach enzymes, so they make it so the stomach doesn't break down the substance or the active ingredient of choice, and so that's what allows absorption of DMT. So if somebody is on SSRI medication for depression, so selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, those contraindicate with MAOIs depression, so select a serotonin reuptake inhibitors, those contraindicate with MAOIs. So we have to have people come off of their SSRIs and be off of them for at least 30 days. Oh wow, now that's hard for a lot of people. Some people it's not recommended to do that because when they tried it before maybe their anxiety went through the roof and maybe they got suicidal or they relapsed or who knows what right. So we always recommend they talk to their prescribing physician. Now the problem is nowadays physicians are a little bit more open to it, but not that long ago, three years ago, physicians were like I am not going to be liable for taking you off anything, and so they were very resistant to trying to get their patients off meds. But a lot of physicians are seeing now the benefits of these plant medicines. We have physicians here every single week, there's health professionals that come as guests, that come through here, and so the SSRIs create what's called a serotonin syndrome and that's dangerous. So that's why we have to have people not on those meds.
57:51
And the other psychotropic meds that are problematic are benzodiazepines like Xanax and Klonopin and Valium, and those aren't as severe. Those can just have something to do with lowering the heart rate during ayahuasca session. So we have 14 days off of those. And then the stimulants like Adderall and Ritalin and those kind of things also 14 days off, just because that can increase heart rate too much. So those are kind of the bad things. And then heart-related conditions. They're contraindicated If someone has a stint in their heart or a pacemaker or they've had open heart surgery and arrhythmias, which is hilarious. Our company's called Rhythmia, and arrhythmia is problematic right makes sense, don't?
58:37 - Mel (Host)
come to rhythm. If you've got an arrhythmia, do not do it correct, it's uh.
58:44 - Dr. Jeff McNairy (Guest)
And then on the mental health side, there's two conditions that are, uh, problematic. One of them is bipolar one, okay, not bipolar two, bipolar two. Bipolar two has been totally fine, and that's where people are mostly depressed and once in a while get manic. And then bipolar one is the opposite. So they're mostly manic, once in a while get depressed, and so the reason for that is because if they're manic a lot, they likely have a high level of serotonin naturally in their body, and if you give them ayahuasca that'll shoot it through the roof and then it's just kind of like, not, they're just out there and it's just not safe. So, um, and also, people that have bipolar one are usually on a lot of meds because their behavior is so unmanageable. You know, if they're not on meds, they're often running down the street naked saying they're jesus, right, so. So that's so they're very severe and it's not a common disorder.
59:39
The bipolar two is what gets labeled. A lot of people bipolar two, but bipolar one is a no-go just because of the risk of a manic psychosis. And then the other condition is schizophrenia, which I find very interesting. Why it's a no? Because there was one study done in armenia, of all places, which is very cool okay, they gave people that had schizophrenia.
01:00:00
They gave them ayahuasca. There was like 18 people and the the the participants said we don't notice anything different at all.
01:00:10 - Aaron (Host)
Oh no.
01:00:10 - Dr. Jeff McNairy (Guest)
Whoa. So what ended up happening with DMT studies and ayahuasca studies back in the 70s is they started to look at those substances to understand the psychosis of the brain. It helped them understand these disorders. So it's used in a way to kind of like figure out, like why is someone schizophrenic, what is it like, what's going on neurochemically? Because the brain wave patterns and the the mri scans show that there's different parts of the brain lighten up when someone has schizophrenia and the same ones are lighting up when someone has is drinking ayahuasca.
01:00:45
Now the. The next common thought from probably your listeners is what's gonna make me go crazy then? Right, but the good, the good news is that no, because in the Western world we view schizophrenia as this horrible mental illness that doesn't fit into society and people are just out there and they're not, they're not being successful. So they either belong in a psych unit or a group home, heavily medicated, and they're just a burden. And that's unfortunately the way the west views those people. In an indigenous culture, those people are the spiritually connected ones. They're the ones that are the, they're the mediums that are the vessels for the spiritual presence of whatever the tribe believes in. So I view people that have schizophrenia.
01:01:35
Very differently, because I used to work in a psych unit in pasadena called las encinas. I would walk in there and I had a case load, I'd do rounds and I was like one of the only psychologists in there that actually like listened to the patients because they were telling wild stories and you could say, well, in a way they're nonsensical, but to me they weren't. They were just these beautiful, amazing wild experiences they were talking about and all I did was just listen and show respect to them and because of that they would deescalate, they would follow the rules, they would do art, they would talk and have, they would write poetry. I mean, it was just beautiful and it was just the way that it was that I approached them, you know, and so that's something that's contraindicated, but not because of the same reason as a bipolar, one right very different and the actually take.
01:02:30 - Aaron (Host)
So, like I was asking a few minutes ago for those people that are listening, that are like you know what, I'm curious, I want to. I think I might want to try this. I think I might be called. What does it look like when you like a typical arrival at Rhythmia? Can you take me through, like the first couple of days?
01:02:50 - Dr. Jeff McNairy (Guest)
Yeah, absolutely. So. Everybody flies into this one particular airport in the northern Pacific side called Liberia and we have a shuttle. We have eight shuttles that pick up the guests. We have your name, we know who you are and all of our staff are wearing Rhythmia logo shirts and signs on the shuttle. So people get a little nervous when they go to a foreign country. They don't know what's going on at the airport. So we have a, we have a whole system at the airport pick everybody up.
01:03:17
It's about an hour drive through a beautiful area of Costa Rica. You show up, you go through an orientation where you learn about all the classes that are being offered. We show you the spa and all the different amenities. You have a very nice room that we do a medical intake. So within the first couple hours of being there you go through a triage with our nurses, you go through a little clinical interview with our doctors and then you get cleared and you we open up a chart on you like you would at any clinic and you have a chart and we just fill it out real quick and you sign the consents and then you go into a breathwork session that first night, you know, after having maybe some lunch, then you're in a breathwork at 530. And you have this. You know, most people have never done that before either, so our staff are teaching people how to do it. It's this beautiful way to kickstart the week.
01:04:03
And then Monday morning, first thing, 930 in the morning, there's a class that teaches them how to set intentions, what to expect with the plant medicine, where the bathrooms are, where your bucket is if you need it, and about 50% of the people will actually throw up while they're here once or twice. Not everybody does. Some people purge through going to the bathroom or just yawning even, or sweating, so throwing up is not the only thing. And then after that first night of medicine, when it's done around two in the morning or so, uh, then there's a class in the morning called the answer is you, and that's a curriculum from michael beckwith, who's part of our team, he's part of our company.
01:04:45
And then um, and then you have an integration class and you have probably have a massage, and so that's how those first few days work and it kind of just continues. So it's very nice, it's relaxing, the grounds are beautiful, there's a lot of downtime and if we have a guest speaker here, then there's a really cool lecture that we might have for an hour. You know it's optional if you want to go. That's kind of how it looks Wow, it sounds amazing.
01:05:10 - Aaron (Host)
So where where can people go if they want to find out more?
01:05:15 - Dr. Jeff McNairy (Guest)
There's multiple ways. You can just go into Google search and just type in Rhythmia Life Advancement Center and then up will pop our website with an 800 number. You just call and book your stay. If you can't afford it, you can fill out a scholarship application. You can talk to the intake guys on how to do that. It's all online. We also have Facebook Rhythmia Facebook and Instagram. So there's all great ways. You can just easily get a hold of us. You know, and we're ready to take the call.
01:05:40 - Mel (Host)
And Dr Jeff, is there anything that you want people to know that we forgot to ask about or just didn't you know mention?
01:05:49 - Dr. Jeff McNairy (Guest)
Yeah, well, I think you know we were talking a little bit about how, you know, these days people can really look at the world in a negative way. It's really easy to do that right now. There's so much happening, it's just wild, you know, and and I believe that the way the world changes is that you have to develop true empathy. But you can't really have empathy for anybody else if you don't have a self-love and a connection with yourself. And so everybody wants to maybe heal the world. But how do you do it? You know where everybody wants.
01:06:18
What's the first step to it? Well, the first step is healing yourself. You have to heal yourself and then, once you're healed and you know it's a work in progress, nobody's perfect we're get to a certain point where we're healing ourselves and then you can go out and really have empathy. And what empathy is is feeling someone else's emotional state. So if I am healed and I feel pain and sadness in my, the people around me, I don't want to feel that I don't want them. I don't want that for them. So I'm going to behave in a way that's going to help support those people, to not feel sad or upset, because I'm feeling it with them, and I'd like to have everybody feel happy and loved and productive, and so I believe that's the way the world changes one person at a time, just getting that healing.
01:07:01 - Aaron (Host)
You know that's what rhythm is about, yeah I, I, you know, coming up in the psychedelic scene, in the grateful dead world and all that. You know, we always heard stories. You know there's going to be this awakening. I remember, like the hopi prophecies and all this stuff, I always thought it was going to be this like watershed, like huge moment where there would just be this mass awakening and everybody you know, and turning out that that's not quite the case. It's kind of a slow roll and and it's really beautiful when you take a look at what's going on, man. So it's out that that's not quite the case. It's kind of a slow roll and it's really beautiful when you take a look at what's going on, man.
01:07:36 - Dr. Jeff McNairy (Guest)
So it's like a. It's like the Buckminster Fuller Bucky ball model right. Which is you're going to? You're going to grow the new world on top of the existing one, Totally. That's the way I think that's the way it's happening. And it seems like it.
01:07:52 - Mel (Host)
We've tried to punch holes in this whole thing. The whole time, we were the skeptics that are trying to punch holes in this and we couldn't do it.
01:07:59 - Dr. Jeff McNairy (Guest)
Good job, I'm really proud of you Like, not not just for that but I'd like to think that I'm I'm definitely on that that vibe, that empathy train, that healing yourself and healing others.
01:08:15 - Mel (Host)
I'm, you know, in the healing industry myself and I am always looking for new ways or or new thoughts on how to become better myself or to help other people, to help direct people, and I really feel, like today, that we've got a new place to send people to, or to at least consider, and I want to thank you for that Cause.
01:08:37 - Dr. Jeff McNairy (Guest)
I really feel like we dug in. You guys are. You guys are so cool. It was such a pleasure, seriously, I love it it was great, I could talk all day.
01:08:47 - Mel (Host)
Right, we want to invite it.
01:08:50 - Dr. Jeff McNairy (Guest)
I was invited to come to Rivia Anytime you want. Thank you, man. Just let us know, abby can hook you up. We'll get you guys down here at some point.
01:08:58 - Apple (Host)
I visited costa rica and I I would love to come back down there, especially that I've always been sketchy about ayahuasca, because like going to the middle of a jungle in peru kind of thing is intriguing, but also very, very scary. So, man, thank you for what you do and I hope to visit there.
01:09:18 - Aaron (Host)
Absolutely. Thank you, Jeff. Oh yes, Take care of yourself, brother. We'll talk soon, man.
01:09:25 - Mel (Host)
We'll let you know when this is coming out.
01:09:26 - Aaron (Host)
Happy early birthday. Take it easy, that's right.
01:09:29 - Mel (Host)
Thank you, jeff, have a good one.
01:09:32 - Aaron (Host)
Wow, man, Dr Jeff's cool man.
01:09:34 - Mel (Host)
We did, we tried it before. Dr Jeff, I hope you hear this very end. Yep, we were trying to like all right, we're going to ask him this, this and this and see if he can say it. And it was awesome, your eyes Slated. The second time or the first time you opened your eyes and we got on the on the call with you it was like and a couple of the things that we were talking about addressing.
01:09:56 - Aaron (Host)
He addressed it before we had a chance to.
01:09:59 - Apple (Host)
Yeah, so like wow.
01:10:00 - Mel (Host)
Yeah, man, Thanks again for what you're doing. And, and I remember, Aaron, a while back we had a conversation and you were like man I don't know about, like you know, psychedelics going into the medical field and like in some stark old room and I just don't know how I feel about it. Do you remember that?
01:10:17 - Aaron (Host)
Yeah, we were talking about ketamine therapy.
01:10:19 - Mel (Host)
We were talking about yeah and him. They've been open for eight years and so three, three and a half of that was kind of perfecting how to do it properly and coming up with the model that they have come up with, and there's always baby steps.
01:10:37 - Aaron (Host)
It's always gonna look clunky, yeah you're not gonna open the place in day one.
01:10:41 - Mel (Host)
Okay, nailed it straight out the gate.
01:10:42 - Aaron (Host)
Nothing to improve we're good here you know, I think that, like going to the lengths of flying across the world to a South American country to take plant medicine with a bunch of strangers, is a very um like how they say if you do what you always did, you get what you always got. You are at that point, you're reaching out.
01:11:15 - Mel (Host)
Yes, do you know what I'm saying?
01:11:16 - Aaron (Host)
Yes, and and to the to the extreme. So it stands to reason that the result from that thing would be as big as the effort to make it happen.
01:11:27 - Mel (Host)
Well, I mean, do you get where I'm coming from? Yes, but if the people or the thing that you're reaching out to, oh, it's legit.
01:11:34 - Apple (Host)
You know what I mean?
01:11:35 - Aaron (Host)
yeah, I mean, we've all heard they're shaman yeah we've all heard um well, maybe not everybody, but the three of us here have heard some pretty harrowing tales of shaman doing shady shit. Oh yeah, and that that's one thing that I did before we had them on, when, when they reached out, was tried to find some of that stuff, and there was none of that out there no, anyway, when it's out, when it's out there, you can't bury no, no, so it's the internet.
01:12:05
There's somewhere, as they say, no, it seems very solid yeah, if, if you're listening and and you've felt the call of ayahuasca, and and or have been feeling it have been feeling it and you just weren't sure. I, I haven't been there, but I just met one of the head guys, and so did you and, uh, I I think that this would be a viable option for you I just want to mention um money, like because think about this Say you want a new car and you want, like your windows, to go up and down.
01:12:42 - Mel (Host)
You want to. You want an alarm, you want, you know, a hybrid, you want this, that and the other. Do you really think that they're going to take a couple hundred dollars for that? What you are expecting?
01:12:53
no, that kind of luxury and that kind of sportsman and workmanship does not cost a few hundred bucks you're gonna get 82 corolla with no right so, in the same way, when we're reaching out to like transform our life, I'm not saying that you should be gouged, but there's also like tit for tat and you're gonna have to pay for something that is going to transform your life. And so if you look at things like you know, like this is not inexpensive but it's also not the most expensive too. You know, you think about what he just talked about, like going on vacation. You're going to this gorgeous resort type thing. All this stuff, right, like this is an investment in you period.
01:13:39 - Aaron (Host)
Well, and I'm a little bougie, I don't want to stay in a shitty motel six when we go on vacation. I want to stay in a nice hotel especially for doing plant medicine and purging and everything you want to.
01:13:53 - Apple (Host)
You want to be able to clean up and feel like you're in a clean environment.
01:13:58 - Aaron (Host)
You don't want to be laying in the doo-doo muck with no showers and you go rest on a fucking pile of hay in the barn or something hey, for some people, man, that might be what they need, but and you heard about the staff.
01:14:14 - Mel (Host)
You heard him talk about the staffing, on how, like there's a you know paramedics, there's doctors, there's the staff like everything costs money. So I I I just know I'm saying this for myself, because I know that I am always skeptical when it things cost a lot of money. I'm like, well, why isn't it free? Well, why isn't it this much? Or why does we have to pay so much? And that, for my own head, I feel like that's why I'm explaining this, or that's why I'm touching on it, because if you expect something great to happen, if you expect a huge transformation to happen, then expect to shell out appropriately, because you will find value in that.
01:14:51 - Apple (Host)
And I like because I said at the beginning I was like that's one thing I want. I was like would it be wrong to ask him about, you know, financial aid and stuff for people at Canterport. It's one of the things he addressed immediately within like the first 10 minutes. That's dope, because I saw that on the website. I wasn't sure what the you know.
01:15:13 - Aaron (Host)
I didn't go on to fill out a scholarship thing, but I saw the scholarship thing on there. It's right there on the website. You see it right away. So here's the bottom line if you want it, you can get it yes, and what's it worth to you and and and yeah. So everybody, you heard him, that's dr jeff from. Dr Jeff from Rhythmia, down in Costa Rica doing the Lord's work, as they say, and yeah.
01:15:37 - Mel (Host)
I'll say he's doing. The plant medicines work Well one and the same.
01:15:43 - Aaron (Host)
Alright, so we will be back next week on Monday with another episode of the no Simple Road Weekly Rewind. Come hang out with us. It's just the three of us hanging out and talking about stuff. It's pretty cool. No guests, it's just us and the dog and him farting Licking the floor like he's doing right now. All right, Take care of yourselves, everybody and smile at a stranger. Take care of each other, yeah, safety. Third Hydrate.
01:16:08 - Dr. Jeff McNairy (Guest)
Take care of yourself.
01:16:14 - Aaron (Host)
And do hydrate yourself and, uh, do do your research before you do. Always, always do your diligence, because there's shiesty folks out there in the world, but there's also wonderfully beautiful there's everything in the world.
01:16:21 - Mel (Host)
Just remember that. How about that?
01:16:23 - Apple (Host)
yeah, and and darwin said not just love your dogs, love your pets. That's his message.
01:16:27 - Aaron (Host)
All right, we'll see y'all next week. We love y'all peace bye.