#170 Expanding Consciousness with Dr. Rashmi Schramm

Hey, this is Melissa Parsons, and you are listening to the Your Favorite You Podcast. I'm a certified life coach with an advanced certification in deep dive coaching. The purpose of this podcast is to help brilliant women like you with beautiful brains create the life you've been dreaming of with intentions. My goal is to help you find your favorite version of you by teaching you how to treat yourself as your own best friend.

If this sounds incredible to you and you want practical tips on changing up how you treat yourself, then you're in the right place. Just so you know, I'm a huge fan of using all of the words available to me in the English language, so please proceed with caution if young ears are around.

Melissa Parsons

Hello again and welcome to Your Favorite You. I am still your host, Melissa Parsons, and I am thrilled today because we have another incredible guest on the podcast. I have known Dr. Rashmi Schramm for the past several years. We met a few years ago now at a previous physician coaching summit and we were reunited just a couple of weeks ago at the most recent physician coaching summit and amazing Rashmi led us in this beautiful first night supermoon yoga nidra. I'm going to set the scene for you all. We were all out on the lawn under the beautiful supermoon under the beautiful Arizona sky and stars. You can picture us all laying on our yoga mats. I was in my wicked pajamas and the resort supplied robe. We were all under several yoga blankets because as you may know, when it's November in the desert, it gets cold in the evening, but it was just the perfect grounding experience to bring us all together and to prepare for the summit. And then she gave this amazing talk on Friday about expanding consciousness and I knew right then and there that I wanted sweet Rashmi to come and be on the pod and teach us all about different ways to expand our consciousness. So welcome to Your Favorite You, Rashmi.

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Rashmi Schramm

Melissa, it is such an honor to be here. I'm so excited.

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Melissa Parsons

Yeah, I'm so excited for my listeners to get to experience your wisdom. So I always have my guests introduce themselves to our listeners by telling us about your current favorite version of yourself, please.

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Rashmi Schramm

Oh, that's great. So my current favorite version of myself is really enjoying a great deal of time freedom that I've been able to create over the last couple of years. I have two daughters there in college and I am coaching full-time time hosting retreats and I really just can pick up and go to a yoga class if I want to. I have enough white space. I traveled to Sedona before that the summit because I created a couple of extra days and I wanted to go hike the vortexes and I think that's my favorite part is the part that's really leaning into what it looks like to have time freedom.

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Melissa Parsons

I love it. You're speaking my language, sister. You might remember at the summit, the way I said that I had my own back was by not giving myself a hard time for having so much white space because for 45, 47, 48 years, I just didn't have a ton of white space and I'm just really reveling in it. So, soul sisters right here.

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Rashmi Schramm

Soul sisters, 100 percent.

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Melissa Parsons

I love it. Okay, let's get into it. When you are talking about expanding your consciousness, what does that even mean? If somebody's hearing this term for the first time, maybe on the pod, explain to them what that might mean.

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Rashmi Schramm

Yeah, so like, I'm trained in yoga and Ayurveda. And so I'll bring in some of those terms. And I'm, you know, of course, trained as a Western physician practice, you know, over a couple decades too. So the way I think of consciousness is kind of the groundwork for all things, right? Like it's, it's the E equals MC squared from Einstein. So consciousness is energy, and energy is everything like matter is energy. And so from that standpoint, like Ayurveda, for example, is a consciousness-based expansion, healing modality. And what I think of that as is kind of coming home to our highest selves, kind of coming home over and over again, to the highest version of ourselves that's available to us in that moment. And it has a lot to do with awareness, it has a lot to do with becoming aware of what's happening internally and externally, and, and almost being able to play with the, with the matrix of life, if you will, right? Like it's, it's that playfulness that will help us to come into more awareness. I don't know if any of that made sense to you.

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Melissa Parsons

Oh, it totally makes sense to me. And it makes sense to me that it's very difficult to expand your consciousness when you have zero white space on your calendar. You're so busy and going from thing to thing to thing and what society and culture, the way that we're rewarded in typical Western society, it just doesn't leave any room for that at all. And it makes sense that I'm more interested in this topic now that I do have more white space and all that kind of good stuff. And I think also coming back home to yourself makes sense to me completely because I think becoming a favorite version of yourself, she's in there and she always has been. And it's about chipping away and letting all the layers of shoulds and expectations and that type of thing go so that you can meet this highest version, favorite version of yourself. So I love it. So much. Yes. Yeah.

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Rashmi Schramm

Letting go of those layers of us that just don't belong anymore and don't serve us anymore so that that essential version of you is what remains.

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Melissa Parsons

Yeah. So yeah, I mean, my next question was what is the point, but I think we've answered it. Right.

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Rashmi Schramm

Yeah, I agree. And I think the point other than our highest self is, is a sensation of ease that you and I are kind of like, again, some of the things that we're talking about are ineffable. So they don't necessarily have words. And so that's why I'm sort of fumbling over some words here. But, but it also brings in a sensation of ease, which is different than easy. It's this level of flow and ease with that necessarily like all the excess like mental baggage that we can carry when we get really bogged down into the day-to-day stuff. Like we can still do all the things, but do them with more ease.

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Melissa Parsons

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think ineffable is a perfect word and I think it might be why it's sometimes hard for me to tell people how I help people. Yeah, me too. Right? Because it's like, well, how do you help them? And it's like, well, it's very hard to describe unless you've actually experienced it for yourself and like felt the ease and recognized that we all have this playfulness inside ourselves that has been totally stripped away from us from years and years of doing. That's right. So even just talking about it like feels heavy to me.

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Rashmi Schramm

And I sense that too. I sense that too. And I think because you and I have both experienced it for such a long period of our lives, that it can kind of come right back. Like we know exactly what that feels like in an instant of that feeling of that heaviness, of the feeling of the shoulding and the never enough, all of those stories that we get to kind of swim around in for, gosh, I don't know, decades of our lives.

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Melissa Parsons

For sure. I know I was doing the math the other day of, you know, how many years of my life I've had this playfulness and white space and that type of thing. And I'm like, Oh, like the percentage is quite low. And I hope that I have many, many more years so that I can, you know, at least even it out a little bit, right? Yeah, I love that idea.

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Rashmi Schramm

Yeah, kind of like, you know, creating that vision or that blueprint for I'd like to have this and more, please.

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Melissa Parsons

Mm-hmm. Yes, yes, yes. Thank you more, please. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So in your vast experience, what are some of the best ways that we can start to expand our consciousness?

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Rashmi Schramm

Yeah, so I think, first of all, just noticing that there may be another option other than kind of doing the same thing that we did last year and the year before that. I think that kind of noticing is so powerful of like, oh, I'm in charge. I am actually creating this life, right? Like a lot of that learned helplessness is encouraged in medical training and certainly in medical practice, a hundred percent, right? And so, and letting go of that narrative can be the first step that becomes really, really, really powerful. And then just starting to notice like, what else is here can be really powerful too. And so as far as like tools that somebody can access it, I think everybody listening already knows what we're talking about, but maybe they haven't put it into these words, right? Like it could be looking at your puppy's eyes. It could be a sunset. It could be a beautiful hike that you've taken. It could be like this really crazy belly laughter that you had the laugh time. Like it's, those are all, those are all micro moments of expanded states of consciousness. Now, of course, you know, practices like mindfulness, meditation, yoga, and breathwork, they are all tools that were designed to literally lead us into expanded states of consciousness when they are practiced with some amount of consistency. And so there's so many different tools that are available to us and prayer, I think can be a powerful way to do that as well. Singing, dancing, there's so many different ways where we can access those expanded states of consciousness. And then of course, I happen to mention at the summit that there is a huge percentage of the population, probably three or 4 million Americans that report using psychedelics, things like psilocybin and microdoses to experience some of these expanded states of consciousness as well. Yeah. So many different ways.

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Melissa Parsons

Yeah, I think for somebody who's listening and maybe who has not really put any thought into this whatsoever, they're going about their life doing, doing, doing, and they're hearing this kind of stuff maybe for one of the first times. The idea that you don't have to sit in silent meditation for hours a day or go be a monk in Tibet or, you know, it's, you know, I think that we, we tend to have this like all or nothing thinking about it. Like I'm either in an expanded state of consciousness or I'm not. But you talking about like the micro moments of experiencing a beautiful sunset here in Ohio recently, we've been able to see for the first time the Aurora Borealis and like experiencing the magic and the wonder of nature. You know, I think that those things, you know, for those who are like, I don't have that much, you know, time right now to dedicate, like you could just start noticing those little things and just make a shift by degrees. It's not, we're not suggesting, or at least I'm not suggesting that you go and, you know, do a yoga teacher training or become a meditation guru or something like that. I mean, you can if you want, and that would be amazing. And you don't have to do that. You can just start by noticing the tiny little things.

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Rashmi Schramm

And it is, in fact, the small things that create the big shifts in our lives. And we can, you know, we could get past the amygdala when we talk about maybe spending two minutes noticing the sky or the trees or the birds, like we can get that past the amygdala and then can we do it for three minutes and, and just like, you know, tiny, tiny, tiny doses is what I always start with too.

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Melissa Parsons

So for my people who don't know what the amygdala is, can you just quickly say what that means? Get it past the amygdala?

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Rashmi Schramm

For sure. So it is the alarm system is part of our primitive brain, right? And so it's part of that HPA axis, the hypothalamus, the amygdala, the adrenal glands. And so let's say, for example, you're a super busy mom, you're managing all the things at work and at home. And someone says to you, the only way to really get to this kind of ease is you got to meditate for an hour every day. Well, that has not going to work, right? Nobody got time for that. Why? And it is the amygdala that's like, what the hell is this person talking about? Like, you got to be kidding me, get the fuck out of here. And I don't know if I can curse on here. Oh, absolutely. It's encouraged.

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Melissa Parsons

You know me Rashmi it's encouraged, you know.

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Rashmi Schramm

I do know you. So like, that's what would go through my head. And in fact, that is exactly what went through my head when I first started meditating, you know, like, there is no way that we are going to have 60 minutes for this shit, like gone and on and on and on. And that will create a sensation of defensiveness of like all the reasons why we can't do it. Whereas if we go, look, when this is what I normally do with my clients to like, do you have two minutes to practice breathwork, like just a simple breathing technique for two minutes, the amygdala is like, yeah, of course, we got two minutes. We're not that desperate. We're not that sick in the head, you know, and so like, yeah, so get in there, slide it past kind of that, you know, alarm system that's meant to keep us safe and small, and then you can really start to experiment. So that's really what I mean when I say that.

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Melissa Parsons

I love it. I love it. Okay. So I know the answer to this because I have definitely gotten into this state with meditation, but how does meditation expand our consciousness? Like what is the mechanism? If you can explain it, I don't know if it's ineffable as well.

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Rashmi Schramm

No, I think I can explain it. And so yoga nidra, let's take yoga nidra, for example, because there are actually studies that can support this. I also teach a month or meditation and a few other types too, but yoga nidra is to me the most accessible because the instructions are just lay down in like your most luscious comfortable position and follow the guidance. And the hardest thing that you'll do is try not to fall asleep. And like most people are like, I'm in, let me give this a try. And so yoga nidra, for example, uses a whole host of different techniques. And they're, you know, when you kind of just look at them separately, they look very sterile and scientific, but it's steeped in a sensation of spirituality that's meant for us to essentially quiet the mind over a period of time, so that we can move beyond the mind and beyond the body. And so I have this, you know, I love to draw when I'm teaching this sort of diagram of the layers that we have that yoga and Ayurveda have been talking about for a few thousand years. And quite simply, we have the physical body where we spend a vast majority of our time, the energy body and heart math has shown that our energy body extends to eight, maybe 10 feet, right? Like we have science behind it now. And then it's thought that the mental body is actually over the energy body. And then you've got a couple other of these kind of ineffable kinds of bodies that we all have, like the wisdom body and then the bliss body. And so what yoga nidra, for example, is designed to do is to quiet the mind, as I mentioned, over a series of, you know, kind of exercises where we create a safe environment for the mind to go, all right, I can rest now. And then remember, I said the energy body is below the mind. And so when the mind gets a little bit quiet, energy is known as prana. And so they're kind of interchangeable words. And so it's said that prana always knows the way home. And so much of the experience that people can have during a meditation is that we have been able to give the mind something to do so that it relaxes a little bit so that the energy body can take us home. And so for example, you know, a mantra meditation, if somebody practices that is simply it's month, I just means mind ladder. So we're just giving the mind something to do. And we make the body comfortable. So there's really no meditative practice that I'm aware of that makes the body, you know, being pain or something like that, because then we're focused on the pain. But really, when we have the body in a comfortable posture, and we take care of the mind, then energy then does its work. So we don't have to tell energy where to go. It's always looking to go home.

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Melissa Parsons

That's why no yoga nidra feels so damn good. It feels so damn good. Yeah. That's amazing. Okay, so let's get into psychedelics and their use as a tool, a medication to help us expand our consciousness. Are you ready for that? Sure. So we're about the same age and we grew up in the era of the war on drugs and this is your brain and the dude picks up an egg and this is your brain on drugs and he points to the scalding hot cast iron pan and then cracks the egg and says, this is your brain on drugs and the egg fries, it's gonna fry your brain. And then he says, any questions? Is there anything you'd like to say about that, Rashmi?

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Rashmi Schramm

Man, that just brought me all kinds of shivers. I was 100% convinced that that is exactly what my brain would do on any kind of drug whatsoever. So it was extremely effective, and it was extremely fear-based, and it was all around. And I didn't question it for one nanosecond at all.

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Melissa Parsons

Yep, there is a very good motivator.

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Rashmi Schramm

Yeah, 100% and like our biggest asset is our brain. I don't want my brain to look like a fried egg.

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Melissa Parsons

Right. Exactly. Exactly. Oh my goodness. I think I want the listeners to know that these medications have been studied for a really long time. And back in the 80s, during the war on drugs, all the studies were shut down and we lost so much in terms of our ability to collect data and to see how these medications could help people to explain their consciousness, help people to heal. And I loved at the summit, you showed us a graphic of the safety of psilocybin compared to alcohol, which is something that is completely legal in the United States and advertised on TV and, you know, touted as something that you should partake in to make your life better. Right.

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Rashmi Schramm

100%. Billboards, the whole thing.

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Melissa Parsons

Yeah, can you tell our listeners, for example, the safety profile of psilocybin versus alcohol?

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Rashmi Schramm

Yeah, so psilocybin is the active compound in magic mushrooms that are found naturally in vast amounts over 200 species all over planet Earth. And so it's a naturally occurring compound, which is really interesting to me that I, in my opinion, I believe they were they're growing to help us expand our consciousness collectively. So that's just my side note. I'm with you. And so in 2010, David Nutt, who is very well renowned, published in JAMA, actually JAMA was 2016. But this was in the Lancet, it was published, where he did a fairly long study in Europe of alcohol. And he looked at all these other and there were some things in there, some drugs that I don't don't even know what they are, like cotton, things like that. But they looked at opioids, they looked at alcohol. And so alcohol basically had the highest harm per use for the person using it as well as for others using it. And then it sort of, you know, very closely mimicked like meth and cocaine and things like that. And then at the very, very, very bottom of that is psilocybin and LSD, which really almost zero harm to self and others like the only real reported harm to harm to self or others is when somebody is on a high dose of something like psilocybin that they shouldn't be, maybe they have a family history of bipolar or schizophrenia, maybe they themselves have that and they maybe have a manic episode and or they're on a high dose and they think they can fly so they jump off of a building or something like that. But physiologically, they are not known to be addictive dependency causing. And certainly, there is no lethal dose that's been studied.

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Melissa Parsons

Wow, that's so interesting. Okay, so you kind of touched on this, but who should definitely not be considering using these medications as a modality for expanding their consciousness or healing?

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Rashmi Schramm

Yeah, so I think, and I know that you'll probably talk about this anyway, but it's a Schedule I medication or a drug right now. So that would kind of be universally all people. We're not advocating for anything like that. But there are, you know, so, not Ohio, you're in Ohio. So Colorado and Oregon have decriminalized psilocybin, for example. So the use is quite high in those two states is what we believe. But they're also, like I mentioned already, there's reports of somewhere between four and five million Americans that even in the last two years annually reported using psilocybin. So there's a lot of underground use. And so noticing that you can imagine there's a lot of bad players in the underground. There's also like shops that you can buy this kind of stuff from Instagram. Don't do it. Like you need to know your source. Like I know some people that are growing their own in Colorado, for example, because it is decriminalized. So that's the stage that we want to set for this. You know, it can be a little bit nuanced. But anybody with a family history of schizophrenia, like I mentioned, or personal history or family history or personal history of bipolar disorder, for example, because there is a chance that and again, these are all case reports, Melissa, like it's hard to study this stuff for real. But I have noticed that just in the last six months or so, blue chip universities like Hopkins are actually going to study bipolar and psilocybin, for example, like a lot of it is focused on OCD, on depression, on anxiety, all of those kinds of things. And the results like always blow everybody away when they're using a macro journey dose. And so but there are certain folks who absolutely should not be like they would not qualify.

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Melissa Parsons

Yeah. Okay. Got it. Got it. So what is the mechanism of action? Like how do these medicines work and how do they help us?

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Rashmi Schramm

Yeah. So psychedelics as a whole, it's a giant category, right? And many of these medicines have been used in indigenous cultures like peyote, like for thousands of years, including psilocybin, thousands of years. And so if we want just like a quick overview, I tend to think of them as three different categories. Ketamine is in its own category, a lot of people would argue it's really not in the psychedelic category. And I don't feel strongly one way or the other, but it's a dissociative anesthetic. And it's, you know, pretty widely used right now in the country for depression and PTSD. And with proper therapy, people are getting some really incredible results that we don't have with traditional medications, for example. So that's ketamine. And then you've got your entheogens and then your empathogens. And so entheogens, that's really what you and I have been talking about so far. And so that's your traditional psychedelics. So those are your LSD, your psilocybin, peyote, 5MEO DMT. There's so many of them. And there's some novel ones that people are creating now as well. Entheogen generally means expansion of consciousness, or it is literally meant to expand our consciousness. So that's entheogen is how I think of it as, right? Like growing your spirituality, however you want to translate that. And then empathogen, so MDMA would be in that category. And it can be hugely helpful for somebody suffering from PTSD. Also, I've seen MDMA used in couples therapy, for example, when some, you know, when there's some deep wounds that need to be healed. And it's really an empathogen is a heart opener, if you will. And so those are kind of the, that's the vast overview of those. And ultimately, you know, like my experience studying as an apprentice has been within psilocybin. And the way that psilocybin works is, it is a naturally occurring substance, like I said. And so the vast majority of people when they're using it, and my use, you know, really has been in Holland and the Netherlands where it's completely legal. So psilocybin itself is just either the dried mushroom or the underground component of the mushroom, which is called truffles. And so when, when that is consumed directly, like there's no side products or anything like that, it basically becomes the active ingredient is psilocin. And so there is a phosphate group that falls off. And I actually at the summit, I kind of put up one of my favorite ways to think about psilocin, which literally looks almost exactly like serotonin when you look at it. And it has an affinity for the serotonin 5-HT2A receptors within the prefrontal cortex. And so that is kind of biologically how we understand that it works. But in my opinion, I think it has its own consciousness and its own playfulness and its own teaching. And it will meet your consciousness where it's ready to be met.

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Melissa Parsons

It's so interesting. Okay, I love that. So it's interesting to me that you've had to leave the country to get your training in the use of these medicines for helping people heal. So do you want to speak about that a little bit?

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Rashmi Schramm

Yeah, I think what's interesting, and we alluded to this a little bit, and I point out to folks is, you know, what's legal in this country and ethical and moral are drifting farther and farther and farther apart in the last several years. And so you might want to consider this as being illegal, ethical and moral. And so that's kind of how I think of it as. And there are really incredible folks at the advocacy forefront. And actually, surprisingly, like Texas is working with Ibogaine. And they've got some interesting studies that they've started to kind of put into effect. New Mexico has a law they just passed with psilocybin for end of life use. And so it's, you know, the changes are coming. But all of these medicines were kind of swept up within, you know, the Nixon era of the war on drugs and kind of perpetuated. And we know, we know now, if we kind of want to go full circle, the war on drugs was a huge failure. It exacerbated all of the divides that we have in our country, social, economic, racial, all of those things. And perhaps that was the entire reason we did that. Right. Like, but it, but as a way to keep people from using drugs, it's been a huge failure and it's cost the citizens a huge amount of money. And so I think to be, you know, on the safe side, and we're both physicians, we're going to do things that are legal. And so for me, my mentor is a physician as well. She's an American physician. She lives in Europe. And so when I decided this is how I wanted to get trained on it, I just, you know, went to went to Europe to get that, to get that done. And most specifically, Holland.

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Melissa Parsons

So awesome. Okay. So I'm going to reveal some of my personal experience on the podcast because it wouldn't be your favorite you if I didn't do this. So personally, I have taken both psilocybin and LSD each only once to help facilitate my healing, but I did not take the appropriate steps to maximize the benefits of these medications. So tell us about intention setting before using the medication and then integration after using the medication and why these steps are so important and how I'm going to do better next time.

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Rashmi Schramm

First of all, congratulations. Thank you. That's the base where we'll start from. But a lot of this is about studying ourselves and allowing parts of us that are finished and complete to fall away. That's really, again, coming back to that same theme. And in order to do that, it's really kind of a safe, cozy thing to have a facilitator who is trained in this, for example. And so I've had an experience where it wasn't necessarily facilitated, and I didn't necessarily do what I thought that I needed to. And then I've also done the other way as well. And huge difference for me, personally. And so intention setting is deeply important. And I actually think, and when I host retreats in the Netherlands, I host them for my private clients, they are so pivotal the first four weeks before we get to the retreat are so pivotal for us as a community, for us as facilitator and somebody who's ready to receive, to really begin the preparation with, I think of it as tilling the soil, if you will. So yes, we set intentions. And we also do a lot of what we call shadow work. And so that way, we may be ready and we may have even let go of some of the shadow work that we're afraid is going to show up during a journey. And so the preparation, to me, is so key. And during a journey dose, for example, which for psilocybin is like three to four grams, the default mode network is down. So the usual ways in which we have ego-based thinking, defensive thinking, protectors, like they're all just, boof, they're great.

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Melissa Parsons

Yeah. So for my people who know what IFS is, basically this is a way to take your protectors offline. And I always think about getting their permission before doing this type of thing to have them be taken offline so that you can get to some of the more tender parts of yourself.

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Rashmi Schramm

And that is exactly right. That is exactly the work that we're doing when we're prepping, is we're developing that relationship with our protector parts and gaining their trust and getting their permission. Because I have also seen it the other way around. Like I have a client who had worked with me a while ago who went and had an experience, just a one-day macro journey experience in Colorado where there was no prep, there was no integration. She was just, her protector parts came back so angry and she was having such a difficult time. And so when she contacted me, then we actually did a lot of the integration work that I think should have been included within the journey itself. And so that is so, so important. Because when what needs to be seen is seen, what needs to be heard is seen during the journey, then the integration becomes so, so important. And it becomes important to then see what other chores do the protector wants? What else do they want to do? What news do they have for us? Everything can shift in that. And the integration is really where, it's the idea of complete neuroplasticity where they can really develop habits pretty quickly, develop ways of thinking pretty quickly. And I've seen really wild things emerge from those when there's support on both ends.

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Melissa Parsons

Yeah. How long typically do you recommend for like formal integration? I mean, I know things can happen for years afterward, but Drew.

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Rashmi Schramm

Yeah. So the way that I structure mine, so it's at least five weeks of prep and then at least five weeks of integration afterwards. And oftentimes I'm working with them one one-on-one for a year or two after that as well. So I think a very long period of time.

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Melissa Parsons

Yeah. Okay. Awesome. So we've gotten pretty deep. So for someone who's listening, who's maybe a little bit curious about expanding their consciousness, whether through meditation or psychedelics, would you tell them to start at just noticing the little moments or where would you tell them to start?

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Rashmi Schramm

I would. I would almost say it depends on what they feel kind of an affinity to or interested in or magnetically drawn to. Some people, it's just being in nature. Maybe create a priority to be in nature more. For some people, it is being with really well-regulated humans. For me, I'm an extrovert. You're an extrovert. I look for options in times where I can be with people who are expanding themselves, who are constantly looking at ways to playfully grow and evolve. That might be a way that you can expand your consciousness. You can decide you're going to get a puppy. Whatever it is, you can start there. Meditation, if it calls to you, that's an amazing option as well. For somebody that's thinking about psychedelics, I would just say safety, safety, safety, safety, safety, all the way down the line. It's like you got to know your source. You got to know your facilitator and all of those things. They're there. You just have to find them.

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Melissa Parsons

Right. Okay. So yeah, how would you know if you're working with somebody reputable and safe?

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Rashmi Schramm

Yeah, so we have this joke and the underground when and I am connected to a lot of people who are working underground so when I have a client who's like I can't go to Holland like give me some choices I do have some choices and there are some above ground places in Costa Rica for example that have been doing this work for a really long time cuz it's actually legal in Costa Rica as well and so some of it is just intuition some of it is knowing somebody who's already been to one of these things is usually how the growth is for them it's organic and so it's like your most amazing option is if you know someone who's already come and gone like through and a lot of the ones in Jamaica are now shut down but Jamaica is another option as well and then there's some in Colorado and Oregon as well so like this would have to be a network situation in my opinion but there's also kind of an underground ethical group that we're in where I will double check if I don't know a person who's like I don't know a particular group if somebody's chosen to go in the underground I can do those kinds of checks for people I don't recommend it at all because I think you know you can imagine it has no checks or balances and things can go from like just fine to quite terrible very quickly if somebody is in a position of being very vulnerable.

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Melissa Parsons

Okay, awesome. So what is giving you hope about the future with consciousness work and meditation and psychedelics? Tell us how I think we all need hope.

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Rashmi Schramm

Yeah, and I noticed how shocked you were when I mentioned Ibogaine in Texas. That's what gives me hope. There are, interestingly enough, as divided as we are politically in our country, psychedelic seems to be bringing both sides together in certain instances, which is very, very interesting to me. And so-

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Melissa Parsons

What makes sense to me, take your protectors away, take your protectors away, become openhearted, and it's really easy to see what makes us similar instead of what makes us different.

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Rashmi Schramm

That's it. That's it. And it's also then easy and effortless to notice that we are all part of the same consciousness. And just like you said, right. And so that's what's giving me hope right now is there is advocacy and it's moving at a snail's pace, but there are a lot of really capable humans who are very highly intelligent, who are at the forefront of that. And some of them are, you know, people like Jim Fadiman, Dr. Jim Fadiman, he's been doing this work. Like he was, you know, he talks about in his book, he was literally in the field, doing a study on psilocybin, when the feds, like people were on high dosages of psilocybin, this was like something that he had a, you know, IRB permission for and everything. And like the feds literally came and they were like, this got to be shut down right now. And he's like, well, you know, they're like two hours into their journey. So what do you want me to do? You're gonna have to wait another six hours or so this thing was just signed in, you got it, you know, so like, he's still been in this. And he's sort of known as the father of microdosing. Now he's been collecting data for 40 years, 50 years on this stuff. So it's people like that. It's people like Paul Stamets, who continue to kind of be these pioneers back in their day, but also still considered pioneering even now, but have like decades and decades of wisdom and knowledge and experience of leading people through some of the darkest things within history in the last 50 years or so. So I do think there's change coming around. The thing to look out for is big pharma is also looking at this. And there is currently a synthetic silosin that has gotten approval for phase three trials, it's going to be fast tracked. So that is going to be probably one of the fastest things that we'll see coming into action, it will probably be completely unaffordable for people who need it. And it will be patented, so silosin will then become patented. So that's something else to look for as well.

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Melissa Parsons

Yeah. Oh my goodness. This is so like America capitalist. It is. Let's take something that occurs naturally in nature and manufacture it in a lab and then sell it to people for unaffordable costs and make it illegal to use the one that's actually growing in your forest behind your house.

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Rashmi Schramm

Nailed it.

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Melissa Parsons

Okay, okay, okay. Is there anything, Rashmi, that I didn't ask you that you think that the listeners need to know?

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Rashmi Schramm

No, I think you know, I've been listening to your podcast, Melissa, and it's a phenomenal podcast. I'm just grateful for the work that you're doing and for just the service that you're putting out there. And I'm just grateful to be connected to you and to your listeners.

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Melissa Parsons

Oh, thank you so much. If they want to hear more from you, if they want to learn more about how to work with you, be in your programs, that type of thing, tell the listeners and we'll link everything in the show notes.

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Rashmi Schramm

Yeah, absolutely. My website is just my name. It's rashmischramm.com. I have a podcast that Melissa, you're going to come on in a few weeks. It's called Inner Peace and Power, so you can always connect with me there. And I'm always looking to connect.

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Melissa Parsons

Yeah, okay. Thank you so much for coming and for sharing your beautiful consciousness and your beautiful brain and your beautiful heart. Like, I just loved everything about this conversation and I love everything about our relationship and I can't wait for it to expand as well.

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Rashmi Schramm

Yes, same here. Thank you again.

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Melissa Parsons

Amazing. Yeah, thanks everybody for listening and of course come back next week. I'll have another amazing episode for you. Bye.

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