Revolutionizing Wellness: Psychedelics in Therapeutic Healing

Tune in to Better Way Today to hear from Tania de Jong from Mind Medicine Australia.

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Tania co-founded Mind Medicine Australia, Australia’s leading not-for-profit organisation working on the use of psychedelic-assisted therapies to treat a range of mental illnesses and expand the treatment options available to medical practitioners and their patients. Mind Medicine Australia is a Coalition Partner of the World Council for Health.

She is also one of Australia’s most successful female entrepreneurs and innovators having developed 6 businesses and 4 charities. Tania works across the public, private, creative and social sectors. She founded Creativity Australia, Creative Universe, MTA Entertainment & Events and The Song Room.

Hello and welcome to Better Way Today. Today is Monday, June 17th, where I am, but possibly Tuesday, June 18th, where you are. Wherever you’re watching us right now, if you’re on our website or you’re watching a stream on somewhere like Twitter or XRumble, Facebook, Take a moment to say hello in the chat and let us know where you’re tuning in from, because that is always exciting to see the reach of our message and our global audience. So today we have a wonderful interview with Tanya D. Young and Francesca Havens. Tanya is one of Australia’s most successful female entrepreneurs and innovators, having developed six businesses and four charities. She works across the public, private, creative, and social sectors. She founded Creativity Australia, Creative Universe, MTA Entertainment and Events, and The Song Room. She also co-founded Mind Medicine Australia. Mind Medicine Australia is a coalition partner of the World Council for Health. They are Australia’s leading not-for-profit organization working on the use of psychedelic-assisted therapies to treat a range of mental illnesses and expand the treatment options available to medical practitioners and their patients. Before we get to that, I’ve got a few announcements for you. Let me put those up. So coming up next week, we have an expert hearing featuring the incredible experts that you see here on the screen discussing where COVID vaccines stand now in 2024. This is an important conversation that you’re not going to want to miss, featuring the latest evidence from the medical, scientific, and legal perspectives. Join us on Monday at 6 p.m. UTC in the WCH newsroom or any of the streaming platforms where you’re watching us right now. So that will be happening in lieu of a normal Better Way Today that you’re watching right now. So same time, same place as usual next Monday. Hope to see you there. Jam for Freedom is coming up again. 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Let’s head on to that interview. Again, this is Francesca Havens discussing Mind Medicine Australia and their work with psychedelic-assisted therapies with Tanya D. Young from Mind Medicine Australia. Yeah, it’s such a privilege and an honor to welcome you on to a better way today. And we’re really excited that you’re about to explain to us from your perspective and your experience, the amazing turnabout that has been had with psilocybin and the treatment of mental unwellness. No, thank you so much. And we’ll also be talking about MDMA assisted therapy today as well, because that’s also very important in terms of psychedelic assisted therapy. So it’s the two psilocybin MDMA assisted therapy, and of course, ketamine, which has been being used for a while as well. So I’ll start by just showing a short presentation. So a reason for setting all of this up was firstly, my husband and I, who are philanthropists and social entrepreneurs, were fortunate enough to experience psychedelic assisted therapies with a Dutch guide in 2016. And that really did change our lives. And it was such a profound and meaningful experience for us that we really started to investigate what could be done in Australia, because we were aware of the fact that Australia had and has now an even worse mental health epidemic. And of course, many Western nations in particular have a terrible mental health epidemic. In Australia, one in four Australians have a mental illness. One in six are on antidepressants. One in two of us is expected to have a mental illness in our lifetimes with children as young as four being prescribed with psychiatric medications and one in four older people over the age of 55. And of course, there are certain types of groups in the population that are far harder hit. So we have veterans and first responders with a far greater incidence of mental illness, addiction and suicidality, and also other groups like farmers and doctors and so on. And the elephant in the room has been the lack of innovation in treatments for mental illness for over 50 years. And there’s been no improvement in treatment outcomes over the past 50 years. And in the case of depression, as few as 15% of sufferers experience remission from existing treatments, which is generally antidepressants or psychotherapy or combination of the two. And of course, there’s significant side effects and withdrawal is very difficult of these medications. In the case of post-traumatic stress disorder, as few as five to 10% of patients experience remission from existing treatments. So more of the same is not going to solve our mental health crisis. And so we set up a charity focused on alleviating suffering from mental illness and suicide through expanding the treatment options available to patients and doctors through psychedelic assisted therapies. So we’re very much focused on psilocybin for the treatment of depression and MDMA for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder, but we are also interested in ketamine assisted therapies. And of course, psilocybin and MDMA are now also being researched for their application in a whole range of other conditions. So psilocybin for obsessive compulsive disorder, eating disorders, early cognitive decline, Parkinson’s, fibromyalgia, cluster headaches and so on and both these medicines for addictions and MDMA of course was famously used for relationship therapy in the 60s and 70s. So for us success means that these therapies become an integral part of our mental health system, that they continue to achieve the high remission rates they’ve been achieving in hundreds of trials around the world. And those remission rates are 60 to 80% remission rates after just two to three medicinal treatments with psilocybin or MDMA with a short course of psychotherapy. So we’re talking 12 to 14 week psychotherapeutic and medicine sessions and then patients going into complete remission versus a lifetime for many people of mental illness and the stigma and taboo that is associated with that. We also as a charity want to make sure that these treatments are accessible and affordable to all Australians, regardless of where they’re located or their financial circumstances. So the remarkable thing about these treatments is that they just require two to three medicinal dosing sessions in combination with a short course of psychotherapy and that they are curative medicines. They’re not just managing the condition. They’re considered to be very safe in medically controlled environments and they’re non-addictive. Both have been granted breakthrough therapy designation by the FDA in the USA, which is only granted rarely to medicines that could prove to be vastly superior to existing treatments. One of the things that really spurs us on is these extraordinary patient testimonials and we see many of these. For example, everyone deserved to have this experience. Wars would be impossible to wage. Wouldn’t that be a good thing in today’s world? I felt like I went through 15 years of psychological therapy in one night. MDMA is the reason my son has a father instead of a folded flag. So what’s happening with these medicines? Well, it’s very interesting because these medicines, and particularly psilocybin, alters communication between different brain networks. And it bypasses the default mode network, which is what is keeping us defaulting and stuck in very rigid childhood programs. Usually they’re programs from our childhood. And you can see these representations of fMRI scans on the right of this slide. One of them is from a patient who’s got very rigid and stuck thought loops, probably like most of us, as we get older, we get stuck and quite rigid and different hemispheres of our brain really stop talking to one another. And we lose a lot of cognitive flexibility. And what happens with the psilocybin, with this ingestion of the psilocybin is this incredible neurogenesis, this increased neuroplasticity, the different hemispheres of the brain really starting to connect with one another again. And that creates a window in which trained therapists can work with their patients to really help them to break out of those stuck patterns of thinking. And it promotes a real empowerment in the patient as well. So the patient starts to find what they need to heal themselves instead of taking a daily pill or multiple psychiatric medications or having to see their therapist weekly or more often. This is a really empowering moment for patients where they start to see what they need to do. what lifestyle and behavioral changes they need to make so that they can start to set new patterns and not get stuck in their old patterns. So it’s really about not bringing the past into the present continuously. And MDMA is particularly important for that. And we’ll talk about that in a moment. The other remarkable thing about these treatments is that remissions actually increase over time, which is not something you see with any other treatments that we know of currently. And this happens because it’s very, very important for integration to occur after these medicinal sessions. So we’re talking about psychedelic assisted therapies. That means the psychedelic is used to enhance the psychotherapeutic process. And as patients work with their trained therapists to really talk about what have been some of their learnings and realizations and light bulb moments in the sessions, which many people describe as one of the most meaningful experiences in their lives. One of the top five most meaningful experiences in their lives. And some people describe it as the top one or two most important experiences in their lives on par with the birth of their first child. Now, whoever just says that about a medicine, generally not, but with these medicines, you see this, Increasing understanding in a person’s life and this increasing remission rate. And you can see here what happens with MDMA assisted psychotherapy. So again, we’re not talking about ecstasy. Ecstasy is a street drug. We’re talking about pure GMP grade MDMA. which decreases fear and defensiveness and increases empathy, trust and safety. It really creates a therapeutic bond. It decreases the activity of the amygdala, the fight, flight, freeze associated with traumatic memories. And so what happens with MDMA therapy is that a patient can talk about their trauma or traumas without being re-triggered or re-traumatized. And that allows them to actually start to live in the present without being triggered continuously by the past. And this has led to these extraordinary remission rates. So in the phase two trials, which led to the current phase three trials that have now completed, After just three sessions of MDMA with a short course of psychotherapy, 68% of patients went into remission. It’s quite remarkable. And that led to these phase three trials where you now see that 71% of them no longer met the criteria for PTSD. I mean, that’s an extraordinary outcome when you compare it against five to 10% remission rates from existing treatments currently. And these people had had PTSD for a long time. They’d had PTSD for an average of 14 years. So you can imagine the levels of their suffering. There was also an interesting study done at Imperial College that directly compared two doses of psilocybin against a daily dose of esotelopram, a leading SSRI. And there were twice as many remission rates in the psilocybin group as the SSRI group and far less side effects as well. there’s a lot of other trials, but I don’t have time to talk about them today, but they are available on our websites, but this is some of the trials going on in Australia and New Zealand because Australia has now become a leader in this field, due to the rescheduling that we achieved here and New Zealand’s also showing some interesting developments. And you can see now the MDMA trials as well and there’s an enormous amount of trials around the world. And last year we had this extraordinary world first decision by our Therapeutic Goods Administration who rescheduled psilocybin and MDMA as a result of Mind Medicine Australia’s rescheduling submissions, which were supported by over 13,000 Australians and others around the world as well, but particularly Australians, including a lot of clinicians and researchers. And so the Australian government has also granted the largest federal government grant of $15 million Australian to support seven clinical trials in Australia. And that’s why you’re seeing so many clinical trials emerging here. And we’re seeing states all over the world, like many states like Oregon in the US, for example, has legalized psilocybin for therapeutic use. So the whole world is moving rapidly in this direction. It is a rapidly emerging field and it needs to be because the suffering in the world is really significant. So this is some of the headlines that happened after this world first rescheduling. and we’re very proud of this achievement and we’re also seeing research and development programs in many of the leading universities around the world, Oxford, Yale, Harvard and so on and of course Imperial College London which has been at the forefront for a long time, Johns Hopkins University. So how did this all begin? Well these medicines and plants have been with us since the beginning of human civilization. In fact many people speculate that cortex, the brain evolved as a result of ingesting, predecessors ingesting some of these plant medicines. And they were used extensively and still are in many Indigenous cultures and have not been illegal in those places. And in the 50s and 60s, they were widely used by tens of thousands of patients in clinical settings and their practitioners. And Stan Grof, who’s a wonderful psychiatrist, described psychedelics as being for psychiatry what the microscope is for biology and medicine or the telescope is for astronomy. What happened in 1970 was President Nixon criminalized the use of This entire class of drugs, not for scientific reasons he’s advisors knew exactly what was. You know how effective they could be, but unfortunately for political reasons, because he wanted to conscript lots more young people into the Vietnam war movement and that effectively meant that these. substances couldn’t be used anymore and all research stopped at that point in time as well, and Professor David Nutt describes this as the worst censorship of research and medical treatment in the history of humanity. One can only imagine what the world would be like today If people had have continued to research these medicines, would we have this terrible division and disconnection and depression and disruption that we’re experiencing or would we be more harmonious in this world. What we’ve seen since that time is this massive now increase in trials where we’re back above where we were back in 1970, which is wonderful to see, and hundreds of trials taking place around the world. We’re also seeing many for-profit companies coming in and wanting to cash in on this rapidly emerging field. And Mind Medicine Australia has always been focused on developing the ecosystem, which has been a unique approach where we’ve really focused on awareness and knowledge building. So we’ve had a lot of events and webinars, and that’s why we’re talking with the World Council today to really inform and educate people about this field so that people understand the science and data and evidence behind this rather than the taboo and stigma of the past we also have started one of the world’s leading professional development programs our certificate in psychedelic assisted therapies which features a world-class faculty which I’ll show you in a moment and we have other educational programs we also fund research in Australia and we partner a lot with universities and of course we’re very focused on patient access so we were the ones who did the rescheduling applications which were successful and we’re also very focused on medicine supply and availability at affordable costs and we’ve started a patient support fund to ensure that patients who cannot afford the upfront cost of these treatments can be supported through philanthropy. We also are currently talking with a lot of health insurers and government and Department of Veterans Affairs to ensure that those who need these treatments the most can access them and can get support to have these treatments. So here again is some of our achievements. There’s a lot more, but we’re not here to boast about these today, but we are very proud of what we’ve achieved in just five years. with a relatively small team, but an extraordinary global advisory panel. So people can help in all sorts of ways. You can learn more. We’ve got an amazing learn section on our website. You can talk to your medical practitioners and fellow colleagues and medical practitioners because everyone needs to educate themselves about these therapies. And of course, we have wonderful webinars and you can join our world-leading certificate in psychedelic assisted therapy. So this is our patient support fund. We are a charity, so donations to us are fully tax deductible. And this is our certificate in psychedelic assisted therapies, which is available for psychiatrists, GPs and other physicians, specialists, psychologists, psychotherapists and counsellors, nurses, social workers, occupational therapists and other allied health professionals. Our next intake of our certificate commences in July, and you can see some of the leaders of our course here. and some more others here. We will probably extend applications to mid-June for this training. And it’s just an extraordinary faculty. And we have some wonderful global webinars. They’re free, but we always encourage people to make a donation. And here are some of the upcoming ones. We also have one with Dr. Rick Doblin coming up soon, which we’ll announce shortly. We also have some beautiful mushroom gift cards designed by my niece. We have our t-shirts and we have Australia’s first book of psychedelic healing stories featuring the stories of 32 Australians. So with that, I think I’ll stop the share and we’ll go into the Q&A. That is a wonderful presentation. Thank you so much, Tanya. Especially as the World Council for Health, we absolutely support innovative practices, but that have their natural origin, so this ties absolutely into everything that we’re proposing and supporting, which is. to decentralize medicine and to bring it back to all the natural remedies and techniques of healing that have been around for thousands of years and that we’ve lost touch with due to the onset of the more pharma-based medical drugs. So I think one of the questions that a lot of people would probably like an answer to is there is the intention by some of the money making bodies, corporations to carry out these sorts of therapies, but with synthetic, you know, patented psilocybin, what would you like to say to that? I mean, we are not against synthetic patented psilocybin. It is actually being used a lot in the trials because it can be easily, the dosing can be much more consistent than using the natural products. and the different strains of mushrooms for example as well which can also be inconsistent in terms of dosing so we don’t see a real problem in synthesizing psilocybin and for example providing it in capsules we just want to ensure that people get the highest quality product that they can and that they’re supported by the best therapists because the medicine is really the catalyst for the healing to occur through the through the extended psychotherapy support of course but of course the reason I’m saying that is because uh there was a a very an old study in 1989 by dr gartz which uh suggested like we so often find that when there’s over 400 compounds in the psilocybin mushroom that they work in synergy with each other and therefore I was interested to see that there’s a new study from the hebrew university the medical center the ladassin medical center which shows that the natural extracts actually work better so it’s always interesting isn’t it because we’re in this era where there’s all of this patenting going on and replication of natural substances and yet coming from my perspective as a nutritionist who works with natural plant medicines a lot of the time that and also extracts of them but natural extracts so it’s just very interesting to see that Uh, these natural medicines that have accompanied us since the beginning of time, there are, uh, Patents being brought out on them and for different purposes. Well, yes, I mean the primary reason why people are synthesizing or creating different formulas is so they can get patients, and so they can profit. So obviously and the effect that you’re talking about before with the multiple compounds is called the entourage effect and that’s where the the full. all the different molecules that are in the mushroom come into the formulated capsule and I imagine that’s how the Optime, which is the company that supplies Our clinics and trials in Australia through Mind Medicine Australia are using this natural entourage. I imagine the full compound. But there are other companies like Compass Pathways in the UK and so on who I think are formulating a synthesized version. Is that right, Ilan? That’s right. And if I may say two points on this. the reason why some companies have gone after the synthesized route is only because it’s easier to measure the exact amount of psilocin given to the patient because if you go out and if you say forage for a mushroom and give that to a patient you actually don’t know how much they’re getting and because we’re treating these as medicines we want to ensure that everything is controlled optimise who we are purchasing medicine from, they have perfected an extraction method which allows them to use a natural mushroom, but allows them to actually measure how much to decide what is going into each tablet. Also lows in the active component, yes. That’s right. And also in January of this year, so after the TGA’s decision to downgrade these substances and classify them as medicines, they’ve actually started engaging with industry and they actually opened up for a quality discussion in January of this year. And they should publish their findings in June, July now. But it’s just interesting to see how the TGA is asking industry and even ask for feedback on, you know, using a synthesized. And actually that’s an important point, which I didn’t say before, but as a result of the decision last year, Francesca, patients are now being treated in Australia. So since January this year, a number of, psychiatrists or over the end of last year a number of psychiatrists became authorized prescribers is uh the the specific definition that they need to achieve to actually provide these treatments and they’re treating people Yeah, which is fantastic, of course, because at the end of the day, this is a major breakthrough. And I have to say that I feel quite, you know, I was deeply moved by your presentation because knowing how many people are suffering and having seen the results of the uh the initial trial by by robin at imperial um and seeing how profoundly that that works on people who have trauma that is irretrievable by normal means because it’s babyhood trauma etc and we don’t have the wiring to retrieve memories from that period under normal therapies or circumstances so it’s really truly amazing and that leads us to another aspect that I think perhaps the public would like to hear about, which is the therapeutic relationship, because it’s very clear that I looked at the Allen Davis study from Ohio University, which was suggesting exactly that the therapist-patient relationship suggests better outcomes, which leads me back a little bit, if you don’t mind me just finishing this sort of train of thought. It leads us back to the fact that, well, if the plant itself is something that’s actually rather difficult to pinpoint this sort of completely controlled environment where you know exactly what’s going to happen, when you have the therapist, and we can take that back to the shaman or even, you know, Otzi, the chap that was discovered in the Austrian Alps was carrying psilocybin mushrooms or mushrooms of different sorts in his pouch, you know, the… the uh they think he may have been a shaman that were five thousand years old and his body was discovered in the I think it was the austrian alps um and uh so in in that world of therapy where you have highly experienced therapists which in the old days we would have called shamans uh these shamans are actually uh they they know how to adapt you know, the therapy and according to, you know, how the patient in this case is responding. So how would you say something to that? Because I think people want to know that, especially people who have been told it’s a psychedelic and a dangerous drug that puts you out of control and all these things um perhaps uh you’d like to say something about that relationship and how it works beautifully Well, firstly, I mean, I just say with MDMA therapy, you know, you are in an altered state of consciousness, but you really are still very much you. And, you know, you’re usually having some kind of dialogue with your therapist that is that is usually one of enormous empathy and care and love. In the case of psilocybin, yes, you are in a, well, if the medicines work well and you’ve had the right dose, then you are in an altered state of consciousness and you’re seeing life and humanity and everything beyond that as well in multiple states of dimensions of consciousness. And for a lot of that particular six to eight hour session, or four to six hour session, you’ll be you’ll be in that other state. And so there’s not a lot going on in the session with the therapist, in fact, because the patient’s usually just viewing and internally seeing what and feeling what’s going, you know, what’s occurring and everyone experiences these medicines differently. But what is deeply important is to bring together this shamanic history, uh, that has, you know, typically been, been the holder of these medicines and Western science so that people can still have what are fundamentally mystical experiences in a more scientific or clinical setting. And so the training that we give to therapists combines that it combines the mystery and the mystical with the science and the evidence and the data. And so we’re really teaching therapists how to hold that space and how to be a loving support. loving awareness as ramdas would have said I am loving awareness and really that’s what these therapists need to embody in these sessions it’s not an interfering type of of course not telling the patient what to feel or what to do it’s really the patient who’s guiding the session and the therapist is perhaps providing some feedback and some inputs into that to help the patient to experience more or to go further into perhaps some darker moments and so on but you do need the reassurance what I was getting at as well people don’t want to just throw you know throw themselves into something like that as may have happened oh no no I mean I mean we You know, the reason why we set up the charity is so that people could experience these treatments in legal clinical settings. That was the entire goal. Feeling safe, but feeling personally safe because you’re well. Absolutely. Yeah. Rather than seeking out these treatments underground, not necessarily knowing what the medicine dose might be, necessarily all the qualifications of the person and so on. That being said, there’s an enormous number of extremely qualified and experienced and extraordinary shamanic practitioners. And it’s just that many people don’t want to break the law. They want to do these treatments legally. yeah yeah yeah which may lead us actually to wonder you know uh definitions of legal and lawful However, going on to another topic, just I’m not quite sure how much time we have left. But I would just like to ask you, because, you know, depression is such a big, big issue. I mean, even the World Health Organization states that depression is becoming the number one illness for many different reasons, because information in and of itself causes depression. So people with chronic diseases tend to be more depressed than we do not have them. However, in the case of depression, there are so, so, so many people that, for instance, have already started taking SSRIs, for instance, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. so um have you uh are there studies being done where these particular people are being assisted in a way that they feel confident that they can leave their ssris or gradually take them off under you know careful guidance of course And move into these, in this case, it’s psilocybin, because we’re talking about depression and not PTSD. So are you undertaking trials or therapies where this has been shown to be effective to help people just leverage them out of that a bit of a quagmire really, in terms of how people get off the SSRIs? Yeah, I mean, it’s very important. And so in general, the psychiatrists that we’re working with help their patients to taper gradually off their medications so that their receptors can be really open to this new form of treatment. And sometimes they will have to do that with extreme cases of patients staying in hospital where they get enough support. now in some cases uh there’s there’s much anecdotal evidence of people using microdosing to actually get themselves off ssris uh we don’t we’re not focused on microdosing but there’s a lot of information out there about that and I know of people who have got after decades of SSRI antidepressant use have been able to get off their SSRIs and through micro dosing and then having some medicinal doses as in full doses supported by by therapists. well isn’t that the medicines yeah that’s such incredibly good news yeah it is but also one of the things that’s just happened recently and I i haven’t seen this research but apparently there’s been some research done that suggests that people could be given high doses of psilocybin or certainly psilocybin I think I’ve heard this about where you know, it could still break through the receptors if they got a high dose. But I don’t know exactly about that research, but I have heard something about this recently. But obviously, I believe it’s far better and so do the clinicians that work with us if people can taper off their existing drugs and that they can heal through these medicines uh fully by having that open receptor uptake to you know the 5 ta it’s the 5 2 hta the 5 th 2a receptor that’s the one that’s like the psilocybin locks in like a key into that particular serotonin receptor Yeah, that’s all of that’s incredibly exciting. And have you actually come across, you know, for those people who still may consider, oh, you know, this is a step too far for me because, you know, they’ve been so deeply imbued with the notion that, you know, these are dangerous drugs and all the rest of it. Have you come across any comparative studies between, let’s say, for intractable depression of some sort? comparing it also actually with PTSD, to be honest, comparing it with things like eye movement desensitization therapy. EMDR and stuff. Yeah. So EMDR can be a very effective treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder, and it does work for some people. But again, still, the remission rates are not very high and what we’ve seen hasn’t come as high up as the 71% that we’ve seen in the final stage of the phase three trials with MDMA in the US, which is being supervised by FDA. That’s the MAPS trials that have now completed. And it is highly likely that MDMA will become a prescribable medicine in August or September of this year in the US, and that other nations will follow that. And So EMDR can be a very useful treatment and certainly we’re not suggesting that even that SSRIs don’t work for some people, they do. But if people have tried a lot of different treatments and they’re not working, they certainly deserve to have access to these treatments. That’s a basic human right to safe and effective healthcare and medicine. And, you know, that’s a part of the human rights conventions. And it is ironic that these treatments are used in indigenous nations and settings and communities and have been all the time. And, you know, and also in churches around the US, ayahuasca churches and so on that are using these medicines in religious settings as well. And of course, in the Netherlands and countries like that where psilocybin has been legal throughout, it’s never been made illegal. And of course, we can see that the Netherlands is a very highly functioning nation with a progressive drug policy. Yeah. Yeah. And what would you say to I’m sure we’re running out of time and Linda will reappear soon. But what would you say to have you encountered studies that have actually managed to resolve transgenerational trauma? through the use of psilocybin because that’s a big thing, isn’t it? We know that we can inherit trauma from past generations and you only have to look at the Dutch famine study and the effect of the famine on the health of the children of the mothers that went through the Dutch famine in 1944 to see that there’s an important health impact and of course that health impact is uh also mental health because it all goes together um well that’s that’s entirely what led me to these medicines to begin with so you know I’ve been hacking mind body and spirit since I was you know probably 18 20 years old and you know I’m a performer as well as a social entrepreneur so I always wanted to be performing at my best and so that was sort of what was leading me to all different types of therapies and mantra and tantra yoga psychotherapy you know hyperbaric oxygen therapy I’ve tried everything But it was actually an article I read by Michael Pollan in the New Yorker magazine that spoke about the end of life trial that was going on at New York University in around 2015, 2016. That really inspired me to try these medicines because they profiled a Jewish man who had intergenerational Holocaust trauma. And I was pretty sure that I was wrong. know a sufferer of that because I believe that I epigenetically you know carried my parents and grandparents who were all holocaust survivors um all of them on both sides we lost pretty much all our relatives on on you know a huge amount of our relatives on both sides of my family tree who were murdered in the holocaust now how i mean of course that’s going to affect subsequent generations and so when I read this I just immediately said to my husband we have to do this and he lost his father through suicide as well so both of us experienced enormous amounts of healing and we went back to the netherlands a year later a whole year later we had to integrate for a whole year before we went back and did this but It was so profound and subsequently when we’ve worked with guides and therapists with these medicines, we’ve continued to experience further integration of our whole selves so that we can bring all the parts that have been lost and disintegrated through our trauma over the years into the whole. and that is one of the wonderful things about these treatments is they really help you to put yourself back together again so you can be fully whole shining at your full potential and that’s what every human being deserves to be they deserve to be fully healthy and happy and be participating and contributing to the community because we’ve got a lot of wicked problems and we need everyone participating and being part of the solutions That’s right. And in an energetic sense, one can also consider that our actions to seek healing is actually taking that healing in an energetic form back to the past generations, if we really want to go further with those ideas. So I think that’s absolutely wonderful. And I can’t tell you how much I I respect you and your husband for having taken that as far as you have and actually being at the forefront of making that available for other people. That’s the most incredible work that you’re doing. And we’re very happy here at the World Council for Health to be in touch with people who are bringing these amazing healing messages from all all around the world and and you’re making a big contribution to that so thank you so much thank you I mean it’s an it’s an absolute privilege and honor to to speak with you and the world council of health I i totally acknowledge what all of the team are doing at World Council for Health. I’m extremely supportive and I’ve sat in on quite a few webinars with the World Council for Health. And I should note also for those researchers and clinicians who do watch this webinar, we’re also funding a registry at the Australian National University. which is collating real world evidence from the psychiatrists about their patients and you know I was on a webinar last night in sweden actually with the swedish psychedelic society we have a lot of connections with europe because europe is also really moving this whole field forward and what was really exciting was you know one of these psychiatrists in australia was saying you know my patient actually said to me that it was like one day of this therapy was like one year equivalent to one year, but you know, and of course we’re seeing that people say it’s equivalent to 15 years of therapy, but you know, it’s like we all need to ensure that these sorts of therapies can become available to all human beings. That’s fair and just and right. And I just encourage all of you who are listening to reach out. um to your networks to learn as much as you can about this and together we can ensure that everyone has the chance to heal from their suffering yeah absolutely 100 and you create a more united and healthy world wonderful thank you so much tanya I think that will be the conclusion of our interview today and thank you so much for giving us your time and your energy thank you Thank you for watching this episode of Better Way today. If you found value in it, please consider making a value exchange with us. The World Council for Health is a grassroots people’s organization and we rely on funding from people just like you. Your contributions from as little as $5 or £5 or 100 Rand help to power our work. The World Council for Health team is on a mission to serve you. Please make it your mission to support us. Thank you.