August 5, 2014 • 31 mins
A shaman consumes a psychedelic mushroom and visits the spirit world. Meanwhile, a scientist studies the effects of psilocybin on depression and conceptions of self. In this episode, Robert and Julie discuss the common ground shared by these disciplines in this classic episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb, and this week Julie is
out on vacation, so we thought we would rerun a
pair of episodes that we were really proud of, and
we received a lot of positive feedback from our listeners
(00:25):
about I'm speaking, of course, of the Scientists and the Shaman.
This two parter deals with psychedelics, with the psychedelic compounds,
electropic compounds that have been with this for ages. Uh,
their effects on the human mind, and how modern science
is turning back to some of these substances to see
how they can aid us in understanding how the mind works,
(00:48):
how to treat various disorders, et cetera. So uh, and
have a listen to this classic pair of episodes. Just
up front, I want to mention that on this podcast
and the other Shaman and Scientists podcast that we're putting out,
(01:10):
we are going to be talking about psychedelics, and by
which I mean psychedelic drugs of it. So just be
aware we're gonna handle this and a mature science backboned
since but I know that this subject is probably not
for everybody, So just a fair warning that that's what
we're gonna be talking about. And we do not advocate
the use of psychedelic substances and illicit substances at all
(01:31):
in orged you not to do them. But the science
behind them is really fascinating. The current scientific investigations of
how they affect our mind and what they can help
uncover about how our minds work is totally game, totally
in our wheelhouse. So we just had to cover it.
We've covered a little bit in the past, So here
another couple of slices from that particular cake. Yeah, And
(01:52):
we just couldn't help it because a lot of times
we talk about what is consciousness and we'll get deeper
into that question in this podcast, but psychedelics, turns out,
can help us answer that question or get a little
bit closer to what we think consciousness is. Um. But
all of this was actually inspired by a talk that
you went to, Yes, and you went to in a
sense yeah, yeah, yeah, via the wonderful recording that you
(02:16):
took of it. Um. It was a talk at Emory University. Yeah. Yes,
it was called four I Am the Black Jaguar. Well,
it was part of the four I Am the Black
Jaguar exhibit, which is an art exhibit they did having
to do with shamanistic visionary experience in ancient American art.
So a lot of ancient American art that depicts things
that that you know, it might be jaguars, it might
(02:37):
be mushroom men, things of this nature that have something
to do with shamanistic traditions, particularly as they relate to
the consumption of psychedelic psychotropic substances. And a lot of
it too, is this unity with nature and this unity
of man, or the duality i should say of of
human and animal, and then the bringing together of these
(02:59):
different aspects right our humans. And the talk that I
attended was given by Dr Catherine McLean, and also Dr
Charles Raison was there as well. But McLean is particularly
interesting because she is involved with some really groundbreaking investigations
at Johns Hopkins where they are looking into again how
(03:19):
these substances affect the human mind and human consciousness and
human perceptions and what that can tell us about how
our brains actually work. Because one of the things she
pointed out in her talk is that you know, we're
talking about how these things change our consciousness affect our consciousness,
and we already have a difficult time actually saying what
(03:41):
human consciousness is and how it works. To get back
to the title of the episode, we're talking about the
show like the voice she did? So can you do
that again? Which one the title of not just the episode,
but of the exhibit for I am the Black Tech War.
Y see, I was listening to an old Timothy Leary
album earlier to get kind of stoked. Larry was first
(04:02):
of scientists, then a shaman, and uh, anyway, we're gonna
get into that a little more. But on the surface
of things, you have the shaman in one category and
the scientists and the other. Right, dragging in a lot
of stereotypes here, but the shaman. You think of the shaman,
you think of somebody that's spiritual. They're ritualistic, they're magical,
their heartfelt, they might have a really long beard and
(04:22):
varying degrees of robes or no robes at all, right,
man or a woman, man or woman. Then you have
the scientist, which again can be a man or a woman,
but logical, meticulous, reasoned um with a certain amount of
distance between themselves and their their feelings and the subject
matter they're looking into. So we on the surface of things,
we tend to think of these as very different, different
(04:44):
people and very different modes of perception when it comes
to the realities of the world and the realities of
the mind. But the curious thing, okay, is that all right?
So the shaman he looks inward, He or she looks
inward at the mysteries of the soul and human consciousness,
and so too, of course, does the con and a neuroscientists. So, um,
you know, the questions of who are we, what's the
(05:05):
root cause of human suffering? How do we achieve liberation
from it? How can we treat mental illness? Questions of
these nature's nature are on various levels covered by both sides.
So while they're they're very different. If you were to
form a then diagram, you know, with the two circles
with partial overlap, and you had one circle as the shaman,
one circle as the neuroscientists, there would be a definite
(05:27):
overlap there. Now, of course, the shaman helps you explore
these questions by bringing into a sacred space, producing a
tray of magical substances that, when consumed, alter your perception.
Uh an experience of reality, setting you on a journey
of exploration. Meanwhile, the scientist brings you into a lab, right,
gives you a pill that might be a placeba, and
then run some tests on you, maybe throws you into
(05:48):
a brain imaging machine or hooks you up to some sensors. Right,
these seem like very different scenarios that one might find
oneself in. But then there's also some interesting overlap here
as well, particularly John hop Into University School of Medicine.
That's where again Dr Kathery McClain conducts her research along
with a very talented assortment of professionals, and they find
(06:08):
themselves not going completely halfway between the shaman and the scientists,
but entering a little more into that shamanistic territory because
they keep like a calm, meditative space to put the
test subjects in when they are given some of these
likedelic substances. And Kathery McClain in this talk at Emory
actually spoke a bit about her role as a kind
(06:28):
of guide for these people too, because they end up
trying to to color their experiences to a to an extent,
you know, to to guide their trip, as it were,
in a direction that's more positive so that they can
study it. Yeah, we talked about this a bit in
our podcast about hallucinogens and stage four cancer patients who
(06:50):
were taking hallucinogens in an effort to try to UM
get over this huge obstacle of fear that was really
actually um just of affecting them on a level where
they were like deer in the headlights. They couldn't even
operate in the space of their lives anymore. And so UM,
you know, we've talked about this idea where in a
(07:12):
lab setting you want to have a level of trust,
you want to make it as comforting as possible, and
so the researchers, the scientists are, as you say, taking
on this persona of guide, of spiritual guide to a
certain extent, because they have to guide people through this.
And I think it's really interesting that Kathleen McClain is
also a Buddhist and she does kind of inhabit that
(07:34):
space of the Shawoman from time to time, heavy and the
the meditation and all that. And I can't help to
think about another past podcast UM having to do with
magicians in neuroscience, because again you've got neuroscience looking at magicians, UM,
looking at these hundreds of years old practices and trying
to learn something about reality and illusion and how our
(07:56):
mind tricks us and what if so central to this
idea of mind trickery, I think is something called the
monkey mind. And probably a lot of you out there
are familiar with this concept that this constant chatter in
our brains UM can sometimes hamstring us when we're trying
to accomplish things in our lives. UM. And of course
(08:17):
this all points back to the question of consciousness and
this idea about whether or not consciousness is actually a
static thing. Now McClain and her talk says, I'm not
quite sure consciousness is something that is coherent, UM. But
again it's this idea of trying to get into what's
going on in these three pounds of computation material in
(08:37):
our brains. UM. She says, you know, it's hard to
to really try to pin it down and figure out
what's going on. She says, we can't explain normal consciousness
in terms of neuroscience, so explaining altered states of consciousness
is even more difficult. And UM, I also wanted to
point this out too, as we begin to delve into
(08:59):
consciousness and the monkey mind. UM. I've brought this up before.
There was a study by Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert and
Matthew Killingsworth, and they actually developed an iPhone app that
would track people's um waking states and their ability to
concentrate and so on and so forth and something like
(09:20):
a people participated in this study and what they found
was that mind wandering is something that takes up half
of our time. And that seems pretty big, But when
you step back and you look at it throughout the day,
you know how, when you're not speaking, when you're not
um doing something that really requires you to fire in
(09:45):
all four cylinders, what are you doing your daydreaming? Right?
So hence you've got this monkey mind, and hence you
have this idea that maybe some of this consciousness points
back to this chatter in our brains. Yeah. There you
see that this represented various ways to another um out
modes of thought. Outside of science, there's always the classic
(10:06):
vision of the guy with a demon on one shoulder
and an angel on the other. These little voices that
are chattering Adam, saying you should be doing this, No,
you should be doing this. You should steal that candy bar, No,
you should pay for that candy bar with with hard
earned money, can you steal it? Um? I always try
and compromise still half of it by the other half,
you know. But it's the classic more dilemma whether to
(10:26):
to steal the candy bar. But then you also have
people like new Age guru Akarta who calls it the
going mind um and you see that term thrown around
a lot as well, this idea that it's a this
this mode of thinking that very tied into who I am,
what my story is. We've talked about that before when
we're talking about storytelling and the power of storytelling and
how we all kind of see our lives in this
(10:48):
mode of story. I am the central character in my story,
and these are the obstacles I am up against. These
are the things I have achieved, and these are the
things that I've lost. Um. So it's this default mode network,
as it's called in the scientific papers, not to be
confused with depeche mode network, because that's that would waver
between just can't get enough in black celebration. Whereas the
(11:09):
default mode network is again this this this sort of
idle thinking zone, and you know, it's it's in it's
better states. It's introspective. It's daydreaming, and it's worst states,
it's depressive. It's that that demon on your shoulder beating
you up and saying, oh, these are the things that
that I don't have anymore, These are the things about
me that suck and and and I'm never going to
(11:29):
succeed in this kind of thing. Yeah. I mean, this
is where when we start talking about consciousness and defining
the eye of ourselves, you start to look at the
default mode network, because this is where you have your
pastiche of memories, feelings, and thoughts and again that chatter
that me, me, me. What we're talking about when we
talk about the default mode network is the medial prefrontal cortex,
(11:52):
the medial parietal cortex, and the medial temporal lobes. And
the idea there's a couple of different theories about what
they're doing ing um. The idea is that these associations
between these different parts of the brain are the brain's
baseline of processing and information, where we consolidate experiences and
we prepare to react to the environment. The second theory
(12:14):
is that it also facilitates stream of conscious thought, also
known as stimulus independent thought, which I think is really
interesting to know stimulus independent thought, meaning you're not even
aware of your surroundings. You're just chattering, chattering, chattering to me.
I think of it as like, you know, driving to
work every day and I pulled into the parking lot
(12:34):
and go, oh, how did I get here? I don't
really have a memory of that because I was so
consumed with my own thoughts. Um. So sort of stuff
that you see in daydreaming. Again, keep in mind that
half of our day is spent in the state of daydreaming.
Um and it's important that here right also totally takes
you out of your surroundings. You know, like on your
your drive to work, we've kind of go into autopilot
(12:56):
mode and suddenly you're there because it's like you weren't
actually on that drive to work. You were wrapped up
in these thoughts of what happened yesterday or what's going
to happen and with the rest of your day, uh,
totally wrapped up in your thought life. You everything else
in your surroundings, be it you know, the the highway
on the drive to work, or a beautiful park or
the love of your family, all of it just kind
(13:17):
of fades as this inner dialogue kicks up, and by
pointing out the parts of the brain, I think that's
the really amazing part here is that you know, on
one hand, we're talking about the devil and angel on
your soldiers. We're talking about grasping in the Buddhist sense
for for things that you want or don't have, and
and all of this this inner and kind of spiritual stuff.
(13:37):
But we can actually look at the brain and look
at the part the network that lights up when the
when this kind of thinking takes place right. And this
this kind of thinking does need to happen right because
it is balancing the sense of self and this ego
and again it's giving us some sort of um consciousness
or idea of ourselves through this process. The problem, of course,
(13:57):
is when there's hyperactivity in this area. It's like like
when a dog has some sort of problem on its scan. Right,
it's gonna lick, it's gonna know a little bit. But
then it gets out of hand when that gnawing and
that looking never stops, when it turns into self harm.
And certainly we see that time and time again in
patients of a variety of mental problems, where we see
that that see this heightened activity in this default mode network. Yeah,
(14:21):
and according to Dr Charles Frey Salam, who is also
part of that talk, people with depression exhibit hyperactivity in
the default mode network. So, as you say, it's fascinating
because you can literally point to that brain scan and
you can see that hyperactivity and you can see that
it's the cause of some of this depression. Because now
think about that chattering in this UM, this idea of
(14:42):
that that chattering is absolutely involved with self and worry.
So what you have going on is is this sort
of midline chatter that is encouraging a person to turn inward.
And then in addition to that hyperactive default mode network,
it becomes more and more entangled with the anterior singulate cortex,
(15:03):
which is responsible for the fear response. So not only
do you have this turning in word, you now have
a fear factor that's involved, and this can contribute really
heavily to depression. Yeah, all right, we're gonna take a
quick break. Stay tuned for more. So we bring all
(15:27):
of this up because this is really important in terms
of UM some experiments with hallucinogens and perhaps relieving this depression.
This quieting the default mode network as well as meditation. Right,
and before we get that, do of course need to stress.
The thing about the default mode network is that under
(15:47):
normal situations, it's more active during rest than it is
during cask performance. So it's it's when you're in that uh,
that easy state of driving to work a road that
you travel every day, or you're waiting on something, you're
sitting around, it's it's like the screen saver of your mind.
But if you're busy, if you are just vigorously trying
to get something done at the last minute, or you're
(16:08):
in that state of flow the job or a hobby
that you love, or certainly if you're engaging saying yoga
where you're you're totally in your body and not in
your mind, we see that network shut down to a
certain extent. Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up, because
there is this idea of getting outside of yourself. Right,
So if you're doing something that's in the state of flow,
(16:29):
then you're getting outside of that chatter and that that
mind and you're quieting the default mode network. Now, this
is where we're gonna get a little more back into
into psychedelics. And I just want to do a quick
note about the nature of psychedelicist reminded about what we're
talking about here. Okay, uh, for the most part, especially
as far as shamanistic practices go, you know, ancient spiritual
(16:49):
practices that date back long before ability to create synthetic drugs.
We're talking about naturally occurring substances such as psilocybin, mushrooms, iowa,
sa vines. We're talking about peyote, cacti and other naturally
occurring psychoactics, after substances in vegetation, in animals, uh, you know,
code centipedes, what have you. And then when taken, they
(17:11):
have the potential to alter vulturally every level of awareness
and experience. Now, some of you listening may have had
some sort of experiences with this kind of altered state
of mind, either naturally occurring or due to illness or
any other lucid dreaming that sometimes dreaming and sometimes in
this character. But for for a lot of a lot
of other people, you may think you may hear about,
you know, tripping on psychedelics, and you instantly think of
(17:33):
the movie Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, or any
number of movies that have attempted to show an altered
state of awareness and perception. It's kind of kind of
like Hollywood tripping. And it's important to note that while yes,
if one took enough of certain hallucinogens, they could have
this kind of very visual, crazy fantastic experience of dinosaurs
(17:54):
climbing out of the walls and all that. Yes, that's
that's possible, but that's not that in and of itself
is just like one slice of the cake. There are
a lot of other modes of perception and modes of
understanding that can be altered by psychedelics. We're talking about
changes in your awareness of your own body, of visual peculiarities,
audible peculiarities, strangeness and thought, and perception in the experience
(18:17):
of time and self. So pretty much any way that
we think or see the world can be tweaked, you know,
because what we talked again earlier, like what is consciousness?
All right, Well, what do we know about how we
think and what our brain is. We know that their
chemical processes, that biological processes, and it's subject to change.
You can change the way you think by looking at
(18:38):
a puppy or or a cat. We've talked about that before.
They're there are all sorts of ways to tweak what
you're experiencing and how you're experiencing the world, and how
you're constructing this world that you perceive. We talked about,
you know, the whole child versus adult. The child has
this lamplight view of the world and then the human
has the flashlight view. I mean, all of this is
(18:58):
we're talking about changes in perception and these substances. Depending
on what a person takes, how much they take, and
also an individual's particular biochemistry, it'll it'll affect that person
on varying levels. Yes, So I think it's interesting to
introduce it like that because there are various ways, as
you say, we can change our perception, and you can
(19:19):
sort of do it a little bit or a lot,
and certainly through something like psilocybin, that is something that
will get you into that spot where you are sort
of blowing open the doors of perception. And that is
why scientists use it, because they are trying to figure
out how it is interacting with the brain, what it's
doing um to personality as well. So we talked about
(19:39):
the default mode network and depression. Then it makes sense
that neuroscientists want to look at psilocybin and see what
sort of effect it has on the human brain. Yeah. Now,
another interesting thing about research into this, and we've stepped
in this in the past, and around the mid fifties,
that's when science really got that interested in psychedelics and
and that's also you know, you saw the advent of
(20:00):
LSD in that age, and you also saw of course
the rise of the counterculture and all that. So by
the end of the nineteen sixties you saw the the
end of actual research into this because it started off
people were looking into, Okay, what are these chemicals doing,
how are they affecting the mind? And then you have
Timothy Leary out there, but you know, again initially approaching
things from a more scientific standpoint, but then becoming more
(20:22):
and more of a cultural figure and more of the
shaman and less of the scientists. And then eventually you
have people like John C. Lily who are just taking
LSD in there in the tank next to the apartment
in which the dolphin lives, so that he can communicate
with the dolphin people, and and subsequently losing his funding
because eventually it just gets so nunny that they pull
(20:43):
his funding. So you're right, it starts to get clouded
with this idea that it's not a good idea to
research this culturally, politically, it just falls off until basically,
I'm saw the dawn of the twenty one century and
and so we that's where we are now a decade
and some change into that. Yeah, then these really saw
a resurgence in this and particularly the last couple of
years too. We've seen a ton of data coming online
(21:05):
about this UM. But when we talk about the default
mode network and depression and psilocybin, it's important to talk
about someone named David Jane Nutt. He's a psychiatrist at
the Imperial College of London, and his team recruited fifteen
healthy people, people that they made sure to scan beforehand
and that they are sort of thing that they were
(21:27):
sound and mind and body UM. And then they also
wanted to make sure that these people had previous experience
taking hallucinogens. This is key and this is something that
McLean brought up in her talk as well. Because you're
bringing people into experiment UM, you know how their brains
work and how they perceive things in the state. You
don't want to be to introduce them to it for
the first time because that can be a very overwhelming
(21:49):
and frightening experience better that the that the test subjects
have some experience with this altered state of awareness, some
sort of context, so that they can study the effects
of it better. Over a two day period, the researchers
monitored activity in the brains of these volunteers as they
land a scanner for up to an hour. On the
first day, participants received an intravenent shot of the placebo solution. Uh.
(22:13):
The next day they got a shot of psilocybin that
was dosed to peak about uh, let me see, about
four minutes, and then was mostly over at about thirty minutes.
We're talking to my short, short amount of time here. Yeah,
because the traditional you know, hippie way of taking these
in the shamanistic way of taking these substances, of course,
just to eat it, which then is a gradual absorption,
(22:35):
gradual trip. That with a gradual you know, I'm thinking hippies,
you know, anyone who would say, pick one of these
things in the natural world and eat it. That is
going to be a slower uptake and then a slower
fall off. But this is introduced with I V. So
it's just like a rocket ship. On a side note, too.
It's probably really obvious to the participants which was the
placebo in which was the actual psilocybin in this case.
(22:57):
Don't you think I have to guess there's not much
of a placebo effect. Yeah, I mean, yeah, definitely. So
all of the participants described kaleidoscope vision with images of
bright and angular shapes. UM. The rush of the first
tend to thirty seconds and do some fear nuts said,
but positive feelings then swept over them, and many participants
(23:18):
said that the benefits of the experience were profound and
they felt that they had moved on from where they
had been. UM. So what they found when they were
scanning the brains of these participants was a decrease in
both blood flow and metabolism in several key areas after injection.
So we're talking about the anterior singulate cortex, so that
(23:38):
was the one that I mentioned that has a lot
to do with the the fear and pain response. And
also they saw that default mode network quieting itself. So
what they found is that here is this way that
you can dial down hyperactivity or activity in general in
this area of the brain and perhaps relieve depression through
(24:01):
this process. And on one level. I mean, how into
your own problems can you be if the wall is
breathing right, This is true, there's not a lot of me,
me me going on, and it is interested. Along those lines,
one of the things that mcclaimantion is how a lot
of this research she feels needs to get out of
the lab and deal with because traditionally shamanistically they're not
(24:21):
taking these substances and then watching twin peaks in the basement,
you know, they're they're not shutting their eyes and plugging
in some headphones. Now they're taking them in nature. They're
they're experiencing the natural world through these substances. Granted, they're
experiencing an altered understanding and experience of the natural world,
but it's a rather different kettle fish than taking it
(24:43):
inside of a closed environment. So again, someone is suddenly
becoming more aware of what's around them and outside of themselves,
as opposed to that same sad old story about who
they are and what their their deal is. Now there's
still the question about how long this um this can
actually affect person, and that's what they're trying to still
go through this data and figure out if these are
(25:05):
long term, meaningful changes in terms of alleviating depression. And
we'll talk more about that in in part two of
this episode. So I did want to mention that there's
another way to go about quieting the default mode network,
and right now it seems to be the best way
to go about it in terms of sustaining long term,
meaningful changes to your brain. And this is through meditation. Yes,
(25:27):
and this is yeah, this is really fascinating. We spoke earlier.
You know, when you when you're you're looking at the
brain and activity in the brain, you can we're able
to identify what's happening with this particular network that we're
identifying this uh, this default mode network, and then under psilocybin,
we're watching the activity there decrease. But then the same
thing occurs, the same decreation occurs during meditation. Now it's
(25:51):
important to note here that that the similar brain activity
in brain scans, that doesn't mean it's the same experience.
So it's not saying that that anyone going into meditation
should you know, should be seeing crazy amazing things in
their mind, not to say that there's not that some
of that isn't going on, But identical brain scans don't
mean the exact same experience for the individual. Yeah, I mean,
(26:12):
what it's pointing to you again is that there's just
quieting in this chatter area. Dr Judson Brewer, medical director
at the Yale Therapeutic Neuroscience Clinic, and his colleagues asked
ten experienced meditators in thirteen people with no meditation experience
to practice three basic meditation techniques concentration, loving, kindness, and
(26:34):
choiceless awareness. And the team then used FMR I to
observe the participant's brain activity when they were practicing the techniques,
and then we are when they were instructed not to
think of anything in particular. So the experienced meditators had
this decreased activity in the default mode network. Moreover, they
found out that this region of their brain was much
(26:56):
quieter than in their inexperienced counterparts. So we've talked about
this before. The the idea that you can actually change
your brain to a certain extent through meditation again long
term changes, and you'll see this again and again in
studies with meditators, is that there's just this ability to
concentrate better, to quiet the chattering mind and not wander
(27:19):
as much. And I wanted to point this up because again,
the mind is going to wander. Half of our day
spent doing this. But there are some studies that point
to this idea that if you can be conscious of
your own mind wandering, you can actually be a more
creative individual. You can harness your thoughts a lot better.
So again pointing to this idea of meditation as a
(27:40):
way not only to quiet the monkey mind, but also
to access some really novel ways of thinking. Yeah, I
mean that's the you listen to various gurus on this matter,
and then that's always like, the first step is being
able to identify the monkey mind, the egoic mind, the
devil on your shoulder, whatever however you choose to to
see conceived that the deep all mode network, if you
(28:01):
can identify it when it's happening, I mean, that's that's
the first big battle that you can actually stop and say, like,
what am I doing? What what are my thoughts doing
right now? Why am I relaying this stupid idea or
this silly fear or even this very real fear. Why
am I occupying my mind with it at this moment?
And what else could I potentially be using it for?
Right or if you're if you realize that your brain
(28:23):
is working stay on a problem and turning things over
and over in your mind, but you know that your
mind is wandering and it's dealing with this. Then you
can kind of have a breakthrough if you have the
realization that your mind is doing this, and then instead
of sort of going into the feedback loop of negativity
that our brains can kind of do with certain stories
that we tell ourselves, you catch yourself like, oh, this
(28:44):
is a problem my brain is working on, and you know,
maybe there's a solution here. Yeah, because sometimes sometimes you
just need to turn the dryer off and take the
clothes out before the cycle finishes, you know, slaying them
up before they get rankled. On the note of meditation
and hallucinations and psychedelic experiences, I will say that in shavasa,
the period at the end of yoga where one after
(29:04):
one has been their yoga exercises for you know, an hour,
hour and a half, whatever the length may be, and
in this state, you're getting out of your mind, You're
getting engaged in your body. You're shutting down the default
mode network just by putting yourself through a lot of
physical poses and engaging the physical body rather than the mind.
At the end of that, you go into this this
(29:24):
state where you you either said or you lay back
or maybe legs up the wall, and you go into
this this meditative state and and on. On a personal note,
I regularly see some really crazy stuff during that period,
you know, colors, explosions, clouds, smoke, that kind of thing. Occasionally. Um,
you know, I see people. I don't interact with them
or anything that that would be a different situation. But um,
(29:48):
but but I do have these uh these in a
sense psychedelic experiences during Shavasa, and a lot of people
do get this well. And so that's sort of that's
sort of a perfect way to segue into what we
will talk about in the second podcast, which is this
idea of whether or not hallucinations are natural to humans,
(30:10):
to all creatures. So there you have it. That's part
one of The Scientist and the Shaman. Make sure you
tune in Thursday for the second episode. And if you're
listening to this on down the line, well it's probably
there for you to just move on to right away
without any pause, without any stop. Um. As always, you
(30:32):
can find us at stuff double your mind dot com.
That is the mothership. That is the home page. That
is where you will find all of our content, our videos,
our blog post links to anywhere on the internet we
might be doing some sort of business, you will find
it there. And we'd certainly love to hear back from
you about this particular topic about the psychedelics, about their
(30:53):
potential for use in intreating various elements, and in their
ability to help us understand the human mind, and also
just the rich historical and cultural significance of these substances,
and how are you going to get in touch with us? Well?
You can interact with us on our various social media accounts,
or you can send us an email at below the
(31:13):
Mind at how stuff works dot com. For more on
this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works
dot com.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb, and this week Julie is
out on vacation, so we thought we would rerun a
pair of episodes that we were really proud of, and
we received a lot of positive feedback from our listeners
(00:25):
about I'm speaking, of course, of the Scientists and the Shaman.
This two parter deals with psychedelics, with the psychedelic compounds,
electropic compounds that have been with this for ages. Uh,
their effects on the human mind, and how modern science
is turning back to some of these substances to see
how they can aid us in understanding how the mind works,
(00:48):
how to treat various disorders, et cetera. So uh, and
have a listen to this classic pair of episodes. Just
up front, I want to mention that on this podcast
and the other Shaman and Scientists podcast that we're putting out,
(01:10):
we are going to be talking about psychedelics, and by
which I mean psychedelic drugs of it. So just be
aware we're gonna handle this and a mature science backboned
since but I know that this subject is probably not
for everybody, So just a fair warning that that's what
we're gonna be talking about. And we do not advocate
the use of psychedelic substances and illicit substances at all
(01:31):
in orged you not to do them. But the science
behind them is really fascinating. The current scientific investigations of
how they affect our mind and what they can help
uncover about how our minds work is totally game, totally
in our wheelhouse. So we just had to cover it.
We've covered a little bit in the past, So here
another couple of slices from that particular cake. Yeah, And
(01:52):
we just couldn't help it because a lot of times
we talk about what is consciousness and we'll get deeper
into that question in this podcast, but psychedelics, turns out,
can help us answer that question or get a little
bit closer to what we think consciousness is. Um. But
all of this was actually inspired by a talk that
you went to, Yes, and you went to in a
sense yeah, yeah, yeah, via the wonderful recording that you
(02:16):
took of it. Um. It was a talk at Emory University. Yeah. Yes,
it was called four I Am the Black Jaguar. Well,
it was part of the four I Am the Black
Jaguar exhibit, which is an art exhibit they did having
to do with shamanistic visionary experience in ancient American art.
So a lot of ancient American art that depicts things
that that you know, it might be jaguars, it might
(02:37):
be mushroom men, things of this nature that have something
to do with shamanistic traditions, particularly as they relate to
the consumption of psychedelic psychotropic substances. And a lot of
it too, is this unity with nature and this unity
of man, or the duality i should say of of
human and animal, and then the bringing together of these
(02:59):
different aspects right our humans. And the talk that I
attended was given by Dr Catherine McLean, and also Dr
Charles Raison was there as well. But McLean is particularly
interesting because she is involved with some really groundbreaking investigations
at Johns Hopkins where they are looking into again how
(03:19):
these substances affect the human mind and human consciousness and
human perceptions and what that can tell us about how
our brains actually work. Because one of the things she
pointed out in her talk is that you know, we're
talking about how these things change our consciousness affect our consciousness,
and we already have a difficult time actually saying what
(03:41):
human consciousness is and how it works. To get back
to the title of the episode, we're talking about the
show like the voice she did? So can you do
that again? Which one the title of not just the episode,
but of the exhibit for I am the Black Tech War.
Y see, I was listening to an old Timothy Leary
album earlier to get kind of stoked. Larry was first
(04:02):
of scientists, then a shaman, and uh, anyway, we're gonna
get into that a little more. But on the surface
of things, you have the shaman in one category and
the scientists and the other. Right, dragging in a lot
of stereotypes here, but the shaman. You think of the shaman,
you think of somebody that's spiritual. They're ritualistic, they're magical,
their heartfelt, they might have a really long beard and
(04:22):
varying degrees of robes or no robes at all, right,
man or a woman, man or woman. Then you have
the scientist, which again can be a man or a woman,
but logical, meticulous, reasoned um with a certain amount of
distance between themselves and their their feelings and the subject
matter they're looking into. So we on the surface of things,
we tend to think of these as very different, different
(04:44):
people and very different modes of perception when it comes
to the realities of the world and the realities of
the mind. But the curious thing, okay, is that all right?
So the shaman he looks inward, He or she looks
inward at the mysteries of the soul and human consciousness,
and so too, of course, does the con and a neuroscientists. So, um,
you know, the questions of who are we, what's the
(05:05):
root cause of human suffering? How do we achieve liberation
from it? How can we treat mental illness? Questions of
these nature's nature are on various levels covered by both sides.
So while they're they're very different. If you were to
form a then diagram, you know, with the two circles
with partial overlap, and you had one circle as the shaman,
one circle as the neuroscientists, there would be a definite
(05:27):
overlap there. Now, of course, the shaman helps you explore
these questions by bringing into a sacred space, producing a
tray of magical substances that, when consumed, alter your perception.
Uh an experience of reality, setting you on a journey
of exploration. Meanwhile, the scientist brings you into a lab, right,
gives you a pill that might be a placeba, and
then run some tests on you, maybe throws you into
(05:48):
a brain imaging machine or hooks you up to some sensors. Right,
these seem like very different scenarios that one might find
oneself in. But then there's also some interesting overlap here
as well, particularly John hop Into University School of Medicine.
That's where again Dr Kathery McClain conducts her research along
with a very talented assortment of professionals, and they find
(06:08):
themselves not going completely halfway between the shaman and the scientists,
but entering a little more into that shamanistic territory because
they keep like a calm, meditative space to put the
test subjects in when they are given some of these
likedelic substances. And Kathery McClain in this talk at Emory
actually spoke a bit about her role as a kind
(06:28):
of guide for these people too, because they end up
trying to to color their experiences to a to an extent,
you know, to to guide their trip, as it were,
in a direction that's more positive so that they can
study it. Yeah, we talked about this a bit in
our podcast about hallucinogens and stage four cancer patients who
(06:50):
were taking hallucinogens in an effort to try to UM
get over this huge obstacle of fear that was really
actually um just of affecting them on a level where
they were like deer in the headlights. They couldn't even
operate in the space of their lives anymore. And so UM,
you know, we've talked about this idea where in a
(07:12):
lab setting you want to have a level of trust,
you want to make it as comforting as possible, and
so the researchers, the scientists are, as you say, taking
on this persona of guide, of spiritual guide to a
certain extent, because they have to guide people through this.
And I think it's really interesting that Kathleen McClain is
also a Buddhist and she does kind of inhabit that
(07:34):
space of the Shawoman from time to time, heavy and the
the meditation and all that. And I can't help to
think about another past podcast UM having to do with
magicians in neuroscience, because again you've got neuroscience looking at magicians, UM,
looking at these hundreds of years old practices and trying
to learn something about reality and illusion and how our
(07:56):
mind tricks us and what if so central to this
idea of mind trickery, I think is something called the
monkey mind. And probably a lot of you out there
are familiar with this concept that this constant chatter in
our brains UM can sometimes hamstring us when we're trying
to accomplish things in our lives. UM. And of course
(08:17):
this all points back to the question of consciousness and
this idea about whether or not consciousness is actually a
static thing. Now McClain and her talk says, I'm not
quite sure consciousness is something that is coherent, UM. But
again it's this idea of trying to get into what's
going on in these three pounds of computation material in
(08:37):
our brains. UM. She says, you know, it's hard to
to really try to pin it down and figure out
what's going on. She says, we can't explain normal consciousness
in terms of neuroscience, so explaining altered states of consciousness
is even more difficult. And UM, I also wanted to
point this out too, as we begin to delve into
(08:59):
consciousness and the monkey mind. UM. I've brought this up before.
There was a study by Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert and
Matthew Killingsworth, and they actually developed an iPhone app that
would track people's um waking states and their ability to
concentrate and so on and so forth and something like
(09:20):
a people participated in this study and what they found
was that mind wandering is something that takes up half
of our time. And that seems pretty big, But when
you step back and you look at it throughout the day,
you know how, when you're not speaking, when you're not
um doing something that really requires you to fire in
(09:45):
all four cylinders, what are you doing your daydreaming? Right?
So hence you've got this monkey mind, and hence you
have this idea that maybe some of this consciousness points
back to this chatter in our brains. Yeah. There you
see that this represented various ways to another um out
modes of thought. Outside of science, there's always the classic
(10:06):
vision of the guy with a demon on one shoulder
and an angel on the other. These little voices that
are chattering Adam, saying you should be doing this, No,
you should be doing this. You should steal that candy bar, No,
you should pay for that candy bar with with hard
earned money, can you steal it? Um? I always try
and compromise still half of it by the other half,
you know. But it's the classic more dilemma whether to
(10:26):
to steal the candy bar. But then you also have
people like new Age guru Akarta who calls it the
going mind um and you see that term thrown around
a lot as well, this idea that it's a this
this mode of thinking that very tied into who I am,
what my story is. We've talked about that before when
we're talking about storytelling and the power of storytelling and
how we all kind of see our lives in this
(10:48):
mode of story. I am the central character in my story,
and these are the obstacles I am up against. These
are the things I have achieved, and these are the
things that I've lost. Um. So it's this default mode network,
as it's called in the scientific papers, not to be
confused with depeche mode network, because that's that would waver
between just can't get enough in black celebration. Whereas the
(11:09):
default mode network is again this this this sort of
idle thinking zone, and you know, it's it's in it's
better states. It's introspective. It's daydreaming, and it's worst states,
it's depressive. It's that that demon on your shoulder beating
you up and saying, oh, these are the things that
that I don't have anymore, These are the things about
me that suck and and and I'm never going to
(11:29):
succeed in this kind of thing. Yeah. I mean, this
is where when we start talking about consciousness and defining
the eye of ourselves, you start to look at the
default mode network, because this is where you have your
pastiche of memories, feelings, and thoughts and again that chatter
that me, me, me. What we're talking about when we
talk about the default mode network is the medial prefrontal cortex,
(11:52):
the medial parietal cortex, and the medial temporal lobes. And
the idea there's a couple of different theories about what
they're doing ing um. The idea is that these associations
between these different parts of the brain are the brain's
baseline of processing and information, where we consolidate experiences and
we prepare to react to the environment. The second theory
(12:14):
is that it also facilitates stream of conscious thought, also
known as stimulus independent thought, which I think is really
interesting to know stimulus independent thought, meaning you're not even
aware of your surroundings. You're just chattering, chattering, chattering to me.
I think of it as like, you know, driving to
work every day and I pulled into the parking lot
(12:34):
and go, oh, how did I get here? I don't
really have a memory of that because I was so
consumed with my own thoughts. Um. So sort of stuff
that you see in daydreaming. Again, keep in mind that
half of our day is spent in the state of daydreaming.
Um and it's important that here right also totally takes
you out of your surroundings. You know, like on your
your drive to work, we've kind of go into autopilot
(12:56):
mode and suddenly you're there because it's like you weren't
actually on that drive to work. You were wrapped up
in these thoughts of what happened yesterday or what's going
to happen and with the rest of your day, uh,
totally wrapped up in your thought life. You everything else
in your surroundings, be it you know, the the highway
on the drive to work, or a beautiful park or
the love of your family, all of it just kind
(13:17):
of fades as this inner dialogue kicks up, and by
pointing out the parts of the brain, I think that's
the really amazing part here is that you know, on
one hand, we're talking about the devil and angel on
your soldiers. We're talking about grasping in the Buddhist sense
for for things that you want or don't have, and
and all of this this inner and kind of spiritual stuff.
(13:37):
But we can actually look at the brain and look
at the part the network that lights up when the
when this kind of thinking takes place right. And this
this kind of thinking does need to happen right because
it is balancing the sense of self and this ego
and again it's giving us some sort of um consciousness
or idea of ourselves through this process. The problem, of course,
(13:57):
is when there's hyperactivity in this area. It's like like
when a dog has some sort of problem on its scan. Right,
it's gonna lick, it's gonna know a little bit. But
then it gets out of hand when that gnawing and
that looking never stops, when it turns into self harm.
And certainly we see that time and time again in
patients of a variety of mental problems, where we see
that that see this heightened activity in this default mode network. Yeah,
(14:21):
and according to Dr Charles Frey Salam, who is also
part of that talk, people with depression exhibit hyperactivity in
the default mode network. So, as you say, it's fascinating
because you can literally point to that brain scan and
you can see that hyperactivity and you can see that
it's the cause of some of this depression. Because now
think about that chattering in this UM, this idea of
(14:42):
that that chattering is absolutely involved with self and worry.
So what you have going on is is this sort
of midline chatter that is encouraging a person to turn inward.
And then in addition to that hyperactive default mode network,
it becomes more and more entangled with the anterior singulate cortex,
(15:03):
which is responsible for the fear response. So not only
do you have this turning in word, you now have
a fear factor that's involved, and this can contribute really
heavily to depression. Yeah, all right, we're gonna take a
quick break. Stay tuned for more. So we bring all
(15:27):
of this up because this is really important in terms
of UM some experiments with hallucinogens and perhaps relieving this depression.
This quieting the default mode network as well as meditation. Right,
and before we get that, do of course need to stress.
The thing about the default mode network is that under
(15:47):
normal situations, it's more active during rest than it is
during cask performance. So it's it's when you're in that uh,
that easy state of driving to work a road that
you travel every day, or you're waiting on something, you're
sitting around, it's it's like the screen saver of your mind.
But if you're busy, if you are just vigorously trying
to get something done at the last minute, or you're
(16:08):
in that state of flow the job or a hobby
that you love, or certainly if you're engaging saying yoga
where you're you're totally in your body and not in
your mind, we see that network shut down to a
certain extent. Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up, because
there is this idea of getting outside of yourself. Right,
So if you're doing something that's in the state of flow,
(16:29):
then you're getting outside of that chatter and that that
mind and you're quieting the default mode network. Now, this
is where we're gonna get a little more back into
into psychedelics. And I just want to do a quick
note about the nature of psychedelicist reminded about what we're
talking about here. Okay, uh, for the most part, especially
as far as shamanistic practices go, you know, ancient spiritual
(16:49):
practices that date back long before ability to create synthetic drugs.
We're talking about naturally occurring substances such as psilocybin, mushrooms, iowa,
sa vines. We're talking about peyote, cacti and other naturally
occurring psychoactics, after substances in vegetation, in animals, uh, you know,
code centipedes, what have you. And then when taken, they
(17:11):
have the potential to alter vulturally every level of awareness
and experience. Now, some of you listening may have had
some sort of experiences with this kind of altered state
of mind, either naturally occurring or due to illness or
any other lucid dreaming that sometimes dreaming and sometimes in
this character. But for for a lot of a lot
of other people, you may think you may hear about,
you know, tripping on psychedelics, and you instantly think of
(17:33):
the movie Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, or any
number of movies that have attempted to show an altered
state of awareness and perception. It's kind of kind of
like Hollywood tripping. And it's important to note that while yes,
if one took enough of certain hallucinogens, they could have
this kind of very visual, crazy fantastic experience of dinosaurs
(17:54):
climbing out of the walls and all that. Yes, that's
that's possible, but that's not that in and of itself
is just like one slice of the cake. There are
a lot of other modes of perception and modes of
understanding that can be altered by psychedelics. We're talking about
changes in your awareness of your own body, of visual peculiarities,
audible peculiarities, strangeness and thought, and perception in the experience
(18:17):
of time and self. So pretty much any way that
we think or see the world can be tweaked, you know,
because what we talked again earlier, like what is consciousness?
All right, Well, what do we know about how we
think and what our brain is. We know that their
chemical processes, that biological processes, and it's subject to change.
You can change the way you think by looking at
(18:38):
a puppy or or a cat. We've talked about that before.
They're there are all sorts of ways to tweak what
you're experiencing and how you're experiencing the world, and how
you're constructing this world that you perceive. We talked about,
you know, the whole child versus adult. The child has
this lamplight view of the world and then the human
has the flashlight view. I mean, all of this is
(18:58):
we're talking about changes in perception and these substances. Depending
on what a person takes, how much they take, and
also an individual's particular biochemistry, it'll it'll affect that person
on varying levels. Yes, So I think it's interesting to
introduce it like that because there are various ways, as
you say, we can change our perception, and you can
(19:19):
sort of do it a little bit or a lot,
and certainly through something like psilocybin, that is something that
will get you into that spot where you are sort
of blowing open the doors of perception. And that is
why scientists use it, because they are trying to figure
out how it is interacting with the brain, what it's
doing um to personality as well. So we talked about
(19:39):
the default mode network and depression. Then it makes sense
that neuroscientists want to look at psilocybin and see what
sort of effect it has on the human brain. Yeah. Now,
another interesting thing about research into this, and we've stepped
in this in the past, and around the mid fifties,
that's when science really got that interested in psychedelics and
and that's also you know, you saw the advent of
(20:00):
LSD in that age, and you also saw of course
the rise of the counterculture and all that. So by
the end of the nineteen sixties you saw the the
end of actual research into this because it started off
people were looking into, Okay, what are these chemicals doing,
how are they affecting the mind? And then you have
Timothy Leary out there, but you know, again initially approaching
things from a more scientific standpoint, but then becoming more
(20:22):
and more of a cultural figure and more of the
shaman and less of the scientists. And then eventually you
have people like John C. Lily who are just taking
LSD in there in the tank next to the apartment
in which the dolphin lives, so that he can communicate
with the dolphin people, and and subsequently losing his funding
because eventually it just gets so nunny that they pull
(20:43):
his funding. So you're right, it starts to get clouded
with this idea that it's not a good idea to
research this culturally, politically, it just falls off until basically,
I'm saw the dawn of the twenty one century and
and so we that's where we are now a decade
and some change into that. Yeah, then these really saw
a resurgence in this and particularly the last couple of
years too. We've seen a ton of data coming online
(21:05):
about this UM. But when we talk about the default
mode network and depression and psilocybin, it's important to talk
about someone named David Jane Nutt. He's a psychiatrist at
the Imperial College of London, and his team recruited fifteen
healthy people, people that they made sure to scan beforehand
and that they are sort of thing that they were
(21:27):
sound and mind and body UM. And then they also
wanted to make sure that these people had previous experience
taking hallucinogens. This is key and this is something that
McLean brought up in her talk as well. Because you're
bringing people into experiment UM, you know how their brains
work and how they perceive things in the state. You
don't want to be to introduce them to it for
the first time because that can be a very overwhelming
(21:49):
and frightening experience better that the that the test subjects
have some experience with this altered state of awareness, some
sort of context, so that they can study the effects
of it better. Over a two day period, the researchers
monitored activity in the brains of these volunteers as they
land a scanner for up to an hour. On the
first day, participants received an intravenent shot of the placebo solution. Uh.
(22:13):
The next day they got a shot of psilocybin that
was dosed to peak about uh, let me see, about
four minutes, and then was mostly over at about thirty minutes.
We're talking to my short, short amount of time here. Yeah,
because the traditional you know, hippie way of taking these
in the shamanistic way of taking these substances, of course,
just to eat it, which then is a gradual absorption,
(22:35):
gradual trip. That with a gradual you know, I'm thinking hippies,
you know, anyone who would say, pick one of these
things in the natural world and eat it. That is
going to be a slower uptake and then a slower
fall off. But this is introduced with I V. So
it's just like a rocket ship. On a side note, too.
It's probably really obvious to the participants which was the
placebo in which was the actual psilocybin in this case.
(22:57):
Don't you think I have to guess there's not much
of a placebo effect. Yeah, I mean, yeah, definitely. So
all of the participants described kaleidoscope vision with images of
bright and angular shapes. UM. The rush of the first
tend to thirty seconds and do some fear nuts said,
but positive feelings then swept over them, and many participants
(23:18):
said that the benefits of the experience were profound and
they felt that they had moved on from where they
had been. UM. So what they found when they were
scanning the brains of these participants was a decrease in
both blood flow and metabolism in several key areas after injection.
So we're talking about the anterior singulate cortex, so that
(23:38):
was the one that I mentioned that has a lot
to do with the the fear and pain response. And
also they saw that default mode network quieting itself. So
what they found is that here is this way that
you can dial down hyperactivity or activity in general in
this area of the brain and perhaps relieve depression through
(24:01):
this process. And on one level. I mean, how into
your own problems can you be if the wall is
breathing right, This is true, there's not a lot of me,
me me going on, and it is interested. Along those lines,
one of the things that mcclaimantion is how a lot
of this research she feels needs to get out of
the lab and deal with because traditionally shamanistically they're not
(24:21):
taking these substances and then watching twin peaks in the basement,
you know, they're they're not shutting their eyes and plugging
in some headphones. Now they're taking them in nature. They're
they're experiencing the natural world through these substances. Granted, they're
experiencing an altered understanding and experience of the natural world,
but it's a rather different kettle fish than taking it
(24:43):
inside of a closed environment. So again, someone is suddenly
becoming more aware of what's around them and outside of themselves,
as opposed to that same sad old story about who
they are and what their their deal is. Now there's
still the question about how long this um this can
actually affect person, and that's what they're trying to still
go through this data and figure out if these are
(25:05):
long term, meaningful changes in terms of alleviating depression. And
we'll talk more about that in in part two of
this episode. So I did want to mention that there's
another way to go about quieting the default mode network,
and right now it seems to be the best way
to go about it in terms of sustaining long term,
meaningful changes to your brain. And this is through meditation. Yes,
(25:27):
and this is yeah, this is really fascinating. We spoke earlier.
You know, when you when you're you're looking at the
brain and activity in the brain, you can we're able
to identify what's happening with this particular network that we're
identifying this uh, this default mode network, and then under psilocybin,
we're watching the activity there decrease. But then the same
thing occurs, the same decreation occurs during meditation. Now it's
(25:51):
important to note here that that the similar brain activity
in brain scans, that doesn't mean it's the same experience.
So it's not saying that that anyone going into meditation
should you know, should be seeing crazy amazing things in
their mind, not to say that there's not that some
of that isn't going on, But identical brain scans don't
mean the exact same experience for the individual. Yeah, I mean,
(26:12):
what it's pointing to you again is that there's just
quieting in this chatter area. Dr Judson Brewer, medical director
at the Yale Therapeutic Neuroscience Clinic, and his colleagues asked
ten experienced meditators in thirteen people with no meditation experience
to practice three basic meditation techniques concentration, loving, kindness, and
(26:34):
choiceless awareness. And the team then used FMR I to
observe the participant's brain activity when they were practicing the techniques,
and then we are when they were instructed not to
think of anything in particular. So the experienced meditators had
this decreased activity in the default mode network. Moreover, they
found out that this region of their brain was much
(26:56):
quieter than in their inexperienced counterparts. So we've talked about
this before. The the idea that you can actually change
your brain to a certain extent through meditation again long
term changes, and you'll see this again and again in
studies with meditators, is that there's just this ability to
concentrate better, to quiet the chattering mind and not wander
(27:19):
as much. And I wanted to point this up because again,
the mind is going to wander. Half of our day
spent doing this. But there are some studies that point
to this idea that if you can be conscious of
your own mind wandering, you can actually be a more
creative individual. You can harness your thoughts a lot better.
So again pointing to this idea of meditation as a
(27:40):
way not only to quiet the monkey mind, but also
to access some really novel ways of thinking. Yeah, I
mean that's the you listen to various gurus on this matter,
and then that's always like, the first step is being
able to identify the monkey mind, the egoic mind, the
devil on your shoulder, whatever however you choose to to
see conceived that the deep all mode network, if you
(28:01):
can identify it when it's happening, I mean, that's that's
the first big battle that you can actually stop and say, like,
what am I doing? What what are my thoughts doing
right now? Why am I relaying this stupid idea or
this silly fear or even this very real fear. Why
am I occupying my mind with it at this moment?
And what else could I potentially be using it for?
Right or if you're if you realize that your brain
(28:23):
is working stay on a problem and turning things over
and over in your mind, but you know that your
mind is wandering and it's dealing with this. Then you
can kind of have a breakthrough if you have the
realization that your mind is doing this, and then instead
of sort of going into the feedback loop of negativity
that our brains can kind of do with certain stories
that we tell ourselves, you catch yourself like, oh, this
(28:44):
is a problem my brain is working on, and you know,
maybe there's a solution here. Yeah, because sometimes sometimes you
just need to turn the dryer off and take the
clothes out before the cycle finishes, you know, slaying them
up before they get rankled. On the note of meditation
and hallucinations and psychedelic experiences, I will say that in shavasa,
the period at the end of yoga where one after
(29:04):
one has been their yoga exercises for you know, an hour,
hour and a half, whatever the length may be, and
in this state, you're getting out of your mind, You're
getting engaged in your body. You're shutting down the default
mode network just by putting yourself through a lot of
physical poses and engaging the physical body rather than the mind.
At the end of that, you go into this this
(29:24):
state where you you either said or you lay back
or maybe legs up the wall, and you go into
this this meditative state and and on. On a personal note,
I regularly see some really crazy stuff during that period,
you know, colors, explosions, clouds, smoke, that kind of thing. Occasionally. Um,
you know, I see people. I don't interact with them
or anything that that would be a different situation. But um,
(29:48):
but but I do have these uh these in a
sense psychedelic experiences during Shavasa, and a lot of people
do get this well. And so that's sort of that's
sort of a perfect way to segue into what we
will talk about in the second podcast, which is this
idea of whether or not hallucinations are natural to humans,
(30:10):
to all creatures. So there you have it. That's part
one of The Scientist and the Shaman. Make sure you
tune in Thursday for the second episode. And if you're
listening to this on down the line, well it's probably
there for you to just move on to right away
without any pause, without any stop. Um. As always, you
(30:32):
can find us at stuff double your mind dot com.
That is the mothership. That is the home page. That
is where you will find all of our content, our videos,
our blog post links to anywhere on the internet we
might be doing some sort of business, you will find
it there. And we'd certainly love to hear back from
you about this particular topic about the psychedelics, about their
(30:53):
potential for use in intreating various elements, and in their
ability to help us understand the human mind, and also
just the rich historical and cultural significance of these substances,
and how are you going to get in touch with us? Well?
You can interact with us on our various social media accounts,
or you can send us an email at below the
(31:13):
Mind at how stuff works dot com. For more on
this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works
dot com.
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