December 21, 2012 • 30 mins
The Shaman and the Scientist: My Egoic Mind: 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.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the two thousand twelve Toyota Cameray.
It's ready. Are you 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 lamp and
I'm Julie Teplas. Just up front, I want to mention
(00:22):
that on this podcast and the other Shaman and Scientists
podcast that we're putting out, we are gonna be talking
about psychedelics and by which any 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
(00:44):
do not advocate the use of psychedelic substances and illicit
substances at all in orders 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 aim totally in our wheelhouse, so we just had
to cover it. We've covered a little bit in the past,
(01:05):
so here another couple of slices from that particular cake. Yeah,
and 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
(01:25):
you went to, Yes, and you went to in a sense, yeah, yeah,
via the wonderful recording that you 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
(01:50):
lot of ancient American art that depicts things that that
you know, it might be jaguars, it might be mushroom men,
things of this nature that have something to do with
shamanistic traditions, particularly as they relate to m the consumption
of psychedelic psychotrophic substances, and a lot of it too,
is this unity with nature and this unity of man
(02:10):
where the duality, I should say, of of human and
animal and then the bringing together of of these different
aspects of our humanness. 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
(02:31):
John Hopkins where they are looking into again how 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 it's 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,
(02:54):
and we already have a difficult time actually saying what
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 on the title of not just the episode,
but of the exhibit before I Am the Black Chack War. Yes, yeh.
I was listening to an old Timothy Leary album earlier
(03:15):
to get kind of stoked because Larry was first of scientists,
then a shaman and 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, their magical, their heart felt.
(03:37):
They might have a really long beard and varying degrees
of robes or no robes at all, right, man or 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,
(03:58):
on the surface of things, we tend to think of
these very very different different 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.
Here she looks inward at the mysteries of the soul
and human consciousness, and so too, of course, does the
cognitive neuroscientist. So um, you know, the questions of who
(04:21):
are we? What's the root cause? Of human suffering, how
do we achieve liberation from it? How can we treat
mental illness? Questions of these natures 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 the neuroscientists,
(04:43):
there would be a definite 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 to a lab, right, gives you a pill
that might be a pocebo, and then run some tests
(05:04):
on you, maybe throws you into a brain imaging machine,
or puts you up to some sensors. Right, these seem
like very different scenarios the one might find oneself in.
But then there's also some interesting overlap here as well,
particularly a John Hopkins 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 themselves not
(05:27):
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 psychedelic substances.
And Kathery McClain in this talk at Emory actually spoke
a bit about her role as a kind of guide
for these people too, because they end up trying to
(05:50):
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 were taking hallucinogens
in an effort to try to um get over this
(06:12):
huge obstacle of fear that was really actually um just
sort 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 lab setting
you want to have a level of trust. You want
(06:32):
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 space of the
Shloman from time to time, heavy in the meditation and
(06:54):
all that. And I can't help to think about another
past podcast, UM having to do with magicians and 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 on how our mind
tricks us. And what is so central to this idea
(07:18):
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 this all
points back to the question of consciousness and this idea
(07:38):
about whether or not consciousness is actually a static thing.
Now McLain 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 our brains. UM.
She says. You know, it's hard to to really try
(08:00):
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 consciousness and the monkey mind. UM.
I've brought this up before. There was a study by
(08:21):
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 a people participated in this
study and what they found was that mind wandering is
(08:45):
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 all four cylinders. What
are you doing your daydreaming? Right? So, hence you've got
(09:07):
this monkey mind, and hence you have this idea that
maybe some of those consciousness points back to this chatter
in our brains. Yeah. There you see that this represented
various ways to another out modes of thought outside of science.
There's always a classic vision of the guy with a
demon on one shoulder and an angel on the other,
these little voices that are chattering at him saying you
(09:28):
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. But it's the
classic more dilemma, whether to steal the candy bar. But
then you also have people like new age guru Akarta
who calls it the go a mind, and you see
(09:50):
that term thrown around a lot as well, this idea
that it's a this this mode of thinking that's very
tied into who I am, what my story is. We've
talked about that before. When we're talking about storytelling, the
power of storytelling, and how we all kind of see
our lives in this 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,
(10:11):
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 default mode network is again
this this this sort of idol thinking zone, and you know,
(10:32):
it's 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 to suck and and then
and I'm never going to succeed and 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
(10:54):
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, the medial parietal cortex, and the
medial temporal lobes. The idea, there's a couple of different
(11:15):
theories about what they're doing. 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 is that it also facilitates stream of conscious thought,
(11:35):
also known as stimulus independent thought, which I think is
really interesting to note. 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 pull into the
parking lot and go, oh, how did I get here?
I don't really have a memory of that because I
(11:55):
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 this
state of daydreaming. UM, And it's important not hear It
also totally takes you out of your surroundings. You know,
like on your your drive to work, if you kind
of go into autopilot mode and suddenly you're there, because
it's like you weren't actually on that drive to work.
(12:18):
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 of fades as this inner dialogue kicks up.
(12:38):
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. But we can actually look at the brain
and and look at the part the network that lights
up when when this kind of thinking takes place, right
(13:02):
and this this kind of thinking does need to happen, right,
because it is balancing this 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,
is when there's hyperactivity in this area. It's like like
when a dog has some sort of problem on its skin. Right,
it's gonna lick, it's gonna know a little bit. But
(13:23):
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 who have a variety of mental problems, where we
see that that see this heightened activity in this default
mode network. Yeah, and according to Dr Charles Grayson, who
is also part of that talk, people with depression exhibit
(13:43):
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 that that chattering is absolutely involved with self
and worry. So what you have going on is is
(14:06):
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 singular cortex, 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
(14:29):
can contribute really heavily to depression. So we bring all
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.
(14:51):
The thing about the default mode network is that under
normal situations, it's more active during rest than it is
during cast 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
just sitting around, it's it's like the screen saver of
your mind. But if you're busy, if you are just
(15:11):
vigorously trying to get something done at the last minute,
or you're 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,
(15:32):
So if you're doing something that's in a state of flow,
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 psychedelicis just 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 practices
(15:55):
that date back long before ability to create synthetic drugs.
We're talking about naturally occur ring substances such as psilocybin, mushrooms, iowa,
sa vines. We're talking about peyote, cacti, and other naturally
occurring psychoactics, active substances in vegetation in animals, um you know, toads, centipedes,
what have you. And then when taken they have the
(16:17):
potential to alter vultually 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,
sometimes dreaming, and sometimes in this chac But for for
a lot of a lot of other people, you may
think you may hear about, you know, tripping on psychedelics,
(16:37):
and you instantly think of the movie Fear and Loathing
in Las Vegas, or any number of movies that have
attempted to show an altered state of 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 climb ending out of the
(17:00):
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 of time and self.
(17:24):
So pretty much any way that we think or see
the world can be tweaked, you know, because when 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 a puppy or
(17:45):
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
of view of the world and that the human has
the flashlight view. I mean, all of this is we're
talking about changes in perception and these substances, and depending
(18:08):
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
sort of do it a little bit or a lot,
and certainly through something like psilocybin, that is something that
(18:31):
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
the default mode network and depression. Then it makes sense
that neuroscientists want to look at psilocybin and see what
(18:52):
sort of effect it has on the human brain. Yeah. Now,
another interesting thing about research into this, and we've stopped
in this in the past, and around the mid fifties,
twin science really got got interested in psychedelics and and
that's also you know, you saw the the advent of
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
(19:14):
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
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
(19:37):
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 natty that they pull
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,
(19:58):
I'm saw the dawn of the twenty century and and
so we that's where we are now a decade and
some change into that. Yeah, the nineties really saw a
resurgence in this, and particularly the last couple of years too,
we've seen a ton of data coming online about this um.
But when we talk about the default mode network and
depression in psilocybin, it's important to talk about someone named
David Jane Nutt. He is a psychiatrist at the Imperial
(20:21):
College of London and his team recruited fifteen healthy people,
people that they made sure to scan beforehand, and they
are that they were sound and mind and body UM.
And then they also wanted to make sure that these
people had previous experience taking ho lucinogens. This is key
and this is something that McLean brought up in her
(20:42):
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 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
(21:02):
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
intravenous shot of the placebo solution UH. The next day,
they got a shot of psilocybin that was dozed to
peak about UH let me see about four minutes, and
(21:26):
then was mostly over At about thirty minutes. We're trying
to 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, gradual shrip
that without grad you know, thinking hippie, you know, anyone
(21:47):
who would say, pick one of these things in the
natural world and then 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. Don't
you think I have to guess there's not much of
a placebo effect? Yeah, I mean, yeah, definitely. So all
(22:09):
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 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
(22:33):
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
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
(22:55):
what they found is that here is this way that
you can dial on hyperactivity or activity in general in
this area of the brain and perhaps relieve depression through
this process. And on one level, I mean, how into
your own problems can you be if the wall is
breathing right, that's true, there's not a lot of mimim
(23:15):
going on, and it is interested Along those lines, one
of the things that mcclaimntioned 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 taking
these substances and then watching twin peaks in the basement,
you know, they're they're not shutting their eyes and playing
in some headphones. Now they're taking them in nature. They're
(23:37):
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
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 saddled story about who they
(24:00):
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 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
(24:23):
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, and
this is yeah, this is really fascinating. We spoke earlier.
You know, when you when 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 we're identifying this, uh,
(24:45):
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 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
(25:05):
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, what it's
pointing to you again is that there's just quieting in
this chatter area. Dr Judson Brewer, medical director of the
Yale Therapeutic Neuroscience Clinic, and his colleagues asked ten experienced
(25:29):
meditators and thirteen people with no meditation experience to practice
three basic meditation techniques concentration, loving kindness, and choiceless awareness,
and the team then used fm R I to observe
the participants in brain activity when they were practicing the techniques,
and then we are when they were instructed not to
(25:50):
think of anything in particular, So the experience meditators had
this decreased activity in the default mode network. Moreover, they
found out that this region of their brain was much
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
(26:13):
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
as much. And I wanted to point this up because again,
the mind is going to wander. Half of our days
spent doing this. But there are some studies that point
(26:34):
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
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 s gurus on
(26:55):
this matter, and then that's always like the first step
is being able to identify the monkey mind, the mind
the devil on your shoulder, whatever however you choose to
to see conceive that the default mode network, if you
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
(27:18):
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
is working to 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
(27:38):
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 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 finishers, you know, um,
(28:00):
month before they get rankled. On the note of meditation
and hallucinations and psychedelic experiences, I will say that in savasana,
the period at the end of yoga where one after
one is don their yoga exercises for you know, an hour,
hour and a half whatever the the link 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
(28:20):
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 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
(28:42):
that period, you know, colors, explosions, cloud 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, but but I do have
these uh these in a sense psychedelic experiences during chava. Know,
a lot of people do get this well, and so
(29:04):
that's sort of uh, 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, to all creatures on the world,
on the world, in the world. Um, so something will
explore a little bit more. Yeah, so tune in for that.
(29:24):
It'll be just another podcast. It's title will be Shaman
and the Scientist colon Hallucination and it's gonna pick up
with this one left off. Who knows, I mean, it's
possibly listen to that one first. Who are we to
tell you in what order you listen to our episodes? Um,
you can do what you like. I'm not going to
boss you around, but but hey, these are the two
episodes that are dealing with this particular except if you
(29:47):
have something you would like to share with us, we
would love to hear about it, and certainly on a
topic like this would depending on what you have to share,
we may not be able to share that with the
rest of the listeners, but totally game to hear anyone's
take or experiences having to do of the subject. You
can find us also on Facebook and Tumblr. Our handle
on both of those is stuff to blow your mind
and you can also find us on Twitter, where our
(30:08):
handle is blow the Mind, and you can also drop
us a line at blow the Mind at Discovery dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
how Stuff Works dot com. Brought to you by the
(30:29):
two thousand twelve Toyota Camera. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the two thousand twelve Toyota Cameray.
It's ready. Are you 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 lamp and
I'm Julie Teplas. Just up front, I want to mention
(00:22):
that on this podcast and the other Shaman and Scientists
podcast that we're putting out, we are gonna be talking
about psychedelics and by which any 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
(00:44):
do not advocate the use of psychedelic substances and illicit
substances at all in orders 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 aim totally in our wheelhouse, so we just had
to cover it. We've covered a little bit in the past,
(01:05):
so here another couple of slices from that particular cake. Yeah,
and 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
(01:25):
you went to, Yes, and you went to in a sense, yeah, yeah,
via the wonderful recording that you 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
(01:50):
lot of ancient American art that depicts things that that
you know, it might be jaguars, it might be mushroom men,
things of this nature that have something to do with
shamanistic traditions, particularly as they relate to m the consumption
of psychedelic psychotrophic substances, and a lot of it too,
is this unity with nature and this unity of man
(02:10):
where the duality, I should say, of of human and
animal and then the bringing together of of these different
aspects of our humanness. 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
(02:31):
John Hopkins where they are looking into again how 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 it's 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,
(02:54):
and we already have a difficult time actually saying what
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 on the title of not just the episode,
but of the exhibit before I Am the Black Chack War. Yes, yeh.
I was listening to an old Timothy Leary album earlier
(03:15):
to get kind of stoked because Larry was first of scientists,
then a shaman and 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, their magical, their heart felt.
(03:37):
They might have a really long beard and varying degrees
of robes or no robes at all, right, man or 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,
(03:58):
on the surface of things, we tend to think of
these very very different different 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.
Here she looks inward at the mysteries of the soul
and human consciousness, and so too, of course, does the
cognitive neuroscientist. So um, you know, the questions of who
(04:21):
are we? What's the root cause? Of human suffering, how
do we achieve liberation from it? How can we treat
mental illness? Questions of these natures 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 the neuroscientists,
(04:43):
there would be a definite 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 to a lab, right, gives you a pill
that might be a pocebo, and then run some tests
(05:04):
on you, maybe throws you into a brain imaging machine,
or puts you up to some sensors. Right, these seem
like very different scenarios the one might find oneself in.
But then there's also some interesting overlap here as well,
particularly a John Hopkins 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 themselves not
(05:27):
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 psychedelic substances.
And Kathery McClain in this talk at Emory actually spoke
a bit about her role as a kind of guide
for these people too, because they end up trying to
(05:50):
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 were taking hallucinogens
in an effort to try to um get over this
(06:12):
huge obstacle of fear that was really actually um just
sort 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 lab setting
you want to have a level of trust. You want
(06:32):
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 space of the
Shloman from time to time, heavy in the meditation and
(06:54):
all that. And I can't help to think about another
past podcast, UM having to do with magicians and 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 on how our mind
tricks us. And what is so central to this idea
(07:18):
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 this all
points back to the question of consciousness and this idea
(07:38):
about whether or not consciousness is actually a static thing.
Now McLain 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 our brains. UM.
She says. You know, it's hard to to really try
(08:00):
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 consciousness and the monkey mind. UM.
I've brought this up before. There was a study by
(08:21):
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 a people participated in this
study and what they found was that mind wandering is
(08:45):
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 all four cylinders. What
are you doing your daydreaming? Right? So, hence you've got
(09:07):
this monkey mind, and hence you have this idea that
maybe some of those consciousness points back to this chatter
in our brains. Yeah. There you see that this represented
various ways to another out modes of thought outside of science.
There's always a classic vision of the guy with a
demon on one shoulder and an angel on the other,
these little voices that are chattering at him saying you
(09:28):
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. But it's the
classic more dilemma, whether to steal the candy bar. But
then you also have people like new age guru Akarta
who calls it the go a mind, and you see
(09:50):
that term thrown around a lot as well, this idea
that it's a this this mode of thinking that's very
tied into who I am, what my story is. We've
talked about that before. When we're talking about storytelling, the
power of storytelling, and how we all kind of see
our lives in this 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,
(10:11):
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 default mode network is again
this this this sort of idol thinking zone, and you know,
(10:32):
it's 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 to suck and and then
and I'm never going to succeed and 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
(10:54):
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, the medial parietal cortex, and the
medial temporal lobes. The idea, there's a couple of different
(11:15):
theories about what they're doing. 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 is that it also facilitates stream of conscious thought,
(11:35):
also known as stimulus independent thought, which I think is
really interesting to note. 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 pull into the
parking lot and go, oh, how did I get here?
I don't really have a memory of that because I
(11:55):
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 this
state of daydreaming. UM, And it's important not hear It
also totally takes you out of your surroundings. You know,
like on your your drive to work, if you kind
of go into autopilot mode and suddenly you're there, because
it's like you weren't actually on that drive to work.
(12:18):
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 of fades as this inner dialogue kicks up.
(12:38):
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. But we can actually look at the brain
and and look at the part the network that lights
up when when this kind of thinking takes place, right
(13:02):
and this this kind of thinking does need to happen, right,
because it is balancing this 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,
is when there's hyperactivity in this area. It's like like
when a dog has some sort of problem on its skin. Right,
it's gonna lick, it's gonna know a little bit. But
(13:23):
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 who have a variety of mental problems, where we
see that that see this heightened activity in this default
mode network. Yeah, and according to Dr Charles Grayson, who
is also part of that talk, people with depression exhibit
(13:43):
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 that that chattering is absolutely involved with self
and worry. So what you have going on is is
(14:06):
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 singular cortex, 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
(14:29):
can contribute really heavily to depression. So we bring all
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.
(14:51):
The thing about the default mode network is that under
normal situations, it's more active during rest than it is
during cast 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
just sitting around, it's it's like the screen saver of
your mind. But if you're busy, if you are just
(15:11):
vigorously trying to get something done at the last minute,
or you're 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,
(15:32):
So if you're doing something that's in a state of flow,
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 psychedelicis just 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 practices
(15:55):
that date back long before ability to create synthetic drugs.
We're talking about naturally occur ring substances such as psilocybin, mushrooms, iowa,
sa vines. We're talking about peyote, cacti, and other naturally
occurring psychoactics, active substances in vegetation in animals, um you know, toads, centipedes,
what have you. And then when taken they have the
(16:17):
potential to alter vultually 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,
sometimes dreaming, and sometimes in this chac But for for
a lot of a lot of other people, you may
think you may hear about, you know, tripping on psychedelics,
(16:37):
and you instantly think of the movie Fear and Loathing
in Las Vegas, or any number of movies that have
attempted to show an altered state of 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 climb ending out of the
(17:00):
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 of time and self.
(17:24):
So pretty much any way that we think or see
the world can be tweaked, you know, because when 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 a puppy or
(17:45):
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
of view of the world and that the human has
the flashlight view. I mean, all of this is we're
talking about changes in perception and these substances, and depending
(18:08):
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
sort of do it a little bit or a lot,
and certainly through something like psilocybin, that is something that
(18:31):
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
the default mode network and depression. Then it makes sense
that neuroscientists want to look at psilocybin and see what
(18:52):
sort of effect it has on the human brain. Yeah. Now,
another interesting thing about research into this, and we've stopped
in this in the past, and around the mid fifties,
twin science really got got interested in psychedelics and and
that's also you know, you saw the the advent of
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
(19:14):
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
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
(19:37):
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 natty that they pull
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,
(19:58):
I'm saw the dawn of the twenty century and and
so we that's where we are now a decade and
some change into that. Yeah, the nineties really saw a
resurgence in this, and particularly the last couple of years too,
we've seen a ton of data coming online about this um.
But when we talk about the default mode network and
depression in psilocybin, it's important to talk about someone named
David Jane Nutt. He is a psychiatrist at the Imperial
(20:21):
College of London and his team recruited fifteen healthy people,
people that they made sure to scan beforehand, and they
are that they were sound and mind and body UM.
And then they also wanted to make sure that these
people had previous experience taking ho lucinogens. This is key
and this is something that McLean brought up in her
(20:42):
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 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
(21:02):
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
intravenous shot of the placebo solution UH. The next day,
they got a shot of psilocybin that was dozed to
peak about UH let me see about four minutes, and
(21:26):
then was mostly over At about thirty minutes. We're trying
to 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, gradual shrip
that without grad you know, thinking hippie, you know, anyone
(21:47):
who would say, pick one of these things in the
natural world and then 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. Don't
you think I have to guess there's not much of
a placebo effect? Yeah, I mean, yeah, definitely. So all
(22:09):
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 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
(22:33):
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
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
(22:55):
what they found is that here is this way that
you can dial on hyperactivity or activity in general in
this area of the brain and perhaps relieve depression through
this process. And on one level, I mean, how into
your own problems can you be if the wall is
breathing right, that's true, there's not a lot of mimim
(23:15):
going on, and it is interested Along those lines, one
of the things that mcclaimntioned 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 taking
these substances and then watching twin peaks in the basement,
you know, they're they're not shutting their eyes and playing
in some headphones. Now they're taking them in nature. They're
(23:37):
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
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 saddled story about who they
(24:00):
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 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
(24:23):
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, and
this is yeah, this is really fascinating. We spoke earlier.
You know, when you when 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 we're identifying this, uh,
(24:45):
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 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
(25:05):
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, what it's
pointing to you again is that there's just quieting in
this chatter area. Dr Judson Brewer, medical director of the
Yale Therapeutic Neuroscience Clinic, and his colleagues asked ten experienced
(25:29):
meditators and thirteen people with no meditation experience to practice
three basic meditation techniques concentration, loving kindness, and choiceless awareness,
and the team then used fm R I to observe
the participants in brain activity when they were practicing the techniques,
and then we are when they were instructed not to
(25:50):
think of anything in particular, So the experience meditators had
this decreased activity in the default mode network. Moreover, they
found out that this region of their brain was much
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
(26:13):
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
as much. And I wanted to point this up because again,
the mind is going to wander. Half of our days
spent doing this. But there are some studies that point
(26:34):
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
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 s gurus on
(26:55):
this matter, and then that's always like the first step
is being able to identify the monkey mind, the mind
the devil on your shoulder, whatever however you choose to
to see conceive that the default mode network, if you
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
(27:18):
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
is working to 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
(27:38):
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 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 finishers, you know, um,
(28:00):
month before they get rankled. On the note of meditation
and hallucinations and psychedelic experiences, I will say that in savasana,
the period at the end of yoga where one after
one is don their yoga exercises for you know, an hour,
hour and a half whatever the the link 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
(28:20):
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 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
(28:42):
that period, you know, colors, explosions, cloud 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, but but I do have
these uh these in a sense psychedelic experiences during chava. Know,
a lot of people do get this well, and so
(29:04):
that's sort of uh, 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, to all creatures on the world,
on the world, in the world. Um, so something will
explore a little bit more. Yeah, so tune in for that.
(29:24):
It'll be just another podcast. It's title will be Shaman
and the Scientist colon Hallucination and it's gonna pick up
with this one left off. Who knows, I mean, it's
possibly listen to that one first. Who are we to
tell you in what order you listen to our episodes? Um,
you can do what you like. I'm not going to
boss you around, but but hey, these are the two
episodes that are dealing with this particular except if you
(29:47):
have something you would like to share with us, we
would love to hear about it, and certainly on a
topic like this would depending on what you have to share,
we may not be able to share that with the
rest of the listeners, but totally game to hear anyone's
take or experiences having to do of the subject. You
can find us also on Facebook and Tumblr. Our handle
on both of those is stuff to blow your mind
and you can also find us on Twitter, where our
(30:08):
handle is blow the Mind, and you can also drop
us a line at blow the Mind at Discovery dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
how Stuff Works dot com. Brought to you by the
(30:29):
two thousand twelve Toyota Camera. It's ready, are you
Stuff To Blow Your Mind News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Lamb
Joe McCormick
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.