Power Pair
On Shamanic Self Healing using Psychedelic Truffles and TRE
“A power dynamic is the archetypal abusive relationship with a binary role pattern: the one with the power and the submissive. It’s a prevalent active Mammal OS function in absence of the healthy Human OS version called love.”
— Prof. Dr. M. Toxopeus III
Ithought it was my fault. But I was just unlucky. One experiences primary school only once. For six years you flow with the same cohort through the system. 'Primary school' equals that group of kids I was surrounded with across that time span. Only if I had switched schools would I have known my cohort was highly abusive. I realized this yesterday, 25 years after the fact.
To preface, the reason why I can see it now, is because I’ve been experimenting extensively to create my own trauma healing modality. This modality is the result of reading basic trauma literature, practicing existing methods like yin yoga, neurographica, and innate neurogenic tremoring (TRE). But this was barely enough. In order to heal I had to push the exploration into the more ‘obscure’ and weird practice of shamanism. This includes methods like: dream journaling, automatic writing, fasting, journeying, soul retrieval, spirit guides, and (plant) medicine.
It took some time to embrace shamanism, but at the end of the day I’m also still a scientist. But they are non-exclusive. A proper scientist experiments and so I allowed myself to step away from the reductionist doctrine instilled in me at university and just to test whatever works. I’m beginning to understand why I like our discoverer of oxygen, Joseph Priestley, so much. Alone in his house, surrounded by bell jars of gasses, mice, and mint sprigs, trying out everything to understand how plants breathe. Prof. Toxopeus is my inner Priestly (or outer actually). A crazy polymath going at it from the fields of mythology, neurology, biology, psychology, sociology, history, chemistry, informatics, and shamanism to achieve one single goal: healing myself.
The following insights were obtained from an experiment (soul retrieval) combining 12g. of psychedelic truffles (Psilocybe Tampelandia) with Neurogenic Tremoring. (Disclaimer: The use of these tools is done with the intention to heal, setting up the medicine to work properly. There's no such thing as a 'bad' trip with the right intention. A bad trip is when you want to have fun, but the medicine demands healing.)
No Father
This was the first time I became aware I was dissociating. It’s a very numbing experience and it’s like your body is not yours. You observe it, but you experience it like it’s not yourself. The scary part is that it feels as if you’re never going to get out of it — trapped in that state forever. Normally this happens unconsciously, I don’t even register it happens, but it’s probably common.
However this time I noticed. First I resisted, but that would result in an uncomfortable ride. By finding a piece of tranquility within me, I could lower my panic, tell myself this was temporary, and just let it happen and observe. With the help of the medicine, I could disidentify from my experience whilst still feeling and noticing everything. It was difficult and scary. My body became restless, it wanted to run away, it wanted to escape and do something intellectual and numb out. But this was an opportunity to go deeper. So I caught myself, I lay down on the floor and started shaking (neurogenic tremoring).
Memories popped up into my consciousness. The plant medicine gives a menu of repressed stuff queued up in your brain to process. Traumatic episodes from the past that have been stamped with: “Ok, let’s look at that 20 years later cuz too hard to handle right now.” You have to choose which ones you want to do, but you have to make an order. Then the medicine locks you into the experience. The tour starts, and the mushroom guides you to all the things you need to look at.
The first thing I got to watch is how I’m still in an abusive relationship with my father. I was begging for his love he’d only give sparingly. The obvious thing occurred to me that this had nothing to do with love. It was all about power. By withholding his love he kept me under his control, feeding me at scarcly, at random times, like a neglected dog. The experience was both visual and visceral. The body reenacts how it feels to be under that control. Vulnerable, fearful, submissive, dominated, like a scared to shit animal at the bottom of the pecking order.
Though my father had been gone most of my life, the absence was the power…and his love conditional. I could see clearly now this was not love. This was the binary game of abuser and victim. It makes sense now that in my early thirties I spent three years of my life training at chess, so I could beat him at his own game. Turn the balance of power. But it was all an illusion. He’d find new ways to find a position of dominance and control me again. I had to realize the whole game was abuse itself…whether I could beat him or not.
At this point a divergence inside emerged. There is the body twitching, the memory showing, and the accompanying feelings rushing through my veins. Whilst on the other end there is me watching all of it pass by. The medicine bifurcated the experience and the awareness. Whatever is happening is not me. I don’t identify. The real me watches somehow.
After the lesson about the relationship with my father was extracted, the ride nosedived into primary school.
School
Marvin and Michel were their names. The Korean twins. Tang Su Do apprentices with muscles beyond their age. They completely dominated my class from the age of 6 to 12. It was Lord of the Flies in a classroom — an animal hierarchy of dog eats dog with the twins at the top. If there had been only one bully, any single kid would have stood a chance. But there were always two. I was always outnumbered in numbers and fighting skills. They invoked fear just by their presence, and had an aire of incalculability.
Grades 1 through 3 were complete hell. These years were led by female teachers. And what happens when there’s no father figure in such a tribe? Well, the strongest boys take over. And the group descends into a flock of animals ruled over by the alpha dogs. In such a dominance hierarchy you don’t have to be beat up many times, as long as you’re afraid, the pecking order is maintained.
The first thing the twins did was steal my bike. They were riding it around the school yard at the end of the day. I ran back to my school teacher. She was an old fashioned lady. When I explained how I couldn’t go home as the twins were riding my bicycle, her reply was: “You cannot snitch.” I told my mom about it, but she would never call on the teachers or put me in a different school. I had no protection. Free rein for the twins.
Another day, the twins had figured out a nice game — stomping on my feet in the school yard. It went on for a couple of minutes. For a week nothing happened. Then one morning I woke up and put on my socks before going to school. Something was wrong. It felt different. When I pulled off my socks I was horrified. My big toenails had fallen off. I screamed. My mother did nothing.
School life fortunately got better from grade 4 when I got male teachers, restoring the power balance back to normal. The medicine mainly wanted me to re-experience how these first years felt. To be continuously on my guard, evade the twins, don’t show fear, be submissive, and hopefully get through the day unscathed. The scarring was the constant fear, the constant pressure, the constantly flared nervous system. I was a chicken in a cage with two mad foxes set loose. The farmer on sabbatical.
Memory
As these images and feelings flash by, my muscles discharge and complete old fright-fight-flight responses. I could never show fear. We are conditioned to hide it in those situations. But the trauma can only heal when these actions are completed and fear can finally express itself in the body. This session I shook for four hours. There’s still a lot more to shake through.
The trip in itself is mostly pleasurable, because you maintain a safe space in awareness. It is possible that previous yin yoga and neurogenic tremor sessions have created that high point, so I can just freely watch and feel. The most scary moments happen when a memory pops up and you feel for an instant stuck in it, like it will go on forever. The only thing to do is go through it. By resisting, the agony endures.
It is wonderful to observe how the body knows exactly what to do. All memories are still there to aid the healing. One of the remarkable things I remember from primary school are the presentations in 4th grade. Most kids would bring their hamster, bunny, or guinea pig and tell a story. But me, and the twins did something else. Marvin did Child Abuse. Michel did Sex. And I did Outer Space.
Monkeys
The final day at primary school had arrived. There was an elated atmosphere in the schoolyard. As a tradition, the 6th graders throw candy into all classrooms at a random hour. The rest of the day we must have played outside. Thank God, I would never have to see these twins again.
That ultimate day the twins were acting erratic. After a while I noticed they had lipstick marks on their cheeks. The duo had taken over the circular bench surrounding a tree in the middle of the school yard. Girls were hanging out with them, kissing them on their cheeks, like a harem.
My miraculous brain had stored this image. And my 12 year old unconsciously thought: “What the hell kind of cage did I just escape from?!”
I never saw them again. Except for that one time when I was 23. I caught one of them in the corner of my eye whilst riding a local bus. He drove on a scooter with a sluttily dressed girl on the back. And I understood, in that instant, exactly what that was.
Because, in primary school
I had sensed
everything!
Sources
- Teonanácatl: Sacred Mushroom of Visions — Ralph Metzner
- The Way of the Shaman — Michael Harner
- Soul Retrieval — Sandra Ingerman
- Waking the Tiger — Peter A. Levine
- The Body Keeps the Score — Bessel van der Kolk
- Shake It Off Naturally — David Berceli
- Journey to Ixtlán — Carlos Castañeda
- Radiant as Rapeseed — Jennifer Sakamoto
