Psychedelic Wisdom with Kole Whitty

A Personal Note From Orion

Welcome to another captivating episode of the Stellar Life podcast! In this episode, we delve into the transformative power of psychedelic integration with our insightful guest, Kole Whitty.

Kole is an extraordinary individual who brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the world of psychedelic exploration. As the co-founder of The Condor Approach, a pioneering psychedelic-informed coaching certification program, Kole offers a distinctive perspective on the healing potential and challenges within the psychedelic movement. Kole’s journey with psychedelics began over 22 years ago and she has navigated both the transformative power and the potential pitfalls of these profound experiences. Her own path includes overcoming a drug overdose at a young age, which ignited a deep curiosity and a quest for holistic healing approaches.

Join us as we delve into Kole Whitty’s inspiring story and gain valuable perspectives on the psychedelic landscape. Prepare to expand your understanding and embrace a holistic approach to healing. Without further ado, let’s dive into the show!

In This Episode

[03:05] – Kole shares her background story and the discovery of her passion.
[07:20] – Kole explores the healing potential of psychedelics.
[11:39] – Kole recounts her experience connecting with her twin brother and becoming a psychedelic coach.
[14:13] – Choosing plant medicines and listening to our body’s communication.
[19:12] – Understanding psychedelic-informed coaching.
[22:07] – The transformative power of self-awareness.
[25:08] – How to initiate a psychedelic journey.
[27:45] – Kole emphasizes the significance of education and seeking guidance from knowledgeable facilitators.
[31:58] – How do spirits or plant medicine choose individuals for healing? Kole explains the importance of creating an education plan with psychedelics.
[39:13] – Kole shares her methods for protecting energy against negative entities.
[43:25] – Kole’s top three stellar life tips.

Jump to Links and Resources

About Today’s Show

Hi, Kole. Welcome to Stellar Life podcast. I’m very blessed to have you here. Thank you for being here and sharing your light with us today.

Hey, we’re here for my favorite conversation. I’m stoked to be here. I always love where our conversations go.

Before we begin, please share a little bit about your origin story. How did you discover your passion and what you’re doing today?

Most entrepreneurs working for themselves find themselves unable to work in the conditions they are in, like a health crash, financial crash, or relationship crash. Mine was all of the above. I will do the CliffsNotes of how I got to the crash, and then we can build on which parts and pieces you want to dig into.

Ultimately, my name is Kole Whitty. I now live in Austin, Texas, but I grew up in Utah. Certain childhood experiences caused me to have certain beliefs. I grew up Mormon, LDS. After being baptized at eight, I had some life events happen—assaults on my sexuality that created this internalized shame. I felt bad, wrong, and broken from eight.

That led me to be an at-risk youth in three different high schools. I didn’t graduate from high school and was in a coma from a contaminated batch of GHB.

Psychedelic integration unlocks remarkable body communication, facilitating release of stagnant energy and trapped emotions. Click To Tweet

Isn’t it growth hormones?

GHB started in the fitness field because it helps athletes get into their REM sleep faster but shuts your body down. A bad formulation or too much can kill someone because it can shut their system too far down. There are risks of vomiting, and then people can choke. There’s a lot there. At 17, I was part of the rave club scene back then. We’re talking late 90s, early 2000.

We worked with that to come off, down off of stimulants. It would help you get to sleep so you wouldn’t stay up. Recognizing that it was 17, I thought, “Well, this life path isn’t going to get me very far, so I need to make some changes.” I decided to do Miss Utah Teen, a Miss Teen USA pageant line, which is quite a pendulum switch.

The thing was, their focus was on substance abuse education. I was very honest about my life experience. I said, “If anyone is going to teach the youth in Utah about some of the dangers of club drugs, I feel like I’m a good candidate for that.”

I started speaking for the partnership for a drug-free America, the D.A.R.E. program, and did all these national talk shows and international shows. The problem was, I was still trying to make up for everything I wasn’t. I was still trying to make up for that eight-year-old girl who felt bad, wrong, and broken.

The Condor Approach by Tah Whitty and Kole Whitty

I’m so sorry you’ve been through that.

It was a lot. Like many people’s stories, the beautiful thing is it got me to explore the beautiful things and have the husband and relationship I have now.

Yeah, thank God. It’s super common. In the US, one in three will go through something like that.

And health crashes as well. By the time I reached my early 20s, I was speaking and doing these things, and then I recognized that I had some healing I needed to do. At 26, my health got worst. I had endometriosis, ovarian torsion and hypothyroidism. I’d had three traumatic brain injuries from my coma, so there was a lot in my body.

Honestly, that’s where I hit rock bottom. I was 26, and my body was so inflamed. I couldn’t take another step in my life. In retrospect, I can see it because I was living my life driven by shame.

Even though it looked like I was doing many great things to contribute from the outside—I worked a lot with animals, foster care, and many places—my body wasn’t okay. In that desperate space, I got introduced to psychedelics for healing. That was a whole other thing because I’ve now flipped the pendulum again from being a substance abuse educator.

For sure, because you’re coming from “Drugs are bad. Never do drugs.” Some drugs are an evil force. When they are being used in the wrong way, they can be terrible, awful, and life-shattering.

I wouldn’t say I ever lost my faith and connection to God and what that meant to me. At that point, I was just like, “Show me a sign. I’m willing to do anything because I couldn’t walk for longer than three hours.” I went to Disneyland, and that’s when I noticed at 26 I couldn’t even walk around a theme park.

“What if I want to have kids? How would I carry a pregnancy? What’s my future going to look like?” At that moment, I said, “If this is downhill from here, I’m not sticking around for 40.” I just turned 40. To have that moment of like I made it was an incredible feeling.

It took just the right friend and just enough signs to lean into really exploring what plant medicine and psychedelics are therapeutically for healing versus for buffering, bypassing, or trying not to feel, but how to get back to the feeling because I was so overwhelmed with feeling or with fear.

Not every psychedelic substance is for every person. A microdose isn't necessarily great for everyone, nor is a higher dose. Click To Tweet

What were the signs for you?

A lot of it was in my prayer. There was one friend that hit me up that I was supposed to be staying with in LA. He said, “Hey, I know you’re coming out here, but we’ve got this event happening at my house the weekend you’re supposed to come. With the healing journey you’ve been on.” I’d already started. I’d made big diet and lifestyle changes and many other things.

I was on a progressive path, but it was someone that I’d trusted for so long. It couldn’t have been anyone else in my life. He just looked at me and said, “I would never put you in any position of danger.” I knew that to be true. There was a little voice in my body or this little felt sense that just wanted me to listen and not say no right away. Initially, it was a no.

It was like that deeper intuition piece that you just go, “Okay, I’m nervous.” I can also feel that little part of me that wanted to know more. I couldn’t tell you the exact signs then, but it felt like so many things pointed me in that direction for more information.

Was it psychedelic? Did you have an intervention with a shaman? What was it for you?

This one was a group retreat of sorts. They were working with something called Sassafras, which is what MDMA is derived from, but it is the natural plant version.

Cool. Where is it from?

It’s a serotonin releaser. Sassafras grows in the states that go to lots of places. That’s not the plant that I particularly work with a lot. It’s what I can recall. My main two teachers are mushrooms and wachuma, which is a cactus. But Sassafras, I believe it comes from a tree if I remember correctly.

How it’s processed becomes the Sassafras that can be taken. It’s a serotonergic, or it works with the serotonin in your body to make you feel happier and more connected. It can have psychedelic effects, but it’s not like mushrooms, Ayahuasca, or other substances that can give you tremendous visuals, entities, aliens, or all sorts of things.

Okay. You went to the retreat, and you, I guess, microdose the Sassafras. What happened there?

Not microdose. It was a full experience dose.

A huge dose of Sassafras?

Yeah. I don’t know how huge it would be with Sassafras, especially when it’s this type of extraction, but it was a full experience. I didn’t have visuals or anything, but it was more. That was the night I was able to put down the heavy burden of addiction that had been placed on me because if you come out of substances, the only alternative is the AANA world, where “once an addict, always an addict.”

Because I’ve been in a coma, I got immediately placed in that category. When really, that wasn’t me that didn’t fit. I was more like a circumstance overdose of a bad formulation versus too much or too often. But I took that label on.

My main two teachers are mushrooms and wachuma, a cactus.

Right. Similar to the thing that almost killed you was the thing that healed you.

Kind of because even in my teens, even though I was using substances versus working with them, it also allowed me to get some support from people in an environment by being able to communicate and talk about traumas and things that had happened. It was just not a safe environment or what they call set. The setting is what they refer to in the psychedelic space of people trained in a healing capacity, whether a shaman or even doctors, now say in Oregon or Colorado, where they can legally work with people in that way.

I heard that doctors are starting micro-dosing.

In this shamanic work, I think it was a bit scarier because of my religious upbringing that you would see evil spirits or something like that. For me, I won that night. I connected to my twin brother, who passed when we were in the womb. My mother used to tell me I talked to him when I was a baby. She said up until I was five, I spoke to him all the time.

I saw him that night. The other notable thing was that I realized I wasn’t an addict. That was not a label for me; I could take that off. I didn’t know how much fear made me live by carrying that label like, “Oh, you’re always going to be that way.” It had been six years. I grew up. I got other tools. I got resources and community, so I wasn’t the same person.

Nice. What took you from that experience to becoming a coach?

Attempt to open a new relationship with each part of your body as you would begin any important relationship. Click To Tweet

That kicked off about six years of my own experience in healing because there was a lot to heal there. With all my different medical conditions, life experiences, and everything that was going on, I spent six years on my journey, and then I got into health and fitness as a result.

First, I was a personal trainer and taught fitness classes. That led me to help people improve their life. I was working with my shaman and facilitators, seeing that much of what people were carrying in their body, even if they did all the things right, ate the right diet, and did all the things on paper that were “right” that sometimes their health still wasn’t getting better, and a lot of that was trauma.

More people approached me, saying, “Well, how did you heal your body?” Because I’ve been off of medication since 2009. I haven’t had a laparoscopy, emergency surgery, or anything since then. People started asking me for support, and that’s what got me more into officially coaching.

Nice. How did you choose the medicine that you work with?

It chose me. It’s the very woo-woo way to say it. But in 2016, when my husband and I went to Peru, we married at Machu Picchu. When we were down there, wachuma was my main teacher, a cactus. It’s a cousin of peyote. It still has a hallucinogenic effect, but not like peyote.

They cook it down in Peru, and it’s like a very gelatinous drink. That allowed me to talk to the different parts of my body. It was more that that’s where I connected with. If I was having reproductive issues or certain pain in my body, it allowed me to talk to my body, just close my eyes and go there, imagine going into my shoulder, imagine going into other parts and work with whatever was stuck because some of it was trapped emotion that had been there for a long time. It wasn’t chronic pain. It was trapped pain that I had processed.

What does talking to your womb look like?

It could be exactly as it sounds. My eyes would be closed. I just have my hands on my lower belly and talk to my body. First, I needed to make up for how I treated and spoke to it. I talked to each part of my body like I would a person I wanted to start a new relationship with that had not been very positive before.

Because the truth was, my body’s been trying to communicate to me my whole life around boundaries, telling my truth, and speaking up.

I talked to my womb, ovaries, or certain parts that were hurting and said, “I’m here to listen. What do you need me to know? What are you trying to tell me that I don’t understand or have been ignoring?” Because the truth was, my body’s been trying to communicate to me my whole life around boundaries, telling the truth or my truth, speaking up, and when I started to track all my injuries from birth until that point when I started to look at whether it was surgery, stitches, or getting strep throat.

If I looked at the literal function of the body part and what was happening outside of my body, I started to find these trends. All the years I got strep throat was at a time when things were going on in my life, and I felt like I couldn’t tell anyone. It was all around my throat, communication and truth. It was the same with my womb.

I hadn’t told anyone about things that happened as a child. That shame in the sexual organs that’s a power center. As I got into my teens, I wasn’t able to process some of the things that had happened in the past. At the same time, I’d get sick because I’m not able to speak up about it.

As I started to speak to those parts of my body, sometimes I’d write a letter, not even in a psychedelic experience, and say, “Look, I’m sorry for all the times I didn’t honor you. Maybe in past relationships or in my first marriage, where there was an intimacy I didn’t want, but I felt obligated, that I should.”

My body wasn’t happy. I’d get a urinary tract infection because my body is angry or pissed at me that I’m not honoring that it’s not really what I want. The more I started to be with my body that way, the more she stopped having to be so loud. Not when we talk. It doesn’t have to be so intense.

Like, “Thank you for listening. We’re good.” Is there a certain message you got from one of your body parts that surprised you, or a certain action you needed to take that was weird?

Integration involves listening to your body, understanding what has worked for you, and recognizing areas that need change.

The one that came to mind was when I was not financially supported. There was a pain in my middle back that I would get. I kept going for massage and chiropractic work. It would help for a few hours, and then my body would lock up again.

All I needed to do was acknowledge that I wasn’t feeling safe. I wasn’t feeling financially safe, like I could provide for myself. That was regardless of whether I was in a relationship with financial support.

I needed to know that I’ve got my back, and I always used to say, “I need to know I’ve got my back, and you can have me. You can support me there.” I was getting pain in my back when I didn’t feel like I had my back and that I could handle things.

Wow, that’s incredible. When your clients come to you, do you coach them to talk to their bodies first? Do you coach them to take mushrooms or wachuma?

I operate more like a strategist.

Because of the current legal climate, I can’t ever coach someone to do substances within the United States, but many people choose to. I can coach them afterward. What do they do with the realization? I operate more like a strategist Sherlock Holmes, where they need to track everything for 30 days.

I have a manual. It’s called The Condor Approach. They’re once weekly, so I have them do that for 30 days. It’s basic questions in the morning and at night and body mapping. You put little Xs on the body. At the end of each week, there are reflections. At the end of the month, we had all this data because, for me in particular, I didn’t know pain-free was possible. I was just trying to joke and say, “Suck less.”

I thought if I could get my body a bit more relaxed, that would make life beautiful. With people, I found as well that when you’re trying to sort so many things—some are emotional, and some are environmental. I had breast implants I removed because I wasn’t healing well. I had all these things that, as I ticked each item off the box, my health kept improving.

But you need a lot more information than just, what are you eating and sleeping? That’s only two parts.

We can look at more of the information when someone comes to me. Now, I teach what we call psychedelic-informed coaching, which is body mapping for coaches whose clients are working with psychedelics. It’s not facilitating them, but when they realize something in their body, “What will we do next? What is the plan of sorts?”

Despite surface-level adherence to 'right' practices, many still struggle with their health. Psychedelics uncover the deep-rooted trauma which hinders our progress. Click To Tweet

Does your body tell you what to do next? Are you journaling, and then you know what to do next? How does it work?

It’s a combination of both. Everyone has the answer, and their journey is a bio-individual on their life path. We call it integration. What things in their life have worked for them? What things are not working for them? We can come up with new strategies if we need to.

It’s looking at what’s working, what’s not, and how the body feels. When people tune in twice daily to their bodies, they learn quickly. Within thirty days, most people, if they do all of the journaling morning and night, express a radical difference in their body and how it experiences their life or what it’s trying to tell them. It was just self-awareness.

Yes. Can you give examples of what happened to your clients with that awareness?

Sure. Some aren’t even clients, and they just got the book. There’s a book I created for myself. I had one guy shoot me a message on Instagram a couple of weeks ago who had just listened to our podcast and got the book.

When you start to track your healing journey with psychedelics, you begin to recognize changes in how your body communicates.

He said, “In 28 days, I was able to see what was working, check in with my body, and when I would become reactive, notice that I was becoming reactive before it escalated. That gave me the sovereignty to choose a different path than I might have before because when I start to get angry, my throat starts to close, and I start to get hot before I get very reactive.” With that nervous system understanding, we see the early reaction cues and then get clear on who we want to be.

My future me who’s already done all the healing, how would that version of me react here? By getting clear on that at the beginning of the book, when you start to track it, you begin to recognize, “Wow, my body tells me quickly.” Let’s say I get on the phone with one client or go to work, and my back locks up, and I start to get a migraine. When you begin to map that out, you start to see trends. As you start to see trends and understand the impact of the decisions in your daily life, you start making different decisions.

It’s just bringing someone self-awareness, whether it’s time for them to leave a job they’ve been talking about forever. My husband is a registered nurse of 31 years. At year 26, he said, “I got to get out of the hospital.” And then, he broke his back at the hospital, which got him out of work.

It was horrible for him. If we keep saying, “I got to get out of this job,” it’s usually the health will crash to help us get out of there because the body only knows survival. If you say, “I can’t do this anymore,” the body says, “All right, let me help you, friend. I’ll help you get out of this life that will kill you if you stay, but you’ll figure it out if we get out of here, probably, or if you keep going.”

It’s ranged from headaches to PCOS to just all sorts of symptoms. It doesn’t mean these conditions go away. Still, the symptoms lessen dramatically because the person is now listening and recognizing, “Wow, there are many places where I’m not consensual with my body. I’m working too long, saying yes to my neighbors to help even when I don’t have the energy, or I’ve had people recovering and still have active cancer that is still overgiving and not giving their body space to heal.” Through that journaling process, you start to see that.

Wow. How does one start their mushroom journey or psychedelic journey? What does it look like?

Check on your body on a daily basis and consider body mapping to experience a radical shift in self-awareness.

It depends on the person. Now it’s becoming very prevalent in the States. I feel like it finds you. From a shamanic perspective, they are teachers and spirits that call to you, but very few people are educated on what questions to ask to make sure they find a safe space for them. Not every substance is for every person.

A microdose isn’t necessarily great for everyone, nor is a higher dose. But something like mushrooms overall is quite safe. You can’t overdose on mushrooms alone. If someone’s on medications, there are all these things you want to understand.

A great place to start is looking at research from MAPS.org, which stands for the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, to understand your current medical conditions. Some medications can’t be mixed.

One plant that I love that’s legal everywhere in the States is called Canna. I think a company called Ca & Pathogenix is a great place for people to start. You can go to their website and read about it. I can give you a 10% off discount code.

Look at Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies research to understand proper psychedelics integration if you have current medical conditions. Some medications can’t be mixed.

That one is subtle that between that and journaling every day, it’s a perfect first step to prepare for your first experience. But overall, there are podcasts and videos. It’s empowering people not to give their power away, not to give it to a shaman, a doctor, or a facilitator to ask lots of questions. If they won’t answer your questions, it’s not your person, even if your questions are controlled.

Right. There are also many charlatans out there or people that went hiking in Peru and got their shaman certificate within three days. Now they’re a shaman, and they have no previous experience, and they just do it for the money, or the people teaching them are doing it for the money. What do you know about that world?

You’ll see every version of that across the board, as you do with anything in life.

Yes, but this one is very important because by doing it in the wrong way, somebody can lose their mind. This is a life-and-death situation when it comes to psychedelics.

It can be. This is why the person should be educated before they go to any facilitator, just by asking questions of: Where did they train? How many ceremonies have they sat in? How many have they conducted? What was their training process? How many people do they put in the space? What’s the most they’ve ever taken? The most dangerous circumstances come from facilitators who haven’t done much, and then they work with someone with more complex issues.

For me, this is where it gets dangerous. People have good intentions because they had a beautiful, easy experience, but that does not mean that’s how everyone is. I have had times when I’ve had facilitators calling me who are new, and they don’t know what to do when they’re panicking because the person doesn’t seem okay. The lack of experience is a problem for sure, which is why we started to focus on education.

I don’t facilitate people anymore. We stepped fully into education because the only way someone can take steps to be safe is to know what to watch for and how they feel about the answer. There’s no right or wrong answer, but how do you feel about the answers the person gives you? If someone doesn’t answer all of my questions, I’m out.

The most dangerous circumstances come from facilitators who haven’t done much, and then they work with someone with more complex issues.

You can think that I’m trying to overcontrol. But if someone won’t honor that I have had traumatic circumstances, that causes me not to trust people. If you can’t meet me in answering that I would need to feel safe, then you’re not my person.

Many facilitators tout that you will come and get a miracle. That’s not always the case. Out of 14 to 15 years on my path, I had four miraculous ceremonies; the rest were very subtle.

When someone saves all their money for one psychedelic experience retreat, I feel this is where it is unethical for a facilitator to take someone’s money that needs at least a year of therapy in addition to the experience. Taking all their money is unethical because you’re banking, and they’re saying they will get their one miracle. But as I said, in 15 years, I had four out of hundreds of experiences.

Statistically, if we just sit there, I don’t think that it’s fair or appropriate when someone’s desperate, and that’s the only money they have to accept it, versus finding another space that’s more appropriate for what they do need because typically, if someone’s financially strapped, they usually need a lot more support than one retreat weekend. They typically require more community. What’s their family life like?

This is where it’s so complex that the most important thing is educating the person to know what questions to ask and that there are other options than what they might be seeing for what they’re able to access.

Yeah. The most dangerous thing is when people are hitting rock bottom and they don’t have the confidence. Everybody that is just looking at them looks like they’re a savior, and then they go for it. If somebody’s listening, and if you are hitting rock bottom right now, do your research, take the time, listen to my podcast, listen to Kole’s podcast, and get educated before diving in. It’s a process.

It’s better that it takes you a year to decide to do a ceremony and you are ready. You did your research, did the work, and then you get there or take a coach to lead you there. Don’t just do it unless you know 100% in your heart that you are being called for that. You said the spirit would call you, or the plant medicine would choose you. What does that look like?

The lack of experience is a problem in facilitating psychedelic integration, which is why education became what we started to focus on.

I can only speak for my experience because anything else is only what I’ve heard. What it felt like being called was, in every experience, I was shown how what happened to me was to position me to help be a steward for others. I needed to understand the hurt, pain, and desperation and how to get free of that in my physical, spiritual, and emotional body.

In each experience, this is where what you talked about with the charlatan or overnight shamans is they get the call. But for me, the call is only, “Hey, now is the time to start your study,” not “Now is the time to start facilitating it.” It’s practice.

When someone decides to attend medical school, they must start doing pre-med and then doing a residency before being released to run their practice. That’s what many folks don’t have. Some areas of the US don’t have access to it either. They are figuring it out a different way. But if you’re getting the call, that’s just the beginning of a lifelong path.

If I’m looking at someone that says they’re a facilitator, if they say they know exactly what they’re doing and they know everything, that’s who I run from because the more I’m in this work, the more I realize I don’t know. It’s always changing and growing; I’m a student of this for the rest of my life.

This is the path I’m on. When I got the call, it was more like the fork in the road came saying, “Would you like to go this way?” I decided to take the first step. The call is the first step. For the person to be safe and ethical from my model of the world, my cosmology is, “What do I know and what don’t I know?” I have to start getting clear.

If I feel I’m meant to hold space for people and facilitate them in the future, I want to know medical contraindications. I’m going to get trauma training. I will start to get all these things of the understanding, so then I can create my education plan and study with some elders, maybe in a few different countries.

Why do they do what they do? To understand there’s so much more to it than just sitting and being with someone. We call that a trip sitter, but then you get into entities and spiritual cleansing. As a facilitator, it can impact your health.

Tell me more about that. Entities and spiritual cleansing. What did you come across?

The setting is a sacred space where healers facilitate transformative journeys with psychedelics, paving the way for safe and intentional experiences.

In essence, it wasn’t something I necessarily believed in or didn’t believe in. Same with past lives and all that before I came into this work. But I started noticing something at one point. I have one example. After someone I had done a private experience, I had nightmares the following nights. It felt like I’d wake up panicky, like someone was trying to hurt me and all these things.

I met with a curandero down in Ecuador, a dear friend I trust for more shamanic practices. As we spoke, she said, “You actually have this person who was looking for you to be their hero and is now unconsciously or consciously sending their ancestors to harm your direction because they blame you for not getting the healing they were looking for.”

My energies were open. I didn’t do the cleansings I usually do after a ceremony because every substance, from my experience, opens different —portals or dimensions. That’s why many people will see past loved ones, aliens, or whatever. I’ve heard a lot of different versions.

When it shows up in the body afterward, it is because something is attached to me. After she did some prayers with me, some limpias, which are cleansings in Ecuador, immediately, I could sleep, and everything was cleared and gone. It took us about three days to do certain prayers.

I can only speak for my experience because anything else is only what I’ve heard.

Again, a past version of me would have been afraid of anything like that because I grew up Mormon, where that would be like black magic stuff. Especially in the jungle, there’s a lot of black magic. Not all shamanism has a good intention or will support your intention. I had to start to learn it.

Can the dark shaman steal energy?

Absolutely. For us, I don’t know if it’s still so much as if someone’s feeling depleted. If you work with someone in the space, there can be a vampire. You feel drained, like you got hit by a truck. It’s not even that people are consciously doing it. There’s so much they don’t understand about this work.

They leave the next day and go into a fully contracted state where they can’t function. They get sick because the body gets very depleted from the experience. That’s why I don’t like large ceremonies. I don’t know who’s there. Some people attend Ayahuasca ceremonies of 60 to 80 people. It’s not my taste.

What’s a good amount? Is ten people a good amount?

It depends on how big the space is. Fifteen or less can be comfortable if I get six feet in each direction. I’m very sensitive. If someone gets nauseous, I can start purging. It’s not something I ever thought about. I’m so sensitive empathetically. There was one time when I didn’t feel sick, and suddenly got sick.

I looked next to me, and this woman’s holding her stomach. She just sat down. I’m like, “No, that can’t be a thing.” I got up and just walked away, and it faded. That night, I started testing if I went closer to some people and if the sensation changed in my body.

I lived in New York City at the time. I started to notice that someone would come on and stand by me on trains, and I’d feel instant anxiety just out of nowhere. That’s when I started to develop a deeper understanding of that. No wonder it was emotionally chaotic in my teens. A lot of chaos surrounded me.

If I’m looking at someone who says they’re a facilitator and know everything, that’s who I run from because the more I’m in this work, the more I realize I don’t know.

It was that I was pulling and experiencing other people’s energy. In this shamanic work, I learned how to protect my energy, which I use every day now. I wear different rocks, crystals, or jewelry.

I’m similar to you because I’m very empathetic. It feels very familiar with what you’re talking about. What type of protection can I or somebody else listening do to protect their energy field?

Again, I’m not a shaman. I can say what’s recommended to me. But if you reach out to Goddess Jhoselyn at La Vida Divine Retreats in Ecuador, she’s beautiful at that. She’s from Ecuador. This is her lineage. She had me do one bathing or shower after you’ve been with people, especially if it’s been a lot of people. You can also use flowers and water.

I have a spray bottle filled with Agua De Florida, which is used a lot in ceremonies in South America. Then I put fresh flowers from my land and some cleansing like a quartz crystal, maybe obsidian. I spray it first thing in the mornings. If I come home, I just spray in the air and let it rain over me. I just imagine anything drifting to the front door before I walk in.

I believe in the intention and just having a ritual for it. If you’ve just worked with someone coaching one-on-one, clearing your energy before and after your work with them is a beautiful practice. Many therapists have a practice like that because they feel they are taking the energy on nurses and first responders, having a way to let it go and let it wash over them. If I’m doing it more quickly, the Agua De Florida is how I like to set my office.

Where can someone get like that?

Amazon. Agua De Florida is just flower water in Spanish. The one that I have is like a 24-ounce bottle. I put the Agua De Florida inside the spray bottle and then filled it with flowers from my property. I always like to integrate where I am with flower water to honor the land where I am and have that as a part of the blessing that I’m home. It also has little crystals in the bottom; just make your own.

This is where you integrate what’s connected with you so far. If you love roses, if certain things, maybe your grandmother loved a certain flower. You’d like to put some of those in to call in the energy of your grandmother. Things like that. Creating an ancestor altar in your home, so pictures where you put your family and your grandparents.

Mine’s deconstructed. It’s usually behind me, but it’s deconstructed because I just took it for an event. I have a place to remind me of who I am and what’s important to me, not to carry other people’s things.

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I’m not wearing rings right now, which is not typical. But I also wear very weighted, heavy jewelry to help remind me not to carry it. I might even shake my body a bit after being around someone I feel a little weighed down by and remind my body not to carry it.

I love that. What kind of events do you do? Do you make retreats?

We typically do one retreat a year. Last year, we went to Costa Rica. This year, we’re going to Tonga. Our medicine of sorts this year in Tonga will be whales. We won’t work with other substances because we will get in the water with whales. That’ll be our experience this year. Next year, we’ll go to Peru.

Now that the focus is on education, we’re just doing events that are called psychedelic-informed coaching. It’s people whose clients are working with psychedelics. As coaches, they want to understand more about the nervous system, fawning responses, and body mapping. They want to help their clients use body mapping.

It’s more for people already coaching, whose clients are working with psychedelics, and they want to understand more how to articulate it and help if a client could be showing signs of entity attachment. We’re not telling you how to release them, but it’s allowing you to guide them if they do it too often. Maybe they’re doing too much, the body will tell you.

Nice. What are your three top tips to live a stellar life?

My top tips for living a stellar life are radical self-honesty, radical self-responsibility, and radical action. If you don’t get honest with yourself and where you are, you can’t get where you want to go. If you don’t take responsibility for some of the things you’ve done, even if it wasn’t pleasant, taking responsibility to be empowered and change your life will be key, and then the actions in doing it will be key. It’s just really having grace through those actions.

How do you keep yourself in action?

I’m always in something that excites me because that keeps me in action.

I have many support systems, from friendships to journaling to signing up for classes. The difference now is when I take training, it’s not to make up for what I’m not. It’s in the excitement to learn, grow, and play.

I’m always in something that excites me because that keeps me in action. Otherwise, I’ll get stuck in what I must do, which never ends well. I do have things I don’t want to do. But as long as I also have something that excites me, keeps me in action, and helps me do the things that aren’t as fun.

Awesome. That’s fabulous. Where can people find you, get coaching with you, sign up for your retreats, and listen to the podcast?

Yeah, I love podcasting. It’s my favorite. As the psychedelic coach, we talk a lot about all these different concepts that we’ve touched on today and on Instagram. If you go to @mystikole, I like to have more fun with a lot of my stuff.

If you take things too seriously, you might not like my page, so be warned. I’m not that serious of a person. Even though I have great intentions, I am not that serious. Go to condorcoach.com to read about our events. We do three a year of those.

Right, and your book is available on Amazon.

Yes, and that’s The Condor Approach. That’s available now. They’re on backorder right now for about a month.

How can I get one now?

It’s a great tool. It just launched. We were not anticipating the growth, which is a beautiful thing. We’re going to have to figure it out.

Congratulations. Thank you so much. I appreciate you. This was a fascinating conversation. I enjoyed it tremendously, so thank you so much.

Thank you so much, Orion, for everything you’re doing.

Thank you. Thank you, listeners. Remember to have radical self-honesty, radical self-responsibility, take action, and have a stellar life. This is Orion till next time.

Your Checklist of Actions to Take

{✓}Approach psychedelics with an open mind, curiosity, and deep respect for their healing power.

{✓}Familiarize yourself with the different types of psychedelics, their effects, and potential benefits and risks. Seek out reputable sources of scientific studies to gain a comprehensive understanding.

{✓}Choose the right facilitator by prioritizing safety, experience, and ethics. Trust your intuition and ensure the facilitator respects and addresses concerns before committing to your journey with them.

{✓}Connect with your body and listen to its messages. Engage in meditation or journaling to establish a deeper relationship with yourself.

{✓}Practice self-compassion and be gentle with yourself throughout the psychedelic healing process. Healing takes time and can bring up deep emotions and past traumas.

{✓}Focus on integrating insights and lessons learned after a psychedelic experience into your daily life. Find healthy ways to incorporate your experiences.

{✓}Incorporate body mapping into your daily routine for self-awareness and transformation. Start using a journal to track basic questions about your physical and emotional state.

{✓}Protect your energy field. After spending time around people or in crowded spaces, you can take a shower or bath to cleanse. Cleansing crystals and Agua De Florida can also erase negative energy.

{✓}Embrace radical self-honesty about your desires and goals. This will help you to experience consistent growth and empower yourself to make positive changes.

{✓}Visit condorcoach.com to follow Kole Whitty’s events and access valuable resources. Check the Condor Coach podcast, The Psychedelic Coach Podcast.

About Kole Whitty

Kole Whitty co-founded The Condor Approach, a psychedelic-informed coaching certification. Kole has a unique perspective on the potential healing and pitfalls of the psychedelic movement, having explored the space for over 22 years and experienced a drug overdose at a young age. Her journey has led her to question the limiting beliefs of substance abuse education and to embrace a holistic approach to healing.