[music] Hey fellow genters, those of us like our spirituality with a twist. As you can see, we have uh the pleasure today of being joined by a very special guest, Samit Kumar. Hey, Samit. [laughter] Um Sam is a clinical psychologist specialing specializing in end of life care focused on helping patients through the dying process. Samid is also just a fascinating person, a Tibetan Buddhist. Uh we actually first met the three of us at a Buddhist retreat at the Theosophical Society right here in our neck of the woods, right? And uh and but then specifically with an interest in psychedelic research as well. So we wanted to talk about first of all me Sam Seam meet's research or sorry Sam meet's work overall a little bit about that and then specifically about research projects because we're always interested in like all this spiritually connected stuff and Sam's doing really profound things. So thanks so much for coming on Sam.

Oh it's a pleasure. It's a pleasure.

Yeah. So maybe the first thing to do is we just ask you a little bit about um maybe a general description of your work before we get into really talking about this specific focus within the research that we want to talk about as well. So I'll throw the mic over to you and you can just share whatever you know you want to share about that.

Sure. Um let's see. I've been for more than 25 years now, I've specialized in um the psychological care of people going through cancer treatment. And um for a big chunk of that practice that I do, it's focused on people who are facing really very limited time on earth um because of their illness and also um assisting who were caregivers and are now the bererieved for people who've gone through cancer treatment. um I read books about grief and anxiety and things like that that are informed about informed for my practice. So really where I've come in um where I've really focused on for the past 25 26 years is the care for people with severe medical issues and the challenges that that brings.

I didn't like have like ask you about this but I know you're an author on this subject too. So maybe we should just have you maybe share the titles of your books as well, right?

Oh sure.

People might be interested.

Sure. Many years ago, I wrote uh grieving mindfully and then the mindful path through worry and rumination. Um there's the the mindfulness for pro for prolonged grief workbook. And recently my publisher put a compendium sort of a collection of grief writings from various authors. Um um it's called how to how I've kind of forgot the title right now because I didn't work on it too much. Um how to grieve what we've lost.

Oh, okay. And that's that's a very practical sort of um bullet point collection of of not literal bullet points but like very short chapters because one thing that happens and this is sort of a general theme right one thing that happens when humans are faced with challenges um no matter what the cause is our stress response takes over and when our stress response takes over our attention span tends to evaporate

and we become pretty fixated on emotional states that might not be very wholesome, healthy, conducive to growth mindsets, growth oriented mindsets. And we oftenimes just wind up spiraling down instead of spiraling up and you know just trying to keep our our our head above water becomes a big challenge. So that's really what my work has focused on is navigating very turbulent waters in people's lives. um helping them get some air, you know, along the way and also at the very end to make sure that um this is something that I learned um since the last time we talked. Um I took care of my dad at home in his final um well really his final years but during his dying process and this is something he taught me um as a scientist that he was facing death head on was uh sometimes the most important thing we can do is what we don't do right

um meaning he really didn't want to die within a hospital system he wanted to go peacefully at home and sometimes S I I I think a big part of what I'm doing is advocating for patients to have dignity on their own terms, not how the medical system or culture or society defines it, but what does it mean to you to be dignified at the end, right?

Condolences on the passing of your dad.

Thank you. Thank I was just thinking about that, you know, um, as you were talking before you even talked about your dad, I my flashback to my own's dad pass, my my own dad's passing, which was a long time ago, 2007. But, you know, what [clears throat] really struck me about what you were talking about, you know, we're all meditative people, right? We have kind of a meditative podcast here. And that was one of the things that was like um, helpful for me in that moment because what you're talking about, the overwhelm of all of it. And I can remember like doing the hospice work and sitting with my dad and like kind of taking his hand and just like doing my practice, doing my meditative thing, you know.

Yeah.

And you can feel

the effect on yourself and you know we're all again meditative folks. So you could feel your connection with the spirit of that loved one too right in those moments. I think

very real for me.

So

it's attunement. It's attunement, right? This idea that we can in train, we can we can kind of synchronize our rhythms,

right, with the people around us. And so what I found, I didn't I I never went to graduate school thinking, you know, I'm going to be a psychologist that specializes in, you know, seeing people dying and going through catastrophic medical conditions. Like that sounds so cool to me. Like that was not me. Um, I decided to kind of dip my toe in the water with that in a in a in a practicum, a training year in a cancer center because it seemed like, you know, I was always interested in spirituality, existential issues, and I thought, you know, why don't I do this for a year? Definitely not something I want to do long term,

right? Um, because well, it's kind of weird. And what I found and what was validated by my supervisors was that I had that meditation practice going already back then, right? And people were opening up and talking about things with me as like a secondyear pipsqueak, right? Yeah, [snorts]

in training they were just like very comfortable and they were opening up in ways that you know my supervisor was like um have you thought about maybe doing this for a living cuz people really respond to you like when you're at the bedside they feel at [clears throat] ease what are you what are you doing and I was like well I meditate a lot um maybe that's what it is and I think that is what it is it's that attunement that when people see a stable base they feel safe.

Yes.

Right.

And they're in a very dangerous spot existentially and oftenimes medically. And even if that feeling of safety is 30 seconds or a couple minutes or 10 minutes, right? Like that that can be pretty profound.

Yeah. S let me ask you um

your you know and you work with a lot a lot of endstage people but do you find that also like the the grieving process can be equal in intensity in the loss of you know Eric and I talk a lot about relationships right in in just like you know uh friend groups moving apart lovers breaking apart or you know you know sometimes even workplace situations breaking apart and and you know what are your you know what is your or do you have experience you know kind of guiding people through those things and how does it differ from end of life kind of stuff if at all

yeah I mean I think there's uh there's some kind of commonalities universalities and you know there's no like blood test to measure grief responses right so some people some people you're just like you know wow are you okay like how can you be quote unquote okay it doesn't seem to affect them and other people absolutely devast devastated and it it kind of doesn't matter sometimes. I mean it does but it also doesn't. I think loss is just such a big umbrella and this is, you know, what the Buddha taught, right? Like suffering is just, you know, it's part of the price of admission. Like you're not going to get through life without that in some way. And the suffering of change, the suffering of loss is universal, right? Like every exhalation is a loss in some way. And you can scale that up to the end of a marriage, you know, the end of a developmental stage, right? Like how many of us were, you know, so eager to go into adulthood, right? Like can't wait to not be a kid again, right? Like when you're maybe that happened at some point, but right like these developmental stages, right? Is um I'm getting into old age now and it's kind of daunting, right? Like oh, what body system is going to collapse first, right? And

yeah,

but the loss of a relationship, divorce, um you know, addiction, there's so many different ways to experience it. Immigration is a loss, too, right? And that's something that we as a society are wrestling with now, as a culture in the United States are wrestling with now. But there's, you know, we're in a time of great upheaval and there's individual grief and there's also collective grief, right? the losses that have happened to communities and and cultures and ways of life and predictability. And you know, we humans crave stability is something that working with dying people has taught me is that we we really value stability over almost everything else. Most people think they want to be happy, but I think deep down inside when you watch how people behave, it's really stability that's running the show. Right. Might you do that again? It's what I know. Right.

Weird question on that because this is something Daniel and I have been talking a lot too. When you think of stability, what do you think is that balance point? This is a little of a tangent, but it's a fascination point between like yin-yang people because we're a little bit daist on this podcast, too. You need movement and dynamism. You need stability. You kind of need both almost, right?

And there is like a lot of craving for stability. And you could even argue, you're bringing up what's happening maybe in uh the world right now, that a lot of this stuff that's happening is driven by some kind of fear, right? And then human beings under fear, it's a potentially dangerous emotion, right? And so there's something about stability and fear, right? That is it driven by kind of a natural need for stability that we all need? We all need yin and nourishing and stability in order to thrive, right? Or how much of this is like built in like fear? I don't know. you. Since you brought up, I thought I would just throw it out to you, get your thoughts because it's such an important thing going on right now, right?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think the what's the uh the the oldest possible estimate on civilization as we think of it, maybe 10,000 years, more than likely 5 to 7,000 years or something like that.

But we as a species have been around for hundreds of thousands of years. and our our brains, our bodies, I believe are adapted to a hunter gatherer communal lifestyle,

right?

And this modern life is really not quite, we haven't quite caught up to it, right? So, in a huntergatherer lifestyle, what do you need? You need predictable food, shelter, right? What we consider basics, right? [clears throat] And um predictable seasons, predictable terrain. Um, you know, you don't want to be in a place where predators going to jump out at you at any minute, right? You want to be able to know what's in the environment. And I think that that kind of neural pathway is still what we work with, right? Predictability and stability is what we want, right? Like nobody wants an unstable economy. No, no, no. We have to stabilize.

How am I going to plan for retirement in 30 years, right? It's the same thing as like how am I going to feed my family tonight? It's the same neural pathway, [clears throat]

I don't think hunter gatherers were thinking about retirement.

No.

Yeah. Yeah. Much more like in the heat of the moment, right, for your hunter gatherer. Yeah. But we have [laughter] those like

that projection into the future. I guess it's kind of like part of your psychology too that's kind of existential then too because it opens up that whole thing of like awareness of all these future potential threats, right? which create these existential anxieties on some level, right? One of my earpots just just uh croked any Is that okay?

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay.

I was say you're looking good. I don't know how old you are. You don't know how old I am. I'm in my mid50s. So, when you started bringing up like the aging of the body, I was like, "Yeah." [laughter]

Starting to think about that.

I'm getting in there, too.

I'm 56. [clears throat] [laughter] Yeah. Yeah. My run time's a little slower than it was. Uh yeah, taking me a little bit longer to recover from my workouts than it used to, but

yeah, I'm like a little bit worried about the chunkiness factor. That's like Think about that, the uncontrollable chunkiness.

Yep. [laughter] I read uh you know one of the things I did early on um Llama Glenn Mullen who was running the retreat that we all met at many years ago he wrote a he translated a a collection called uh death and dying the Tibetan tradition and in it he has a translation of a poem called conversation with an old man where it's a young man who who sees like an old beggar who's all disfigured with old age and uh and the old man starts to talk to the young man. They they're talking to each other and he says, "Uh, you know, the the Lord of Death has spit on my head and that's where my hair has turned white and it's like, oh, my white beard. That's the Lord of Death has spit on me." Right.

I think I have that book on the shelf out over there, but I think I just skipped that chapter.

Want to read that one yet?

Yeah. Well, I guess before we move on to the study itself, maybe we can hook it up to some of our practice, too. Because what struck me earlier of what you were saying is um I got into this through Zen. Daniel came in through his route. You came in through your routes. Eventually, we end up in this Tibetan Buddhist world at least in part, [clears throat] but we're within these practices that really directly face these fears,

right? Yes.

You know, and uh it's it's interesting, you know, they're not

they don't uh shy around these issues. And in so many ways, I guess you could say that a lot of times in our our culture in the states, we don't have as much of that thought of like, well, let's look at this very frankly and honestly and come to some kind of terms with it. So, I was just maybe that's worthwhile kind of chatting to if you have things you want to share about that because it is a powerful part of what we're up to, right? And I imagine it informs your work.

Yeah. I mean, this is something that I've that I've really come to appreciate is how recent it is that people don't die at home routinely,

Like this is a postw World War II phenomenon of, you know, inbalming. Inbalming is something that happened after the Civil War. It was invented during the Civil War. Um, and most people died at home until the 50s, until the 1950s. So, we've had several generations now where where it's just something that's done over there, right? And no, don't bring the children, you know, it's going to be too disturbing or something like that. When, you know, Elizabeth Kubler Ross talks about growing up in a village in Switzerland in the 30s and guy in her village died and they laid out his body on the on the kitchen table in his house and everybody came by and paid their respects as a village, as a community. And I think that's just how it's been done around the world for millennia. And now it's just so sanitized. And we we come to these other places, right? Like we think about India, Tibet, and sky burial and things like that where we're just so it's so different from what we have in this country in this culture. And I think part of us craves it, right? because we're like, surely it can't be about how many likes I got on my latest on my last post, right? It can't be how many followers I have, right? Are you sure?

There's got to be something else because

every time I look and I check,

I'm happy for like a millisecond and then I want more and then I want more. Like it's never enough, right?

And um so this is a new experiment of sequestering death away into hospital systems. It's always been done at home with families, right? We we we exist in relation. We used to die in relation, right?

And now it's just so fragmented. And I think part of us craves that that [clears throat] connection again.

Yeah. Yeah, I don't want to like go off on a tangent about my own experience with it. But [clears throat] my dad, we did do hospice at home

and uh there's some Chinese uh medicine things, acupuncture that they have, you know, if you get to the spirituality of it to help the body and the spirit go through that process, right, which I'm sure we'll be talking about as we go forward.

Sure.

And uh one of the things that was shocking was that the minute my dad passed, it was like, okay, and there was a production that was supposed to start. Okay, we're going to take his body and we're going to put it away and he's going to go in the bag. And I was like time out you know let's

time hold on

you know for for our sake as like the family members who may need some time to process this but also you know we'll talk about I imagine like uh Tibetan things too as we go forward but to give the that spirit of that person and that system of that person if you want to think that way time to go through that process so I was like fending off people. So yeah, it really struck me what you were saying how true that is. There's like a production process almost or something, right?

Well, this is the thing is that

that can potentially just kick into gear, right? You know?

Yeah. I mean, this is the thing is that it's uh we all live in this kind of environment where all of these things are are commodified, right? like there's an industry behind bodies, there's an industry behind health and wellness, there's ind industries. And you know, I'm not saying that it's right or wrong. It's just the way it is.

And it's kind of like somebody dies, well, let's let's clear it out and move this thing along. [clears throat]

And we forget that, you know, dying is sacred, death is sacred, life is sacred, illness, well, that's also sacred, right? It kind of sucks but that doesn't mean it's not sacred right and um I think taking that time out and pausing and taking that step back right and just and this is what I think so much of the dharma practices do is cultivate awareness all times of day all settings all circumstances right this is something that is a real struggle like can you perceive what's happening around you as part of the sacred mandala Right? Especially when you don't like it. Right? Because that's really what the challenge is. Can you perceive words as mantra that really are jarring to you spoken by somebody you can't stand? Right.

That's a stretch. That's a stretch. But that's what these practices challenge us to do. Right.

Yeah. Speaking of that, there was um I took a class last year. It was like a death and dying acupuncture series. And in the first meeting, someone was like, "Well, what can I do?" You know, like if I'm with a family member or somewhere where this is happening, a retirement home, you know, some place. And I just thought it was very practical. Someone goes, "Start by turning the TV off."

You know, and you're talking about like hearing that hearing sounds and stuff like they're like, "Just turn the TV off. You don't have to say anything or do anything. You just hold their hand and stay there and that's it. But like who wants to be at that point in your existence with you know CNN or Fox or you know baseball playing in the background people cheering or yelling or what like it's it's just you know so even like the observation of that moment even the fact that someone had to make it a point to say that to people means that she's been in places where that wasn't the case. And I just, you know, you you work in a hospital, Eric works in a hospital. I know what a hospital is. Uh, you know, they they got the TVs in every room, right?

Always on. No ma, you know, kind of like very few times do I go is it off. Usually it's on and people are zoning out trying to pass the time to heal and and go home, right? But in that moment, it's like honor the time that's there. It's it the process like you were saying is is is has been commodified and is going to happen. But how much time can we steal back for ourselves to

honor the thing that's only gonna happen once?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That is such so well put. Yes. Yes. You don't get to do this again, right? Like do you want to have like a a stranger a strange TV channel with a sports team that your loved one was not a fan of like winning? [laughter]

Oh,

he did. He hated the Bengals. What?

Right. Right. Right. Right. And I I see it all the time, right? Like the TVs are on because there's a lot of time to kill, you know.

What a way to put it. Right.

Yeah. I remember having my appendix out as a teenager and being in the hospital and they were blasting this like incipid music everywhere and I remember thinking this is like a nightmare.

Yeah. being some sick person and it's just all this dily m I mean I guess if it was something good but it was just like musicy kind of stuff just flittering everywhere like

music

right

all right should we move on to the next piece Eric

yeah I mean so yeah we'll throw it open to you meet right um we have a really good feeling of like what you're doing so I guess the question would be like you got involved in some ways in this research uh and I thought maybe we'd ask you to share a little bit of the study you were involved with and then we'll kick around what we think it means. So if you don't mind sharing about that I think that'd be that would be sure including me. So, so [clears throat] you know there's there let me start uh with a very brief or broad overview um of psychedelic therapy research in the last 20 years has really been very individual based right and it's um test subject or clinical trial subject comes into um a study. They're given a bunch of questionnaires. They work with a team of therapists and then um they have like preparatory sessions with the therapists and then they come in and they're on a couch or a bed by themselves with a therapist on each side and they have their experience and then they integrate with the same therapist afterwards. Um and they've had some really really good results with that, right? But it's really expensive if you want to scale that up. So Tony Back, Anthony Back, who's a physician in Seattle, um devised really ingenious study where it really mimics how these medicines, psychedelic medicines have been given um historically in cultural context and indigenous context. Bis doesn't, right? You do them as a group,

right? um you're not you're in ceremony in in a ceremonial space and there's a different kind of quality to that, right? Because it's not this individualized experience and which to some people individualized is what it's all about. But you know something else seems to happen when we do it in a group setting, right? There's group healing. It's there's relational connections. There's chaos. there's you know spontaneity and you know I think in in the clinical trial world we do want to control all the variables but are we missing out in kind of bringing that assumption into the psychedelic therapy world right so um I helped out with uh co-f facilitating was one of many really small potatoes in this study and I helped out with this group retreat for people with advanced cancer who were given higher doses of psilocybin than other studies and um you know all above ground approved by the FDA um and the results were were well I I will tell you one thing uh the results were really good but I can't tell you what the results are because what's have really stuck with me was how powerful it was to be a facilitator in the presence of group healing um and I shared this with Dr. Back that you know just being in the room my sleep quality has improved. It's been almost a year since that session and my sleep is just so much better, right? Like it's so much better. I didn't take anything, right? I was there as a psychologist [snorts] um completely sober and it had an effect on me right and I think it had an effect on everybody and um it's hard to describe that like you know we you go to meditation retreats and things like that you have experiences and if you go to sacred places and go on pilgrimage and things like that you can feel like an imprint of [clears throat] what other people have experienced in those places in those retreat spaces, right? You can feel that they're different. And that's the best I can tell you is that that's what it felt like to be in the room full of people who were having intense experiences, you know, and while they had pretty significant medical issues going on too simultaneously, many of whom have passed away since then. Yeah, it reminds me a little bit of uh you know my first experiences with this were these like very intense Zen retreats, right? They're notoriously intense. But one of the things I came out with was this idea of like the interconnectivity principle of this all right especially the interconnectivity of people's minds or spirits or whatever word you want to use for that. And then makes total sense what you're saying. I've wondered about that you do it in a group setting the way you're talking about for the study that you were a part of. Then all of a sudden it's all the minds of the different people sort of affecting each other in this somewhat more subtle way which is a fascinating thing to realize. I think I realized doing those Zen retreats. Oh wow, our minds are all affecting one another. We are all interconnected in this way. You know, and sometimes that would be one person kind of being in a state where they'd help other people who were struggling. You know, you feel that sometimes in these group settings. I imagine you've probably felt things like that happening when you're doing that work and facilitating, you know, and other times, uh, someone else has a breakthrough experience and we all feel the energy of that. I mean, that sounds amazing actually. I can totally, you know, not that exact experience, but I could totally imagine, you know, how that, you know, could work in the way that you're talking about.

Yeah. I mean, there's something about it also is that, you know, in these group settings, ceremonial settings, um, you're hearing other people have experiences, too, right?

And that that brings up a whole different set of things. How do I relate to my distress? How do I relate to somebody having distress around me? Right. Like, am I going to get pulled away from the work I need to do?

And start thinking about, oh, maybe somebody needs a glass of water. Do they need to go to the bathroom? like why isn't somebody helping that person, right? Oh, they are helping. Oh, that's so sweet.

And you're out of your experience of that,

And it really kind of I think this is one of the one of the many many values of group experiences, group retreats, group ceremony, um whether it's meditation, dance, writing, right? Psychedelic assisted therapy, right? like it really brings up how do we connect to others? How do we connect to other people's suffering? How does it affect how we connect to our own? Right? Which is, you know, that these dharma practices, they figured this out thousands of years ago, right?

There's a couple things to me. One is uh there's a quote I heard from my shamanic teacher a long time ago. She said, uh, we get better individually, but we heal as a community.

And it took me a minute to like get that. and but you know doing all the work with the various things over the years leading and and uh attending has been you know very profound. The other the other piece uh adding on to what you were saying is that like yes you could get pulled away from your own practice based on the needs of other people right but the other part that I think is is harder to experience unless you're kind of there is that other people can have experiences that help you. So for an example, there has been many times where I've been in, you know, a breath, you know, because I do I do breath work ceremonies. Next one's coming up in March.

Amazing. Amazing.

I've been doing these for a long time. You know, this is the highest that you'll be um not that you get high, but this is the highest that one you could be without taking anything. It's a lot of breathing. It's a lot of mantra. There's dancing. There's all kinds of stuff. You know, we drink a little chocolate or as I call it cacao. It's quite nice, you know, but sometimes somebody will be crying at certain points. And you can almost feel the tension in the room that some people are like, "Oh god, I wish they would just shut up." You know, to, "Oh man, I wish they would be I wish someone would help them to then other people saying thank you for doing that cuz I couldn't." And so that expression, that purggation was not just for that person, but like we talked earlier about the collective, this like this like escape valve for some of those things to come through and that that allows people to have that emotion even if they're not allowing themselves to have it. They they get to benefit from it. And that's just one of many examples, but I think it's a poignant one of like this kind of unspoken potentiality for communal work that only happens, literally only happens when there's other people around. It will not happen on your own.

Yeah. Yeah. And this is one of the things that I was alluding to earlier is like can we see our difficult circumstances as a sacred mandala, right? These sacred ceremonial spaces, these ceremonial spaces of healing are mandalas. And you know, we would like to think of them as like, you know, there's jewel encrusted walls and you know, golden gilded palaces, but you know, a lot of these mandalas have zombies in them and they have cannibals and monsters and ghouls and

worms,

you know, creatures popping out of the clouds and Yeah. worms and

grounds, right?

Charal grounds. Exactly. There's rotting corpses and jackals. Yeah.

That's also part of the sacred mandala, right? Like there's that There's that person in there sobbing and screaming out the name of somebody you don't know,

This is also part of the sacred mandala, right? Like that's this is healing, right? Like here we go. Here we go.

You know, let's let's do the work now.

You know, when I first started doing this, I was in my 20s. And the other word that comes up to my mind is like compassion or sometimes I talk about bodhicitta. This idea like I want to work on myself to help others. And you can be in those kinds of situations and you'll have this feeling like, oh, this other person's going through a hard time. You can kind of feel it and you want to help them and it's very spontaneous. So, it could be distracting I suppose, right? But in other moments, it's that natural

compassion instinct that kicks in and you realize, oh, I'm learning about compassion, you know, in this spontaneous way, you know?

Yeah. That mindset.

I think that is this is where so much of the work that I've been doing over the years converges with a lot of this work. Um, you know, I've been getting into this author named John Wellwood. Amazing, amazing psychologist. Um, I think he was a Zen Buddhist. He's passed away, but he has a line in one of his books, right? Like, love is more powerful than hatred because love can hold hatred, but hatred cannot hold love. And I've kind of played with that a bit since I read it. And well, okay, is love more powerful than anxiety? Well, love can hold anxiety. Anxiety cannot hold love. Okay, love is more powerful than anxiety. Is love more powerful than fear? Well, let's see. Love can hold fear. Fear cannot hold love. And every time I go through the checklist, love is more powerful, right? And seeing, experiencing, hearing other people having a very hard time. I think these are invitations to open the heart, right? Like the mind kind of goes, "Oh, why why they being so loud?" or why hasn't somebody help them or and then kind of just have to breathe into your heart and open your heart. And this is I think really fundamentally what it comes down to for the vast majority of people that I've worked with over the years who are dying is can they open their heart towards the terror of not being here? And if not, what has happened in their life that's blocking that from happening? Can we work on that? And really, I'm going to spoiler alert. Time to work on that is not when you're dying.

The time to work on that is when you're healthy.

And going about your ways and ruminating about the grudges you're holding and the grievances you have. That's the time to go, hm. If I [clears throat] drop dead and this is my last thought, yeah, that might not be so cool. I might not want to go out on that note. Right.

Yeah. It's interesting like in the stages of the path that we all learn when you're doing these studies, right? The famous Lam Rim, right?

Tibetan Buddhist, the first point they make is preciousness of human life, but certainty of bre death, right? You're not going to be around forever. And there's different ways to think about what that means. You know, don't waste your life. Take advantage of the opportunities that you have to grow and develop yourself and help others do the same. But then, you know, look at that honestly and, you know, don't do what you're talking about, right? And, oh man, I never thought about this. I never really tried to like address this set of questions, you know, of my own mortality. I should have done that before. And it's true, right? It's so true.

Yeah. Like, I spent my whole life pushing away thoughts of death and now here it is. Oh my god. I never realized it was going to happen to me. It's happened to everybody else. I thought I was thought I had more time. I thought it was going to be, you know, later and here I am. Oh [...] Like, uhoh. Like

I laugh and smile because that thought's real, isn't it? It's so interesting. Everyone [clears throat] has it. Like all these other folks are going to die and then you don't you don't take it out yourself in some weird way, you know? It's very strange,

right? So, Sam, what were um what were some of the, you know, your takeaways from the study and and how you saw, you know, given that we're, you know, talking about people not being in a hospital trying to, you know, be at home and have this process be more accepted as opposed to less like I don't want to deal, I don't want to see this thing. I don't want to be reminded of my own mortality, you know. um in these people having the ability to you know break free from some of their own maybe fears or anxieties or have their perspective changed you know h how how did that how was that

you know me just real quick before you answer I don't mean to kill the flow but I'm I think a lot of people would be curious I am too you know with Daniel's question so important but also is it possible like maybe set the scene like how many people were in the group and could you maybe paint a little portrait of that if you can because it's sort of

I think it equalize. Yeah,

I think it was about six or seven people in a retreat center and um in a retreat center north of Seattle and quite beautiful. I mean, it looked like a yoga studio, but it was in a retreat kind of natural environment, lots of trees around and um away from town, so it's quiet and um it looked like a yoga studio, you know, mattresses in a circle and a central altar with meaningful objects with the participants in it, sound system, and um that's pretty much it, right? like not a clinical hospital setting. Very comfortable and warm and um

that's like fascinating. The people who designed the study were like they thought of all those issues. They really wanted to make like something more like what you're talking about a sacred space. Yeah,

it was exceptionally well done. I thought and um you know there's a there's a distinction between uh comfort and safety. And I think anybody who's got a significant medical illness who signs up to take a very high dose of psilocybin or any other psychedelic is uncomfortable already right before they come into the study because or before they come into the experience. And I would say that that's what probably compels a lot of people to try psychedelics or to try psychedelic therapy or breath work or any of these things that are sort of like outside the norm.

Um I mean I I never got into it at all, but I really think that rave culture filled that for so many people and still does, right? this like I've had a really hard week and I'm going to get together with loud music and community and just lose track of time, right? Whether I'm going to they're going to take something or not, right? Like just that to me it sounds like it's enough. You don't need to take anything, but I'm sure uh I might not be the majority of that view, right? But but I think when people come into like a a psychedelic therapy study under these conditions, they're already pretty uncomfortable in their psyche, in their bodies, in their spirit. Um there's something that needs to be done. And you know, there's a couple states that it's much more accessible than others. And so people are doing this every day now, right, in legally sanctioned, safe, structured environments. So they're already uncomfortable. They need to make sure that they're safe. That's the most important thing. And you know, gut check. Does this feel safe to me? Yes. Okay. Proceed. Gut check. Does this not feel safe to me? Don't do it. Right. Like the guy's kind of weird looking or, you know, like they're looking at me funny or, you know, I noticed there's a lot of traffic sounds here. Like that's okay. That's probably not the right setting for you. Right.

Right. Um, so I will say that the the setting was completely safe and I felt very safe there and the participants also felt very safe and that was that was part of the feedback they gave also.

So discomfort was part of the package, right? They're already coming into it with pretty advanced cancers and other medical issues and they're getting a very uncomfortable dose of psilocybin also. And um you know, anybody who's done a multi-day meditation retreat knows that the beginning of the retreat is working with pain in the body, right? Because we're not used to sitting in that posture for hours and hours at a time. So, you really have to get uncomfortable, right? But you have to be safe.

Yes. I guess Daniel, you're asking about like takeaways, right? I was just sort of trying to visualize it. Yeah. I mean, like I'm

setting the scene. So, yeah, I guess would be like the takeaways part. Yeah. But also slight plug for our our meditation retreat, Eric, April 15th to April 19th in Galina, Illinois. Uh you know, Vajriana, you know, Tibetan tantric practices. And uh we'll be we'll be going over much of this here. I I actually did uh one of these they call it transition meditations or dying meditations. You know, it's a you know, generation stage practice for those of us who know, but for our audience, they don't know. And it it takes you through different elements of the body and moves you to different states of non-conceptuality, you could call it. And uh I I you know, so I I put some needles in and I got him into this meditation. And uh he was like he's like, "Man, you really got into that." And I was like, "Yeah, how about you?" He's like, "Yeah, it was good. It was really good." And I was like he's like, "How often do you do that?" I was like, "Every day." He's like, "Are you scared of dying?" I said, "No, but it's going to happen and I might as well practice. But that was his response, you know. I So to your point, Sam, I I I was waiting to kind of weave that in because that that was the first thing that he said. So, um yeah, but anyways, I'll let you speak and then get back to the uh the thing.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean I I'll say that um [sighs and gasps] my experience is is that the best way to get people comfortable with the fact with the fact of their eminent death is um not necessarily to confront the dying process itself, although that helps a lot. That really helps a lot. It's relational. Death is relational. Life is relational. And what I've experienced in in this retreat and also in other settings, people think about their relationships. They think about their loved ones. They think about the ones who have passed before, their ancestors, their family members. They think about what their legacy is going to be. And you know, the the the often times the kind of big deal of psychedelics is, oh, you have a mystical experience, right? You're going to have a mystical experience. You're going to see the clear light. you're going to have like a a Bardau kind of orientation. That happens sometimes. But I think people finding inner peace in their place in the world, that's kind of what peace at the end of life is all about really. Whether there's clear light there, whether there's transcendence, whether there's you know a parade of Buddhas coming and you know anointing you with water and [gasps] I think like you know people feeling a sense of connection with their place in the world is much more profound and it's also like it's happening right now right like if you if you want to do that if you want to go there right think about the impermanence of the body And this is something that we asend Buddhists do several times a day, right? Dissolving and reemerging, dissolving and reemerging. Um so I would say that um what I witnessed in that particular setting was that pretty much everybody was um well there I I would say people were there for different intentions, different individual intentions, but I think relationships were really the running theme. You know what could be better, what is better, what is amazing. And really I think when we talk about relationships we are talking about love the possibility of it the potential of it and that's the medicine really you there's a thing in the you know I think in this while the Chinese medical world talks about a certain way Tibetan Buddhism talks about it a certain way and so on but you know um I've worked with sick people I worked with HIV patients back in the day people who were ill and have gone through some of these kinds of things and uh But even in the theory there's this idea that again we if we were to use the Chinese word the shen the spirit's going to separate from the body you know and the same thing in like something like the Tibetan book of the dead there's this process but like um and I I'm curious what you think about this because if you haven't been around that you might think it's just all grim and dire you know but there's something powerful in that too and I when you watch people going through that process a lot of times theory would go as the spirit separates from the body sometimes there's clarity for people right it's almost like

you separate away from the things that are the transitory issues of the world of this life or something you the perspective gets a lot broader I had a friend who died on the same day as my cancer very within hours and um

well we were having interesting conversation before he passed we had a party and the party was just celebrating him you know so it's all the people who knew him he was dying of lung cancer He was just a chain smoking guy, you know, and at one point he was out on the porch and he was like having a smoke. So, we all knew him. That's who he was. I walked out on the porch to talk with him and he said, "I can't explain this to you, but uh I feel like I'm full of love for everybody

and I feel like everything feels clear to me and I wish I could share this with you and with everyone." And that's the other side of this, right? You know, that part of it. And uh you know again in our theory

and he just shared it. He just shared it now all these years later. Right.

Yeah. Yeah. It was uh it was very moving and I had seen that with my father as well. So you know part of the idea is you're you're tapping into some other part of your own psyche, your own spirit, your own nature and and uh um I feel like that I'm curious about because I I shared the story. It seems like you feel like you've seen obviously I've seen patients with that. You've seen patients with that kind of experience too I imagine. Yeah. Yeah, I mean this is part of the elemental dissolution that we talk about in Tibetan Buddhist practice, right? Like the earth element is is not just the physical form, but it's the solidity of thought collapses into the flow of thought that collapses into the intellectual fires, right? In traditional Chinese medicine, that fire collapses into air and spaciousness and what's left at the end of that, right? Like that's something that's happening with each cycle of breathing, but it's also we can kind of deliberately go into it. I see it all the time. I mean, there's there's terms for, you know, I think it's called terminal burst. Some some people call it that. There's terminal restlessness. There's this period lucidity that sometimes also happens that people kind of wake up after a couple days in a coma. They wake up with total clarity and appetite and all of this stuff. and it's like this miracle healing, right? But then they pass away six hours later, a day later, or two days later. Um, and they're kind of like glowing when they come back from wherever they've been, right? And I've definitely seen people starting to have this kind of radiant appearance as they get closer to dying. And it's it starts to look like the body is just trying to pump the soul out or whatever word you want to use for the life force, right? the body is just pumping and each breath is such an effort to get that pump to to go and to release. And um yeah, that's a very important time to make sure a person isn't disturbed. It's dim light, a soothing environment, that kind of thing.

Yeah. my um my my mother's brother so my mom is one of 10 and her her brother passed away and he was just uh like a month ago a month and a half ago and he was the first one of the 10 siblings to pass away so it was very very hard uh for all the brothers and sisters you know but he was diagnosed with uh stage 4 uh small cell carcinoma about last March didn't say anything. And then in the summertime was having an ablation done, had a stroke, and they were like, "Hey, sir, do you know that your cancer is advanced?" He's like, "What cancer?" You know, he was just like in total like denial of this. And so they said at that point that he'd probably have 10 to 12 months, 8 to 12 months, something like this. He ended up passing in December and it was really difficult. I I was first glad that I was able to spend time with him and I was able to work on him, meditate with him specifically and he was always blown away by the profoundity of what happened, you know, the sort of like non conceptual states just really was. So I was very glad to be able to step in and do that for him. to the point that you were talking about the last like week of his life was he was just under so much pain and um finally my mom kind of who she's a nurse and has worked on oncology wards before was like please give him enough medication that he is out of pain and there was some admission from the hospital staff that the family wanted to keep him around a little bit longer so they were intentionally keeping his payments meds down so he would be uncomfortable so he wouldn't leave his body.

And so I was like yeah Eric like your face I was like whoa that's that's a that's a deep thought you know.

Yeah. Yeah. That does happen. That does happen. And

yes,

I think again it's just kind of like this we don't know how to die, right? Like it's going to happen whether we're ready or not, whether we know what to do or not. It's going to happen. I can assure everybody of that,

right? But it's also like like I said, sometimes it's very important not just what you do, but what you don't do.

Well, I thought I'd throw out I like uh I'm so sorry. Actually, Daniel, we haven't talked about this off mic, but I'm I'm the first sibling in the family. That's that's a thing

really brings something home like

to everybody, right?

And they're all, you know, they're baby boomers and and uh you know, baby boomer Gen X area. So, they're, you know, from 58 to 85. So they're they're all on that range, you know, where it's it's happening. But um yeah, you know, it really anytime you have uh somebody passing your family or friend or something like this, it at least for me, it's a reminder of the the short time and how it's just over. It's just done. There is no there's nothing else to do. There's no more plans to make. There's no more bills to pay. There's no more debts. It's finished. You're finished. whatever projects you had going, no more projects.

Your schedule's instantaneously free.

And the last thing, the last conversation you have with that person is the last conversation you'll really ever have with that person in that way. And sometimes you get lucky. I mean, it's hard for the person to know that they're terminal as you, you know, you've been working with for so long. But then I'm sure Sam you get to tell the family like hey this person's going through this process but you get to say to them now whatever is on your heart and you know that it's going to go right to them right there is nothing else that matters any of the [...] that you brought in here none of it matters the outside world none of it what matters is what's right here this love that's present and you have the opportunity to say that and I think you could certainly share from your experience can be um sweet but like I feel like we don't often do that enough. And so there's a kind of a regret where it's like we don't tell people often enough they matter, you know, and so we end up passing or the people end up passing and we're like gripping at ourselves for not sharing the things that we have wanted to share and it just like eats us alive. How do you you know, how do you counsel people to to work with this, you know, at the end?

Well, you know, it's it's interesting. a couple several years ago. Um, and really this is during the pandemic when there's just so much death. Yeah. Working in a hospital system is talk about collective grief and trauma. Um, I had the insight then that, you know, we never talked about love in my training. I never talked about love in graduate school. That's a word that's not said very often in the hospitals, right? Like with any depth or profoundity. Like we can talk about medications, we can talk about symptom management, but we very rarely aside from the paleative care community talk about love. And that's something that I've started to really make it a point to do is let's talk about the four-letter word. Let's talk about the L word. Let's make sure that that is on the checklist, right, of life. Because like you said, like at some point you go, "Oh, that thing that I did with this person, that was the last time I'm ever going to do that." And we didn't know that at the time, right? Like at some point everybody goes, "Shoot, that was the last good Thanksgiving. That was two years ago. Oh man, what I would do to have known, right?" Well, do it now. This could be the last Good Tuesday. This could be the last Good Friday. I don't know.

We don't know. So, yeah. What have you been pushing aside saying, you know what? I'm just going to let that person I'll tell them when I see them how much they mean to me. Well, we have these devices we're locked in on all the time now. Like, what? Why not use them for some good, right? Like, why not reach out and say, "Hey buddy, I was just thinking about you. It's been a while since we've talked. Love you. Right. We haven't talked in a while. Like that's going to just feel good,

Yeah. Yeah. I didn't know where this episode was going to go. You we go in these things and you don't know where the conversation is going to take it. But it's very emotional for me and it like a good way. Um you as we're talking about I was remember you you know we're having this conversation you naturally start thinking about people who have passed and when I was a teenager I ended up like kind of taking care of my grandpa in like his last days. It was just sort of a weird thing happened in the family. So I ended up sort of being in this caretaking role and uh you know he passed and we were in the hospital and uh you know he had a stroke but before his stroke his last words were like he looked at me and he said I love you and I that was like the last thing he said and I was like love you too and you know you look at that

retrospectively speaking as we're talking now you know it's jarring in the moment you feel all that but I'm like I'm so grateful. Yeah, we had that m [laughter] that was it. That was our moment. And it it happened and and it, you know, it does bring home that feeling of like uh we should do it all the time. We should do all the time.

Yeah. And I mean, relationships are difficult. We don't [clears throat] always have loving relationships with the people we're supposed to have loving relationships with, right? But sometimes it's a pet, right? Like for so many people, a dog or a cat is the embodiment of love in their life. the human realm didn't quite do it for right and it's okay to to do it that way but I think you know however healthily we can open our hearts that's where everything comes together right all belief systems collapse all methods collapse when the heart is open it doesn't it [clears throat] almost doesn't matter what your belief is anymore it's just so open right like this John Welwood saying love can hold hatred but hatred cannot hold love I think love can hold all categories. Not all categories can hold

It's It's interesting. Maybe there's a practice we can all take on. You know, you mentioned the devices and I have some routines I do where I like tell people that I love that I love them and I just send the text, hey,

and it's been interesting because I have a 13-year-old son and he sort of adopted that habit. So most nights there's like a I love you dad in like a little something and you know and uh you sort of think okay that could be something we all could be doing it's easy for us to do it now you know we can take advantage of technology you know the upside of it right

suppose you know all can talk about the downsides but the fact that we can do

yeah I mean that's a practice that we can all take on yeah

you know what greater expression of this precious human life and bodhichitta is there than to say I love to somebody,

It's a very very powerful mantra.

Yeah, it's true.

It's very true.

Well, Sumi, uh I I can't thank you enough for for coming on again. I really uh I really appreciate it. You know, we definitely are not going to go uh you know, five and a half years before we have you on again. You know, that's just too much time uh passing. Uh, I want to give you the the the floor for a minute here before we wrap up. Any any any uh any, you know, lessons that you would like to share with whoever might hear this or something that's, you know, calling to you right now or a takeaway from your uh, you know, hosting at the at the retreat or anything really.

Make sure that you're that you're aware of your breath. That's really the fastest the best way I know to open the heart is to still the mind with the awareness of the breath. This is the Buddhist teaching. I think this is timeless wisdom. If we can manage the stress response and I think the most efficient way is with the awareness of the breath, then we might realize the heart is open anyway, right?

Like the fact that it feels closed sometimes, it's not always. It's just stress, right?

So be aware of the breath and share

Beautiful.

You're lying about it's like the great m it's the greatest mantra almost, right? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks.

That's good.

Well, Sim, thank you so much for coming on. Eric, as always, thank you for uh driving the ship. Uh audience, thank you so much for tuning in. Like, comment, subscribe. Uh if you want to uh have any questions or anything like that for uh Se, please feel free to uh leave us an email at the jinantragmail.com or leave a comment in the comment section or hit us up on the gram at the jin andra podcast. Uh SE, thank you again for coming on. Eric, as always, audience, thanks for tuning in. For Eric and Sim, this is Daniel. We'll catch you guys in the next one. Peace. [music]