Plant Medicine Navigation For Eating Disorder Recovery: The Hero's Journey
We sit in ceremony to remember that all of life is ceremony. We sit in ceremony to remember the sacredness of all things. We sit in ceremony to remember we are the medicine. We sit in ceremony to practice how to live the teachings of the medicine. We sit in ceremony to reclaim, reconstitute and restore. We sit in ceremony to repattern and rewire ways of thinking, feeling and being, rather than suppressing, dampening or avoiding. We sit in ceremony to truly see, to truly hear, to truly feel. We sit in ceremony to be with the confusion, the trepidation, the discomfort, the awkwardness, the grief, and the anger. We sit in ceremony to learn how to breathe through it. We sit in ceremony to feel our feet on the Earth, our bones stacked, our hearts rhythmically beating. We sit in ceremony to remember the miracle of being alive, and the gift to be moving through it all in this body.
Navigating a plant medicine or psychedelic journey, like life, comes with its ebbs and flows of challenge and ease. Each psychedelic journey is different and some may be more challenging to navigate than others. However some of our most challenging moments can also be our greatest catalyst for growth and transformation.
The parts that feel the most challenging are where the medicines are pointing us to, amplifying an emotion, a thought, a sensation, or a memory that has been begging for our attention for all this time.
For the moments that feel difficult, it can be helpful to remember that there is something to be gained by sticking with it. When these moments bubble or erupt to the surface, you can remind yourself that they are expected, they are normal, and you are and will be ok. By welcoming in these chapters within the larger journey arch, and exploring how the challenge is rather a gift, there is an opportunity to deepen the healing process in profound ways. Spoiler alert: The gift is that there is something to be learnt.
the plant medicine hero’s journey
The psychedelic journey is akin to Joseph Campbell’s famous “Hero’s Journey”: a challenging portal through which we claim our authentic selves and share our soul gifts with the world. It is a journey meant to help us come to our full, true human selves and to take our place as world servers.
We are called to this journey when we feel something is off in our lives. There is discord, dissonance or distress. And so we hear the call to adventure, and so begins a process of change, sometimes with reluctance, sometimes with excitement, sometimes with fear. As we begin this journey, a mentor appears to support us, or we find the resources within - and with this support, we leave the known and enter the unknow territory. Along we trek, we reach the underworld where our greatest challenge - our ultimate fear - awaits. Here we are tested in the depths of the descent. Out of this moment of death there is a rebirth and a soul gift is granted. We then leave the underworld, bringing the treasure back with us but just as we are about to reach final completion, we are faced with one final moment of death-rebirth, taking us to an even higher level of transformation. The discord at the beginning of the journey is resolved. Purification, healing, and whole-ing have taken place. We return - transformed - bearing gifts of service that have the power to transform the world.
When we enter the underworld, of which we have agreed to do upon committing to journeying through this Hero’s Journey passage, we may experience:
Any and all emotions, including fear, anger, grief, and hopelessness.
Our eating disorders for what they are, including the ED thoughts, how the eating disorder manifests, and how it affects our life, and our souls.
Our addictions and obsessions, related to food, body and anything else, both obvious and subtle.
Facing deeply-held fears and work through the barriers that have kept us from being our true self.
Releasing anything that does not serve our soul’s purpose and our path.
Healing aspects that have been shamed, hidden, abandoned or mistreated.
Claiming our soul gifts in service to something greater than ourselves.
Diving into these depth, we are investigating what fears have held us back from pursuing our most valued, yet unrealized dreams, as well which aspects of ourselves need to be retrieved and integrated. Within your own personal healing context and within the framework of eating disorders in general, you know all about what this means.
Eating disorders are smart survival adaptations to help an individual feel safe in the world. They are strategies that are unconsciously adopted, learnt and refined as protective behaviours. Often the individual with the eating disorder is carrying and manifesting the trauma of the family, such as attachment wounds, through unsustainable food behaviours. The process of healing from an eating disorder (which I do believe is possible despite it having one of the lowest recovery rates of any “mental” condition), requires the individual to recognize something is out of balance and that something needs to change. With this intention and awareness, so begins the journey. sometimes with the help of psychedelics. A plant medicine journey can sometimes feel like years of eating disorder therapy in a single session. Of course, the work thereafter to integrate these changes is where the meat lies. Possibly the integration phase after a psychedelic experience for eating disorder recovery is the phase in the classic Hero’s Journey where we are leaving the underworld, and we are faced with tests to prove to ourselves and the world that the changes have indeed been consolidated. Eating disorder recovery can be a beast at times. But the journey is worth it.
Eating disorder recovery is indeed a long Hero’s Journey, with multiple adventures along the way. The more we commit to our recovery, the more initiations we will face… that result in transformations beyond our wildest imaginations. Are we willing to take the next step?
Below are a few tips you can practice whilst navigating a psychedelic journey:
Focus on the breath. Follow each inhale and exhale, noticing the pauses. Allow the breath to fill the belly, chest, back, front and sides of the lungs, and nose. If possible, lengthen the exhale or make an audible sigh for a calming effect on the nervous system. Count your breath. Make this your single point of focus.
Place a hand on your heart and your belly. Feel the contact of the hands resting your body. It can be helpful to lightly palpate, push, tap with the fingertips, stroke, rub, or massage the heart space, arms, belly, head, or legs as ways to ground, and make contact with the realness of the body.
Center your attention to your heart. Focus on feelings of love and compassion. Breathe in and out from the heart space, envisioning white light. Meditate on all the beings who may be suffering right now, feeling the same pain, fear and anxiety you may be feeling. Send them your love. Connecting with positive emotions can be a powerful way to break through fear and anxiety.
If you feel physically sick or in pain, see if you can explore it. What is its source (where is its origin, how deep does it go, and in what direction does it want to move to)? What is it here to show you? Can you embrace it exactly where it is? What is the medicine for you in the discomfort?
Move the energy. If you are laying or sitting down, get up slowly and gently move your body to release stuck energy. Moving the spine, light shaking, forward folds, legs up in the air, or child’s pose can be useful. Stick to simple poses.
Drop the storyline. If you are mentally spiraling, try let go of the narrative or story and just focus on the sensations and feelings in your body. Release what is bad or wrong about what is happening, and be with the body. Allow the sensations to be there as you let go of trying to control or change what is happening.
Surrender and trust. Whatever you are experiencing will pass. Believe in this. Where in your body can you relax more? Can the eyes, tongue, jaw and belly soften? How much more can you let go into the experience? Slip into the moment.
Be curious. Replace judgement with curiosity. Blend the contrasts, releasing the labels of what is good or bad, and be curious as to what you are experiencing.
Pray. Focusing your mind on prayer can also help shift the experience of overwhelm. Your prayer can also summon the assistance of your spiritual allies to support you as you navigate the journey.
Ask for help. If you feel like you are unable to ride out your experience and make it through the intensity, call for a facilitator to assist you. The shaman may perform a blessing or purification ritual over you, to support you in healing process.
Trust the wisdom of the medicine.
This process is a resurrection of our truest essence. Along the winding road, there will be opportunities to meet, learn from, and embrace our deepest and most authentic selves as we look at aspects of our lives that we may have been avoiding, consciously or unconsciously, including limiting beliefs and patterns. It requires courageous vulnerability and self-compassion. Navigating the path of healing unlocks unconditional acceptance and love. It is a stepping into our own skin. It is embodiment.
For more on Journey Navigation, head to my #4 Podcast Talk.
Photo by Anastasia Petrova on Unsplash