Witchy and Well's Soul Medicine Episode 3: Psilocybin and Spirit with Kristina Ellery

I learned early in my career as a pharmacist that medications prescribed for chronic disease like diabetes and weight loss are but one tool in the toolkit for navigating our health; they can help keep us safe from complications, but they don’t address the root of our illness. Sometimes we have to dive deeper for those answers. Sometimes the trauma that causes us to make the choices we make (that aren’t in our body’s best interest) is buried too deep for us to even know it’s there.

While there are many pathways to help us find and heal our trauma, from meditation to sound baths, to hypnotherapy, to forest bathing, to the infinite world of alternative and holistic wellness, my pharmacist brain was eager to find the medicines that could help us do this work. As I started to read the literature about psychedelics for treating PTSD, depression, and end of life anxiety, I felt my hope and curiosity growing. Natural entheogens like psilocybin can allow new neural pathways to form that help us to find the answers to our healing within ourselves. The tricky part is, to do this work, to engage in a relationship with psychedelics, is to go where Western medicine has not yet dared to go - into a connection with spirituality and the mystical.

Perhaps psychedelics belong in the setting of a therapists’s office, perhaps they belong under the supervision of a psychiatrist, perhaps they belong where they have long resided - in the world of Spirit with the shamans and medicine folks, or perhaps their home is in a novel space, a space that integrates body, mind, heart, and spirit together.

Regardless of where they find their place in the 21st century, they are not without risk. They merit the utmost care and stewardship, and people looking to do the challenging work to heal with the help of these medicines deserve to have all the support and guidance they require.

Kristina has found a way to hold a safe space for people to engage in the tender and difficult work of healing at her registered 508(c)(1)(A) faith-based organization, Sacred Earth Sanctuary, where she works with the psilocybin mushroom as sacrament. I don’t know all of the answers when it comes to how we work with psychedelics, but I do know that Kristina and her church represent a beautiful model of how it can be done with a whole lot of wisdom, love, and care. As Kristina so eloquently puts it, "even the hardest, most awful things that you go through are there for your highest good. It's not going to feel like that while it's happening, but if you're open to seeing that it's there to teach you something, life gets way more gentle."

While the church is currently closed to the public, you can learn about their philosophy and approach to healing here: https://www.sacredearthsanctuary.com/