S3 | E6 Amber Renee Schwartz

Amber Renee Schwartz came over to my house for this one, which felt fitting. We've known each other for about five years now. I first found her as a massage therapist around the corner, started regaling her with my psychedelic stories, and we've since sat together for a number of people's medicine journeys. Amber is also my bridge to Renee, whose session sparked this entire podcast. Amber grew up in a Mormon home in Portland, Oregon, never really buying into it, and that inner conflict showed up as depression, brain fog, and chronic pain, compounded by scoliosis. Instead of college and journalism, she wound up in cosmetology school, where it quickly became clear people were coming to her for her touch. Massage school cracked her world open: the links between emotion, trauma, and pain, and her first introduction to Reiki. That path eventually led to energy work, shamanic tools, and guided inner journeying. We talk about why so many of her clients arrive burned out after exhausting Western medicine, and why she sees depression, anxiety, and body pain as inseparable. Amber explains Reiki as universal life force energy, with the practitioner acting like jumper cables or a clear channel, and describes the more intuitive layer she brings: tuning into the conversation between the body and that energy. As someone who's aphantasic, I loved her reminder that intuitive information doesn't have to arrive as pictures. It can be a knowing, a phrase, a feeling. And it doesn't have to make sense right now. From there we go into the guided inner journey work she learned in her two-year mentorship with Renee: a light, hypnotic, drug-free process where the client journeys through their own imagination, starting in nature, meeting guides and allies, and using the body as a portal. Amber describes energy extraction, where we personify something like depression or anxiety and ask what it really needs (usually love), and how this echoes Tsultrim Allione's Feeding Your Demons practice. The demon isn't slain. It's nourished, and it becomes an ally. We also cover: Tarot as a way to reflect your own story back to you, not predict the future, and my take on it as training wheels for synchronicity Why AI can feel divinatory but comes with confirmation bias built in A client whose year and a half of weekly Reiki transformed her life, and the mystery of sleep paralysis and shadow people Validation through direct experience, from a room filling with white light at a Paul Selig event to beings moving through my body on retreat Spiritual bypassing, including my own, and seeing the collective shadow for what it is Why there's no end point to healing, and Starhawk's idea of the spiral dance If you're in Chicago, I highly recommend having the Amber experience in person. If you're not, her guided journeys and Reiki work beautifully remotely. Connect with Amber: prismatichealing.comSpecial Guest: Amber Renee Schwartz.

I'm joined from Maui by Jonathan Hammond, an author, teacher, transpersonal counselor, and shamanic practitioner whose work bridges transpersonal and depth psychology, shamanism, magic, and the occult. Jonathan trained in theater at Michigan and Harvard and spent nearly two decades as an actor, including on Broadway, before a series of events in his late thirties led him to devote himself to spiritual work full time. He explains why actors and shamans have so much in common: instead of feeling into characters on a page, he now feels into the people who come to see him. We zoom out to this moment in history. Jonathan points to indigenous prophecies that describe a dark "near miss" followed by a generations-long evolution of consciousness, and he frames what's emerging as a return to indigenous mind, where everything is alive, sentient, and interconnected. We talk about the Cree concept of Wetiko, the three worlds of shamanic cosmology, and how your outer world reveals what you believe about yourself. I share my own shift from "I could never afford it" to opening to possibility. One of my favorite parts is Jonathan's walkthrough of Ho'oponopono, the Hawaiian practice of making things doubly right. I share how I led one at my mother's service and how it came back to me during a solo psilocybin journey. We close on masculine and feminine polarity, men's work, and the missing rites of initiation for young men. In this episode, we talk about: Why acting and shamanic work draw on the same skills Indigenous prophecies, the Aquarian Age, and why truth may matter more than love in the age ahead Wetiko, the "mind virus" of greed and disconnection from nature The upper, lower, and middle worlds, and how the inner dream creates the outer dream Seeding the unconscious with who you want to become, and why thoughts need movement in them What each phrase of Ho'oponopono really means, and why the practice is "tedious and incessant" Effectiveness as the measure of truth: the doctor sets the broken bone, the shaman asks why you broke it Men's work, the Mankind Project, two-spirit traditions, and initiation for young men Jonathan's new book, Rewilding Consciousness: Shamanism and Natural Magic, comes out in March 2027. You can find him and his work at jonathanhammond.com.Special Guest: Jonathan Hammond.

I'm joined from Austin by Ashley Carmen, a licensed marriage and family therapist and the founder of the Psychedelic Guide Network (PGN), where she trains practitioners in the ethics and interior work of guiding others through non-ordinary states. Ethics isn't the sexy part of psychedelic medicine, but Ashley makes the case that it's where the real transformation happens, for guides as much as for the people they serve. Ashley traces her path on two tracks: a childhood without much honor or respect, a connection she made during an ayahuasca experience, and a clinical career where hundreds of hours of required consultation showed her what was missing in the psychedelic space. Her own road to the medicine ran from mushrooms on a pizza in sixth grade, to witnessing substance-induced psychosis in inpatient rehab, to finally answering the call with intention in Tahoe, then training with MAPS and the School of Consciousness Medicine. From there we get into Kylea Taylor's InnerEthics model, which asks practitioners to look at the motivation and intention behind everything they say and do in the journey room, and then we get very practical about how to find a safe guide. I share some of my own experiences as a guide, including times my projections crept into someone else's journey. In this episode, we talk about: Why inner ethics beats a rulebook, and how it becomes shadow work for practitioners The practitioner as the container, and what a "clean container" really means How medicines amplify attraction, projection, and a guide's need to feel useful The questions to ask a facilitator, and why operating in isolation is a red flag Why a guide who won't tell you what you're taking is violating your sovereignty Co-facilitation, group ceremony ratios, and who should avoid solo journeys Integration, aftercare, and why three prep and three integration sessions is the minimum Why the FDA is only one umbrella over psychedelic work, and the case for standards for coaches You can find Ashley, and PGN's free monthly live events, at psychedelicguidenetwork.com.Special Guest: Ashley Carmen, LMFT.

I'm out in the lovely suburb of Hinsdale, Illinois, with Dr. Devon James, owner of Within Reach Healing. Laura O'Malley, my guest earlier this season, kept telling me I had to go see Devon, so I did, and I've been back half a dozen times since. Devon is trained as a chiropractor, but she concedes the chiropractors probably wouldn't let her back in the club, so I like to call her a witch. She's fine with it. Devon has just built out a gorgeous, 2,900-square-foot space in a quiet wooded setting, a big step up from her first office of under 500 square feet. Her vision is a true one-stop shop. During COVID, her patients leaned on her for everything, and when she'd refer them to the best people she knew, they'd tell her it was too far to drive. So she brought those people next door. Her team now includes massage therapy, orthopedic and pelvic floor physical therapy, mindful facials, sound healing, yoga, life coaching, a bioscan unit, and soon nurse practitioners and a psychotherapist. When I was in Sedona in 2021, I sat in meditation thinking, "We need a Sedona in Chicago." This place is pretty close. We dig into applied kinesiology, the muscle testing Devon learned in chiropractic school, where every muscle connects to an acupuncture meridian, lymphatic and vascular points, a nutritional need, and even an emotion. Take the psoas: it shares a meridian with the kidneys, its main nutrition is water, and the kidneys' emotion is fear. That's why Devon has zero protocols. She asks each person's body what it wants that day, then pulls from 17 or 18 techniques, including TBM, quantum neurology, and remote energy healing. She tells the story of the seminar where she saw a flash of her teacher's past life, helped heal his shoulder, and learned that most practitioners don't actually hear their patients' bodies talk to them. Devon is open about where this all came from. Her father struggled with alcoholism until she was about ten, and she learned to sense his mood from miles away and keep the house calm. She started her own healing work at 19, went through a divorce, spent eight years in therapy for complex PTSD, and recently had her therapist tell her she was healed and didn't need her anymore. It was far less triumphant than she expected. We compare notes on growing up hypervigilant, on dissociation and falling asleep as a defense, and on how a secure, loving relationship with her partner Aiden gave her the footing to do the deep work and, after losing $40,000 on a building with toxic dry-cleaning chemicals underneath it, to build this place anyway. We also talk about who she sees: people with chronic and autoimmune illness who've been to many doctors without answers, survivors of abuse, and especially kids, including children on the spectrum and non-verbal kids she says communicate with her telepathically. She built an indoor play cottage so kids are upset when they have to leave and parents never have to apologize. Finally, we have some fun with her idea for a "healing carnival" open house, complete with a passport to wellness, raffle tickets, and blind muscle testing. In this episode, we talk about: Within Reach Healing and Devon's vision of a one-stop wellness center Why Devon was trained as a chiropractor but works nothing like a typical one Applied kinesiology, muscle testing, and how each muscle connects to meridians, nutrition, and emotions Why there's no protocol for low back pain, and why she asks each body what it needs Discovering her intuitive gifts at a TBM seminar, and the science of intuition as pattern recognition Remote energy healing and the bioscan unit that picked up a family argument from across the world Growing up with an alcoholic father, hypervigilance, and complex PTSD Getting "fired" by her therapist after eight years, and what healed actually feels like Dissociation, panic attacks, and learning to let feelings pass through Working with chronic illness, abuse survivors, kids on the spectrum, and non-verbal children Losing $40,000 on a building and building her healing center anyway Supplements, muscle testing yourself, and why bodies change The sway test, blind testing, and a healing carnival You can find Dr. Devon James and her team at withinreachhealing.com and on Instagram.Special Guest: Dr. Devon James.

I'm joined by Norwegian-American multimedia journalist and photographer Marian Siljeholm. She reached out to a group we're both part of, looking for people with transformational MDMA experiences for a graduate project, and that's how we met. Marian is upfront that she's a relative newcomer to this space, but she came to it the hard way: through her own search for something that would finally work after a lifetime of therapy. Marian tells the story of growing up in a home ruled by fear, and of the ways that stress showed up in her body for decades. She describes work as her "drug of choice," and the month when her relationship, her housing, her health, and her career all fell apart at once. A sleep specialist who admitted he couldn't help her handed her a business card and pointed her toward psychedelic-assisted therapy. She walks me through her first low-dose MDMA journey, the shift in her relationship with her mother, and the deep gratitude she felt afterward. She also tells me about her second, far more physical journey, in which she released years of stored pain. We also talk about the reporting project that grew out of this. Marian interviewed 45 to 50 people across several continents, along with researchers and clinicians, including Judith Herman, who coined the term complex PTSD. We talk about why so many people with such different lives told the same story: nothing else worked, and this did. We dig into why complex PTSD still isn't in the DSM, why our system is built for pills and acute care rather than process, and what it would take to bring this work in responsibly. I also share some of my own experiences, including my frozen shoulder and the body work I've been doing. In this episode, we talk about: How Marian found psychedelic-assisted therapy through an unexpected referral Why she couldn't think or talk her way out of a nervous system stuck in fight or flight What her first MDMA journey opened up, and why her second one built on it The gap between medicine that works and a system that isn't set up for it Complex PTSD, and why we need a shared language for trauma before we can have an informed conversation about the medicine Managing expectations, integration, and why it's a catalyst and not a quick fix Breathwork, rest, and what it means to finally feel at home in your body You can find Marian's photography at mariansiljeholmphotography.com and on Instagram.Special Guest: Marian Siljeholm.

I'm kicking off Season 3 of The Permission Slip with one of my favorite people on the planet — Conscious Channel and happiness coach Laura O'Malley — for our third conversation on the show. This time we're celebrating her debut book, Becoming You (Lisa Hagen Books), out September 29th in print and e-book. Laura never set out to write a book. Back in 2023 she began typing out answers to one simple question for her guides — "What's most important today?" — and sharing them with clients. When the Collective told her it was going to be a book, she said fat chance unless they dropped it in her lap. They did, and I got to play a small part in how it landed there. We wander (squirrel!) through a lot of territory: why every one of us is channeling all day long — our ego, our soul, or something higher; why you can't talk, think, or trick your nervous system into feeling safe; how getting quiet and present is the only way to actually receive; and why embodied belief is so different from believing something in your head. We trade stories about canceled flights, furrowed eyebrows as an early-warning system for anger, feeling fine after 10-hour drives, finding money on the sidewalk, always finding parking, and the Chinese money frog. Laura also has a real-time realization about where her lifelong habit of always looking happy came from, and we talk about why so many kids today feel so much, what it means to have chosen our experiences from a higher perspective, and why everyone needs a woo crew. Then the Collective comes through to answer my question about whether Becoming You should be read aloud — and to remind us that there's no one-size-fits-all, that you're a different person every time you open the book, and that the whole point is to soften your nervous system into peace. You haven't done anything wrong. You've just been programmed. I'm always thrilled to have my friend and my favorite channel, Laura O'Malley, in for a chat about all things metaphysical. This episode kicks off Season 3 with our third conversation to celebrate her first book, Becoming You. It's a collection of daily messages she channeled simply by asking her guides, "What's most important today?" We talk about getting quiet, becoming present, why you can't outthink your nervous system, and how contrast and triggers are gifts in disguise. And of course, the Collective drops in to have their say. Link to her book: Link to the "Aura" app she mentioned: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/aura-wellbeing-copilot/id6749313216Special Guest: Laura O'Malley.

I'm in Austin, Texas with Ken Moench, founder of Moench Method Bodywork, which has four locations around the city, and author of Every Baby Hurts. I had just spent about three hours on Ken's table, and I'll admit I was tenderized. So I asked him to explain what he actually does, and why it did something for me that years of massage, myofascial work, dry needling, chiropractic, and physical therapy never quite managed. Ken walks me through his method: pressing into a tight muscle to temporarily block its blood supply so it lets go, then moving it through its full range of motion until the pain signal shuts off. He explains why muscle relaxers and painkillers never touch the fascia, why the work has to start at the root of the chain (the hip flexors, the psoas, and the low back), and why my flat-on-my-back sleeping and side sleeping were quietly working against me. I also share what happened when I finally slipped into deep REM sleep in the middle of an afternoon. Ken's path here is not what you'd expect. He was an industrial electrician who worked on barges along the Mississippi and the Intracoastal Canal, until a layoff in Baton Rouge sent him praying for direction. He became a physical therapy aide at St. David's Hospital in Austin, went to massage school at night, and started getting people out of pain faster than the hospital's physical therapists could, so fast that the doctors nicknamed his work "marrow massage." He tells me how he combined three rudimentary weekend classes into the technique he has now taught his team for more than 30 years. Then we get to the book. Ken tells the story of his infant grandson, who screamed through every diaper change, and what he found when he put his hands on the baby's hip flexors. A second grandchild, who seemed perfectly calm, led him to the thought behind the title: if that baby hurts, every baby hurts. We talk about pre-birth posture, why every culture has swaddled infants, and what Ken sees in older adults who end up curled and stooped. We also talk about the practice itself. Ken says the average client comes 2.4 times a year, and that the team celebrated when that number went down. He shares stories about Austin FC, a hurdler who won gold at the Pan American Games, and a big-league pitcher whose fastball went from 82 to 98 miles an hour. He explains why most of us stretch the wrong way, and how he trained for a marathon by stretching only to the first hint of tension. Finally, we get into his work on dogs, including the nearly 170 foster dogs he and his wife have taken in. In this episode, we talk about: What the Moench Method is, and why the pain fades even while the pressure stays on Why the work starts at the hip flexors and moves down the chain, and why I needed the posterior chain done too How sleep posture, side sleeping, and flat surfaces can shorten muscles overnight Ken's path from industrial electrician to physical therapy aide to massage therapist, and the prayer behind his method The story behind Every Baby Hurts: two grandchildren, two sonograms, and one big idea Pre-birth posture, swaddling, and why older adults end up stooped Why Ken tracks average visits per client, and why he wants that number to fall Athletes, from Austin FC to Olympic-level competitors, and what flexibility does for speed and strength The right way to stretch: warm, sweaty muscles, the slightest tension, and deep breaths Working on dogs, hip dysplasia, and Ken's no-charge policy if he can't help You can find Ken at moenchmethodbodywork.com and search Moench Method on Instagram and Facebook. His book, Every Baby Hurts, is available online and through Barnes & Noble and Amazon.Special Guest: Ken Moench.

Neil Gehani is the founder of Mind Lumen, a nonprofit working to close the trust gap in psychedelic care by making ethics observable, measurable, and accountable. He's also a co-signatory of the Hopkins-Oxford HOPE consensus statement and author of "Ethics Without Borders" in The American Journal of Bioethics. In this episode, I talk with Neil about: Growing up in a military-style boarding school in India, separated from his parents for years at a time Arriving in the U.S. alone at 16 with almost no cultural context His career in Silicon Valley tech and the personal crises along the way A life-changing unplanned psychedelic experience at the Oregon Eclipse festival in 2017 The three-year search for a safe, ethical therapeutic guide that led him to found Mind Lumen How Mind Lumen certifies facilitators and retreats using a practical, weighted ethics scoring system The real difference between decriminalization, medicalization, and commercialization Drug-checking and harm reduction resources like DanceSafe and anonymized testing models (Portugal) The Asian Psychedelic Society, a community he built for Asian-American psychedelic users Living with ADHD as a "condition" rather than a disorder, and what it means to live a "blissful" life Connect with Neil: mindlumen.org | mindlimen.substack.com | linkedin.com/in/gehanineilSpecial Guest: Neil Gehani.

I'm joined by Cindy "Seer" Anderson, founder of Soulpiphany and creator of Your Spirit Guide on Speed Dial®. Cindy is a self-described mad spiritual scientist who spent more than a decade testing whether spirit-guide communication can be clear, reliable, and teachable — and she brings that same practical, skeptical-friendly approach to our conversation. We talk about her path from corporate marketing and real estate into full-time guide work, the moment everything changed on June 5, 2014, and the "fingerprint signature" she teaches her students to help them recognize their own guidance. We dig into discernment, boundaries, and what to do when something feels off, plus some genuinely moving success stories from people she's worked with. We also talk about her free Call Your Guide Challenge, and wrap with a conversation about AI's (limited) place in spiritual work. If you've ever had a knowing you couldn't explain, a gut instinct that turned out to be right, or a voice in your head that didn't quite feel like your own — this one's for you.Special Guest: Cindy Anderson.

Marisa Skolky wears a lot of hats — transformational doula, psychedelic guide, expressive arts therapist, professional singer — and in this episode she walks me through how she got to all of them. She grew up in New Jersey immersed in music and theater, and spent 16 years quietly struggling with bulimia while climbing the ladder as an assistant vice president at an insurance brokerage, making music videos for underwriters and sneaking sound bowls into business meetings on her lunch break. It took an ibogaine flood in Costa Rica for years of accumulated tools — Reiki, hypnotherapy, IFS, somatic work — to finally take hold. We get into some of the wilder edges of her healing story: an ayahuasca ceremony that appeared to heal a fractured tibial plateau overnight, and a DMT experience that put her back inside the moment of her own birth. Marisa also breaks down the five-part framework — identify, confront, release, change, grow — she uses with clients, blending expressive arts, somatic practices, and ritual (letters burned in fire, seeds planted during a journey, physical totems made by hand). We talk about the difference between crying into your chest and actually releasing energy out of the body, why so many people are afraid of their own anger, and what it looks like to build a life — and a business — around energetic integrity. She leaves me with a recommendation I'm passing along: Nathaniel Branden's "Six Pillars of Self-Esteem."Special Guest: Marisa Skolky.