Adam Quiney returns! Executive Coach, Author, Plant Medicine Fan

Jason sits down with Adam Quiney, a visionary leader and aficionado of plant medicine. Together, they embark on a journey through self-discovery, personal growth, and the transformative power of sacred plants. Adam shares his profound experiences and insights into the world of ayahuasca and psilocybin, offering listeners a unique perspective on the ancient practices that continue to influence the modern quest for enlightenment.

"Plant medicines are not just substances; they are teachers and guides on our journey." 

"Ayahuasca is about connecting with something much larger than ourselves." 

"The true journey is inward, and plant medicines can be a key to unlocking those doors."

Adam is an executive leadership coach specializing in working with the Smartest People in the Room. A former software developer and attorney, Adam’s learned the hard way about the costs that come from keeping your heart safe and chasing after external rewards to feel whole and complete.

From love, Adam is connection, passion, presence, wit and brilliance. From fear, he is awkward, robotic, apathetic, irrelevant and arrogant. He’s learned to embrace all these parts of himself, and works with others to do the same in their own lives. Living with his beautiful wife and their two dogs (one of which is a cat) in Victoria, B.C., He is a man on a mission to bring the world to a more inspired and fully-expressed place.

http://www.adamquiney.com
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Transcript

Jason Frazell: 0:11

Hey everybody. It is my great pleasure to welcome back to the show a fan favorite. Mr. I'm going to call you Lord because we know he likes to be called Lord. Lord Adam Quiney, Mr. Adam Quiney, back for round two. We talked a year and a half ago when you were just coming out with your book. We spent some time getting to know you and I wanted to have Adam back on the show. One, because he's just a great dude. Got a lot of good feedback on that episode. And two, he's into a lot of cool stuff that I know we can learn from both in the way he thinks about things, the way he looks at things, and some of the things that you and your wife, who I've also had on the show with our friend, mutual friend, Laura Westman, some of the things that. You two are creating together around from a business and experiences and all that. So Adam, I'm so glad to have you back. I'm glad to have an open conversation where you just get to get some of your wisdom and see what's up with you and, and teach the audience something and entertain as we always will. And not spend too much time on gaming because not all my guests are gamers and I'm a huge gamer and Adam's a huge gamer as well. So Adam, thanks for coming back. Bit of a trap.

Adam Quiney: 1:16

Yeah, we're both looking at that like really nice bubbling tar pit over there. We're like, we should probably not jump into that right now. Hey, look at,

Jason Frazell: 1:24

if you're on a motorcycle, you're like, don't point your wheel towards the video games. So Adam, as we get deeper into the conversation, what are you playing? No, I'm kidding. Adam, welcome back. Glad to have you. Glad to have you on.

Adam Quiney: 1:33

Thanks, man. It's good to be here.

Jason Frazell: 1:35

Yeah. So Adam, first of all, for those who didn't tune in the first time, where are you joining us from and anything else you want people to know about you? Sure,

Adam Quiney: 1:43

So I live in Victoria, British Columbia, which is an island off the coast, the west coast of Canada. Oh, fun facts let's see I'll just shoot a few from the hip. I love, since we talked games, I love Street Fighter 6, it's probably one of my favorite games right now. I'm in the top 3 percent of the players in the world, and

Jason Frazell: 2:00

We're not playing because

Adam Quiney: 2:01

you'll kick my ass. Yeah, it's not that much fun for my friends, they find. No,

Jason Frazell: 2:05

that does not sound fun. I'm too competitive. I'd be like, Oh, that sounds great.

Adam Quiney: 2:11

Yeah. Oh, it'll be, it'll be neat. I'll I'll learn. We, we also, I really love this game called magic, the gathering. And there's a few things that in our group called the forge, which we can talk about it later, if it feels appropriate, but yeah, for sure. Do a retreat in Costa Rica in January, that's where we're coming towards and. So one of the members of our leadership team was like, let's play magic. And I was like, totally. So we got there, we set it up and everyone was like, this is going to be so neat. I can't wait to watch. And very quickly, they were like, this is like chess times a thousand. And there's nothing for me here. They're having fun.

Jason Frazell: 2:45

So, so for the one person listening everybody come back, come back for, we're not talking about Magic the Gathering today. That's what they call a a huge buzzkill. I am not a Magic the Gathering player. I've seen it and it doesn't seem like, it seems a little slow for my taste as well. The, the card thing, but I understand people love it. A lot of people love it, for sure. It's a huge brand.

Adam Quiney: 3:07

Let me give you the, the, I'm not trying to sell it on you, but like, here's what's amazing about this game is that it was created in around 94, 93. So that's, what are we at? Like 30 years. So imagine a game that's been actively played and in active development for 30 years. And then just the depth of like what would be available in a game. It's not a game that's just been around like Monopoly, but it hasn't changed much. It's been evolved and built on. And so that makes a very rich kind of. Click a space in which you can play, which is very, very fun for people. At least like, yeah.

Jason Frazell: 3:42

So there's an affiliate link in the podcast here. It's a link to Adams Adams retreat to go to Costa Rica and then they just play magic, the gathering. That's it. That's all you're going to do. It's a week of just playing card magic, the gathering, but the, not the electronic version. That's a lot while in Costa Rica. Yeah. Some people are probably going, whatever it costs, I'm in it. And everybody else is like, no, but that's what you want. That's what you want in your offers. Polarizing offers. You want it to be, you want to be that thing. But I think this would be a good lead and I'm kidding aside to talk about Costa Rica and specifically one of the things that you and your wife are passionate about and that's plant medicine. And we haven't really talked about. On this show, we haven't talked, I haven't talked to anybody at length about this. I'm re I've mentioned it a few times. I'm really interested. I think you and I, we covered it briefly, but I'd like to get some education from you Adam on the plant medicine space. It's obviously blowing up big time. There's a lot of information out there. There's a lot of people doing work around that. And there seems to be some rumblings here in the United States. A potential legality coming in certain states around certain mushrooms, maybe some ayahuasca at some point as well. Don't know what's up in Canada, but, you know, professor, take us away on what, what you think that those listening would want to know or need to know. About what's up in the plant medicine world.

Adam Quiney: 5:05

Yeah. So I'll give like a really general kind of overview and then you can help us get specific with like questions that show up. Yeah. So the, the, the plant medicines that I've worked with, I've worked with psilocybin, many of us have. Psilocybin is probably usually the way most of us initially get into this work. And

Jason Frazell: 5:23

then, and that comes from mushroom. Mushrooms? That's right. Yeah. Magic

Adam Quiney: 5:27

mushrooms are their kind of stream. Magic mushroom. Or whatever. Which is sort of, and then LSD is like a synthesized version, a chemical version of that. Yep. And then but the plant medicine that I really and committed to, and that I would relate to as like significant part of my teachers is ayahuasca. And so ayahuasca is a psychotropic brew, kind of like a tea or like a beer, I guess you can think of it. It's made from two plants. One is a vine called ayahuasca and one is a, the leaves of a plant called the chacruna. And they're, they're both from the the Amazon and they get brewed together and they create this, this rich, thick kind of molasses like substance that you drink. And that medicine has been worked with for millennia, you know the last I heard was like thousands, maybe 5, 000 or so years, like the tribes along the Amazon had been working with this medicine for a very, very, very long time. And the, for the longest time, this medicine was really held sacred and it's always held sacred but like protected and would, it was sort of like the West, so to speak, isn't really ready for this. And the Taitas, which means the fathers, are the ones that hold this kind of lineage, recently started getting, you know, recently within the last kind of, we could say 20 to 50 years, started getting messages like, now's probably the time, it's time to start bringing this forward. And so those of us that are alive at this time are really fortunate because we could start to work with this, this medicine. And what ayahuasca does. It's very similar to what you and I do as a coach and what anyone who's worked with an ontological or like a coach that works below the level of just what you're doing. And it does three particular things. The first is that it supports you to see yourself for who you are free from your story. So another way to put that is to see our blind spots. Just typically. We're like, I hate people that are thieves. And then someone's like, yeah, but you're stealing. And I'm like, but it's different because I'm doing that because my child needs the blah, blah, blah. Or because they stole from me earlier and, and, and so it justified. So that's my blind spot with my story attached. And as long as that's happening, I can't ever come to confront my truth because it's shaded by my story. So just like a good coach in Ayahuasca, what happens is that story is shed and then we're forced to confront like, Oh, I'm a thief, plain and simple. Not, not even I'm bad for it. Just that's who I am. And then we have all their stories about it. So we kind of that confrontation. And then once we've done that, we can kind of what we call merge back with our soul or have a breakthrough, which is we can kind of like. Oh, I don't have to hold that part of me at bay for the rest of my life. I don't have to like convince myself I'm not a thief and hate other people for being a thief. I can just have compassion for the fact that sometimes I do that. And sometimes these people do that. And then from there we can heal. We can, we can create a transformation. And so ayahuasca walks people through that path. Death is a process that walks people through that path. And really profound coaching is a process that walks people through that path. And so That gives you like kind of a high level overview of the medicine and what it does, and then we can go anywhere you want to go. Yeah,

Jason Frazell: 8:37

I think one of the first questions I have, and you may have answered it, is somebody who knows very, I know the basics about this space because of, because of doing coaching work and knowing people like you that do this work. But the first thing that I am curious about is, why is it called medicine? Because, well, yeah, because it's, normally you'd say, oh, it's a hallucinogenic, in the United States we would call that a drug. Okay. But it's called plant medicine, not a plant drug. So what, what is the delineation there? And you may have mentioned it with the healing that happens in it, but how do you see it as a, why is it called a medicine and not a drug? Mm hmm.

Adam Quiney: 9:16

So in the West, we don't actually have a context for a medicine. We have, like you said, a context for a drug and the nature of a is one sec, let that burp out somewhat off mic. The nature of a drug is that I will take it and it will, it tends to like arrest my process. So if I'm anxious and I'm having a panic attack, I'll take an anti anxiety and I'll kind of stop that process or if I have knee pain I'll take that drug and it will like it'll stop me feeling the pain of my knee and I'm gonna do stuff So the drug arrests your process to some extent. It doesn't heal you It just brings you about down to a point where you're kind of stable and then and then hopefully you can get healed some other way and in addition to that the context of a drug includes that The more I take, the more I have to take subsequently to have the same experience. So we build a tolerance with a drug and further over time I become dependent on that drug. I require it. And if you take it away from me, I have a drawl. So these are all kind of the context for drugs and this is often a concern people have when they see someone going and working with plant medicine. They're like, well, aren't you just getting addicted? Aren't you blah blah blah blah. Really valid questions again, because we only have the context of drugs. So what are you doing? You're going to the jungle and taking drug and drug has clear consequences. By as an aside, people have the same sort of story about coaching. You've probably had this experience for people like maybe if you talk to my dad or something will be like well, aren't you just as an example, yeah, just by completely making it up, completely

Jason Frazell: 10:56

making it up,

Adam Quiney: 10:58

but they'll have this like, don't you become dependent on your coach? Because again, that's the context we have for most health. Yeah. So the distinction between a drug and a medicine is what a medicine does is it supports you to like, it's something that supports you to actually heal yourself as opposed to simply arresting your process. So that would be like. Let me try and find an example here. Mm hmm.

Jason Frazell: 11:23

I've got an example for you. If you, yeah, something like a neosporin, something that you would put on a cut would be considered, and that is labeled, I believe, a medicine because it's helping speed up the healing process. I mean, it is stopping that process, but it's also aiding in getting healthier quicker. From actually speeding up that process, a lot of drugs will help you to get healthy quicker, but it's because it's stopping the process so your immune system can then go and work on that thing. Mm hmm.

Adam Quiney: 11:53

So I don't know if that's a good analogy or not. It's a bit challenging, of course, because it kind of skirts a bit of both of those, right? That's true, yeah. But let's think of like an opioid. So an opioid stops our pain, quite effectively. But then it doesn't do anything to, like, heal the thing causing the pain. It sort of, in theory, can, like, let you kind of stabilize out and then you can seek out that support and blah, blah, blah. Whereas what a medicine will do, at least in this context we're creating for it, is support me to do the work I have to do to heal that part of myself that's causing the pain in the first place. And so that's, that's what, that's what ayahuasca does. And it's a little hard for us in the West to kind of wrap our heads around that because again, we only have the one context. So it's kind of like inviting fish to consider what it's like walking on land like you, but I don't. And, and, but that's what we must do to really grasp it is like, no, this does something fundamentally distinct from what a drug does. There's some overlap, of course, there always will be, but it's important to actually heal the underlying thing that's causing whatever pain or disease we're feeling.

Jason Frazell: 12:59

So my next question around this is, it's. It's many people. I, I don't know if this is something you've done. I would assume it is, but I don't like to assume anything is this is something you can do over and over and over again. So, and you, and you and your wife, you lead people on retreats to have a guided experience. Especially for people, maybe the first or second time. So what is the difference or what happens the first time versus doing it? Maybe third or fourth or 10th time again. I think I'm in my drug context, right? Because the first time you do a drug, you're like, Oh, well, I've never felt this before the 10th time you do a drug. You might go, Oh, I'm doing this because I know what it feels like. So what does that experience been like for you or for others for others that you've guided? Because and Adam, one of the things to say, I believe. You would say I'm going on a plant journey with a guide. So you, you consider yourself as somebody who's guiding people through this process because it's not generally something you're going to do by yourself when you start. That's right. Yeah. I

Adam Quiney: 14:02

think it's really important actually that the tendency we have in the West is to look at everything through the scientific microscope and then we lose all of you lose sight of the tapestry when you look at it through a microscope. Yeah. And ayahuasca in particular is a spiritual medicine and, and so when, when people don't realize they're doing, they're like, I don't need all that ritual and like, I could just get the thing and then take it myself, it'll be just as good, but that rich ritual protects you. It, it helps work with the medicine. So there is like something really important in that, that we lose when we Westernize it, so to speak. Yeah. So and. I teach some classes in service of this and I drink the medicine myself, but I'm not someone serving the medicine. I'm very committed to working with shamans who are very deep in their work with this. So to your question, which was like you know, first versus 10th, it's kind of like coaching, you know, like you and I have had that at first time someone really was able to point to something that we like in our blind spot. It's like, You'll never forget that moment and you're just like, it's like for the first time in 30 years of your life, you're seeing the thing you've been tripping over for 30 years of your life. And you're just like gobsmacked. You know, it's, it's unbelievable.

Jason Frazell: 15:13

Not fun. It's not fun in the moment, but it's powerful.

Adam Quiney: 15:16

Yeah. It's jarring. You know, it just,

Jason Frazell: 15:18

it's very

Adam Quiney: 15:18

jarring. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I've found in coaching each time that never stops. There's always new stuff I'm tripping over, but the stuff has become more and more subtle. Because I'm more and more masterful in my work and I've got more work under my belt. So it's like smaller, more nuanced things I'm tripping over. So every time I'm just as resistant, every time I'm just like, holy crap. But it's not quite that humongous furry elephant that I first saw that I was tripping over. And I find plant medicine is quite similar in that regard. At first it's just like, oh my goodness, this experience is wild and crazy. And then as time goes on, it can be a little bit less pronounced, a little bit less wild. And then the funny thing about it is. The more you drink this medicine, the more you are, the less resistant you are, just like with coaching. The more we work with a coach, the more we're able to hear what they have to say, and we can therefore go deeper. Because we have less in the way. And so ayahuasca is very similar to that, like, the more you drink, the less you require to go deeper and deeper and deeper.

Jason Frazell: 16:19

Interesting. Which is the opposite of a, which is the opposite of a drug context. Interesting, Adam. Very interesting. So let's talk about What for? Otherwise known as why. So you mentioned some of the results people can expect to get. I guess where I, where my mind is going is, and if you're willing to share, which I, knowing what I know of you, I think you'd be more than willing to share. What are some of the things that you've uncovered through your own journey? And if you'd be willing to share anything that like and keeping confidentiality, but I think anybody else is like uncovered that, you know, was probably not possible through traditional therapy to call it out coaching because some of these things just like, we're not even present to it. So I'd love to hear some experiences you've had in any other, you know, confidential examples of other things you've seen people go through.

Adam Quiney: 17:13

Yeah. I'll share a story that was quite powerful for me. So, and, and I'm going to preface this by saying like I'll come back to this, but like a lot of people will report like, Oh, ayahuasca is like doing 10 years of therapy in one week. And, and I've heard that. Yeah. And there's like this sort of implied line underneath that, which is like, and that's the way therapy should be. Like if, if therapy worked better, I don't think that's valid or true or accurate. That's dangerous. Yeah. And it's like, yeah, it's 10 years of therapy in one week, but then you've got to integrate 10 years of therapy. Whereas 10 years of therapy, you're integrating week by week. So it's not better or worse. It's just different. And sometimes we need to be jarred like that. And other times we really need the slow drip of like the therapy IV. So anyhow, we'll come back to that in a sec, but like, the, one of the things for me that I've been working on all my life has been my sexuality. And I grew up in a house that was very, like, kind of open about sexuality, but then there was like almost underneath that, like a prudishness that was hard to put your finger on. And it's, And what I witnessed would be like sex is okay, and we can talk about it openly, but then let's make fun of that guy over there who's blatantly checking out that girl, or maybe not even blatantly, just checking that girl out. He's an object of derision. And so as a result, my sexuality became this thing that was like, a little, it was like, okay, but then a little bit to be ashamed of. And that was part of it. And then it was also like, and here you are just being like every other frigging guy. So there's that part. So there's like a lot. And then my perfectionism got wrapped up into it as well. So as a man who has a big impact just in his energy, one of the things I fear is the fact that I'm a disappointment. You know, someone that makes a big entrance is going to also naturally leave people disappointed because they're like, this will be sweet. And then sometimes he strikes out at back. So disappointed and so to counteract that I learned to become perfectionistic and that got wrapped up into my sexuality as well So you've got this dude who's like kind of ashamed a little bit of a sexuality really loves women and wants to look at them But then feels that that's really wrong So it has to come up sideways then on top of that perfectionistic doesn't want to be a disappointment Terrified of being a disappointment. And so what what happened in my life was basically Meet my need for sexuality like my sexual needs myself In case anyone didn't figure out, that's what I'm talking about.

Jason Frazell: 19:41

Yeah. What, what do you mean by that? Yeah. Can you say

Adam Quiney: 19:45

meet my names by myself and then be in like these great relationships with amazing, beautiful women, but like there would not be any sex, there'd not be any intimacy. And, and so that existed in pretty much every relationship I've ever been in. And like. And what would typically happen is our relationships over time would just sort of like trail away until we both just kind of walked away from them. You know, it was like very, there was no dramatic breakup. There was nothing big like that because it was just sort of like a shrug of the shoulders like, Oh, well, whatever. See you later. Yeah. Because intimacy wasn't present. And everything I've described applies, of course, to sex, but also to intimacy across the board. So, you know, sure. All range, emotional, energetic. So I'd been working on this for years and years and years. I'd worked on this with coaches, I'd worked on this with counselors, I'd worked on this with like embodiment practitioners, men's work practitioners, and Ben and I, for the last probably four years, I've worked with some incredible world class teachers in this art we would call sacred yoga. Sacred yoga is like kind of a two body. You, an easy way to think about it might be like tantric practice and they've done amazing work with us, like so many breakthroughs. But still there was this part of me that was like really reticent to be let out. There was like a part of my ferocity as a man and a sexual being was still held and caged. Is this tracking so far? Am I making sense? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Definitely tracks. So, we were down in Costa Rica. We were working with a man named Tito Juanito, who is the father, the, the lineage's father of the medicine that we drink. He's from this place in Columbia. You got to take like a boat up the river to get there. He's trained all of the people at Rhythmia, which is where we work and where we, we bring people. He's like really the guardian of the lineage and we are so, so, so fortunate to get to work with this guy. It's just like an unbelievable honor and gift. And he's, he's this. Just a random dude who's a nut job, he's hilarious, he's super reverent for creation and totally irreverent and he's always laughing and yeah, he's a real goober. And so this was the first time we were ever drinking with him and we'd been told like it's a very powerful experience and I was like, yeah, I've drunk a fair bit, we'll see. And so what happened was I drank this medicine and typically you drink the medicine, you sit for about two hours, they serve the second cup and then the night starts to pick up. And with him, I drank that first cup and pretty quickly, the, the whole, the Maloka, the sacred space started to get like noisy and loud and you can hear people maybe purging or some people are laughing and a woman next to me was talking in Russian, Russian I think, kind of driving me nuts. I was like, Oh God, the space cadet next to me won't shut up. And so I went outside to the hammocks. That they're on property, you can, you can go and sit in these hammocks, which is beautiful to look at the stars, you know, in the middle of the night. And I sat there. And as I sat there, my sexuality kind of like took a hold of me in a way that I pretty much never allowed it. You know, I always had control over this part of me and it was like, there was no controlling this. I was just swept away in like the fire of, of sexuality turn on. And I was, you know, moving around in my mind, like performing acrobatic sexual acts on this hammock. And and this one of the medicine team, you're very held at this place. One of the medicine team came up to me and said brother, breathe, breathe, calm down, breathe. She's kind of bringing me down because my energy was very high. And of course I'm like, who's this woman interrupting my sex? It was kind of like, what are you doing here? You're not meant to be here. Get out of here. But. She did that she brought me she laid me down on the grass and then she asked me my name and she said I'll be right back and she left and then boom I was swept right back into it and I was so like I guess we could call it unconsciously in this experience that it wasn't until I didn't kind of come back into the conscious moment until someone said Adam pull up your pants. Pants were down and I'm like, who knows what I'm doing rolling around on the grass. And in that moment, all of the shame that I had, all of the shame that like these sort of perfectionistic, hold this stuff in check was designed to never have me have to experience came to the surface. Yeah. Boom. Oh my God, I'm that guy. I'm the very guy that I've spent 35, whatever years of my life slaying. Making sure he never comes out, castrating him so he can't be present. Yeah. And, and so I was like ashamed and they walked me, one of my friends who works there, walked me and said, he was very, very good with me. He said, you know, you're, you're doing great work. I love you. I am your friend. You don't have to worry. You're doing great. Of course, I'm very tender at this point because I've just smacked the wall of my shame and he's sharing this with me. And as he is. The fascinating thing is I can feel that turn on pulling at me like a siren and I'm trying to listen to him, but I'm also being swept back away and I'm like, frig, what's going to happen next? I don't know. It's very scary. And so over, over that night, like I, I kept asking for help. I kept getting help. You know, I really worked with this and, and it was really a practice in me learning how to like, and I've been working with this. over the months since. This probably happened maybe seven, eight months ago. And the work is often like, okay, the first step was to let that animal out of the cage. And like, there was nothing I was going to be able to do to control it. You know, it's like, well, put a leash on him and walk. No, no, no, no. I was so atrophied in my ability to be with this part of myself. There was no leashing. Just sort of like, Oh, we'll take the dam away from the Niagara falls for a little bit. And no, it's going to cause some havoc at first over time, learning to calibrate this part of myself. So it can be existent without being like neutered and dead on arrival or causing all the problems that it was causing. Yeah. So I'm going to start to wind this down here, the, the potency of that experience, I could have created that kind of. And I had been edging towards that through like my work with our teachers, through my work with my coach. I worked with her counselors, stuff like that. But there's this saying that you can get anywhere with a series of steps, but sometimes you have to cross a chasm and you can't get across the chasm in two steps. So that was where the gift in that case of ayahuasca really supported me because it really like, yeah, all right, buddy, you got to jump. That's the only way to deal with this.

Jason Frazell: 26:33

Yeah, and by jumping, you end up rolling around in the grass with your pants down. Yes, highly recommended. Highly recommended. So Adam, what has been the impact, you're a married guy, what's been the impact for both you and for your wife getting to have that experience and to move towards To move towards that, that has to be a monumental impact. And I would imagine any man out there listening, probably like I'm listening and I'm like, Oh man, so much of that resonates for me and the way you're raised and just all those different things. What's been the impact for you living in this world now, since going through that experience?

Adam Quiney: 27:11

Yeah, it's been like, well, the first thing is there's been like some really interesting parts Peripheral that these are like that almost like the icing on the cake, but like mm hmm after that I noticed I started getting checked out way more because that part of me checked out. Huh. Yeah, which was kind of confronting I was like, oh, I don't yeah sure what to do with this. These are women. Yeah, so so there was like learning how to like Allow this part of me to be alive, but then to be responsible and clean and an integrity around it. Because what I want to do is bring all of this to my woman. And at first, as is always the case, when we unlock something new like this, we were not, or at least I'm not very good at being clean and responsible with it. So my energy was probably pretty messy and a bit sloppy and unclean. And then what that then allowed now the impact is it's opened the gate to start to bring all of this to bear and to be focused on my woman. Who I love very much and to allow like the fire of our sexuality to exist between the two of us, whereas historically, I think what I was really doing was like killing the part of me that had any interest in other women so that I was totally committed to my woman. But the impact of that was that there was, there was nothing there. I was drawing desiccated. So it's really like a wellspring between us and it's kind of. It's like it's, we always had you know, a couple of great cars, but now it's filled our tanks with gas, and we can go a lot further in our work together. All of our sacred intimacy practice and stuff has a lot more ground to like, chew into and to, to move forward and stuff.

Jason Frazell: 28:48

Ah, that's beautiful. Thanks, Adam, thanks for, thanks for sharing that, thanks for the vulnerability, there's a lot in there. I think this says a lot about your character and who you are, which is one of the many reasons where you're back on is I'm like, whatever Adam's going to bring is going to be juicy. There's not, there's going to be, there's things that we just discussed there that have never been discussed in over 200 episodes here. And I love it. So thank you for sharing your experience. I'd love to hear maybe some anecdotal. What have some other what have you seen other people go through because I'm sure everybody everybody has I mean I think I would assert that almost everybody has what you just said. We all have something like that inside of us men women Non binary doesn't really matter. There's everybody's got something around sex and sexuality Normal, what are some other topics that people have breakthroughs around?

Adam Quiney: 29:37

Excuse me. So one of the things we always do, I teach plant integration classes. And the intention is that in between there's four nights of drinking ceremony. And then there's breathwork on either side of those. In between those four nights, I teach a class called plant integration. Intention being to help people find their footing and understand like where they are in their process. And really, I believe in my heart, to, to be reminded they're doing a great job. Because we, we are like, oh, I'm doing it wrong. I'm screwing this up. It's not true at all, but that's what we do. And then that, that story takes over and then sure enough, we don't get what we want. So in those classes, one of the things we always ask is like, who's feeling angry? Who's feeling sad? We go through a list. Who's feeling anxious? Who's feeling scared? Who's feeling blah? Who's feeling blah? And people put up their hands and they're like, In the moment, they're usually disempowered by that fact. They're glad that they can out themselves, but they're like, Oh, yeah, here, here I am angry with these other 12 people. This program sucks. Oh, I feel sad. I feel scared. I'm not doing it right. I'm doing it wrong. And what, what this medicine does, just like good coaching does, is it's, it's not making us feel angry or sad. We have felt angry and sad for decades. And what we have is a story of feeling that way is wrong, right? And then we push that down below the surface of our consciousness so we don't have to be conscious of the fact that we feel that way. And then we drink, we eat, we do all this sort of stuff. And so this medicine and good coaching is bringing it up to the surface of our consciousness so that we can actually heal it for the first time. So for the first time in 20, years, however long, we're holding the thing. That has always been there. And yeah, first we're like, I'm doing it wrong. I shouldn't feel this way. But it's like, no, you were doing profound work. So to your question, I often see people like transform their relationship to like part of the abundance of their emotional state. So maybe they, that's beautiful. You know, told they always had to be joyful. And so they could be angry and sad. And now they have access to that part of their state. It's like, Oh my God, there's so much freedom available in that. So that's a really big one. And there's one other I'd like to share, but I want to give you a chance to get a word in it. No,

Jason Frazell: 31:49

no, I like to, no, I think that's, that's beautiful. That like I, I stand for, and I think most coaches that we know, we stand for people to be themselves. And Like I think you and I are aligned on this Is that the best version of us is the true us out in the world and the true us is never all joyful or all angry There's and I don't even call it light and dark. It's just like being our Our best and most enlightened version is all of us together. And then like you said It's then, doing what you did, how do I channel this thing into the things that I love that I know are going to be an integrity? Because there's, I think most of the problems in the world are from people channeling those things into things that are out of integrity for them. And so, yeah, just beautiful.

Adam Quiney: 32:36

Continue. So then, the, the other thing that's really shifted for me was All my life I've, I've had like, I guess we could call it struggles with like addiction of various sorts. So when I was young, it was pot and that one took forever to release. Took me many, many years and that was sort of like the, the closest I, I picked pot up. At the youngest age, and it was attached again to my sexuality that was developing, so of course it's going to be very sticky. But then like I had like an awkward, challenging relationship with alcohol, which looked like a sawtooth wave. I'd like, drink a bit, drink a bit more, drink a bit more, oh my god I'm drinking all the time. Stop. And then a little bit of break, and then repeat. That's the way that looked. And likewise with food, I have, I have slash had a real sweet tooth, and I would really like. You know, I, I, I, I always played like a lot of sports. In part to manage the, the glutton that I was. So it was like, as long as I like get out and run enough, then I can kind of deal with the fact that I'm eating three bowls of granola as a snack. It's just like crazy. I

Jason Frazell: 33:41

found out. Hold on a minute, Adam. I have to pause you for a minute. You're a glutton for sweets. And then you said three bowls of granola. I'm like, People are like, I eat a whole chocolate cake or, or, you know, like, you're like three bowls of granola. That is the, it's all in perspective. I love that. That's a great example.

Adam Quiney: 33:59

You got to look at like the calories in granola. It's crazy. Totally. It's like, it is crazy. Calories. I was like, it is clustered

Jason Frazell: 34:06

grains. You're like, you're like, I'm not eating like a whole pound of M& Ms or Skittles. It's just granola, but it's still a lot of calories. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Adam Quiney: 34:13

Yeah. So anyhow most recently I was. I've been doing work around this and one of the things that the medicine often brings me, she brings us just like, here's the experience you need to be set free. And, and more particularly, it's like, here's the experience you spend most of your time avoiding. And so that can be frustrating. We'll sit and drink the medicine and nothing happens and we're bored. And it's like, yo, that's your medicine. You avoid just sitting in stillness. You have no capacity to just be. And so she often brings that to me so I can run fast. And over maybe the last two months or so, I've been really sitting with like that and The beautiful thing about this medicine is she, the spirit of the medicine, Mother Ayahuasca we call her, you can ask her for support. You can be like, Hey, what's going on? And so I was sitting there, I asked her, what's going on? She said, you're, you're slowly opening and you're impatient with your tempo. Like you want to go faster, but this is the speed at which you're comfortable. You're actually willing to open. I was like, Oh, okay. That's interesting. And so I slowed down and I sat, and as I started to like, slow down and not let go of my desire for the experience to be something else, what I started to feel was like, sadness. And then as I started to feel that, really profound heartbreak. And, I'm not gonna go too much into the details of how this worked, but as I like, continued to sit with that and let myself feel the immensity of the heartbreak I was feeling, what I saw was, oh wow, I use food to not have to feel this way. The End. And so the move there, that the incredible transformation is to like, if I can let myself feel heartbroken, which is again, just part of being a human. If you look into the world, it's a heartbreaking place. It's not hard. Yeah. If I can let myself feel that, then never again do I have to manage it. And I'll tell you, the last two months have been so different because I, I have fruit in my fridge and I, I don't really binge. I eat like a single piece of chocolate for dessert at night, rather than crushing a bag of M& Ms. I haven't drunk for two months and it's not been really like. I've not been forcing it or like bending my elbow to like create some structure to make sure I don't like, all of that stuff has kind of fallen away and it exists as a choice. I went away with my friends for a annual weekend. I chose to drink that trip. But other than that, it's just like, Those cravings have lost so much of their power. And so that's like a fascinating kind of way that some of this work can end up healing us.

Jason Frazell: 36:50

Yeah. I've, I've read that, that sometimes people will, we'll do it as part of their overcoming addiction of some type, like actual chemical addiction, because a lot of that stems from what you just said. It actually stems from an emotional state that you're, you're masking. Yeah. So Adam, let's talk about resources. education, people that are interested, maybe they're not ready to go do it yet, or they're wondering, well, like, let's, I'm going to leave the, throw this back over to you. What are some things that you think people should know that you get asked about? Because the, you, you actually take people on trips, you enroll people in this, I'm sure they have questions. What are some things that you get asked or that you think people should know about as they may be considering doing a plant journey at some point? Yeah,

Adam Quiney: 37:39

I think it's really important to recognize there's a shadow side to this work. And, and our shadow is like any time our ego gets the best of us, basically, and what our ego's job to do is to fear the unknown and keep us here in what's safe. And so the way that works in plant medicine is like people get into this belief like I don't need more support. I've drunk medicine 20, 30, 40, however many times I'm ready to start serving other people. And then, and then what that presents is this like compelling opportunity. Like, you don't have to leave your neighborhood, and you can get the gift of this medicine. And, you don't have to listen to the bullshit, like spirituality, and like the lineage, and the talks that the shamans will provide. You don't have to do any of that. It's kind of like a shortcut, right? And it requires you leaving your Western context a little bit less, and I think it's really important. in approaching this medicine that we relate to it as a spiritual medicine, which again, that's two contexts that we don't have in the West, right? Yeah, totally. And a spiritual one.

Jason Frazell: 38:42

Well, Americans, Indian, Native American, Native Americans, Indians definitely had the concept of spiritual medicine. Yes.

Adam Quiney: 38:49

Yeah, absolutely. And so I think like, it's really important to consider that like the stuff that we would kind of by default discard. Or assume doesn't have value actually is super super super important and like whenever you're gonna find someone you want to know like what's the lineage of this medicine? What's the lineage of the person that's serving it? Are they trained and ultimately in your heart? Does this feel good? And and those are like super important questions to ask and I'll say like the place We bring people Rhythmia in Costa Rica We really like because they've done the impossible which is jump through you don't even know how many hoops To get licensed federally by the Costa Rican government. So there's no one else in the world where medically someone is licensed this way to serve this kind of medicine, which is just such a gift. And so on the more expensive side, but what I love about their work is that they've surrounded that, that process, that medicine with like so much safety and security and support and healing so that you really have a pristine space in which to do your medicine. And I would say to anyone, like, make sure it's a pristine space. Like, are you

Jason Frazell: 39:57

cared for? Yeah. Yeah. Well, that was going to be my, my next question was going to be, this is obviously a fast growing space in terms of the marketing and things. What are things that people need to be aware of about the space overall? Maybe maybe some of the downsides. Mm hmm,

Adam Quiney: 40:16

yeah, like, one of the things, one of the things that I see neglected the most, and this even exists kind of in the Indigenous cultures, because in the Indigenous culture you drink the medicine and then you stay in your tribe, and so you're still in the context, whereas that's not how it works in the West, in the West we drink the medicine then we go back home. And we return to the me shaped hole that I left. So that energetic shape I was before I left, that's there waiting for me. And of course that's going to nudge me out and back to the way I was before I, before I left. And so I think integration is really, really important and off kind of stepped over because what happens is people go, they spend a week doing this work and they have such a life changing experience. They're left in the belief. Nothing's going to take this away from me. And that's reinforced sometimes by the people that hold that space. And in fact, like, yeah, there's some truth to that, but it's also important to recognize how powerful you are all the time and that you shaped the world that you left and that that world is now going to shape you. That's constantly happening. We're shaping the world around us and it's shaping. Sure. And and so it can be really valuable to like Make sure you talk when you go and do this work to like talk about what you can do to serve your integrative process to reach out to practitioners that do this kind of work so that you can like have someone to talk and Bar none in my experience the very best support you can have is working with the coach And so like, I love that I have a coach because I come back and I share with her all of this stuff because it's a little bit embarrassing sometimes. So one, there's just someone that can listen to me very well. And then two, she can help me like see the connections between what I did there and what, what I've been working on in my life and then help me sort of weave that into the tapestry of my life going forward. And that just makes this work so much richer because, sorry, I just realized one last thought here. Yeah. Because. One of my teachers says you can drink all the medicine in the jungle and if you don't put it into effect in your life, you're wasting your time. It's not worth it. Just

Jason Frazell: 42:17

like therapy and coaching and any personal development, professional development anybody's ever done. Insights without action. Who cares? Yes, exactly.

Adam Quiney: 42:25

It's neat. Who cares?

Jason Frazell: 42:27

It's, it's really fun to, to, it's it's like, no, what's like knowing is half the battle. Like knowing, knowing, and my experience with knowing with professional and personal development in an Easter way, shape or form knowing is about 10 percent of the battle. You're like, yep, I know that thing about me. Like your thing is like, I know that I have this deep sexual thing that's being repressed. Okay, great. So you know that, Adam. Wonderful. And now you go back to doing what you're doing all the other time. Who cares? Like, then you just get My experience is, and maybe this is a good place to wrap for today, is that if you do this work, but you don't actually do anything with it, like, tangibly, or create different ways of being, is it's actually more painful. Because then you're just aware of some other crap that's just maybe you don't like about yourself or that stinks and then you start to know, well, well, I could do that thing that can make me better or make my wife or make my marriage better or my business better or make more money, whatever you care about. But now I know it's there, but I'm still not doing anything about it versus it. So I mean, let's be ignorance is bliss is there for a reason. Yes. It's wonderful to have blind spots and we all have them, all of us have them, is you're like, yeah, I don't really need to know about it. But like, once you know about it, then you're like, well, I know about it, but I'm still not going to do anything about it. You're like, Ooh, that's a painful experience. Huh.

Adam Quiney: 43:35

I've just seen how I'm falling short over and over. In Zen they have a

Jason Frazell: 43:39

saying. Now I just get to judge myself even more harshly because I'm not doing anything about the thing I know that's a shortcoming of mine.

Adam Quiney: 43:44

Yeah. Yeah. In Zen they have a saying regarding the journey of consciousness, they say better not to start. But once started better to finish and of course there is no finishing but like what they're really saying is like once you're in this you're in it you're not gonna stop halfway you're better

Jason Frazell: 43:59

yeah no no yeah well adam let's let's we'll obviously put in the show notes resources i know you write a lot about this and your wife does as well what are some other thought leaders that you really respect in this space and we can put a link in the show notes where people want to do some reading because i want to make sure that it for those interested in this topic which i would assume if you're listening to this still you're interested, who are some reliable and trusted sources that people could go and read more about this if they're thinking about exploring it? Exploring the idea of plant medicine, taking a journey, etc.

Adam Quiney: 44:30

Yeah, so a lot of like Carlos Castaneda's writing is, is very, very, very good. It's not usually, I don't think he, he worked more with mescaline, mescalito as he called it. But he, he, his writing has a lot of like, you'll get an understanding of the grounding. of plant medicine in general through his writing. Jerry Powell, who is the CEO of Rhythmia, the founder of Rhythmia has an incredible story and is like very deep in the medicine himself. And I really recommend people go and check out his work. You can even just look up like Jerry with a G G E R R Y story, maybe put ayahuasca there. Yeah. There's like Countless videos of him talking about it. It's, it's such a good story. And then some other people that are like, great. Another one would be John Jacob Mubarak, JJ Mubarak, who is a he's also a coach. He does a lot of work with Michael Beckwith and also works at Rhythmia. And he's, he's very, very deep in his work. And finally, I would suggest people follow along with Michael Beckwith, who's not traditionally like related to plant medicine, although does do work with it, but he's just like, One of the things I find it can be helpful is to look at this stuff from many, many different facets. And even if we don't think we're learning about plant medicine, you actually are because what you're learning about in plant medicine is your soul. So yeah. The last person. Yeah.

Jason Frazell: 45:48

Amazing. Adam. Last thing you, you and Bay. Lead these retreats. And you mentioned you have one in January. How often do you do them? How often do you, do you like to take people to Costa Rica? And do you recommend that people start coming? Like, I guess my last question about this as a. potential consumer of the service. This is a service in a way, right? It's a service, just like you would hire a coach or hire a therapist. How do you know when it's your time? Like, how do you, like, how do you know, like, Hey, I want to do this once. And then you do it. Do you, is there any way to recommend people like you should do it every so often? Is it more, how do you internally know that it's your time? It's kind of like, how do I know I should hire a coach? How do I know if I should go see a therapist? Because some therapists will say, Hey, you're doing great. I don't know that there's a lot to work on. I would assert that this is probably an example where there's always more. There's always more to chip away at and uncover.

Adam Quiney: 46:44

I have two answers. So the first one is, is ultimately what these processes all do is they help us come to a place of trusting our intuition better and better and better, and better being able to discern our intuition from our fear, because that can be tough at first, like, Oh yeah, my intuition is telling me to. Yeah. Yeah. Stop working with this coach. Yeah. Because your coach is helping you confront what's scary and that's, that's actually your fear tricking you. But yeah, so they help us do that. And so the best ultimately, like it's, it's, it's a big sounding word, but I think it's the right one. It's kind of holographic. Meaning the best way often is just to like trust you feeling called into it. So there'll be people listening to this or like, man, this is really resonating for me and I really think maybe that's what I want to do. That's you being called into it. And so one, you can trust that, you can work with that. And then two, this answer is not mine, but a teacher of mine, a man named Mitra, the way he was describing it is anytime you go into the world and do like, you know, a silent retreat maybe a coaching session, webinar thing, ayahuasca, iboga, any of these other plant medicines, whatever it is, you'll go away and you'll have this experience. And at that end of that experience, you'll be vibrating at a very high level. And, and you'll come back to life and you'll feel your life start to kind of rise up to meet this new vibration. And there comes this point over time where you start to peak, and then you can start to feel yourself moving back on the down slope. And this of course requires a bit of consciousness, but he says when you start to feel that down slope, that's when it's time to book the next thing. So that you can kind of continue to engage in more and more support and, and we do the best we can, you know, maybe it, maybe it takes like a cycle where you spent two years in that downslope before you realized, Oh crap, I really missed it by two years. That's okay. You're learning to find yourself in your process. So that's another way to kind of track this stuff.

Jason Frazell: 48:39

Beautiful. All this is going to be in the show notes. Adam, I want to thank you so much for having you on again. We were planning to maybe talk about some other things, but then as, as, as it usually goes, like here we are at 50 minutes. Brilliant. I personally learned a ton. Hope you enjoyed sharing with us. Really appreciate your vulnerability as always. Have you back on again soon. Everything's going to be in the show notes. Adam, any last parting thoughts for the

Adam Quiney: 49:04

audience? Yeah, it really simply like the longer I'm in this work, the more I learned you're doing great. And that sounds trite. We have to look to see that truth, but it's actually true if we, if we're willing to look for it. And so I just want to acknowledge every single one of your audience members, like way to go listen to this podcast. And like all of it is leading to whatever's next that leads to whatever healing there is to do. And so like just way to go you, way to go us. Yeah, we're doing. Yeah.

Jason Frazell: 49:32

What is, what is the Buddhist? It's like the path to enlightenment. Enlightenment starts with admitting we know nothing. Is that what it is? I love that. You're like all the expertise, all the things in the world that we can learn from all the coaches, teachers, consultants, therapists, all the gazillion ways we can learn all these things. Then you go, oh yeah. I actually don't really know anything

Adam Quiney: 49:54

still. Oh, freedom,

Jason Frazell: 49:57

freedom, Adam. My brother, it's always good to have you on. Thank you so much for your time, your wisdom, and we'll see you again soon. Thank you, Jason.

Adam Quiney: 50:04

Thanks, Adam.

50:06

Thanks for listening to another episode of Talking to Cool People with Jason Frizzell. If you enjoyed today's episode, please tell your friends, follow us on Instagram and Facebook, and give us a shout out, or take a moment to leave a review on iTunes. If something from today's episode piqued your interest and you'd like to connect, email us at podcast at jasonfrizzell. com. We love hearing from our listeners because you're cool people too.