The Full Spectrum of Being Alive

Maybe you’ve noticed that when it comes to sharing things with you, I don’t exactly stay in my lane.

I have lanes, plural. Some of them are clearly marked. Others are scenic routes. (A few are ruddy dirt roads that looked interesting at the time.)

It always amuses me that I’ll get a little surge of subscribers when I write about life in Portugal. Or a bump when I explore the bright side and shadow side of psychedelics (which I discuss later in this piece).

Or a spike when I wade into the thorns of U.S. politics.

People hop on board for one particular road. And then they realize I’m not building a house on that road.

Some stay. Some quietly exit at the next turn. (If you appreciate my range and stick around, thank you!)

Foremost, I am an emotions therapist practicing the Emotional Liberation method. That’s my home base.

For me, Microdosing and Emotional Liberation is never about escape. It’s about creating just enough openness for what’s true to come forward, gently and honestly.

I care deeply about the architecture of the human heart (and helping people resolve the anguish that often lives there).

So yes, I happily spend precious words unpacking avoidance patterns or the difference between pain and suffering.

But here’s the thing:

None of us actually lives inside an emotion laboratory.

We do not wake up, resolve a childhood wound and retire into enlightened stillness.

NO! We want to try out our sturdier edges.

We want to test our courage in the wild.

We want to see how our new insight holds up in real conversations, real love, real risk.

We want to bring our healing revelations into motion.

Living a life worth living requires getting out into the open. It means risking new experiences.

Before I was guiding people through emotional terrain, I was a reporter (remember NPR?) – I told human interest stories. I learned to look for the heartbeat inside ordinary moments.

That instinct never left.

So no, I don’t stay in one lane. Because life doesn’t. And I hope you’ll stay with me.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be revisiting a few reader favorites from the archive, pieces that continue to resonate and feel surprisingly timely.

And this week, I’m bringing back one of the more talked-about columns, a piece exploring demons, entities, and psychedelic plant medicine.

Read on ….

Demons, or spirit entities, are a very real thing in the beliefs of indigenous cultures. And one of the beliefs is that whenever a person is in a state of altered consciousness, a portal can open for these malicious entities to “possess” a person – and maybe hang around long after. Having said that, we know that when a person takes psychedelics they are entering an altered state of consciousness.

Our Western culture has gone gaga over psychedelic plant medicines, maybe you’ve noticed? There’s been a cascade of discussion and hype about using plants, such as psilocybin mushrooms, ayahuasca, peyote and ibogaine, for healing. All of these psychedelic plant medicines have a revered history in indigenous communities so Westerners, when using them, often lean heavily on the rituals and traditions that these native cultures have cultivated.

Of course, in regard to this, there’s a lot of talk about cultural appropriation and the disregard of the sacred cultural positioning of these medicines – but that’s a discussion for another day as it’s outside the scope of this blog.

I recently spent a week at a retreat in Europe studying with a skilled medicine woman (she’s white and originally from Texas) in a facilitator training for those who guide psychedelic journeys.

My current practice involves emotional and trauma release work optionally with microdosing psilocybin but I get requests for full-on psychedelic healing journeys – and I was drawn to this woman’s work to learn about indigenous approaches.

Because my own work is rooted in Microdosing and Emotional Liberation, I’m deeply interested in understanding the other frameworks people bring to healing with these medicines.

Part of the facilitator’s charm is her straightforward honesty including how others experience her work (which gets rave reviews by the way). But she candidly shared with us in a group discussion that one client called her (indigenous-inspired) methods “hocus-pocus,” referring to the mystical words, music and actions she employs to clear and hold space.

This includes calling in the safety and guidance of the four directions – air, fire, water, earth; playing entrancing beats with hand drums and rattles, and indigenous chanting and singing. Also included are smudging agents like the ubiquitous sage and palo santo for clearing negative energies, an enduring practice during our time together.

The overarching reason for these various rituals is about what’s widely referred to as creating and holding space. The concept of “holding space” and how to do it is pivotal for anyone offering healing and ceremonial work, including myself. It’s vital that my participants, students, and clients feel safe with me and the environment they’re in and accept me as a trusted guide.

As a practitioner who supports others in emotional and trauma release, what I do is in stark contrast to indigenous ways of holding space. My methods are rooted in yogic traditions that tap into our invisible inner life and draw on expressive movement, mudras, mantras, meditation and breath work and, optionally, plant medicine – serving to strengthen our relationship with intuition and soul.

In my paradigm, the “demons” my participants work with are their own difficult emotions tethered to unhealed trauma.

So encountering a practitioner deeply rooted in indigenous tradition and ritual was a fascinating and markedly unique experience. Especially when an overarching focus of the indigenous in navigating psychedelic journeys is about establishing a protective barrier to keep out negative entities. Among the other energy clearing and protecting techniques mentioned earlier, mirrors are covered because they’re seen as portals through which malicious entities can enter.

There is robust debate around whether these experiences of entities are actually unprocessed trauma alchemizing itself as demons or monsters. Power of suggestion comes into the discussion because if a facilitator, whether it’s my local shamanic practitioner or a native shaman in Peru, is immersing participants in a paradigm that includes the specter of unfriendly entities, a person may mirror that perspective in their psychedelic experiences.

Reports of encounters with malevolent entities are not infrequent. Jules Evans, who writes the Substack blog, Ecstatic Integration, points out in a piece called: ‘Encounters with negative entities’

“It is quite common to encounter ‘entities’ — what other cultures would call spirits, angels or demons — while on psychedelics. A 2015 survey of 800 psychonauts by Fountonglou and Freimoser found that 46% of ayahuasca-takers reported ‘encounters with suprahuman or spiritual entities’, as well as 36% of DMT-takers, 17% of LSD takers, and 12% of psilocybin-takers.”

Jules also notes that one of his readers told him that, “I think shamans plant this idea with you when you arrive [in the Amazon]. They can help you expel your demons and you feel satisfied.”

What complicates our understanding is that the field of trauma is an emergent science. We now know, for instance, that if a person experiences unspeakable traumatic events – often in childhood but just as well in war or a medical emergency – the brain, in an act of remarkable biological mental resilience, will disconnect the person from their body. You can imagine that if this dissociation arose during a psychedelic journey in the context of indigenous beliefs, the detachment a person feels from their body might easily be interpreted as a hijacking by unfriendly entities.

It’s intriguing to recognize how trauma and its shadow elements might manifest in the deep recesses of our minds – influenced by our conditioning. For example, in the charismatic Christian religions, it’s important for believers to have personal encounters with the Holy Spirit, which often entails active movement and speaking in tongues. In Western therapy, there’s “inner child work” where one visualizes and connects with the younger version of oneself. Pairing either of these concepts with a psychedelic journey setting that supports the belief of malevolent entities could be the catalyst that brings monsters to life.

In my emotional release work, participants are guided to go toward the painful emotions that they have fought so desperately to keep at bay. Indeed, it can be freaking scary to go into the darkest parts of ourselves – but that’s where relief and healing reside. And one might speculate that, particularly in psychedelic journeys, if we don’t go toward the dark, the dark comes to us – in whatever form we subconsciously will it.

In the end, no matter how one meets the disparate parts of one’s shadow, these parts simply want to be seen. And regardless how these dark parts of ourselves manifest I believe they are seeking the light so we can process and release them to restore the balance we so desperately seek.

What have been your experiences in this realm whether it’s been via psychedelics or otherwise? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

With Love,

Becca

P.S. If you’re curious how this looks in practice, my next Elevation Ceremony is in March 2026. These guided experiences support emotional release and insight, with the optional use of cannabis or psilocybin microdosing to deepen and amplify your process. You can reserve your place here.