Nicole: Welcome to Modern Anarchy, the podcast exploring sex, relationships, and liberation. I'm your host, Nicole. On today's episode, we have Karolina. Join us for a conversation about reconnecting with our healing wisdom.
Together, we talk about intentional drug use, getting curious about our triggers and being present enough to experience pleasure. Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to Modern Anarchy. I am so delighted to have all of you pleasure activists from around the world. Tuning in for another episode each Wednesday.
My name is Nicole. I am a sex and relationship psychotherapist with training in psychedelic integration therapy, and I am also the founder of The Pleasure Practice, supporting individuals in crafting expansive sex lives and intimate relationships. Dear Listener. Happy New Year! Hello, hello, 2025! How exciting!
I am dearly looking forward to 2025. This is the year that I finish up my schooling. I become Dr. Nicole. What a crazy, crazy journey it has been. And so, I am really excited to be hitting that finish line and to be celebrating that big milestone with you this year, dear listener. And I just want to say thank you.
Hi, thank you for tuning in. Thank you for coming back each week. 2024 was a big year of growth for the podcast and it is truly all of you dear listeners out there that are growing this show and making it what it is and so I just want to say thank you. I really hope that 2025 is a year of magic, and play, and pleasure, and shedding anything that no longer supports you.
Dear listener, that is my intention for this year, is embodiment and shedding. Leave me behind. Any fear and doubt to step into the most powerful version of myself. And I hope that you are feeling your power. You're feeling your pleasure because this year with the podcast, we are definitely living into that wild, wild women archetype for sure.
Right? That's the thing. It's the intro song to this podcast, and I get to shed being in school. I no longer have to worry about that, uh, come this upcoming summer. And it is so exciting to be able to share more of my authentic voice with you, dear listener, and to keep stepping deeper and deeper into my voice.
Wild embodiment. And I am so honored to have you as a part of that journey. I'm honored to have you tuning in each week. So thank you for riding out 2024 with me. And I look forward to sharing 2025 with you.
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Happy New Year. I'm so delighted to have you here and Let's tune in to today's episode. Well, then the 1st question I ask each guest is, how would you like to introduce yourself to the listeners? That's a very good question.
Dr. Karolina Mikos: They have so much so many hats. I wear. Well, I'm Karolina. I'm a medical doctor holistic practitioner.
I'm a dancer. Um, I do women's work now lately. Also been more involved in event organizing. I also do public speaking. So just a lot of hats that I wear, but I feel like my biggest passion is my work with psychedelics.
Nicole: Mm hmm. Such a joy to have you in this space.
Dr. Karolina Mikos: Thank you.
Nicole: Yeah. Tell me about the work.
Where did you know, where does the story start for you? Take us all the way back. Hmm.
Dr. Karolina Mikos: Oh, they could. Yeah. So let's actually talk about my psychedelic work because I think that's the work that I actually can kind of pinpoint where it started. Um, well, I, when I actually was in medical school. I read a book called mind over medicine, and that book actually changed the trajectory of my career, because it kind of blended the scientific method.
I've been involved in because I also used to be a chemist before I went to medical school. So that's a hot. Uh, but that book introduced me to. Spirituality in the context of science, because I've also been always very spiritual, but I thought they were just two completely different worlds that just do not want to talk to each other.
And they shouldn't talk to each other. But that book by a gynecologist, um, the, uh, Alyssa Rankin, she convinced my left brain about spirituality, that it's a thing. With a placebo effect. And so really diving deep in the placebo effect that really showed me that the power of our belief system and our mind is so powerful.
I just, yeah. So that kind of like snowballed into my curiosity about finding out more, how can I understand more of the power of our beliefs and our thoughts, our emotions, like how do they all connect and how can they be even measured? Cause there's of course now scientific ways we can measure that. And so I was very interested in holistic medicine at that point.
Uh, this was before my residency, and so I knew I did the whole traditional residency I did in my residence residency in internal medicine here in Chicago, actually, but I knew what that's like. Okay. This is great. I'm learning all the science, all the pharmaceutical ways we can heal patients, but there was always something missing.
And so, after practicing for 4 years, I actually did travel. I was doing travel medicine all over the country, California, Hawaii, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and so forth. I started burning out and there's something within me that started calling me to, Hey, remember that book, remember mind over medicine. Let's kind of dive into that a little bit.
Maybe it's time to transition into the scholastic medicine you've always wanted to do, or at least for these several years. And so it was during COVID that long story, very short, I ended up Going to Costa Rica, um, having a very powerful experience with ayahuasca and I came home just a changed person. It changed me and not just on the healing aspect, um, with my lifelong depression, but just meeting of life and understanding like, oh, my goodness, this is my path.
This is my holistic path. And so I started getting trained in holistic medicine, holistic methods, mind, body medicine, energy, medicine, epigenetics. What is trauma? What is, you know, what is somatization? How does our body hold all the information? It's not just with drugs that we heal ourselves because that's really just more of a temporary solution, right?
She's going to, like, get rid of the symptoms and, you know, maybe achieve some sort of remission, but it didn't it doesn't get to the core and so understanding that. Oh, my goodness. Trauma is so deeply rooted. Within our bodies within our energy fields, and yeah, I just started really getting trained in all sorts of modalities psychedelics.
Of course, we're such a prominent topic in my mind at that time, because I had this very deep experience. On a personal level. And then it wasn't until really just a few weeks later, since I thought, I'm like, okay, ayahuasca helped me. I'm sure it helps other people, which is great. You know, we're in this space with psychedelics.
I've done tons of psychedelics before recreationally back in my college days. I just never thought it would be helpful. So I thought it was just like a fluke, maybe just, just some of the happy and, you know, to have been. Really have such a deep impact on me, but within weeks, I ended up attending a psychedelic conference through Canada and the whole weekend, just my lab brain was so happy to see all the data, all the science that have been happening for the past decades, actually, especially the past decade, exponential growth in clinical trials and studies, and really resurfacing of these beautiful components compounds that have been used.
All over the globe for thousands of years, and we're just now in the Western medicine space, recognizing them again. And so it was kind of a no brainer. I'm like, okay, so all of these things just pointed like, okay, I got to quit doing Western medicine.
I have proof now that not only personal experience, but also data to back this up.
And so that's really how I started my whole journey of holistic and psychedelic medicine.
Nicole: Powerful, powerful. Thank you for sharing. Thank you. Yeah. And I just think about, you know, yeah, given the Western context, the war on drugs, all of the messaging, right? How powerful it is for someone within your credentialing as an MD to be able to speak about this, right?
Because we need that sort of power to work within the power structure that has had so many problematic, um, views on, you know, This medicine and drugs in general, right? So it's such a powerful space to have you speak about this with your credentialing.
Dr. Karolina Mikos: Thank you so much. And yeah, it's absolutely true because we had all these studies actually happening in the 50s and 60s, as we know, and then unfortunately, or fortunately, you know, everything happens for a reason.
So I'm sure even that point in our history was needed to kind of teach us now kind of what not to do, maybe, and how we can learn from those mistakes that were made in the 50s and 60s. But we already had so much data and so much healing potential. And it's almost a crime that we had that withheld for almost five decades, if not longer, you know, to like, to be in this war on drugs that clearly has never served anyone.
And it clearly doesn't work because there's always been underground stuff happening. And I don't mean just with psychedelics, of course, but all sorts of other illegal drug trafficking. We all know about that. And so, So it's time to look at a new paradigm, but how can we do better this time? What can we learn from those mistakes in the past and, and not condemn, you know, just because there's a schedule one narcotic right now that, you know, ayahuasca and DMT, psilocybin mushrooms are placed in the same exact category as heroin.
I mean, even cocaine, which we know is safe. Super highly addictive is not a good schedule on the schedule too, because there's some medical benefits, but, you know, to have these compounds that we know from thousands of years from indigenous cultures and to still have them classified with no medical, you know, use and
it's almost like, what are we even talking about?
Like, can we have a real conversation here?
Nicole: No. I know, which I appreciate the, uh, ways that's, uh, waking people up to go, Oh shit, maybe this system's fucked up. Yeah. You know, just to be like enough to rattle the cage of like, Oh, maybe we shouldn't trust them. No. Do not trust them.
Dr. Karolina Mikos: Yeah. Yeah, it's like, you can just, you know, gather your own information, make your own, you know, conclusions, but let's not fully blindly trust everything, you know, we have to really trust ourselves.
And that's what has been taken away from us to, I think, I mean, probably millennia, not even centuries. It's just do not trust your heart to trust the outside. And so these medicines are also reminding us, like, Hey, maybe there is something, like, there's an imbalance here. Like, I don't feel I can. You know, I don't resonate with what's happening and does that mean I'm wrong?
And that's actually my belief is that's why we have this mental health crisis, because we have been taught to stop listening to the inner voice to the inner questioning of, like, wait a minute. This doesn't feel right, but I'm being told that this is the right thing to do. So I must do it. And and that's that.
Discord that imbalance that happens between our, you know, our essence and the outside world and where we are right now. And I, I think, honestly, we're like, a very cool, awesome, pivotal place in history, you know, because so much things are so many things are changing and people are waking up to realizing, like, Yeah, wait a minute.
Like, sure. There's, you know, I, are these things for our best interest or really? Are we really, you know, what's the root cause of this? Is this all money? You know, when we really look at that.
Um, so we really have to question motives and just everything really. And just to start questioning that totally.
Nicole: Yeah. I appreciate coming back to that body somatic wisdom of feeling the disconnect there. And there's yeah. You know, as you were talking, I was immediately thinking of the Sunday scaries that people get like, Oh, I have to wake him and go to work on Monday and that dread that they feel in their body.
Yeah. That's saying something, right. You know, I think about the ways back in the past when, um, people literally died for us to have a five day work week, right? Like people died for us to have that. And now we're here sitting at this going, Seth, this still doesn't feel right, but yet you have to go, obviously.
So then just like that sort of expanded on multiple different ways. Just the system doesn't like allow you to stay connected to your pleasure and what feels authentic to you in that way. And so, yeah, I, um, appreciate training at sauna healing. They really talked about, um, psychedelics as non specific amplifiers that can really highlight the imbalances in your life.
Right. And so I think psychedelics have a powerful way of kind of like highlighting those when you turn up the volume.
Dr. Karolina Mikos: Absolutely. And I think that's actually what could be the scary part and why psychedelics are not for everyone. Um, I just wanted to put that out there because if we're not ready to face the shit, we're just going to resist it.
Keep fighting and like kick and scream. And we're still not going to allow the psychedelics to do their work really, because ultimately it's Still us, the psychedelics are tools, their medicines, they're not as magic pill that heals. Everything takes it all away. Yeah, it's a lot of inner work that we need to do.
Even when we approach psychedelics, even whether for the 1st time, or for the 100th time, we can't just have these experiences and just go on our merry way without making any change that will sustain us. That will sustain what feels good. Good to us. And like you mentioned, pleasure, like pleasure is our God given right on this planet.
And, you know, even just all these false belief systems that we've grown up that, you know, you need to suffer, you need to be a martyr, especially as a woman, you know, you need to give, give, give, and God forbid you receive, cause that makes you selfish. And just all of these things are just so not true and they're so imbalanced.
And I think that's what it is. It's just all of this. It's all bubbling up. It's all coming to the surface now. And are we willing to face the shit? Are we willing to face our shadow? And it's not even just being about, like, good or evil, but the shadow, so to speak, or just the, these people. Dark parts are really just parts that we rejected within ourselves.
Um, I also have some like basic training, training and IFS therapy, not a therapist by any means. But for those of you who do not know internal family systems, it's a model to therapeutic model based on parts. And so when we start looking at all of our parts within us, they're all valid. And even the dark ones, the, the, the crunchy ones, the ones that we really want to reject, and those are kind of like the dark parts that we just pretend they're not there.
We just want to shove under the rug. But once we embrace everything, especially those parts, we actually transmute them. And we, it's, they're actually sometimes not sometimes I feel like. They're there to be actually the greatest teachers once we transmute them is that the alchemy we alchemize those parts to actually embody more pleasure and embody more joy.
Nicole: Right? Yeah. And I definitely think about how pleasure specifically has so many. Cultural narratives right around that, that make it difficult for people to really embody that. And particularly, I think this is where I start to push on the IFS framework where it's like, uh, what about like the internalized homophobia part?
Like no one wants to claim that, right? Or the internalized racism part, like all these different pieces that are the system and how they get internalized in these voices. And so I think that, yeah, I mean, there's a lot of powerful work to do with confronting the parts of ourselves that we have shut off because of society.
And then Societal problematic parts too, right? Yeah. And being able to kind of really examine those when you're in that altered state of consciousness, where you've kind of turned off the default mode network, you're having all these other connections, you know, to unpack and re look at this, you know, situation, turning the jewel from different sides and seeing it.
Right. I mean, there's a lot of benefit in that sort of new perspective when you're in a community that is holding you there to kind of like foster those conversations afterwards. Right.
Dr. Karolina Mikos: Yeah, absolutely. I love what you said, community, because community is so important for healing, not just with psychedelics, but just in any context.
We're communal creatures. Biologically speaking, we need to be impacts. We travel as packs, right? Always. And so community is very important for the support part, whether we journey with anything really doesn't have to be a psychedelic journey about any rites of passage that we also, unfortunately, have been so disconnected in Western society.
Yeah, just really inviting all those parts, allowing ourselves to, to face them, like you even mentioned, like those parts that we don't want to like homophobia, racist parts, like, when did they come from, you know, there, there's a chance they, they have a story to tell, you know, we're not inherently bad.
There's a reason we were conditioned for specific ways. Maybe something happened to us. Having the courage to face those parts, it's like, why are they here? Do I actually truly believe in them or is this fear based
because as we know, a lot of these, you know, homophobia, fear, right? All of these things are based on fear.
And so once we understand our fear a little bit better, once we're able to lean into this fear, it has messages for us. It can teach us so much.
Nicole: Mm hmm. Yeah, I like to think about like sitting at a dinner table and maybe you're like the one sitting at the front of the table, you know, and you're watching all the parts kind of sit at the table.
You're like, okay, I'm gonna let you guys speak. You can talk to that one. But at the end of the day, I'm the one sitting at the table saying, I'm going to decide how I move forward with this. I heard all of you speak. Right? And so I think that's where I like the sort of parts framework as a sort of like mindfulness distancing.
Right? We can have these thoughts. We can have these different perspectives or parts, but at the end of the day, you're the person who's sitting at the table, getting to like, hear all of that reflect and then. Move forward from your value systems, right? I think that's a lot of what I see in my work with my clients is like, we can have all these thoughts, all of these parts here, and then people say, Oh, like I had that thought.
I feel so bad. That's not in congruence with my value system. And it's like your value system is being exemplified through the actions of how you respond to these thoughts, how you move forward, right? Like we all have those thoughts that is not within our control. It's how you act moving forward from that space.
Dr. Karolina Mikos: Absolutely. Yeah. I love that response is so different than react because so often, so we're in the stress response. We're constantly on the go and society, we know, you know, we have social media, we have notifications, we have emails, we have work, we have life, we have children, blah, blah, you know, this, the list goes on and we're constantly in the stress response, which means our brain constantly keeps releasing cortisol.
And when we are in that space, we're also not breathing. We're not breathing properly. And we're just constantly, uh, the same response from the stress response is actually the same one as fear and all of these kind of fearful emotions. And so once we're flooded with that, we react because we don't know how to respond.
And so the difference is once we give space, maybe with like a conscious deep breath, once we just kind of allow ourselves like, wait a minute, okay, I'm in this fight or flight response, fight or flight, or even freeze. A lot of us get the freeze response from trauma. And when we're in that space, we don't know how to respond.
And while we take that deep breath, while we remember to take the deep breath during this space, we actually send signals to our brain that it's safe to be here, that it's safe to kind of slow down. And the parasympathetic nervous system actually kicks in with the out breath. So the longer the out breath, the longer this.
Moment of break, right? Just giving our brain and our whole, all the cells in the body a break to be like, wait a minute. Okay. I don't need to react. How can I respond now? And so it gives us that space to, to really be more present and to make a different choice. And that's actually what triggers really do for us because I believe triggers, you know, we all get triggered by something and triggers are, are kind of like a reminder, like, Hey, okay, you're ready to.
To transmute this, but how are you going to respond now? Are you going to react based on how you always been reacting to this trigger? Or are you going to give yourself that space of maybe like, wait, let me, let me just pause, let me pause in this busy life and how can I respond differently?
Nicole: Totally. And again, I really appreciate coming from the body space.
That's so much of why you're here. Right. Oh man. It's just, uh, my whole training and. Psychotherapy and not a single class on the body. And I just, Oh, you know, because damn, we really messed up there. But like, which is why I like to talk about it in this podcast space, right? Because you have that moment, you get activated.
How can we come back to the body first before even continuing to run in the cognitive mind? Right? It's like, oh, like, there's so much benefit to like feeling, um, and being present with that feeling, which typically means it will, like, amplify a little bit more as you tune into it. Right? That's awesome. And then it comes back down as you give it that space and then to use the breath to be able to calm the brain.
I mean, ah, kills me that I never got any of that training in my school, but that's why I talk about it here. Right? That's what I talk about on the podcast.
Dr. Karolina Mikos: Absolutely. Yeah. Same here. We did zero training in medical school. The only thing I learned about bodies and the body parts and what cells and muscles and brain cells, you know, and then what drugs, uh, you know, I respond to what receptors and that's, yeah, that like after a while it gets a bit boring.
It's going to like, that's it. That's all we are. We're just this machine with like just this chemical factory and. No, like there's so much more, of course, there's chemistry, of course, brain chemistry, but we can actually view the ones that actually can. The only thing we have control, by the way, is nothing outside, just what's happening in our body.
Nicole: Right.
Dr. Karolina Mikos: So, so we do actually have control over our breath and that is how we change the brain chemistry. Of course, the chemistry will continue, but we don't have to be slaves to it. We can actually be the masters of our own blood chemistry and body chemistry.
Nicole: Mm hmm. And speaking about drugs. Talk to me about coffee.
Talk to me about caffeine. How does that impact this? I'm curious, doctor.
Dr. Karolina Mikos: Oh, this is such a good question because I have a very interesting relationship with caffeine. Yeah. Um, I actually was not a caffeine drinker until I went to med school and it was almost kind of like a societal belief because I like coffee.
Like, you know, frappuccino here and there, you know, and then I'd have an espresso. Once in a while. Um, but when I went to med school, there was something in my brain. That's like, Hey, you're going to be studying a million hours a day. You need coffee. Exactly. So I got myself addicted to coffee since then. Um, but you know, I actually have been, um.
So it's been a while that I've been drinking coffee every day, but there are times that I really want to abstain from coffee. And I do recognize the actual physical addiction because even if I miss 1 day, I'd get a withdrawal migraine because I've been suffering from migraine. So it's not even a headache.
It's like a legit, like, incapacitating migraine. But then I, when I was actually in India a few months ago, we were told this is like a fiend free, uh, journey. And so I'm like, you know what, instead of fiending for coffee every day, I'm just going to once again, wean myself off. And I did great. You know, just the first migraine, of course, deep.
Yeah, but then I realized I'm like, I just actually love the taste, you know, so there's nothing and I love tea. I'm actually drinking it right now. And I drink like, I don't know, five cups of tea a day. I'm not more, but I always have my morning coffee. It's for the taste. It's for, it brings me pleasure and it doesn't really keep me awake.
I don't know. I drink one small, like tiny espresso every morning and, you know, with my little kind of mud water version of like, of, of mushrooms of like turmeric and spices. I have my own routine, my meditation to it. So it's more of a, for me personally, I love it. Yeah. And I try just not to overdo it. And yeah, it's.
Caffeine just another drug, right? Like, yes, we get physically addicted to it. If we use it mindfully, just like anything, it can be beneficial. If we abuse it, if we drink our, you know, double whatever lattes, like 5 times a day from Starbucks, which are super strong, like, you know, that's different when we, you know, when we cannot function.
And so, so really, I think as with any drug, honestly, just having a healthy balance. Right. Absolutely. It is an intention, right? So important to, which is something that, you know, we talk about in the psychedelic world, you know, you have to have an intention, but how about, for instance, cannabis, you know, cannabis is a medicine and now it's legal in Illinois for some time now.
And do you have an intention? You know, is this your medicine? Is this for relaxation? Is this for fun? You know, like, having an intention to everything really just goes such a long way. Right.
Nicole: Mm hmm. Yeah, both on and off drugs, right? Like, teaching yoga, right? And having that attention or waking up and journaling and having that intention and You know, usually we say like, Oh, if you don't have a specific intention, then it's open intention.
You know, I'm open to presence. I'm open to the unfolding and I'm open to all of that. And yeah, it's really about, yeah, the, the, uh, intentionality to the rituals that you're engaging in, in your life. Right. And everybody's body chemistry and specific embodiment will be different. For me, it was, It's just I get I laugh when I look back on like being diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder, which felt accurate at the time and at the time I would be drinking like two cups of coffee in the morning, right?
I mean, like, this is fine, you know, now where I'm at. I'm like, I can't even drink a cup of coffee without getting that like anxious feeling in my body. And I feel like that's another aspect of it. of like the whole mind body connection that frequently doesn't get looked at is like these other drugs are impacting you and depending on how sensitive you are, like it might be a whole part of what the hell is going on with your mind as well.
And for me it's so wild that I could like use cannabis repeatedly, um, and wake up the next day and feel great and not engage in it. But if I drink a cup of coffee next morning, my brain is like, where's that coffee? Like it is stronger than any cannabis experience the next morning and I'm always just like damn coffee.
That's the one that's legal. I mean, it makes sense. Capitalism, right? Like run, run, run. But like, damn, it's intense. I just appreciate a holistic take to all of the drugs, right? That's a frequently one. I take a substance use class. And are we talking about coffee? No, we're not. Okay. But half of my anxious clients, right?
Like I should be checking in. Like how much coffee are you drinking in the morning, my friend?
Dr. Karolina Mikos: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So important to really understand and, and not judge because people are so quick to judge just like you're mentioning, you know, this coffee is just another drug, you know, like, you know, alcohol, cigarettes, all being legal that, you know, totally fine because you go to the corner store, you buy all three, you know, but God forbid, you know, we legalize mushrooms and God forbid, we federally legalized cannabis because that's a drug.
Now that's bad. And it's like, okay, well, we clearly once again, get that stuff. But also to be open to learning that, hey, it's really our intentional use of anything. And, of course, you know, some people need more guidance than others because, you know, all sort of addictive behaviors. We know that it's not, you know, it's easier said than done.
Just do whatever with intention, but education, educating people that, You know, whenever you were engaging with any substances, even with food, you know, food can be a drug when when we're overindulging or not enough or whatever. So it's all about intention. And that really ties into that mind body practices that placebo effect that I learned.
So, you know, that I, like, changed my life. It's we know that the placebo it's like you get a sugar pill or a regular pill, like an actual pharmaceutical agent and you'll get the same results in so many subjects in the clinical trials. And so, you know, what happened there? So we know that as soon as we believe something, we can actually make it manifest.
And so, you know, if we believe that this cup of coffee is going to keep me awake all day and it's just, you know, for pleasure, then yes, just drink that one cup of coffee. But there's also people that, you know, think that Caffeine is the worst thing on the planet, you know, so don't drink it, you know, but just like let others do their thing.
And so, yeah, so there's just intentionality. I know I keep saying that over and over. I think that's just so important because we forget how powerful we are as human beings. We're creators and we create with, with our thoughts, with our emotions, with our beliefs constantly. And, and we create our external reality by what's happening in our internal reality.
Nicole: I know. The placebo effect really is wild when you think about it, you know. We have a lot to learn, right? About how that impacts our lives. And yeah, I think about intentionality with drug use. And then I also think about like the community, right? Because it's, we're all relational creatures. And when your relationships are not satisfying, right, that's, here's a relationship to a substance of any kind, right?
That can be consistent. That can make me feel good, right? And so that being a space where people go to. And then again, when I think about like the research of Rat Park, I think about the cage then too, like the systems that we're under, right? And how that is. A part of this question to like all the right education, all the right, you know, community work.
But if we're still in a like messed up system, we're still going to have chaotic use to substances because the cage is so problematic. Right. And so, yeah, I mean, we're starting here now. But I think about future generations of restructuring the whole system. system and the whole page. Right. But of course, given where we're at in our lifetimes right now, we're just trying to get psilocybin legal, you know, but eventually let's, you know, once we relearn and reconfigure those future generations, you know, and I think that is what's interesting, right.
Is watching how the generational divides, um, are unfolding, right. You're in your young teen years and you're on Netflix watching Michael Poland's documentary, your brain is being shifted in ways that when, you know, the older generations with Reagan and all that, you know, like. We're just talking about radically different paradigms of understanding the healing potential here.
And so I'm very curious to see how that unfolds over our lifetime.
Dr. Karolina Mikos: Absolutely. Yeah. I think that's why it's such an exciting time to be alive right now. We're all here for, for a purpose. And I think that's what it is. The core that the foundation is shaking, so it's, it's, you know, maybe it's, it's us now unrooting that foundation and just understanding.
Okay. This no longer works. There has to be a different way. And, yeah, just seeing just the exponential growth and change in society that just happened in the past 50 years, and it keeps exponentially changing. I mean. Even with like social media, just 20 years. Like I've actually sadly been on Facebook since it first started.
And it was only for college students. And I was in college at that time, it's been 20 years. So literally half my life, I've had this platform available and it has radically changed. Like when I joined in 2004, I had no idea that it's, this is where we would be 20 years later. And just how much things are changing, but that's what it is.
It's, it's the joy of witnessing this change and being, how can we be a part of it? That's really, I think, and a very important question that we can ask ourselves, you know, I can be either resisting this change. Or I can be proactive and see how I can, you know, how I can influence, how I can support, how I can serve, um, you know, my human family, the planet, like, what can I do to, to impact these societal norms that are no longer valid?
And they're crumbling and creating a new earth, really?
Nicole: Yeah. And that's where I think about the privilege that we have in the space, particularly, you know, to use that privilege, then to speak about. These things, right? Oh, I had a trip where I experienced ayahuasca. Okay, I'm going to use my platform to actually push this edge a little bit further, right?
And so then taking those risks, taking those leaps right within the privileged space that we do have to actually be like, Hey, like, this is happening. This is real. Um, I think that's really powerful. And I also think, you know, about yeah. So, you know, this medicine is helpful for all people, all genders, of course, but I am thinking about, you know, you talked about women and particularly, uh, even just speaking to my own experience in the medical system of various times being taught specifically with reproductive health, right?
Because that's a really fun space. Like, uh, Um, Man, I've had a handful of different IU, um, IUDs in my body. And I remember just like, Telling the doctor like it feels wrong. It feels like something's off. Like it's painful and I'm being like, no, that's normal. It's normal. It's normal. Yeah, years later getting a CAT scan and realizing or getting a scan of some sort.
I don't even Getting a scan and realizing that like it had perforated into my uterus like stuff like that where you're just like you know, you can hear horror stories of women across the board, right? Who are not listened to by medical professionals and are specifically told in their bodies to not listen to the wisdom of what's coming up for them.
And then it gets even worse when you're a woman of color, right? Et cetera. And like literal deaths that occur because the medical field does not listen to women. And so I do think about the power of these medicines to reconnect all people, but of course, particularly women to reconnect with their bodies as well.
Dr. Karolina Mikos: Oh, my goodness. You're touching on such an important topic because Yeah, let's talk about the medical system, like, system a little bit. Roar! Roar! Let it out! I know a little bit about it.
Nicole: Yeah, you do. This is your space.
Dr. Karolina Mikos: This is my space, and it's, sadly, it's the space I, you know, I was kind of, you know, Um, brought up in the sense that I've always wanted to be a doctor since I was six years old.
And I, you know, I wanted to serve. So I was always interested. I was, um, I was always the nerd who would just be telling people, actually, this is how you do this. And that's how you cure that. And that's what you need to do. Um, until, you know, of course I went to med school. I realized I was wrong, but it's a whole other topic.
I know. So every study that has ever been done in any clinical trials on any drugs was always done on men. And this is just in the Yeah. So let's just kind of You know, drugs for blood pressure, you know, things that, you know, do we need to care what, how women react? It doesn't matter. Let's just study it in men, you know, or like not even, you know, factor in that women might have a completely different hormonal, uh, blueprint and, you know, reaction to everything.
So it's a very, I mean, we all know we live in a patriarchal society, but we didn't really, we don't even understand how deep that goes, because even, I mean, even up until maybe recently, if unless it's still true that most even gynecologists were men. I mean, how can we possibly, you know. Be heard and understood when we're going to our doctor, our gynecologist and tell them about, you know, some symptoms, such as what you had and then we're like, no, no, you're fine.
It's like, do you have a uterus? Like, I'm sorry. Like, yeah, you studied it, but that does not, you know, really like, until you have 1. I'm sorry. Like, I feel like you can have only a little bit of a say, but not make it universal. And so when we understand that, how women have been marginalized, you know, not Being studied, of course, even women of color, even, even worse, unfortunately.
So then we can once again, stop and think and start questioning things like, wait a minute, is this actually good for me? And so based on the cycles too, you know, so that just kind of leaving it there. Cause there's still a lot of rage within me that, you know, it's, you know, it's there because it sucks and it's unfair.
And. And yet, you know, this is our once again, it's our opportunity to do something about it to understand and to learn if nothing else we can educate ourselves like, hey, okay, maybe what my doctor is telling me is not 100%, you know, the truth, or, you know, they're obviously doing the best they can. And I'm not saying that they're doing this, you know, um, In a malignant way, it's just the way we've been trained.
And it's also like, the way we're trained in a Western medical system is like, we're also kind of trained to get that arrogant to being like, oh, everything else is wrong because you're not an MD. And I was like, you don't know anything. You reiki practitioner. That's nothing. Right? I have no scientific proof of that.
So I'm going to. fully rejected. Um, you know, that, of course, is changing, thankfully, because there's a lot more. Thankfully, you know, the complementary and alternative medical, you know, that's what they're called it, you know, to the Western world, uh, cam, you know, all the basically all the other practices outside of allopathic medicine.
Um, but returning back to our cycles Attuning even to our cycles as a blessing, as, as a power of nature, rather than as an inconvenience. Like we have always been taught, you know, like I'm sure, you know, from our first periods back in the day, it's like, Oh, I got my period. My God, this hurts. I'm like, Oh, what can I do?
This is such an inconvenience. Like, and we will be shaming ourselves. You know, we're like, we're on our period. We can go swimming with our friends. Right. So like, so it's always been this negative connotation that our body must be doing something wrong.
And instead of celebrating that is a rite of passage, you know, that ritual that we don't have in this society.
And it's such a lost opportunity for us to really connect deeper to ourselves and to understand ourselves and to trust ourselves, trust our bodies that our bodies have this infinite innate intelligence to that. It knows what it's doing every month. You know, every month we shed our lining and every month we rebuild it again and we don't have to think about it.
You know, like, no medical, you know, understanding will ever have, you know, will ever allow us to to be like, oh, what do I have to do now? Which hormone do I need to release from my brain? It is done automatically and through this intelligence. And so honoring that I think it's so important in our, especially where we are right now.
Nicole: Yeah, because everything said with like a whisper, it's like, Oh, you're, you're in your period. Oh, oh, can you, can you very secretly hand me that tampon at the table? Cause I need to go to the bathroom, right? Like, Oh, hide it, hide it, hide it,
Dr. Karolina Mikos: hide it. Yeah, it's so silly. I wouldn't even think about it. It's like, I'm ashamed of a completely normal body function.
And that causes also so much trauma because it's all embodied. And it's also like, I mean, you obviously don't. Even more than I do, like, all that, like, the pleasure gets blunted because we are afraid of, you know, of experiencing pleasure, even in our period, let's say, you know, like being perceived as dirty by our partners or, you know, whatever it is, it's just, bleh.
Nicole: So much shame into the space. Totally. I love some period sex. That's great. Throw a towel down, have a blast. Who cares that it's messy, it's so empowering, oh my goodness, I agree. Especially if I am having cramps too, to have like an orgasmic release through that, I mean that's really like its own free medicine right there.
Dr. Karolina Mikos: Yes, yes, absolutely. Yeah, it's all contractions and why not embody those, you know, having those juicy contractions and they will suit the ones that you and honestly, even the painful ones like the cramps. I actually love them. I know. I'm like, super weird because I'm like, oh, I feel you. You are here. And thankfully, I only get cramps in my 1st day.
Sure. Thankfully, that's how I can say that. But, but I, I enter into a ceremony. It's my day. It's my moon ceremony. And so those, when those cramps appear, I'm like, Ooh, yeah, here you are, you know, I'm bleeding and let me feel that pain. Cause that's also leaning into that pain, right? We're not rejecting. Cause this doesn't, you know, the whole embracing all the light and dark, it's not just emotional, but it's also the physical pain that our body, you know, whispers to us like, Hey, there's a reason there's pain.
Is it normal to have? Painful periods, not necessarily, but what is normal? That isn't my normal. And so whenever it happens, I just embrace it. I end up like, not working that whole day, just being in ceremony. And I really just celebrate myself.
And so, yeah, so we can, it just, it's once again, it's the intentionality.
What do we need? Intent with this information that the body's giving us.
Nicole: Mm hmm. Yeah. And I think about the community of all of it, right? When we think back to like, uh, yeah, even advertisement, you know, like being afraid to talk about these things. I know people who have gotten their content blocked, like their free bleed content that's been blocked on instagram.
And you're like. I don't even know. I'm not even, you know, I'm not even going to try to understand, but it's perpetuating the further, the further things. Right. But so we can't even get out into community in these more like public virtual spaces to talk about this. So I think there's a lot of power and being able to talk about it right in a platform of like, Oh, yeah, I have period sex.
It's great. I have this. Right. And so. Hopefully when we have these conversations, it starts to change someone's perspective who maybe was like, Oh, that's dirty and gross. So like, no, that is sacred and empowering that you have this ritual. Right. And so when I look to other people who are talking about like free bleeding through their white, um, uh, skirts as like a sacred ritual, I'm like, Whoa, okay, I got to change my paradigm because that's, that's much more liberated than I'm feeling right now, you know, I don't know yet, you know,
Dr. Karolina Mikos: Yeah.
Oh, I love that. I haven't heard those. I mean, maybe I have, but maybe I'm just not there yet. Yeah, I know that I said that. Yeah. And I love that. Yeah. I love that we're talking about periods because there's so much we can, um, harness from them. And even from the scientific perspective, because of course I started doing research when I got more into this understanding and empowering myself back to my body.
Um, you know, period blood is actually extremely healing and the indigenous cultures in, um, Australia, the aborigines actually, this is a direct quote from somebody that was there with the indigenous people that basically they use, like, Period blood somehow. I don't know how they conserve or whatever, but to heal like broken bones even and like to heal wounds.
And then I was like, okay, like, I'm all into the spiritual stuff. And I love this kind of stuff. But I also like, of course, you know, to do a little bit of research. And, you know, is there actually any scientific, you know, research into this or any backup? And I actually found that period blood, which was never taught to me in medical school, or I never, I guess, had interest actually has stem cells.
Right. Okay. Which means that they can heal pretty much any wound and there's been starting to do to be research be done on using menstrual blood to heal diabetic foot. And so, just as a little bit of background, diabetic foot is just a complication of longstanding diabetes when, because diabetes actually kills the nerve endings and.
Feet are usually the first to suffer because of course the longest nerves get damaged first. And a lot of the complications would be to amputate the feet. So, you know, in a really longstanding, poorly controlled diabetics. But now they're studying how to use menstrual blood to heal diabetic foot so it can regenerate those nerve endings.
And I was just, my mind was literally blown. Like when I read that study, like it's a legit paper published. And I'm like, Whoa, we are so powerful. Like literally our womb, not only we obviously create life in our womb, you know, no big deal. Right. I just kind of ignore that because, you know, we live in a patriarchal world where we're, you know, not very useful.
Of course. Right. But just to actually see that people are really looking into this, that every month we can literally heal so much.
Nicole: Sure. Fascinating. This is what happens when, uh, men start the field, right? And they name the pudental nerve, you know? Shame, shame, shame, bad, bad, bad girl, man, man. You know, like, let alone to like, Oh, I have like the life giving force coming out in my blood that could heal things.
Like what a different paradigm that I think people could step into in terms of like their ritual every month of like. Seeing what that is for, for what it actually scientifically is rather than the decades, centuries of patriarchal shaming around, you know, the uterus and, and what comes from that wild and, and just how that changes your outlook because again, like, yeah, just thinking about pleasure, like, you know, even if you, you know, are open to having period sex, just the shame of it all.
It's like, oh, this is gross. This is bad. Versus yeah. This person's getting to play with my sex. Sacred life force blood. What a bastard, you know, such a different energy than like, Oh no, Oh no, did it get on? Right. So different. My goodness.
Dr. Karolina Mikos: Absolutely. Oh my God. Yeah, absolutely. And I just wanted to just say one more step about, you know, maybe for women who are hearing this listening and they're, they want to empower themselves to do something new and maybe different into the practice, you know, I've, um, Since I've started using the diva cup, I guess for so many reasons, environmental was actually my primary reason because recognizing like, Oh my God, all the tampons, they're just one time use.
Even I've been using organic tampons, at least I'm like, Oh, I want to get absorbed the best stuff, but then recognizing like, wait, this just goes to the garbage and I'm really just contributing to more pollution and more, you know, suffering in the planet. So. Ever since I started using it and also doing research and reading and, you know, some training to through the psychedelic community, collecting blood from, you know, through the Diva Cup, which is so easy, and then giving it back to mother earth.
That is so powerful. Just, I can't even describe just these small steps that we take to honor ourselves, honor the planet and its reciprocity. Um, It just goes such a long way and I'm not just, you know, the manifesting and everybody wants to manifest and lead a beautiful life, but just really to connect ourselves to ourselves to the core, recognizing that we are creatures of the earth that we are made of earth, water, air and fire or spirit.
Right? And we're the same. We're just a different manifestation of the divine of this earth and returning back and like connecting back this way. We really just reconnect back to our hearts and really feel what's important for us.
Nicole: Yeah, it took years for me to even like be able to be embodied enough to kind of notice when my period is coming, you know, when I'm not tracking it to be able to, Oh, I'm feeling the shifts in my body and my energies, low energy levels.
I, I think it's about to happen, right. But to even get into such deeper embodiment where I could like notice the changes as I ovulate or these other things, like I have not. Slowed down enough in my body to kind of be that present. And so it's a continual process for me, but I think that so many of us, again, because of the systems we started out with, like, how often do we have to really like be present with the body and feel that and notice that over the, like lunar 28 day cycle, right?
Like that is a process in and of itself to be that embodied to notice.
Dr. Karolina Mikos: Oh yeah. Oh,
Nicole: it's definitely.
Dr. Karolina Mikos: Like, I'm still trying to figure myself out, you know, it's not like it's like, oh, I got it all figured out, but it's like, I've only been doing this for a few years and it's a process because we have busy lives.
We're not just there like, okay, where am I today? What are my hormones? You know what? I always have that space to just really focus that much, but it's because it's usually when something goes wrong that we're like, well, yeah. Wait a minute, I'm paying attention to what's happening in my body. So it's only, but we don't have to wait until something goes wrong in order to really attune ourselves to our bodies.
And so it's definitely a process. Yeah. Like there's the, you know, each phase of the, of our cycle is, is also for different, you know, different embodiment of our energies. Like there's definitely the face for resting. There's definitely the face for being active and, you know, and. Powering ourselves and, you know, being driven and go out there like our relation stage.
That's like the goddess stage. Right? Because it's basically being like, I'm upulating here. I am. Right. So, like, we're the most kind of like creative and, um, you know, and out there. And then, of course, there's the. post ovulation in premenstrual phase when we're like, like, what's happening? And understanding that it's okay.
All of those are perfectly normal and they're perfectly valid. And, you know, stop being shamed by like, Oh, are you PMSing? You know, how like, simple would be asking us. Yeah. Like I sorta got, like when people just, thankfully I never really had such bad PMS symptoms or like, I don't really have symptoms, I would say, to be shamed that way, but I cannot stand when people be like, oh, she's PMSing.
Nicole: That's why, well, yeah, it's a leftover remnant from like bullshit science. Remember, because they used to say back in the day, they'd like justify. Well, this is why like, CIS women can't be participating in sports because. They're, you know, just not functionally, you know, they have their period and they just like, can't do that.
It's too, it's too much for their feeble bodies. And of course they're feeble minds, right? And that's the science, right? So like, I think it's like remnants of that as we continue to get out of like, Oh, is it because of this? And it's like, no, I can run marathons. I can run business meetings. I can run dungeon scenes.
Like I can just run all of it. Well, I mean, okay, you know, maybe even a baby on the hip, you know, sit down, sit down, you know, so I think as we unpack this and I always think about like just Margaret Sanger, like 100 years ago in the 20s being, um, you going to prison, being arrested for talking about contraception.
So again, we're just talking about like a hundred years to like even have a conversation about bleeding, right? Let alone contraception or these other things. Like, there's just so much that we're going to continue to go through as a society as we continue to shed, uh, judge and critically reflect on the bullshit science.
Dr. Karolina Mikos: Absolutely. Yeah. And it will take time. And actually, speaking of bullshit science, um, something similar about. No, go ahead. Like, I haven't said much of that. Mm hmm. Um, I don't want to shame my medical community, because, of course, they're doing great things, too. Critical is important. There we go. Being more critical.
Um, so, even, like, the whole pregnancy, like, you're only in your prime, you know, up until 35, and after that, your chance of conception, you basically become a geriatric pregnancy. I know. like, are you kidding me? Words. Like, yeah, like, are you really calling me a geriatrician if I'm 35 and pregnant? Like, just even the shame of that.
Yeah. So that study that we're basing all of our information in the 21st century was done in like 19th century French women who clearly had a different life expectancy at that point and everything was different. And it was just not even really repeated, but we're just going based on that assumption that like, Oh, well, after 35, we must be infertile.
So you might as well just throw us away and just like, boom, geriatric pregnancy, super high risk. I mean, Can it be high risk? Absolutely. Depending on obviously your whole lifestyle up until that point, but it doesn't automatically make your, you know, your chance of, you know, pregnancy being super high risk and geriatric, you know, on top of that.
So, so, yeah, so I think it's just something very important for, like, older women, such as myself, you know, air quotes because I'm air quoting older women because I would definitely be considered a geriatric pregnancy if I were to get pregnant. And to me, it's like, I still feel young. Like, I still want kids.
Like, do I, am I afraid it's going to be high risk pregnancy? Absolutely not. Because if I'm meant to be pregnant, like, I've been keeping healthy and I know my body much better now than even when I was in my 20s. And so it's just. Even that is such a shameful part, right?
Because a lot of women want to still have kids, you know, later on.
And, you know, some don't, which is fine too, but the ones that do, they're, they're just being so shamed into even trying. And, you know, that's just another layer of damage that has been done and, you know, not on purpose, but, but we need to uncover these things.
Nicole: Yeah. The power of language, right? Geriatric.
Yeah, all of that. Right. And then there's just so much. Yeah. Like you said, shame or blame and particularly even capitalization, right? Like, Oh, you're 33. So freeze your eggs. Hey, Hey, Hey. Yeah. There's some process that you can pay thousands of dollars for to freeze them. Just in case, you know, so there's like a whole market on top of that, too, of capitalizing on that and the fear around that, right?
And so, just, you know, being in tune with your own body and your own process, I think, I mean, that's some of the benefit of finding holistic practitioners who do more of that research than go into the deeper ways of working with the body rather than the, like, traditional mainstream science that isn't always, you know, really fact checked, you know, unfortunately, and that just being the reality that it is.
Dr. Karolina Mikos: Yeah, I think that's the kind of the damage that I'm noticing that it's just, um, any science is now just absolute. But when we really look at science, which I totally, I'm a scientist, I was a chemist, like I mentioned, analytical chemist at that, you know, it's a super analytical, you know, in my medical degree.
But it's, it's not absolute science is just a measurement of the truth. So it's kind of like, you take a ruler and maybe you have the wrong ruler, you know, like, it's not absolute and science evolves for a reason. You know, if we even look back just in the past century, you know, doctors used to prescribe smoking for asthma.
Right? I mean, we forgot that kind of thing. And so, like, let's kind of really rethink. It's like, hey, just because a doctor's telling you to do something doesn't mean they're like. They may be, they may have some truths and they want to share what they know, but they not, they may not be right. And or, you know, even accurate by any means.
So, so really just to kind of look at science like, yes, science is I wouldn't say with a grain of salt, because science is important. It's important, right? It's very important, but also understanding like, okay, so this study show me this, but there's also something called observers bias. And so, so the, all the clinical trials, scientific studies are also done studied by people who are interested in the topic.
Right? So, of course, if I want to study, let's say psychedelics, I'm going to have a bias. towards psychedelics. So I'm going to make sure that my data, you know, that I publish only data that's like, yes, it's proving my point, you know, um, same thing with, uh, with anything really. And this is actually why we, you know, we tried to double blind control studies, but the placebo effect always, of course, shows up.
Um, and that's teaching us like, Hey, okay. People believe different things. And so, yeah, the way I look at science now, especially after all my psychedelic journeys, it's kind of like you have an iceberg and science is just the tip of it and the actual truth is the entire iceberg underneath that. So, can you extrapolate just what's on the tip to the rest of it?
I mean, it's, it's, um, it's an estimate of the truth. Which is very valid, but you're missing all the other components too, perhaps.
Nicole: Right, right. Yeah. Once I studied physics and you learned about like quantum mechanics and how observing the atom changes the trajectory, I was like, oh shit. Do we know anything?
Oh no, you know. But it's important, right? Because we do, in some ways, I want to know the lethal dose of this drug. I want to be very, very clear. You know, science is important, right? So I want to know what that lethal dose is. And if I break a bone, I want that scientist to know how to fix that damn bone or that organ.
Okay? For sure. But then when Go ahead. Yeah.
Dr. Karolina Mikos: No, no, sorry. We absolutely need science. We absolutely need medicine. We need surgery. We have so many beautiful advances in emergency medicine, intensive care, you know, all of the acute care medicines. And so, yeah, to honor that too. And of course, yeah, I'm not going to go get my bones sat by my neighbor.
Right, exactly. I'm just going to make sure to go to somebody who actually has the knowledge and the science behind what to do. so much.
Nicole: Totally. And I think that's where, like, even it gets a little bit trickier too when you think about like psychological research, right? Like that being really like a space of the intangible.
So much of our psychological experience is about meaning making and narratives and the story, right? Even if we just go back to like, yeah, the period example, right? Like, is this, The shameful thing or this empowering sacred space and then that is actively going to change your mindset of when you go into that sex experience of feeling shame, sadness, right?
Versus pride and power and embodiment, right? Like, that's directly related to the narratives. And so when we're studying psychological research, it gets even deeper. More messy of like who defined the variables, how, you know, which, which, um, which data points were lobbed out of the set because it didn't fit the norm that you line that you were creating and your research.
And it was just so mind boggling for me to like, learn about the inner radar reliability of. Some of our diagnoses for like the listeners, like that inner radar reliability being like, do, do clinicians consistently rate this person with the same diagnosis. Right. And so reading into some of that and hearing that generalized anxiety disorder and major depression have a reliability that is as likely as chance.
To get consistent across the board from clinicians. Oh, no. What does that mean? When all of your research on like depression and anxiety is based on a variable that is as likely as chance to be consistent. I just like, yeah, you're already laughing. I was like, Oh no, the house is crumbling. Like, what do we do?
Like the pain and suffering is very, very real. Right. But like, damn, some of this research, y'all, I just, you know, I don't know, man, again, I want to know Drug is going to kill me at what dose, but psychological research. I'm like, I don't know, you know, anything is possibly proven through research.
Dr. Karolina Mikos: Oh my goodness.
Yes. Psychological research is probably the most difficult thing to do and to prove. And, and honestly, I honor everybody that does it. Definitely not for me because of all the variables and I would need to have some answers. Yeah.
Nicole: Oh, I'm good. I'm good with a conversation research space. This is great.
Dr. Karolina Mikos: Yeah.
And I think, um, Even the diagnosed it like the diagnosis itself. Yeah. Once we diagnose a patient, we put them in a box. Yeah, we label them and then they start believing and of course, you know, rightfully. So, um, you know, because the doctor gave a diagnosis. So it's like to kind of have answers. But unfortunately, what the human ego does, it really grasps onto that diagnosis so tightly sometimes that it just identifies with it.
And then nothing else will shake it off because it has, especially with a longstanding diagnosis. So, let's say, you know, treatment resistant depression. Once we've been diagnosed with that, and then, of course, everything has failed, then we become even more like, desperate and tightly gripping to the diagnosis because we know it's my depression.
It's my whatever. And so understanding that it's like, yes, there is depression within me, but I am not that depression. And so I think there's just so much. I don't want to use the word damage, but it could be damaging when there's all these diagnoses, you know, that people come to us, you know,
Nicole: I want to say, yes, I think it is damaging.
I think there's a lot of benefit in feeling seen, understood having language community, a reason for support. Right? But like, these boxes, like you're saying, do become so engulfing and entrapping and reinforcing narrative of, you know, Oh, I have depression. This is why I can't get out. I'm here. I have depression forgetting that these are boxes that were created from a field.
That's only a hundred years old, right? Like let's look back beyond the last a hundred years. Like, so to get really locked into this label again, I see the benefit of like. Getting access to systems, you know, support under these systems, but I wish we could get access without having to have that label because I do think that it is a reinforcing pattern.
And I, I just dream of getting to a space where we could have a much more nuanced conversation about what's going on with each individual person. Okay. This is what's going on in their somatic root, like a space of their body and how they're feeling. This is what's going on in their relational patterns now and the past.
This is what's going on with the systemic Bullshit that they're facing and their unique combination of identities that are facing that in the world, right? This is the narrative that they're making of their life and the pieces of how they're conceptualizing all of this, right? This is the spiritual component, right?
This is the god they speak to or don't believe in and how that fits into the narrative Like I want all of that rather than oh depression And I do think that it's really scary when you look into like specifically the racial components of this of like children of color getting specifically, um Oppositional defiant disorder at higher rates than white children and then the way that that then perpetuates this diagnosis that moves in their chart throughout the field of, oh, that's a kid with problems.
Okay, we treat that differently rather than systemic racial trauma, right? And all these other pieces. And so, yeah, I mean, there's a lot of benefit to finding certain labels that give us community and understanding and validation because our suffering is so, so, but these. These labels then can also create harm, depending on who's giving them and and what it means and what it says about that person for that label.
It's scary.
Dr. Karolina Mikos: Absolutely. You just said it so beautifully. You know, this, this just brings me back to to my hospital working days. Where? Oh, no, no, no. Just even like the conversations that have with my patients that I would admit because I was an internist. So, meaning, like, in working the hospital setting called hospitalist, you know, so it's not going to go into details about that.
But basically, I would admit everybody that needed to be taken care of in the hospital and then, you know, be the primary doctor and then discharge them. But because I'm not a psychiatrist, Um, whenever I would see any psychiatric diagnoses and medications, I would just need to ask, but I usually just left them untouched because I'm like, whatever your psychiatrist wants you to do with this, continue.
I kid you not. I would say more often than not, I'm just going to pull it a number out, but like 80, 90 percent of the times the patients had no idea they had that diagnosis on the chart. The patients had no idea why they were taking benzos or antidepressants or SSRIs or any other antidepressants. And I would just be like, sitting there being like, oh, my God, like, I, I'm not your premier doctor because I'm only seeing you for a few days here in the hospital.
I mean, never see you again. So it's not really my that's actually not part of my job to to kind of reconcile, you know, reconcile everything. But can you imagine that? Like, people just take, you know, pencils like candy SSRIs. They have no idea that they're labeled with anxiety, depression, you know, CD, all sorts of things.
And I'm talking to them. They have just zero idea, right?
Nicole: Cocktails, multiple drugs. Yeah. So many drugs that even some that seem counter intuitive when you put the two together and you're just like, what doctor? And I think this is part of sometimes the, the brokenness of the medical system, right? You hand it out to so many different people that no one sits down and looks at it holistically of, wow, Hey, these two meds are counteracting each, you know, like, Again, this is not even my area or anything, right?
My, my job is to educate and I can invite the client to say, Hey, think about this, but like speak to your provider on this. Cause I see these things, but I can't stop or change anything. And, and, and there's so much there that so many people just really have no idea why they're on certain drugs. And there's such a power dynamic too.
Cause I definitely went on an STD test. In the past, and this is before I was even in the field of psychology or any of this work. And so when a psychiatrist sat me down and said, Hey, you should take this. I said, cool. Okay. Like you just don't even think about it. You just think, Oh, they're trying to help me.
This is what they have. I'll do that. Right. And then getting into the field of psychology and learning that like there's research, which again, is. It's complicated, but there is research that shows that mindfulness is as effective as SSRIs for like, um, moderate, you know, depression, right? And so all these different things, or even just that SSRIs weren't effective for mild depression, right?
Like all these different pieces, we were like, wow, there are so many alternative ways to work with this system, but it's so complex when all of us are tired and don't want to take the time to meditate because it's, it's so much harder than just like, here's a drug Everything's fixed. Goodbye. You know, but then you get this list long problem of so many people having different cocktails of medicines and really being unsure and then afraid to go off because It's been your support there.
Who am I? And that's another question for birth control, right? Like who am I when I get off a hormonal birth control, right? Like all these different things that it can be so hard to really navigate.
Dr. Karolina Mikos: That was probably the reason I actually left practicing Western medicine as a hospitalist. Basically, I would, like I mentioned, I would admit patients and sometimes they would just have 20 to 30 medicines and they had no idea what they're taking them for.
It was always very refreshing to have that patient that actually knew exactly everything, which is like, oh, thank goodness. I actually know your yourself, but because of my white lab coat walking in the room, I would get that. That would be that huge power differential, right? Because no matter what I would say, they would just take, they're like, yes, doctor, I'll do it, but I'm like, no, but what's the difference?
What's, what do you want to do? Like, why are you on this? Do you know it? And so it became very frustrating for me because, um, I did not want to be that weird, you know, omnipotent, you know, doctor who just tells you what to do. And you not, do not give me any like feedback. Like there's no, it's a partnership.
When you come to see any, any healthcare provider, it should be a partnership. It should not be this, this like. Patriarchal paternalistic relationship where you blindly listen to your doctor and don't question them at all. Listen to your intuition. You know, make sure your doctor is a partner. Not, you know, not like a dictator.
Nicole: Right? Yeah. And in psychotherapy too. That's like, 1 things I do when I have a new client is like, I hope you can tell me that you disagree. I hope you can tell me that what I said was true. Stupid or you're mad at me or like any of these things, like, please invite that into this space to try and dismantle that.
Cause otherwise it is such like this, like Mount Olympus, like listen to the, the leader in such ways that discredits your own intuition and your own healing. And that being like the biggest piece here, you know, is being able to empower people to have that mind body connection and to, to feel empowered in that.
And I think I enjoy when I get. So talk to people about psychedelics, right? And the conversation doesn't stay to just the drug, right? It goes to all these different areas because when we're working with psychedelics, it's all about the set and setting, right? It's a tool. It is not the magic bullet. And so when I have these conversations about psychedelics, ultimately, we're talking about all the different set and setting pieces that are going on to our experience, right?
Because again, if we just talk about the drug, we're missing in. That it's not a magic bullet. It's not going to fix the world, people. Right? So like, when we're having this, it is that larger discussion. And I think something that I've been thinking about as we're talking about, and I know I've talked about this a lot on the podcast, but just feels important to continue to express, given the ways that, uh, we are working to create a paradigm where psychedelics are, you know, not, you know, are legal to work with.
with both hopefully recreationally and through therapeutic work, but through the establishment of starting with that through therapeutic work creates the space where, Oh, psychedelics are for healing. Psychedelics are for the cognitive work and there is so much healing and all the different types of play that you can do with it.
But one of the important things I think about is the connection to the body, right? You can spend all of your psychedelic session thinking, processing, getting different narratives But you can also spend your psychedelic session connecting to the body and just the body, right? Of course, thoughts are going to come up, but you can always come back and really, like, use this, uh, medicine, this tool to be able to, like, really build that mind body connection in that amplified state.
And so I think about the power of that, not just as the cognitive. But like truly to spend time in meditation with that amplified body state to feel that. So that way, when you come off the medicine into your ordinary state of consciousness, you've already established those neuronal pathways. You've already established that connection and then the power of that to change these larger systems.
The more we are connected to our bodies, the more we're gonna roar and like scream and have rage. Rightfully so.
Dr. Karolina Mikos: Oh, my goodness. So beautifully said. Absolutely. Um, I feel like for any preparation, even before I ever work with anybody, you know, who's doing psychedelics preparation is key because if you do not know how to tap into your body before you even enter a psychedelic space.
It's, it's not going to, I mean, it might still be beneficial, might still show you what you need, but the body is so important, at least through the breath, you know, like, if just subconscious breathing and tuning into our body's messages and we don't have to have answers, you know, our brain's not just going to be like, okay, well, this pain is means this, you know, trauma with your mom back and, you know, when you were 7, you know, it's not going to be that necessarily that overt.
Although it may be, but it's what does my, you know, how does my body feel when I take a deep breath? What, where is their tension? And having these, this practice as well developed as possible before entering into psychedelic space will just take us so much further in any therapeutic space with psychedelics or beyond.
And then even afterwards, and so, yeah, the body connection is just mind body. I mean, I cannot stress that enough how important it is.
We have ignored the mind. Emotions and all sorts, and even our spirituality, or like, there are in the medical community for far too long.
I don't know why we kind of had that schism between kind of like church and state, right?
Like in the day, but it's like spirituality and science. It's like, it's time to blend them together because there's so much information in our body and that doesn't even have to be spiritual. It's just being in the body. Just the, the, the mind is so expansive as we talked about the placebo effect already.
It's I believe system is so powerful. So let's harness it. Let's not vilify it. Yeah. If we harness it and we're like, Hey, let's actually use this to our advantage. So what can I do with this to, to heal better, to heal more, to heal deeper and to be a better human afterwards as well. It's, it's so important.
I just, yeah, especially breathing, especially breathing. Like I even read a study recently that pulmonologists, you know, lung specialists. Do not know how to consciously breathe at all, which is kind of like, really? You're like, you, you, you don't even look at the rest of the body. You only look at lungs and you don't even know how to breathe.
Nicole: You know, well, that's how I feel as a yoga instructor where I'm just like, you know, I forget sometimes I'm like, oh, damn, damn it. Come on. Come on. That's the one point is the breath, the Pranayama. Come on.
Dr. Karolina Mikos: And it's like the simplest thing too, you know, it's free, it's available at Anytime and I feel like as humans do we like to complicate things, but once we just like return to the basics, just return to our breath, you know, it doesn't have to be meditating in a lotus pose for five hours, you know, just, just breathe, you know, while you're talking even, right.
Or like while you're driving. Totally. Keep breathing consciously and, you know, and recognizing what's happening in my body. Because as you mentioned before, when you breathe, you're giving your body the break of like, Oh, let me see what's available here. Let me respond, not react.
Nicole: Totally. Yeah. Coming back to like pure present, like the now, and again, and again, because that just constantly happens, right?
You know, we'll get lost. Oh, did I say something weird? That was, uh, you know, and then you start to spin, spin, spin now. Oh, right now I'm here right now. I'm here right now. Right. And hopefully in a way that we create space for us to process the past, you know, we don't want to just completely run over it because the past.
Patterns do impact our future movements, right? So, you know, I think that's important too, but to come back to that pure presence and noticing again and again, I think is so, so powerful for our, our mind body connection. And I think that one of the things we usually do when we are preparing people for psychedelic experiences.
experience is the week before inviting them to start that like mindfulness meditation. And it doesn't have to be like you said, like, yeah, sitting down in Lotus pose. Most of us don't have the privilege of like having that amount of time to sit down. Like you, like you said earlier, maybe you have two kids running around playing constantly.
When are you going to, you know, like alone time, God, when, you know? So I think it's important to remember that like open awareness meditations can be so powerful, right? You're driving. Okay. I'm going to be present in this moment right now and notice. Oh, I noticed the cars. I noticed the sky. I noticed the temperature of the car, right?
Like, So all this sort of stuff that you can come back to pure presence that isn't as like sitting. That's often some of the hardest part is to really just sit. One of my favorite meditations is rock climbing, right? When I'm on the wall, I am present with that right there, right? Nothing else. And then those sorts of skills both transfer into the psychedelic space so that you can be present with where your mind, your body is going, right?
And then that also transfers to like the day to day, the more that you can be in pure presence, right? Which means embracing the pleasure, which means embracing the pain because those are deeply connected, you know, the more that you can be in that space. I really feel like the more like life you really live ultimately, right.
Just ultimately the more present, like the more you're there.
Dr. Karolina Mikos: Yes. And that's, and I think that's the, the, the. The challenge as well as the reward. When we're present, we become available to the full spectrum of human emotions, which unfortunately, yeah, right. Ouch. Exactly. Which SSRIs do such a great job sometimes to just make us super numb to all of it.
Nicole: Yeah, right.
Dr. Karolina Mikos: But when we actually allow ourselves to feel that pain to tap into that pain that the pendulum will swing to the opposite and into the joy and then back again to pain, because, of course, we cannot just, you know, the ocean has ebb and flow. It just doesn't sit there. Right? So, like, also understanding that we're just like the ocean.
We're forces of nature. It's humans. The emotions will right. And being present, it really gives us this opportunity to fully, like you said, to sit with what is and yes, it doesn't need to be in sitting. For instance, my I meditate every day sitting. Yes. But also my biggest and most profound meditation is actually through dance.
Sure. So when I dance, that's when I really have ecstatic, whether I actually do ecstatic dance or other sorts of dancing, I've been a dancer my whole life. So it's always been this connection with, to my body and to my breath because you have to breathe while you're moving.
And I never even understood what a beautiful therapy it has been my whole life.
I honestly feel that that dance got me through so much, so much more than I even give it credit and just constantly dancing. And it's like now even understanding. More from this, you know, somatic angle. It's like, oh, yeah, that's movement. I'm just moving energy and I'm just moving and breath and just allowing my body to express and to move whatever is stuck.
And what else do I need body? Like, how can I support you? Like, to move and express. So it's just, yeah, meditation doesn't have to be, you know, just this idea of sitting still, especially when we have trauma. Cause it's hard to sit still when we have trauma, right? Cause it can bring us into that freeze response and it could actually be retraumatizing for special beginners.
So we need to move. We may need to just start a moving meditation or even like singing, like chanting, like toning with our throat. Cause it's sound waves will actually soothe ourselves as well. So there's so many methods of meditation, which Actually, I don't even like calling it meditation. I call it more conscious breathing.
Sure. Because we're, we're just actually putting our consciousness and mindfulness, like you mentioned, into the present moment, into the breath, and let the breath be our vehicle to whatever experience we're having.
Nicole: Right. Yeah. And talk about the spirituality of that, right? Like that's originally spiritual practices of bringing the people together, having music, having that ecstatic dance right before it got really co opted by patriarchal lineages, right?
Like it used to be. to be like, let's bring the people together and feel and have the beat, like the base move us. Right. And it is so wild when you think about the spirituality and the science, cause you know, the more that we study, even just the space and universe, like we, I don't know how you don't have science.
Some level of like spiritual framework to understand the scale of the universe. Right. The more you study science, it's like, Oh shit. Uh, there's a lot going on here and I don't understand. Right. So being able to incorporate more of that, I think is really important. And I know that like, there's some level of understanding too.
Oh, okay. Like it's hard to move my body. It's hard to dance. Right. I particularly think about women, right. Cross your legs. A good girl, right? Like, oh, there's no space when you're crossing your legs to dance and to get around, right? And so, for a lot of us, that conditioning is deep in our bodies, and so, to get out of that, we have such a normalized relationship to alcohol.
Like, oh, you could have a drink or two and have that sort of space, right? But, again, psychedelics can be really powerful for that, for people to kind of unleash and have that sort of movement and feel into that. And then particularly in spaces, right. Where you can have that music in the community. I mean, that is spiritual healing in and of itself.
Right.
Dr. Karolina Mikos: Absolutely. And yeah, the community aspect, yeah. Ecstatic dance is as ancient as humanity itself. People have gathered in tribes and communities to drumming to music to the around the fire under the full moon to dance to release to be together. And it's kind of funny that it's coming back now, but it's being capitalized upon.
Right? It's kind of like, oh, we just invented this new thing called drumming circles. Or like ecstatic dances. By the way, I love ecstatic dances. I'm actually about to, or I'm organizing my very first solo ecstatic dance as an event organizer. So it's Super exciting because I do want to bring this to the community, you know, from my angle as well, because it's so ancient, it's so deeply rooted and, you know, and having also more drumming music in, you know, into the space that I want to bring in, bring us into that.
Primal nature of humanity, because that's the most primal, you know, us connecting through sound and through movement and, and I, and I love that it's, it's coming back, it's making a comeback. So whichever way it will, it has to make it, you know, I appreciate it.
Nicole: Yeah, absolutely. And then even, you know, upping the ante, like just in terms of like erotic play and sexual play too.
And the rituals around that specifically within like. The, uh, sex positives communities being in consensual spaces to be very clear, but consensual spaces where you can have other people be a part of that ritual and the energetic creation of that, right? There's long lineages of different spiritual traditions that did that sort of stuff that again, under patriarchal society, we've really been displaced from, and so it's really beautiful just to see the different ways that people are connecting to their body.
Connecting to their pleasure and connecting to community. Right. And in so many different areas of their lives. And yeah, I'm very excited to see the future generations that kind of build off of the runway. We're creating here for them.
Dr. Karolina Mikos: Oh, absolutely. Me too. Yeah. And like, how you mentioned the sexuality, like, I mean, that's the life force energy.
So also needing to recontextualize what sex means and like, can we talk about sex, you know, and it's like, We need to understand, like, people have been having sex for generations, because otherwise we wouldn't be here. Right? And so how can we bring also intentionality to sex and to the arrows to that creative energy?
And so the sacred sexuality, I feel like it's also now starting to flourish and to, um, also to understand how much shame. Is so deeply in our DNA, like, it's just been shame for generations for thousands of years, especially in women. And so bringing that to the table as well to be like, Hey, you know, we are all sexual creatures.
If you're not, that's totally cool. That's your choice, but it should be your choice. It shouldn't just be coming out of some past, you know, like somebody told you not to because you're being a bad girl, you know, and so, um, there's so much. Flourishing undergoing and there's still so much to do, but it's so exciting and it's just so, so great to be part of this conversation and just to this of this movement and to be here and witnessing it all and, you know, being able to hopefully participate in it in whatever capacity we can.
Nicole: Yes, absolutely. And you definitely did that today by joining me and all the listeners to have this vulnerable conversation about so many of these pieces. So I really appreciate that. Thank you.
Dr. Karolina Mikos: Thank you so much. That's been amazing. Such a pleasure and such an honor to be on the Modern Anarchy podcast.
Nicole: Hell yeah. So good. So good. Yeah. Well, I'll take that deep breath with you as you come towards the end.
So I always like to ask each guest just to tune into their body and tune into their soul and see if there's anything else that they want to say to the listeners. Otherwise, I have a closing question for us that I can guide us towards.
Dr. Karolina Mikos: I feel pretty complete. We touched on so many beautiful topics today.
Nicole: Great. Love to hear that. Well, then the closing question that I ask every guest is, What is one thing that you wish other people knew was more normal?
Dr. Karolina Mikos: Mmm. Mm hmm. Oh, I think sexuality. Oof. We're gonna end it on that. Yeah. It's so normal to be expressing, to be feeling, to be in our pleasure, to be joyous, and through that sexual life force energy.
Totally. Needs to be normalized.
Nicole: Oh, yeah. We'd have a very different life if we could all, like, feel more of that erotic force, right? And I know that, I guess I just hope in a world of getting more, flexibility with these boxes too. Like what does it mean to have sex versus like, oh wow, this is erotic, sensual embodiment play, right?
Like just more expansiveness with what that can mean for people. Um, because like even within the asexual community, so many of the asexual community members, like enjoy playing in kink, right? There's so much to play with embodiment in a kink. Um, ecstasy, and even in my work with clients from the asexual community, how that can evolve and change and shift over time, right?
I just hope that we can all get to a space of not seeing it in such rigid boxes of what it means to engage in this, but rather like that erotic space. Sensual life force energy, which you experience when you eat a good meal, my friends like slow Down to and this is myself included advice. Sam and Nicole slow down to eat that donut You know that's in front of you rather than just like munch munch munch munch munch, right?
Like it's it's it's all erotic embodiment when we really slow down to be sensual, right? And so I think that the more that we can do that the more that there'll be space to play um erotically and sensually So many different containers. And I do believe in a better world when we're in that embodied state.
Dr. Karolina Mikos: Absolutely.
Nicole: Absolutely. Yes. Yes.
Dr. Karolina Mikos: Then we're going towards that space.
Nicole: And if you can't cry, I don't know what kind of orgasms you're having, you know, I'll just say that too, right? You gotta be able to release it. All the areas. Okay. My friends.
Well, it's such a joy to have you. Yeah. Thank you for joining us today. Thank you so much. Such a pleasure. Thank you so much. I want to hold some space too for you to plug where people can find you want to connect with you and your work. Where should they go to connect with you?
Dr. Karolina Mikos: Yeah. So, um, they could find me on my website plantmedhealth.com or I'm also on social and Instagram. Not too much. I'm not a big, huge fan of social media, but I do have actually two Instagram accounts. Go figure. Um, they're both business accounts. One is at Carolina amigos MD. And the other one is at. So follow me, contact me. I would love that. Thank you so much.
Nicole: Yes.
Thank you for joining us. It's been a pleasure.
If you enjoyed today's episode, then leave us a five star review wherever you listen to your podcast. And head on over to ModernAnarchyPodcast. com to get resources and learn more about all the things we talked about on today's episode. I want to thank you for tuning in and I will see you all next week.
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