Today we have Modern Day Shaman the Journeymen Collective coming on the podcast. And the reason why I’m so excited about that is because I do think that consciousness studies and that kind of thing is a total rebel diet, and something that does need to be integrated more. So I’m very keen to talk to Gary and Rob. Yeah, and I see what they have to say about diet.
Russ: Same here. I see them. How are you guys doing?
Rob: Wonderful, as usual.
Gary: Excellent. Yes.
Russ: Good, good. Well, welcome to the podcast. Introduce yourself, we love to hear who you are.
Gary: So we'll keep it short.
Rob: So we are the Journeymen Collective, and we guide visionaries through luxurious shamanic journeys. And a little bit about us, I come from our corporate background. And for the last 15 years, I’ve been working in the metaphysical world as well and left the corporate world. And I bring both the metaphysical world and the corporate world into our business. And
Gary: I actually come from a theater background, I moved to England and went to theater school for a number of years and stayed there and lived there and worked there. And in that time, I discovered a program called the Alexander Technique in mind body conscious awareness training. I just took to it like a horse to water and it was perfect. I understood it, and eventually when I moved back to Canada, Vancouver, they opened up a school here and I ended up going back to school for three years to become a certified teacher. So I’ve been teaching the Alexander’s Technique for about 18 years, but I’ve been like the program or with the program, about 30 years. So we incorporate that a lot into our work. Also, the use of psilocybin is a vitally important part of our work and the journey process.
Sarah: Right, very cool. Yeah, I’ve heard of the Alexander Technique, I didn’t realize that you had studied that so much. That’s about posture. One of the elements I’m sure there’s a lot of it but that’s really what it’s more famous for?
Gary: It’s getting you more connected to self, finding out how unconscious, we are responding to the world, and how can I get conscious about responding to them rather than through habitual response mechanism, immediate response so there’s,
as we work with deeply as we take the time to teach you or to guide you to get you to stop coming to heart, breathe, and then respond.
It comes much quicker with time but at the beginning, you need to take the time to practice. It’s hands on work and it’s almost mind to mind working away. You’re listening and watching the client and seeing how they respond and awakening their response mechanism.
Russ: Very helpful in the corporate environment of not immediately reacting and taking your time to respond in it. How do you couple it with active listening?
Gary: It’s because what we’ll work with is getting you into the present moment. Listening, can you actually hear what’s happening in the room? Or are you in your head, thinking about your answer other than actually listening to what has been spoken to you. So you’re able to respond to a more natural flowing state.
Sarah: Right, yeah. Well, that’s cool. And like I say, I actually had thought that was something completely different. I thought the Alexander Technique was more about, you know, because my mom always used to say to me, I’m gonna send you to the Alexander Technique, because you’re not sitting up straight. So I totally had missed that. But I think that’s what I’m learning with a lot of the things because this is Rebel Scientists. I’m coming from a science background, and a lot of the things that are taught about this kind of thing is missed off their whole, like you say, the metaphysic. So very cool to see that being bought in, and it’s something that I haven’t practiced. And that’s why it’s great. You know, like, Russ said, we talked about Reiki last week, which is something way out of my comfort zone and other things like that. Gary, you said, just when you introduce yourself that you’re into metaphysics, and that’s quite a broad term. I wonder if you can narrow that down a bit and explain what kind of metaphysics are you into.
Gary: So it would be about bringing universal law, universal laws that govern all of creation, and bringing that into not just a mental understanding of it. But when you come on a journey with us, we allow you to experience those laws. And we guide you to experience those laws, so that you not only have a mental construct of it, but you have a deep visceral, understanding the heart knowing that you can bring into the boardroom. And you can actually allow yourself to hear someone, listen to them, feel their energy, open up your awareness to actually feel their energy, process it, and you’re not only processing their words, you’re processing their energy along with their words. So we know that so much of what we speak of, is in the unspoken.
So it’s opening and expanding one’s awareness to those metaphysical laws, so that you can create the highest form of intelligence.
Sarah: What laws are you talking about? You maybe need to, for someone who’s not used to the language. What are the universal laws?
Gary: So, there are many and there are also new laws that are coming through us as well. So, one simple one is the love vibration.
Every single thing that is in existence that’s in front of you, that’s your laptop’s made of it, your microphones made out of it, it’s a cycles per second, that’s a hertz, it doesn’t hurt. It says hertz is a frequency. And depending on what your being is vibrating at, that’s what is going to construct your reality. That’s what’s going to construct your business. And so that’s one of the many laws, we could probably go over.
Russ: Do you mind if we stop on that law really quick and only because I’ve been listening to every single one of our guests on our podcast and I’ve been listening to Sarah and that is actually something that has come up so often. The electrical vibration or the current we just met with a Reiki healer. A few weeks ago, she talked about passing that energy on to people. What are we talking about here? Is it the fact that like, I mean, Sarah told me once that there’s vibration in your food that comes from the sunlight? So what is that part of it when you teach the vibration piece of that law? Do we have to coexist with it? Is there a battle we’re having with that vibration? I’m curious about that one.
Gary: There’s only a battle if you want it.
So you can choose to live in harmony with it and take an active participation in cleansing and clearing your energy on a daily basis through intention.
Russ: Is that meditation?
Gary: Yeah and meditation there’s various forms of it, there’s the actual piece of the Alexander Technique whereby you’re witnessing whereby you may have pain or tension in your body that is an example of you are restricting the flow of the universe through you like we’re 99.99% space the matter that we are is only a small point 001% so when we actually have an awareness of what that matter is doing, then we can use those cues to actually instruct our daily life.
Sarah: Okay, that not really that quantum physics rather than metaphysics because quantum physics tells us that we are vibration and oscillation. What is the difference between what you’re saying there and quantum physics?
Gary: I think it’s taking it into the spiritual realm. So it’s a lot of the mystical aspect of what is mystical. The mystical is simply the unknown, what we can’t see with our physical eyes. It’s an inner seeing and it’s an inner seeing of our being.
Sarah: Okay, and so I’m interested where do you get that component from... do you follow any specific spiritual path or it’s something that came to you?
Gary: I think a lot of it was we were awakened during our journey process when we met with the shaman and we went on a personal journey individually. I woke up you could say I did wake up even more that I said to my shaman the frequency and vibration. He says, “Well, explain to me what do you mean.” I said, “Whoa, if I can feel that what else is happening throughout the world that ripple effect, it’s like I thought it was like all explosions.” It’s just one explosion that just didn’t happen and it’s done.
It ripples throughout the world and we are all affected even if we don’t sense it right now. It vibrates through our feet and into our being.
Russ: Gary, I have a question there and I’ve listened to our podcasts back and I was realized I was bringing it back to me and I say, I a lot. I’m trying to relate here is when you talk about that moment when you realize when you woke up and I’ve had a moment like that in my life where I was like, oh my god, this is incredible. I can feel and see things I’ve never seen before just by standing here and staring at a tree or staring at the ocean. For you, what was that? And for both of you, what was that moment when you woke up and what caused it and what happened afterwards?
Gary: The whole thing is like I’m aware it was like, no, I was just touching awareness.
And when I went on the journey and within like 15 minutes after digesting the psilocybin and sitting with my shaman and doing the work, I woke up as it we were in the matrix.
My eyes were so open and I could see clearly what was happening around me and the movement and the connectivity. And then from there I just sensed into a lot more into like five hours of this journey process with Rob.
Rob: I’ve been doing the work the metaphysical work working with different teachers from various backgrounds. And I went on my very first shaman journey. And I had experimented with plant medicine previously in University. When I met the medicine with intention and respect, it blew me out of the water.
Because I was actually able to go so much deeper within itself and connect more deeply with self. I also had someone guiding me through that process, both mind to mind in my physical presence, soul to soul.
And I came back from that journey. And I sat with myself and I sat in silence in our home. And I was sitting in silence, and I was shown that this is what Gary and I are to do. And so I called our shaman that we had been working with. And I said, this is what you were to do. And he’s like, “No, I don’t train people, I only facilitate it.” I was like, “No, you do, I saw you, I saw it.” And most of what I see on the inner plane takes place on the outer plane. And so I asked him to open up to a possibility he did, and the rest is history.
Sarah: And that’s when you started doing this, the journeys, you facilitate the plant medicine, maybe you can tell us a bit about that, like, which one do you use and how to do that, because I know that something that maybe needs a bit of care when people...
Rob:
Yeah, it’s always, always, always to be guided. When you meet the medicine with respect and intention, it changes the inner playing field. And when you come on a journey with us, it’s not just running through the forest, it’s not in a shack, it’s a luxurious process. Because it’s a divine process that you get to experience. So there’s times where it’s not comfortable.
So allow the physical body to be comfortable, and super comfortable. And so we facilitate those journeys with psilocybin, otherwise known as magic mushrooms, and it’s a plant medicine, it grows in the forest, was put here by Mother Nature. And we guide people into stillness. And we just allow people to go very deep within itself, and some people will come in and they will be still as still it can be for like, five, six hours, if not more, and we’re with you from the time that you land, into our presence, to the time that you leave, obviously you sleep on your own. That’s not included in the service, kidding.
So, we’re with you, from the time that you arrived at the time that you leave.
And that’s the personalized aspect. We truly believe you need to be taken care of. Because it is a journey. And it’s your personal journey. It’s all about you. And that’s all we focus on is you. So we do very small groups. When we do a [unclear 18:44] process, there’s either a single person of solo, or there’s a couple of maybe two partners that work together or whatever team of two and then maybe a team of three or four people maximum. And then we just devote our whole time to you for that for the like the four days that you’re with us. There’s just to give a little bit more there’s prior to the journey, we would do like a four-week intensive preparatory work for the journey process. You come see us for four days. And then after that four weeks would be the integration, which is vitally important is you need to integrate what you’ve been taught, shown and going to learn to bring you forward because our habits are so strong, and you want to break those old habits create the new ones you’ve seen to move forward and a clear path.
Sarah: Yeah, what do you find from the people that you’ve taken on these journeys? I mean, what kind of reports do you have? And do you follow up with people afterwards?
Rob: Oh, definitely. We still stay in contact with all of our people. And what do we find? Again, that could take about 12 hours.
We find that people really let go of the old baggage. So there’s the clearing of the old, there’s the opening up to the new, and those that really embody the mystical experience that they were shown that those are the people that really consciously go back into their life and create the life that they truly, truly want.
And their life is typically in a great state. And it’s about bringing it to that next level, it’s upgrading so that it’s even better. And some examples would be, we worked with a doctor who lived in the in the Midwest, and then he eventually decided that he wanted to leave the Midwest and go to the coast. And he did, he bought his dream home. And he started his own center. And so he’s in that process and he did it by trusting his heart intelligence. And there was that strong logical side because as a doctor, you’re going to be trained in the knowledge, in the mental, training those mental programs. And for him he was able to actually let go and bridge the two worlds. So that there’s the heart intelligence merged with the mental knowing aspect.
Sarah: My main question, I suppose, is why do you think people need to plant medicines or need to be walking through and connected, if we are all part of the universal energy. Why do we need to be guided, or what is this plant medicine bringing us that we don’t already have?
Rob: It helps you decompose, the old programming inherited from our parents, from our grandparents, from our great, great grandparents, the generational traumas that we don’t even know they’re there will show up. And they’re there. Because we all have generational trauma from war, no matter what you like, no matter how far you go back, every single one of us is carrying the energy of war. And we don’t even know, it’s unconscious. So it’s about bringing those energies up through and allowing someone to guide you through that process. So that we can open up what I call your quantum window and help you clear the energy that’s stuck in your system. And it’ll show up in various ways, in your relationships, in your business. And so we help you clear that out, so that there’s space within you and every single person on the planet could benefit from this. And it allows you to actually open your awareness to the unseen.
Sarah: Right. Why do you think it’s a little bit fringe then because if it’s something that everybody needs and yet, most of the population are not focusing on way, most of the population and not taking these inner journeys or doing the plant medicines?
Rob: Most people want to be told what to do. Most people will bow down and hand over their freedom and over their purpose just to get on by and their life. And they haven’t touched that inner aspect of themselves. And me coming from a science background from a corporate world as well. I think I always sensed there was more and that’s the thing, there’s always more, there’s another level, every single journey that you come on with us. There’s another level and its simply people don’t want to look at themselves. It’s easier to point outside yourself.
Russ: And as shaman, then you’re guiding people through that at their own pace, and kind of letting them be and you got to guide them through that process.
Gary: Yes, like we’re there, we’re almost there holding your hands were in the room with you, right from the beginning until right to go to the bed or after dinner, whatever it is like we never leave the room. And we’re consciously aware of what’s going on at all times.
Rob: And we tap into your energy we tap into your mind because when people go on a plant medicine journey or a trip on their own, what happens is you’ll get stuck in a loop for four or five hours. And people will say, “Oh my God, that was horrible. That was a bad trip.” It’s again because you didn’t have the guidance. And when you have the guidance there, we can help you. Again, a lot of it’s in silence. We do play music as well. We don’t create the music; we just play through iTunes.
Gary: There’s no singing, dancing, chanting, rattles, fetters, whatever.
Russ: I want to see. I love if you can share that playlist.
Gary: Come on the journey, you’ll be able to hear it.
Rob: Yeah, it’s a sacred process. It’s a bit honors your highest potential. And that’s what it comes down to. We’re there to help you to connect more deeply into self to truly honor your highest potential that you’re here for. And to truly remember. And that’s another one of the laws is the law of remembering that we have all come into this life and we’ve just forgotten.
Sarah: Well, I was just gonna ask what about people who can’t go on the journey? I was gonna ask what tips have you got for people? You know, maybe our listeners or maybe even Russ and I, we do our challenge, what advice that you have for people that they can maybe get in touch with what you’re talking about, without having to do these journeys, which people might not be able to do and do the suicide and what can people do now?
Gary: Do you want your seven-day challenge now? And then
Sarah: Go, go Yeah.
Russ: Yeah, go.
Gary: Your listeners can use it. Okay, so we’ve thought about it. And this is what we’ve come up with this part of our process too. So we feel this is a thing that you can do on your own.
Rob: So it’s about, like, so the context of this is that society, the whole entire planet is so freaking busy thinking all the time thinking about what’s next thinking, “Oh, my God, I have to go pick up the groceries and had to go pick up the kids.” And I’m not even here, I’m not even present, I’m worrying about the future that hasn’t even happened yet. And because of that, we have ignored the highest intelligence within our being, which is our heart intelligence, and it has everything that you’ll ever need. And so our challenge is, throughout the next seven days, anytime that you’re changing a direction in your day, give yourself some time. And this is up to you to find out how much time you need to stop, breathe. And come into your heart. Switch the energy, because most of the time we’re sitting here looking up, we’re looking up because our energy is up in our head, or in those conscious or unconscious loops, that programming’s. So it’s stop, breathe, come into heart. And just allow yourself to be in that space. So then mental chatter can stop. And then go about the next thing you’re going to take on and then do it again. The next time that you’re going to change direction, stop, breathe, come into heart. And when you actually let that go, let go the control. That’s what it is, we’re so fearful of letting go of control when we have no one has any control. If we just tap into the heart, field, that magnetic field of our heart, everything will work out perfectly for us. The perfect people, the perfect places, the perfect things will drop in. And I’m not saying that you do nothing. Lazy law of attraction people. It’s about actually taking that conscious action and you’re pulled by your heart. You’re pulled by that infinite intelligence that every single one of us is connected to, but we become disconnected from it.
Gary: So the big thing is to keep it simple is think with the heart. Love with the mind. That helps you drops you into your heart so you can come back and communicate through your heart.
Rob: See, come back and communicate through your you just you just blew up Valentine’s Day for so many people. Now we go change the heart to a brain and the whole thing is it’s very, it’s I mean, it’s all this is all doable stuff, right? I think. And its practice and its practice and practice and practice. I mean, I think the two of us are game to do this. We’ve done some sort of this practice in in the past I think, you know, as you advance through and you have the folks that you work with coming through, what are some tips you give them as they go back to their real life journey? Obviously this is one but they’ve been through a journey with you What are some tips that you give them now that they have seen something? What are some tips you leave them with so they can do this on their own? Because learning and understanding is part of it, but what’s the practice piece that you can do on your own because you They just showed a great one. Are there other others, though that you could that you share with them that they can practice on their own?
Rob: Yeah, and this is a big one. It’s about remembering. So we all have traumas and dramas in our life. And we can as Gary said, we can talk about those and lament about those endlessly. Which then just brings more of that into our lives. Or we can remember that which we were showing in the journey. And allow that to be a touchstone. So that anytime that you get into what I call head fuckery mode, when you’re in your head too much, it’s allowing yourself to remember back into the journey. Remember that what you were seeing and there are things that I’m still integrating into my life from my very first journey. And I’ll go back to them, I’ll remember and I’ll ask, “What am I to learn? How am I to integrate this into my life? How am I to integrate this into my business, into our business and help more people?” And so it’s about grounding the mystical into your everyday life.
🚨 7 Day Challenge 🚨
Russ: Sarah, I honestly I’m in my body right now I’m by right by my heart I could hear it beating.
Sarah: Yeah.
Russ: I spent the time. I did it. I spent the time to get out of my head. I took me a busy day. And I said I’m going to figure out the right intention and I’m going to get closer to my heart and guess what? I now have to go take blood pressure medicine every single day because I listen to my heart because I have high blood pressure. Oh god great is that thank your modern shaman for pointing that out to me.
Sarah: Now you’re totally aware of it because you’re listening every day.
Russ: I would have never known; I would have never known by now I know.
Sarah: [unclear 41:58] Have you progressed to shaman head shaman yet?
Russ: No, not yet, but I will. We will join them on their journey and let you all have our own journey when you finally get to visit the United States in 2023, 2024 when our politicians can get their acts together to figure this thing out. How do you feel about this? How did you do with this exercise?
Sarah: Well, what they such lovely guys, very gentle. I’ve been kind of stopping in my day bringing in that gentle energy, taking a breath. I must admit. It’s not... it’s more of a kind of on the go all the time, so it is cool to have that reminder to just stop and take a breath and as we heard from warrior women you know breathing is crucially important you know it’s something that we take for granted. So I think it is cool, stop, do some deep breathing, take a breath, be where you are, it’s a good lesson. So, yeah, cool.
Russ: Yeah, it’s important. We talked to Christy about it as well. The Reiki side it’s you know, breathing. Breathing is the reset. I watch a lot of sports as you probably can imagine. And I watch every baseball player who goes up to bat and every baseball player who’s pitching and the way they reset themselves is they take a deep breath every single time and it probably is a great reset for your body to say I’m going to breathe in and breathe out and it’s an it takes you out of this your headspace and put you into your body space.
Sarah: Yeah, it probably has a few different functions, doesn’t it? Because I did the Wim Hof breathing as well. Wim Hof and there he’s like getting you into a different mental state, preparing you for what you’re gonna do, you’re mentally stealing yourself in that case that I’ve got a different take they want you to be in the now [unclear 43:58]
Russ: Yeah, I like it.
Sarah: [unclear 44:05]
Russ: Yeah, and very kind. Rob and Gary were very kind for giving us their time and what they’re doing is, it’s for other people. Right. The thing that I always love about meeting your friends and new friends is the compassion. They have for others. As some people are doing this for money, let’s be honest. Some people are building a business off of this and some people are doing it because they want to help people and there’s no shame in helping people like that’s why we’re all here. Right? We are...
Sarah: [unclear 44:42] making money that I mean, you’ve got to, you need to look after yourself. So that you can be there to [unclear 44:50] people. So yeah, I thought they were good. I mean, actually what they’re doing is a little bit more for a different part of society. It’s just where you wrap the things you want. I don’t think everybody’s going to be able to be going off and doing the modern journey. But everybody can do the breathing. Everyone’s been [unclear 45:10], everyone can do that. So yeah, it’s interesting. It’s kind of a little bit of an LA Hollywood version of the shaman, but it’s cool. They were just very lovely people.
Russ: Yeah, you know, making money, doing something you love and you’re helping people. All day long. I’ll do that all day long. I can’t say every job I’ve ever had has been to help people. I’ll tell you that. And I enjoyed it. I think breathing is incredibly important in my life. I think meditation. If I don’t breathe, listen if I’m not breathing [unclear 45:44]. Rob and Gary, both are Great. Thank you so much. And thank you.
Sarah: Yeah, thank you. Yeah, thank you Rob and Gary.
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