This Monday we got to sit down and explore Jess Esfandiary's life experiences. Jess is the host of the Open Late Podcast, a speaker, and a coach whose passion is to help others embrace their authentic self. We dove into some interesting topics and explored the world of holistic medicine, psilocybin’s, and sexuality.
Jess began the conversation by explaining the beginning of her journey using plants. She had worked mostly in night clubs in the beginning of her career and had never once used psychedelics. She had a fear of drugs and during that time there was a media and cultural push that drugs were bad and ruined your life.
Exploring Mushrooms @ Burning Man
Her first experience with mushrooms was when she was 29 at Burning Man. She ended up taking way too much and had a wild experience. However, this experience made her learn a lot about her ability to take care of herself and get through hard things. It was really overwhelming for her, a lot of fears were brought up into her mind. Dark thoughts came up for her about her own safety and violence in the world. She continued to remind herself that she was safe and was able to work through the moment. She knew that this experience would accelerate new things for her in a different world. She started to explore psychedelics and using them as a healing modality.
What are psilocybin’s??
They work on the brain in that they manipulate the way your neurotransmitters communicate. It suppresses our ego, which tries to control our thoughts to keep us safe. Our ego doesn’t want us to face our shadows it wants to create structure and reduce the unexpected. Jess explained that if you let the ego take hold, you will continue to create the past in your future. By using psychedelics, you re-wire the brain to make new connections and want to explore new ideas.
She explains how you can experience great healing with the proper guide work. People have felt less self-conscious, decreased stress, help with their PTSD and insomnia, and more creative. Jess experienced the feeling of being more creative in her life. She decided to go on a sound journey in Nepal while taking psychedelics. She learned about the power of sound and how it can open our mind + body. She became so passionate about it she took a class in sound techniques and reiki. She now uses this education to help heal others.
The healing power of Ayurveda
Jess went through a life changing moment when she was diagnosed with cervical cancer and had to go through major surgery within 11 days of finding out this news. Post-surgery she had a lot of physical complications. Her body had to re-learn how to function and went through a lot of struggles. She had so many different problems that required a lot of different medicine from different doctors. This is when she decided to investigate ayurveda. This Ayurvedic doctor helped her with her lifestyle and completely changed the outlook of her life. She found holistic methods to healing her body through her lifestyle. She was able to bring her body back into balance.
What is polyamory?
Lastly, in the episode Carolina asks Jess about her relationship and how her and her husband found polyamory. Jess explained how when her and her husband first met, they knew that they didn’t want a traditional relationship. They didn’t want to deny that they would continue to have attraction to other people and didn’t want to shut down their flirty personality now that they were in a relationship. She had been in jealous relationships before and there was sexual repression. She wanted a relationship that was going to continue to be spicy even after the honeymoon stage. About 6 months into them having an open relationship, they had an accidental threesome with one of Jess’s friends. It ended up being an amazing experience where Jess got to come to terms with knowing that she had always been attracted to women. Initially, they had to work through some shame after the experience and not wanting others to know, but eventually it became a new lifestyle for them. They ended up having a 3rd partner who became a very important person in both of their lives. She helped Jess heal her sister wound and be able to feel loved by women. Polyamory helped her to see others as their own person.
Jess and Carolina dove into so many amazing topics and we hope that you took something away from this episode!
If you want to hear more of Jess and Carolina's chat, listen here!
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