Tap Into The Power Of Nature And Plant Medicine To Heal

Tom McCarthy

I’m very excited for our next guest. It’s Dr. Maya Shetreat, she is a conventionally trained neurologist, a medical doctor, but she’s so much more than that. That’s what you’re gonna, you’re gonna discover. As we get into this, she, as a neurologist, she was already practicing integrative medicine. So, she was upping her game and really helping lots and lots of people. But then one day, her son, who was seven years old at the time, I think had a seizure and Maya then decided to expand her horizons. And that often happens when either we face something or someone we love faces something. It ends up being a gift, where we get to grow beyond where we were, she was already helping so many people live great lives, but decided when she looked at her son, it wasn’t. He didn’t need another medicine or something like that. He needed his spirit and his soul to be aided and helped and so Maya, went on a journey where she’s literally gone so many different places all over the world, studying herbs, indigenous people. And, and also she has a background. She came, her father was indigenous in the Tunisia region. And she’s got a special place in her heart for those cultures, which I love because there’s so much wisdom in those cultures and you’re helping us unearth that wisdom, Maya. So, welcome to The Global Energy Heal Summit. We’re really pleased to have you here.

Maya Shetreat, M.D.

Thank you so much for having me, Tom, it’s a pleasure to be here.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah, absolutely, so tell us about that story. I alluded to it a little bit, but you’re practicing medicine. You were one of the leaders in your field already, and then your son has a seizure. How did you go from that to really this exploration that you embarked on, to really go deeper into the soul and the spirit of life and also terms like, you know, terrain medicine, I think ethno, what is it called? Ethnobotany, yeah, I mean all these cool things, which I just learned that term today from you, by the way. So thank you for that, so how did take us a little bit through your journey here?

Maya Shetreat, M.D.

Yeah, well, so, you know, I think we all, I call my son, really all my children, but I call my, this particular son, my youngest, my muse, because he has really been a high level teacher for me. And I think a lot of us have those people in our lives. Children can be that, but other family members or people in our lives and, you know, in his case, he first sort of led me in the direction I needed to go of integrative medicine. When I was still in my training, becoming a pediatric neurologist, he way back, he was just turning a year old. He started to have these terrible asthma attacks and we didn’t know what was going on. We couldn’t get help, he started having neurologic kinds of is at that time and we discovered, or I discovered that he was allergic to soy and he took me on this whole journey, which ended up helping him to heal, applying that to my patients. I wrote my book, my book, The Dirt Cure.

Tom McCarthy

I love that title, The Dirt Cure.

Maya Shetreat, M.D.

That was all about, you know, where does our food come from? Like you know, that health is all about, you know, being exposed to germs and microbes, like yes, being exposed to germs and microbes.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah.

Maya Shetreat, M.D.

Eating fresh food from healthy soil and getting out into nature. So, he first kind of catapulted me out of conventional neurology and I remember talking to somebody and saying, you know what, I think I wanna go into integrative medicine. And she said, Maya, you’ve always wanted to go into integrative medicine. What are you talking about? And it was like, that event was like a pattern interrupt. And really like, as you said, those moments are really important in our lives. So his illness, which was obviously very scary, very stressful for me, you know, watching how him have all these struggles. And yet it really reminded me of who I wanted to be and what I was here to do. So that was my beginning of integrative medicine, way back when he was just a baby, we did all these things, I supported his body. He became much healthier, no more asthma, you know?

Tom McCarthy

Yeah.

Maya Shetreat, M.D.

Applied all these dirt care principles to our lives and then, when he was about seven years old, we actually had had this whole mold issue in our home and we had to move out and had five months of gutting certain parts of like, my apartment at that time and so on. And I got rid of all the upholstered furniture, everything was cleaned, I mean, it was down to the studs. Like mold was gone, moved back in two weeks later, my son has a seizure, his first seizure, you know, first and knock wood, only seizure in the epicenter of where the mold had been in the, that bathroom, my bathroom. And, but it had been stripped to the studs. There was no mold, we’d had it tested, everything was gone and he was locked in the bathroom. So, he was supposed to be taking a shower and he had locked the door and I mean, I thought we were gonna have to break down the door. It was a whole thing.

Tom McCarthy

Wow.

Maya Shetreat, M.D.

And then he kind of woke up, he was lying on the floor we were looking under the door. And then he walked out and he was groggy. And, you know, I held him and I just, in that moment, you know, I knew so deeply, and this is a different kind of knowing, right? Not cognitive knowing, but something much deeper and older, you know, and more profound, that this was not physical. This was not because of a physical thing. It was something energetic, it was something spiritual for him, it had to do with the space that we were in. And so I knew we were gonna have to move, even though we had just done this whole remediation and the whole thing, I knew it was the space. I knew it was him, I knew we needed to leave. 

And I knew that I didn’t have the tools to, at that moment to help him, I knew, you know, so much about food as medicine, I was an herbalist, you know, and had been practicing herbalism. I was doing mind, body work, I mean, I had a lot of knowledge and I was helping people from all over the world and I, and I think I was a little, you know, I had hubris, a little hubris. I thought I could help anybody you know, because I was helping people from everywhere, who were mystery cases and I felt, you know, just as the universe is, want to do, you know, you have this moment of confidence and then the universe comes and kind of, you know, gives you a kick in the butt. And that was my kick in the butt. And so I knew that I was gonna need to find teachers. And, you know, that’s something that I, I feel like is something we all need to take away, is we all need teachers and we all need mentors. We all need guides, through the journey of life.

Tom McCarthy

And you never, you’re never, you never stop growing too, which is you know, like you said, like I got all this handled, I know how to heal people. And then like, life kicks you in the butt or, you know, knocks you in the, in the jaw and you go, okay, there’s more to learn, which is beautiful. I mean, that’s such a beautiful thing that no matter how good we are at anything, we’re never gonna know everything. And so people that are coming and listening to you right now, Maya, you know, they probably tried some different things. They’ve tried to heal, they haven’t been able to heal yet. Or they have a loved one, that’s not been able to heal yet. That’s okay, there’s more to learn. And that’s what Maya is sharing with you. But she, you know, and also you’ve got the vulnerability to, to say that, you know, I thought I knew it all, like you just told us, and now, you know, even more, because you were willing to step beyond that hubris, that ego, so beautiful, I love that.

Maya Shetreat, M.D.

Yeah and we call, you know, so it sort of took me on this shamanic journey in a sense.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah.

Maya Shetreat, M.D.

And I wouldn’t call myself a shaman because that’s sort of a colonized word and it, you know, it’s a complicated word, but really what it taught me was I had to, it was an initiation period for me.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah.

Maya Shetreat, M.D.

And an initiation is when you’re catapulted out of your normal everyday life, this pattern interrupts kind of idea, right? Where, but it’s profound, right? You’re, you’re knocked out of normalcy. There’s no way to get back, to that place that you were before, you have to find a new way back, find tools and strategies, and really change and evolve in order to get back into sort of, to feel equipped again on your journey. You’re on your journey, you’re on the right journey. It’s not that you’ve necessarily done anything wrong. It’s that you’re in a period of awakening and these are what, this is what initiatory experiences are. And that was, and they don’t always feel very good. You know, they certainly bruise your ego. And sometimes they’re even harder than that, you know, in a lot of ways, but that was really, it was very humbling and it took me on a journey where I started looking for spiritual teachers. I didn’t even know what I was looking for in the beginning, to be honest with you and it’s not that, I didn’t have a spiritual life. I mean, I thought I was very awakened, right? Like, that’s the nature of this is like, every time you go through these evolutions, you think you’re in a great place. You think you have the tools and then you realize like, really what it is, in a sense is an upgrade, right? It’s an evolution.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah. 

Maya Shetreat, M.D.

But it, it doesn’t always feel like that, you know, it can feel.

Tom McCarthy

Exactly.

Maya Shetreat, M.D.

Yeah.

Tom McCarthy

Well, in any form of healing, we have to be willing to let go of who we think we really are to a certain extent. And that’s scary for people, I think that’s why a lot of people don’t heal ’cause they keep clinging to this old version of ourselves. I mean, think about what you had done. You’d gone through medical school, you specialize, you had all the is training and you’re supposed to come out and be able to like save the world, which you did you, but then you even went beyond that. You, you know, more holistic, integrative. And then you took the step that most people aren’t willing to take, when they’ve got all these degrees and all these years of education you went beyond. And, but it’s why you’re so phenomenal in what you do. I love it, how did you decide though, to take the path that you ended up taking? Like you went to Ecuador, Mexico, Australia, Africa, you know that’s and you learn from people that didn’t have degrees, right? That were taught by their elders. And didn’t go to a university to get an MD, like that took, that took a lot of faith too, right? Because a lot of your teachers, you know, had great resumes and they were very esteemed. And now you went out to people that you, you knew inside were gonna be your teachers, but there wasn’t a resume on them.

Maya Shetreat, M.D.

Well, yeah, I mean, you bring up so many good points. The first, you know, the first being, this journey of letting go of who you think you are is it’s really, there is something about remembering who we are here to be, right? And I still struggle with that. You know, there are still people who see, oh, like I practice ancient astrology, which is incredibly complex system, that I’ve learned because I find it so fascinating and so accurate. And of course there are people who think, oh, she’s a doctor and a scientist and she’s thinks, you know, oh, she must be, you know, she must not know anything about science. And it’s like, you know, there is this way of letting go of ego and saying, you know what? Like I’m here to be in my truth. 

I know the things that I’m able to do, which is thankfully many things, but it is, it is a, it is a very humbling experience to let go of who you think you are or who you thought were that part of it. In terms of, you know, how did I go on this journey? You know, this is a really important piece, I think. And you mentioned faith, so there is this way in which when you are, when you’ve let go of a lot of these parts of yourself or you’re letting go, it can feel very raw, you know, these initiatory periods can feel very, very raw and you have to look for the signs, right? You have to look for the messages. I call them cosmic breadcrumbs, that are kinda being put before you. And so what happened to me was, you know, I had, I kind of gained two spiritual teacher at that time in my life, one of them, a friend of mine said, oh, you should really talk to this person, you know, that my friend talks to, I think it would be great for you. I had no idea what this person did. I had no idea who they were, where they were, it turned out, they weren’t even local to me. And this was before it was like completely normal just to assume.

Tom McCarthy

To get on a Zoom or something yeah, yeah.

Maya Shetreat, M.D.

Well, I thought I was gonna be going to see her. She wouldn’t see me first.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah.

Maya Shetreat, M.D.

She said, I’m too busy, I had to like pursue this spiritual teacher and finally she said, I’ve been guided, like you, you need, I do need to include you in my work.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah.

Maya Shetreat, M.D.

And so that was one person. And I had no idea, you know, we call jokingly we used to call her my Oracle. She was, you know, and she would just talk to me, you know, every month and we would have these, she just helped me find this really deep spiritual part of myself, this inner knowing. And she, she really pushed through a lot of my resistance. I always think, wow, I’m so lucky. I found her and she has since passed away, but she was really important spiritual teacher. And then the other person, was actually someone I had heard speak at an herbal conference. She’s a, a fourth generation Shaman and an ethnobotanist.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah.

Maya Shetreat, M.D.

Meaning who had a PhD actually in her case, in, you know, how plants are used in indigenous and communal setting. So it’s, how they are more than just their biology, right? Their, that’s what ethnobotany is, is how are they used in culture and community. And it’s often looking at very like, powerful kinds of plants, it could be like, cacao, it could be tobacco, it could be psychedelics, you know, like psilocybin or ayahuasca. So these be all, but all different kinds of, of really unusual, powerful plants. So, I wanted to take my son to her to get a healing. And so we drove and it’s a whole story, which I won’t get too deeply into, but we drove hours and hours because she happened to be in the United States, to have her do this healing, which we didn’t even know if she was going to agree to do. And when, and she did the healing on him, then she did the healing on me. And then she did the healing on my daughter who come with us, to help us. And I said, oh, do you ever, do you ever teach people? Like, do you, you know, or do you just do healing? She said, oh, I do teach in, in Ecuador. And she said, I’m gonna do a, I’m gonna do a, a trip where I teach people in the winter. She said, we’re in the spring, something. So, you know, you can look at my website. 

Well, I went to look at the website afterwards. It was like, not a website, I mean, it was, there was no information. It was nothing like a website. And I kept looking and nothing, nothing presented itself. It was just the same thing and I was like, oh, like, I don’t, I don’t think anything’s gonna happen. Then one day I go on and it says, there’s gonna be a trip. And the trip was in two weeks. And basically long story short, everything conspired to allow me to be on that trip in a way, like, again, as the cosmic breadcrumbs, right? Like it all came together in this way. And I went and spent weeks, I was able to just leave sort of magically things worked out. And I began my journey of learning with the indigenous teachers that I began to study with at that time.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah, that’s awesome, so The Dirt Cure, nature, you know, you’ve really, and you said in your bio there’s, you said as a child, you were always like, you know, climbing rocks and trees and you could, if a tree got cut down, you could feel the pain, the tree was feeling, talk to us about nature and nature’s ability to heal and all the things that provides us that most people are not even aware of.

Maya Shetreat, M.D.

Hmm, yeah, you know, it’s so interest that whole idea about like feeling the trees and the being kinda unique, was something I think I did grow up with and you know, I learned later on, much later on in my life, that actually there’s a relationship we have in nature, which is that when trees die, more people die and there are studies that have been done. They don’t understand why, of course, but there have been studies that show that people die more of like cardiac illness, respiratory illness, other illness, if there’s, let’s say a, a tree, you know, an epidemic that hits trees and like a lot of trees might die, it actually affects us, humans, even though it’s not necessarily connecting the way that people understand. In terms of nature you know, we’re in this very deep relationship all the time with the natural world, we talk about, you know, being disconnected from nature. There’s no way to be disconnected from nature because we are nature. 

And even our understanding, let’s say of the microbiome, right? These three to five pounds of organisms, invisible organisms, right? Microorganisms, bacteria, viruses, fungi, parasites, even that live in and on our body, three to five pounds that are in constant communication with our mitochondria and guiding how we think and feel, what our immune systems do, what our hormones are doing. This is this very like deep and magical connection that we have with nature, with the natural world, like soil and trees and when we’re outside, there is a shared microbiome that we have with the natural world, right? In one teaspoon of soil, there are as many organisms as there are people on the entire planet.

Tom McCarthy

Oh my God.

Maya Shetreat, M.D.

And we’re in this very spiritual connection.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah.

Maya Shetreat, M.D.

Even just with the natural world in that way. But if you think about it, even if you go for a walk in the woods, let’s say, okay, I like to go foraging, I go trail running in the woods and I go foraging and sometimes I do them together. Right? Like I’m running, I’m also foraging what’s happening when you’re walking through the woods? Well, you’re doing you’re, first of all, you’re sharing a microbiome with the woods, right? So you’re in this, all these organisms, you’re breathing them in, you maybe are touching them, you know, when you brush against things and so on. You’re looking around, so you’re doing what’s lateral eye movements and, you know, if you know anything about things like EMDR, right? Lateral eye movements are a way in which you actually can like move trauma, right?

Tom McCarthy

Yeah.

Maya Shetreat, M.D.

Process trauma. It’s actually something which is very, away of also moving anxiety through, right? So you’re doing, because you’re looking around, especially if you’re foraging, but even if you’re just enjoying nature, you’re also connecting with the sounds of like the birds, the animals, the insects, the wind. Right? So you’re having this like nourishment of sound. So there are all these ways, and you’re grounding, you’re earthing, with your feet touching the ground as you’re walking forward movement, right? So, there’s all these ways when we’re in the natural world that we have these invisible connections.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah.

Maya Shetreat, M.D.

These invisible relationships, we can’t even necessarily discuss, but we’re experiencing community and we’re experiencing kinship. We’re experiencing reverence and wonder and awe and gratitude. And all of those are, are medicine to us. They’re their nourishment to us.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah.

Maya Shetreat, M.D.

And so they help us to, you know, they help us to operate in, in better balance and alignment.

Tom McCarthy

I love that, even just today. I mean, it’s a, I’m in Southern California. We’re a little bit, we complain a little bit about the weather out here, but it was chillier today and just getting outside in the sun and feeling the sun on me and being outside, it just felt so good. You know? And it, it’s just amazing. Yeah, that connection that you talk about to feel in balance and I definitely need to be outside a certain amount of time or I really don’t feel grounded, you know, I don’t feel that, so absolutely agree. Let’s jump into some, ’cause I know a lot of people are thinking, okay, so what can she share with us that can help us? And so one thing that I didn’t realize, you said three to five pounds of our body weight. Right? You know, cause I’ve heard of, you know, the microbiome and all that, I thought it was like, you know, just a little, little, you know, maybe a couple ounces, three to five pounds of microorganisms inside us and on us, that really is amazing. When we look at herbs and that, this goes back to, you know, training that you’ve been doing for a long, long time, but I know you’ve expanded it. What are some, you know, people talk about the microbiome and their gut and there’s so many issues that, that start from the gut, not being in balance, what are some herbs or some things that people that are, are wanting to be healthier, what can they do in terms of good things for the gut?

Maya Shetreat, M.D.

Well, that’s like a whole conversation in itself say, you know, so one thing is, you know, obviously getting out into nature, every day or as often as possible for some of the reasons that I outlined. Hugging trees, sitting on the ground, gardening, all, you know, foraging, like these are all things that I do. I am known to hug trees, it’s true.

Tom McCarthy

So what happens when you hug a tree? Because I believe in that too, but what, what actually happens, you’re a neurologist, right? So you understand the, not only the brain, but the nervous system and the nervous system is part of it is in the gut, part of it’s in the heart, not just the brain, what happens when you hug a tree? ‘Cause some people like, well hug a tree, well, how’s that gonna help me? Like, what actually happens when you hug a tree?

Maya Shetreat, M.D.

Well, so first of all, you know, if you’ve, I’m sure you’ve had people talk about the biofield right? This electromagnetic field and more than electromagnetic field, which is measurable, you can measure it up to six feet away or even more, six to 10 feet away. Everything that everything has a biofield okay. A rock a biofield and I can talk about a practice I do with rocks even, as well. But so the tree has a biofield you have a biofield and what happens with these two biofields, when you come into proximity is that you create a shared biofield, you become a little bit of that tree, right? Energetically, you are, you are taking in tree, right? Oak energy.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Maya Shetreat, M.D.

You’re seeing, You’re feeling that, it’s influencing and changing your biofield and your biofield, is influencing the biofield of the tree. You are, you’re you’re creating an intimate connection. And you know, so even if we don’t talk about kind of the spiritual nature of the tree and you know, the sort of invisible kind of elements of the tree, just from like, tree spirits, let’s say, but we’re just talking about from a scientific standpoint, you’re now, you’re now sharing you’re in a shared biofield with that tree. Then you’re coming into contact with the tree. Now, you’re experiencing earthing and there’s a whole lot of papers, I even talk about some of them in my book, The Dirt Cure, about what earthing is, it’s this, it’s a flow, unlimited flow of electrons. Okay?

Tom McCarthy

Wow.

Maya Shetreat, M.D.

That are coming out of the earth. And when you are, you know, walking barefoot or in shoes that don’t have rubber souls, okay? That are non grounding. Or if you’re are coming into contact by hugging the tree or sitting on a rock, you’re experiencing that unlimited flow of electrons that comes from the earth, that neutralize free radicals in your body, so that is a way in which you are actually transforming inflammation in your body, just by simply hugging the tree. Right? You’re.

Tom McCarthy

And it’s free.

Maya Shetreat, M.D. 

It’s free.

Tom McCarthy

Its free medicine, hugging a tree, or sitting on a rock and you’re getting healing energy from those interactions, wow.

Maya Shetreat, M.D. 

Right? And you’re changing. You’re changing how you, you know, you change how you feel, right? So there is a medicine, that’s involved in coming into contact, what I will add is when I hug a tree, before I hug the tree, I will ask permission. And this is one of the things that I actually teach in, in my programs, is about how do we come with reverence and respect and humility in these relationships, this kinship that we already have, but how do we, you know, the same way, we wouldn’t just throw our arms around another human being without feeling like there’s a sense of intimacy and connection and consent, that we kind of come to, You know, one of the things that I was taught is like, trees have, like rocks have family, right? I don’t just go pick up a rock and say, Ooh, this is a rock I’m taking it home. It’s pretty, I like it, I’ll notice a rock. And if I notice it, I already know that we’ve created a kinship. We already have an intimate connection. 

But what I’ll do is I’ll say, can I take you home with me? And I might say it out loud, or I might, you know, think it and then you kind of feel, right? You can feel into that and notice what it feels like. And sometimes you’ll get a no and sometimes you’ll get a yes and you pick it up and it’s like, yay. You know, this rock wants to come home with me. I was gonna mention actually, one of the practices I love, is when I have people in my office, that I’m working with, who very, very anxious and they’re talking and they’re all up here, you know, I have a rock and I did this exact process. I met this rock, it’s a nice, big, heavy rock. Okay? Not so heavy, I couldn’t pick it up, but it was effort for me to bring it home. And I saw this rock, not like a crystal, not a, this isn’t to do with crystals. This is like solid, you know, like granite, or whatever kind of rock you just might find outside. 

And I asked if I could bring it home, to help me in my healing work and I got a, yes, I brought it home, kept it in my office, washed it off. And when people start getting that way, I say, can I give you the rock? They’ll take the rock, put it in their lap. And you feel that same shared electromagnetic field, that the rock is bringing them back into their body, helping them feel calmer and more solid. And they’ll even say, oh, like, I feel so different now. Right? Just holding the weight of the rock in their lap. I’ve tried this with children, I’ve done it with adults and it can be transformative. And again, it’s like, you know, we’re trained to think we have to do such complicated things to feel well, to feel good, to feel grounded, to feel calm. But sometimes it can be as simple as just connecting with the energy of a rock, right? And becoming kind of sharing that electric magnetic field.

Tom McCarthy

I Love it.

Maya Shetreat, M.D. 

With something solid.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah, no, you have such a reverence for nature, which, you know, we all need to have more of that, because it is so precious and we need to take good care of it. And you know, one of my beliefs is everything is energy. Everything’s alive, it’s energy, a rock. Most people wouldn’t say is energy, or a chair or a desk or whatever, but everything’s energy and it’s alive and it’s got intelligence inside of it. Right? That your rock, you said, can I take you? And now this rock is helping to heal people. And some people might be listening to this, going what the heck is going on here? But this is real stuff and I’m so glad that you’re bringing it out to people and where can people, we’ve, I’ve got a few more questions, but where can people find more of your work Maya? You’ve got The Dirt Cure, obviously can buy it on Amazon, but what other things do you have available and where can people go and find you?

Maya Shetreat, M.D. 

Yeah, well, my site Drmaya.com, D-R-M-A-Y-A.com is where all my programs are. I have a certification program, where I take people through a lot of the knowledge I’ve grown and collected and you know, my own kind of indigenous lineage. So, I share that and to train people on how to bring it into their lives and into their communities and kind of leadership. I also have an herbalism track that I teach people. So, and I also just have a lot of free resources on my website, so people can definitely come and get meditations or read blogs, or just like a lot, a lot of resources to help people, right now, that they can access.

Tom McCarthy

Dr. DrMaya, M-A-Y-A.com.

Maya Shetreat, M.D. 

That’s right.

Tom McCarthy

Okay, perfect, so let’s jump into some kind of a hot topic for the time and, and it’s been much discussed and talked about over the past several years, used to be kind of taboo back in the, you know, back in the day, but psychedelics. So, I know you’ve done a lot of work with like mushrooms and different types of things that come from nature that have, these great healing properties also. So, talk to us about psychedelics. ‘Cause I think a lot of people are really interested in it. Some people have taken the plunge already. Some people are a little bit nervous, standing on the sidelines, they need to know more because you know, psychedelics were, were so taboo back in the day, where many of this grew up, where they were not only illegal, but you know, you don’t do that. You know, that’s bad for you. There are some really great uses and lots of great stories where people have benefited and have life altering experiences by taking psychedelics. So give us a little, a little primer. I know we, can’t it go like super deep into it. We, that would take another eight hours, but teach us a little bit about psychedelics and how you found them to be useful.

Maya Shetreat, M.D. 

Sure, yeah and I teach a whole deep dive, actually. That’s another thing that you’ll find on my website.

Tom McCarthy

Okay, cool.

Maya Shetreat, M.D. 

But psychedelics, so, psychedelics are really interesting because so everything that we know about psychedelics is that they’ve been used since the beginning of time, really in the beginning of people. Okay? at a minimum and you know, we know this from, from drawings and temples of things like cannabis and mushrooms and, you know, things like ayahuasca and the jungle, these, this wisdom that’s been passed down for, you know, thousands of years, really. So this is something that’s ancient and has been part of, you know, not just individual healing, which is how we think of healing now, but it’s been used as part of communal healing. And that goes to that idea of ethnobotany and kind of my love and passion for that. That these medicines are not just about how do we become healthy, but how do we have healthy communities? And that’s something that I think we miss in Western culture, we’ve really lost that idea, that a person, we’re only as, we’re only as healthy as the sickest person, right? 

You know, and so, this whole idea of psychedelics is it’s something much bigger than just you take something, have this kind of, you know, profound experience and kind of like move on. And, you know, like that, it’s something, it’s something that’s more comprehensive. And, you know, so the studies that have been done began in the fifties and they were very positive studies about OCD, about anxiety, about depression, very, very successful and unprecedented, you know, studies that were, were very profound. And yet, because of interesting political reasons, you know, it was, they were made illegal, you know, at a particular timeline, kind of the beginning, early beginning of the war on drugs, around the time of Nixon and then, they’ve kind of come back now, they’ve reemerged as something interesting in the academic world, so every academic institution in the world right now has studies going on around psychedelics, they have psychedelic research centers and so on. And what we’re finding that, psychedelics are probably the most meaning psilocybin mushroom, like magic mushrooms. You know, there are some others that are not, you know, as ancient, like MDMA or ketamine that are actually, you know, are LSD, right? These are newer, okay? But they have similar neurophysiology, like neuro activity. What they do is they actually are effective for things like depression, okay? These are studies, big studies that are coming out. You can kind of look, look in major publications and see major.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah.

Maya Shetreat, M.D. 

And, you know, you’ll see in New York Times and all that for major depression, for addiction, you know, really profoundly effective for like tobacco addiction, for opioids, there’s some of the, some of the best treatments that exist for addiction, PTSD, for OCD. And now we’re seeing that there are studies coming for dementia, for cancer, for people who are facing death actually, which you know.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah.

Maya Shetreat, M.D. 

A lot of people don’t like thinking about that, but you know, if someone has like a terminal illness.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah.

Maya Shetreat, M.D. 

This is, and they’re very, very scared about dying. There are profound studies where most people, most of the participants, like 90% came out feeling at peace and really with no anxiety about what was, what was to come, eating.

Tom McCarthy

I’ve heard that, yeah, because they’re so connected with and feel so one with everything, they don’t fear not being in a body anymore.

Maya Shetreat, M.D. 

Right? So part of what these do, these medicines do, is they turn off a part of the brain called the default mode network, which is part of like, what creates our ego, you know, for us, we call it the mean network, but when it’s shut down, temporarily shut down, you know, it allows like old memories to come up, sometimes old emotions, so this is a way sometimes people will say having one of these experiences, a macro experience and I also, I also teach about microdosing and coach people with microdosing, where they’re not having like this big, you know, cannonball, firework, experience. But for those who do, it’s maybe five hours or seven hours or something like that. Or sometimes even very shorter, much shorter than that. But they, they have these moments where it’s almost, they call it like 10 years of therapy in five hours, right? Where you’re facing things and coming up against things that maybe you’ve really compartmentalized. And suddenly you start to feel this sense of like moving through all this baggage, that you’ve been holding for a very long time, or that you, you aren’t willing to look at. Or you’re just, your defenses won’t allow you to look at, it’s not that you don’t try, there are a lot of people who say, oh, I’ve done the, I have done therapy. I have done all of these different kinds of approaches. And this was the one thing that was really transformative. Now I wanna just say, because we’re doing a little conversation about it and I don’t wanna mislead people. I don’t think it’s for everybody,

Tom McCarthy

Yeah.

Maya Shetreat, M.D. 

I don’t think it’s for everybody all the time. So in other words.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah.

Maya Shetreat, M.D. 

It could be right at one point, so I really encourage.

Tom McCarthy

You need an expert, you need an expert, right? You need someone like you or somebody, somebody that’s qualified to coach you through. You don’t wanna just go do this on your own or, you know.

Maya Shetreat, M.D. 

Absolutely.

Tom McCarthy

And, and.

Maya Shetreat, M.D. 

On the street or whatever people might do, yeah.

Tom McCarthy

And there are aspects of making sure you can do it safely. You can access the right.

Maya Shetreat, M.D. 

Yeah. Conditions and then there’s legality and a lot of things. So it is really, really important and helpful to know that it’s right for you and to go in with that kind of knowing. So, but there are some really amazing outcomes that people have experience.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah.

Maya Shetreat, M.D. 

I think it’s a very exciting time, I think soon within the next five years, for sure. We are going to see, we’re gonna see this being offered in probably in controlled settings, but we’re gonna see this offered very widely from you know, doctors and, and other practitioners.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah, really wonderful, again, it’s not for everybody all the time, but it could help a lot of people, the studies I’ve seen are very, very supportive of everything you talk about and, you know, it is coming from the earth. It’s something that you said, we can trace back to ancestors, having used these types of ways of healing before there were all the manufactured drugs that we have now, you know, there were also things available way back then that were super helpful that have been forgotten a little bit. So it’s just, you know, coming full circle back now, and people like you leading us back to nature, you know, instead of moving away from nature, moving back in unison with nature. And I really love that about you and the work that you’re doing.

Maya Shetreat, M.D. 

Thank you, yeah, I think what’s exciting about this, is that it’s forcing the medical and scientific community to think about things like consciousness and the, and spirituality and the sacred. And, you know, part of my commitment is to help us keep a sense of balance, right? So that we don’t rush head on and get, you know, kind of muck ourselves up, by not coming with that sense of reverence and the sacred, but it is a really exciting time to be, you know, in medicine and in research and seeing this kind of blossoming for people, especially because it’s not something you have to do all the time, it’s something we’re finding one experience or two experiences can be all that somebody needs and it can change everything for them.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah, so anybody that’s interested in herbs, expanding your consciousness, you know, all the different things that Maya is talking about, reconnecting with nature, go to Dr.maya.com and check out everything that Maya’s doing there. Her work is wonderful and she’s, she really, she truly is a scientist, she’s a medical doctor. So, she’s got that credibility and then she’s expanded beyond that. But I think, you know, you weren’t somebody that just went out in nature and started trying these things, you’ve got a scientific background. So you’ve got rigorous training, and you’ve really reached into nature and found what truly does work. So it’s not just hit or miss, you know, your work really has been a work of art. So it’s been amazing having you on Maya, and I know we’ve just literally scratched the surface. So I hope everybody will continue to, explore with you and check out your work, your book, The Dirt Cure, and then Dr.maya.com. Thank you so much for being with us. It really has been amazing, thank you so much.

Maya Shetreat, M.D. 

Thank you, Tom, it was a pleasure.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah and just last thing, any final words for everybody before we sign off here?

Maya Shetreat, M.D. 

You know, the only thing I would say is just, you know, stay connected to yourself and to nature and like really be playful and curious, and explore and find those cosmic breadcrumbs.

Tom McCarthy

I love it, you’re amazing, thank you, Maya.