There's an element of materialism versus the spiritual animism. So integration after psychedelic experiences, let's say in the Amazon, would be to be able to connect with the spirits of the Amazon, just to connect with the life force that's there in the only way we can.

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Hi, today we are going to be talking on To Cures MD, our podcast on asking those unasked questions. Today, specifically, we're talking about integration, which is a term used in psychedelic healing spaces, as well as in treatments, with therapy and the Importance of integration is more of bringing in all elements of what was experienced, what was the intention, and what was understood and processed through that using all the tools at hand.

I'm going to be asking and interviewing Dr. Surya Rehman today on integration and the practices of integration in both narrative medicine, as well as psychedelic treatments in medicine and the creativity that comes through that and the understanding of those processes.

And today we're also going to be doing an exercise in integration. So if you would like to join in, just get some paper and some coloring implements or a pen or pencil, whatever you're comfortable with, or an iPad, and just have that ready to explore with us as we explore this beautiful field of integration.

So thank you for joining us today. And a lot of the elements of art and narrative medicine come from a lot of the literature. This is one of the books I'm reading currently on recommendation by Dr.

Rahman on narrative medicine and the use of history and story in the healing process. So if you have access to this, this is a rich resource of the importance of narrative medicine.

And again, that element of story in one's processing of their life and their experiences and in their healing. Yeah, absolutely. We'll drop a link in on the podcast episode so you can get a book, a copy for yourself by Luis Mel Madrona.

So ways of integration. Can you tell me a little bit first about what is integration? Yeah, it's a word. It's a process. It means something on a larger scale and it means something on a smaller scale.

And I think that's what makes it hard to completely describe and it can feel a little bit fuzzy, which is why it's important to kind of stay in that edge between language and images that can really help us because what we're trying to do is we're trying to reach towards newness.

Right? Like I think in speaking of natural processes, when you think about, you know, fungal hyphae growing under the earth, and they're constantly connecting and disconnecting with each other, they're integrating almost kind of like that's how they work is integration is built into the culture of fungi, you know, and we're talking about, well, that's a concept of how organisms communicate.

So in a way, integration really reminds me that The flip side of it is happening right now, which is a lot of disconnection, right? Integration means connected together and integrated into a whole.

So it really requires a holistic understanding that all the parts of ourselves when they're aligned and they're present. We feel like an integrated whole self.

And what we experience in everyday Western model of life is that we have pieces of ourselves. We feel disconnected from ourselves. We spend too much time in one part and not enough time in the other part.

And so those parts can sometimes stop talking to each other. So my heart and my mind may stop talking to each other. And sometimes that emerges as an illness.

You know, therapy can be thought of as a process of integration, right? Because somebody is holding that space for you to make new connections in your own story and your own patterns and recognize what's happening so you can go into the edge of your growth and really feel free to explore.

And I think that is important to think about in integration. It's like, it's not like I have a plug and the socket it goes into and it's going to connect.

It's like, oh no, I'm going to massage this process. I'm going to just allow it to emerge because part of it is emerging from our pre-verbal intuitive selves.

And it's really hard for us in our Western mind to allow that to happen, to have spaces where we do that. Artists do that all the time, right? Artists are constantly listening to their imaginal, but they're usually the only ones.

And when we think about psychedelic journeys, for example, they bring so much richness on all these different facets and levels that one of the aspects of a deep psychedelic journey is ineffability.

The word ineffability is part of the mystical experience questionnaire. And what that means is it's indescribable by words. It's ineffable, right? It's like we know that there's something here, but I can't quite describe it because it's beyond the frameworks of my present understandings and experience, but there is experience that can happen outside of our frameworks of understanding, right?

So you can even talk about integration as like, oh, something traumatic happened. And even outside of psychedelic experience, how do I integrate this traumatic experience now into my life?

You know, for example, a life changing, we've been in the pediatric ICU, a life changing spinal cord injury that begins the process of integration of this new self.

back into, because in a traumatic situation like that, the person's identity, their embodied self has completely been shattered. And so they have to come back to wholeness in some way with this new paradigm, right?

And so community connection, all of that. So community, the microcosm of that say species, right? That's making connections both subsurficially and superficially, like you described the fungi, the networks and the, I guess even the soil, the moisture, you know, the molecular connections it's making at that microscopic level and the effect that that has on the whole species, correct?

So we're bringing, we're identifying those hearts and bringing them all in that whole understanding of what that really looks like and using other elements of creativity, narrative, being something that you can describe, something that you maybe only just to body or feel, or to have a sensory perception of and using what would be the ways of integrating.

What are the, um, and cause you described many things. So what is a, a way that you find integrative one tool. I love how you laid out the different ways that we may receive information.

Information can be insights as thoughts. Information can be as emotional states or embodied somatic energetic movements. And one of the ways that we even just begin to start the integration process is just allowing experience to be, because you can, you can, you know, that's one of the beautiful things about a psychedelic journey is my mind suddenly becomes present, very present to its own workings.

I see. Right. And so bringing in that. Right. Capturing that moment and allowing it to crystallize because I feel that's the only place where we're when we're making art, let's say.

So today's exercise is going to be making some art. And, you know, that is an exploratory form. It's a form where you don't know what the final product is going to be, but it becomes symbolic.

of where your thought process is right now, right here, as a result of you being able to see your own thought process. Visually. Visually. And even in that exercise of putting that onto some form of media, you're really capturing that and representing that in a symbolic form that gives another kind of meaning as it comes out or, you know, expressed on the page.

We are symbolically aligned in attuned beings, you know, respond to symbols every single day, right? the rectangle of the yield sign, the round of the square, you know, the red of the stop sign, like we are attuned to symbols and when we don't use that part of our brain to build in our own personal symbology, our things that are important to us, we may not even understand that we have this power that actually brings both left and right sides of the brain, if you want to think about like you know, the logical intuitive, what I was reading, this book called The Master and the Emissary, and this idea that when we think of our brains, we forget to use the intuitive part, and actually the master, which is the intuitive part, the true self, sends out the emissary, which is the egoic brain, the self, you know, and the emissary's job is to come back and report back to the greater whole and say, this is what I found out there, How much of this feels true?

What feels false? What do you want to accept? What do you want to reject? Like there's a discrimination factor that needs to happen. And that's where I think reflection, meditation, putting these, putting what you think out of yourself so you can see what you think is such an important tool because what he describes in this book is that it's like the emissary goes out and forgets to come back and becomes so much more powerful that the ego starts to think that it's all there is.

Okay. And so we need to bring back information from the logical brain into the intuitive brain for processing. And that's what's happening in dreams. It's already a process happening.

Right, right. And those dreams are describable. And I've always wondered why, and I'm always curious about why is it that when you have a dream, you're in a dream, and this can be even in a session, You're so present with it.

You know what's happening. It makes sense. And then when the dream is over and you wake up, suddenly the recall, clarity that you had within that experience is somehow less accessible.

And it's almost like you want to be able to describe it, but the words are not there. And that's what I've always been curious about. Why is that? You would think that the brain as it is, right?

I mean, it is an integration of so many parts. There's the thinking brain. There's the executive brain. There's the sensory brain. There's the temporal positional brain.

There's the processing brain. There's memory right in the middle. There's the brain stem. There's the limbic response. So imagine that the brain itself is integrating all of its processes at the same time, but to even open it up and dissect it and then see it as it is, because I just recently did a brain map.

Oh yeah, I mean, I recently did my brain map, which is actually a quantified EEG, you place leads on your head like you do in an EEG and they're dry cap EEGs, it's a helmet you put on and it picks up the different waveforms in all of the cortical structures of your brain, the superficial ones, the ones that are right on the top and the motor cortex say, then there's the sensory cortex, then there's again the visual cortex, I just say how exciting this is.

It's like being able to tap into your own brain's patterns. Yes. And see it. And see it. It's like, oh, this is a real thing and I can play with it and interpret it and learn from it.

And even what you're describing makes me recognize that there's so many different systems that part of preparation even is maybe pulling in all the systems.

Right? Get embodied, get into your breath, get into your nervous systems and start to pre-integrate even, at least call them up. We all are born with all these capabilities, but some of them fade away and get unused, but we have that.

And I think this brain mapping technology is going to teach us that we're optimal when we know how to switch between different modes and recruit when we need to.

And I think that really aligns with me with the education piece, which is the only way to learn is to remain curious and identify the gap. That exists and that's exactly what we're doing here is like, with the brain mapping technology, looking at the gaps and saying, how does that translate to behavior and mood and relationships and yourself talk?

Or are you having trouble accessing your memories? How does that impact your relationship? Right? Yeah. What does brain fog really look like? Why it actually is, there's a mapping for brain fog, you know, um, you know, that loosening of the executive function, the Delta waves that kind of take over the brain looks sleepy.

It's in a Delta and Theta waveform and it's in a dream sleep state of while awake. So there's that disconnection of what's being, what you're present with and what your body is wanting you to go into that state or, you know, forcing that state on you when you're fatigued, when you don't sleep well.

Not eating well, not exercising, not getting sunshine. Your brain is telling you, you need to slow down. Yeah, listening to those parts and recognizing that this is kind of like how an engine works.

It's like the throttle on the brake. There's things that slow it down. There's things that make it more refined and being aware of what mode you're in.

Are you fuzzy? Are you clear? I'm also curious about what you talked about, the differences between Western integration techniques and what are the Indigenous integrated techniques that we've been using for centuries and maybe have moved away from.

Can you kind of describe those two parts of Western integration, Indigenous integration? Just that in five minutes, please. It's a big topic. Thank you for asking that because I'm learning more and more about it.

So my conception is also still growing. You know, I approached it like everybody else does, which is that, okay, integration is activities that you do.

Okay. And something magical is supposed to happen. and somehow makes sense of it. Okay, it's a meaning-making tool. And then when you kind of scratch under the surface and you look at what does successful integration look like and what are the cultures that have integrated psychedelic experiences into their everyday, not just spirituality, but sense of being and purpose in the world and relationality within their context or their tribe or their area and a sense that there's a culture of integration that has existed in many, many cultures over time.

For example, one of the great pieces that I really was excited to discover is our heritage in South Asia. You know, some of the concepts of what we discover in psychedelics really map on very nicely.

to some of the, for example, temple designs that you see, right? All over. Some of the ways in which the mythology of existence is very alive in people's everyday world.

It's like, oh, I'm going to Kashi. That means something. That's meant something to my ancestors. And imagine that, right? When you do something that your ancestors have done for thousands of years, the connection you feel, the deep-seated connection you feel, and how they are also, you know, it's a bi-directional, relational, energetic field that you get to connect with over and over again.

You get to, say, pilgrimage as a form of integration, making that journey, preparing for that experience, and when you're there, recognizing the historical context.

That way, right, right, the historical context. I think when we talk about like, so that's what like an example that struck me as, you know, integration can also be part of a culture, a lived culture.

And it's happened in various ways. But when we think about, okay, what does it mean to say with your, let's say with your psychedelic integration coach or your psychotherapist, oh, now we're in an integration session, right?

And that pattern of integration would be one to one. Two people like we are here, we might use some art tools, we might use some journaling. Some people for integration, you asked me earlier, what are the different ways of integrating?

Some people may go for a walk or a hike. Some people may do yoga and more embodied practices. Some people may paint, write, journal, make mandalas. That's another way that really becomes very alive right after psychedelic journey.

And so these are the ways that we were seeing and hearing it, but, you know, there's again this kind of like tension between I'll call it indigenous versus Western and just recognizing that the Western relationship to psychedelics is fairly new since like the 1950s only and that the.

kind of indigenous cultural roots in the various practices, especially across the, you know, kind of different continents are different. They've been around for thousands of years, you know, and so it can one of the contrast is the disconnection that we can feel in Western culture versus a connection that we can feel.

um in kind of like a more long-standing culture of integration right because there's already a story that there's already a mythology you're just plugging into it and here we're kind of like grasping we're still figuring out like what does it mean you know and more individualistic more okay because it's within this framework unless you go to a retreat center you know but still you're not in a culture you're not like oh these are groups of people and we connect over these various things.

It's like, no, you may not have met those people before that retreat. So that's a sense of disconnect. So it happens in isolation versus community. There's an element of materialism versus the spiritual animism.

So integration after psychedelic experiences, let's say in the Amazon, would be to be able to connect with the spirits of the Amazon, just to connect with the life force that's there in the only way we can.

which is non-verbal, pre-verbal, quote unquote, spurts. Which may be very sensory, right? It would be in the forest, integrating with nature, the smells, the sounds, what you witness.

Completely present and not thinking about my emails. Thinking about my next day because I am completely in that moment. So you can even describe a moment of integrating as a moment when you feel completely present in that moment and connect to the things that you're seeing.

So even like just the other day, I went and lay down under a tree and was in a state of just, you know, stillness within myself enough. to kind of have a conversation with the trees.

And that just felt very beautiful because I felt safe. Yeah. Right. I felt very safe. It's like, oh, you're part of this. You're not separate from it.

Right. And that you can converse with it because if you're part of it, you have communication with it. Yeah. It's something that our Western minds, right?

Like it's a it's a bit difficult to explain because you can't put in language, you can't put in a definition. And so there's not a lot of material there to touch.

So it can be reductive. versus in the Indigenous model, it's relational. So, one of the things I'm finding out about integration is, one, that integration is important, not just that, but integrating in isolation is different from integrating in community.

That's true, right? Like, yeah, the example I think of is like, let's say in a culture in which your village has just gone through a psychedelic journey through drumming or psychoactive plants and chanting and fire and everything, and a young person has gone through that ritual, right?

Yeah. They're a 13-year-old boy and they're experiencing this held within their community. and confronting the spiritual side of themselves for the first time, they're going to be changed by it.

They're not going to be the same person they were. And so the next day when they emerge, everybody knows. Everybody's like, you're different now. We're going to treat you like you're different, like right off the bat.

Yeah. But that doesn't happen there, right? Just because they've had it, there's a culture. It's a rites of passage. It's a rites of passage that's expected, right?

So it's like, yeah, just like rites of passage marriage here, right? It's like you get married the next day, your husband and wife, everybody treats you differently.

So what I see happening in our kind of Western model of integration is that it's not as relational and we can do it in isolation and we can miss out on that part where our community is not reflecting back to us the newer version of ourselves.

Because they're still hung up on the older because they haven't been able to update. I can, you know, and this happens with patients when they, their identity, they connect to the true self and.

the old self, the depressed self, the anxious self or the chaotic self is now removed, you know, it's shedded and now they see themselves and they know that they are, they feel that something's changed and then integrating back into their community becomes a challenge, right?

With their family because, hey, who are you? You're not that depressed self anymore, but who is this person? And I often see that that becomes a challenging place, right, for that individual because now they're also discovering their true self and wanting to, you know, really project that and to be seen for that and not for the other part that was…

Right. They're trying to move away from that construct of themselves. And yeah, how much are we a part of the projections of others, patterns on us, right?

And then this idea that when it's not accepted, or when it's kind of labeled as like, oh, you did get a mean treatment, so of course you're feeling better, you know, just like, kind of shut it down and be reductive, comes from a place of not understanding, but can be felt as, well, what you just did wasn't important, it wasn't real.

And that is one of the key constructs of psychedelic journeys, right? They can feel so real in the moment and give you so much depth and insight, but they can also fade if we don't hold on to what they gave us.

Yeah, so what we're doing with integration is we are capturing what we can, the imaginal, the liminal, things that are beyond language maybe. Because once we start to reduce it to language, we have to use frameworks of meaning that are pre-existing versus imagine and liminal is we're talking about frameworks that maybe are new.

And so I think integration is this ability to connect with newness and maybe make some symbols, archetypes, imagery, and also to make it a part of our own culture, right?

We're constantly integrating. It may be happening. while you're, you know, listening to a podcast and some insight may drop in for you. Stop what you're doing.

Write that down because that is something that is there for you to gain some insight from some direction. It's there for you. So take that as a gift, you know, and let's not get frustrated about, oh, it's not a fully formed pattern or it's not like a cause and effect.

It's like, no, great things start from just an impression. And so stay with the impression, whether that was, you know, whatever form that came into it.

Well, we'll get started with our next activity, which should be a creative exercise, I imagine. And you can give us some ideas on how one should set that up for themselves, meaning getting a nice clean space, get any art materials that you want to form, use as tools for to formulate that expression.

I think what you said was really important. Clear the space, clear the space, like ritually, like, you know, clearing the decks of your own mind. Put your phone away, put the, you know, just focus can be such a activating mechanism.

So let's, and you know, you want to burn a candle. Yeah. Bring you into the space. Set up the set and setting, as we say, create that space, clear the deck and have your tools at hand.

Then there's usually a little bit of a prompt, right? And then it's, it's a timed activity. We do, you know, in narrative medicine, we do talk about. That timed activity, whether it's 4 minutes or 5 minutes or 7 minutes, it doesn't have to be a long period of time, but timing it is important because again, we want to capture in that moment what comes through the page or on the page and then being able to reflect on that.

after with the focus always being on just what was expressed and not to do any therapy with that. Meaning I don't have to apologize. You don't have to disclaim it and say, I didn't, I wasn't prepared for this.

I did this and I'm not a good artist. So that self-talk, you know, that comes through. So I'm excited to do this now. Let's begin. Okay. So our prompt today, what are we thinking about?

So once you've got everything set up, um what we recommend is spending just a few minutes maybe meditating maybe spending some time in the breath and the body to just relax and just allow whatever it is you're carrying to start to kind of bubble up to the surface and then once things start to bubble up just let them happen is kind of just the tension of it.

So prompts are to be taken as structure, but interpreted in your own way. And, you know, no two people are going to be looking at the same interpretation.

And that's kind of the beauty of it. And there's no right or wrong to this. There's no right way and there's no wrong way. There is just the way. Yeah.

And the other thing that I really like to think about integration is to be witnessed. You know, it's no accident that we're both doing this instead of one.

Because when you integrate and you've kind of made meaning of it, it's only in the transmission of that meaning and in somebody holding that for you and saying, yeah, I appreciate that.

I see that I felt that that becomes real. Okay. Well, let's begin. We're gonna set up our space, as we said, clear our space, clear the deck, and put a timer on.

We'll have our prompt ready in a few minutes, and then we will demonstrate that narrative medicine in action. Yeah, thank you. We're so excited. Today's activity day, which is a fun thing to do, and just to break up all the science, although we did drop the science.

Yeah. All right. So the exercise, the narrative medicine exercise today. So the prompt is, How do I love myself? And in what ways do I show up for myself?

You know, this is our Valentine's Day reflection on love. Where it starts is self-love. So do you want to go first? What was the exercise like for you?

How did it feel? It felt little. I was a little tense. It was hard to put everything there on the page and wanted to capture as much as I could. It felt creative.

I mean, this definitely brought out a different side of myself, which is color, not words, really, you know, being able to put a visual in, knowing that I'm going to be judging my artwork as well.

and that representation. But yeah, there was a little bit of tension there. Definitely I could feel the opening of the door and, you know, can I get there and will I be able to get there so that those questions came up.

But then getting to the door and seeing that There's something else, another way of me expressing what I want to say and being given that freedom as we enter into it.

I feel like there's still more, but I feel like that was able to really open that door and really apply what I was feeling. I love that, the permission given.

The permission given. Giving yourself the permission to just be like, I'm okay with whatever comes up. Yeah. And even in like these creative choices, you're not making them from a place of like, this color looks good with this color.

It's more like, yes, this or no, not that. And it's, it's more just trusting yourself to know like what the next choices are and following that a little bit.

Cause I did not know that I was going to come up with. So do you want to show yours and then decide? Well, mine is. I show for myself in stillness and really I feel that stillness to me is a very physical process.

You have to just be still in oneself to really have that observation experience. And this goes back to scuba diving. When you're holding your breath, you're breathing through the tube, you're observing beautiful plant you know, the microcosm under the water, this whole ecosystem.

And as you're doing that, you're worried that, you know, you're breathing through the tube, you're relying on the tube to, you know, give you that oxygen.

You can hear your breath under the water, which I found was very strange because I could hear, I could hear my heart. I was so connected with my body and yet my mind was still, meaning the thoughts were not there.

It was mainly just observing what was under there. And the more still I was, the more information I was able to receive, the more appreciation of what I was observing came to life.

And it happened very slowly. As you're in that still moment, you notice so much more without the brain kind of trying to govern that experience. So just that physical connection, that awareness, that moment of calm, and you can feel it in your body.

And I can feel that when that stillness comes to me, it's like my heart, brain and spirit are kind of aligned. So that's the, you know, so how do you love yourself and what ways do you show up for yourself or is connected to that?

So what does that translate into? We're talking about integrations, like that's a feeling, that's a certain memory associated with that feeling. And it's the best way to describe what it feels like to be suspended and held.

I felt that same feeling. It's like when we are held by the ocean, it's like we're in a different state. Gravity works on us a little bit differently.

Yeah, there has to be a shift. So there's a physiological, perceptual shift. You're feeling the water through all of your surfaces. That's an unfamiliar feeling.

So it's like that combination of what you're describing, it brings you to stillness. gets rid of the chatter. So would you say then, maybe this is one of those ways in which we integrate is like maybe suggest or look at it and go, oh, to you taking care of yourself and loving yourself.

is turning down that chatter because you can connect with your true self and appreciate, right? And actually be in connection with, and that's how you love yourself is to be in connection with this.

Is that right? That's true. That's exactly what it is. And it's really connecting to myself outside of the head space, feeling into that experience, shifting the body, you know, forcing the body to be in a different field.

of being held, being held by something that doesn't have to be any person. It can just be sitting in the sun, floating in the water, walking on the ground barefoot, you know, and that stillness where you're just really connecting to, in all senses, right?

The smell, the sound, what you witness and what you observe and what you, without thought, without trying to interpret it, I think is really what it comes to.

Yeah, like that experience that brings you back to yourself. All right. So when I went into this, I had no idea. But what popped in my mind is that I've been rehabilitating my relationship with plants in that I don't kill them anymore or they don't die on me anymore.

But what I'm discovering is this bi-directional relationship. And to me, when my plants are happy and they're growing, it's like they radiate the energy of love.

Right, they're growing, they're radiating, they're happy. And so that's how I feel like I love myself, is by loving this other being that then shows up for me.

So it's kind of like self-care through the, and you know, like I've been in people's homes where like the plants are so happy. You can feel that happiness.

You're like, oh, you guys, you know, you're well taken care of and you can kind of feel their presence, especially like well-loved houseplants that people have had for ages.

So that's my goal, you know, in life. And just this idea that, you know, recognizing that beauty and love arrive in many forms, and no matter what form they arrive in, we can still appreciate them.

you know, flowers have their way of kind of like really being very out there with their beauty. But vines also have some texture to them and a pattern that emerges that we connect with, like this idea of spiraling.

I can see the radiation of that experience when it gives me an impression of nurturing, you know, that that you can nurture something that you're related to or connected to in nature and the receiving of that nurturing effect.

is bi-directional. They say thank you. They say, you know, you feel it. And you feel it and you basically receive that love, that connection. Here's a new leaf.

Yeah, here's a new leaf I made for you. You feel that presence and to me it serves as a way of let me not get into my head so quickly. Let me remember to be connected to my environment and in doing that it breaks up my self-absorption you know and switches me into like yeah nurturing nature yeah that's the other thing yeah inviting life in inviting life in seeing the reflection of that life that nurturing spirit brings into the home and how that's kind of really the environment becomes much more enriched enriched with life and enriched with that energy of joy you know gratitude beauty yeah kindness right beauty And kindness and giving and persistence, like, you know, PlantSelf would also treat us about seasons and persistence.

You know, when you plant something that's almost dead and then you bring it back to life and it responds to you, it's like this sense of, wow, this is something real that I can connect with.

So for me, integration is that. More recently, that's been part of it is like, changing my relationship to nature has meant kind of making them like thinking of the spirit that arrives in nature.

There is a spirit that arrives in nature that we witness. You can actually see the spirit of the plant, which is consciousness that a plant is expressing.

It's a life form that has its own intelligence that has persisted for hundreds of years. It's older than us. I love that book Overstory. Yeah. right, that just talks about these creatures and ever since I've started to think of them as characters, as a whole holistic intelligent being and having their own purpose and home and, you know, relationship with life.

And their relationship with life is very stable, very steady, very rooted. It goes back to your fungi metaphor. Dr. Rahman is very good with metaphors.

Metaphors, as she says, anchors you into a new meaning. Anchors you, gives you an anchor. Have you ever thought of when you're on a climbing wall and you have the handholds and you've got to swing up to the next thing and you've got to pivot, right?

So you've got to find the perfect fulcrum to make it to that next move. You can't just go straight up. You kind of have to swing your body around to go to the next one.

And a metaphor is just that thing activated in your brain between language and meaning and symbols, right? So it's like a picture showed up. This thing is like this.

And so I can step into the new meaning of this. And that's something that we've both described is a metaphor. That visual that gives meaning to what is being felt or Yeah.

And how writing that down, you know, writing the words that come up. This could be a metaphor, right? Your fungi metaphor of the network under the ground and the connection it makes to each other.

And again, the metaphor of light and energy. Again, my metaphor is more has to do, I guess, with the life forms, right? Observing the fish. But it doesn't have to be this fish.

It's actually observing, you know, using this as a representation of what that of that metaphor and applying that to other ways of being still in other environments.

Right, exactly. So that's a metaphor for stillness is that the one you experience when you go underwater, it's It's unfamiliar. And when you bring that into this terrestrial life, you can still kind of, it's like going back to the David Foster Wallace quote of, this is water, right?

It's like, this is water. If we can allow ourselves to be held by even the air, it will hold us. But water is more tangible. Yeah. Well, thank you. Thank you for tuning in to Doctor Talks.

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Narrative Medicine in Action Series: Ways of Integration and Art

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