What Happens During a Psychedelic Experience? Part 2

0:00:00.0 Lalin St Juste, Sister Tripper: There are certain spirits that I’ve had connections to that are specific to the Pantheon within Haitian spirituality. And so, I’m curious to see what kind of symbolisms or messages might come up during this experience.

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0:00:22.8 April Pride, host: Hey, I’m April Pride, your host on The High Guide podcast. This is the show for women who have an open and curious mind, and this is a show all about women changing their lives, thanks to altered states. You just heard from Lalin St. Juste, one of our three Sister Trippers who are getting high with us this season on The High Guide, just for you. And have you at any point in your life, have you asked yourself, dear God, is anyone there? On this episode, we explore the significance of our Sister Tripper’s encounters with Haitian voodoo spirits and what meaning this holds when she’s not under the influence of psilocybin mushrooms. As with every episode, we’ll jump into the word of the week before listening to our High Guide Natasha Lannerd perform Lalin’s intake and post-trip integration sessions. And remember to stay to the almost end for our trip tips and remain after I sign off, because we’re gonna end every episode this season with a 10-minute excerpt from one of The High Guide’s very own guided psychedelic audio journeys.

0:01:32.9 April Pride: Produced in partnership with Patchwerks. All the sounds you’ll hear throughout this episode are sampled from The High Guide’s Journey #4: Facing The Fucked Years, meaning the years lost to the pandemic, and that’s episode 30 of this podcast. Now, for our word of the week, voodoo. Fundamental to voodoo, and yes, I know you’re not supposed to use the word in a definition, but we’re going to. [chuckle] Fundamental to voodoo is that everything is spirit, and to serve the spirits is the purpose of humans who are spirits of the visible world. Voodoo prayer and ritual are intended to show devotion to God or a specific Ioa, which is a spirit of the non-visible world. Listen, as our High Guide Natasha completes Lalin, our Sister Tripper’s intake.

0:02:35.6 Natasha Lannerd, High Guide: Alright, and we’re taping. If you wanna go ahead and just kind of introduce yourself, I think that would probably be a good start. And then we can just kinda go from there.

0:02:44.9 Lalin St Juste, Sister Tripper: Sure. I’m Lalin St. Juste, singer, performer, producer, based in the Bay Area, and also more recently, New York. I am fascinated by the world, by new experiences, and also led by my ancestors and that’s about it. I think that sums it.

0:03:09.9 Natasha Lannerd, High Guide: Awesome. I was reading your bio and I was immediately drawn in to the whole magic of it. I’m so excited to meet you. [chuckle]

0:03:21.0 Lalin St Juste, Sister Tripper: Thank you. [chuckle]

0:03:22.9 Natasha Lannerd, High Guide: I don’t know if you wordsmithed that on your own, but I found the bio mesmerizing is the way they describe your voice.

0:03:29.7 April Pride, host: The description Natasha is referring to is this quote, “she dances as sounds slither in her mouth.” I’ve seen Lalin perform live a couple of times, and it’s impossible to take your eyes off of her, which must be why the Haitian-American Lalin St. Juste is commonly described as mesmerizing and hypnotizing when she performs. Lalin shifts the atmosphere with her voice inviting you into her cosmic underworld. These are not my words, these are on her website. Lalin St. Juste isn’t one sound, Lalin is a range of experiences and emotions that are inviting you in. There is space for you and all that you feel in her offerings. She is more than a mood, she is both memory and future colliding in the present moment. These words, all of them couldn’t be more perfect for the intention Lalin set for her psychedelic journey with us. But first, Natasha wants to know what Lalin is planning for where she’ll trip.

0:04:35.4 Natasha Lannerd, High Guide: What does your setup look like, where are you going to be having your experience? Do you have any just basic questions?

0:04:42.3 Lalin St Juste, Sister Tripper: Well, my setup is basically… For me, I’ve always preferred being close to nature. So, I’m planning to look for a space probably in Guerneville, California, which is a place that has a lot of red woods. There are some Airbnbs that you can find that have a creek that you have access to, or maybe there’s a big red wood right outside. For me, that would be the number one priority is being able to touch ground with the earth and with trees and fresh air, if possible. [chuckle] That’s a priority for me. And so, depending, when this all goes down, that’s my goal. I’m guessing just ’cause of where I’m at mentally and spiritually, it will be things related to Haitian culture. There’s a lot of beautiful singing and drumming that I could see elevating the experience. I love having altar.

0:05:56.3 April Pride, host: Listen to episode number 45 of this podcast titled Your Setting. To learn more about creating an altar in preparation for commuting with ancestors during a psychedelic journey.

0:06:07.4 Lalin St Juste, Sister Tripper: I’m in a very open space to connecting with my ancestors and really diving into the magic of my lineage, the surrealness of it all, the spirituality of it all. I am in a place of seeking a certain amount of guidance in terms of my spiritual path, and so I’m curious to see if… What kind of symbolism or messages might come up during this experience that can help me further on this path that I’m on. For example, right now, I’m really examining my dreams and looking to see what’s coming up in my dreams that can help deepen my connection in terms of my spiritual path as a Haitian woman. And this is all a part of me reclaiming my identity and reclaiming my culture, ’cause I’m a Haitian born in America, I’m Haitian-American, and grew up in a very religious Christian household. And so everything that I’m doing in this part of my life is reclamation. It’s revolutionary in my family, ’cause it’s not something that’s done in my family. It’s moreso just about really understanding who we are and where I come from and the significance of it all, and so there are certain spirits that I’ve had connections to that are specific to the Pantheon within Haitian spirituality, like Dambalah and Lasirenn. And so that’s one thing I’m contemplating is, can I open myself up even moreso to hearing and feeling what these presences mean for me in my life?

0:08:09.8 April Pride, host: Our Sister Tripper is looking to assign personal meaning to the stories of her Haitian heritage, specifically Haitian Vodou. And we learned at the top of the show that voodoo is about serving spirits. And you just heard Lalin say there are certain Ioa or spirits she feels particularly connected to, Dambalah and Lasirenn. In fact, it’s not uncommon for followers of Haitian Vodou to develop short or long-term relationships with specific Ioa. Before we learn more about this specific Ioa, I wanna share the interesting historical context I learned while researching this episode. Voodoo was practiced by West African societies, and when members of these communities were redistributed as a result of the slave trade, they brought voodoo with them. What makes Haitian Vodou so unique is that unlike similar creole societies, Haitian Vodou has been preserved better, thanks in large part to the slave uprising at the turn of the 19th century, known as the Haitian Revolution. It ended both slavery and colonial rule in Haiti. The development of Haiti as the first free post-slavery society, meant Haitians were able to better preserve beliefs, they were able to flourish without colonial suffocation. In Haitian Vodou, the spirits and other deities who are served are called Ioa. Each represent a different set of ideas, stories, needs, emotions and identities.

0:09:39.4 April Pride, host: Lalin mentioned Lasirenn and Dambalah. Lasirenn is depicted as a mermaid, and because the sea is the final resting place of so many, this mermaid’s spirit represents a link between this world of the dead, the ancestors, the spirits, and our world of the living, the present and the physical. The other Ioa Dambalah is one of the most important of all Ioa, having created all the waters on earth. Dambalah is traditionally portrayed as a great white serpent. Dambalah is said to be the sky father and the primordial creator of all life and created the cosmos by using his 7000 coils. 7000 coils is also the name of Lalin’s record label, with the mission that is “rooted in the ritualistic sound alchemy of the African diaspora, ancestor-driven as we move relentlessly in the direction of our dreams.” With her solo journey, driven by the intention of communing with her ancestors, Lalin is living out this mission. You may recall from episode 44 titled, Your Mindset, that I mentioned a lecture I attended a couple of months ago now, I guess, on the history of psychedelics in Africa. It was hosted by Daren Springer, known as Darren Le Baron on Instagram.

0:11:02.7 April Pride, host: During his lecture and as I noted in this previous episode, what struck me was the fact that many of the African religions, including Vodou teach that while there’s one supreme God, this deity is unreachable and does not interact directly with humans. Darren went on to explain psychedelics are a portal to commune with spirits of our ancestors who are closer to God. This is exactly the intention Lalin set forth for her psychedelic experience. In the following, Lalin explains that she’s learning to use her voice to process grief. Lasirenn too creates music to express emotions of her ancient soul, and this Ioa represents among other things, expression.

0:11:44.4 Lalin St Juste, Sister Tripper: I think also what’s coming up now in this moment is just some of the breakthroughs that I’ve had around silence, around using my voice, around healing certain traumas, and just letting that come out [chuckle] in a bigger way, and I’m fascinated by all the bits, all the sides of what we experience as humans. And for me, I think especially the past few years, it’s just been… I’ve learned to go there even more. I was always into it, but now it’s like, “Okay, I have to lean in as much as possible.” This is what it means to be alive. Is to feel these feelings. And this is how we heal.

0:12:28.3 Natasha Lannerd, High Guide: Do you have any questions or…

0:12:31.1 Lalin St Juste, Sister Tripper: Well, based on… Because I know you’re going to decide on what kind of dosage I should…

0:12:37.9 Natasha Lannerd, High Guide: Yeah. I’m curious to know, given your experience level and that this will be your first solo experience, tell me a little bit about any apprehension, any lack of apprehension, where are you at on that?

0:12:54.7 Lalin St Juste, Sister Tripper: I didn’t even realize that I hadn’t done anything by myself, even though I’ve done shrooms a few times, quite a few times, but I don’t tend to usually go beyond maybe two grams. And that usually… I’m still very much in this realm, I think there’s still a certain amount of control that I feel, even though it’s definitely still an experience, but I think the apprehension comes with going beyond that and just feel like, “Oh, wow, [laughter] I’m really out here.”

0:13:38.2 Natasha Lannerd, High Guide: Yeah. Well, it’s something that I would say about that that is a unique feature that I learned when I started to journey. There’s taking psychedelics of which I have been doing for a very long time and then I started the journey, and when you take the sensory out, you’re not in a group, you’re not talking, you’re not trying to keep your shit together when you’re out and about doing whatever it is. In this instance, when you take that attention and you turn it inwards, the dose becomes a lot more potent, because all there is is you. No distractions. Well, the other thing too about that is, if you wanna see what it takes, what it looks like to keep your dose and increase the potency, have you ever lemon tekked before?

0:14:27.9 April Pride, host: In episode number 43, The Medicine, we review what a lemon tek is, how to make it, and the effect it has on potency. Go back and listen to this episode for more information on preparing psilocybin mushrooms for optimal support of your intention.

0:14:45.2 Lalin St Juste, Sister Tripper: I’m so excited. [laughter]

0:14:47.3 Natasha Lannerd, High Guide: I’m so excited for you, I love nothing more than caring about people’s experiences. I can’t wait to hear about what opens up for you and the one last thing I will say to you that I say to everyone that I work with is that in the realm of infinite possibilities, anything is possible. That magic that you’re talking about, is real. Alright, well, I hope you and the witness that you’re cultivating have an amazing time dancing in the cosmic universe with your ancestors, it’s gonna be…

0:15:21.8 Lalin St Juste, Sister Tripper: Thank you. [laughter]

0:15:22.9 Natasha Lannerd, High Guide: Awesome.

0:15:25.3 April Pride, host: Indeed It was. Welcome to the other side. Post-journey, post-trip, Natasha’s integration session with Lalin and has been fascinating to investigate due to the cultural specifics, and significance of our Sister Tripper’s Haitian identity, have a listen and I’ll fill in with context along the way.

0:15:43.9 Natasha Lannerd, High Guide: I have been so excited to reconnect with you. One of the greatest things about integration is not only sharing what happened, but is around finding out what it means to you, that’s really where the meaning is made.

0:16:00.1 Lalin St Juste, Sister Tripper: I’ll do a brief recap of what happened and then I can share what it means to me. I really didn’t have very much expectation in terms of… I had my intentions but I didn’t know necessarily obviously how the night would go, [chuckle] and so I was in Guerneville which is surrounded by red woods, and I set up an altar with flowers, a cup of water, and like I said, my intention was just to connect on a spiritual level, to feel, to be open to any messages that my ancestors may have for me or to seek any guidance. Also to feel whatever feelings could possibly come up, and so… Yeah, once I took the shrooms, I did do the lemon tek, maybe not. I forgot the grinder, so there was… [chuckle] I just tried to cut them up as small as I could, so I was a little nervous about that, figuring that, okay, I don’t know if I’m doing this right, I don’t know if it’s gonna be effective.

0:17:29.5 Lalin St Juste, Sister Tripper: There were a few little stumbles along the way, ’cause I ended up chewing, just eating them after I drank the juice ’cause I just wasn’t sure if I had… I don’t know, I just wasn’t sure. And then I forgot my tender shoes so I was just… It was a bit of a discomfort in the beginning, and I just allowed myself to rest then I laid in bed and I actually couldn’t even really listen to music, I just laid in silence. [laughter] And just laid there and observed my thoughts coming in and out and, next thing I know I think over some time that’s when I could start to feel the effects coming on, noticing things that are beyond where it’s behind my eyeballs, just some images. I did get a sense of feeling a little underwater in a good way, and then… But because of also some of the bodily sensations, I resorted to singing, which I probably would have done anyway but that helped me to feel better. I would just sing and I sang acapella for a while, and I sang about this healing and… Yeah, basically healing myself and I…

0:19:17.0 Lalin St Juste, Sister Tripper: Unexpectedly there was a piano, a keyboard in the room, so I also just ended up playing around on the keyboard and singing interjected with lots of strange moans because it’s just like the feelings of… The waves, just felt a lot for my body, it wasn’t even a visually intense or anything, it was just… Yeah, just intense in the body and I could see the redwoods out my window, and that was just amazing feeling the energy. I went outside and saw a bajillion stars and… ‘Cause it was totally dark, and so it was just really beautiful, but the biggest thing that I got was, when I was starting the trip, I knew that I wanted to listen to someone named So Anne, who is a Haitian voodoo singer, and I didn’t know what exactly, and I happened to have Spotify on my computer, so I just opened Spotify, there was one album and the first song was called Marassa which symbolizes twins in the Haitian pantheon of the spirits, the Ioa. So my mom is a twin, and I have lots of twins on my maternal side, and so it’s believed that when you have twins in your family, a part of the spirits that you serve are the divine twins.

0:21:07.9 April Pride, host: Let’s unfold this concept of the divine twins or the Marassa who remain essential tenet in voodoo, particularly for those who are twins, triplets, or for those people and families with multiple births like Lalin. Like the Ioa Lazarin, the Marassa represent truth and are associated with liaison between earth and heaven. Connecting with her mother’s twin in this realm made possible by psilocybin mushrooms is exactly the intention Lalin set forth for this psychedelic experience, communing with her ancestors, like her mother’s twin and uncle who died in Haiti before Lalin was able to meet him. Lalin continues sharing with us about the significance of her mother’s twin in life and in spirit.

0:21:51.6 Lalin St Juste, Sister Tripper: My mom had just been telling me a story of her dancing in Haiti, throwing little events in her home and her twin brother would play the drum and she would dance, and I just got this sense of being able to carry on artistic expression, even though my family hasn’t been able to… My mom hasn’t been able to just for her survival, her twin brother, wasn’t able to, and then he passed away, and so just really getting a sense of, “Okay, this is also part of… ” I know I got my voice from my maternal grandmother to express myself in that way, but I also have it from my uncle that has passed, and they also hold… My mom would tell me stories of when they were very, very young, that they would gather herbs and people would come to get healed by them because there’s just a power that twins hold. And so I just felt the channeling of that healing energy, and I played this song, probably 100 times. I just had it on repeat, singing to the Marassa, just really thinking about the blessings in my life and how… And the healing in my life and how they’ve really been a part of that.

0:23:29.7 April Pride, host: The Marassa are renowned for their power as healers. They’re also, as I stated earlier, liaisons between heaven and earth, and if Haitian voodoo is rooted in serving the spirits, Lalin’s offering of her intention and her voice must have pleased the Marassa so much that they facilitated the connection with her uncle she so craved.

0:23:51.7 Lalin St Juste, Sister Tripper: It was a way to really connect with him. I could feel a sense that I hadn’t really felt before. All of a sudden, I could feel that he has been with me, that he has been helping support me, it was a very… It felt like a homecoming of sorts, just to be able to be in nature to sing, to just think about my family in this way and really connect with my uncle in a way that I haven’t in the past. And that’s what I fell asleep to. I had my speaker in my bed just curled up beside it, [laughter] and just listened to the magnificence of the drumming and the singing. After, I just felt really comforted, really held. And other things came up just around just taking care of myself and how to keep healing, how to keep fostering my communication with the earth. And I think feeling unwell made me think about just making sure that I’m taking good care of myself and eating right and doing all of these things, but yeah, it just was… And also singing, I’m just like… I actually haven’t been singing as much even though I’m running around doing a bunch of music stuff, but just to slow down and be able to sing and tap back into how it has healed me and what it does mean for me to…

0:25:33.4 Lalin St Juste, Sister Tripper: To channel in that particular kind of way. Yeah, the next morning I was just feeling really good, well rested, and then the Airbnb host offered me to… He was just like, “Do you wanna stay another night? On me?” And I was like, “Okay.” And so I got to unwind or just process everything as I walked through the red woods, I went on a four mile walk and just communed and processed everything and yeah, I’m just… So now I feel like, “Okay, I do wanna continue to foster this relationship with the divine twins and what that means for me spiritually,” and then I decided to make a tattoo appointment, [laughter] I’m gonna… On Monday, I’m gonna get a tattoo that’s one plus one equals three, which symbolizes the twins, but also triplets, but the beyondness of any sense of duality just kind of ancient… It’s hard for me to put into words in the moment, but it just… It just symbolizes that whole thing.

0:27:00.2 Natasha Lannerd, High Guide: We had talked before you went in for your experience, I feel like this… It’s just so beautiful to see when the ancestors need us and they show up, and how incredible that you got to have an experience with your uncle in a way that maybe was unique and novel in that moment. Incredible.

0:27:24.9 Lalin St Juste, Sister Tripper: The other spirit that came more present also for me is a spirit called Erzulie Freda, and she is associated with rivers and I had gotten a reading many months ago, and she came up in that reading. So I was by a creek, and so there was also a sense of communicating or having some type of exchange with her, and she was popping up on… I don’t know, there were just certain things about her that were just popping up, and so I decided to leave a little offering at the creek, and then I got a rock and some river water to add to my altar. And so, yeah, I definitely feel like being able to be close to water was also a big component because there’s a lot of ways in which water has been coming up in my life as a conduit of change and symbolism.

0:28:38.7 Natasha Lannerd, High Guide: Well, I love that too, because from an elemental perspective, water is the essence of feeling, and I just have a beautiful image of you being close to the river and close to your feelings.

0:28:52.7 April Pride, host: Lalin’s journey touched on water from start to finish. Lazrin and Dambalah, both of these Ioa are connected to the element of water. Erzulie Freda is the Haitian African spirit, often associated with water or fluidity. Lalin had the feeling of being under water and her proximity to the creek. We’ll explore the symbolism of water in our next episode when our final Sister Tripper integrates her psychedelic experience. Spoiler alert, vikings at sea make an appearance. For this episode, Natasha wraps up this integration by circling back to address Lalin’s physical discomfort.

0:29:33.4 Natasha Lannerd, High Guide: Is there anything from your experience that you don’t feel as clear on or any random questions that you have for me?

0:29:39.9 Lalin St Juste, Sister Tripper: The only thing that comes to mind is I do wonder if the discomfort has to be a part of it. I know, I forgot my tender shoes. And maybe it is, maybe it is a part of the process, and that’s maybe just life that you can’t fully have one thing without the other, but…

0:30:01.2 Natasha Lannerd, High Guide: It’s funny you say this actually, I had a very incredible experience with Ayahuasca, and in my experience, purging is a big part of the experience with Aya. And she told me the reason that there is the purge or any physical discomfort, which I don’t really find it uncomfortable as much as it’s just knowing what’s coming, was that it served as a reminder of humanity, that when we get into these very elevated altered states, that the physical discomfort is sometimes a reminder of just the basics of humanity, you have a body. That doesn’t mean that it’s not uncomfortable. The other part too, that I’ve witnessed in my experiences holding space for other people, is that sometimes the physical discomfort is a sign or a symbol or a calling or an urge to move some energy. And when you were kind of telling me a little bit about your experience, it was like, okay, you felt the discomfort, you moved your energy by getting up and singing at the keyboard. And so sometimes it can be kind of this just push, push to move the energy. And I think the other thing that I’ve also witnessed in my own experience and with holding space with others is that sometimes that physical discomfort can be incredibly powerful and a great way to see the way we relate to discomfort in our lives.

0:31:44.1 Natasha Lannerd, High Guide: Do we writhe in pain, do we get up and move, do we cry, do be express, do we sit in silence. What is our relationship to discomfort, because at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how… Every single person in this life, part of this life is going to have some type of experience of discomfort and knowing how to navigate these experiences, which again are just human experiences, really does say a lot about how you would do that outside of an altered state. If you’re uncomfortable or you’re feeling discomfort in your life, are you… You were drawn to move, some people freeze and they cannot move, and so it’s just interesting to see the different relationship we have with that energy and the effect that it can have.

0:32:38.9 Lalin St Juste, Sister Tripper: That’s so real. That’s so real. I definitely had a moment where I wasn’t sure what I was gonna do, I was like, “Well, yeah, I could just lay here.” [laughter] And I thought to myself, “Well, maybe I do have more power than I than I think that I do. Maybe I can… ” And that’s when I started singing about healing myself and it’s like I could either just stay and focus on how uncomfortable I feel, or I can realize that I can move this energy and move my consciousness to another place of empowerment and my own ability.

0:33:20.8 April Pride, host: Lalin was able to heal her physical discomfort, and also something that came up in my research is that the Marassa, the divine twins we talked about earlier, manage people through the stomach. [chuckle] So what are the Marassa trying to show Lalin? What is the spiritual meaning of stomach pain? Stomach pain is sometimes an indication that something is unresolved and unprocessed. Traditional Chinese medicine holds that through the stomach, we see the world and welcome it into our bodies. Psychologically, the stomach is the origin of feeling, it is responsible for the initial metabolism of mental, emotional material. The stomach is a channel where we begin to have an emotional response to our environment, it is the development of like and dislike. At the level of the stomach, we generate an emotional response based on pure feeling. When the stomach hurts, we are having trouble digesting an emotional experience. Addressing that emotion gets to the spiritual basis or meaning of stomach pain.

0:34:27.7 Natasha Lannerd, High Guide: Well, I’m so happy to hear that and that you had a fulfilling experience, and thank you for bringing up the discomfort that you may have experienced because right away, people think that that’s a bad thing and it’s not a bad thing, it just is. And you really touched on it with the one plus one is three. Get beyond your linear thinking and allow it to be a call to just express and move energy, and I just… I’m really, really glad that you brought that up. So thank you for sharing.

0:35:05.3 April Pride, host: Yes, Lalin thank you for sharing and a big thanks to Natasha for so beautifully integrating Lalin’s experience. For today’s trip tips, I’m actually gonna keep this simple, should you experience stomach pain during a psychedelic journey, questions to ask yourself during the integration process include, who am I? What are my values? What is important to me about my identity? Can I stand up for myself? Do I feel powerful and in control? What is my relationship to anxiety? Do I feel safe and secure in my life? Do I feel supported by others? Do I know who I am regardless of what other people think?

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0:35:57.6 April Pride, host: Thank you for listening to this episode of The High Guide. I’m your host, April Pride. Please tune next week when we integrate our final Sister Tripper, and check out our website, thehigh.guide for more information on The High Guide and for this week’s show notes. Remember to please rate and review the show on Apple Podcast or give us a heart on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. It really does help more people find the show. And I leave you with a 10-minute sample from The High Guide’s Psyched Audio series. You’re listening to psychedelic audio journey number four, Facing The Fucked Years, episode 30 of this podcast, produced in partnership with Patchwerks. See you on the other side.