Dr Tomas Frymann

Dr Tomas Frymann - Exploring the Depths of Psychedelic Therapy

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Peta Stapleton (00:00.932)
Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the 4th Wave in Therapy. I'm thrilled to be having a conversation today with someone that we have just crossed paths, but I feel a path, shared path moving forward and you'll understand why after this conversation. With me today is Dr. Thomas Freiman and Thomas is the founder of As We Wake, an organization dedicated to organizing and connecting culture to interbeing through psychedelics.

there's a little hint as to where we're going to go deep today. So Thomas has facilitated and experienced hundreds of psychedelic ceremonies. Again we're going to go there. He's presented his work at major organizations including the United Nations, Harvard University,

lots and lots of podcasts. have all of the links below so that you can go off and listen to Thomas after this as well. And just in his spare time, he really does love the ocean, does a lot of skimboarding. We like people that live a balanced life. So welcome Thomas and thank you for sharing your wisdom today.

Tomas Frymann (01:05.856)
Yeah, thanks so much for having me.

Peta Stapleton (01:08.324)
Fantastic. We really should start from the beginning because I think anyone listening, know, certainly in my country and world here, and of course you're in the States at the moment, you know, the psychedelic assisted therapy, particularly in the trauma space, post-traumatic stress disorder and beyond, is still fairly new here in terms of, you know, not only being regulated, but certainly, you know, accepted at that level. But how did you find

psychedelic assisted therapy where you are in your corner of the world, how did it come across your pathway?

Tomas Frymann (01:43.04)
Yeah, it was sort of just a hap stance of I had finished my college experience and was sort of touring around different places and a friend just had some mushrooms. And I decided to have that experience and I had it on my own. Not so it was not really in the way that most people would say is a good idea. So my first and that's kind of I think that's some of the territory that comes with things when they're not.

Peta Stapleton (01:58.285)
Okay.

Tomas Frymann (02:12.972)
legal or not supported as people sort of take them in a more haphazard way and you sometimes then have to learn the hard lessons. And maybe it goes right. For me, it actually went well. So I didn't really know what I was getting into, but I had a really wonderful experience. I ended up walking around New York City, which is also not like the place that you would ideally have a psychedelic experience for your first time, but it happened to go well for me.

Peta Stapleton (02:19.418)
Mmm. Mmm.

Tomas Frymann (02:42.546)
And I learned so much about myself and I just felt so connected to life and nature and my sense of intuition, my sense of what was healthy for me. So that kind of kicked off my interest in psychedelics. And then from there, I did my PhD in clinical psychology and continued to have different psychedelic experiences and more professional and supported settings. And that kind of was the avenue into my path.

Peta Stapleton (03:12.986)
And it probably is worth us saying right up at the front here, do not try this on your own at home, anybody. This is certainly not an instructional session so that you can go off and explore. And as you said, Thomas, and I know we're going to talk about this in this session, to be supported in these experiences because it's not always going to happen that if you're unassisted or out there and perhaps, you know, opportunity presents itself and you have access.

to be unsupported, you're not necessarily gonna have a really good, positive experience, and we know that through the research, don't we?

Tomas Frymann (03:43.918)
Definitely, it's a lot more risky. And it can go well, but it cannot go well. And if it doesn't go well, then it's important to have that support.

Peta Stapleton (03:58.212)
Yeah, so at what point and you're doing your PhD, Columbia University, obviously in a field and a department that really supports integrative and exploratory research, what was it that you then applied research to? Like what were you investigating?

Tomas Frymann (04:14.062)
Yeah, so for me, the core sort of epiphany that came out of psychedelics was that I am the universe experiencing itself. I'm not separate, my individuality, my personhood. It's not like there is a separate me that came into the universe. And yet I had somehow thought of myself in that way without even recognizing it before having a psychedelic experience, sort of related to myself as walking through a universe.

I'm in that universe, but I am not necessarily it manifesting through me. So this shift in how I related to myself and my notion of my connectedness to the universe was the core epiphany and really experiential epiphany that I had through psychedelics. And then when I had that shift, there was a sort of cognitive integration.

So I thought to myself, okay, I have experienced myself as the universe happening as a person. Now, what does that mean? If I am the universe, what does it actually mean to be the universe in its totality? Then I thought of my lifespan as the universe. Well, wow, kind of my babyhood was the big bang, right? And I lived out my life and I gave birth to planets and I gave birth to...

galaxies and then on those planets I manifested as human life. That's me as the universe and then as that, then that became Thomas, my local identity, as well as everything else. So this shift of thinking not from Thomas's perspective in the universe, but the universe perspective in Thomas, which the universe is a greater thing than Thomas's. It's a bigger and longer lasting thing.

So it is a more fundamental identity. That actually makes a lot of sense. But I had to really think it through to say like, what does this mean? How do I conceptualize of myself in this different way? Then when I thought that, I thought, okay, so if I think from the lens of the universe, then I am being every single being that exists right now. I'm every single person, every animal, everything with a first person conscious experience.

Tomas Frymann (06:31.24)
I as the universe am having that experience. But also to be any one of those beings is what it is by not being the rest of them. To be any one of those beings is to be the uniqueness of that being and the uniqueness makes it different from the others. And we can think that's kind of the same as in time. I keep on moving through time and the uniqueness of these different moments is what it is from differing from the others.

But I still connect those all into a single identity that I call Thomas. But I didn't do that in space. I would isolate my identity in space. I'd say me across time is connected, but me across space is disconnected until I had this experience with mushrooms where I said, wait, actually me across space is just as connected as just the universe essentially traversing identities as different people in the same way that I traversed time.

So I had the experience of oneness with the universe, and then I cognitively integrated that by considering the philosophy and the implications and the aftermath of that experience. And then I took that and I brought that to my PhD and I looked at who else is saying the same thing, you know? And Thich Nhat Hanh, I felt, said it really well. And then he had the term interbeing and he says to be

is to inter-be. You can never be by yourself alone. Everything that I am is a relationship between everything else. And so it's not that I am being this separate Thomas thing, this separate Thomas, there is no separate Thomas thing. Every thought of mine, every piece of my body is food that came from somewhere else. The sodium potassium channels that cause my thoughts are the bananas that I ate this morning, right?

And so everything that I am is woven into the universe and there's no boundary. And so I wanted to look at basically how do psychedelic experiences cause this sense of identity shift? How does that lasting identity shift then translate into behaviors that are aligned with oneness and how does acting in alignment with oneness then benefit our mental health? And that's almost the idea of karma, right? It's like, if we do

Peta Stapleton (08:47.322)
Mmm.

Tomas Frymann (08:50.84)
good things, that's actually gonna benefit our mental health. And why do we do good things? Not necessarily out of the expectation, cause good things are gonna come back to me or because I must do the good things because that's the ethical right thing to do. But no, doing good things because actually there's a spiritual sense of connection with everything else. There's a unity and I see those other things as myself. I thought there's an additional layer of depth in that sense of oneness.

And I want to investigate the way that psychedelics help people connect to that and how that then helps them maybe come out of their mental health challenges.

Peta Stapleton (09:26.49)
Fantastic. So many questions are coming to mind and now I'm just going to go bang, bang, bang. So after you had, I know you've had hundreds of experiences now and facilitated them as well, but after that first one where you were exposed to this concept, if you like, that was so different, how long, when you just said something about how long did it last, were you able to retain that? And I guess if anyone's listening in that might be, you know, new to this whole experience or even concept.

Like does it last or do you need to continue perhaps using in a supported way psychedelics in order to re-engage with that to remind your human Thomas self? Do you know what I'm saying?

Tomas Frymann (09:58.797)
Hmm.

Hmm. Yeah, absolutely. So the, the moment of that awareness was this like sort of a single moment, there was an epiphany in which I was looking at the ocean and I saw a wave in the ocean and I thought, my gosh, I've only seen myself as the wave that I am. And I've given that wave a label Thomas. And really what Thomas is, is a wave of complexity traveling through the fabric of the universe.

which we could say is the quantum field or whatever physics sort of identifies as the fundamental substrate of what the universe is. I am a wave of complexity traveling through that substrate of the universe. Very literally, right? The food molecules kind of flow into me like a weather system and they flow out of me just as a wave traverses through the ocean. And I looked at this wave and I thought, wow, how funny it's like.

I've been so identified with what that particular form is. This wave looks like this, this Thomas looks like this, or it acts like this. has these characteristics, these properties. And I never really, as the wave of Thomas looked deeper and said, what is this wave? It's really just the ocean. It's really the wave is the ocean just happening in a certain way. Thomas is the universe just happening in a certain way.

Tomas Frymann (11:31.982)
So the awareness happened in a sort of a moment of epiphany. And I would say throughout the journey, that particular mushroom journey, that awareness happened in a number of different ways. It was like it was trying to show me the same thing and communicate it in a variety of ways. Another way was like looking up at the stars and think like, oh my gosh, like I am this cosmos, I am this universe. And looking at the oceans analogously seeing, oh, this wave

is just like Thomas as Thomas says to the universe, the wave is to the ocean. So across journeys, it continues to show that and you feel it in different ways and different psychedelics have shown me the same message in so many different ways and often it's a teaching. It's like the plants are carrying this fundamental wavelength of we are one and then they take that to you and they show it to you in regard to different parts of your life.

And sometimes maybe for one person, oneness means forgiveness. And so they have a psychedelic experience, they experience oneness and it's particularly the offshoot of forgiveness related to oneness. And somebody else might have a oneness experience and see, address their jealousy. jealousy actually is also including a sense of separateness from what I'm jealous of or who I'm jealous of.

So there's all these different avenues of oneness and having recurrent psychedelic experiences can surface that again in a more powerful way related to different topics that come up across your life. But it also takes time to integrate those teachings, right? So let's say you have an experience related to jealousy and you're in a relationship and then you learn, I don't need to be jealous

of this other person because actually that's almost like me being jealous of my future self. Like I share an identity with my future self and I wish the best. I hope I'm happy tomorrow, you know, right? Like I don't hope tomorrow that I'll be sad because so that I feel better about me today thinking, that future Thomas, like I hope he's sad so that I can feel better about myself now. No, like I hope I wish the best for myself, right? And similarly, we can hope.

Peta Stapleton (13:35.29)
Mmm.

Peta Stapleton (13:53.449)
That's it.

Tomas Frymann (13:57.58)
wish the best for all beings regardless of who they are, what is happening. So one teaching can be around jealousy and then it can take a lot of time to actually shift our cognitive patterns related to being in relationship and related to feeling jealousy. So the kind of pattern between having an epiphany and then applying that epiphany is you can go back to the psychedelic to regain that teaching.

and it will show you that, but it won't walk the steps for you. So there's a of like a wisdom to taking time, really honoring the lesson. And in our work on psychedelic integration, part of conceptualizing that is the sense that somebody has fully actually lived out the messages that were conveyed to them. So there's like an item we have in our psychedelic integration scale that says,

I feel a sense of harmony between my psychedelic experience and the way I live my life, essentially. So there's things like that where you can come back to the experience and it will often have good teachings for you. But if you do it all the time without integrating, it's kind of like you are looking at a map and you're not walking anywhere and you keep looking at the map and you're like, why am I still in the same spot?

Peta Stapleton (15:18.368)
I'm stuck. It makes total sense. tell me, because I'm aware of like meditation studies and I've certainly done some of those with, you know, Dr. Dawson Church, Joda Spencer and a few others just around EEG functional MRI and what's happening in the brain if people meditate and sometimes may reach similar, what sounds like similar kind of, you know, yeah, those pathways through to oneness and

unity and things like that. But do we know what is happening? And maybe it is different for different psychedelics. What is happening at a brain level or a neurological level or how is it that the brain maybe can get an update? Because we know it can to experience that kind of, you know, connection that's out there and be able to, and of course, integration I want to get to. But yeah, what do we know about what's happening in the brain?

Tomas Frymann (15:57.464)
Yeah.

Tomas Frymann (16:03.95)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-mm.

Tomas Frymann (16:15.758)
Yeah, I have a relatively humble amount of knowledge related to neuroscience and brain chemistry. But from some of what I know, there's obviously a more dramatic and rapid shift with the use of psychedelics compared to the average person. Let's say you do psychedelics for 10 hours and you meditate for 10 hours, and you've never done either of each, right? The use of psychedelics is going to, on average, have a lot more dramatic, prominent, immediate shift.

And that shift is characterized in the brain typically by a lot of connectivity happening. So different areas of the brain that usually aren't talking to each other start talking everywhere. There's connections between everything and you actually, so it's almost like if you look at these brain imaging sort of pictures, you'll see the oneness almost in the picture. You're like, wow, that is the oneness this person's experiencing or at least some ripple of it, right?

So there's a lot more connection happening in the brain during psychedelic experiences. And in that there's also what can be felt as almost synesthesia, this crossing of senses. So normally, let's say our visual processing system is connected to auditory processing. that's, so if a sound happens somewhere in space, then it makes sense that my

visual and auditory systems would be connected because there and my motor system, for example, I might need to turn my head to orient to that sound. So everything in our brain is sharing information, but it's also sort of compartmentalized. And then when we have a psychedelic experience, a lot of those data streams are essentially shared in a much more dramatic way. You actually feel that phenomenologically in your own experience. You can feel, Whoa, my sort of like vision.

sort of feels like it's merging with my sense of body so that what I'm seeing and who I am maybe almost feel like one thing more or what I'm hearing and what I'm seeing also maybe feel like one thing. So there's shifts. Yeah. This can be, it's really fascinating to see those connections and then internally to reflect, wait, what kind of like, what was happening on a brain level there in that experience? And then look at the data and say, Ooh,

Peta Stapleton (18:27.418)
It's It's amazing.

Tomas Frymann (18:42.348)
those things are actually see those relationships.

Peta Stapleton (18:45.984)
amazing. So it does bring us, we're talking about research and you touched on it earlier, there has been research and part of why I guess you know Australia has also approved you know psychedelic assisted therapy for the trauma or PTSD space is because of the evidence that heavily supports that. Can you tell us a little bit about you know the impacts if someone is curious and we will get to the right way to do this but

What is it that it can have as an impact on something like post-traumatic stress disorder or other mental health issues like anxiety or depression? How is it possible that these substances, we know a little bit about what's happening in the brain, but how can it shift then mental health symptomology?

Tomas Frymann (19:19.949)
No, no,

Tomas Frymann (19:24.27)
Hmm.

Tomas Frymann (19:33.105)
Yeah, that's a great question. And so I say off the bat, the shift that I've witnessed in working with Navy SEALs, for example, in post-traumatic stress conditions, Navy SEAL veterans, is one of the most touching, incredible, profound shifts, the most absolutely magical shifts I've ever witnessed in mental health treatment have come through psychedelics by far.

So the efficacy just from a firsthand perspective is incredible. It's absolutely magical. like I've worked with an organization called the Mission Within, which helps Navy SEAL veterans work there for the past six years or so. A lot of times we'll have groups of four to six guys who are on the brink of suicide and those guys will come out.

radically transformed. The amount of tears shed and the amount of hope and just change and spirituality in people who have seen so much death and so much trauma and maybe are so hopeless and depressed. It's incredible for those people to witness their profound connection with the universe. And that has a bearing, our connection with the universe and our sense of self has a bearing on

almost every clinical disorder, would say every mental health condition, there's a very direct link to who am I? And let's say, let's take depression, right? It's like, if my sense of self is narrowed and I'm focusing on myself and then I get hopeless about sort of the world and my condition and I begin to shut down.

then I experience this sense of unity with nature. My sense of self expands and my sense of care expands and my sense of the beauty and the awesomeness of the universe expands. There's a really direct connection there. Or let's say with cancer and death. If I'm approaching death and I have a terminal illness, I might shut down if I'm overly identified with just

Tomas Frymann (21:52.534)
the pattern of the wave I am. And I'm like, my gosh, my pattern is ending, this life is ending. That might be a very depressing thought. But then if the wave understands it's the ocean and it sees the land, it travels towards the land and says, okay, yeah, I'm gonna break, my form is gonna dissolve, but nothing is fundamentally lost, right? And that's even like...

in laws of thermodynamics, energy is not created, And there's a spiritual truth to that, right? And so when we see that, we can see come to terms with death. So our relationship to others and to the world around us and to nature, it completely hinges on how we conceptualize ourselves at a very base level.

Peta Stapleton (22:32.666)
Hmm.

Tomas Frymann (22:45.814)
And when we conceptualize ourselves as isolated beings, whether we're conscious of that or not, that has a dramatic impact on how we live our lives. And so I think the way that psychedelics can heal mental health conditions is often through this avenue of expanding our awareness of who we are. And that can shift how we approach things at a level that is so deep and so profound, we're actually not even typically aware of

how it is sort of influencing us.

Peta Stapleton (23:20.57)
Thomas, it's sounding like a silver bullet. Like it truly is. Really the research is there to back it. But if someone's listening and saying, okay, I really want to explore this. I think we need to talk about all of your hundreds of experiences and thousands of hours of running retreats, not only for Navy SEALs, but other veterans and sufferers of lots of these conditions. The parameters around how this is best

Tomas Frymann (23:33.838)
Mm.

Peta Stapleton (23:49.526)
administered and supported which you touched on. How does this look and how should it look? So if there is someone listening in kind of thinking I want to experience this because truly everything you're saying sounds wonderful and sounds fantastic and I want some of that. How does someone take those first steps but be supported in this process and certainly and I'm happy if you want to touch on there's so many psychedelics that one could try

Tomas Frymann (23:56.462)
Hmm.

Peta Stapleton (24:19.162)
and having chatted to a couple of other colleagues in similar fields, there's an assessment process sometimes that might happen to find out what's the right one for you and your personal makeup. Like, how do we go about this? What are the first steps? What should we know?

Tomas Frymann (24:21.54)
Mm.

Tomas Frymann (24:30.942)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah. So I think we'll start with the beginning of that, which is like, is it a silver bullet? And my mind goes back to the map analogy. If somebody is way off course and they're hiking through the woods and they remember, Oh, I have a map or they find out I have a map. You know, that is wonderful. You know, um, that can make a world of difference to helping somebody get back on track. And I think if we think of psychedelics, like a map.

a piece of education that can orient us to who we are, where we are, and what is good for us by often showing us our oneness. That's great. And oneness includes everything, and it doesn't necessarily put us right back on the path, right? And sometimes you could look at a map and say, good Lord, I am terribly off the path. There was a seal I worked with who said he came in and

He felt like he was generally fine and he had a psychedelic experience and it was like a doctor telling him he had cancer and he didn't know it. You know, that was the level of epiphany he had about how far off path he was without knowing it. So it's not necessarily a happy-go-lucky experience all the time and it can be far from it, right? Psychedelics are very beneficial in that they often confront us deeply with reality.

And that's very different than other drugs that kind of take us away from reality or sort of make it easier to escape, right? If I have something that is really bad for me, let's say I've become an alcoholic and I start cheating and lying and I drink alcohol and then I forget about that and it's, nice, I feel good right now, right?

Tomas Frymann (26:30.798)
Psychedelics do the opposite of that. They say, is your cheating and lyingness in full fledge and you feel the negative impact dramatically. And sometimes more intensely than it can almost be communicated. the lesson, psychedelics can be very difficult teachers in the experience. But after the experience, it's always for a reason. And so there's a strong...

call for anyone listening to this to honor those messages, really to take them very seriously and to think about if you're going in, you're going into a lesson with a teacher that can be a very hard teacher. And if you don't learn the lesson, you're going to have to learn it again. So to go in with somebody who has the wisdom to help people orient to these journeys is one very important first step.

And it's up to that person, sort of like who their facilitator is and who they resonate with. And it's very important to know the facilitator and know kind of your sense of comfort and familiarity and trust with that facilitator. So that's one important thing. Another very important thing is the setting. just being, I think the role of nature is very important.

This is an interesting sort of consideration in the field of mental health treatment. Nature is not very integrated into our mental health treatment modalities typically. So if you were to go to the Amazon and do a treatment, or they wouldn't even necessarily call it a treatment, but a sacred ceremony with psychedelics,

you might be very much more immersed in nature and connected to the oneness of the world through nature. If we go into a standard, let's say like ketamine clinic in the United States, you might be in what looks more like a therapy room, right? Or just like four walls and maybe some IVs. My personal bias is maybe towards, I don't know if it's bias or I don't know.

Tomas Frymann (28:50.434)
preference based on experience, right, is towards really emphasizing that nature, like thinking about the variables that have been present for the thousands and thousands of years that people have used psychedelics is a wise elder often within a community in the presence of nature. And I think the closer that we can get to those variables, the better. And we also want to, you know, look out for our health. So thinking about is there somebody you trust?

Peta Stapleton (28:51.354)
Yeah.

Tomas Frymann (29:19.618)
who can be supportive? Does that person maybe have a good track record if you talk to other people who have experienced with them? Do you personally feel very comfortable with the energetics of the space and the person? And is there also safety considerations and professionality as much as possible?

Peta Stapleton (29:41.122)
And is there a need during the experience because you do often hear that perhaps a dose is given but then there might be a support period of a couple of hours, even up to eight hours I've heard. Is there a need for therapeutic intervention during that time, whether that might be some sort of somatic process like EFT or EMDR, or is it just a supported

process to see what emerges.

Tomas Frymann (30:12.014)
CB most, depends on the experience and it depends on the facilitator. There's often nonverbal forms of guidance that are offered in ceremonial contexts. let's say you're in an ayahuasca ceremony and the ceremony has somebody who's gotten really scared in that ceremony and the whole room, let's say, needs a reorienting. so then the

the shaman facilitator guide, ayahuasca figure, maybe hits a big gong. Whooooa! Right? And everybody suddenly, whoa, okay, came out of the state of fear, because now we're hearing the gong, right? So there's these nonverbal shifts that speak to your awareness and shift the focal point of your awareness. So facilitators can be helpful in sort of implementing these

nonverbal shifts of awareness into new objects of awareness when your awareness has fallen in an unhelpful place. And the unhelpful place is mostly a place that would be characterized by resistance or fear. So that sort of intervention is common. The sort of direct intervention based on standard therapeutic techniques is not as common and not as helpful because they're mostly cognitive.

So lot of the talk therapy, when you're in the experience, you don't necessarily want to take somebody into the verbal channel of awareness, because being in the nonverbal spiritual space is often the realm that the psychedelic is taking somebody to and helping them recognize who and what they are and feel in touch with their emotions and all these nonverbal characteristics.

The verbal channel of awareness also carries the bias of whoever is putting their brain then into that space. And there's a, was kind of alluded to as a natural healing potential of every person that when we simply become aware of the truth of our internal space and world, that awareness will be healing. So we actually don't need to intervene to create awareness. The awareness will happen.

Tomas Frymann (32:36.352)
internally for that person themselves facilitated through the psychedelic and their interaction within that space. And then the processing usually happens later. Yeah.

Peta Stapleton (32:47.884)
It dovetails now into what you touched on, and I'll come back to the map. So you touched on this earlier. So we got the map, we've had this shining light that's shone and we're like, I have a map. And now I've got this awareness of connection or unity. And then I go back to normal life. Like I might have to go back to a nine to five job. And I've just had this.

amazing experience that's been well supported and you know I've just had this awareness develop and insight that perhaps never had before but then I go back to work and I've still got my map but I have to go back to life. So you mentioned the word integration. I'm wondering what does that look like? I'm imagining we're not encouraging people here every weekend to go off.

Tomas Frymann (33:24.91)
Mmm.

Peta Stapleton (33:40.3)
and have another kind of psychedelic experience just to be to cope with life. But what does the integration process look like? Because like you said, you know, if you've become aware of your lying and you're cheating and your alcoholism and then you go back to what and an opportunity comes up for you to do that again and you don't take a step to do something different. How do people go back to life after these experiences?

Tomas Frymann (33:55.71)
Okay.

Tomas Frymann (33:59.118)
And.

Yeah. So integration just for background generally means connecting to things that are dissimilar and weaving those into a single now connected system. So with psychedelics, the things that are dissimilar from normal life is often you have this radical expanded awareness of self that includes your unity with the universe, might be a different orientation towards space and time.

and you're basically in a very spiritual place, and then you go back to the mundane. So how do we connect the spiritual to the mundane is sort of the question, and that depends also on the nature of somebody's mundane life. What is their life? Are they working 18 hours a day at a finance job? Are they a kayak instructor? There's very different lives that people live that will...

lend themselves more or less naturally to a smooth integration. So that's one thing to consider. often I use a metaphor with integration of planting a seed. So if you plant a seed, some of the things that that seed needs is a really good soil. And you can think of the soil as the environment around you. So let's say you're an alcoholic and you then go back

to your, you have this great awareness, oh my gosh, I don't want to drink. This is how it's been impacting my life. I'm making a resolution not to drink. You go back to your environment and it's surrounded by alcohol or you're a workaholic and you go back to a lot of work or you know, whatever it is, this soil that you're in and the supportiveness of that environment is one very important factor. And then the amount of time that somebody has to dedicate also to integrating.

Tomas Frymann (35:56.768)
is another very important factor. can think of that as the light, almost the light of awareness. So for example, a lot of the seals I work with have been very high performers and they might have really intense jobs and families. And so it can be a challenge to kind of make space for integration. So let's say you have this great awareness, my gosh, I need to forgive my...

Dad, my dad is just a kid who grew up and he had kids and doesn't make him perfect. and we all have faced, he's faced so many difficulties, right? And we've all faced difficulties and I see that I want to forgive him. So let's say you have that experience and then you make time to write him a note, to talk to him, to call him, to journal on that and continue to reflect, to look.

into his history, say why is he how he is, like where did that come from? And you give a lot of time to this. That's kind of like light for the newborn plant or the seed, right? And then another factor would be like kind of watering the soil. You could think of the water as the actual behaviors that we take. So that could be, you if I have a very busy life, then meditating, meditating each day could be like watering the seed.

so there's these different components of integration that support the transmission of a teaching into a new way of life and the linking of those. And, you know, just on the level of like linking the cosmic into the mundane, it's an interesting thing to balance to see, Whoa, we're in this.

infinity of time and an infinity perhaps of space if this universe is one that expands and collapses and keeps doing so or at least incredible, know, fractal levels of space that we're embedded in. And you might open up to this expanded awareness and then go back to a desk. But can you bring that into every person that you see? When you're looking at your pencil writing, can you think, huh,

Tomas Frymann (38:18.414)
Can you think of the tree that is present in that pencil? So I think there is the, the spiritual is present in the mundane at every moment. So there's also the opportunity to see that in every moment. I think Einstein had some quote about like, you know, it's like when you can see the like spiritual in the everyday, that's kind of like where the magic is, right? Cause yeah, we can be blown away kind of on a,

momentary level by something that is fireworks and explosions, right? But for a more sustained sense of awe and appreciation is that sense of can my awareness touch into the way that that's always prevalent.

Peta Stapleton (39:05.848)
Yeah, I love that. That awe. think, yeah, we could all do better if we did a bit more awe, couldn't we? That's fantastic. Thomas, in wrapping up, and this has been such a wonderful conversation, what do you hope or what do you hold the vision for maybe the next decade in this space? Like, I truly put this kind of approach in the mental health field in the fourth wave with lots of our other

kind of somatic approaches as well. But what do you kind of, you're really in it and you've done hundreds of, not only personal experiences, but holding the space and facilitating others. What do you hope happens in the next decade in the psychedelic world?

Tomas Frymann (39:54.478)
the decade, you know, at the pace that things are going, that's, that's, you know, a big question to think of where things will be 10 years from now with technology developing at the pace it does. So that's where my mind goes right away is thinking of the way that technology is expanding gives us greatly amplified power capacity to change things. And with power, we need wisdom of how do we change things, right? So

the ideal hope would be that we use the wisdom of psychedelics to inform the power that we're gaining through technology and create sort of a ideal sort of marriage. I'm tempted to say a utopian, you know, it's like utopian is always a far off concept, but it really could be quite amazing. And it could be in that direction of utopian if

We imagine a context in which we understand the potential of psychedelics and give the reverence and the sense of honor that they deserve to say, these are incredibly powerful teachers to show us about our unity and the way that unity can be applied to different facets of our life. And even if those experiences are hard,

they teach us something. And if we understand the value, so that would be my hope really for the world at large to deeply understand psychedelics in a way that they're respected for the way that they teach about oneness and the potential they have. And I think about everyone wants the world to be better for themselves and their families around them, right? Pretty much everyone is.

hoping that they have a better life in the future. And if we can see that the way that we will each have a better life in the future is for the totality of what we're connected to, to be healthier. The animals that I eat, right, if they are tortured in factory farms, they're gonna carry those stress hormones, that's gonna go into my body, my body's gonna be less healthy, and maybe even on a spiritual level, some of that.

Tomas Frymann (42:16.846)
Karma is transferring through, right? So if we understand our oneness with animals and we treat animals better, our bodies are gonna be healthier. If our bodies are healthier, our minds are healthier. If our minds are healthier, our family's healthier, we treat our family better, right? Like the food we create is a product of how we're living. Everything we do has to do with the connectedness of those things around us. And if we honor psychedelics for their potential to show us that connectedness and not only show us, but then...

teach us about how it applies to our lives. think the world can be a much better place. And I think that's the trajectory that we're actually going in. I think, you know, I've been in the field for 12 years and where we are now is way further than we were a decade ago. So it's amazing to think a decade from now, we could be in a really, really amazing place.

Peta Stapleton (42:57.23)
Yeah.

Peta Stapleton (43:10.874)
I reckon we put that in the diary, Thomas, and we circle back. Okay. Let's see what's happening in my world, your world, and we'll let everyone know. has been truly, I'm going to use the word enlightening, but yeah, a conversation that I think has such potential for so many people listening. I do want to put out there again that we're not giving anyone medical advice and absolutely you need to do due diligence in exploring this space for yourself.

Tomas Frymann (43:14.766)
Yeah, sounds good.

Peta Stapleton (43:40.852)
and of course any mental health challenges. But Thomas, it's just been wonderful to hear where you've come from and applying the clinical research in this and your PhD kind of research, but then the therapeutic work on the back of that and the people that are benefiting from this. I know you've got hundreds of stories like you've told us today about those Navy SEALs and the potential.

of how this can actually assist people. I have all of your details below because I'm sure people want to listen to you on other podcasts and I've listed some of those below as well as your website and retreats that you do offer. So if anyone is curious, we're hoping secretly to get Thomas to move to Australia. So look, you never know. And I know it's interesting being doing that. you know, it's just, so maybe that happens in the future. You never know. So Thomas, thank you so much for joining us and

Tomas Frymann (44:24.519)
Yeah.

Peta Stapleton (44:37.048)
and sharing everything today and your wisdom about this space and what you've seen and experienced.

Tomas Frymann (44:44.162)
Yeah, it's my pleasure. Thanks for hosting me and to everyone listening. Thank you for listening.

Peta Stapleton (44:47.286)
amazing.

Peta Stapleton (44:52.282)
Fantastic, And we hope that you join us for another episode on the fourth wave in therapy and one of our other wonderful contributions in this space. So thanks everyone and we'll see you again soon.

Resources

About Dr Tomas Frymann

Dr. Tomas Frymann is the founder of As We Wake, an organization dedicated to connecting culture to Interbeing through psychedelics. He completed his Ph.D. in the Spirituality and Psychology Lab at Columbia University, is an initiate of the Bwiti tradition, and has facilitated and experienced 100’s of psychedelic ceremonies worldwide with psilocybin, ayahuasca, iboga, and 5-MeO-DMT. In his many years of psychotherapy experience he has worked with veterans, cancer patients, university students, and ICU patients. Dr. Frymann authored the first empirical measurements of Psychedelic Integration and Interbeing Identity, which have been translated into multiple languages and adopted by psychedelic facilitation centers globally. He has presented his work at major forums including the United Nations and Harvard University, and is featured on the following podcasts: Universe Within, 10 Laws Podcast, Psychedelic medicine Podcast, End of the Road Podcast. Dr. Frymann is also a former professional skimboarder and general ocean sports aficionado.

Website: www.aswewake.com

Instagram: @aswewake