Lana's Journey: 3 Questions
The podcast host & coach talks about the nuances of integration and how Western society needs to learn to approach psychedelic medicine from a "psychedelic lens"
For this month's Q&A, it's my pleasure to introduce you to Lana Pribic. I first discovered Lana’s work at the dawn of the pandemic, when she began curating wisdom via the Instagram account @ModernPsychedelics. Lana has since founded the popular podcast in the same name which she co-hosts with creator and Kambo practitioner Zoey Poulsen, aimed to bring heart and intuition to the foreground of psychedelics.
Her own journey of self-actualization led Lana to become a certified professional life coach, focusing on psychedelic integration. Through the coaching process, Lana supports clients and fellow psychonauts to anchor in the profound lessons and messages from psychedelic experiences. Lana lives in Ontario, Canada where she sits regularly in Ayahuasca ceremonies with her spiritual community.
What are the biggest shifts psychedelic medicine has brought into your life?
I love this question, and, it's really difficult for me to separate my experiences with plant medicine from coaching, therapy, and other tools. Eventually, it all started to blend together—ceremony and integration have become a way of life.
That being said, the first big lesson I received had to do with surrender. In a profound moment during an Ayahuasca purge, it dawned on me that the medicine was in control (not me). The more I surrendered to the medicine, the deeper the healing I received. Surrender and trust. I’ve been able to bring surrender into my life by examining what is and isn't in my control, then I go to work on what is in my control.
I’ve also received healing of the throat chakra and learned to use my voice to speak my truth, and podcasting has been a beautiful way to integrate this! This lesson has also been reflected in the positive progress I’ve seen of a life-long medically unexplained throat/nasal drip, which has significantly improved over the years since I started to speak my truth and sit with Ayahuasca.
Lastly, I am still on this journey of fully stepping into my power. This has been long and nuanced, but progress is made every day. I am learning, from these deep explorations into myself with psychedelics, the power I hold within. This requires a lot of shedding of limiting beliefs and false stories, and anything holding me back from being the powerful human beings I truly am (and we all are!).
What have you learned about the psychedelic medicine space through your work with your podcast?
I see the mainstream psychedelic space in the West as a reflection of the Western collective consciousness: unproportionately in the head. The industry leans almost solely on science, facts, and "knowing". While there is absolutely nothing inherently incorrect about this form of knowledge, it does not necessarily do the psychedelic space justice because psychedelics, by nature, open up our minds to perceptive truths beyond human comprehension. If we try to look at these truths through the mind, we can't fully grasp the essence.
I would like to see the psychedelic industry utilize holographic thinking, which means balancing mind, heart, and intuition. Part of our mission at Modern Psychedelics is to balance the scales and offer a more spiritual perspective on psychedelics.
Psychedelic medicine did not begin in the 1930s when LSD was first synthesized by Albert Hoffman. If we truly want to succeed at integrating these medicines into modern society, the trick is to look to ancient wisdom, and use modern science as a tool that supports ancient wisdom (not the other way around). In speaking with the guests on Modern Psychedelics, it’s comforting to see that many others are also advocating for this type of approach in the psychedelic medicine space.
In short, we must approach the psychedelic space through a psychedelic lens.
What, in your experience, do people struggle with most when it comes to psychedelic integration? How can coaching help?
Integration is the process of understanding what we learn in ceremony and taking appropriate action to fully embody the lesson. Integration is about awareness AND action; one can not work without the other.
Integration means that change follows the lesson, and change requires action.
Most of us are juggling our self-actualization journeys with full-time jobs, relationships, and passion projects. Where I see most people get stuck is when we jump back into life's demands without making the commitment to integrate the lessons through aligned action. In this case, it just becomes another "trip" you had. Committing to working with a coach signifies a commitment to your own personal growth and integration process, and pays reverence to the sacred lessons received.
Coaching is a partnership between a coach and a client, where the coach works with the client to provoke deeper awareness and connect their inner desires to their outer goals. Coaching itself is a process of integration. Working with a coach to integrate your experience can help you gain a greater understanding of what the messages you received mean to you, and what it means about how you want to live your life as a result. Once these things are aired out, we can start to creating shifts through awareness, aligned action and accountability.
You can find out more about Lana’s podcast Modern Psychedelics here. If you’re interested in working with Lana you can reach out to her via Instagram or email her at hello@lanapribic.ca.
Inspired to share your own journey? Reply to this e-mail if you’re interested. I’m always keen to feature readers.