Coltrane Lord | From Rage and Shame to Psychedelic Freedom: The Healing Path

Who is Coltrane Lord?

Coltrane Lord is a spiritual mentor, feminine embodiment coach, and self-described “lovologist.” Known as a “Soul Retriever,” “Shadow Slayer,” “Shame Smasher,” and “Love Amplifier,” she guides individuals — especially women — into deeper connection with their divine nature and spiritual wholeness. Her work weaves together ritual, creative expression, healing, and integration, intending to restore authenticity and ignite inner beauty.
She is a Chopra-certified Ayurvedic Educator and Vedic Counselor, with training in Vedanta, Ancient Goddess Mystery Schools, and occult practices. Drawing on these lineages, she helps people reclaim what has been lost or hidden and awaken to their fullest potential. At the heart of her mission is the belief that every soul can embody divine love and beauty, cultivating profound intimacy with the self and the Universe.
What did Coltrane and Boomer discuss?

00:00 Intro – Healing, Liberation, and Rastafari Village
00:48 Welcome to the Smarter Not Harder Podcast
01:00 Meet Coltrane Lord: Women’s Health, Psychedelics & Trauma
03:50 From Divorce and Betrayal to Psychedelic Healing
07:00 First MDMA Journey: Safety, Self-Love, and Transformation
11:00 Beyond Talk Therapy: Why Embodiment Matters
12:00 Psychedelics vs Traditional Therapy – What’s Missing
15:00 Ancient Roots of Psychedelic Medicine in Spiritual Traditions
19:00 How to Choose the Right Facilitator or Space Holder
23:30 Psychedelics, Capitalism, and Access to Healing
24:00 Indigenous Wisdom, Ritual, and Reciprocity
27:00 Healing Women, Healing the World
32:00 The Wonderland Project: Research & Support for Survivors
36:00 Rethinking Medicine: Integration as the Key to Healing
40:45 Life as Ceremony – Finding Awe, Wonder, and Wholeness
41:28 One-Cent Solution: Be Madly in Love With Yourself
42:09 Where to Find Coltrane Lord & Closing
Full Transcript:

[00:00:00] Coltrane Lord: We go to the Rastafari Village, the lineage is 500 years of slavery. When I offer them money to hold space for us, it's going to the Jamaicans that are living off the land. It's not going to a different country who owns the hotel, and then I'm not hiring people from all over to come in. It's like it's going to the people, it should be going to.

[00:00:19] They tend to the land, they steward the land, they grow the mushrooms. I feel complete there. Also, just the history of their liberation. They know oppression, right In Jamaica. Not all Rastafari are seen as equal if we're gonna liberate the body who best to be with than people who really truly understand liberation and one love, so.

[00:00:48] Boomer Anderson: All right, everybody. Another episode of the Smarter Not Harder podcast. And today we're going to have so much fun talking to the only person who can make me name jealous, Coltrane Lord. [00:01:00] Coltrane, welcome to the show. 

[00:01:00] Coltrane Lord: Thank you so much for having me, Boomer. It's great to be here. 

[00:01:03] Boomer Anderson: So today we're gonna dive into many different topics, women's health, psychedelics, trauma.

[00:01:10] A whole bunch of other things. Wanna set the stage for everybody because I'm assuming that you really wanted to get involved in this space of psychedelic healing, or healing in general. Take us through sort of that journey, when was that bifurcation point for you that you said like, "Hey, this is what I want to do."

[00:01:28] Coltrane Lord: Yeah. Thank you. And I wanna say thank you to your audience because. Those are super heavy topics, and I'm gonna try as I can to make it at least engaging so that people aren't afraid to listen deeply and with an open heart and an open mind. So thank you all for being here. So how did I get to psychedelic medicine and healing?

[00:01:46] I'm gonna go from most recent to- I'm gonna go backwards. I think. 

[00:01:50] Boomer Anderson: This is a fun way to tell a story. 

[00:01:51] Coltrane Lord: Yeah, it is. I've had a lot of experiences in my life that would traumatize any person, and I just happen to have a lot of 'em. I'm living [00:02:00] and I'm alive, and I am abundant, and I am really joyful in my body, feel amazing.

[00:02:04] And so I just wanna say that as I share this story, and I hope that I don't traumatize any of you that are listening. My most recent experience with trauma is a divorce, which was not as much trauma except for the fact that my son at one point had suicide ideation, and this is after my psychedelic medicine journey and a lot of healing.

[00:02:25] And I will say that those two experiences, without those tools and without that embodied healing. Felt sense of wholeness would have destroyed me as a mom. All the parents out there probably understand that, and one of the biggest stressors in life is actually divorce. So before that, and what got me into plant medicine is I experienced a betrayal in my relationship and it really, really rocks me.

[00:02:49] And I didn't understand why it rocked me so much. Like. To the extent that it did because my father had betrayed our family. I remembered, you know, I'm not gonna have this [00:03:00] happen to me. I'm leaving the person who does that to me, and all of a sudden I'm faced with this experience and I have two little kids.

[00:03:07] I am shook to my core. I went through all this therapy, talk therapy and I- because it's infidelity and that's sexual, and I was told that it was my fault that I was shut down. So. You know, I like working on myself, and so I went down this rabbit hole of trying to fix myself in all ways, shapes or forms, sexually, emotionally, intellectually, psychologically, and nothing seemed to get really to the core of what was wrong.

[00:03:32] A friend of mine who has even more trauma than I do could recognize my brokenness at the time. And so she said to me, I think you need to go see this person. I didn't care what it was by that point. I was so tired of myself that I thought, I don't care what this is, I'm gonna go do it. And it was my first experience in the underground of my MDMA journey.

[00:03:56] MDMA for some people on the street is called Ecstasy or [00:04:00] Molly. It has been used in the eighties. For couples therapy. For those of you who don't know what it does, it's an empathogen and it takes the serotonin in your gut and it brings it up to the brain and it allows you to see some of your trauma from a very different vantage point from the un traumatized, very loving and a beautiful space.

[00:04:19] What happened was I realized that everything that destroyed me was really about my upbringing. I'll pause for a second and say I really understand what a veteran goes through because I was raised in a household that felt like a war zone. My father was a rageaholic and I liken it to having a father that was the Incredible Hulk mixed with the movie, The Shining like, scary and violent. And so the landmines were eruptions of rage. The weapons of destruction were a fist, a belt, and I even have witnessed g*ns underneath my mother's chin at young age. He had also betrayed us. He had a whole other family. He [00:05:00] was a gambler, so we had no money, and my mother worked five jobs just to support us and probably his gambling habit.

[00:05:06] He was never home, so we didn't have any guidance. We, you know, almost burned the house down because we were serving each other cereal for dinner, and my sister once tried to make us eggs, and she burned the house down. So it's that kind of lack of foundation and lack of container that was really the problem, not necessarily being betrayed.

[00:05:25] So when you're raised like that. You don't have a sense of safety ever. You don't have a sense of self-worth ever. You feel guilty for everything you've done, right, because you're getting belted for blinking or laughing, and you don't have at all any self-love. You are actually in a process of self-loathing.

[00:05:44] And so, my first MDMA journey gave me my very first breath actually, my very first sense of safety and sense of someone holding me. And you don't realize the freedom you have when your [00:06:00] PTSD or your unhealed body. You just don't realize the freedom and the liberation that other people walking around have.

[00:06:06] And also just from that childhood, you make bad choices, like with the people you hang out with. And so I did have an experience with, I thought was a boyfriend, and I was way too young. I find a hand over my mouth and then I lose my virginity and I think that he's my boyfriend. But then you realize, actually I'm- my body was just used as a vessel for his own desires.

[00:06:26] So there's a lot of shame in that too, right? This experience opened up the door to true healing because I did go to therapy, and I did go to talk therapy and it didn't get to the level of embodiment. And I have to say that too much information, I think from maybe the men in this group.

[00:06:41] But I did have skin rashes. I did have women issues. I had no idea where those things would come from. But you know what? They came from stress. And we all know in the healing space that stress. Least inflammation, at least other things in your body. You know, I would get UTIs for no reason, all because of the stress I was holding in my body.

[00:06:59] And so [00:07:00] on the psychedelic journey, which I ended up being open to doing deeper medicines, plant medicines like ayahuasca, psilocybin, mushrooms, even Iboga.

[00:07:08] Boomer Anderson: Wow.

[00:07:08] Coltrane Lord: Even, um, medicine called I- wachuma, which is a hard opener as well, to get to the very, very root of the issues. So now I have a balanced gut system, and now my body's all online and aligned.

[00:07:22] I have never felt healthier, more free, more emotional sovereignty in my entire life. I associate that with my psychedelic healing. Because it's not just emotional, it's neurological, and it's even gut biome. I feel like ayahuasca, the little gut biome in your belly is like, "Hi, happy, happy, happy. I get to be used", you know?

[00:07:44] That's the story, and I hope that didn't trigger anybody, but the story of trauma to transcendence is a powerful one, and I do believe that a lot of our health issues come from some of the traumas that we haven't addressed. And we have a lot of 'em. Just our world is [00:08:00] stressful. 

[00:08:00] Boomer Anderson: Stress is sort of ubiquitous, if we will-

[00:08:02] Coltrane Lord: Yeah.

[00:08:02] Boomer Anderson: And thank you for, for sharing all of that, I think gives a, a lot of context to this conversation. One of the things that I wanted to go a little bit down the wormhole with you on, you mentioned traditional therapy and then you mentioned the fact that okay, traditional therapy may not have giving you all the benefits that psychedelic assisted therapy.

[00:08:21] Has given you as a person who went through traditional therapy for years, for different things, had later turned to psychedelics. I, I think there's something there to, to talk about and Yeah, especially around your experiences with traditional therapy and what you weren't getting out of it, why it kind of left you lingering for more?

[00:08:38] Coltrane Lord: Yeah, thank you. I actually got re-triggered through my traditional therapy. And I know that not everyone has the same traumas and everybody's trauma. Big T or little T, is valuable and worthy of healing. And so I just wanna premise that. What strikes me with traditional talk therapy is that not all talk therapists are the same.

[00:08:56] Healing to me requires a [00:09:00] grounded presence. A presence that doesn't feel top down. And also healing to me, I know this to be true for at least me and the people, the women that I serve, is that healing is also an embodied practice. So if we're talking a lot in talk therapy, it's all philosophical, and it's all a remembering and a a- trying to understand.

[00:09:21] I understand that my father was going through his own pain. That doesn't help me at all in my body. Not at all. I still have hypervigilance. I'm still tight. I am still hyperventilating. If somebody says the wrong words, when, um, women get, you know, sexually assaulted, oftentimes the words. You're gonna be okay.

[00:09:39] You're, there's like a lot of words that people use to gaslight women into situations sometimes, and so words don't always, we don't always trust the words. And in my case, authority figures, I also grew up Catholic, so it's, you know, like-

[00:09:52] Boomer Anderson: Yeah, I know that one.

[00:09:54] Coltrane Lord: I, I, yeah. And so, authority figures often are to be distrusted because I've been [00:10:00] abused by authority and I need not an intellect.

[00:10:04] I need a parent. I need someone who is going to be with me heart to heart, and help me release the trauma from my body. Psychedelics is an embodied experience. All the way around.

[00:10:18] Except for ketamine. I- I have a different experience in healing from my ketamine, um, assisted therapy that I had done. I prefer the other ones that are more embodied, less disassociated.

[00:10:28] 'Cause when a lot of women, at least the women that I serve, we disassociate from our bodies. We don't even know what our bodies are like. We don't know what it feels like. We don't believe it's ours. And so to come home into the body, to be present in the body and be alive in the body is what my goal is, at least.

[00:10:44] What the medicines do is it helps you be embodied, at the same time as, understanding what has gone on, or what you've experienced, but also giving you that sense of transcendence.

[00:10:58] To me, [00:11:00] psychedelic assisted therapy requires somebody who's gonna allow that person who's healing to heal themselves. Just like a cut on your arm, you need a great environment to heal.

[00:11:10] The antibiotic is not healing you. Your body's healing you, right? The therapist is not healing you. You're healing yourself. So that's how I see the difference between the two. 

[00:11:20] Boomer Anderson: For somebody listening to this and you know, there is still, uh, you know, many camps when it comes to, to psychedelics, right?

[00:11:28] Because it can be very polarizing. Look, I grew up and had the DARE officers come to my school, explain to me that all of these things are evil. And nobody really mentioned David Nutt's study about how some of these substances are in fact safer than alcohol. 

[00:11:43] Coltrane Lord: Mm-hmm. 

[00:11:44] Boomer Anderson: How do you look to evaluate this as a person? Like, is this right for me and perhaps, you know, some people that it might not be right for? 

[00:11:52] Coltrane Lord: Yeah, that's a great question. I think what happens in medicine. Altogether, is the person's sovereignty is [00:12:00] disregarded. Our history is left unchecked. We have so much research on psychedelic healing from ancient times, and I also wanna tell people to look where the money's going.

[00:12:11] So, um, I'll just say that really quickly. But do your research. Right. Do your own research. Psychedelic medicines have been around. My gosh. I mean, I don't even know how many thousands and thousands of years. 

[00:12:22] Boomer Anderson: Yeah. There's something- some tale about cannabis being used, and I'm not saying cannabis is a psychedelic, but exemplifies here. Being used in China sort of 5,000 years ago, right?

[00:12:31] Coltrane Lord: There are artifacts of mushrooms, even in the, um, Christian religions. They have evidence on stained glass, windows of mushrooms growing.

[00:12:40] I don't wanna offend anyone's religiosity here, but if you're a Christian, uh, listening to this. And you go to the non-commodity scriptures, which are the scriptures that were removed from the Bible and or all the lost gospels.

[00:12:53] They talk about Jesus Christ eating mana and perhaps going up top of the mountain and praying to Sofia, by the way. [00:13:00] So you have to think that there's some evidence that mushrooms at least, and in ancient times and Greeks, there was a fungus that produced a psychedelic effect that is similar to LSD right now.

[00:13:11] Boomer Anderson: This is the Kykeon, right? 

[00:13:13] Coltrane Lord: The Kykeon, yeah.

[00:13:14] Boomer Anderson: Yeah. And then you have Soma in the Vedas. Uh, there's numerous of these rites of passage and I think think they are more framed as rites of passage across various sacred traditions.

[00:13:25] Coltrane Lord: Mm-hmm. Yeah. 

[00:13:26] And so I would say to do your research first, because even for therapy and say ADHD medicines, right?

[00:13:33] You have to be on them for a really long time. I have friends that have been to therapy for 25 years talking about the same thing. I understand that it's great to have conversations with people, but if you're doing something for 25 years and you have the same exact problem, I think you gotta make a little change.

[00:13:50] Right? And it does make sense a little bit if that's someone's livelihood, right? Does it make sense for a psychedelic to heal you? I. Will say there [00:14:00] are things that might happen in my life that will cause something, but I am healed from my childhood woes. I am healed from them. I do not have PTSD any longer, and it's complex.

[00:14:10] P-T-S-D-I choose to do psychedelic medicines now to tap into something greater, to be creative. You can go from healing trauma to accessing a part of you that is creative and more conscious, and so. I had to heal first and my healing journey was not easy. I'm gonna say preface that, but I feel really, really, um, strong in my position that I'm healed from my childhood wounds healed from, um, this is before medicine work.

[00:14:38] Had a friend j*mp off the Golden Gate Bridge and I'm the only person that he called and I'm the last person and the only person he called that day. And so that huge guilt and like understanding of death really. Stayed with me for a long time, and even now when I tap into plant medicine and to that piece of healing, I really have [00:15:00] no fear of death and I have a deeper understanding of life because of that.

[00:15:04] And that was, I will say, to me, is plant medicine experiences.

[00:15:09] Really deep understanding of- all of how life works. So I would say do your research and also kind of understand the propaganda of all the stories. This is your brain on drugs, right? Like people didn't wanna go to war 'cause they were, they were connected, right?

[00:15:23] And so I, I think that that's important to do. I'm not gonna try to convince anyone that it's good or bad, but just from a lived experience, having, being so afraid of authority, being so hypervigilant, having so many health issues and, and now being absolutely healthy. Absolutely sovereign in my own body.

[00:15:42] And I, I- that's plant medicine. 

[00:15:44] Boomer Anderson: You talked about earlier. Some, you know, the rashes, the UTIs, those types of things that developed as a result of this stress, this trauma. And having then go through traditional therapy, it's not necessarily something that worked for you. And you tried these plant [00:16:00] medicines and you know, all of a sudden a lot of these.

[00:16:03] These sort of health issues start to fall away along the ways. It sounds like you had a few good sitters, therapists, et cetera.

[00:16:10] Coltrane Lord: Mm-hmm.

[00:16:10] Boomer Anderson: Uh, are there commonalities in what you would say are sort of good experiences that you can share? And good- air quotes, right?

[00:16:18] Coltrane Lord: Yeah.

[00:16:18] Boomer Anderson: You know, experiences and things people should be on the lookout for, because we'll get to the topic of psychedelic justice here in a second.

[00:16:25] Coltrane Lord: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

[00:16:25] Boomer Anderson: But right now, one of my biggest concerns is when people go sit, something like Ayahuasca with 300 other people. You know, the person who's administering it probably does or hasn't been really taught. They're just administering it because maybe there's money.

[00:16:42] My favorite one is I used to live in Amsterdam. It's sort of like, 'pay what you want, ayahuasca ceremony'. Right? What are some of the things that people can be on the lookout for to determine what is right for me?

[00:16:52] Coltrane Lord: Yeah, that's a great question and it's a very important question.

[00:16:55] For those of us who are traumatized sometimes the habit is to [00:17:00] give up all your sovereignty and all your authority to a person. That's where it becomes very, very dangerous.

[00:17:06] And um, so the first thing would be to tap in and truly try to understand where you're at in that department. And then what you can do is you can ask a practitioner like, what is their trauma and how did they get to solve it? Oftentimes what I have felt-

[00:17:23] This is just gonna be with my son who had therapy, and I'm the only one who thinks this by the way in my family.

[00:17:29] But there was a time when we really got to the root of what was going on with him in- in therapy. And she's probably a great therapist, no names, but he got ripped open and to the most vulnerable place, and I don't know any trauma that she had. And she does have a, like a Ivy League education.

[00:17:46] You know, it was just like, I think she used the word, "Okay, it's time to zip this up and we'll- it'll happen next week."

[00:17:51] And I'm thinking, Mama Bear is like, "you just ripped open my son and he's bleeding on the ground and like- and we're gonna stop?"

[00:17:59] There's just [00:18:00] no sense of healing is because she's never gone through some of the things that we're trying to heal.

[00:18:06] So I look at what kind of experience does this person have? Not everyone that's a great space holder has to have trauma, but are they a great space holder? Are they grounded and are they present? Is this about them or is this about healing?

[00:18:23] A lot of people have egos. I keep saying, "go for the money". If the language around the person is, "Oh my God, he or she's a great healer," "Oh my God, he or she's the most amazing shaman."

[00:18:33] I would- I would consider that a little bit odd because most of the people who are here for healing is, I'm doing nothing but making sure you don't hit your head; that you can cry, that you- you have help going to the bathroom, that your physical needs are met.

[00:18:50] I'm here to serve you. You are the healer, you are the medicine. That's one thing. And then also- I also check on lineage. So there's a lot of people out [00:19:00] there who have like did an ayahuasca journey and they think that they need to be a shaman because they're so grateful and because it works, right?

[00:19:07] But then, there is so much to indigenous wisdom that people from the global north, and the west just don't have.

[00:19:16] Especially in America, we just don't have a lineage of healing. We have a lineage of colonization. We have a lineage of oppression. How does one sit for somebody who's been oppressed if they have a lineage of oppressing so.

[00:19:31] I always check lineage. I always check their ability to hold space, and I check the ego. I think it's really, really important to check why they are, um, doing this. And you can ask those questions.

[00:19:43] For those of you, it's like- ask lineage. Ask them why. Ask what their trauma is.

[00:19:48] Boomer Anderson: If they don't answer, then go find somebody else. Right? 

[00:19:50] Coltrane Lord: If they don't answer, go find someone else. There are plenty of people who are doing this work, especially indigenous wisdom keepers. [00:20:00] So for example, you have a Western person who's- this is what they do for a living. They bring the medicine from Peru or Brazil, and they're charging like $2,500- $3,000 for a sitting. And then that person who lives in the jungle, maybe they gave it to him for free. I- I don't know how much they charge for that medicine.

[00:20:18] And there's no lineage. There's no teaching of, you know, how it affects their land, how it affects their families. Just like everything I feel like the global north does.

[00:20:27] It's like we're ruining the rainforest people. This is our livelihood, this is what we eat. There's a lot of conservation needs now for all of the medicines 'cause people are pirating them and bringing them out and selling them, not just for healing, but also all these medicines can be used in different ways and a lot of them appropriated, extracted, colonized.

[00:20:46] Boomer Anderson: Peyote is one that comes to mind immediately, right?

[00:20:49] Coltrane Lord: Mm-hmm.

[00:20:49] Boomer Anderson: Fortunately, you just touched on something that I think is a interesting segue. When we look at evaluating a therapist.

[00:20:56] Coltrane Lord: Mm-hmm.

[00:20:56] Boomer Anderson: And first, thank you for this checklist is really, really [00:21:00] helpful for people.

[00:21:00] Coltrane Lord: Mm-hmm.

[00:21:00] Boomer Anderson: And we're looking at the world of psychedelics, particularly in the past five, maybe a little bit longer, but five-ish years when we started seeing companies that were IPO-ing, using intellectual property law to protect questionably original formulations of things.

[00:21:16] Coltrane Lord: Mm-hmm.

[00:21:16] Boomer Anderson: Brings about this idea of capitalism to psychedelics, right?

[00:21:20] Coltrane Lord: Mm-hmm.

[00:21:21] Boomer Anderson: I- I'm not saying capitalism as bad, I think anybody could just look at my background and say, that's probably not the case. You mentioned this sort of three- $3,000 ceremonies. The $5,000, the $10,000, there's more. There's people that are charging much more than that, right?

[00:21:35] How do we level the playing field? Because like trauma is not something that is a rich person's game. It's universal, right? 

[00:21:43] Coltrane Lord: There are some nonprofits. I have- I have a nonprofit. My nonprofit's called Wonderland Project, and I saw the need, that this is expensive. This is very- this is an expensive journey, right?

[00:21:54] I connect women survivors of domestic violence, r*** and sexual exploitation to [00:22:00] trauma-informed plant medicine care and integration. There is a huge need for access, and what I'm seeing in the field is a lot of people talking about commercialism.

[00:22:09] There's a lot of money going towards recreating a fake version of the plant medicine, a drug instead of the plant medicine. And there's a lot of language around, "Oh, it's safer."

[00:22:20] And it might be in some circumstances, like Iboga, it really does something with your heart. And so there are ways that pe- scientists are trying to, um, create a molecule that doesn't do that for your heart, and that's a great medicine for addiction.

[00:22:33] If you take away the spirit of the plant though, like out of ceremony. I feel like healing in ancient times. Right. It was part of the culture. Yeah. All these medicines were part of the culture. We have-

[00:22:43] Boomer Anderson: I mean, the shaman was a core part of many of the ancient cultures, right? 

[00:22:46] Coltrane Lord: Yeah. Back to my nonprofits. We connect women and I also do a lot of sacred reciprocity for the, um, indigenous, because I feel like there's so much wisdom that we have not even tapped into.

[00:22:56] These people didn't go to Harvard or Stanford, like they live off the land and [00:23:00] learning off the land. I don't think that a person with a great deal of trauma. Like mine, I- I did it underground for a long time, and then I went to the jungle and I sat with people, the- the infrastructure of, um, an indigenous community.

[00:23:14] This is part of their life. 

[00:23:16] Boomer Anderson: You hear of certain facilities in Costa Rica, right? And. This is very different from going to a retreat in Costa Rica, I'm guessing. 

[00:23:24] Coltrane Lord: So going down to the Amazon number one, it's a- really hard to get to. It's really hard to get to. And I just went last August and what broke my heart was you could see smoke everywhere.

[00:23:34] Farmers are trying to take the land away. And so I went to visit, um, the Huni Kuin tribe, which means, I think it means first people. It's a beautiful village called Punya, that means hummingbird and. There's a road that is like taking over their space. And so it's- so you can see smoke and you can hear things sometimes, and it's disappointing that they are not even looked at as legitimate Brazilians.

[00:23:56] Right. Although they are indigenous to the land. When you go [00:24:00] down there, it's different for a Westerner, a global north person, or even somebody who lives in Brazil proper because. You know, the- the infrastructure, at least in America healing is so removed. It's like we have to have an authority figure to heal.

[00:24:13] There, healing an ayahuasca experience is part of their culture, and so when they're doing, um, a journey, it's also quite ceremonial, right? 'cause they don't have the same traumas that we have. And so you'll have a father coming up with a little, their daughter, and they'll put medicine on their forehead, depending on the age, give 'em a taste.

[00:24:35] So they already know built in community, built in preparation. Built in integration and they're- and it's a celebratory, it's a connection to the divine, it's connection to the planet, it's connection to the earth, connection with each other. Very, very different from a retreat center, sometimes owned by a Westerner, not even a Costa Rican, or you know.

[00:24:58] You're really paying for like [00:25:00] the- the hotel and the food. And then I don't know how much money they're giving to the facilitators or to the shamans if they bring them in. It's like a blip in time versus this is how you live. Quite magnificent to see how intelligent they are about what the land offers. 

[00:25:16] Boomer Anderson: And they have generations and generations of wisdom.

[00:25:18] Coltrane Lord: Mm-hmm.

[00:25:19] Boomer Anderson: Wisdom that's been passed down as a result of that. 

[00:25:21] Coltrane Lord: Yeah. And ritual. You know, ritual, we don't think that it's important. We use it at funerals, we use it at weddings, we use it at when kids have birthday parties, there's some importance to it. We've just kind of dumbed it down a little bit.

[00:25:34] Everything's ritual there. It's really. Glorious and beautiful, and so it feels important. It feels like when you're connecting with that divine essence, it feels important when you have the ritual. I feel like it's very important to honor both, like we have to live in those world.

[00:25:49] I think that it's hard for somebody to go down to, um, the jungle. There is no- the integration is built in. We're so used to having a bed and, um, no tarantulas, you know, so it's, I- I [00:26:00] do think that there's a different structure for, um, Westerners before they go to.

[00:26:04] I think it's advanced learning, when you go down to the jungle. We have to be aware of the cultural appropriation, the extraction, the misuse of these medicines, because people are taking down forests for building.

[00:26:17] We need trees y'all to breathe. So, you know, things like that where people aren't thinking about holistically how to approach the medicines. 

[00:26:26] Boomer Anderson: We treaded into that topic of indigenous reciprocity. Right. And one of the things that I- I know you've been heavily involved with is that- that topic. We- we chatted a little bit about the fact that sometimes yes, people need to be rewarded and we're kind of treading these two.

[00:26:42] Coltrane Lord: Mm-hmm.

[00:26:43] Boomer Anderson: Spaces of, um, you know, these traditional wisdom, ancient wisdom, and then modern capitalism.

[00:26:49] Coltrane Lord: Mm-hmm.

[00:26:50] Boomer Anderson: And it- it's a very fine line, right? Yeah. It's certainly not easy to- to tread. And when we talk about the indigenous reciprocity element, what are [00:27:00] some tools that, you know, if somebody's gonna go down this route. Right. And let's say they're going embrace the idea of psychedelic assisted therapy.

[00:27:07] Coltrane Lord: Mm-hmm.

[00:27:07] Boomer Anderson: Because they're working on past traumas or some sort of thing. What are some things that you recommend people keep into their awareness,

[00:27:14] Coltrane Lord: Mm-hmm.

[00:27:14] Boomer Anderson: when selecting, because it all- it all plays into itself, right?

[00:27:17] Coltrane Lord: Mm-hmm.

[00:27:17] Boomer Anderson: Like you select your sitter. You select the person that you're working with.

[00:27:20] Coltrane Lord: Mm-hmm.

[00:27:21] Boomer Anderson: How does that, um, feed back into that indigenous reciprocity element? Because, um, you know, as, as you said highlighted earlier, like Peyote, 5-MeO-DMT, like these all come from uh, ayahuasca, all- all of the, the substances we're talking about here all come from nature.

[00:27:40] How do we protect that element of that? Is there a way to protect it from the running bull that is capitalism? 

[00:27:46] Coltrane Lord: Yeah. Well, I think that now that you have the knowledge that there's a lot of extraction going on and there's a lot of money to be had, it's really being conscious of where the medicine comes from and trying to be conscious of [00:28:00] how you want to participate in the medicine.

[00:28:03] Some people will say, you know, I just need to get rid of this addiction, and I understand that. Oftentimes with plant medicine, you will have this sense of, um, belonging to something greater than yourself. I think that if you go into something saying, you wanna be part of this fabric, part of the community.

[00:28:21] If you wanna be part of it, then you're already open to how do we do this in a beautiful way? And the beautiful way would be to understand that there is a history, and that there is a lineage, and that there is wisdom that the indigenous has all of our, you know-

[00:28:39] If we go back and- the first nations in the United States have really great knowledge of how to tend to the land, and tend to the animals, right?

[00:28:47] That's the same with all the medicines that we are talking about. UFO is the 5-MeO-DMT. We have to use synthetics now. Because-

[00:28:55] Boomer Anderson: Frogs are...

[00:28:56] Coltrane Lord: The frogs are: one, getting extinct, but people [00:29:00] who were trying to extract that medicine weren't doing it properly, right? They're killing the toads versus doing it the way the indigenous would've done it.

[00:29:07] If you care about the ecosystem of your body, the ecosystem of existence with others and the ecosystem of like- the planet itself, it would be just super wise to go. "Okay. Peyote. Let me look at the lineage of that and how can I do this best where I'm actually working with the original lineage."

[00:29:28] Like- I won't sit with American person for ayahuasca. I will not do that. It's just one of my- my principles because there's family history, there's connection that even myself here being born in the United States, I don't have that lineage. I mean, I- I-

[00:29:43] I feel like I'm a professional in transcending trauma, but I don't have the lineage, the deep, deep lineage for ayahuasca. Can I help and throw, get rid of wash buckets? For sure, I can hold space.

[00:29:54] But to be served that medicine, I wanna be served from somebody who has deep lineage [00:30:00] and has been studying this for years. It's just like- I don't want you to give me surgery. I don't want you to cut me open. I want somebody who's studied deep, deep, deep knowledge, who doesn't have an ego, who has all the tools and has seen it all to, bring forth my medicine.

[00:30:17] I just made a- a rule for myself, which was I sit with indigenous people, 'cause I do come and visit. When Wonderland Project, Psilocybin is legal in Jamaica, we go to the Rastafari Village. I do it purely because it's legal there, a hundred percent legal. The lineage is 500 years of slavery.

[00:30:32] So, the Rastafari has decided that their roots were gonna be from Ethiopia, and so they infused their own indigenous experience on the island of Jamaica, and they live off the land just like indigenous folks do. And what I decided was, we will take women there for at least a psilocybin experience because they live off the land.

[00:30:51] When I offered them money to hold space for us, it's going to the Jamaicans that are living off the land. It's not going to a [00:31:00] different country, who owns the hotel. And then I'm not hiring people from all over to come in. It's like- it's going to the people it should be going to, and they tend to the land, they steward the land, they grow the mushrooms.

[00:31:11] I feel complete there. And also just the history of their liberation. They know oppression, right? Because even in Jamaica, not all Rastafari are seen as equal. So if we're gonna liberate the body, who best to be with than people who really truly understand liberation. And one love. So that's what you can do with other medicines.

[00:31:32] Boomer Anderson: Well, beautifully said, and let's get into Wonderland Project, but also, uh, you've- you've hinted at it a couple of times here and just sort of your specific focus on feminine trauma. 

[00:31:43] Coltrane Lord: Mm-hmm.

[00:31:43] Boomer Anderson: Right? Because, uh, and something, and this was in my research, so you'll have to correct me if I was wrong here.

[00:31:48] Coltrane Lord: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

[00:31:48] Boomer Anderson: But you mentioned ancestral trauma experienced by women. Ancestral, I think of like- generational trauma.

[00:31:54] Coltrane Lord: Mm-hmm.

[00:31:54] Boomer Anderson: Why did you kind of go that route and- and, and sort of focusing on helping, [00:32:00] um, this population, because I- I mean. Look, we can talk about women's health in general and how it's very underserved by science, but let's talk about how you went down this path.

[00:32:10] Coltrane Lord: Mm-hmm. 

[00:32:12] Yeah. So besides my own experience, right? I could just say- oh, it's because of my own experience, but I really do believe that. On a global scale, women are under represented, and our healing is not addressed, and one out of three women will have experienced domestic violence, r***, or sexual exploitation. We are half the population.

[00:32:35] We're also the population that creates life. We are also the population through our own bodies that sustains life. And when we stop revering the feminine, and I mean also the earth. How you treat the earth is how you treat the feminine. And you can see how today like the r***ing and pillaging of the earth is what we're trying to do to women.

[00:32:55] And so, it is my strong belief that if we start healing women first, [00:33:00] women are-

[00:33:00] Our bonding mechanism, just when we have babies- Whenever a child, when my kids were young, whenever there was another kid, they were my kid for that moment. Because I'm a mother, I'm going to include everyone.

[00:33:11] And so, the more we can focus on women, I believe that healed women will heal the world. 'cause we're not gonna exclude anyone. I'm not excluding anyone from their healing journey. I want everyone to heal, including men.

[00:33:24] But there are a lot of men right now in the psychedelic field. There's way more than men than there are women, especially trying to make money.

[00:33:32] You know, the focus is on veterans right now, and there's men and women in veteran- in the veteran circle. But I don't know what the population, a third of the population, I don't know exactly what the population of veterans, but it's not half the population. We're focusing on veterans, but we're not focusing on women.

[00:33:46] Women have a- a unique- because we create life gest and create and birth life. There's a portion of our time here on earth where we're extraordinarily vulnerable in that period of gestation and, um, and birthing. [00:34:00] And our bodies have been appropriated and abused and oppressed in all facets. If I focused on women, had more women leadership, this whole idea of like- including everyone in the healing journey would take shape and we can create more and we can, um, love more and we can be in community more.

[00:34:20] And so I'm focusing on women because I believe that that is gonna be the way that we change the world.

[00:34:26] The Dalai Lama once said, the world will be saved by the Western woman. And I actually think he meant wo- men, the women in the world are going to help save the world. 

[00:34:36] Boomer Anderson: You're not only, um bringing these women who have experience with domestic violence, et cetera, to Jamaica. You're also doing some research, as I understand it around this. 

[00:34:47] Coltrane Lord: Yeah. Trying to. 

[00:34:49] Boomer Anderson: So historically, as I understand it, you know, science has largely avoided studying women because menstrual cycles basically, as I understand it. Would love to understand a little bit more what [00:35:00] types of research you hope to get with the Wonderland Project in the future.

[00:35:03] Coltrane Lord: Yeah, thank you. The women's cycles and women- women's rhythms are totally misunderstood. Number one: people are don't even know what menopause is and how- and like- the population grows into menopausal women. Getting your period is like- a dramatic thing for people to understand, and we're constantly in flow and in change, right?

[00:35:23] And so, that's the same thing for healing. I really, truly believe that if we had sovereignty in our own bodies, and we had healing in our own bodies, we would shift the health system quite dramatically.

[00:35:36] And at least for women, I hope to study what women need for healing. Like, it's not the same as men. Not the same. Especially because of our trauma, the wounds of the sacred feminine, more women get r**ed than men.

[00:35:49] Boomer Anderson: Mm-hmm.

[00:35:49] Coltrane Lord: More women aren't, you know, allowed in the boardroom than men. In other countries, women aren't allowed to expose themselves. You know, things like that. Women get beaten for- women aren't educated in some places. [00:36:00] And so, when we learn about how we heal. Do we need to have a group? Do we need to have it all women? Do we need to have- what kind of medicines work better for the moon cycles?

[00:36:11] Like, we need all that information to, not just heal the psychological wounds, but actually to be fully embodied. So we create, we help co-create what is great for our earth. Even, um, agriculture, there's this book called "When God Was a Woman", and it talks about the Sumerian times when women were the agriculturalists, and it- and whole culture got annihilated.

[00:36:34] It's like- how can we do this life better with the perspective of a healed woman? There's so much study we need to have, which would include of course the cycles of women and plant medicine, the types of plant medicines that work for different types of traumas.

[00:36:50] And um, and also I think creation, like actually, how can we use these medicines from- in a ceremonial way? To me, it's ceremonial [00:37:00] to co-create something greater and bigger and better than what we're doing, which is not including everybody in this the system. 

[00:37:07] Boomer Anderson: If you think about the world in the next five years and the space that you're in, what excites you the most?

[00:37:12] Coltrane Lord: What I would love to see is the decolonization of plant medicine. I don't think plants should be legal or illegal. I would also love to see a bottom up approach. To healing, adding the perspective of the people who've been traumatized and women in particular. You have all these intellectuals, sometimes they aren't even doing the medicine, right, and they've done it once, and they're like, "Let me study this."

[00:37:37] And actually, having it a co-creative experience where women who've been traumatized and they've healed "Well, actually this situation doesn't work for me. And I'll tell you why." And that being part of the conversation.

[00:37:51] So, I say survivor leaders being given a seat at the banquet table of this- this renaissance; the legalization of [00:38:00] plants, but also the education for everyone, not just a licensed therapist.

[00:38:04] Education for everyone, on how these medicines work, and how these medicines are available, how they can be available; and the indigenous, um, the indigenous narrative should be revered. I would love to- that to be the focus, but also some people are gonna wanna do the clinical route. There's not enough, um, earth-based, uh, stories I guess.

[00:38:27] Some people will be too afraid because the narrative has been scary before. And so for those people who would just wanna go the medical route. I hope that the medical route, also includes wisdom from the indigenous, because there's something missing to me. Like, you just get a shot and you- the one and done shot.

[00:38:46] So many people in your field want the pill. They don't wanna do any other work. And we know that it's the work that is important. It's the work, it's the integration that is really, really important in- in order to actually [00:39:00] really transcend. And so, I guess I would say even integration, as being as important, or maybe even more important than, um, just going on an ayahuasca journey.

[00:39:09] Throughout our whole conversation, I've been saying the same thing: having your healing journey be sacred, including going to the medical doctor to get a shot. Perhaps we should be very sacred about all these things and things enter our bodies, we work with them together. I would even just do, you know, just in your field, um, optimal health, you know, kind of just understanding why our bodies do what they do and why we want to, um, be as healthy as we can because this is a disruptor in the medical field also.

[00:39:42] Your field, right? And not just psychedelics as a, as a disruptor, but your field is a disruptor because not all medical doctors. Understand the whole system. And I guess what we're saying is, I would love in the next five years to have the whole system be available [00:40:00] for everyone and it not be so money based, and it be really heart centered and, um, soul centered.

[00:40:07] That's a goal for me.

[00:40:09] Boomer Anderson: I love that, and "Life is Ceremony" might be the title for this episode. Uh, I- I love how you tied it all into bringing everything to a sense of awareness. And I think so much of right now- and I know my own life, right, like there's times where we go through periods of awareness and presence, and there's times where we don't.

[00:40:26] But a lot of what these medicines have helped me do is become a lot more present to what's going on. 

[00:40:32] Coltrane Lord: Yeah. 

[00:40:32] Boomer Anderson: Including this amazing conversation today. 

[00:40:34] Coltrane Lord: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, so I guess, what I would say for anyone curious or to get people curious is the question of, "Do you feel free in your body?"

[00:40:45] Do you feel comfortable in your body when stressors or news or things that are triggering, can you come to a place of homeostasis? Like- does that feel like- a desire of yours? Do you feel pleasure every day? Like- can you find that [00:41:00] sense of awe and wonder? These are things that to me, plant medicines offer us in terms of breaking through all the noise of what today is.

[00:41:10] The news is traumatizing. And if we can find those places of awe, wonder, peace, wholeness, presence, being, before we do anything, maybe there's some hope for our future. 

[00:41:23] Boomer Anderson: One last question that we always ask everybody, if you're gonna give everybody listening

[00:41:28] Coltrane Lord: Mm-hmm.

[00:41:28] Boomer Anderson: one piece of advice to live smarter, not harder, what would it be? 

[00:41:31] Coltrane Lord: You know, this is really, really, really simple. But not easy. To live smarter is to be madly in love with yourself, to know yourself so deeply that you know your true north. You walk your true north, you speak your true north, and that never gets you in trouble. 

[00:41:48] Boomer Anderson: Beautiful, uh, Coltrane where can people find out more about you, what you're doing, the Wonderland Project, et cetera.

[00:41:54] Coltrane Lord: I'm not the best marketer, but you can find me on Instagram. It's @lordcoltrane or [00:42:00] @wonderlandproject.love.

[00:42:02] And then www.wonderlandproject.love is also the website and www.lordcoltrane.com is also the website. So, very simple. 

[00:42:09] Boomer Anderson: Coltrane lord, thank you so much. This has been a phenomenal conversation and, uh, the first of many, I hope so. Thank you for joining us. 

[00:42:16] Coltrane Lord: Thank you for having me, and I'm super grateful everyone, for your presence. 

[00:42:20] Boomer Anderson: So everybody listening, have a wonderful day.