Beyond Safe Harbor: Psychedelics, Coaching, & Self-Actualization

LISTEN ON:


Episode 219

Lauren Mugglebee

In this Psychedelic Podcast episode, co-host Joseph Anew and leadership coach Lauren Mugglebee unpack self-actualization through psychedelics and embodied coaching.

Joseph and Lauren examine questions like: What would you do if you had the time and space to think about who you really are? Why are coaches pivotal in your growth? What role does courage play in transformation? And how can microdosing, embodiment, and community support the process?

Tune in for a talk about sailing away from life’s safe harbors and flowing into the authentic unknown.

Lauren Mugglebee:
Lauren Mugglebee is an executive and leadership coach, and a transformational practitioner and facilitator. In addition to her private practice, Lauren is a Third Wave Psychedelic Coaching Institute faculty member.

Lauren uses a variety of somatic and integral modalities in her practice—including pairing inquiry and non-ordinary states of consciousness—to help leaders achieve radical self-awareness and presence. A US native and British citizen, she lives with her partner and young daughters in Northern California, where she teaches and designs bespoke intensives, training, and retreats for engaging emergence.

Before coaching, Lauren spent two decades developing technical products and leading global teams for Facebook, Instagram, OpenTable, and Ticketmaster.

Podcast Highlights

  • Lauren’s evolution from tech to transformational and leadership coaching.
  • How psychedelics helped Lauren align her life and career.
  • How embodied intuition can be a powerful decision-making tool.
  • Cultivating the courage to “leave safe harbor.”
  • Lauren’s advice for transitioning into a more fulfilling career.
  • Lauren’s transformation coaching process and core clients.
  • Lessons from Lauren’s participation in Third Wave’s Coaching Certification Program (CCP).
  • CCP’s evolution toward executive and high-performance coaching.

Fall asleep faster, stay asleep longer, and wake up feeling refreshed.

This episode is brought to you by BiOptimizers, makers of Magnesium Breakthrough—the only magnesium supplement on the market containing seven forms of supplemental magnesium and vitamin co-factors in one convenient bottle.

BIOptimizers' Black Friday Mega Sale is happening now through the entire month of November! Get the biggest discount possible plus amazing gifts with your purchase. Head to bioptimizers.com/thirdwave and use code THIRDWAVE at checkout.

 

This episode is brought to you by Magi Ancestral Supplements, makers of the world’s first beta-Carboline nootropics for cognitive health. Magi’s Stard Deep Meditation Aid (minidose) helps you get to stillness much faster. Their Haoma Revelation Aid (macrodose) is a unique psychoactive ideal for inner spiritual journeys.

Get a discount on any of Magi’s beta-Carboline nootropics. Visit ancestralmagi.com and use coupon code TW10.

Come join Paul at Wonderland in Miami. It is the closest the psychedelic world has to a yearly “gathering of the tribes”: From shamans to serial entrepreneurs, neuroscientists to energy healers, investors to sex therapists, plus artists, investors, yogis, coaches, journalists, and more.

If you have ANY interest or aspiration to be involved with psychedelics professionally as a coach, therapist, practitioner, or business this is the one event you should attend.

Head to wonderlandconference.com and use the code THIRDWAVE20 at checkout to save 20% on your ticket.

Podcast Transcript

0:00:00.2 Joseph Anew: Welcome back to The Psychedelic Podcast by Third Wave, where we explore how the safe and responsible use of psychedelic medicines can catalyze individual and collective transformation. This is Joseph Anew. And today, I am speaking with Lauren Mugglebee, an executive and leadership coach and transformational practitioner.

0:00:22.4 Lauren Mugglebee: The best leaders, the greatest leaders are the ones who they walk into the room and it's not about them and their charisma, and they're so amazing, it's how they're making you feel. You feel important, you feel like anything is possible, which is why coaching is so effective, you're getting into a container with someone who is so focused on you, who is seeing you, who is hearing you, who is meeting you, who is mirroring to you, sometimes that is all people really need. They just need that. They get so little of it in the corporate sphere.

0:00:55.9 Paul F. Austin: Welcome to the Psychedelic Podcast by Third Wave, audio mycelium, connecting you to the luminaries and thought leaders at the psychedelic renaissance. We bring you illuminating conversations with scientists, therapists, entrepreneurs, coaches, doctors and shamanic practitioners. Exploring how we best use psychedelic medicine to accelerate personal healing, peak performance and collective transformation.

0:01:27.0 Joseph Anew: Hey, exciting announcement: BiOptimizers, Black Friday mega sale is happening now and will last throughout the entire month of November, we've all got our eyes on all sorts of things, this Black Friday, the wish list is growing longer, but this year, I challenge you to make your health your top priority. Instead of any impulse purchases. Let's focus on what really matters. We all know the importance of sleep when it comes to our overall well-being, and while some might say you can't buy a good night sleep, I'm here to tell you that you absolutely can. I'm talking about Magnesium Breakthrough by BiOptimizers, a true game-changer in the quest for a better night's sleep. As you know, because we've been raving about this magnesium on this podcast lately, it's the only product we trust because it combines all seven critical forms of magnesium into one convenient supplement.

0:02:19.0 Joseph Anew: So keep in mind when you supply your body with the correct essential forms of magnesium, you're in for an incredible upgrade, magnesium supports a balanced, inflammatory response, promotes healthy, restorative sleep, enhances relaxation and calmness and even improves your stress response. And BiOptimizers' Black Friday mega sale that's happening right now and lasting throughout the entire month of November, is going to give you the biggest discount you will get on magnesium breakthrough plus include amazing bonus gifts with your purchase. Just head on over to bioptimizers.com/thirdwave and use code thirdwave@checkout, this is your golden opportunity to stock up and reap all the amazing benefits that magnesium has to offer, and trust me, it is the best value you're going to find this Black Friday. You will not find a better deal anywhere else, even on Amazon with this product. So choose health over unnecessary shopping this Black Friday and head on over to bioptimizers.com/thirdwave, and use code thirdwave@checkout. Your well rested calmer healthier self will, thank you.

0:03:28.3 Joseph Anew: This episode is brought to you by Magi Ancestral Supplements, makers of Stard Deep Meditation aid. If you're like me, you might recognize the benefits of regular meditation practice, but find it hard sometimes to slow down and enter that place of real stillness. This is why I love Magi, who makes the world's first beta Carboline-based supplement in support of deep meditation. What are beta-carbolines? They're a seriously overlooked class of compounds in the world of psycho-actives that are overshadowed by their psychedelic cousins, beta-carbolines induce dream-like states ideal for awareness transformations. They're produced endogenously in the brain and they possess a wealth of cognitive health benefits ranging from anti-inflammation and stress relief, to neuro protection and even neurogenesis. Magi's team of chemists, pharmacologist and neuroscientists have crafted a lot of Neotropics derived from beta-carbolines using their patented plant extraction technology. Their Stard Deep meditation supplement is designed to help you reach a trans like state of deep meditation where an hour passes like nothing.

0:04:37.2 Joseph Anew: Take it 15 minutes before meditating to get into the zone with less distractions, fidgeting and effort. For a limited time, Magi ancestral supplements is giving listeners of the Psychedelic Podcast a very special 10% discount on any order from their website, visit ancestralmagi.com, that's ancestralmagi, M-A-G-I.com to view their full product line and enter coupon code TW10. TW10@checkout. Magi Ancestral Supplements currently ships within the USA and Puerto Rico. Give them a try to take your meditation to the next level.

0:05:14.4 Joseph Anew: One more time, that's ancestralmagi, M-A-G-I.com. And the coupon code is TW10. Hey listeners, this is Joseph Anew director at Third Wave Psychedelic Coaching Institute. Welcome back to The Psychedelic podcast. In this episode, we examine the path to self-actualization through intentional psychedelic use and embodied coaching. Today we have Lauren Mugglebee on the podcast. Lauren is an executive and leadership coach, she's also a transformational practitioner and faculty member at the Psychedelic Coaching Institute. She's a former graduate of our coaching certification program, just like myself, and it's been such a pleasure getting to know Lauren a little bit over the past year and working professionally with her. I can tell you all first hand, she is not only a brilliant coach, but a true inspiration for anybody looking to up-level their personal or professional lives. Lauren and I go deep into her evolution from a tech leader consumed by work to a transformational and leadership coach.

0:06:20.0 Joseph Anew: How Lauren harnessed the power of psychedelics to realign her life and career. The bravery required for people to step out of their comfort zones and leave safe harbor to explore the unknown, and Lauren's tips for shifting to a more aligned and meaningful work life.

0:06:39.1 Joseph Anew: You will walk away from this conversation ready to leave that safe harbor of yours and flow into your more authentic unknown. Lauren Mugglebee is an executive and leadership coach and transformational practitioner and facilitator. In addition to her private practice, Lauren is a psychedelic coaching institute faculty member, Lauren uses a variety of somatic and integral modalities in her practice, including pairing inquiry and non-ordinary states of consciousness to help leaders achieve radical self-awareness and presence. A US native and British citizen, she lives with her partner and young daughters in California, where she teaches and designs bespoke intensives, trainings and retreats for engaging emergence. Before coaching, Lauren spent two decades developing technical products and leading global teams for Facebook now Meta, Instagram, OpenTable and Ticketmaster. Before we dive in, take a moment to follow the psychedelic podcast on your favorite podcast app, you can also help others find this podcast by leaving us a review there and go deeper into this episode with full show notes, transcripts and any links to products we may have mentioned in the conversation. Just follow the link in the description or head to the thirdwave.co/podcast and scroll to Episode 219 with Lauren Mugglebee.

0:08:06.3 Joseph Anew: Alright, that's it for now. I hope you enjoy my conversation today with Lauren Mugglebee. So Lauren, thank you so much for jumping on the podcast, and I would love to kind of kick off with kind of your life before psychedelics, what did your professional life look like, what did your personal life look like. If that... If we kind of move on from there, because I'm so interested in coaches, especially career changes, especially people that are doing one thing in some capacity or they're living a certain way, and they end up being a psychedelic coach or a facilitator or a guide or something like that. It's always a great transformation story. So I'm curious, Lauren, to kick off the show. Like what was your life like before psychedelics.

0:08:53.0 Lauren Mugglebee: Yeah, well, I would just re-frame slightly to say that, you mean intentional use of psychedelics as a modality for coaching, because this is probably started about two years ago, but before that, I was in tech, so I went to school and I studied English Literature and French and then I basically went into Tech where all the jobs were. And I started as a recruiter, and then I became a project coordinator, and then I was a producer, then I became a product manager, and I was in tech for several different companies like Ticketmaster, OpenTable, and then more recently Facebook, which is now Meta. And for a very brief time on Instagram, and so I was working in a space of product management in the digital space for those companies, and then technical program management, when I was with meta. And I became a coach two years ago, I just decided to come out of corporate and quit my job and I had two children, so I just had my second daughter when that happened, and it was really the transformation really happened during COVID. Where I had time and space to just come back into what I was always interested in, which is humans and working with humans and interesting ways to make the unknown known.

0:10:34.4 Lauren Mugglebee: And I started listening to podcasts of other coaches and people in the transcendent space, and just getting really excited and just seeing the possibilities of actually coming into the space as a psychedelic practitioner through a clinical frame. I thought, I'll just go back to school and I will become trained in the MAPS protocol, and I did a Google search and I found Paul Austin and I hired him as one of my coaches who was helping me through this transition, and he said, "You don't need to do that, you don't need to take three, five years, however long it would be, you could just start making a difference now for people." And so came out of work, not always having worked for two decades, never really taking a break, and also being very addicted to intensity and wealth, creation, I went into a coaching certification program immediately, Berkeley executive coaching institute.

0:11:36.1 Lauren Mugglebee: 10-day intensive program, and then you come into a practicum, and then at that same time, I started to incorporate the use of psychedelics for my own transformation with Paul Austin and I told him, teach me how to do this so that I can maybe help my clients, but first and foremost, this is for me and making it through this transition, and then he was starting Third Wave at that time, and I think he was with his first cohort and he invited me to consider coming into the second cohort, which I did, and so I think just to sum up corporate two decades, a very sort of traditional frame for my life and my work and being a mother of two daughters, young children, decide to quit my job during covid and become a coach. And look at psychedelics as something that could be a very powerful way of introducing into a coaching frame that would allow me to be in service faster than going to academic clinical route.

0:12:53.2 Joseph Anew: And you stepped into psychedelics consciously for the first time during that period as well, right? So you were in this heady job and this transformation, this shift into this coaching thing, it seems like you use psychedelics to sort of ease that process or maybe stay grounded with it, or what did that sort of... What was your personal first step into medicine, what did that look like, and why did psychedelics come on your radar as sort of such an important element to coaching as you were actually stepping into it for the first time?

0:13:33.9 Lauren Mugglebee: Yeah, well, it wasn't the first time I was stepping into psychedelics. When I was in seventh grade, I was 12, I won the science fair and my topic was drugs, so I was always interested in psychopharmacology and in understanding, yeah, different behavior states and expanded consciousness, even though I didn't have the language to explain or describe that. So I was a very sort of lonely bookish child, spent a lot of time reading, and my parents had this set of books that were kind of like encyclopedias, this was pre-internet. And one of the books was about drugs, and it was all about different kinds of drugs and barbiturates and hallucinogens and opiates, and how do they work, and what do they do? And their dangers and they say what you can spend hours studying or learning about or focusing on when you're in that age range of eight to roughly 14, is there's a possibility you'll be doing that for the rest of your life or that's what you'll be interested in, and possibly if I had had parents who could see that in me and maybe encourage me to go into Sciences or do more with neuroscience, maybe I would have chosen a totally different path. And I did with English literature, but let's just say that that interest was sparked at a very young age, and I already experienced parents coming up to me and saying, "What is this? Why is she winning? Why would you study such a thing and my child who did volcano should have won the science fair or whatever."

0:15:34.5 Lauren Mugglebee: But I had just spent so many hours and it was clear that what I was bringing to the table was also educating people and... So that seed was planted very young, and then let's just say around 17, I came back into recreational use, and my first experience was with MDMA, and it was known like that as ecstasy or something you'd find in a rave, then I experienced that very intentional use with a friend at 17, we were house sitting for somebody and she had a playlist and she had all the things, and so that was my first experience that I had, and then my brother, my younger brother was actually the one who initiated me into mushrooms, he was a big Grateful Dead. He was a dead head and he was seeing Grateful Dead concerts and... So the first experience I had actually recreationally with mushrooms was at the Oakland coliseum at a Grateful Dead show, I was 17. So then fast forward a little bit, and I went to college and I went to UCSB, which is known traditionally as a party school, I think it's changing a little bit now, but I took a class that was all about drugs and the exploration of drugs, because there's a lot of drugs on campus, and it's part of the culture at that school, and they were looking to harm reduction and educate people, and so the first thing we did was to...

0:16:51.9 Lauren Mugglebee: If we were drinking coffee, was to stop drinking coffee and experience withdrawal and learn about drugs through the frame of, this is what withdrawal feels like. I was on a sofa for two to three days, feeling the effects of withdrawal of caffeine. Best way to learn. And I experimented with lots of different compounds in that class, and I journaled about them, and there was a lot of feeling that happened there for me, and then I just put it all away. I put it all away. I bought a trash bag full of mushrooms, probably like $250 worth, and I was gonna be like a mushroom person and sell mushrooms and bring mushrooms, and the mushrooms actually, I didn't have the language to describe this at the time, but they told me to confiscate. Confiscate them immediately, I flushed them all down the toilet, and I didn't really experiment or use any psychedelics. Maybe a few times, experimenting with MDMA or trying to get back to having the experience I had had at 17, but really just focused on my career, building my career, and unfortunately, in the spaces I was in mostly like Ticketmaster, there's a lot of drinking, you know, there's a lot of use of alcohol, unconscious use of alcohol and a lifestyle of smoking and alcohol, and I was living in Europe for a decade, and so this was in London.

0:18:18.5 Lauren Mugglebee: It's a big drinking culture. And so I kind of stepped... I was away from the plant medicine and I just also, I should say at 17, because I was not raised in a religious household, I was raised like in an atheist frame, I did my own research and experimentation around the time when I started using psychedelics as a teenager into Buddhism, in Taoism and expanded states of consciousness, and so this was what I deeply, deeply cared about naturally, naturally what I gravitated towards and what all my books on my shelf were about. And then let's just say programming, and needing or wanting to be successful in a frame the way other people define it, I put all of it away and just... Yeah, went into a corporate world and focused on success in the way most people define it.

0:19:20.0 Lauren Mugglebee: And just during COVID was like, is this what I want to say about my life and what I achieved? Is this what I'm gonna be really proud of? No, let's just remember what used to really turn you on and help you to feel passion, and what you know to be true is this, and so just allow yourself to explore that, and it just felt... The timing felt really right.

0:19:46.0 Joseph Anew: Hey, I want to interrupt the podcast for just a second to invite you to our favorite conference of the year, Wonderland in Miami. We cannot recommend this event highly enough, it is the closest thing that the psychedelic world has to an annual gathering of the tribes from shamans to entrepreneurs and investors, neuroscientists, energy healers, sex therapists, plus artists, yogis, coaches, journalists and more, every perspective gets their voice heard at Wonderland. It's really about creating cross-community dialogues and conversation around psychedelics. There's also a near 50-50 balance between men and women, which you do not see often at these high profile conferences, last year was absolutely epic, and this year seems like it's going to be even better. You'll get to hear from Hamilton Morris, Dave Asprey, Dave Raven, and many other of our past podcast guests. If you have any interest or aspiration to be involved in psychedelics, professionally as a coach, a therapist, a practitioner or a business, this is the one event you should attend. And as a listener of the psychedelic podcast, we've got a special offer for you by using the code ThirdWave20, you can save 20% on your ticket to Wonderland, just head on over to wonderlandconference.com and use code thirdwave20@checkout to join us at Wonderland in Miami this November 9th through the 11th.

0:21:13.5 Joseph Anew: That's November 9th through the 11th in Miami, Florida. You can find these links and codes in the show notes, so pause the episode if you need to and we'll happily wait for you right here to hit play again. Now, enjoy the rest of the episode. So beautiful. Lauren, thank you so much for sharing. And as a parent, I'm like, "Man, I better double check what books I have on the shelf as my kids... " But you know what's so funny is, my dad had a book on the shelf when I was a kid, it was like this ancient history book, and I had like King Tut on it, and I was at a Joe Dispenza event, and you're not supposed to microdose or anything but, you know, those are the rules, but... So we end up doing the whole breath work thing, and I just blasted it off just completely, and I saw King Tut, it was like the Great Pyramid, and I was like, "It's the book. It's that book I used to like, my dad had on the shelf and I would pull it out and I would look through it." So I had this recollection of that book, so it's so interesting when you said when you were a little boy or a little girl what could you sit and read for hours and what piqued interest, because there's a chance you should be doing that, having that just...

0:22:27.6 Joseph Anew: This was maybe a year and a half ago, having that vision of that book basically in that state, just came up for me, so really cool insight and amazing. And I imagine as you began to consider this as a modality in a coaching frame, all of that experience and momentum and connection probably quelled a lot of the... A lot of coaches stepping in, the legalities are sort of the big thing, and maybe that's what kept you from experimenting while you were working at Facebook and Ticketmaster and such, but... What can you say about that? Like when you started to think during COVID, this might be a thing, were there any concern? What was that... How did you approach the legal landscape mentally, or did it not even like phase you? You just kind of knew where you were headed.

0:23:15.7 Lauren Mugglebee: Yeah. Well, what really... To go back to the kernel, and I think what you're asking is, what was the moment when I really started to consider seriously going back and combining these compounds or introducing these compounds into the work that I was gonna be doing, and it was an awareness-based systems change course that I was taking, where I was introduced to presencing and Theory U and the work that Otto Scharmer is doing at the Presencing Institute. And a combination of that with a neuroscience for business course that I was taking that MIT offers. Where the neuroscience for business is teaching you all about expanded states of consciousness and wellness and how to optimize your focus, and that was where I first got this neuroscientist saying, you wanna get into a state of flow, you wanna expand your consciousness, you wanna be a different kind of leader, like this is how you can get into the flow state, you can do cold plunge, you can do meditation and mindfulness, you can do exercise, you can do psychedelics like that was where I was like, "Oh, I see now, like the connection here with the awareness-based systems change." Which at the bottom of the U and Theory was letting go to let come, it's surrender.

0:24:48.1 Lauren Mugglebee: It's sensing and presenting, it's surrender and then it's crystallization and then prototyping. So this, taking that frame with the neuroscience piece from the class that I was taking and starting to really become a systems thinker and a futurist, and how do we see what's coming from the edges and this is just a tool. It's one tool that can be very useful for someone like me who has become very armored working in corporate and having to protect myself and being away from my emotions so that I can get things done, and how many other people am I working with? And then the other piece was, I joined Facebook wanting to connect the world and believing that I was part of a movement of people building a platform that we're gonna deeply connect people. And towards the end of my tenure there, I felt very disconnected. I did not feel like the people who are building the platform with me side by side, were able to deeply connect with me.

0:25:52.4 Lauren Mugglebee: And I started to misalign... I came into misalignment with how I was feeling and what I believed we were doing there. And so it was a combination of that. Like when you come into mid-life, I think what you really start to understand is it's important to evolve and it's important to have deep, meaningful connection with people. And it becomes more important to explore creativity and intimacy and generativity.

0:26:21.0 Lauren Mugglebee: And so I was thinking, well, what can be helpful for me right now is I also need some kind of compound to jump start this process, and I can start to increase my neuroplasticity, come into flow states, and I can be a coach and I can combine all these different things together, all these different models together, and I think what I really wanted was to have it modeled to me what it could look like, which is why it was so useful, having Paul come in and being in a container with someone and having someone that is modeling to you how it can be done and what it looks like allows you to know, "Is this right for me or not?" and it's just a feeling, it's affect, it's not... You're not thinking logically. You're just like, How does this feel in my body? It felt really good. It felt really right, and I saw what he did and how he worked with me, and I thought, I can definitely do this, and this is so accessible for me, and I think the legality, because so much was already happening around the area where I live in California, and people are open to it.

0:27:26.9 Lauren Mugglebee: And I was starting to look into just places you could go for intentional use, for responsible use, for discrete use, I wasn't as worried about the legal piece as maybe I would have been when I was younger.

0:27:44.3 Joseph Anew: Makes sense. Gosh, and when you were explaining your job, and basically, I think you said you had to turn down your emotions to get your work done, and it just seems like... That's incredible. Like that insight. And so this being an effective leader and connected, if you can't connect with your organization, so I wanna get into psychedelics for leadership a little bit, because if you have to tune down your sort of human side to... In order to do your job, it's just such a mismatch. And so this, is this work you're doing today, is it really about pulling people back into their body a little bit and re-opening and teaching them how to do their job without consciously turning down who they are?

0:28:32.1 Lauren Mugglebee: Yes, yes, so I would say where I came out the other side was, I need to become more embodied, I need to come back into my body and start connecting again, I always lead with intuition, I was working in a very technical space, I was on the R&D side, for most of the things I was doing surrounded by engineers, often times the only woman, oftentimes, definitely in the oldest person, and maybe even the only parent in some aspects or ways, and so this idea of embodiment coming back into the body, and I was always other. I always felt other in the spaces that I was working in, and I could hold that and that was okay, but also alienating and also difficult, 'cause I was coming from a humanities frame and I was kind of being hired to be the adult in the room or to be the person who could really communicate and to be the person, I think with humanity in a space that was very maybe bereft of a lot of that. And so for myself, even surrounded by people who were very disconnected in ways and knowing that I wasn't that way, but coming back into myself and being around other people that were deeply embodied was shocking.

0:30:04.8 Lauren Mugglebee: Really shocking, and I'll give you an example, somebody who is speaking and what they're saying is really important to them, and their voice starts to shake a little bit, and they're in their body and they feel their voice getting shaky, and they say, "What I'm about to say, must be really important to me and difficult for me to share because my voice is shaking and I'm feeling some resistance in my throat." And then they go on to share what they wanna say, so this idea of feeling of feeling and talking about the feeling in the body and then being vulnerable and hearing what I'm about to say, it must be really difficult for me to share, was very uncomfortable for me in the beginning when I first came in the space of people who were deeply embodied, I was not used to people talking about the feeling in their body before they talk about the feeling, is how I describe it. And most people in the spaces I was in either don't speak at all, or they're definitely not gonna say what's happening in their body when they're speaking, or they're gonna say something that they think is gonna be acceptable in the group that they're in, and so I always led...

0:31:22.3 Lauren Mugglebee: Even towards the end, as I became more emboldened and I started to understand the power of just bringing humanity into the workplace, I even was disembodied compared to people who are very far along on the spectrum of feeling their feelings, and so I always led with intuition, but I didn't really understand the power of that until I started coming into learning about neuroscience for business and systems-based awareness and presencing the real power of that intuition and being in touch with your body, and that being a way that can lead you... And I'm not saying data is not important, data is important, and looking at all aspects of a decision, but even the most powerful leaders will say, at the end of the day, how did you make that decision? And will say, "I just felt it in my body. I felt into my dad or I felt it with whatever." So this idea that I always had that power but maybe wasn't aware of how to articulate the importance of it or what I could bring with it, is something that's happened in the last couple of years as I started working with plant medicine.

0:32:29.1 Lauren Mugglebee: And then the other piece, I would say, is that I was leading onboarding for my function at Facebook Meta. I was deeply interested in compassion as a service, what I call compassion as a service, which using that kind of language as a service with people who build services and platform and other things. I think that really resonates with them. They start to understand this is a muscle you can build... This is a skill you can build, these aren't soft skills, these are really important, and towards the end of my time there, I actually had people coming to me from HR and from leadership development saying, "We'd love for you to work with our engineering leaders, we'd really love for you to stay with the company and just completely change what you do and move into this work and do it full-time, and there are so many people that can benefit from your experience in technology and holding space for so long in these spaces."

0:33:23.8 Lauren Mugglebee: "They'll respect you, and they'll open to you and maybe they'll... The package that you're bringing it in will be more palatable for them." And I thought about doing that, but I'm glad that I decided to just go my own way and find my way, and then I decided if it brought me back to Facebook, fine, that would be but maybe it can take me somewhere else, and I just wanted to explore and see, and I think that's what the psychedelics did for me, I think they gave me a more expansive frame and a way to connect in with other people that expedited my ability to build a new network, and a new support structure very quickly.

0:34:05.5 Joseph Anew: I can't help but... And I'm so glad that Facebook kinda gave you the option of sticking around because just what's coming up over here is just with the impact these tech companies have on society, if somebody begins to become more embodied and they're forced to more or less leave the organization, like what... And with you, they offered, they wanted you to stay because they see it too, but then you're like, "That would be just like, I'd rather climb mount Everest." It seems like that might have been a very challenging role if almost everyone there is just like in the head, turning down the ability to feel things and turning down their intuition, sort of doing what's acceptable.

0:34:52.8 Lauren Mugglebee: Yes. Here's what I learned when I went into coaching. They said, "The people who come to you as your clients need to want to be coached, this isn't something you sell to people." And the feeling and sense I had was the people they wanted me to help in the organization were not interested, did not want to be... Coming into a totally different way of being, they weren't ready, or they just didn't understand it, or it's fear inducing. And so I can completely understand why in the back of my mind I was thinking, "Yes, I could help these people, but how many of them actually want to learn these skills?" I don't know, I don't really think there's that many who want to.

0:35:46.1 Joseph Anew: Right. Oh my gosh, yeah. And you mentioned cold and for years, I've been putting people in ice baths and doing breath work and stuff, and when we as... From that business, when we went from public events, like events that people buy tickets to and apply to attend, and when we went into private events for corporations, it was so foreign to me 'cause, wait, these people don't even wanna get in the ice bath, like these, I gotta like arm wrestle them in. And it's a completely different vibe, and I'm just used to showing up and doing some breath work and jumping in, and so it was just this big and it's so much more for you, the coach, the impact you can have, you might... Depending on how you're fulfilled in that context, you might work a million, you might work yourself dead and only have a 1% impact, whereas you could work a modest amount or a reasonable amount and have a 10X impact on the right client in the right role with the right expectations with the right intentions, with the right past and the right presence, and so most of us coaches, it's more about, I wanna step into wherever I can have the greatest impact, and not just like exhaust myself and then I have no impact.

0:37:00.8 Joseph Anew: So I just love the path you took Lauren and the courage you had, because I imagine when Facebook says, "Why don't you stick around and do this full-time and we'll give you a check?" Saying, "No thanks, I'm gonna go see what the world has for me." That sort of courage. I just will acknowledge as well, because that's a... It's probably a big job to turn down.

0:37:20.1 Lauren Mugglebee: Thank you. Yeah, stay in safe harbor or leave safe harbor. Which is, I don't know...

0:37:24.6 Joseph Anew: Let go of the shore.

0:37:24.8 Lauren Mugglebee: That I would have had the courage. I don't know that I would have had the courage when I was younger, I think I reached a point during COVID where just financially I felt secure, I had support from my husband, my kids were... My daughter was that bit older, and we were really coming up out of the trenches, when people approach me or I meet people in the spaces that we're working, and they're very young and they're really struggling and they wanna start a family, and they haven't embarked on the complexity of what that all means. I just... My hat is, my heart so open and big, and my hat is off to these people who frankly had so much more courage and overcame some programming lot sooner than I did, but coming into the space with the privilege and from where I'm at in the experiences that I've had, it has made it a lot sweeter, I think, I haven't had to feel a lot of that angst that I see a lot of other people who really want to be doing this work and haven't really figured out how to sustain themselves in it.

0:38:41.1 Joseph Anew: Right, right. And I think stepping in, there's something that psychedelics tend to do, at least for me, and that's, it's to tear down doubt of these decisions, right? And I like to say doubt is the enemy of dharma. You know, dharma is this thing we're supposed to do in this life. And it's the story of the woman that infiltrated the tribe of chimpanzees and learned so much about them. And she contributed everything we know about chimpanzees. It's like, but she, from a young age, was super into primates and super into... So this, like, story that you had where you were, like, super into that book and could read it for hours and then experimenting and doing the project in seventh grade. And then this opportunity, you know, with the help of psychedelics, potentially just tearing down the doubt that that's the right move. It's sort of a dharmic story where you had this certainty that this was the move.

0:39:30.8 Joseph Anew: And I think so many people nowadays, like, tearing down some doubt because we get so in our heads when we have this intuitive sense. You know, if we do feel our body, as you were talking about a little while ago, we do feel, that clinch in our throat. We do feel that turn of our stomach when we think about becoming a coach or becoming a whatever. We're so conditioned to, like, doubt ourself and say, stay in safe harbor, take the... But it's like, there's no fulfillment there and there's no drive and passion and connection. And so I just, I guess if there's one thing that I'm just hearing, it's just this, it takes so much courage. But as you experienced when it's true and dharmic and when it's in alignment and when it's truly your path, typically the universe has something waiting for you. You are supposed to take that step.

0:40:23.0 Lauren Mugglebee: Yeah. Clear, simple, obvious. That is definitely how I felt when it happened. And I did...

0:40:36.5 Joseph Anew: If you were going to advise somebody, Lauren, so like someone out there is like working in accounting and like they want to, you know, they're feeling it, but they've been tuning it off and turning it down for so long. Like what's... How can you... You were fortunate, you stepped into psychedelics, you had this history. Like if someone's just feeling that in their body, like what, if you were going to do it again, like what would you, what advice would you give them?

0:41:00.6 Lauren Mugglebee: Yeah. Okay. Well, it starts really slow. You have a vision or you have a feeling that you could do something else and you don't really know the right path to get there, but you decide you're going to choose a path. And so for me at the time, there was a mental health, a raging mental health crisis because of COVID. Absolutely raging. And I felt like I have a skill that I can use. There's a need in the world for it. And I'm not really sure how, whatever, it's going to look that I'm making money or that it's going to be this or that or the actual steps I'm going to take. But what can I do right now to sense in my body if this is right for me or this is possible for me? And so for me, it was just getting myself into learning containers like Scott Barry's Transcend course, like Neuroscience for Business, like you could take systems-based awareness change. You could take polypoetic and archetypes at work.

0:42:08.7 Lauren Mugglebee: You could take so many different paths to get into a learning container with other people who share those passions with you and see how your body feels, see how you feel. You have tears streaming down your face because it feels so good to be in this space learning this thing and it just feels so right. And why did you wait so long? Or are you like doing it and it's not feeling good? And you're like, "This is annoying or I can't bring myself to get the work done." Just allowing the reaction you're having in real time to whatever it is that you're exploring. Even starting as simple as listening to podcasts, just start listening to podcasts, psychedelic podcasts or coaching podcasts or people who are psychedelic-assisted therapy talking about being on the front lines and what they're doing or the neuroscience, what is turning you on and feeling your body that feeling and then keep going deeper if it feels good and if it doesn't find something else. But it's dipping your toe in and it's being intentional and a little bit every day.

0:43:08.2 Lauren Mugglebee: And then once you start learning about things, starting to talk about them with other people and seeing the reaction you're getting and who else is interested and who isn't and how it feels in the world to be talking about these things. This is a frame that Stephen Kotler teaches in The Art of the Impossible, where he talks about high-hard goals. And so my high-hard goal was like, I'm going to become a psychedelic-assisted therapist and I'm going to spin up a practice and I'm going to write books about this or I'm going to start speaking about it publicly. Okay. So what happened to me? It was a little bit of a reframe. Okay. So instead of psychedelic-assisted therapy, I became a coach. Okay. And there was this new modality. And like, "Did I write a book yet? No," but I'm like forming companies and I'm creating retreats and I'm doing all these other things, frankly, that like at the time could not have foreseen at all, but just allowing myself to feel my way in and hiring a coach really early on was, oh my God, such an, I wish I had had more coaches early on.

0:44:15.3 Lauren Mugglebee: I wish I hadn't waited until I quit my job to then start hiring coaches as I was becoming a coach. Things may have been very different for me if I had incorporated coaching earlier on. Maybe I would have even left corporate sooner and I would have been on this path a lot earlier, but what I would have done differently; while I love the way that I did it and it's been like two years, but if I had to make one change, I might have focused more on embodied coaching, like with the Strozzi Institute, I may have gone into a more intense coaching container of like a six months or a year and really focused on one of these coaching containers that combined embodiment and somatic coaching with expanded states of consciousness. I know there are some now, I wasn't aware of them before, but what was nice about the way I did it was it was a 10 day intensive that put me on the path to coaching immediately, which meant I had a way to make money.

0:45:17.0 Lauren Mugglebee: I started my own LLC. I gained confidence in how I invoice clients and how I got my own money and feeling my way into that, the way that I did. Can I say I would have changed it? I don't think so, but I would always recommend to people you're coming into coaching, start with embodiment, start with somatic coaching, because actually that's where transformation happens. It happens in the body. And also like public service announcement, it happens in community. And I was really resistant to that at the time. I was like, "I can only work one-on-one with coaches and I need to be in my own frame and I need to do this on my own." And really, Paul was the one who said, "What you really need is, you need a community of other people that are doing this and you need to experience these modalities with others. That's really the sweet spot. That's really where the transformation happens and so much healing." And he was right. And that's just been confirmed by my own experience is even clients who are saying, "I just want to work one-on-one with you and I can't go into a group scenario."

0:46:22.7 Lauren Mugglebee: That's okay. You work up to it. I had so much resistance to the group scenario. I can't even tell you. I almost didn't go to Brave Earth. I told Paul right before hand, "I'm not going. I don't do adult summer camp in the cloud forest in Costa. I don't do those things. I just don't do that. That's not what I do. He's like, "I can't believe this. We've been building up to this for six months. This is the thing we've been building up to, you coming in and accepting it's a gift you give yourself. You don't need to be, this isn't Joseph Campbell's Hero or Heroine Journey anymore. This isn't about you. We're coming into a feminine frame that is a partnership frame and a partnership morality. It's not about the singular anymore. It's about the partnership." And he couldn't have been more right. How I would have done it differently?

0:47:12.2 Lauren Mugglebee: Well, maybe opening more to being in group learning containers that have an embodiment or a somatic element to them. It could be really hard for people who are armored and really outside of themselves. It's actually though what you need. Just the sooner you can get yourself into any kind of situation, no matter how uncomfortable it is, leaving your safe harbor, just having the true, really the true courage to do that is maybe how I would have changed it slightly, what I did.

0:47:45.8 Joseph Anew: Yeah. And courage just keeps coming up, right? It's such a courageous act to step into this stuff. And also the longer you stay on the dock or on the shore, whatever metaphor we're using, the smaller that dock is getting. So the more of this that's going to be required and the more, the harder it's going to be to step into any kind of group, the harder it's going to be to step outside that comfort zone. So courage just seems to be a theme in terms of what is required and people need to be ready for courage almost every step of the way. And also, I think we always think we have it all figured out. When you left Facebook, it was like, you thought you were going to go into the more clinical path. So maybe I'm guessing, but one of the reasons you had the courage to leave is because you thought you had it all figured out.

0:48:39.0 Lauren Mugglebee: Yeah. Okay. Let's talk about that. So that's really interesting. And staying in the metaphor of leaving safe harbor, there is this beautiful sailboat metaphor. Scott Barry Kaufman took Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which was never a pyramid, and he created a new image for what actualization looks like and getting a pathway to transcendence, which is a sailboat, the sailboat metaphor. Are you familiar with this? Do you know about the sailboat metaphor?

0:49:07.9 Joseph Anew: I think my wife might talk about it, but it's been a while and rusty. I feel like I'm going to know it when you tell me.

0:49:14.9 Lauren Mugglebee: Okay. So in the sailboat, plugging your sailboat up and making sure your boat doesn't have any holes. And what's in the sailboat is safety, safety of roof over your head, enough water, enough food, being able to get medical attention. You're not going to get attacked by a wild animal outside. You feel safe in your body. Your nervous system can experience regulated states. And generally you feel safe. And then connection, connection to self, to others, to source. That connection is really, really important down in the sailboat as your base. And then security. And security is esteem. It's self-esteem. It's self-love, self-trust, and self-respect. And so the metaphor says in order to get up into the sails of adventure and love and actualization and transcendence, and then to even get to the bird above the sailboat, where you're just flying in the air, you need those three things. You need safety, connection and security.

0:50:18.7 Lauren Mugglebee: And then once you have those things, you are in a state where it becomes possible for you to really take that leap, that adventurous leap of surrendering, letting go, not knowing what's going to happen, just being open to outcome and knowing your needs are going to be met, your baseline needs. And it's not to say that we come out of the sailboat, we get up into the sails and we stay there. This is always happening. It's a cycle. It's a process, again and again. But where I really obviously got to, which is probably a combination of midlife and also complete burnout and being really honest with myself, that you have an addiction to intensity. You have an addiction to knowing. You have an addiction to being in control. You have an addiction to success as it's defined in this very narrow way. You're addicted to all of these things. And so how can you take the position that you're in now and feel safe and feel connected and feel secure enough to get up into the sailboat?

0:51:25.4 Lauren Mugglebee: And you don't really know how anything's going to work out. But all I knew was it's always there for me. I can always go back. [chuckle] If it doesn't work out, if anything goes wrong, if I'm ever feeling like this wasn't the path or this wasn't whatever, I can always just move back into the space that I was in. It will always be there for me. And so it just didn't feel as risky as a prospect as it might look like from the outside. Okay, like I just knew I could always go back and support myself no matter what. And like I said, middle age and my kids being a little older and having a really supportive partner played a big role in my feeling that way.

0:52:11.9 Joseph Anew: I love that. I can always go back. And using that to bolster some courage, it's a little bit, I think it's Tim Ferriss that talks about in one of his books, and it's a stoic thing, right? But contemplating what's the worst that could happen and using that as a launch pad and literally being like, "Okay, so if things go sideways, I'm going to have to move in with my mother or something." And actually map that out and say like, "Oh, that would suck so bad. I'll just go back. It'll take me two months to recover and then I'll get back on the horse." I love that. And I'll add that, so my wife teaches a lot of mindfulness. In one of her talks, she talks about how Maslow on his deathbed actually said that belonging is the primary, is like the base of the pyramid. It's even more important than I think like air and water or whatever's down there, right? Because...

0:53:09.3 Lauren Mugglebee: That's the connection. That's the connection.

0:53:12.2 Joseph Anew: Yeah.

0:53:12.9 Lauren Mugglebee: The belonging is feeling deeply connected to self, to others, and to source, however you define it. It could be nature, whatever words you want to use, the collective. But this idea of absolutely love, safety, and belonging, which is something I learned from listening to Jerry Colonna, The Reboot Podcast, and he comes from a very Buddhist tradition. And he's like the CEO whisperer and everything that he was teaching and talking about was it all comes back to love, safety, and belonging. And love, safety, and belonging, you could use love, safety, and belonging. You could say that it's security, connection, and safety. But it's all talking about the same thing. Do you belong? Do all your parts within you belong? Are you integrating them? Do you accept them? Do you love them so that you're not othering others and you can go out into the world? Do you fully believe that? And I actually started talking about love, safety, and belonging inspired by Jerry Colonna and his coaching style. Before I even left Facebook, I started using these words with people.

0:54:22.9 Lauren Mugglebee: And it was really interesting because the word love in a business context can really freak people out. It can be very uncomfortable. And people see love as they go straight to intimacy in a sexual way or familial love. And so that word can be very incendiary used in a business context. But actually, it's exactly what we're talking about. This idea of love, love in all its forms, love for self, love for others, but using the metaphor instead of family as tribe or community or partnership. In a business sense, and this idea of trust and belonging and love and safety in order for people to reach their potential. That's all we're really doing as leaders is creating containers for other people to feel safe, to feel seen, to feel heard, to feel met. The best leaders, the greatest leaders are the ones who they walk into the room and it's not about them and their charisma and they're so amazing. It's how they're making you feel. You feel big. You feel seen. You feel important. You feel like anything is possible.

0:55:35.8 Lauren Mugglebee: And I couldn't agree more. It all starts with these very simple, simple ideas, which is why coaching is so effective. You're getting into a container with someone who is so focused on you, who is seeing you, who is hearing you, who is meeting you, who is mirroring to you. Sometimes that is all people really need. They just need that. They get so little of it in the corporate sphere.

0:56:01.8 Joseph Anew: Goodness, you're so right on. And that idea of safety in a professional setting, it's like from a nervous system. These people, if that leadership at an organization is not creating that feeling of safety, then everyone's firing a cannon from a canoe. No one is doing their best work. No one has the energy of the universe on their side, so to speak, because if we're not safe, our nervous system is totally out of alignment. I love that. And I want to talk more, Lauren, about your coaching specifically. Who are the people that are so fortunate to find you? Because particularly where you're based in the country, I've got a few clients up there. It's a very specific type of person. And a lot of them, this is the word love is outside their comfort zone, as you said. Who is the person? What sort of, whether it's midlife or mid-career, what brings them to you? And what does that process look like? What does that relationship look like?

0:57:06.6 Lauren Mugglebee: Yeah. Okay. So when I started a couple years ago in my practicum, I coached, you need to coach 50 hours. Okay? And the particular program I was in was like, coach for free, you can charge, you can charge a little bit, but in order to get the volume and the number of people you need and to start that flywheel of referrals, if you don't wanna be spending all your time marketing and doing, writing things and podcasts and buying, SEO and all of this, you need to actually increase the number of people that you are offering your services to very early on to start that flywheel. And so I coached for 100 hours, and primarily the people I coached were, I had a woman post into a Facebook group of bread-winning moms who wouldn't otherwise be able to afford coaching.

0:58:00.9 Lauren Mugglebee: Okay? So they were mothers, they were making the majority of the money in their household. And they really were hungry and starve for support. But they, wouldn't have, it wouldn't have occurred to them that, I would spend money on a coach, and, a lot of them were entrepreneurs as well. So I coached, in the beginning women, but I also had like a CTO of a billion dollar tech company, come into the mix. And I had, other people that I had known in the tech industry who were interested in coming into a container with me. And, so it was a real sort of hodgepodge, okay? It was like very diverse set of people. I would literally coach anyone because all I knew was, okay, I'm calling myself an executive and leadership coach, but I'm learning the skill of psychedelics, but I don't really know, am I gonna be a transformational...

0:58:51.8 Lauren Mugglebee: I didn't even have the language. I didn't really understand the kind of coach I was gonna be. I just knew the more people that I coach, I can start to understand who is for me and who is not for me? Who are the people I can best serve? Who is attracted to me? Who goes and tells people about me? What comes to me organically? Until I get a sense for who am I able to best serve here. And so, really for me, it's been about established leaders and rising leaders, people who are looking for a very... A different kind of experience that is radical, that is about radical self-awareness, learning how to be radically present, learning how to be in radical inquiry. I'm not, really serving people who are kind of dipping their toe in the water. I do have some clients who are a little more conservative, but most of these people are midlife.

0:59:42.5 Lauren Mugglebee: They have reached a point in their lives where, they have achieved [laughter] success and status in the way that it's, defined. And the way that we're all programmed to believe what success and status is, or a large number of us were. And so they are really looking for something. They don't actually know what they're looking for, to be honest. They come and they say, I'm not getting high enough on the ladder, or I wanna make more money, or I wanna change companies. Or, they're not coming to me being like, I think I'm on the wrong ladder. Or I think there might not be any ladder, but I'm not really sure about that. No one's saying that, okay? Everyone's saying, I have this goal where something's not working for me and I feel blocked and I wanna get to the next level.

1:00:25.4 Lauren Mugglebee: I'm really deeply unhappy. I have all this success, what's wrong with me, kind of thing. And so I will service, people, men or women generally tending to be in their 40s. Some of them are a little bit younger, but, they really are looking to explore in a container with someone how they can reach their potential. And a lot of them are willing to try lots of different things. So in the beginning, I wasn't working with any clients with psychedelics. Okay? Zero, zero. And then once I started learning the skill, and I started talking about it and incorporating it with some people, the people I worked with started telling other people about this experience and the power and the potency of combining the compound with the models. And all the people coming to me now pretty much are like, "Hey I wanna work with you in this way. This is what I'm attracted to."

1:01:22.4 Lauren Mugglebee: 80% of my clients now are working in some form of psychedelics, whether it's microdosing, whether it's macro-dosing, whether it's a combination of those two things, whether I work with them or I design bespoke experiences for them to go off with someone else. But the key here is I work with lots of different people, and I design a bespoke experience for every person sitting in front of me. There's no, like, I only work with leaders at this level who are totally burnt out or who are really like, hard edges. I will work with so many different kinds of people, and design something unique that is specifically for them and teach them a new language, a new way to hold complexity and paradox and embodiment, and how to be in inquiry with themselves and how to become whole.

1:02:07.8 Lauren Mugglebee: And I don't wanna put myself anymore into just executive and leadership frame, because the truth is these people come into my frame maybe because of that, because it's safe, it's safe that frame. But really this is about transformation. And it can happen in so many different ways that you have to meet the client where they're at. And so there just needs to be a spark, between myself and that person, and the willingness to take responsibility to being the creators of their lives, the, really the vow to live in truth, and alignment with their passions and their values and their virtues. And then they need to be willing to surrender or let go, even if they don't even know what those words mean. They need to be curious about what those words might mean. And I learned that, in, the Robert Fritz book, The Path of Least Resistance.

1:03:00.3 Lauren Mugglebee: That frame that he talks about, how to create the tension. And so every client I have, I won't take them on unless they can agree to those three things. There's a ton of other stuff they have to agree to, like physical movement, a stillness practice, reading some books like showing up, but they have to agree to a lot of things. But those are the most, those are the three most important things, because what they're presenting to me when they first start talking to me is not the thing. It's never the thing. So we're gonna have to feel our way into what that thing is, and it's gonna be an emergence of a different kind of, archetype or energy that they are. It may be in the shadow of too much or too little in and need to come into like an optimal zone there, but they don't even have the language to talk about that or describe that, when they come to me.

1:03:43.7 Joseph Anew: Right, right. Wow, Lauren, it's amazing. I love that. And what would you just like, maybe this isn't like a great question, but like, how many people are up to the challenge, like out of 10. Because it's like, as a coach, we need to have these intake processes because we wanna have an impact. We wanna change people's lives, we wanna support them, and we need to have space in our calendar to find those people. But as a coach, it's also very tempting to just try to like, take everyone in, especially when you're just starting out. So yeah, like I guess out of 10, like after you've been doing this a couple of years, like how many people do you find that are actually up for that type of challenge?

1:04:24.3 Lauren Mugglebee: Yeah, I would say, because people come to me through referral [laughter], these aren't like random people finding me online. I don't like, it's very few instances where the person isn't already super interested in working with me, and I am turning them down because it's not gonna be right financially. The energetic exchange is not gonna be right, or the timing's not gonna be right, or they can't commit to something I'm talking about, it's probably gonna be like seven out of 10, or even maybe even eight out of 10, only because the way people are coming to me is not through a means of they find me in a way that isn't through another person that's already worked with me. By the way That's like one thing that being out there and having a platform and being more in the spotlight and doing podcasts and publishing articles and all of this is one thing that I'm actually, I've talked about this with people opening myself up to potentially having a lot more people reach out to me and have to have like a more intense filtering process than I have now, because I just don't need to worry about that so much right now. And it's, yeah, it's something that I really weigh and I think about. But it's like, again, leaving Safe harbor.

1:05:47.9 Joseph Anew: And there's just, and in a psychedelic like frame willful participation, like is just, required, right? Like, doing it for the right reasons, having the right intention, the right space in your life, the right understanding of what you're getting yourself into, you would never, so it's just, I guess having kind of ethical boundaries and a willingness to, divert someone into the direction is always required, I guess at the start of a coaching relationship. Lauren, I'd love to kind of jump, 'cause you were in CCP-2, I was in CCP-3, now we're onto CCP-5 right now. I would love to kind of like tie up, I know, we're kind of getting over time here, but I would love to kind of talk about CCP and your experience in the Third Wave course a little bit, and sort of how that prepared. I know you were also working with Paul in a separate coaching container, but what can you share about CCP that for people that are listening that are coaches that might be interested in what Third Wave's doing there, what was your experience like in the program?

1:06:53.6 Lauren Mugglebee: Yeah, I really felt, when I came into the program, so much reservation about, wow, there's a lot of spirit people here. There's people who are energy trained, there's people who have done body work. There's people who are very physical, physically fit, and they're biohackers. I felt at the time I was one of only two or three actual, like executive coaches or people coming from like a business frame. I wasn't Reiki certified. I wasn't like Breathwork certified. I don't, I didn't, associate myself with like being a spiritual [laughter] person in any way. And so for me, wow, like coming into this was, so confronting. It was so showing me, how little attention I had been paying to anything basically that was outside of something that I could do with my mind. Okay? So I was like all about knowledge and all about the cognitive and all about rational and all about... And maybe deep down there was a spiritual component or there was a body component, or there were these other intuitive components, like already there kind of like dormant inside me or needing to be uncovered. But in the beginning, for me as like coming out of a corporate frame, it was shocking. [laughter] It was really shocking for me. And I feel...

1:08:20.8 Joseph Anew: You are like, "There's a lot of tie-dye shirts in the room here." [laughter]

1:08:24.4 Lauren Mugglebee: Yeah. Yeah. And like, I love that. And also, wow, this is, wow, okay. But when you know, when it's difficult and it's challenging in that way for you and you're, looking very different and coming from a different frame than most of the people in the program, what an opportunity, what an opportunity to be thrust into just something so different and to learn about yourself really on Hyperdrive. So okay, for me, I loved obviously learning about everything, psychedelic learning, learning about the history and the culture and the neuroscience. And it was just setting off like every nerdy dopamine pathway like possible. But also getting [laughter] getting into a container with people who were so different than me, and being shown Lauren, you think you're an open person. You think you're deeply compassionate, you think you're deeply loving, you think that you're intuitive, you think all these things.

1:09:21.8 Lauren Mugglebee: And by the way, on a continuum, you are not, you have so much work to do. [laughter] You know nothing that was okay, that was such a gift. That was such a gift because I get super turned on by the challenge of that seeing, how farther, how much farther along other people are in their embodiment. And then wow, okay, really see where I need to get to and what could be so useful for me. And not getting overwhelmed by all of the things that you don't know and the skills you don't have. I think if you can just hold that you're coming with something too that can be useful. [laughter] But not to get like, too hung up on how much there's such an expansive toolkit to build in the space. And so not to get to, not to get into a state of mind of, imposter syndrome about that, but just to sit with that and understand you're gonna be learning, you're gonna be in deep learning for basically ever.

1:10:23.1 Lauren Mugglebee: And I love learning and I'm curious, so that was really great. That was a beautiful experience. The people I met in the program, and this is kind of what Paul was saying, yeah, you know about psychedelics, you've experienced a coaching frame with me, but you need, lots of people in your network. You need therapists, you need people who are, energy and body workers. You do need people who are like very fit in bio-hackery types. You need to have all types. So when someone comes to you, you know who's right for you and not, and you can refer on or you can draw on the collective knowledge of this group of people that is very, very diverse and everyone has such beautiful gifts. And so that's the main thing that I think I really experienced in the program was just allowing myself that gift of coming into a community of people that were so diverse and so different from me, and how could we get together and create together. Learning about Co-Elevation, Keith Ferrazzi and the Co-Elevation. Learning about embodiment, workshop, things with eye gazing and the oxytocin.

1:11:27.8 Lauren Mugglebee: And by the way, all of the modalities that have absolutely nothing to do with compound that are totally safe, totally legal, the ecstatic dance, the breath work, coming into sweat lodge, just being out in nature, frankly, all of those things. The medicine brought us there and it was the catalyst. It wasn't the thing itself. And so that experience of, yeah, psychedelics brought us all into this, but what we really start to understand is it's this connective, this connective cohesive source of community and just any of these modalities frankly, could be so effective with or without the medicine, was the biggest lesson and the most surprising lesson.

1:12:08.6 Joseph Anew: Yeah, absolutely. And and you're referring to the Brave Earth retreat, the retreat down in Costa Rica where the cohort all comes together and you experience... Yeah, the Temazcal or the sweat lodge and the breath work and, and these non psychedelic modalities. Absolutely. Particularly when you're open to it, right? So, even a high dose experience as you know if someone's super open, they might not need that much medicine. And it's the same thing with all these other modalities. It's like, especially when you're on that patch of earth [laughter], it's a very, it's a little bit like a, I imagine like a Sedona or these places on the planet where people say, magic happens. I think get down in Costa Rica where we bring the groups is definitely one of those places.

1:12:54.3 Joseph Anew: So I think it's like a magnifier for whatever's present, but I think that openness, and as you said earlier, that safety of being with this group that maybe you've been on Zoom with for 12 weeks, you've gotten to know them now, you're finally in the flesh, you're finally face to face, you're in this amazing nature. And really, getting connected. And I'll add too, Lauren, that, you were CCP-2, we're now onto CCP-5, and just like any coaching practice, I do think my group CCP-3 was even, I would say half leadership executive coaches. So I think we're, as time goes on and, there's some other programs that are, maybe capturing some of the other folks, I would say we're moving more in this professional direction in terms of leadership, executive coaching, high impact performance coaching or health coaching. I would say that that is being refined. I think in cohorts one and two, it was a much broader group that we're funneling in. But I think as we've done more and more cohorts, and of course other programs have popped up, I think we're really refining our group and we're still getting such a nice melting pot. But I get the sense that there's more people like you in it now than maybe there were in one of the initial cohorts.

1:14:08.4 Lauren Mugglebee: There's no questions about that. Yes. Like when Paul came and asked me to come back as an intern for three, no hesitation, of course, I wanna do that. And what I saw, the progression from two to three and the people who were in that cohort and the population we were attracting and the word getting out, and people feeling safer to come, from that business frame and to start thinking about, "Hey, if as coaches, what we're doing is making the unconscious conscious and bringing awareness to our clients, and this is an effective way to do it; Seeing more people with that executive and leadership, or even just, life coaching, wellness coaching, whatever it is, almost everyone's a coach now, and I'm on faculty now. I've come back as faculty and I'm leading a cohort." And the way this cohort looks is very different to [laughter] what I experienced in two.

1:14:58.7 Lauren Mugglebee: And it's been so beautiful and interesting and amazing to watch that progression. And people coming in who, yeah, addictions to intensity or just wanting to be in more service or wanting to do something where they're like deeper and more part of the collective. And how can I teach my coaching practice and, look at incorporating these compounds and what will that look like? And people very concerned about the legality, people very concerned about keeping people safe and the harm reduction. And it's been so beautiful to watch that and, and so deeply humbling to be part of so much of the program and watch as it evolves. And who we're attracting and who we will attract, and how that shared energy of the people who are coming in co-creating the experience is just, becoming so much richer, and more beautiful, and even more excellent. That's actually been, I think one of the best parts about this is coming in learning, having the experience, and then being able to turn around and serve the next generation and the next and be part of that, has just been so wonderful and not anything I could have foreseen happening.

1:16:14.4 Joseph Anew: You and I both. [laughter] So a year ago I signed up as a student and that Brave Earth Retreat sat down with Paul down in Costa Rica, and here I am. And it's been such a joy to not only share on this podcast, but I take a lot of the phone calls, like, if people go on the CCP website and they're interested in the certification program, chances are you're gonna end up on the phone with me. And it's been as sort of like the doorman for this program. It's been amazing to help people with their decision, whether it's this program or something else. Because this group that we're now curating really consciously is, it's super exciting to kind of be on the front lines of the program because I'm really getting to know people and seeing who's coming in, and helping that group just, just kind of, create itself, co-create it, if you will.

1:17:08.1 Joseph Anew: It's been amazing, and I'm so excited to be here and a part of it as well. And, I'm so excited. We're gonna be in Costa Rica together in like a month, and so, we'll create some magic there as well, Lauren. Well, hey, this has been awesome. It's been such a joy. And gosh, next time we talk, I really wanna talk about that addiction to intensity, because I think that's just so interesting. And I think there's a hormonal piece as well. People get literally, executives, leadership folks, they literally get addicted to the hormones of stress. And even when things are supposed to be calm, they're just creating stress and anxiety because they're just addicted to that. Like, that's a whole show. I would love to explore that more deeply with you. But is there anything, Lauren, that you want to kind of close us off with here and, tie this episode up with any final message to our listeners?

1:18:00.0 Lauren Mugglebee: Wow, just how beautiful opening yourself to possibility can be, allowing yourself to indulge in dreaming and visioning something for yourself that you just, if it happened to you, it would be the most amazing thing that could happen. But it's getting to the point and having a frame and being surrounded by others who will encourage you in that indulgence of just, dreaming for really bringing into creation your mythos, your life dream. And not waiting until midlife to allow yourself that indulgence. That there's so many ways of energetic exchange and finding different pathways that could be completely unknown to you, that are open to you, if you will allow yourself that. And so that is my message. And find yourself a mentor. Find yourself a mentor. And if you're interested in this work in plant medicine or just expanded states of consciousness, doesn't even have to be about plant medicine. Finding a mentor, someone who's walked the path slightly ahead of you, who can guide you in the space and bring you into it, is just, really such a beautiful way to be initiated. And it is an initiation.

1:19:26.4 Joseph Anew: Lauren, thank you. Thank you so much. And, it's just been such a beautiful conversation. I've really enjoyed it. So thank you so much for carving out the time and for all that you've shared. It's been a really inspiring episode of your story and for people listening. So thank you, thank you, thank you. So if people are listening and they're like, wow, Lauren is just, this is really resonating. How do they find you? Where do they go?

1:19:51.1 Lauren Mugglebee: Yeah.

1:19:51.7 Joseph Anew: Is there your a website?

1:19:54.8 Lauren Mugglebee: I have a website. Laurenmugglebee.com, [laughter] That's it. That's it. My name Lauren Mugglebee, M-U-G-G-L-E-B-E-E Laurenmugglebee.com. That's my website and you can reach me there. And thank you so much. Thank you for having me. It was really fun to spend this time with you and enjoy your day as well. So thank you.

1:20:13.4 Joseph Anew: Hey listeners, Joseph here. I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Lauren Mugglebee. Remember to head to the thirdwave.co/podcast to go deeper into this episode with full show notes, transcripts, and all the links we mentioned in the conversation. That's the thirdwave.co/podcast. And scroll to episode 219 with Lauren Mugglebee. What moved you in today's conversation? What inspired you? What new insights did you gain? Do you have any more questions about today's episode? Continue the dialogue with us in Third Wave's Community Forum at community.thethirdwave.co sign in or create an account first. And once you've logged in, navigate to the psychedelic podcast menu. Leave us a comment there. And while you're at it, check out the rest of the platform and find support, meaningful discussions, high quality education resources, and even providers from across our global ecosystem. You can sign up for free at community.thethirdwave.co. We hope to see you there.

Related Podcasts