Be the Work: From Human Doing to Human Being

Podcast Highlights

• The wound beneath high achievement
• Stefanie's first psychedelic awakening
• Grasping versus generative desire
• Why transformation happens on the being level
• The Be-Do-Have inversion
• Psychedelic integration beyond ceremony
• Internal Family Systems and coaching
• Conscious leadership after psychedelic work
• AI, humanity, and authentic connection
• Moving from striving to wholeness

Show Links

1. Dr. Stefanie’s website
2. The Sacred House of Eden
3. Dr. Stefanie’s YouTube Channel
4. Dr. Stefanie on Instagram
5. Dr. Stefanie on Facebook
6. Dr. Stefanie on LinkedIn
7. “BE THE WORK” book
8. Free Guided Meditation by Dr. Stefanie

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Podcast Transcript

00:00:00 Paul Austin
What if the thing you've been chasing isn't actually what you're looking for? And what if more achievement isn't the answer, but the very pattern keeping you stuck? Welcome to the Psychedelic Podcast.

00:00:10 Paul Austin
I'm your host, Paul Austin. And one of the common themes that I've seen over the years, both in myself and the people that I work with, is that success doesn't always bring the fulfillment that we expect it to. Many high performers spend years pursuing goals, building businesses, accumulating accomplishments, and doing all the things they're supposed to do, only to find that something still feels missing underneath it all. My guest today is Dr. Stefanie Kleine, psychospiritual coach, author of Be the Work: The Shift from Human Doing to Human Being, and co-founder of the Sacred House of Eden. Drawing on more than 2 decades of experience coaching executives, founders, athletes, physicians, and other high performers, Stefanie helps people uncover the deeper patterns that drive achievement and reconnect with a more authentic sense of wholeness. So what we're gonna cover today is why so many high achievers are driven by a hidden sense of not being enough, How Stefanie's first psychedelic experience revealed a lifelong pattern that she couldn't previously see.

00:01:03 Paul Austin
The difference between grasping desire and generative desire. Why the common do, have, be formula, as Stefanie calls it, keeps many people stuck. How flipping this around to be, do, have creates a different path to fulfillment. Why integration matters more than ceremony itself. The role of Internal Family Systems and parts work in lasting transformation, and how psychedelic work can influence leadership, relationships, and organizational culture.

00:01:28 Paul Austin
Dr. Stefanie Kleine is a psychospiritual coach, guide, and author who has spent more than 20 years coaching executives, founders, attorneys, physicians, athletes, and high-achieving individuals. She holds a master's degree and PhD in psychology and is the co-founder of the Sacred House of Eden, one of the leading psychedelic retreat centers in the United States. Since 2018, she has guided more than 1,500 ceremonies and integration processes, and her work centers on what she calls the be, do, have inversion, the shift from human doing to human being. She is the author of Be the Work: The Shift from Human Doing to Being and has been featured in Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal, and Forbes. Now, Stefanie and I met a couple years ago. The Sacred House of Eden helped to sponsor an event that we were hosting in Malibu, and she's been working on this book for some time.

00:02:12 Paul Austin
And so I wanted to have her on once this book was published so you all could hear from her, because I think in terms of women who are in this work, who have both the clinical background and expertise but also are really in the work holding people through transformation, she's one of the best in the game. So I think you're really going to enjoy this, this episode. But before we get into it, let's quickly hear a word from our sponsors.

00:02:33 Paul Austin
Third Wave sometimes shares or partners with outside providers, but we don't control and aren't responsible for their statements, conduct, products, or services. We encourage you to do your own research and consult appropriate professionals.

00:02:46 Paul Austin
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00:04:01 Paul Austin
All right, folks, let's hear from Dr. Stefanie Kleine.

00:04:24 Paul Austin
We first met in person in Malibu 2 years ago. You helped to support an event that we were putting on, and we've known of each other's works for some time before that, but that gave us a chance to meet and connect. And so we've been sort of having this in process, and I know you were waiting until the book was out to really come on. And so the book is out now. That's where I wanna start, in fact, is the book, 'cause I think that'll be a good opener for the rest of our conversation.

00:04:53 Paul Austin
And your book turns on one shift, right? Human doing to human being. And so for someone who's checked every box and still feels that something is missing, what actually changes on the being level that achievement can't touch?

00:05:10 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
Yes, that's a multi-tiered question and a lot that I wanna share. Obviously, the real bulk of that will be in the book itself, but you can see here that I've literally crossed off do, which is the most common vernacular in the wellness space, psychedelic and wellness in general. Do the work, do the work, do the work. And for me, after doing this for, you know, almost 2 and a half decades, and then of course my own healing journey, which I'm happy to, to get into, it became very clear to me that transformation happens on the being level, not the doing level. And that's really the premise of the book, but it's also the heart of the work that I do. Mm-hmm. With people.

00:05:52 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
So if we can kind of take it back to decades earlier so I can share really the origin of the book and Eden and my, you know, my coaching and my own experience with the medicine is it goes back to a young, young kid who thought she had everything figured out. Like I have been a chronic overachiever from about the age of 8. I was actually an Olympic-trained athlete. I was a fastpitch softball pitcher. My dad was my coach.

00:06:25 Paul Austin
Wow.

00:06:26 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
And that's like a whole different way of growing up, a very different, unusual, high-pressure kind of childhood. I was also really academic. I skipped 2 grades in school and went on, of course, to get my, my master's, my PhD. I was the one that set the curve in the doctorate program. I did the 2-year master's in 11 months. Like, you get the picture.

00:06:50 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
And I'm not saying that to be impressive. It's really because the point is not the list of accolades. The point is what was underneath it. And from very early on in my coaching career, I was working with top performers. Like, I was working with C-suites, founders, pro athletes, doctors, lawyers, you know.

00:07:11 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
And I'm like barely in my 20s and I'm working with the highest of achievers. And I think that part of why I was able to sit with them the way that I was, even though I was so young, is because I was one of them. Right?

00:07:25 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
And, and what I came to understand is that the thing that, like, where we would truly meet, it wasn't just like I had achieved and they had achieved. It was underneath the achieving. Like, we shared the same root.

00:07:39 Paul Austin
Mm-hmm.

00:07:39 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
Right. We had been doing, doing, doing, doing, doing, but our being shared a very common wound. And for me, I was a very celebrated, very loved kid. I was in a loving family, but the deepest, truest parts of me were not met. Like they weren't heard, they weren't held, like the truth of who I was. And, and that's no fault to, to my parents. They're great people, but it just, it wasn't their wiring.

00:08:08 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
And I came in very wired for depth, extremely intuitive, a sensitive kid. I was channeling by the time I was 6. Of course, I didn't even know what that meant at the time, you know, but my parents just didn't have a language for that. And so I felt unmet. And so my wound was that, and the way that I attempted to feel better about it Was that my currency became achievement, right? If I— that was the closest approximation of being seen. The rub of that is that I wasn't actually being seen. The performance was being seen.

00:08:52 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
So I became a very skilled performer, perfectionist, control freak, like all the things that come with that. And it's, You know, it's no wonder that from the very beginning, my clients were high achievers that also shared that same wound underneath. It might not have necessarily been that they didn't feel met, but almost always when you distill it down, it comes to a sense of not feeling enough, right?

00:09:19 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
And so that's truly the heart of what I healed in myself. Through medicine and, and, and work, a lot of work outside of medicine as well. A lot of IFS-informed work, which is how I practice too. And then also, you know, how I've seen across hundreds of people that same pattern that's running on the doing level, but the wound on the being level. And until that's really tended to, nothing really sticks, nothing really changes, right?

00:09:52 Paul Austin
Mm-hmm. Because

00:09:53 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
we are human beings, not human doings, but we're conditioned to be doings and we're usually rewarded for our doings, right? But then this other part of us is neglected. And so it's just this engine that keeps running and we're never actually like getting to this finish line because we're, everything's going outward and this part is still like, it's just not being fed.

00:10:17 Paul Austin
For you, what was the moment where that came into your awareness? At what point did you realize, okay, I, I have been quite successful, right? You've mentioned the, you know, the PhD at Pepperdine and, being a very high-profile softball pitcher, and even with the Sacred House of Eden as well, one of the first above-ground psychedelic retreat centers.

00:10:38 Paul Austin
So it's not as if your achievement has quote unquote stopped. You've continued to want to show up in a big way and support, but when did the inner game for you start to shift, and what catalyzed that shift in the inner game for you? Yeah. For you.

00:10:54 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
Yeah, I love the, the language of inner game because that's what it is. And, and also just to the, the word game, I think that life— like, I think that we take life so seriously, not just overachievers but just people in general. And it's like, we're actually meant to enjoy and have fun. Like, this is ultimately a game and you get to choose how you play it. So for me, that change really happened with my first medicine journey.

00:11:23 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
So I, I grew up— I'm, I'm an '80s kid, you know, Nancy Reagan, just say no. Had never touched anything, took all the pride in the world of being like clean and, and smart and a good athlete. And when other, you know, my peers were experimenting with different drugs, I, I didn't do it. And I was very scared and I had a lot of judgments around it.

00:11:45 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
So when I was invited to medicine by one of my very best guy friends. I had just moved to Colorado, it's 10 years ago. I just moved from California to Colorado. It just so happened that he had moved a year prior. We reconnected, we were both in Colorado, and he was in relationship with a woman who held medicine journeys underground, complete— like literally underground in basements, and like very hush-hush, like you got to have the secret handshake. It was almost like a psychedelic speakeasy type of situation, and I was terrified.

00:12:20 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
I was so scared. I was the most unlikely person to be there. And I, like, so much of me wanted to say no, but I said yes anyway. And I really believe that there was, like, a deeper part of me that knew I was supposed to be in that room. And, and I, and I, and I did it. I, I summoned the courage and, and I did it.

00:12:41 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
And You know, I remember us sitting around, there's probably 12 of us in a circle sharing our intention. Why are we there? And a lot of the people there had really traumatic, heavy histories. And I came from a loving family, devoted parents, and I almost felt like, do I belong here? Well, what I didn't know is medicine was going to show me in very, you know, quick order that none of us get out of here unscathed.

00:13:07 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
And It actually really not broke open, 'cause a lot of people talk about their experience like it broke open. For me, I actually melted. That was my experience. I melted. And in that melting, it became very clear the pattern that I had been running my whole life, which was ejecting out of who I actually am and, and trying to like, You know, it became like an acquiring thing when really what was needed was more of a connecting thing. And that came through, like, immediately in my first medicine journey, which was remarkable. Remarkable. Like, I'm so grateful. And it really did change, you know, the trajectory of my life in the most profound and unexpected ways.

00:14:01 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
Yeah, that's really— I mean, that was really just the very beginning. There's, there's so much more you know, including like what I saw in, in that room and with other people too. And then kind of the role that I organically took there, just given like my history, was like people started coming to me asking, you know, not for ser— not for medicine, but like to unpack and ultimately to integrate, you know, what was coming up for them. And so I kind of just moved like into that role very quickly and very naturally, and I loved it. And it became evident to me that the most important thing about all of this is integration. And that is what we built Eden around. We're, we're very big on safety, number one, and integration.

00:14:52 Paul Austin
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00:15:37 Paul Austin
And I want to come back to kind of your approach to that, particularly through Eden, working with high performers. But before we do that, one thing I want to get a little bit deeper into is like this shift, right? The sort of shift from doing to being, the shift into feeling fed, the inner game being, being fed.

00:15:56 Paul Austin
One thing you've talked about is sort of grasping versus generative or grasping versus being generating. Can you talk a little bit about that distinction? And for those, there are a lot of high performers who are listening to this podcast. How can we tell that difference within us? When are we grasping versus when are we coming from an energy that is much more sort of generative and in service of life and creation and our path? Yeah.

00:16:25 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
Yeah, for sure. And a question that often comes up, because I work with, you know, top performers who have tethered their identity very much to what they're achieving, there's a fear that comes up like, are you gonna coach me to not have ambition? Are you gonna coach me to just stop? And my answer is no, absolutely not. It's, it's not about that. It's what engine is running you.

00:16:51 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
So, I talk about two different types of desire. One is grasping, which is you are trying to prove you are enough. Generative is where you're, you're acting from a place of already knowing you are enough, right? So same ambition, a lot of times same drive can show up very similar in what you're actually doing, but the felt sense of it, like the, The fuel behind it is so different and so much more fulfilling because you can accomplish, accomplish, accomplish, tick off all the boxes and still very much feel that something's missing, right?

00:17:34 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
Because a lot of times what's happening is people are driven. If you've done any sort of inner work, you might arrive at this place of like, okay, I can see my pattern and I can see that I've been chasing worthiness, right, through, through a series of things that I'm accomplishing. And I would say, okay, that's a great first insight, but that's by no means the finish line.

00:17:59 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
And I think that's something that the Wellness space is actually really missing because then what happens is you're, you're then told, okay, stop chasing these things, grasping for these things outside of yourself. And instead go inward. But then what happens is then people do— it's the same chase with a different costume, cuz now they're just doing it inside. Like they're like, okay, what's the next protocol, the next framework, even the next ceremony? And that is exactly the same machine running because it's coming from a place of not already feeling enough.

00:18:38 Paul Austin
Mm-hmm.

00:18:39 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
Right. And so we have to tend to that place inside. So what, for my, my journey, my first one that showed me that I actually reconnected to a very young version of myself. I was like 6 years old and I was playing and I was like so full of wonder and curiosity and aliveness.

00:18:56 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
And the, the word like enough didn't even exist. There were no measures, there were no scales. She wasn't impressive, she wasn't accomplished, she was full. And alive. And that is who we all are underneath all of this striving, achieving, running, chasing, performing. So the work is untangling that so that we can then get to who are we underneath it before all that stuff started.

00:19:25 Paul Austin
Mm-hmm.

00:19:25 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
That's really the shift. And, and it's not about stopping accomplishing at all. And that's a very reasonable question, you know, for people to have when we start working together. It's, it's really about knowing you're already enough and then moving from there.

00:19:40 Paul Austin
And how does that shift or change the quality of someone's experience in everyday life? Like, like one, one metaphor that a coach once sort of communicated the same lens to me is it's like, you know, it's like I'm a Ferrari, let's say, and it's like putting diesel in a Ferrari when you're coming from that grasping energy versus when you're coming from a generative energy, that's like premium fuel. It's like you're running clean, right?

00:20:03 Paul Austin
So she would often describe it as you're running clean. So when these high performers start to shift from that grasping to that generative energy, how does that show up? How does that impact their wellbeing? How does that impact, you know, maybe their sleep or their lifestyle or, you know, their relationships? Like, talk to us a little bit about the, the sort of secondary outcomes of shifting to that cleaner energy source. Of generation rather than grasping?

00:20:31 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
Yeah, that's a great question. And I would say like E, all of the above. Like you named it, it really does have an impact across every domain of your life because if you, so we are taught to run this formula of do, have, be. If I do enough, then I'll have the things and I'll finally be okay or enough or at peace or happy. And the formula is completely backwards. So what I coach is the, the be, do, have inversion, which is then starting from being, let your doings emerge from that place, and the havings take care of themselves.

00:21:18 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
So it's completely flipping the whole paradigm. And The result of that is people then, your, your worth, your, your state of being is no longer contingent or reliant upon a particular outcome because you're already starting from a place of knowing you're okay. You're okay. Like you don't need those things to be okay. And people think that they're chasing maybe worth, but that's, That's actually, to my mind, almost the trap door because then what happens is then you turn it all inward and you're like, okay. And then it can start to look like, you know, like I was saying earlier, all the protocols and all of this. And then you just end up depleting yourself or becoming exhausted or, you know, riddling your whole system.

00:22:05 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
Your whole nervous system is still chasing. And so that has a direct impact on your interpersonal relationships. It has an impact absolutely on your sleep. On your entire orientation, the way that you show up in your, in your world. So when you can relax back into this, the being underneath all the doings and get aligned there from a place of already knowing you are enough and choose from there, everything has much more meaning, more fulfillment, more lasting energy that you can sustain. Cuz the other's not sustainable. You might feel a temporary high from accomplishing something, but it's very fleeting. Healing because it's all happening on this level and not the actual human being underneath.

00:22:53 Paul Austin
And so let's— I want to get a little bit into like then your approach, and this sort of dovetails with integration and psychedelic work. But you know, one thing that you've talked about on your website, I'm sure is mentioned in the book as well, is this relationship between Internal Family Systems or parts work. And we've had, you know, Dick Schwartz on the Podcast before. We've had a couple, a couple other psychedelic Practitioners talking about parts work, but we haven't really had anyone on who is addressing the full spectrum because not only are you trained in IFS and working with IFS, which I see as more of a therapeutic modality in nature, although it's not explicitly therapeutic, but you're also doing a lot of coaching.

00:23:32 Paul Austin
And so what are you noticing, you know, when you're working with high performers, how do you as a Practitioner navigate or hold when Parts Work or Internal Family Systems work may be appropriate versus when you know, proper coaching and sort of getting them focused on what they're creating and building is appropriate. How do you, how do you sort of handle that from a protocol or from a, from an approach lens, this sort of balance of IFS with, I suppose, more, more traditional performance coaching, if you will?

00:24:03 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
Yeah, that's an interesting question. I need to take a minute with that because I don't know that I make a hard and fast Demarcation between the two? Surely IFS work is incredibly deep, right? So by no means is every session an IFS session. There are sessions that stay a little bit more on like, because I even feel like when you do IFS, if you like, at least the way I'm doing it with people, it alters your consciousness. Like you drop into a little bit of a non-ordinary state, right? And I mean, you can do that through breathwork and meditation. There's prayer. There's so many ways to do that. And certainly I think that when I work with people and do IFS-informed work, that's happening as well.

00:24:51 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
So there are sessions that are that, and then there are sessions that stay a little bit more I don't wanna say superficial a little bit just more topical, right? A little bit maybe more pragmatic. But I don't, but that's a decision that's made like very much in the moment. Like my clients know to show up in in the session, my, my ask is that you show up with a, with a readiness, a willingness, and an openness and an honesty. And so we determine how we work, you know, each, every time is different, right?

00:25:24 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
I don't, I'm not formulaic. I'm not formulaic at our Retreats. I'm not formulaic in, in my coaching, which is, which is great because, you know, having been, you know, this gold star junkie as a kid and very controlled That's not how I work at all. It's very organic. So I think that to answer your question, it's decided, you know, each, each moment and it's just based, it's very intuitive.

00:25:47 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
Like I think also why I chose to be a coach and even though my training is classical and clinical as a psychotherapist, I, I chose very early on to be a coach because I, it gave me the freedom to work the way that I'm actually wired, which is intuition first, framework second. And so I bring that to each session, and it's very much like meet them where they're at, which that in and of itself is so much of the healing that happens, right? Someone that can actually meet you, the truth of you, and be fully present and hold that, hold that kind of accepting space. Yeah. Did that answer? Did that answer it?

00:26:27 Paul Austin
Yeah. I mean, let's, let's keep going on it because I, I think it's brought up some other interesting things, which is like you have a particularly interesting developed archetype, which is a lot of these individuals who are in high-performance coaching roles tend to be quite masculine overly masculine. Sometimes they are men, but sometimes it's women who are overly masculine, right? That tends to be very prominent in this sort of performance coaching or leadership coaching role.

00:26:52 Paul Austin
And I think what's very interesting about you, Stefanie, is that you're really looking at how does this sort of embodied feminine archetype with psychedelics as a center point, which is very rare. How are you holding that as this sort of, not even a new definition of performance, but a new understanding, a new approach that folks can take who are sick of attempting to, you know, build things externally to compensate for a lack of self-worth, self-love, whatever it might be.

00:27:25 Paul Austin
So I'm kind of curious to hear you articulate that framework a little bit more. You know, I know we're talking about the book, Be the Work, which is that starting point, but how would you articulate the sort of embodied feminine psychedelic-informed approach to performance and leadership? And how does that maybe even change how we look at performance and leadership, you know, from, from the start?

00:27:50 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
Yeah, another great question. So to that point, I would say from the very beginning, about 90% of my clients were men. And it wasn't until Eden where that changed. And now I'd say it's about 50/50, maybe 60/40, 60 men, 40 women. Because, you know, kind of my area has been, you know, high performers.

00:28:17 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
So, and just the way that society's set up, that's, you know, often men. But even if it's women, you're right. Like it is a very masculine energy, right? When you're in that, like striving and achieving and accomplishing and winning. Like, that's very like exertion and force and push, and that's very masculine. You can even feel that in your body.

00:28:39 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
So when, when I bring in a different element, just being a woman myself, right? I mean, we all have masculine and feminine. Myself too. I think I was largely in more in my masculine energy younger with sports and school and everything. And, and, and the medicine is really softened me so I can connect more and lean more into and trust my feminine, which I think is a superpower.

00:29:02 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
So, so working with men, bringing that energy into the room, it's all— it, it early on, it was definitely met with a lot of skepticism, right? Cuz everyone thinks they kind of have to like leave their heart and their feelings at home. You cross the threshold of the office and like you gotta put your big boy pants on, male or female. Like that's what you gotta do.

00:29:19 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
And so when I introduced, I mean, we're talking 20 years ago and I'm talking about what at that time people would call soft skills. My work then became showing them how that actually hits the ROI. Like, how does that hit the bottom line? What do we then see as real results, tangible results, when we are able to show up as humans?

00:29:37 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
Because the lifeblood of any organization or team is people, right? And so people are like, you know, heartbeating, alive, feeling humans. So it's met often, you know, initially with skepticism. There's some fear around it. I think that that's just, you know, A conditioning and a programming of our society.

00:29:57 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
And so it's really learning to trust, right? To trust me, to trust the process, and for them to trust themselves so that they can inhabit the fullness of who they are because we are both masculine and feminine. And if we're chopping off half of us or a portion of us because we are like, we have to be masculine, we're really missing out on a lot of gifts that come from the more feminine energy, like creativity, right?

00:30:29 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
And that then brings in new ways, new, new perspectives, new point of views, new ways to tackle maybe the same problem or the same challenge. There's just— you're, oh, you're then opening up, broadening the scope, the aperture opening to what else could be available that you would not have considered because you shut that part of yourself off.

00:30:51 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
And when people start to do that, they're like, oh my gosh, I I see it, like, I actually have 7 options available here, not just, you know, I'm not my op— like, it's not just one thing. And when you start to feel that and trust that and get comfortable in that, it's like you would never want to then give that up.

00:31:08 Paul Austin
Right, it becomes intertwined into this new sort of seed of your identity that's being planted within the psychedelic space, which of course then brings up the importance of integration. And so this brings us then to Well, after someone goes through ceremony, they have this high-dose experience, right? Let's say they go to the Sacred House of Eden and they're guided or facilitated by you through a journey. What does your aftercare look like for integration? What are the things that you think are really important to honor and weave into that process, especially within the first week or 2 weeks or 3 weeks that you think a lot of folks aren't paying attention to or is often missed?

00:31:51 Paul Austin
I think with this nuance being, I'm sure there are some folks you work with who have some of these underlying challenges, but there are, I would imagine, many folks who are coming to you are not just coming because they're like, "I'm depressed and I want to feel better." There's probably a sort of larger mission or vision that may be associated with that interest in working with psychedelics. So how does your integration process support what I would call that— That— that exploratory mindset, you know, that capacity to see new choices, that ability to be re-empowered, that ability to take back agency and sort of own the story of our lives. Like, kind of how are you approaching that integration process to support these leaders and high performers and other folks who don't just fit this bill of, you know, well, I want to do MDMA therapy for PTSD, or, you know, I want to do psilocybin for, depression or alcoholism or whatever it is. Talk to us a little bit more about kind of how you, how you hold that.

00:32:50 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
Yeah. It's interesting that you talked about like owning your story and agency. So before you even come for retreat, there's coaching. So there's, so anybody that comes to us, there's at least 8 weeks of coaching that, and 4, like a bookends. So 4 before you get there in preparation and 4 after. And then there's the option of course to do more than that. And then we do deeper containers, which are actually like year-long journeys.

00:33:13 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
With people, individuals and couples and even small teams. And so one of the first things in the prep is talking about personal agency, owning your life. Like, I teach 4 levels of personal responsibility, like moving out of victim consciousness and like really understanding that you are the captain of the ship. So that's literally day 1. And then there's, you know, 3 subsequent sessions And actually that program was called Be the Work, which is how the book took its name. So this predates the book, but that, it just lended itself nicely to and made all the sense in the world for me for that to be the book. But in terms of on the other end, after the experience, because this is the part that I think the entire psychedelic field is getting wrong.

00:34:02 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
So I've guided like close to 2,000 people experiences at this point. And I'm here to say that this ceremony is the doorway. It's never the destination. Like, the whole point of the medicine is to get you to the integration, like, full stop. And I think that people in this space, which is exploding now, which is great and a little scary, It's a bit Wild West, like we were talking about before. I think that people are maybe learning how to work with the medicine, but not learning how to be with the person the next day and the next week and the next year, right? It's like we open up and then, and then there's not really a lot of people are very skilled at holding people through that journey.

00:34:59 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
And that is the most important, that and safety are the most important things. So, so we, we do a lot of support on the back end and that takes, you know, it's a different shape for everybody. So obviously with the neuroplasticity and the window, you know, for the, the 2 to 4 weeks of, you know, after your experience is like where you have the opportunity to truly rewire You know, these, your brain, like these patterns that have been running your whole life, some of them that you didn't even know. I certainly didn't know the pattern that was running my whole life until I had my medicine experience. And then it, you know, became clear. But then my real work was what I did with that after. And so that stays with me and that's, that's how I carry people through, through their experiences, right?

00:35:46 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
Like you have this incredibly opening breakthrough, but then what I always say is the follow-through is what you do with it at home. Like Eden's the breakthrough. What you do at home is the follow-through, and that is the integration. And really, you know, using those, those 4 weeks, 2 to 4 weeks afterward. But it doesn't stop there, right? This is like a beautiful journey of your life. Like the most meaningful project you'll ever work on in your life is yourself.

00:36:12 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
And I'm even, you know, reticent to call it a project cuz you're a person, not a project. But, but I, I think you get, get what I mean.

00:36:19 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
So. Yeah, it's super important and it's something that I think is being very missed. I think there's a lot of hype around the medicine and the ceremony or that peak experience, but for me, that cheapens what the medicine is actually about and it really robs you of what is possible when the full experience with heavy integration is, becomes the standard.

00:36:49 Paul Austin
And how have you seen then psychedelic work help move a high performer out of maybe victim consciousness into full agency? Because when I think of high performers or leaders or founders, I would imagine many are already naturally pretty autonomous and maybe they have a certain degree of agency, but how does psychedelic work in particular help kind of move them beyond just the me, my, I to more of an agency that's about being in service rather than just what can I get out of life? Life for myself sort of thing. Like, I'm curious kind of what you've noticed or observed in that, that context.

00:37:23 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
Yeah, of course. And I'm sure, you know, you know this, and I'm sure your listeners know this, that often what is occasioned in ceremony is this feeling of connection, right? That there's like, we're all connected. Even like, you know, people talk about the mycelium network and how that's like emblematic of how we're connected, right? Everything is intertwined. And so we can then move from, just, you know, I, I, I to the we. And actually Doug, who was my partner for many years romantically, and then also we, we co-founded Eden together.

00:37:57 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
We were at dinner before we, we started Eden and I wrote on a napkin the word illness, I-L-L-N-E-S-S, and I crossed off the I and wrote we, and it becomes wellness. And that literally was like the moment we were like, We need to build that. We need to build that. And that moves somebody, like those experiences where you start to see how connected you are to other people, like whether that's in a group retreat where you can literally feel the people around you in a whole new way, or even if it's your own journey, but you drop into a space that just illuminates to humanity and the, and the, and the beauty of that.

00:38:42 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
Mm-hmm. The richness of, of being connected to something larger than yourself, you can't unsee that. And so people are changed, right? And so then the work is like, okay, what do I do with now what I have become aware of? Like, what do I do and be with that? And a lot of times people then can move into more generosity, more conscious capitalism. They start leading in a very different way.

00:39:07 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
Like they're, they become more open. They start, they become better listeners, right? They, They noticed, like, I mean, my dissertation and my doctorate was on, was on organizational culture and job satisfaction and the perception of the people at, at the different levels of their leaders and the disparity between how the leaders thought they were being perceived versus how the human capital of their organization actually saw them and how that disparity equate, like, was heavily correlated to job satisfaction, which hits things like turnover rate and lawsuits and productivity and how loyal people are to their companies. And that's what I mean when I say like it really hits the bottom line. And so when you become a better leader, because you're— you just become more whole human, people notice that. Like companies notice that. And you can pay people as much as you— as you think that you can, but they're going to work a lot harder for you if they actually feel a true bonded connection, like, that's what builds the loyalty even more than the paycheck. And

00:40:12 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
so I've seen people transform completely from like, I, I, I, and achieve, achieve, achieve, and what can present oftentimes is like narcissistic tendencies into way more generosity and generative and a marked difference in how they show up and lead.

00:40:29 Paul Austin
And I, you know, I noticed that when I was reviewing your website, you are just, you do coaching and advising in like corporate settings and in business settings as well. And so I'd be curious to hear you riff on that a little bit more, you know, as a lot of these leaders and high performers are coming in and doing psychedelic work and then going back into jobs or, you know, starting new companies, like—

00:40:50 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
Yep.

00:40:52 Paul Austin
How do you want to hold them to this sort of greater vision, if you will, right? Like, What is it that you want to bring into the space for them? How can being the work, if you will, actually change the way we do business, change the way that we work together, right? Like change the way that we collaborate?

00:41:12 Paul Austin
Because I imagine, especially in the wake of AI and everything that that's bringing up, I imagine you've given some thought and attention to this in the last year or two, right? Like how might all of this psychedelic ceremony work and especially the integration that's provided after? Actually impact the way that people show up professionally?

00:41:29 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
Yeah. So, well, it starts with you, right? So how you're showing up even for yourself, right? Because if you can start to show up for yourself, listening more to yourself, having more compassion for yourself, having more patience for yourself, then your outer world matches that. So then you're able to show up as a more compassionate leader, a better listener, You, you're a more patient person. You can catch your reactivity and instead choose to respond, right?

00:42:02 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
The Viktor Frankl, right? That, that moment between stimulus and response, like that space is, is, is your superpower, right? Like that ellipsis. And so note, like learning your patterns, seeing where you've been reactive and, and tending to that, healing that within yourself. Cuz your inner and outer world match.

00:42:21 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
If you're at war with yourself inside, you are going to show up as a highly conflicted person on the outside with your colleagues, with your partners, with your family, with your kids, with your friends, with life, right? So when we can get to this place that feels like a lot more open, spacious, there's more peace here. We bring that energy into every room that we walk into.

00:42:46 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
And as leaders, it's really important because you want to lead by example. That's the most powerful way to teach anything. Right? It's not didactic or training manuals or it's none of that. It's like, who are you showing up? Like you're the example of that for, for people that work with and for you and, and for your kids. Right?

00:43:04 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
One of the most beautiful gifts, I think, doing this work are, are parents and, and the way that their relationships with their kids transform. It's just such a blessing. Such a blessing.

00:43:16 Paul Austin
Mm-hmm.

00:43:17 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
Yeah. Oh, the AI. You asked about the AI stuff. So I've had people ask me like, are you worried that AI is gonna take over what you do? And I was like, which, like, which part are we talking about? Because I think, I think AI is amazing. I think there's a lot of utility. I think there's great things. I don't know a ton about it to like really speak. It's not my, you know, area of expertise by any means, but I use it.

00:43:42 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
I, I can see the value in it. I can see some danger around it too. But in terms of, is it gonna like take my job? 100% no. It's like, because I feel like when, when I work, and my hope is that when other Practitioners are working, like what is happening is like two, to be scientific, like two nervous systems are coming together, right? And if, and, and I feel like we have a responsibility if we're keepers of the medicine or holders of the space that we need to be in a very regulated, safe nervous system so that we have that to offer those who work with us. And that there's mirroring that happens there because they can feel that.

00:44:24 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
You're not gonna have that from AI, right? Like you can get all the information, but then we all have the same information. So then we, then it's like, okay, like what is it uniquely about you that is, that is yours, right? And that, and that's very subjective and personal and that often is your gift. Like, how are you? Like, what is your journey? What is your story? What makes you different?

00:44:48 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
And, and because now with AI, everyone's sharing every, every everything. I mean, I see people post stuff all the time. I'm like, they literally sound like echoes of each other. Everybody's sounding the same. And so it's like, okay, well, what your point of differentiation is like the truth of who you are. And so that's what I'm interested in is helping people unlock and uncover that. And that's only done for my, through my mind, my experience, and hundreds of people at this point is only done by untangling. And, and un— like, you know, unpattern, unwinding those things to strip back to like, who are you? And then bringing that forward, which also then gives the invitation to those around you to be able to do the same thing. And that's when you have like exponential growth. I mean, that's when companies like take off. Companies and sports teams, because I've worked with pro athletes too. So same, same, same mechanism.

00:45:40 Paul Austin
Yeah, kind of deconditioning from the externally imposed identities, touching back into the essence of who we are, sort of nourishing that seed into greater and greater growth and capacity. And I think that's what I hear you talking about when you're mentioning, you know, the shift from human doing to human being. I

00:45:57 Paul Austin
mean, my sort of positive optimistic outlook on AI is that it does take care of all the knowledge work, and knowledge work is sort of our current prison for doing. And so if there's a tool that can handle that, well, then that opens up new vistas for the capacity to actually do this deeper work of soul searching, of getting back into our essence, of embodying the things that really make us human, emotion and dance and love and playfulness and—

00:46:29 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
Music.

00:46:30 Paul Austin
Music and culture. I agree with you that it, it, it feels a little bit of like whenever I go on LinkedIn now, there's a bit of an AI psychosis because everyone more or less sounds the same 'cause they're doing this through Claude or ChatGPT or whatever it is.

00:46:44 Paul Austin
So we're kind of in this course correction. But my hope is that with AI, we find just another tool that's useful for this knowledge work, this doing work, which if the governance is set up appropriately and we can be collaborative in how we navigate this, I think will open up incredible opportunities for more and more of us to simply explore what it means to be and be in relationship with one another, which is why I think, you know, you mentioned no one's going to replace you as a nervous system or me as a nervous system, or, you know, because we need to be held by humans as we go through this process of not only rediscovering ourselves, but sort of also putting ourselves back together in the integration phase. Mm-hmm.

00:47:25 Paul Austin
And AI can be supportive on the edges of that, but the, the crux of it has to be human. And I think we'll remain human for sure.

00:47:34 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
Absolutely. A thousand percent that. And one, just one thing I would offer around that, the doing, cuz what I, what I think I heard you say is how AI can like kind of take some of the I don't know, the busy work maybe like off of our plate, right? That which then opens up some time and space for us to then tend to like what I, you know, the being. And, and I would say yes, that. And also you have to be very conscious of what you then choose to fill that with, right? Because nature abhors a vacuum. If there's an open space, it's going to be filled. So if you're taking things off your plate because you're now delegating that to AI and it's efficient, it's crazy efficient, and then you have extra time, then you, you know, you have this space and it's like, what will I choose to fill that with? Well, if you're still running on do, have, be. Formula, you're going to just fill it with more doings. Even if it's the doings of, you know, things that I love, like, like even if it's the breathwork and, and the red light therapy and the protocols and like, you're gonna, you're still gonna be doing, doing, doing in that open space. Your doings might look different, but it's also, it's still the same chasing and grasping, which is different from. Actually being right. And so that's where we talk about the two different desires. Like, are you doing— are you now filling those things with doings that you're utilizing to prove that you are enough or that you have worth, right? Or are you doing it from a place of already knowing deeply in your bones you're already whole, you're already enough, and then choosing from that place? Because that's a very different architecture and a very different lived experience.

00:49:22 Paul Austin
That's really important to emphasize. It comes back to the generative versus grasping. Be generative with that extra time. Don't just grasp to try to fill it with more filler, basically, is what I hear you saying. So the capacity to be intentional is important.

00:49:39 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
And it's tricky because I think that our world, whether it's psychedelic or wellness, we're obsessed with optimizing. Right. But you can't optimize worth. Okay. Like you can't optimize worth. And so sometimes people say, okay, I just won't, you know, focus everything outward. I'll do it inward.

00:50:02 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
I, I was kind of saying this earlier, but then it, it really is, it's mimicking, it's the same machine of chasing and it can get confusing because it can look very spiritual and it can look like, I, you know, I'm doing the work and this is the stuff, but it's like, Okay.

00:50:21 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
The kind of the litmus test for that is like, if you weren't doing those things, how are you with yourself? Like, how are you actually feeling about the human that you are without those things? Like, 'cause I think that tells you, okay, I'm, I'm still using, I'm using different filler, but I'm still using those things to kind of eject out of the, the being, right? Like, like how, how are you in your quiet hours? When you're not doing anything. That's what I'm interested in, because if we can find peace there, that's where we want to start from.

00:50:53 Paul Austin
That's beautifully said. Well, folks, Dr. Stefanie Kleine, you can find out more about her book, Be the Work: The Shift from Human Doing to Human Being. You can preorder on her website, which I believe is drStefanie— that's with an F— Kleine, ending with an e, dot com. We'll post and publish the link on the website. So you can also just go to Third Wave and find it there. So drStefaniekline.com.

00:51:18 Paul Austin
The Sacred House of Eden is thesacredhouseofeden.com. And again, that new book is Be the Work: The Shift from Human Doing to Human Being. Stefanie, any other places you'd like to point folks or sort of final words that you'd like to share before we close?

00:51:32 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
Yeah, thank you for asking. So I actually made a gift for your listeners. It's about a 10-minute guided meditation. It's called Already Enough. And it's, it's great for integration, like when you start to maybe feel far from the medicine, or just great when you need to just really be reminded of everything that we're kind of talking about here today, of like that being underneath all of the striving and achieving. I think it's about 10 or 12 minutes. So I'll give you that link, Paul, so that you can share that.

00:52:04 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
And then I would just offer that anyone that You know, if this landed for you and you're interested in exploring this, definitely check out the websites. And also, you know, start with the book. I think that's a great place to start, like whether you're working with psychedelics or not. Like it's, it's definitely not a book about psychedelics. They're woven throughout because they're woven throughout my life. But it's, it's, it's whether you're psychedelic curious or, or, you know, you've been at this for a long time or you would never explore psychedelics, like I would say any of those camps, like start with the book and yeah.

00:52:41 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
And just thank you to you, Paul. I've said this when I was with you in Malibu. I just really appreciate the way that you're doing what you're doing and how you're showing up in this space. And I wish we had more of you. I just, I have a lot of respect and— Thank you. Appreciation for you. So thank you.

00:53:01 Paul Austin
Thank you, Stefanie. It was great to finally do this. Folks, make sure you check out Stefanie's new book, "Be the Work: The Shift from Human Doing to Human Being," and also her work at the Sacred House of Eden. And Stefanie, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. It was great to have you on.

00:53:17 Dr. Stefanie Kleine
Thank you.

00:53:19 Paul Austin
All right, there you have it. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend, colleague, or loved one who might benefit from the conversation. Conversation. And if you haven't already, follow the Psychedelic Podcast on your favorite podcast platforms. Leave a rating and review. This helps people to discover more of these conversations and supports the growth of the show. You can also subscribe to our YouTube channel for full video episodes and additional educational content. Follow us on Instagram. I'm on Instagram, X, and LinkedIn. Just search for me, Paul Austin. All right, thanks for tuning in, and we'll see you next week.

00:54:09 Paul Austin
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