The Transformational Power of Liminal Spaces with Lynda Samphire
This is Wendy Halley, and you're listening to Lucid Cafe. Hi there. Thanks for joining me. Well, I hope you're hanging in there and able to find moments of amusement in the midst of the chaos. And in the other moments, we can immerse ourselves in conversations like the one you're about to listen to.
Wendy:Ones that open doors to possibility and healing and maybe even give us a glimpse of just how complex the nature of reality seems to be. In today's episode, my guest, Lynda Samphire, opens the door to the transformational power of Liminal Spaces. Lynda is a highly intuitive transformational coach, a trusted guide for those ready to explore their gifts, creativity, and inner wisdom. In this conversation, Lynda talks about bypassing the rational mind to speak to the nervous system, the subconscious and soul through modalities such as dream work, plant medicines and light language. She trained in disciplines such as psychology, Reiki, transpersonal hypnotherapy and plant medicines to help support others on their path toward emotional freedom, inner clarity, stress relief and creative flow.
Wendy:So please enjoy my conversation with Lynda Samphire. Lynda, thank you so much for joining me.
Lynda:Thank you, Wendy. I'm excited to be here... and have a fabulous conversation.
Wendy:Okay. No pressure!
Lynda:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Not at all.
Lynda:Okay.
Wendy:Let's see see if we can pull this off: a fabulous conversation! I think we can do it.
Lynda:I think we can do it.
Wendy:I don't know much about what you do, just like a broad overview, but the impression I got from looking at your website and some of the materials that your publicist sent over, it sounds like you dabble in lots of different territories under a kind of umbrella of sorts that unifies them, but how would you describe the work that you do?
Lynda:Yeah, thank you for noticing that. There is a lot of different modalities that I bring in, but all of my work bypasses the mind and is really speaking directly to the nervous system, the soul, and the subconscious. Guiding people back to that space of relationship with their natural rhythm. And whether that's their dreams, their consciousness, weaving paths of ancient medicines and frequency of light language, each tool has its own lineage and integrates. Reconnecting us to the truth of who we are.
Lynda:I'm a weaver and my role is to weave these doorways together so people can remember their essence and live from that soul led creation where embodiment is our rhythm and it becomes natural and life begins to flow with trust and connection rather than outsourcing and fixing rather a soul led rhythm.
Wendy:Okay. So there's a lot there, and I'm trying to imagine which direction we can go in in the scope of this conversation because there's many options. Why don't we start with the basics? How did you even end up where you are? Doing the work that you're doing?
Lynda:Yeah, that was a journey in itself. My, I lost my mother when I was two years old and we're unaware of what grief is, what death is. I just knew she was gone. It really started this functioning anxiety and depression, though I did not call it that at the time within, and my body was in survival mode. I had this underlying rhythm that soon became functioning anxiety and I was a doer, a pleaser, kind of following do this next, do this next, over exerting myself, looking really strong on the outside, but the inside was a mess and I really just came to this point in my life one day where I was like this is not working, like I really can't do this it was I don't want to call it a breakdown but it was a moment in time where when I was young where I actually did try to take my own life and I was trying to escape myself and so it really led me into self observation, self curiosity, the human behavior, death, what all of that means, why we're here, and that's when I really started working in this field.
Wendy:Okay, but you referenced being pretty young. How young were you when you started doing those kinds of transpersonal explorations or just exploring your inner worlds to begin with?
Lynda:I was pretty much in survival mode till my mid twenties. And then after that, I didn't really know it, but I was moving in this direction. There were always these wishes. I wish I was this. I wish I was that.
Lynda:It's meant for some people. And so I really started studying and looking at other people and going, that's just for some and it wasn't till you know really it wasn't until I started working with plant medicine that it really that remembering came in. Prior to that I heavily had vivid dreams all along the way. And I began working with them more, looking at that as kind of the original medicine. A lot of my life, not that I didn't have my fun times and my enjoyment, it wasn't always, but it was, you know, it was just do, do, do and over exhausted.
Lynda:I was sick a lot because I worked too much or I, you know, I thought the more I did that would bring in what I was looking for and, and also earning your love, earning love, proving yourself so that you are That was huge for me. And I thought that was kind of how you did it.
Wendy:Well, I don't think you're alone in that. I think that's kind of epidemic that we end up associating our identity with doing rather than being, unfortunately.
Lynda:Yeah. Definitely.
Wendy:Yeah. And wonder why we just feel kinda empty or unsatisfied. This might be a really odd question, but do you recall the moment when you understood what death really meant, what it was, since you experienced it so young? It's an abstract concept.
Lynda:I do. Have that. It was at the depths of darkness for me. I was sitting in my living room on the floor and I was hitting this space where I was so uncomfortable. I didn't know what to do.
Lynda:I was like, how do I get rid of this? And I just wanted to get away from it.
Wendy:What was it that you were trying to get away from?
Lynda:This feeling inside this, this feeling of uncomfortability in the body where I just wanted to escape the body. I looked outside and I looked up at the trees, I'm like, what do I do? What do I do? And I looked up and I'm like, oh my gosh, death can't even get me out of this because death is the continuum. Like I can't die and get out, this isn't gonna fix it, right?
Lynda:And all of a sudden I heard this voice that said, feel it, breathe and feel it. Your body comes first. And so I did. I'm like, okay, what did I have to lose? It was almost at that point where you're like, well death doesn't make it better and here doesn't make it better and it's almost like the ego was like, oh my god what do I do?
Lynda:And it hit this moment of just like this and clarity then came through and it was from there that the tears continued to come and fall and move that energy. And I have to say that was really that point where I was like, oh, this is a continuum. Like this is actually part of the experience our soul is living, as uncomfortable as it was. I realized that it was the resistance to it that was creating a tight tightness in the chest and the looking for the answer to fix it.
Wendy:The kind of despondency, yeah.
Lynda:Yeah, yeah, I mean, it was so, it's such a powerful and I was just, the wind was blowing that day and I was just looking at the trees moving back and forth and it was such a powerful moment. Even feel chills just speaking about it now and going back to that and it's everything, words are so small to describe everything that was flowing through me at that time, but for the first time in my life I felt held and I didn't feel alone. I felt like there was something higher, something larger in my life that was guiding me.
Wendy:Yeah. I think most of us have to get to that place in order to connect with that aspect.
Lynda:Yeah.
Wendy:Yeah. Yeah. Which is it's a hard road to... Well, that's the way it is. Right?
Lynda:Definitely. And I'm a hard nut to crack.
Wendy:So fair enough. So it sounds like you were older then it wasn't like early childhood or were you like in your teenage years or in your 20s?
Lynda:No, this was more in my 30s.
Wendy:Oh wow, okay, that's when you really understood.
Lynda:Yeah, and I don't know if I understood it, I just knew that there was a direction I was being guided in and I started really working in my sleep state, in my dream state there because my mind was too active during the day.
Wendy:Gotcha, so the idea of of death, at that point, you were hoping it would be an escape from the despondency, from the discomfort. And Mhmm. That's when you realized, nope. Mhmm. There's no real escaping this except through living or not not escaping it, healing it, I guess, or being
Lynda:in relationship with it or Yeah. Yeah. What do we call it? Right? I guess I looked at my body expanded and made space for it.
Lynda:And then I could actually take a deep breath in.
Wendy:Yeah,
Lynda:and it's funny, remember once I went to a doctor and they said you're a shallow breather. I'm like what's that? And then I realized yeah, was
Wendy:It's so rude. Well, you're an asshole.
Lynda:And at that time, Charles, I'm like, I don't think I'm breathing below my, like, upper chest.
Wendy:Right. Yeah.
Lynda:Yeah.
Wendy:Yeah. Not the full breath.
Lynda:Yeah.
Wendy:Yeah. Well, that, yep. Like you said, you were in survival mode. So it's kind of hard to to breathe deeply, I guess, when your nervous system is feeling like it's
Lynda:Yeah, in constant fight or flight.
Wendy:Yeah, exactly.
Lynda:Yeah.
Wendy:So then all of these experiences propelled you to be of service to others?
Lynda:First I did my own work. So I did my own.
Wendy:I didn't want to skip through that.
Lynda:Yeah and then I mean all along I've been doing my own work since you know I went into psychology, I went into Reiki, energy healing. I mean, did all of these modalities. That was part of the chasing though too, chasing the healing loop and more certifications, more certifications. And I started my practice over twenty years ago and I worked with past life regressions, regression therapy with transpersonal hypnotherapy. And then it was about five years ago, five, six years ago that I entered plant medicine.
Lynda:And that was when the crack opened completely.
Wendy:Okay, so what did that end up looking like? What medicine did you work with?
Lynda:I worked with psilocybin to start with, and then moved into a medicine called 5MEO which is a dissolution of the ego.
Wendy:I've heard about that, that's no joke.
Lynda:No, it really isn't. If we think about our ego, it takes us out of the dualities of life, the ego and ego is tied to our identity. So if we're not ready for it, we literally can become very dysregulated. I was very lucky and fortunate to have a medicine woman that guided me through it very, very compassionately, lovingly and held space for me.
Wendy:So important, I'm glad you had that.
Lynda:Oh, I can't even tell you the importance of having a container because it's scary when we're all, I am a mother, I am a healer, I am a student. Mean we're so tied to the identity of who we are that when we step into this space of complete expansion we can be a bit dysregulated and we need the container. Since then I really discovered that we need to begin with restoration in the body first. And so I moved into Aminita Muscaria and really beginning with that medicine, that's my most used medicine, especially right now. Our times are very, very tumultuous out there and chaotic and it works with our GABA, our central nervous system.
Lynda:So it soothes the body where you show up to do your work, you're doing yoga, you're going to retreats, ceremonies, showing up and then it's not sustainable. And it's because that nervous system is still gripping. Almenita Muscaria comes in and roots us kind of tills the soil, so to speak, and brings back the body's rhythm, allowing for these other medicines then to come in and do what they do.
Wendy:What do you mean by other medicines?
Lynda:Like psilocybin where we're coming in yeah or five MEO and Oscar any of these psychedelics that come in. Almenita's working with a different system.
Wendy:But it's a mushroom as well.
Lynda:It's the red mushroom with the white dots. It's the icon
Wendy:Alice in Wonderland. Yeah.
Lynda:Yeah. And it's, it works with restoring sleep, getting our REM back, connecting us back to our dreams. And then during the day, soothing our nervous system where we're held.
Wendy:My understanding is that that could be a psychedelic as well. You using it?
Lynda:Yeah, you're right. You're absolutely right.
Wendy:In a different way, like a microdose or?
Lynda:Can't overdose on it, but it can be really, really uncomfortable. I like to leave those larger ceremonial journeys to the traditional psychedelics that works with the serotonin system. This one again works with agave and it can be pretty uncomfortable it's a dissociative. On a micro dosing basis however, very, very soothing and that ebb and flow comes back, coming back to this space of homestasis and taking our central nervous system and moving from sympathetic to parasympathetic, right?
Lynda:From there,
Lynda:our other it kind of ripples out to like our vagus nerve, our all our other systems start to do their jobs. And then when we maybe begin microdosing psilocybin that opens up our emotional pathways, actually have the body that we feel safe in to look at those where in other circumstances we might go into resistance.
Wendy:Yes, that is a problem, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. On occasion. And even without substances, can be.
Lynda:Definitely. Yeah.
Wendy:I mean, that's the thing... Intellectually, like, yes, I'm ready. And then emotionally, no, I'm not. It's all unconscious, right? Or I'm afraid or whatever.
Lynda:It's all. And I think there's always gonna be a fear going into it, the fear of the unknown, right? Many times I'll start people with their dreams as dreams are our first medicine, right?
Wendy:So that's your intro to the work?
Lynda:Sometimes if they're not ready for the medicines, we might combine the medicines and do two, like my dream series, microdose almanita alongside of it have chosen, but dreams were the first medicine and I think they're like our training field for the altered state in a way that feels safe, where we're bypassing the rational mind, connecting to the soul and then that will feel different as we begin microdosing. Gotcha. Yeah, so not that it's necessary, but if someone's coming into it and I'm listening to them saying, let's start working with dreams first and then move you into the medicines or we'll do side by side.
Wendy:Okay, so it sounds like you incorporate plant medicines in your work. It sounds like that is a big part of it. Yeah?
Lynda:Most definitely. Yeah, incorporating the medicines in. Some people just stay with DreamWorks. People just stay with Almanita. Okay.
Wendy:So they can kind of choose from the menu of options you offer and see what works for them? Is that how it works?
Lynda:Yeah, think we do like a consult and an intake and we kind of see. These medicines require space in our lives. So if we don't have the space and we're in the middle of moving changing jobs or something, it might just be on amenity to mascaria because that's just going to soothe the system and move us through. And then when called, if called, we move into psilocybin.
Lynda:So there's not a wrong or right way to approach the medicine, it's the individual way And it's very, very relational. These medicines require a relationship because they're live beings and they're taking us and guiding us back to the relationship with ourselves. So relationship before technique. I love that. Yeah.
Wendy:And that does seem to be the way it works, Ideally.
Lynda:Yeah, most definitely. I think Amanita is such a powerful medicine. Her connection to the forest is so incredible and you feel her energy, her beingness. So she cannot be replicated or grown inside like psilocybin. She can actually, she has relationship with trees.
Lynda:And so it's that root water system and that's the only way she grows. So she comes, she brings the forest energy with her.
Wendy:Oh, that's very cool. Yeah, this is a plant I don't know much about, or fungi, I guess.
Lynda:And she's special. She's really special and when people really start working with her, they feel that. And she's so powerful that I've had people enter into my dream work and rather than take the medicine, they're just putting under their pillow.
Wendy:Oh really? That's powerful. The essence of the mushroom. Yeah,
Lynda:yeah. I mean, all these medicines have essence. You'll feel them before you even start working with them.
Wendy:Makes sense. Yeah.
Lynda:Yeah.
Wendy:Before we get into your plant medicine work, I'd love to dive into your dream work a little bit more and just get an understanding of how you look at the dreaming and yeah. And how you work with them.
Lynda:Yeah, so for me dreams have always been very powerful. My mother used to come in my dreams and I feel that are, many of us are missing this most powerful sacred space and sanctuary at night when we sleep. So if we look back through time, again, I look at dreams being that first medicine and probably actually guided us to the plant medicine, to the forest.
Wendy:Most likely.
Lynda:Yeah, yeah in ancient tribes there was a dream weaver in the tribe, in the Xhosa tribe, the African Xhosa tribe, if you're not remembering your dreams, you're sick and you're taken in by the elders until your dreams come back. Originally we had two sleeps where we would sleep the first part of the night and in the middle of the night between one and three, which is very common that we wake up between those hours, we would wake up, we would get up, we would pray, meditate, stoke the fire, maybe go next door, smoke a peace pipe, talk about a dream and then go back and do that second sleep and it was the first thing we did when we woke up in the morning. If there was moving, like the tribe was moving or hunting, they would go to the Dreamweaver. Which direction do we go in? So there's this very powerful connection that we've forgotten that we all have that we're outsourcing rather than coming inwards.
Lynda:So it's this direct connection with the soul, with the subconscious and we're also processing a lot of our emotions through the dreams throughout the day. So I like to look at it as we receive these codes when we're sleeping, these symbols because I mean really we're like what was that in my dream, right? And we go to kind of the literal like well that person was doing this to me in my dream when in actuality looking at the dream as you like I am that person I represent and the aspect because there's a message coming through. It's about really learning our own soul's language and what that does for us is it builds our own intuition, our own trust within, our cognitive abilities increase even just by dream tracking, just by every morning waking up and going a cat, a red ball, a blue car and that's all you don't need to know. We'd love to go to the dictionaries or now AI, what's that mean?
Lynda:That's the universal meaning, Go to here first and sit with it. A lot of times they'll show up during the day.
Wendy:So that's how you work with folks is to try to encourage them to decipher the meaning themselves rather than looking to out outward sources?
Lynda:Yeah, we're running the dream through as a feeling. Okay. It's funny lately, I've been drawing these tarot cards and then I put the tarot cards alongside my bed. And I'm like let's work with these, let's show what's and I think one of them one day it was the upside down death card which meant something is standing here and it's ready to move and I'm hanging on to it and it was anger, my whole dream was about anger and I'm like, oh okay, I was super screaming and yelling in my dream and then I let that run through me and the word undermining came through like areas in our life where we feel very undermined and I'm like wow that has been a theme most of my life.
Wendy:There you go.
Lynda:And my voice and being heard and so there's all kinds of things we can do to kind of incubate things at night and then allowing that feeling to come through and it may be all day, not that we're focusing on it but there might be these little light bulbs that go off and like oh we might have experiences of being undermined that day, might go oh that's it and not to judge it as a victim but to go, oh I totally understand that and I can see where I have been working maybe to prove the self to not be undermined but that is perpetuating it really just coming in and building that trust and love for self. But first we have to sleep. We have Which to hit those
Wendy:is also an issue for a lot of us too.
Lynda:Yeah, yes, definitely.
Wendy:If you're not hitting each stage of sleep then you may not even, you may not even be hitting the dream stage.
Lynda:No, we need the rums. Then, you know, my, the biggest thing I hear is, well, I don't remember my dreams. That's the number one. We're all dreaming. Otherwise we kind of would not be stable.
Wendy:Unless you have a sleep disorder
Wendy:where you're not able to or do you not buy into that?
Lynda:Well, I think that no, it's not that I don't buy into it, I think there's underlying.
Wendy:Like unconscious reasons why the person isn't.
Lynda:Yeah. I think there's something in there. And so I really notice when people begin, first of all, look at it being nervous system and I've gone through my moments when I can't sleep and what's insomnia, it's trying to sleep and so there's tools to do at night creating that sleep space. One of the number one things I hear and I've noticed is empaths, the sensitives. Clearing the energy before you go to bed rather than taking it to bed is so important.
Lynda:So that shower at night, that bath at night, that just dry brushing the body. That's a great suggestion, yeah. Yeah just and creating it as a sanctuary and okay, need to go talk to my soul about this when it comes to disorders like night terrors
Wendy:or seeking like a physiological thing like sleep apnea or where people they're not having restful sleep because they have a physiological issue.
Lynda:Yeah I think or
Wendy:hormonal imbalance or
Lynda:yeah sometimes I hate to go to the condition and I like to start looking what's underneath it and a lot of times that can come out in our our daytime. What are the foods we're eating?
Lynda:A big one for me is mouth taping. Are we sleeping with our mouth open? And a lot of times mouth taping when we're sleeping at night can actually bring in that sleep. Doctor so I'm not going to diagnose someone, but I'm going to look beyond the condition.
Wendy:Gotcha, yeah, love the idea of incubating a dream like with using tarot, that's really cool.
Lynda:That one just came to me recently, I thought oh like I'll try this. Yeah, really neat. Yeah, because sometimes they're kind of, you get them and they go, oh that's really difficult to understand, but you're, you begin that language of the soul is gonna, it's gonna bring in something different for you. Yeah. It was very I was like, oh, okay.
Wendy:So you like to work with people in their dreaming.
Lynda:Mhmm.
Wendy:Or at least as an on ramp.
Lynda:A tool. Yeah.
Wendy:And some people stay in that realm. They just work with their dreaming and then you can expand on that in the work that you do and that is by using plant medicines.
Lynda:Definitely. The other, like dreaming is our built in oracle and I like to look at it as all these oracles coming in and guiding us. Yoga is an oracle, meditation, plant medicine. So yes, bringing it in so we connect our own inner oracle.
Wendy:I got a question for you. This question was brought up in my shamanic training.
Lynda:Okay.
Wendy:The teacher asked, who is the dreamer? What do you think?
Lynda:That's an interesting one and I love it because who is the dreamer? Is it us? Is it the soul? Is it this the dream that we're in right now?
Wendy:Or all three?
Lynda:I believe it's all three. I believe it's a universal type of connection beyond what science has explained it as. I believe it's the connection to the spiritual realm. So when we think of dreaming, it has this kind of stereotype of oh it was just a dream when in actuality is the dreamer the connection to the power within the power that we're trying to go out here for but the vast universe so maybe the universe is the dreamer. Yeah, maybe the soul is the dreamer speaking through us.
Lynda:I don't think there's a right or wrong answer for that and maybe today I'm the dreamer and maybe tomorrow the universe is the dreamer, if that makes sense.
Wendy:Well, it's very abstract, right?
Lynda:You think words are too small to give it?
Wendy:Yeah, yeah, I just thought I'd throw that out there.
Lynda:Yeah, no it's good and it's a brain toaster or a Well, it's maybe because your ego might start looking for that answer and it can't really come up with one because it's so big. It really is a space that bypasses the rational mind.
Wendy:Yeah. Well, that's all the territory you're talking about. Yeah. Which is the whole point is my guess, right, is to get out of cognition.
Lynda:Like, it's built this trust within me with my own intuitiveness and my own believing and self confidence in myself that is indescribable, and it just happened over time.
Wendy:Do you have any theories as to why that is? Why that just focusing in this way has helped develop your intuition and helped you develop your trust in it?
Lynda:Yes, we're always, I hear a lot, I want to build my intuition, what is intuition? And it really comes down to trusting in the self. When you really begin to have those conversations, those very individual and personal conversations with the soul, your soul, there's this feeling that comes in of expansion and beyond your knowing. So, it connected me and up to the remembering. The remembering of who I am and I'm bigger than this because I have had some really crazy things happen in my dreams that, are not something you can put explanations to and in a simple form, you know when we go to bed with a problem then we have the answer in the morning and we can look for that all day long and then we go to sleep and the answer comes through in the morning.
Lynda:Right there is the connection to intuition and knowing that everything we have is within us and that's where we visit it. Gotcha. So I look at it as kind of a training ground or ceremonial work in a sense.
Wendy:I guess what you're saying, if I'm understanding you correctly, if you have enough direct experience with your dream that correlates with your lived experience, so your liminal experiences correlates with your lived waking experiences.
Lynda:Yeah. And they start to mesh together where you're like, wait, was that a dream or did that really happen?
Wendy:Great question. Yeah.
Lynda:Yeah. I had this when I was growing up, I used to have this recurring dream of Michael Myers and Halloween. If that was my nightmare, he'd come out of the walls, he'd be chasing me. It's super scary and you go to sleep at night going, don't want to go to bed. This feels uncomfortable.
Lynda:Something's stirring.
Wendy:Sure, yeah.
Lynda:Through my healing journey, one night I had a dream where Michael Myers was sick in a hospital and I'm holding his hand healing him, which is representing my fear. And then I was out walking at night here in the Pacific Northwest. It was September. It was kind of rainy, leaves were starting to fall, which I love and it was dark and I was getting ready to start a dream series and I was thinking, gosh, it's so amazing how like your dream life is coming, you know, it's coming into my waking life, like things are happening and at that moment I looked across the street and there was someone walking down the street dressed as Michael Myers.
Wendy:I had a feeling you were gonna say that, yeah
Lynda:and was like oh my gosh and I'm like is that I'm trying to take a picture nothing came out of my camera.
Wendy:Did you want to go hold his hand?
Lynda:No, I was just kind of laughing. I'm like okay universe and then I turned down the street and he turned and he was walking behind me and I'm like just like my dream this is my dream and I laugh so hard because I'm like the fear I felt through the years is laughable now and so you could see the healing and that's when it's like okay transmuted yeah Yeah, I, I, all this in here is here. So when our dream life begins showing up in our waking life, we're paying attention to ourselves, we're automatically intuitive. It's part of our innateness that wakes up and then we trust in it.
Wendy:Right, and it also, I mean, the bonus is, or the point of it is, it sounds like, is that you now have a different relationship with fear.
Lynda:The healing, right? And what stops us? Fear. Yeah. Yeah.
Wendy:I mean, symptoms, at least from where I sit, have a story to tell us. And and you can like, when we're presenting with a certain issue, it's not about getting rid of it. It's about making friends with it.
Lynda:Agreed.
Wendy:Yeah. The same thing with the symbolism that shows up in your waking dreams or your nighttime dreams is rather than being turned off or afraid of the symbols it's like lean into them and find out what Yeah, spirit they
Lynda:the emotions that come through and
Lynda:rather than figuring out what the symbol means universally, sorry, what it means for you, yeah, what's the feeling and then the feeling's going to connect with the language. How does your soul speak to you? I have many people start their own dream dictionary Michael Myers fear.
Wendy:That's that's a really cool thing the language of your symbolism.
Lynda:It's all so individual. It's fun to look at the universal meaning and like I've had words show up in my dreams before where I'm like that's a strange word I've never heard it before we might want to look it up and see what it means numbers showing up in dreams so things like that yeah but I really encourage people to allow the dream to fill through. A dream circle would look like someone speaking, let's say I'm speaking and you're listening to my dream and you're allowing my dream to move through you. You're going to get a lesson from that. It's going to be your feeling, your share, you're going to get something from that is that oneness comes in as you share it I might get something else from it too.
Lynda:Yeah, Yeah so they're so personal, so individual, so powerful and it is the connection to our soul. Even Carl Jung said that the realms you know pathways to the soul are the dreams, right, and the imagination, both.
Wendy:Well, and like you said, it's the original medicine.
Lynda:Yes. And I believe and I feel these met you know, where the dreams guided us to the medicines, the medicines are now guiding us back to the dream world.
Wendy:Yeah, that makes perfect sense.
Lynda:It can prepare us for altered states that might feel uncomfortable. They're a natural altered state.
Wendy:In our culture, this territory is so foreign and we can take it more literally. Then working with the plants, are you doing this in person? Are you working with people at a distance?
Lynda:I work with people at a distance, though I hold retreats. Like we just came off this last weekend off of a ceremonial retreat and we did the first night was Amanita Tea moving up to the retreat in the weeks prior we worked with our dreams coming into it. So the first night was fire ceremony with a small microdose of Almenida. It's some drumming and light language and kind of connecting to the land and our ancestors and then the next morning we went into psilocybin and had a full ceremony with psilocybin and then the sound bathing and then the last day was flower essences to reground back into the body.
Wendy:Oh, nice.
Wendy:Sounds like a really lovely retreat.
Lynda:Was powerful.
Wendy:I bet it was. Yeah. And have you been were you trained by someone to facilitate medicine journeys, or did you just - are you like listening to the plants and doing it that way?
Lynda:Both, both. Again the plants are, they speak pretty loud. I did, I studied with a medicine woman for four years and working with these medicines learning about them and then I did a year long training in Mexico with trauma informed five MMO. So yeah, I've worked with various teachers. Have to say though the most powerful is the connection with the medicines and speaking with them.
Wendy:Yeah, I bet. Yeah. That makes sense. So maybe for people who don't understand what five MEO is, if you can describe what that is, that would be possible.
Lynda:Yeah, so five MEO is a molecule. In its original state it comes from the Luphorovirus toad. However, it's the glands of the toad though they've been over secreted and so they're starting to disappear. So we now ethically work with synthetic, they come out of the, the toads are in the known from the Sonora Desert. Yeah.
Lynda:Yeah. So I work with jaguar and for me I work with it on a very small basis. I don't hold large, large journeys for it but it dissolves into our essence. It's can be known as the god molecule where we go beyond kind of where we go and we die which has always been my my big curiosity so it's the ego dissolution.
Wendy:Right, right, yeah. Yeah. Okay, that's helpful because yeah it's not one of the psychedelics that's commonly talked about.
Lynda:No, it's not super well documented and there's still a lot to learn. It's one of the medicines that doesn't carry a lot of lineage with it, where Amanita Muscaria has all this lineage and psilocybin and Ayahuasca they have all those.
Wendy:Well you got a moving target; you got to chase around a frog right!? Mean
Lynda:yeah right and who knows how did we know to like secrete their glands and you would have an experience.
Wendy:Well maybe the frog shared it.
Lynda:Yeah exactly and so it's but it strips away the ego identity it's not so visual it's and it does it feels very primal you know it feels like you're going through thousands of years when it's been maybe nine minutes through the whole journey.
Wendy:It's a very quick experience.
Lynda:Yeah and one to really enter with integrity and reverence and not as an escape or a fixing.
Wendy:Well I think that's true with any psychedelic
Lynda:Yeah, this one especially, but yes, all of them. Well said.
Wendy:The unfortunate thing about it's that kind of wanting a quick fix and the sort of psychedelic tourism that seems to be
Lynda:No. And there there needs to be a strong container, a huge strong container prior and afterwards.
Wendy:No. I I've certainly gotten the phone calls where it there's an experience didn't go well for someone and yeah. Yeah. Didn't have a knowledgeable facilitator.
Lynda:So important.
Wendy:Yeah. So then you're in the Pacific Northwest, you mentioned a little while ago.
Lynda:I'm in the Pacific Northwest. I work over zoom. My most used medicine is Almanita to soothe the nervous system and become embodied to get that in preparation.
Wendy:Yeah, that makes sense to start that way absolutely.
Lynda:Yeah, it really especially for our time right now I really feel like she's the medicine of our moment and we're not looking for altered states except for in our dreams. We're looking for that kind of dial that shifts upwards and we feel more grounded, more focused, more clarity, more like okay I can do this. And then developing that relationship with the medicines could be called to a larger dose. Could be, but not necessary.
Wendy:Gotcha. So you're dialing it down at this point.
Lynda:I really got that message about three years ago that these medicines really need to be approached and served with a feminine energy about it because we're not in a space and we're coming up to which this is prior to 2025. We're coming up to an area where we're really going to need to feel embodied and grounded and not dysregulated because we're going to have enough of that. Yeah. We'll have enough of that going on around us that it's going to be so important to go inward and to feel safe in here within the body.
Wendy:Yeah. No, that's sounds like a wonderful approach and necessary. And
Lynda:if the body feels safe, nervous system can integrate and everything else can.
Wendy:Yeah, and then you can tolerate and manage.
Lynda:And heal.
Wendy:The external world a little bit better.
Lynda:And then this soul feels respected, it feels like okay you're paying attention to me, we're working, I can speak now. Going back to remember when I was, felt like a shallow breather. Yeah, I just, I breathe in now, like I have these deeper breaths, there's more expansion in the body, so. Right,
Wendy:So then I'm I'm curious, how do you connect people with the medicines since the whole legality thing?
Lynda:Yeah. Isn't that interesting?
Wendy:Yeah.
Lynda:I have safe sourcing. Gotcha. Have safe sourcing for it. Okay. So Aminita is actually, well, Aminita is legal.
Wendy:Oh, it is. Okay.
Lynda:It is legal except for.
Wendy:I've actually never really done any psychedelics.
Lynda:Okay yeah I hadn't either until like five years ago. Aminita is legal except for Louisiana. Okay. I don't know what to say about that one. Yeah and I think because we're working with not the serotonin like traditional psychedelics so she gets kind of left out of-
Lynda:She gets left out of the loop even though you can have a pretty extreme psychedelic effect with her taking too much. And I can't stress enough the importance of sourcing and where we're sourcing and what you're receiving. I cannot stress that enough.
Wendy:So what do you recommend as far as sourcing that particular mushroom for people who might wanna calm their nervous systems down and start a relationship with this mushroom? They contact me. Okay.
Lynda:Yeah, I haven't. I source from a medicine woman of great integrity and reverence and each medicine is carefully packed. It receives energetic frequency of light language and it is free of heavy metals and any other substances. Normally when there's a poor or adverse effect with the medicines, it's either it has something else in it, it wasn't sourced properly. Think of food and how we source food.
Lynda:Sure. Yeah. And a container wasn't properly prepared.
Wendy:Understood. Yeah. Now that's that's wonderful that you have that connection. Yeah. Yeah.
Wendy:And before we sign off, what do you mean by light language? I've heard a couple of other people mention this, but what is your understanding of what that is?
Lynda:Yeah, that's a fun one, not a gift I was looking for. I was in my kitchen one day, sneezed three times and I just started speaking this language and light language is soul language. It's the language of our soul. I feel it's a universal language that we all used to speak and we have forgotten. And it works as a frequency, it bypasses again, the rational mind.
Lynda:And it is a felt sense as a sound like sound bathing and it brings in a balance within the body.
Wendy:So you just did it organically, just happened spontaneously for you?
Lynda:Yeah, it's super weird.
Wendy:Because I have heard of folks who've learned how to access it
Lynda:too like, I think. Yeah, that's a remembering. Yeah, it's a remembering. We all have the ability to speak it and I think what happens when we go to try too hard to learn it is we're trying and then it needs to be something. I've worked with people where I've, you know, I've done light language, provided a space with light language and then some of them are speaking it in their sleep.
Wendy:All right. It's not like a traditional communication. It's more of a---
Lynda:Do you want a sample?
Wendy:Yeah. Sure. Okay. Cool. (Lynda offers a sample of light language)
Wendy:Okay. Does everyone sound like that when they speak?
Lynda:I think everybody's different.
Wendy:Yeah. Didn't know if it was individualistic or if wouldn't it be wild if everyone ended up saying the same kind of phrasing
Lynda:Oh, yeah. I think That would be wild. I mean I like, with somebody else's speaking light language, it's very familiar to me and I can understand it. People have listened to light language and said oddly that sounds familiar.
Wendy:It does have that quality to it, it does sound familiar absolutely when you were speaking it.
Lynda:Yeah. And really what just came out through that language, light language was the path to the soul is the connection to the heart. And so that piece that I was just doing was connecting us back to the heart rather than coming and coming out of the mind. We can use a little of that. It was moving from here to here.
Lynda:There's different ones that come through like angelic, very fairy like, galactic and very primal and ancestral.
Wendy:Neat! Yeah definitely territory I'm not familiar with.
Lynda:So yeah it's it's again I wasn't either and it is kind of weird but when we listen to it and just allow it to move through our bodies we can begin to feel a tear sometimes tears come out of my eyes just as the movement of energy not as a sadness but love that frequency of love is so powerful our bodies begin to move out so it can come in.
Wendy:And as you were speaking it, the light language, I could see and feel the joy that you were experiencing and translated it. But for the folks listening who aren't able to see you because it's audio only.
Lynda:Yeah. I have on my website, on my light language page, there's a, you can request a free light language meditation just to listen to if anybody's curious. Yeah. People are curious. It's And really one of those things that we don't want to figure out what's happening.
Lynda:We just want to allow it. Yeah.
Wendy:Get out of the head. You don't need to understand.
Lynda:Yeah. Get out of the head and just allow, like you would listen to a sound bath or, you know, bowls or whatever. So yeah.
Wendy:Yeah. Well, thank you for sharing that.
Lynda:You're welcome. It's one of those things I kinda kept inside for a little bit because it was rather strange when I first doing it.
Wendy:I get it. Yeah. Well, so how do folks find you?
Wendy:What's the best way if they wanna learn more about what you do?
Lynda:Well, my website's probably best. It's lwsamphire.com. And from there, I have all of my programs, all my offerings, and then there's a link to my retreat page, which is Spirit of Life Retreats. My colleague and I are on that one.
Wendy:Cool. Well, I'll put links up in the show notes.
Lynda:We have a men's retreat coming up in March.
Wendy:All right. Well, I don't know when this is going be out. So please check the schedule whenever you're listening to this so that you can find out what's coming up.
Lynda:Definitely.
Wendy:Cool. Well, thank you, Lynda, so much for coming on and sharing your journey and your work
Lynda:with me. Thank you so much for having me. It was fun. Fun conversation and interesting topics.
Wendy:So many ways to explore our inner worlds. If you'd like to learn more about Lynda's work, I've included a link to her website in the show notes. Coming up, can I interest you in a little midlife manifesto?! I'm talking to you, women Gen Xers! Also, I'll share an exciting development about a brand new podcast that will likely be live by the time the next episode of Lucid Cafe is released.
Wendy:So stay tuned for that. Thanks so much for listening. Until next time.
