Ep18 Gaia Harvey-Jackson—How to Get Free: Trusting Yourself Even When Life Isn't Okay

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  0:00  
Right now my mission is to support people to get free, and what I mean by that is the ability to be with what is to trust in yourself, not to trust that everything is going to be okay, but to trust that even if it's not okay, I'm still there for me. 

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  0:19  
Welcome to inner source. I'm Dr Sandra Dreisbach, whether you're just beginning to explore your inner landscape or you've been doing this work for years and understand that transformation is a lifelong journey. This is your space. We're diving into real conversations about personal growth, Shadow Work, and what it actually takes to create lasting change from the inside out, because the truth your most powerful healing tool isn't out there somewhere, it's already within you. Let's connect to that inner source together.

Unknown Speaker  0:57  
The information shared on this podcast, our website and other platforms may be triggering for some viewers and readers, and is for informational, educational and entertainment purposes only. It is not a substitute for professional medical legal or therapeutic advice. While we explore topics related to altered states of consciousness, we do not endorse or encourage illegal activities or substance use. Always research your local laws and consult qualified professionals for guidance. The content provided is as is, and we are not liable for any actions taken based on the information shared. Stay supported and informed. Act responsibly and enjoy the podcast.

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  1:28  
On this episode of inner source, I am very pleased to have Gaia Harvey Jackson. I've known Gaia Harvey for a few years now, both as someone who helped me as a woman, as in transformational journeys, and both groups, as well as one on one, work for well over a year, so we'll talk about it on this show. But Gaia is a woman's empowerment facilitator, ecstatic dance DJ, private coach, who guides people on a profound journey discover true inner freedom. What could be better for enter source

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  2:05  
as co founder of true nature, a platform for women's events and retreats, co director of symbiotica Collective, a cooperative for consciousness raising brands, and advisor to the UK psychedelic society, which is where I first met Gaia. Gaia brings together therapeutic frameworks, embodiment, practices and ancient ritual modalities. She creates brave and playful environments. If you have a chance to work with her, I would highly recommend it. You can explore your inner worlds. You learn to relate to yourself with kindness, connect with others from a place of truth and love. More than pleased to have her on this episode where you can actually not just experience our relationship and friendship and connection over time, but also really get a sense of of what a true guide she is to your inner source.

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  2:55  
Welcome, Gaia. I'm so happy and pleased to have you on the show. I cannot tell everyone who's like listening to this like what love I have for this woman and what a gift she's been for my life. But I shouldn't like front loaded too much, because I don't want you to feel too much pressure.

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  3:11  
But I know I've given a little bit of introduction. But Gaia, would you want to say anything about yourself or about your general work in this space? How would you like to introduce yourself? Thank you for having me. So what would I say about myself and my practice? I have a multi disciplinary approach to

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  3:30  
healing, wholeness, wildness and much of my work. So I'm a group work facilitator and coach, mostly doing programs on Dartmoor, which is a sort of big national park in the UK, in the Southwest, and it's got, like rivers and tours, which are sort of like hills with big stones on the top

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  3:55  
and forests. And it's, yeah, very wild, a wild land. And much of my work is about looking at the ways that we have been conditioned away from our wildness and away from our authentic selves, through through ritual, through embodiment, through singing, through connecting with the land, through being together in community. It's about creating spaces for us to interrogate those narratives and create new scripts for ourselves, and doing that together so that we can find the safety in the group to be vulnerable and share our stories and be witnessed in our stories, and find Yeah, healing and connection and a source of empowerment that we can then take that out into our lives to then be

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  4:46  
change makers out in the world, whatever that looks like, right? Maybe it's just the way that you interact with your family is different, and the ripple effects that that has.

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  4:55  
And kind of like the end of my work, I suppose, is a nine month facility.

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  5:00  
Theater training that I run for women. So that's sort of the end of the journey with, well, not like the end of the journey, but, yeah, it's just, it's just another form of the journey, right? Depends on what people are called, and I love that. It's nine months, by the way, it has that gestational right aspect of it. And I love the there's a lot of conversation around what, what's rewilding, right of people, and how and rewilding of the divine feminine. And I know we came in relationship because of one of your workshops, but before I go there, and thank you for that, could you talk a little bit about your relationship with with plants or psychedelics, like, how did you end up coming into this work? Right? I know I originally encountered you through the psychedelic society of the UK

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  5:49  
and so, and I know that's not where you're at now, but, but could you tell a little bit about, like, your authentic story? I joined the psychedelic society in I think it was 2018

Unknown Speaker  6:02  
2017 something like that.

Unknown Speaker  6:06  
I

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  6:07  
like, yeah, very dear friends with Stephen Reid, who's the founder of the psychedelic society. And

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  6:13  
I think up until that point, I'd also been on my own journey of discovering meditation and tantra retreats being a big, big partier, and actually, my introduction to psychedelics was very much through a recreational lens. When I met Stephen. Actually, I met him in 2016 and he invited me to the first psychedelic experience weekend that the society were running. And they look very different to how they look now that that program has now gone on to become a Lahore, who, yeah, if you're in Europe, I highly recommend those as as a source for psychedelic assisted retreats. So I went on that first weekend, and that's the first time I'd really used psychedelics in a ceremonial context and in a healing context, and just found that to be

Unknown Speaker  7:06  
such a profound shift of

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  7:09  
kind of forgiveness, self love, letting go of a past relationship, it's actually where I met my now husband. So yeah, that was a very pivotal moment for me. And I think a year or two after that, I came on board the psychedelic society, supporting them to run their events, because at that time, Subra had been campaigning for a number of years, and there were, there was a lot of people on the mailing list, and a lot of people in the community, very like when there was, I think, a supper club and a gong bath.

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  7:42  
And so lots of people just wanting to meet each other, like people who are interested in psychedelics, wanting to come together. And so in those early years, I mean, yeah, if you go to the psychedelic society UK platform now, you'll see just how many events they have. A lot of them not even necessarily directly related to psychedelics. And what we've really found, and I think where we've shifted our emphasis over the years from campaign work much more into community work and integration. And it's like, well, what does psychedelics give us? It gives us an opportunity to see the world in ourselves in a completely different and new way. And it kind of has this ability to strip, strip away a whole bunch of conditioning and the layers and the hardening, right? It's kind of like that stuff no longer becomes possible often when we're in that psychedelic state. And so

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  8:35  
a lot of my work has come from that place of like, okay, well, how do you create that kind of transformation without psychedelics like psychedelics is one aspect or one way of doing that, and there's loads of different methods that we can use. I think it's a very familiar journey in this space, at least in terms of the part about going from recreational to it being ceremonial and and, and moving into community and and a lot of you know, psychedelic societies have have shifted their focus more towards that sort of community aspect, integration, creating that supportive mechanism. And I love that. That's kind of how you came into relationship. Talk about for you personally, like, how has it really had an effect on your life? You know? I mean, obviously, you know, you've come on to new friendships, new relationships. What has it really meant in terms of your growth as a person? I think it's very much gone hand in hand with the

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  9:34  
other practices that I've had alongside So, alongside meditation, alongside dance, it's opened up so much for me in terms of movement and dance and actually using dance as a way to process stuck emotions come to insights. Yeah, I went through a period of a few years of taking mushrooms, and I asked.

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  10:00  
Go not the same time, and just really, like totally transforming my relationship with my body. And what I often find they can be really good for me is when I'm getting to a place of feeling a bit stuck or numb or dull or in some way disconnected from my mission. And even though I have a really strong mission. Sometimes I can feel, on a soul level, a little disconnected from it, because the reality is, I've got to send emails and do my social media and, you know, do the spreadsheets, and that kind of admin has a way of pulling us away from the deeper why, right? And I find psychedelics help me to touch back into that deep place of purpose I feel there's just this feeling, yeah, on the soul level, of like, Yes, this is, this is my work, and this is what I meant to be doing.

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  10:54  
And also, in my relationship with Ronan, we, we, I'd say we do an acid trip maybe once. So it's not plants, but does it still count? No, whatever is you do want to share. So we would do a trip together once or twice a year that

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  11:11  
I see, we see it as sort of relational hygiene. And again, it's like whatever has accumulated over that time, and we're good at relational tending anyway, but again, it just has this incredible ability to drop us deep into our hearts and feel that soulful body heart, yes, for each other.

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  11:33  
That's beautiful. And I love and I love that we're even talking about this aspect, not just in terms of how I can help create deeper relationship, right? And be used when and used consciously, I'd argue, also responsibly,

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  11:49  
but, but also how plants? I mean, obviously I can, even if we talk about plants right now, right? I literally see three plants behind you. So maybe, maybe allow the plants to have a little interlude here. So, so what about your relationship with with plants and plant medicines? When you say that question, and when you talk about the plants my background, it makes me think of the big oak trees in the field. Ah, yes, because is it no tree in front of you. I'm trying to recall I have three just across the in the field opposite me. There's three

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  12:23  
really big oak trees, and there's one in particular who is like my my dear friend. And right now that tree feels like the the biggest part of my plant medicine journey. In this moment, it's a place that I go and I'm overwhelmed and I feel like I'm beyond capacity, and whatever reason, like a personal crisis, whatever

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  12:48  
I feel like I can just get so much resource and calming and wisdom from being by that tree, and it also helps give me perspective. It's like it must be more than 500 years old. Can help me remember that my problems are fairly small in the grand scheme of the history of, you know, the earth and and human lives and and speaking out like, because, like, I definitely have relationships with my trees, you know, like the one that the ones that give me that sense of time are the I live amongst the redwoods, which, you know, and they also have that sense of time, but the oak are just, we're right where redwood and oak meet, which is like, you know, and by the shores of the Sea. What would you say is your relationship to the oak? Is it? Because I think we also are aware of like ancestral connections to Oak, right? And there's certain complexities involved with that. Dartmoor is called Dartmoor because Dart means Oak, Dart door. It's the old Celtic word for Oak,

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  13:58  
and there's a river, the river Dart that runs all the way down to

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  14:04  
Dartmouth, the mouth of the Dart. So, yeah, where I live, where I work, there's a huge connection with the Oaks. And also where I grew up, there was a massive oak tree also in the field opposite my house when I was a child. So having this oak tree here, it kind of has that link for me, also back into that more innocent,

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  14:29  
childlike part of myself. And

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  14:35  
yeah, they're just they're just magical.

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  14:38  
But I think actually it's much more that it's specific oak trees. It's not just any old oak That's right, I would agree with that. I mean, even in being in a redwood forest right now, like, I don't connect this deeply with all of them, it's usually particular ones,

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  14:54  
and we can talk about them being networked and things like that. But at the same time, like, there are a couple.

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  15:00  
Particular ones and their couple particular relationships, right? And I love that. It's like you said, like there's a few you can see out your window, right? But this is one particular oak that's you, or that one particular in your childhood,

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  15:14  
yeah. And those are sort of the relationships like that source us, that resource us, that are harder to communicate to people, I think, sometimes, but I also want to keep up our dancing, right? Because, like, I mean, I maybe I didn't appreciate enough how much we both have this love of dancing.

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  15:36  
So maybe, maybe we can, we can bridge a little bit to our relationship and your work, and it was because of one of your workshops that we originally connected. And you probably know the name of the workshop better than I do, but it was like it was going through the archetypes, and it was going through feminine archetypes. Do you recall the name of the workshop? It might have even been psychedelic women's circle, four week course, or something, something like that, you know, something like that. Or archetypes of the feminine four week course, I think I changed the name a few times. As I like to keep, I like to always change things, yeah, that we went through five different archetypes. Yeah, I was gonna say it was at least five. It

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  16:16  
was five. It was the maiden, the warrior, the lover, the Queen and the priestess. And for someone who had primarily, I would say, still at that time, a primarily recreational relationship, and then was doing healing work myself at the time, the somatic aspect was really breathed to life, literally with the healing work, in my experience with you and connecting to this sort of higher aspect of archetypes,

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  16:42  
would you like to talk about, like, what are some of the benefits that you found with working with women in those sort of groups? I did find it very powerful and incredibly healing.

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  16:53  
It definitely had a, you know, for a short period of time, definitely had deep connections with the women and lot of vulnerability very quickly that you're able to help support us to drop into, 

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  17:03  
I mean, I can talk about the that till the cows come home, but I mostly hear more of your experience, if you remember, because it was a long time ago now. 2020

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  17:13  
Yeah. 2020 Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. That feels that feels right. It had to have been during covid, yeah, during covid, which was also like an important time too. And actually, towards the end of your series, I actually my my brother had passed and and, and I got paired, even at the last one of some of the last little gatherings, with someone else, and she had just lost her father at the same time, and we ended up being paired together.  And there's like this sort of magic of those sort of things, and being able to be together in relationship to help us  heal through that that time, and having had that experience definitely helped prepare me, you know, but

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  17:54  
I love that, that there's so much beauty in your work, that it's not Just about, you know, sometimes people have these workshops, and they're very functional, right? They're like, you know, script, but I feel like you allow a lot of flow and experiential and exploration, even though there is this sense of structure to it. How do you balance out this sort of, like deep, archetypal healing work? How do you go about thinking through workshops? And how do you go about, you know, curating that sort of group space over time? Well, Sandra, I put together a whole nine month course.

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  18:35  
Yeah, maybe we should get out all the biases out of the way, right?

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  18:39  
But I can give a little nugget. Give a nugget, give a teaser. You know, like, why would people sign up for your facilitation course versus someone else's?

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  18:49  
I mean, in my heart, I'm an artist, and I studied theater at university, and I love creating experiences. I love myth, I love movement, I love ritual. I love loads of different kinds of things, and I have found that my own path has been meandering, and there are loads of different practices that have created huge shifts for me.

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  19:14  
And so what I teach is usually what is exciting and alive for me, which is also how I guide other people in what their offering should be. It's like, well, what excites you, what do you love? What actually works?

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  19:30  
So the training program we we you learn lots of different modalities. So you learn tools from meditation and embodiment and ritual and authentic connection, and then really, you find your own your own way and your own path with it. Maybe you're more drawn to one of those pillars. Maybe there's something else entirely that you're bringing in. And so I don't teach in like there's a one size fits all. This is the modality. This is how you do it. I think those, they're great, but the way that I.

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  20:00  
Teachers like, here's my theory of transformation. These are the different components that you need, which is follows an arc. So almost all my sessions and workshops will follow a sort of a similar arc, which is not too dissimilar from a psychedelic experience, right where you've got, like, setting the container, doing some warm up and connection and embodiment, reaching to a peak experience, kind of landing down from that, the integration work and then the closing of the experience. So you can play around with each of those sections in so many different ways. And my passion really is about like getting to know the individuals and understanding it's like, what's your journey?

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  20:44  
And how do we bring that out? Because the gift is in the wound. Whatever your wound is like, that's where you look for the medicine, because you've lived that. So the authority that you have in that space is that you've lived it, and you can have compassion for people, because you know what it's like to be there. I

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  21:06  
think that's really beautiful. I mean, and the medicine, right? The medicine, isn't it, right? The medicine you find for yourself is a medicine for others, and the gift

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  21:16  
of the experience. And I love also that you started with the fact of passion, right? That passion and relationship and what, what comes up, you know, like, don't be fettered by what you think I'm supposed to do as a facilitator, but also think about what, what lights you up, and also connecting to your particular wounding, right? So it has this lovely balance of inspiration, but also the the pain points and embracing it that sort of, you know, the shadow of the typical shadow, versus the golden shadow, right? Sort of aspects of it, yeah. And there's a huge emphasis on on the

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  21:52  
the inner work that's required to build the discernment, being able to see your own blind spots and the ways in which your staff has like you to interfere with your work as a facilitator, as well as seeing you know, you mentioned golden shadow, right? So the brilliant parts of you that you also can't see that get reflected back to you through the group we've actually just two days ago come back from the final weekend of Empower. So there's, there's three residentials, and in the last one, they all, they're put into groups of three and then collaborate to create a session on basically whatever they want. So the huge emphasis on creativity, thinking for yourself, it's like, I'm giving you the tools and I'm giving you the frameworks, but like you go and do something that is you with it, don't, don't do what I do. Do what you do. I

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  22:46  
 love that. And which brings me back full circle to you talking about your mission. So, so what would you say is your mission or your vision that inspires you?

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  22:58  
It is, I mean, it probably changes all the time how I would word this, but

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  23:04  
right now, my mission is to support people to get free,

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  23:12  
and what I mean by That is the

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  23:17  
ability to be with what is

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  23:22  
and not that it's like to trust in yourself, not to trust that everything is going to be okay, but to trust that even if it's not okay, I'm still there for me,

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  23:34  
that and

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  23:37  
helping, keep helping women, in particular, to just feel more confidence in themselves and like they have value and what they have to say is important and that their voice is needed,

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  23:48  
and I certainly have received that from you in relationship,

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  23:53  
so you're at least successful in your mission with me. Yay.

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  23:59  
Maybe this is a opportunity to go beyond, like, how we met in the workshop and what I received in that workshop, and and I love archetypes, and I love creativity, I love dance, so I think there's a lot of alignment with that. But it took some time before I came back, I think, to kind of knock at your door and and realize I needed, you, know, more support and and work and healing. And it's so funny. I'm like, I can't even remember the beginning part of that story. You know, it seems so natural. I mean, I mean this in the sense of, like, it seems so natural, a natural evolution of our relationship. Because I also admired you as a leader, and I think women in leadership positions. But all, all people in leadership positions, you know, who are doing it well? I thought, who are holding it well, right?

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  24:49  
They tend to be the same people who aren't trying to focus on the fact that they're leaders and they're good at it.

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  24:57  
So, so I certainly.

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  25:00  
Admired your leadership, your heart centered leadership and spirit and all the above, right? Like, I love the fact that you bring in this element of a full embodiment, right? You're hitting, for me, at least it's hitting all the nodes, like from, from the body to the spirit, to the heart to the healing, right, and, and, and is it sort of this sort of dance, inspirational dance, and being able to dance even in, like, I think, was an anger exercise, like, you know, like, I mean, I know people have heard ones like this before, where you yell at the pillow and like, we're, we're smacking down and, like, full body, like, stripes,

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  25:39  
you know which it has. It has like, even in the moments where you're expressing a negative right, as it were, people negative right? There's a freedom in it, an expression and a somatic net. And there's and this, this balance of that physical embodiment with conversation and connection is really beautiful in your leadership. So I just want to acknowledge you as a leader. Thank you. Feels so lovely to hear

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  26:08  
and and I love also that I have the opportunity to let you shine a bit, especially since you've helped me to shine as a leader. And I think it's a special calling when you're when you're called to help leaders be leaders. Leader. Take a moment to pause and actually celebrate you, even calling yourself a leader and owning that with ease. Thank you. Thank you. Well. Seen in her too. And to that point you were saying about looking at blind spots, right that I feel like it's so essential as leaders, and I think as a facilitator, you are a leader too, right? Even if you see yourself like, Oh, I'm just working one on one with people, like people who are, you know, paying attention to this the show, right? That is a leadership position, and that doesn't mean that, you know, you're telling the person what to do, right? It's it can be that that holding space leadership, but I think you know, it's been beautiful for me to experience your leadership and holding my leadership

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  27:13  
and helping me to be accountable, and helping me to see my blind spots, even in this moment, in this podcast, you helped me to recognize and see how I've grown in terms of being able to recognize leadership. So I at least want to make that transparent and also give you an opportunity to speak

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  27:34  
on working with me on the opposite side for me to not to demand you receive from me, but to like, what's it been like working with me? What can you give other people insights into like, what is like working with me, like, and I'm giving you permission. Okay, you have my consent. You know, you don't have to go into it. I guess you can always edit the bits that you don't want. No, I can always edit, but I tend to go edit light. But, well, I was actually going to ask you that question because I wonder if it would be a more powerful for you to have it to at least start that in where you feel some of the core shifts have happened, particularly for you around power and receiving,

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  28:16  
yeah, power and receiving power was what came up. I think what I was handling more initially right that I I felt very uncomfortable with it, because I had this association with power being abuse, power being control and being less of myself, not more of myself, less of my authentic self, and less freedom. And as I work through that with you, and also through my dominatrix training, which I think I'm public about that, I sometimes laugh when I mention it, because, like, I know, I don't think everyone

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  28:53  
knows

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  28:55  
and then, but we spent a lot more time working on my ability to receive, you know, and, and honestly, it surprised me how much needed to come and be unpacked around that and, and what financially like, because, you know, we went from doing some healing work to like, Okay, I need to work on receiving abundance and and receiving more from my work. And, and I feel like I've worked through things, but I'm clearly hitting a block still, right and and so that's what we've spent a lot of lot of time working through. 

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  29:29  
Yeah, I don't know if you remember some of our earlier sessions. We mapped out all of the places where you were spreading yourself. And yes, that

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  29:38  
map, I still have that map. I still find myself of where I was,

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  29:43  
 how much you were giving, and how little was coming back. And one of the first things we did was actually to look at it's like, Okay, where can we actually draw back some of this energy into you? And one of the things I love about you is how big a heart you have.

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  30:00  
Of and how much you want to help and support people, but, but that recognition of like, well, I can't keep going like this.

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  30:08  
And where do you need to actually cut back and set more boundaries in place to be able to then do the work that is right for you to be doing at this time with,

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  30:23  
with a full heart and being resourced?

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  30:27  
Yeah, I really love that. I will say that that was a real that was a very clarifying exercise for me way back in the game, when we were looking at it like just having literally put pen to paper and seeing all the places and seeing what I was, you know, and I would even say it's an accountability exercise, you know, like to actually go through and look at, like, Okay, where am I giving? And just like, write all that down and like, and actually was a thought bubble type of thing for people like, so it's like it had like me at the center, and then I put on little circles all the different things that I was giving to. And then we were then doing an accounting, as it were, of seeing what I was receiving from each of them and what the energy exchange really looked like, regardless of doing anything else after that point, just seeing it so clearly that it made it so crystal to me, that I was giving and not receiving in balance,

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  31:22  
you know, yeah, in quite an extreme way, extreme, very extreme, like it like and it made it clear to me that it was toxic to me, right? It made it very clear that it was toxic to me. And I think it helped me to see giving in a new way. Because, like, I mean, I don't know about everyone else, but like for me, I feel

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  31:42  
like I was taught to give and not receive. And maybe it's some term toxic conceptions from social stuff about what feminine should or should not be doing, and masculine too, right? You should take care of everyone and not take care of you type of stuff. And so I thought I was doing good. I thought I was doing good. And not saying good didn't come of what I give. But I wasn't giving from a place of abundance, and I was reciprocity, actually, or even reciprocity, or even basic reciprocity, yeah, I mean, like, it was all the things it was, like, even when I was in a healthier place, I think, I mean, I wouldn't say I was, like, totally unhealthy at the time, but even recognizing that link for you, I don't know if you want to talk about this, but the link between receiving and safety, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That was, that was a huge, that was a huge click for me too, that that part of it was, you know, like, you know, if we got, we can, not to say inner child, but like this aspect of of protecting myself, that because I felt like I that was the only way I could keep myself safe as well, which was a very, which was a hidden aspect that took a that, I think took that in part to reveal,

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  32:55  
yeah, the not feeling safe,

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  32:58  
it not being safe To receive,

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  33:01  
yeah, and I think a lot of people have that same experience, yeah, that it then means something, or it's going to lead to some like either that there's a, I'm not talking about you now, but just No, no, no, I gotta get into it all. Okay,

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  33:19  
there, it's a, it's a worth thing, yeah, I deserve it. Or it's a, well, if I receive, then I'm gonna have to give something back, or, then there'll be consequences for that. It's, it's not just a,

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  33:33  
yeah, it's not a gift that there isn't that safety to receive, yeah, which, you know, I noticed the big shift in you when we, when we kind of untangled that piece around the receiving and say, Gee, I agree. I think that really was, yeah, that was the, I think if I had to pick a biggest shift, that would probably be one of them, and working with you, where you just, oh, that was it. That was the hidden belief that that was connected to these other things and other actions and other choices that I was making, so maybe I should make sure I taking a moment of gratitude for all the accountability and leaning in and coaching. I know I paid you for that time,

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  34:12  
and now we're doing more of an exchange, for what it's worth, right? You know? And actually I'm going to be, I'm going to be helping for that workshop coming up, or it's actually occurring ongoing, the nine month process. I'm phase three, but really excited, happy,

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  34:27  
but I've loved to watch our own relationship evolve through all of it, and allowing it to dance with us, and our ability to check in with each other and to see where we're at and have those conversations, I think it's where a lot of work is going

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  34:46  
and and we don't have a lot of great models for it. And even as I try and speak of it now, I have a I have difficulty trying to communicate what it's like to be in this kind of relationship, other than to talk about this idea that I've been talking to people by about.

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  35:00  
Ecosystem of relationship. So it's hard for me to convey what it means to be in an ecosystem of relationship and what it's like to go through growth cycles together over time and nurture the relationship, and how that dynamic shifts and being present for and allowing for that growth to happen. I think we're taught so much in in at least a western view, this is the strict structure that we're going to be in and and this is how we're going to relate, and that's it, right? And now, granted, I don't want to say like we should have a totally loose no boundaries, right? It's not that there's no boundaries. If you go the, you know, the other extreme, would say, look, oh, you're saying like, not to have any structure. Like, no, no. It's, it's allowing a bit of both, you know, just like a plant has and a tree has structured growth, right? But it still is allowed to grow. It's still allowed to shift, it's allowed to change and evolve over time, and I think sometimes the challenge is, is that we don't create space for each other in relationships, for that growth, for that change and and that's just my way of appreciating that about you and about us and our relationship, and I'm seeing it in all of Your relationships, and I'm starting to notice it more now as I as how I approach things, and I know I've been encouraged towards that mindset by you, so I just want to recognize and acknowledge that source for me in relationship, yeah, and as we kind of come to A close in this conversation, what recommendations or advice would you give people you know, whether they work with psychedelics or not, you know in terms of doing this internal work or transformation, or people who are curious like, what? What kind of guidance or support? Or even as a facilitator, a new facilitator who's coming to this space, what advice would you give people?

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  37:03  
I think so much of my resource and learning comes from peer support.

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  37:10  
So having whether that is

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  37:14  
a small group of people who are who share a similar practice to you, to come together and share kind of regularly, both like, what is going well. And, you know, I think for maybe in group work, it's a little bit different. But I know in like, the one to one work I do because it's so private, often I don't really have someone to celebrate. Like, no one really knows what happens right in the second I put that, yeah,

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  37:43  
and to have a place where you can both celebrate what's going well and also be vulnerable and talk about the challenges

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  37:51  
and get reflection and get advice and get support

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  37:56  
for me working with Like a coach or supervisor, somebody who knows you well and who you trust, and it can take time to build that relationship, who can help you see your blind spots and help you sense check

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  38:12  
I have my Yeah, dear, dear mentor, elle Rosenthal, she, I, you know, she kind of supervises my work, and sometimes it gets crunchy in a retreat context, and sometimes I'm like, I did my best, and actually,

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  38:30  
I don't know, could I have done something different? What am I not seeing here?

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  38:35  
And so having her to sense, check things against and help me to see where my blind spots are as well as where the golden shadows are. Is is incredible, because it also means like, when I don't feel like I'm holding it all on my own, and I have to get it, quote, unquote, right. Yes, right. It means I'm bad and wrong, and seeing it as like we it's, it's nuanced work, and particularly in the realm of psych, working with psychedelics or any kind of transformational process, you're supporting people into spaces that where they are vulnerable.

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  39:13  
There's a lot of unknowns

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  39:16  
and shit goes down. Can I say that stuff goes down? Having a place where you can kind of offload and sense check, and

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  39:26  
also be able to, then, you know, course correct if is needed, or if repair work is needed, to have somebody talk through it with you, of like, well, what would that repair process look like? You know, I know so much of your work is about this, and that's the ethical practice. And I think that part of ethical practice and resourced practice is having peers, mentors, people who can hold you accountable and also really support you and help you out.

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  39:56  
Yeah, I love that you bring that up, because I think sometimes people.

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  40:00  
Think you just need the peers or the mentors, but it's like, you know, it's, it's, it's, what, what kind of function are they? Are they serving for you? What kind of relationship are you actually creating? Are you just going to a peer support circle once a month, right? With no real accountability, with no real, you know, or deeper relationship with those, those mentors like you, you went and saw a mentor. Well, that's, that's different, you know, someone you look up to, versus actually having that active relationship, where that that accountability, also provides support. I think that's the other thing, is like, I think sometimes people think it's all stick, you know, it's like, it's not, it's not about the stick. No way. In fact, it shouldn't be stick. In my stick, I think it should be carrot.

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  40:41  
Yeah, it's not about being told, told off it, but it's more like, Okay, well, that happened. How was that for you?

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  40:49  
And Ha, maybe this is, maybe this is what's interacting with. Maybe, you know, let's say it might be like, Oh,

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  40:59  
is this participant or client, or whoever it is, like, are they reminding you of someone in your childhood? Is there something there for you? Or, oh, wow, look how much pressure you're putting on yourself to have, like, made this a perfect experience for somebody, and that's just really unrealistic and unfair to put those standards on yourself. Or sometimes I, you know, I'll share with someone like, Okay, this thing happened. What are your reflections for me, and what would you have done in that situation? And right? It can just be so valuable and interesting and

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  41:32  
and with my, you know, with the people who are peers, who I do that with, who are, they're my friends, essentially, right? There's a level of intimacy that's right that we deepen into and actually those friendships become more solidified because we have a shared experience in our mission and what we're doing. And then also it's vulnerable to say, Hey, I think maybe I made a mistake here, or I didn't really know what to do. This is what I did. What do you think to have the humility to do that. And I think that's so essential, you know, that that the humility to do that, the intimacy to do that, and that it's not about, you know, creating those sort of stick moments. It's about, you know, creating those supportive moments to be able to look at that wounding, you know, I mean, I don't want to call it nurturing, necessarily, the wound Right? Like, it's more about, you know, having a safer space to look at those woundings or those experiences, even to notice, like, hey, you know, are you feeling wounded right now, right?

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  42:33  
Or when you're coming with a rupture, right? And I know I've come with you with ruptures and talking about how to handle it and how to address it or look at it. And even in those moments where I know I've made an, you know, an oversight, we'll say it that way, right? Like, you know, a place of you know, we like to call them growth edges, because, like, you know, we don't, it's not that they, we wouldn't conventionally call them mistakes, but that we also see the wisdom in them, right? The lesson in them, like what you're saying earlier about the pain being the gift, and this rupture, repair work that you do with people and in relationship and in leadership is so essential and important to model, and I love that you're sharing that. And again, like what the other person can do. Because when I've been in rupture, my nervous system is like, oh, it gets right.

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  43:27  
You know, when I'm working with people like you're coming in with you're inflamed in some way. There's all these stories, and the only other person can act as the regulated nervous system, that's right, who just moves everything down and helps you to unpick it and look at the different layers and going, Okay, well, where's your stuff in this? Where maybe are they doing something? How do we bring curiosity to this, rather than jumping into a conclusion that, oh, well, I know what this person meant. It's like, well, actually, do we have enough information there? Yeah, most of the time, no, most of the time. You've created a story about what's going on.

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  44:08  
So, so much I could say about getting supervision and peer support, there we go. That's my job. But I love that, you know, like, this is kind of the note we're kind of wrapping on, because, because of we have that we've had that relationship, and I know it's, it's, it's shifting into more, you know, been more peer related, but, but still, even as peers like, I don't know what, what real relationship to me is about, right? It's not about just, you know, celebrating and having fun and is all those things, but it's also about leaning into those, those spaces and being there for each other when you need it, right, including the the sort of tough love moments that are then done with love, not with with anger or any other sort of spirit,

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  44:57  
yeah, and I think you know, particularly for newer people.

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  45:00  
Or going into this work, there could be so much fear around getting something wrong or traumatizing somebody. And like, of course, we want to be really we want to go really, really delicately and take that really seriously. And what the peer group or the supervision or whatever can do is it's like, I don't have to have all the answers on my own. That's right. And I think it's essential that you, you, we don't have like, like, you like, know that you don't have all the answers. Oh, you're not supposed to do it alone. You're never doing anything alone. And be honest, don't trust someone who thinks they've got all the answers. Yeah, don't trust that. Yeah, that's that's a red flag. Red flag, everyone, just accept that. There are gonna be times where my mentor uses this word where you're unskillful, yeah, I love that. Yeah, unskillful? Yeah, there are just, there gonna be moments where you're unskillful, so just and then plan for how you're going to meet that. That's exactly right. And when you've got the plan and when you've got the support, then it doesn't feel so intimidating. That's right. You know,

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  46:02  
one of my mentors is like, it may not be that you've failed right. It

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  46:07  
may be or that your vision is incorrect. It may be that the strategy or your approach has been incorrect, and revisiting from that, you know, getting new perspective on it, being more compassionate towards ourselves and each other and and even just, you know, knowing where those the Achilles heels are, as I think it has been so essential to my work, like I know I'm going this Achilles heel area of receiving is, is, is, is something that is going to be take me time. But I'm very grateful for receiving from you today and every day I get to interact with you, Gaia, and for being generous with your time to help others receive from you and wisdom from you. How can people get in touch with you if they want to reach out to you or learn more about your work? 

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  46:56  
Yeah, so you can find me at Gaia Harvey jackson.com,

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  47:01  
that's g a, I a Harvey.

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  47:07  
That's also my instagram handle. I'm quite easier to find. I think it's quite an unusual name. And I also have an organization called true nature, and we are a platform for feminine and ecological empowerment, and we are true nature.org.uk,

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  47:25  
so yeah, you can find out more about me on my website, and then there's a lot more information about the different kind of group programs that I run, and that also some of my other dear friends and trusted facilitators also run through that program soon through that platform. So yeah, well, definitely check her out. I mean, I obviously could not recommend you hire, but I'm biased, heavily, heavily biased

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  47:50  
through joy and love and healing. Thank you Gaia and thank you for being a leader in my life. 

Gaia Harvey-Jackson  47:57  
Thank you Sandra. So great to finally get a chance to chat for the full hour. 

Dr. Sandra Dreisbach  48:03  
Thanks for being here with me today. If this resonated with you, subscribe wherever you listen and share it with someone else on their journey. And if you're ready to go deeper, take the free inner source assessment at inner source podcast.com it'll help you discover exactly what kind of inner work you need right now and where to start until next time, remember that everything you're searching for is already within you.