Sunny Strasburg on Healing Trauma with Psychedelics: Expanded States of Consciousness MEGA Summit

You know, in this summit, clearly we're exploring expanded states of consciousness and the myriad ways that human beings have been accessing them for millennia and for realizing their potential for healing, for deep healing and for transformation, spiritual evolution. And in this year's summit, we have a particular through line of focus on trauma. There are potential for both for healing trauma and supporting post traumatic growth. And, and so your work, integrating very seamlessly internal family systems and psychic assisted psychotherapy seems to really contextualize and leverage expanded states in some unique ways. So I wondered if just maybe we could start with what does the term expanded states of consciousness mean for you and how do you relate with it in your work?

I love that you asked what does it mean? Because I think we really need to define what that means to us because it can be different for different people. I think we're in expanded and narrow states of consciousness all the time. I don't think it's like we're, we're in a normal state of consciousness and then sometimes we go into expanded, expanded states of consciousness. Our brains are really amazing. I'm thinking about the quote by Aldous Huxley and Doors of Perception that our brains are these incredible reducing valves. So when you think about that idea, that implies that there are all kinds of other realities out there and that our human form distills information that's coming into our five senses in a, in a very reductive way in order for us to survive. I think we're, we're trying to save calories, we're trying to save energy by going into looping thoughts and regular, you know, like normal rum thought so that we can survive looking at patterns, things like that. So when you think about consciousness, what is consciousness? My consciousness is very different than a bat's consciousness. They, they see their world or experience their world through echolocation. Right. So what even is a regular state of consciousness? I don't know. So I think that that's something to think about first, is what does that mean? I. So there's also this idea too, of, of reality is something out there to be discovered, like Aldous Huxley kind of, you know, that kind of seems to point to there are these realities out there and we're reducing what we're perceiving. And then a material list would say, our everything's confined in our skull. We're just creating the world through thoughts and neuronal firings. I think it's the, the, that we're discovering the world. I don't think we're inventing the world. So that said, when I use things like internal family systems or EMDR or archetypal psychology or psychedelics, what I feel like we're doing is opening the aperture of consciousness to, to be able to access different slices of reality. So for example, using internal family systems, if we're working on a part, that's a 12 year old part where, you know, his father was yelling at him and that's this part that gets hijacked in his system and we're, and we're working with that part and he's talking to this 12 year. I don't think he's just fantasizing about this. I think he's in an expanded state of consciousness and he's actually in some slice of reality where that 12 year old boy is looping in some time loop somewhere. So we're accessing this all the time when we're using internal family systems with the help of psychedelics. The psychedelic is potentiating and amplifying that ability to open our states of consciousness to access these deeper minds, memories, these, these other realities, if that makes sense. So I kind of think I want to, I want to couch it into that kind of framework of understanding that we're actually discovering something, we're not inventing something.

Well, that's a really interesting view of internal family systems. And, and you know, I, I've done a lot of psychodrama work in the past and, and as a trainer and, and a lot of chair work. And I know that in part Dick discovered that he didn't need the chairs anymore, but he was kind of doing that chair work. You have people sit in one chair and they're playing one part of it, then they move the other chair and they have dialogues back and forth. So I've done a lot of that work. And it's amazing when somebody drops into a part, you know, it really does feel quite real. Almost seems like they're channeling something at some sometimes. Right. And so it does kind of make sense the way you talked about it. And you know, you talked about, you know, what's my consciousness, what's a bat's consciousness. And it does make a lot of sense that what we're perceiving, I mean, even what we know from a lot of different scientific fields today, that really the brain is a reduction valve and we are experiencing this very reduced version of reality that we can actually handle and do something with. But even the idea of my consciousness might be, it may be there is my version of consciousness, there's a bat's version of consciousness. But you know, it's interesting whether consciousness and reality are two separate things to begin with.

Right? Yeah, it is so interesting. And I think that Dick Schwartz would agree with me that we're actually going to some slice of reality and it's not a fantasy. You know, when you talk about ifs and, and you get lost in the process and someone's starting to think about what that 12 year old boy would say, you say, don't think, just ask him, he'll tell you. And inevitably there's this interesting thing that happens where that part lives there and tells you what's going on. It's really fascinating. Right?

Yeah, yeah. Well, that, that almost gives a little credence. You know, Dick talks about these parts as if they're like entities and we're actually born with. Already with a multiplicity of parts. And, and I certainly can see the technology and how useful it is. That's been a little bit of a step further far for me to see them as actual entities. But, but when you start thinking about space and time and consciousness and you know, it is perhaps a lot bigger game than we're aware of.

It's wild, you know, with psychedelic experiences and having kind of these magical amazing things happen. You know, it's. You could say, oh, all of these experiences that you're having, these hallucinations that you're having in psychedelic experiences. Just this fantastic way that your mind's creating this, you know, and you could say that. But then these crazy things happen. A couple of years ago, I had this group come to a group experience academy experience. And this woman had privately shared with me that she was grieving her dog that was this beautiful white samoyed dog. Is that how you say samoyed? The white, fluffy, I think so, named Happy. This was his dog, Happy. She's so grieving, so. And she's very shy. So she comes to this retreat, doesn't know anyone else there. There are eight other people there. They all show up and kind of process. And she didn't really share what she was processing about the grief of her dog. We have this journey. She comes out of her journey and, and she calls me over and she whispers to me, I'm so sad. Happy didn't show up in my journey. So we, so, you know, I comfort her, we go back, we start doing the group process. This woman across the room, who knew nothing about her, said, I had the weirdest experience. I was flying around the universe. I was going through, you know, nebulas and stars and the galaxy and here's this white, fluffy dog, and he's so happy, and he's jumping up on me, and he won't let me go. And he's flying around the universe with me. And I cannot figure out why I have this dog with me. And that was her journey. And it was just this weird thing where, you know, what is the. What is the chance of that specific thing happening in that group? You know? So I've always been kind of a skeptic, but when things like that happen, it gives me pause, you know, what. What are we accessing here in these, you know, expanded states of consciousness? What, are we going somewhere, you know, are these. Are these entities out in the field somewhere and we're able to contact them? I don't know the answer to that, but I think it's really fun to wonder about it.