The Unfolding with Olivier

"Most of us have spent so much of our lives trying to fit in rather than find belonging."Gary Albert is a somatic sex therapist, a clinical hypnotherapist and a trained classical musician who won a full scholarship to one of the world's leading conservatoires. He is the founder of Pleasure Medicine, a sober conscious dance and connection workshop for queer men that fills every two weeks in London with almost no promotion.He also spent more than a decade in London's club and after party scene, going out on a Thursday and getting home on a Monday, chasing a validation he almost never received. He lost friends to overdose and chemsex. His own body eventually shut down. What pulled him out was a naturopath, a breakdown in an East London cafe, and a chance meeting that changed the direction of his life in a single morning.Everything he teaches now comes from having lived the thing he helps other men leave behind.In this conversation you will learn the difference between fitting in and finding belonging, why almost everything called community is really just an event, what people are actually reaching for through apps and chemsex, the shadow side of our freedom, and why our greatest gifts come from our greatest wounds. You will also hear one of the most striking stories of synchronicity I have had on this show.Gary is not speaking from a pedestal. He is, in his words, in the waters swimming with the rest of us. That is what makes this land.Whether or not you are queer, this one will change how you walk into a room.Gary Albert is a somatic sex therapist, hypnotherapist and the founder of Pleasure Medicine. Find him at pleasuremedicine.co.uk, at eroticevolution.co.uk, and on Instagram at @pleasuremedicinedance and his WhatsApp group: https://chat.whatsapp.com/E4fIypCZwAvCumiTOtEOaN .To know more about Olivier Passebecq's activities, events, retreats and one to one consulting: olivierpassebecq.com and @olivierpassebecq on Instagram

Carolin Goethel wears many hats. Facilitator, community weaver, bridge builder and nature based guide. She co-founded the Wild Minds Collective, a trio of deep ecologists and nature guides who run retreats and vision quests. She has spent years building things from the ground up: she helped launch the UK arm of the Food Assembly, worked on a universal basic income experiment in Berlin, organised citizens assemblies to bring everyday people into the conversation about AI and has been stewarding the Church of Interbeing, a non religious Sunday community ritual in a refurbished Berlin church, since 2021 and was the Germany Activation Lead for The Week, a project mobilising courageous conversations about the climate. She trained as a rite of passage guide with the School of Lost Borders, where she learned to hold twelve day containers in which people go out on the land alone for four days and four nights, without food and without shelter, to mark a threshold in their lives. This conversation is about what technology cannot give us, why she believes the world is stuck in a domination paradigm, and what she found when she stopped looking for wisdom elsewhere and went searching for her own roots instead.Chapters00:00 Intro01:49 What do you do?05:07 Democratising AI10:22 What she learned organising citizens assemblies15:27 Is AI something to be afraid of?20:46 Outsourcing yourself to a machine25:57 AI as an idea generator, not a replacement28:11 Other ways of organising society36:55 The stories underneath our systems41:51 Remembering that she is also indigenous44:00 Cyclical living and the seasons48:38 What are rites of passage?1:00:24 How to create a rite of passage for someone you love1:06:58 What does a facilitator actually do?1:09:23 A Sunday community ritual in Berlin1:13:41 Where it all started1:22:17 Family, roots and being a generalist1:27:02 Navigating power in groups1:32:53 Do you lose power by sharing it?1:35:09 Is there hope for the world?1:41:01 What is a vision quest?1:54:33 Guiding vision quests todayFollow Carolin on Instagram @carolin_goethel and visit carolingoethel.comFollow me on Instagram @olivierpassebecq and visit olivierpassebecq.com

Makenzie Darling spent over a decade building campaigns that reached millions of people, from anti-bullying programmes with Major League Baseball and ESPN to a global kindness campaign that touched 125 countries. She later became chief of staff inside some of the fastest growing organisations in the psychedelic and consciousness space, helping build the systems, governance and community structures that took them from a handful of people to national scale. But her own path here started somewhere much harder: she grew up the black sheep of a family marked by addiction, and within months lost both her parents, her job and her health all at once. She rebuilt everything from there, and now teaches leaders and founders how to build movements instead of businesses, with a sharp focus on power, accountability and what it actually means to lead with integrity. This conversation is about what she learned from the inside of organisations that lived up to their values, and the ones that didn't.Chapters00:00 Intro02:04 What do you do?03:12 Karmic assignment vs purpose vs passion06:23 Psychedelic churches and the psychedelic renaissance10:53 Becoming an entheogenic minister12:10 From educational technology to movement building14:58 It ends with me17:28 The ayahuasca journey and the dam21:15 Messiah complex and the ego in plant medicine24:28 What is a movement maker?26:46 Extraction dressed as devotion28:37 Patagonia and corporate movements32:54 Power literacy and decentralisation37:59 Does power corrupt?41:30 Inside the incubator44:50 Ancestral healing and epigenetics50:28 Her mother's addiction and death51:44 Riches to rags and accessibility in healing59:51 Community, loneliness and rebuilding1:04:42 Designing for belonging1:11:07 Cultural appropriation in psychedelics1:13:58 The Enneagram1:18:10 Faith, God and reclaiming the word1:21:34 Cults vs movements1:25:35 Being let down by spiritual leaders1:32:17 Holding both the genius and the flaws1:38:06 Closing reflectionsFollow Makenzie on Instagram @global_movement_maker and visit globalmovementmaker.comFollow me on Instagram @olivierpassebecq and visit olivierpassebecq.com

Sara Barnes is a published author, a Level 2 Open Water Swim Coach and one of the UK's most recognised voices on cold water immersion. Based in the Lake District for nearly three decades, she has written three books, The Cold Fix (Vertebrate Publishing), The Winter of Our Lives (HarperCollins) and Where the Beck Flows, the first release on her own independent press CROOKED LAKE. She has written for Outdoor Swimmer magazine and the Outdoor Swimming Society, made three short films including the award-winning Dear Heart and Skinny, and was featured on the 2021 BBC series The Lakes with Simon Reeve.She has been swimming in cold water every single day for nine years.In 2025, she nearly died twice. Her doctors told her that cold water swimming is the reason she is still alive.In this conversation, Sara opens up about the surgery that broke her body and her identity, the moment she realised she could float when she could not walk, and how cold water became a daily practice that brought her back to herself. We talk about creativity, ageing, desire, body confidence, the loneliness of working from home, the courage to self-publish at 64, and what nearly dying twice taught her about being truly alive.This episode is a love letter to anyone who has had to rebuild themselves from the inside out, and a reminder that the most powerful transformations often begin with one small act of saying yes to your own life.In this episode:Growing up an island girl in Trinidad and swimming before she could walkThe surgery that broke her body and stripped her identityThe moment her kids drove her to the lake and she realised she could floatCold water as medicine, daily ritual and creative fuelWhy one minute per degree and other cold water rules are rubbishThe five archetypes that shaped her first bookFalling in love in a frozen ice barrel in NorwayWriting as a way of speaking to her younger selfSelf-publishing at 64 and refusing to be silenced by the industryNearly dying twice and what it taught her about lifeThe little girl called Silly Sarah and finding her voiceWhat cold water, breathwork and nature can do togetherSara on Instagram: @bumblebarnes Her books and films: sarabarnesauthor.co.ukFollow @olivierpassebecq on Instagram and visit olivierpassebecq.com

Safa grew up in Tehran in a deeply religious and restrictive culture where desire was taboo and her body never felt like her own. Today she coaches bold leaders to transform their relationship with intimacy, recognising it as the untapped key to their power, creativity and impact, and she is writing a book about it.This conversation is about what we inherit, what we carry in silence, and what becomes possible when we finally stop.Chapters00:00 Intro 01:28 Growing up in Tehran 06:18 Quietly rebelling 08:37 Religion and the bubble 15:46 Sexuality and silence 19:56 Unwanted experiences and the body as duty 23:46 Parents as danger, society as danger 24:38 Compassion and breaking the secrecy 29:36 University, boys and falling in love 34:20 Marriage, leaving Iran and the divorce 45:33 Freedom in the Netherlands and depression 49:16 Therapy, NVC and the beginning of change 57:19 The improv breakthrough and writing a book about intimacy 1:06:11 Identity, religion and being human 1:09:23 Her parents and their dynamic 1:14:13 How we see others through our own filters 1:17:06 Iran, war and holding contradictions 1:26:37 Closing reflectionsFollow Safa on Instagram @safaxperienx and visit safaxperienx.comFollow me on Instagram @olivierpassebecq and visit olivierpassebecq.com