Are you curious about psilocybin (magic mushrooms)? There's a lot of compelling research being published about their potential benefits, but are they right for you? Today I talk with Michelle Harrell, a licensed facilitator in Oregon, who has been facilitating sessions for the past six months. We talk about how psilocybin can help you, how to make the most of your experience, and a lot more.

Michelle Harrell is a licensed psilocybin facilitator who is committed to helping others connect with their own self-healing capabilities, creating deeper connection to self and source. Prior to training as a psilocybin facilitator, Michelle enjoyed a successful international corporate career in Human Resources and Information Technology. For over 20 years, Michelle supported global teams through various change programs. Through her work, she realized how difficult change is for most people and she enjoyed supporting others through their own life transitions, big and small. Living and working abroad while raising two children overseas provided an opportunity to work with individuals of all backgrounds, cultures, and nationalities. She aims to bring this passion for diversity and personalized service to her facilitation practice.

 

Learn more about Michelle:

Website: https://www.treeoflifefacilitation.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/treeoflifefacilitator/

 

Learn more about Karin

Website: https://www.drcalde.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theloveandconnectioncoach/

 

TRANSCRIPT

Intro:

Karin: This is Love Is Us, Exploring Relationships and How We Connect. I'm your host, Karin Calde. I'll talk with people about how we can strengthen our relationships, explore who we are in those relationships, and experience a greater sense of love and connection with those around us, including ourselves. I have a PhD in clinical Psychology, practiced as a psychologist resident, and after diving into my own healing work, I went back to school and became a coach, helping individuals and couples with their relationships and personal growth. If you want to experience more love in your life and contribute to healing the disconnect so prevalent in our world today, you're in the right place. Welcome to Love Is Us.

 

Episode:

Karin: Hello everybody. Last week, I announced that I was finishing up my training to become a licensed psilocybin facilitator in Oregon, currently the only state in the country where that's now legal, although Colorado is not far behind. And this week I thought I'd invite my colleague Michelle Harrell to speak with me. Now, for those of you who don't know what psilocybin is, I recommend you go listen to my previous episode where I give you the details. Michelle is currently licensed and has been facilitating sessions with people for the last six months or so, and I anticipate having my license by late May or early June, depending on how long it takes for the Oregon Health authority to process my application. So just a few things we talk about on today's episode include the ways that psilocybin can be helpful for you and your relationships, how you can get the most out of a psilocybin experience, how likely it is that you'll have the experience that you really want for yourself. And Michelle also talks about some of the changes that she has seen in her clients after they've had a psilocybin session. So I hope this episode gives you a better feel for whether or not this might be an experience that you might want to have. Michelle is currently taking clients, so if you think you might want to work with her, go ahead and check out her information, which I'll put in the show notes. I really appreciate the response that I've gotten so far to my announcement. I've had a lot of people who have expressed interest, so I'm planning on offering a free informational webinar about psilocybin. So let me know if that's something that you would be interested in attending. Send me a message on Instagram where I'm @theloveandconnectioncoach, and please share this episode with others who might appreciate it. All right, thanks for being here. And here we go.

[02:46 ] Michelle: Welcome, Michelle. Thank you, Karin. Thanks for having me.

[02:50 ] Karin: I'm so glad to have you. I want to dive into how we met and how this all started, but why don't you just start by telling us where you are in the world?

[03:02 ] Michelle: Sure. I am in Portland, Oregon. And yeah, that's also where I work. And I love it here.

[03:11 ] Karin: And what keeps you here?

[03:13 ] Michelle: What keeps me here? I just love Oregon. I think it's beautiful. I love the green spaces that we have. I love the fact that we have mountains and forests and ocean and even desert. It's just a beautiful part of the country to live in. I love the Pacific Northwest. And, yeah, I can't imagine myself leaving anytime soon.

[03:36 ] Karin: Yeah, I love it for all those same reasons, too.

[03:40 ] Michelle: Yeah.

[03:41 ] Karin: And we met at a business networking event last year.

[03:47 ] Michelle: We did? Yes.

[03:49 ] Karin: And you got me going on my.

[03:51 ] Michelle: Current project, which I love. So it's really fun to have you.

[03:58 ] Karin: Here and to hear about what you're now doing for work.

[04:02 ] Michelle: Yeah. So I am a state licensed psilocybin facilitator. Anyone who may not know what the word psilocybin means, those are psychedelic mushrooms. And Oregon is the first state to actually legalize any kind of psychedelic program in the United States. So it's really exciting to be a pioneer in this new industry that is slowly emerging. Colorado will be the next state to go live with their legal program in January of 2025. So, yeah, Oregon was first, and I launched my business in September and have not looked back since. It's been fantastic.

[04:42 ] Karin: And I just want to say that of course, there is a thriving underground psychedelic community, but this is just a little bit different. And it's a way to kind of influence and shape how we do things going forward because I don't think that Colorado will be the last.

[05:02 ] Michelle: I think you're right there.

[05:04 ] Karin: This is the beginning of a trend, or hopefully not a trend, but of how we do things going forward. And I'm really hopeful that we can do it well. There's lots of things I think we can still work on, but, yeah, I.

[05:20 ] Michelle: Think one of the advantages of being first is we get to kind of see what works and what doesn't work. And then one of the disadvantages of going first is trying to figure this out where no one has in a space where no one has been before and making sure that clients are safe, that facilitators are safe, and that everybody can get access to these kinds of services when they need them is the biggest challenge. But yeah, it's been going well. I think the majority of my clients are from out of state, which is surprising. I knew that I would have some out of state clients when I started, but I never expected the majority of them to be from out of state. So who are needing these services are finding us, which is pretty amazing.

[06:15 ] Karin: So great. And how did you come to do this work?

[06:20 ] Michelle: Well, I think like many people, I came to do this work through my own experiences with psychedelics. I was going through some normal life transition stuff back in 2019. I was starting to date for the first time after my divorce, which was in 2017. And I was also starting to feel a little bit cynical and discouraged and unhappy in my career after being in corporate spaces for many, many years and really just kind of in search of, like, what's next. My kids are getting older. They're about to be an empty nester. My youngest child is a junior in high school. My oldest is already in college. And so just all these kind of big transition questions that many of us have in midlife were kind of on top of my mind. And then I happened to meet someone who introduced mushrooms into my life and had some amazing experiences with mushrooms myself, which really were transformative and helped me to find forgiveness from all kinds of things and processing of past traumas and things that we all have in life, and really helped me to find focus about what I wanted to do going forward. And so once I had those experiences, I wanted to know more. I dove into all the research. I read every book, I watched every podcast and show that I could find on psilocybin and was just very fascinated with the success rates that many of the research trials were having. And my biggest inspiration was the Johns Hopkins research that they were doing with terminally ill cancer patients. And the success rates there were quite as