Today I want to share my own experiences with iboga. It’s a personal journey, and it’s important to have an open mind and not judge or overthink other’s experiences. This plant has been integral in my healing, but it may not be for you. This is my journey.

After battling for sobriety for years, I knew it truly was the time for freedom. Time for it to stop. I spent 17 years as a functional drug addict; I led a double life, and no one knows the full extent of my experiences. It was when I came to iboga that everything was laid out before me. Iboga is a small shrub tree native to Western Africa, and the root and bark have been used for hundreds of years in rituals and healing.

Everything I was doing before iboga was helping, but it just wasn’t enough. COVID only aggravated my addictive habits, and I knew it was time. I went to a retreat to experience the use of the root. Staying and going through the ceremonies was life-changing for me.

The ceremonies began with fireside talks which were just as helpful as the use of the iboga itself. There was music and sleep masks to help you shut out the world. It was tough, both physically and mentally. I had extreme nausea and vomiting. It helped me release a lot of my emotions, even after I was able to put aside what would normally be a huge burden to me.

I always felt safe. These are only my experiences, but for me, it has been essential. I have been sober for 2 years, and the reset from the iboga has been invaluable in my healing.

In today’s episode I want to talk about meditation, what it has done for me, as well as how it can help you connect your emotions, awareness, and actions. I want to guide you all through my meditation process and hopefully allow you to discover a new daily routine.

Today’s world is noisy and full of distractions. With constant distractions, it is easy to become lazy and complacent, ignoring the gifts around you. The act of meditation, stillness, and silence is more needed now than ever. A mind is a strong tool, and tapping into peace and silence at any time is invaluable.

Anything can be meditative. Chores like dishwashing, gardening and cleaning can become meditation by using focus and presence. There are many gifts in this life, and being able to come to the silence and stillness whenever you need to is one of them.

When it comes to my meditation practice, I sit on the floor and start to engage my breath, taking full breaths, without exerting or straining. Envisioning my breath filling my body and then being expelled begins to help clear the racing thoughts. Meditation isn’t a race. This is your space. If you have to be somewhere, set a timer.

Later in the episode, I would like you to follow along with me as I guide you through a meditation. Find somewhere where you can be comfortable; somewhere that is quiet and that you won’t be disturbed. This will only be a short meditation, but I hope that it can demonstrate the benefits of this practice.

Today, let’s talk about the effects and benefits of juicing fruits and vegetables. I’ll get into how I do it, along with how you too can get started with juicing.

Juicing complements a lot of my other daily practices for health such as breathwork, yoga, and meditation. It’s a part of my ideal day. Making orange juice with a manual press isn’t just good for you—it’s also a fun therapeutic practice that’s easy to take with you just about anywhere.

The first juicer I got was a gift from my brother. At the time, I knew very little about healthy practices. I came across a juice recipe that included beets, ginger, lemon, and a clove of garlic. Not knowing what a garlic clove was, I put in an entire bulb. Needless to say, I was sweating out garlic all night and spent a long time stuck in the bathroom.

It takes time to become proficient at juicing your own fruits and vegetables. That said, it is a deeply rewarding practice. I always loved eating fresh, raw produce as a kid. As I grew older, I strayed away from it. I now truly understand what’s good for me and the impact I can have on my own life through thoughts and actions.

Juicing is my secret weapon for energy and focus. It’s taking in a surge of nutrition from nature. I highly recommend the bag-and-blender method for juicing. Using it, I can make a few litres of juice in 20 minutes or less, and there’s not a lot of preparation or set up. This method works well with celery, carrots, cucumber, apples, grapes, and fresh herbs. Juicing creates easily absorbed nutrition, which is basically human rocket fuel.

Today’s episode is about how yoga has made such a huge difference in my life and my self-care practice. Also, I’m going to explain how I hope it can be of help to you too.

I came to yoga 12 years ago, and since then, I’ve found so much value in the tools and processes. The pull towards yoga was magnetic, and it came to me when I needed it most. There are so many different types and teachers of yoga that it could be a series of its own, but for this episode, I want to give you an overview of the main yoga practices that have helped me.

Yoga is like a guiding light in the darkness, showing the way forward. Initially, yoga seems simple, but it can be difficult when starting out. By breaking each pose and posture down into separate pieces and teaching myself, I was able to put all the pieces together until I moved to the city and finally took some in-person yoga classes. The teachers were able to offer subtle corrections that improved my practice even more.

Practicing is the key to yoga. It connects you to your body and your soul in a way that I hadn’t experienced before. During the initial years of my practice, I was battling drug and alcohol addiction, and yoga gave me a space to find relief. The dynamic stretching and connection to breath is a way to feel more. Wisdom is at the core of yoga, and that wisdom allows for creating insight into your own feelings.

Don’t be attached to how postures look, it is about how they feel to you. Yoga doesn’t have to be a rigid practice; it is about flow and abundance. Have fun and don’t compare yourself to others. Honor the changes time brings.

In this first episode of Peace of Me, I am going to introduce to you the concept of this podcast, what it means to me and what I hope you can also get from it.

The first step is the hardest – a phrase we’ve all heard and one that rings true for me. The biggest challenge always seems to be the beginning. However, along the way, I have discovered that just jumping in and doing is far less stressful and anxiety-inducing than letting something stew and fester as you put it off.

Over the years I have delayed so many things for silly reasons. Making sure it’s the right time, the right things have to be in place. Things don’t have to be perfect from the get-go, or at all! Throughout this podcast, I will be sharing tools and practices that I use every day. These things are a constant, consistency is the only way to make progress. The world moves fast but there are always constants. Look to the sunset and sunrise to ground yourself.

Looking ahead I will be discussing yoga, juicing, plants, health, nutrition, crystals and so, so much more. The best way to know anything is to research and consistently practice what works for you. The value you can take from these practices is unending.

All of these things, all of this knowledge is out there for you. Don’t be ashamed of the beginning, beginnings are exciting and lead to incredible things. Take a pen and paper, and write down your dream day in detail. What are you wearing, doing, and who are you with? Look it over, you’ll be surprised how much of it you can experience right now.