Coming Above Ground: Psychedelic Therapy and the Natural Medicine Health Act with Josh Kappel

Coming Above Ground: Psychedelic Therapy and the Natural Medicine Health Act with Josh Kappel

I recently made the decision to bring my work above ground into Colorado's regulated system as a licensed facilitator working with psilocybin mushrooms. In this episode I sit down with my friend and lawyer Josh Kappel, one of the co-authors of the Natural Medicine Health Act, for an honest conversation about psychedelic therapy and the law around psychedelic therapy in Colorado. We talk about what the Natural Medicine Health Act is, the difference between staying in personal use and becoming a licensed facilitator, where Spirit and Earth can sit inside a clinical frame, and what the latest psychedelic studies and federal developments mean for practitioners on the ground.  About my guest Josh Kappel is a founding partner of Vicente LLP law firm and one of the co-authors of Colorado's Proposition 122, the Natural Medicine Health Act, the first state law in the country to create a regulated access model for psychedelic therapy alongside decriminalized personal use. He chaired the Natural Medicine Colorado campaign, was named a 2025 Lawyer of the Year by Law Week Colorado, and continues to shape psychedelic and cannabis policy, including recent work on safe ibogaine access in Colorado. Resources and links * Josh Kappel and Vicente LLP: https://vicentellp.com [https://vicentellp.com/] * Reach Josh by email: j.kappel@vicentellp.com [j.kappel@vicentellp.com] * The Makaranda Method: https://themakarandamethod.com [https://themakarandamethod.com] * Work with me: https://themakarandamethod.clientsecure.me [https://themakarandamethod.clientsecure.me] * Free meditations on Insight Timer: https://insighttimer.com/eleanorevansmedina [https://insighttimer.com/eleanorevansmedina] * Chacruna Institute and the Indigenous Reciprocity Initiative: https://chacruna.net [https://chacruna.net] If this conversation spoke to you, I would love to hear from you. You can find me and the rest of my work at www.themakarandamethod.com [http://www.themakarandamethod.com] If you found this podcast supportive in any way, please share it with one person who needs to hear it. Thanks for listening! To stay connected, follow us on Instagram @themakarandamethod [https://www.instagram.com/themakarandamethod/] and @eleanor.evans.medina [https://www.instagram.com/eleanor.evans.medina/] Visit our website: www.themakarandamethod.com [https://www.themakarandamethod.com/] About Eleanor Evans Medina: Eleanor Evans Medina is a nature-based therapist, death doula, and beekeeper who calls herself a daughter of the Earth. She started The Makaranda Method in 2018, and her work brings people back into relationship with the Earth and with themselves through somatics and earth-based ceremony. Whether she is with someone one-on-one, in a group, or on retreat, what she is really after is helping people feel free, settled, and at home in their own lives.

Meditation - Coming Home to Yourself through Cancer - For E

This meditation was made a friend who was recently diagnosed cancer. This is for anyone moving through a disease, before a surgery, before a scan, before the unknown. It is about ten minutes long and invites you to arrive exactly as you are, afraid or exhausted or grateful or all of it at once. It moves through grounding, a gentle invitation back to yourself, learning to receive the love that is already moving toward you, and holding a prayer for your own body and the people caring for you too. Thanks for listening! To stay connected, follow us on Instagram @themakarandamethod [https://www.instagram.com/themakarandamethod/] and @eleanor.evans.medina [https://www.instagram.com/eleanor.evans.medina/] Visit our website: www.themakarandamethod.com [https://www.themakarandamethod.com/] About Eleanor Evans Medina: Eleanor Evans Medina is a nature-based therapist, death doula, and beekeeper who calls herself a daughter of the Earth. She started The Makaranda Method in 2018, and her work brings people back into relationship with the Earth and with themselves through somatics and earth-based ceremony. Whether she is with someone one-on-one, in a group, or on retreat, what she is really after is helping people feel free, settled, and at home in their own lives.

Conversation - From the Night Shift to Medicine Circles with E

I am honored to share this conversation with E. She is a labor and delivery nurse who spends her days at the threshold where life begins, holding families through one of the most raw and uncharted territories of human existence. She came into my world looking to buy my Sprinter van. What unfolded from that party, that snack table, that first conversation, became one of the most meaningful relationships of my life. In this episode, E shares how she found her way into psychedelic-assisted work and expanded states of consciousness. We talk about what it took to step into a group ceremony when that felt scary, and how that experience shifted her relationship with her body, her mother, her patients, and herself. We also get into the difference between thinking your way through life and actually feeling it, and what it means to keep showing up as a student, even when you're also the one holding the room. E is now part of the Makaranda Lineage. She is also the nurse I want by my side when I bring my own children into the world. I hope this conversation finds you at exactly the right moment. Thanks for listening! To stay connected, follow us on Instagram @themakarandamethod [https://www.instagram.com/themakarandamethod/] and @eleanor.evans.medina [https://www.instagram.com/eleanor.evans.medina/] Visit our website: www.themakarandamethod.com [https://www.themakarandamethod.com/] About Eleanor Evans Medina: Eleanor Evans Medina is a nature-based therapist, death doula, and beekeeper who calls herself a daughter of the Earth. She started The Makaranda Method in 2018, and her work brings people back into relationship with the Earth and with themselves through somatics and earth-based ceremony. Whether she is with someone one-on-one, in a group, or on retreat, what she is really after is helping people feel free, settled, and at home in their own lives.

Meditation - For the Pregnant Mother - Dedicated to T

I made this meditation for one of my best friends, T, who is pregnant. May it find every mother moving through a moment of fear or contraction and help her open, call in light, and trust the profound mystery already unfolding within her. Sometimes we receive news that pulls us out of our bodies, out of the joy and the knowing, and into our heads. This meditation is an invitation back. Back into the body, back into the breath, back into the deep trust that life knows what it is doing. In ten minutes, we ground into the Earth, draw white light in through the crown of the head, and let it travel all the way into the womb, circulating around your baby, tending what needs tending, restoring what needs restoring. If you know a mother who needs this, please share it. Thanks for listening! To stay connected, follow us on Instagram @themakarandamethod [https://www.instagram.com/themakarandamethod/] and @eleanor.evans.medina [https://www.instagram.com/eleanor.evans.medina/] Visit our website: www.themakarandamethod.com [https://www.themakarandamethod.com/] About Eleanor Evans Medina: Eleanor Evans Medina is a nature-based therapist, death doula, and beekeeper who calls herself a daughter of the Earth. She started The Makaranda Method in 2018, and her work brings people back into relationship with the Earth and with themselves through somatics and earth-based ceremony. Whether she is with someone one-on-one, in a group, or on retreat, what she is really after is helping people feel free, settled, and at home in their own lives.

Conversation - Psychedelics & Motherhood: Kate’s Story of Becoming

In this episode, I'm sitting down with my dear friend, client, and student Kate Pauley, a licensed marriage and family therapist and ceremonialist who has been part of my world since the very beginning of my practice in 2018. We're talking about Kate's experience bringing psychedelics and ceremonial work into her experience of becoming and being a mother. Kate shares her story honestly, from the ceremonies we did together in Mexico before she got pregnant, to the vision she received of a spirit baby connected to the Tree of Life, to the very real challenges of identity loss, loneliness, mom guilt, and the hormone crash of early postpartum. We also get into the maiden-to-mother-to-crone transition, why mothers specifically need ceremony and community, and what it means to raise a child inside a life that is itself a ceremony. I also open up about my own path toward motherhood, including a miscarriage last year that has been one of the harder chapters of my life. What I love about this conversation is that it isn't about psychedelics as a magic fix. It's about what happens when you do the work, when you let ceremony give you space to see yourself clearly, stop the patterns that are hurting you, trust your own knowing, and come back to love, especially in the small, hard moments. If you're a mother, or becoming one, or love one, this one's for you. Thanks for listening! To stay connected, follow us on Instagram @themakarandamethod [https://www.instagram.com/themakarandamethod/] and @eleanor.evans.medina [https://www.instagram.com/eleanor.evans.medina/] Visit our website: www.themakarandamethod.com [https://www.themakarandamethod.com/] About Eleanor Evans Medina: Eleanor Evans Medina is a nature-based therapist, death doula, and beekeeper who calls herself a daughter of the Earth. She started The Makaranda Method in 2018, and her work brings people back into relationship with the Earth and with themselves through somatics and earth-based ceremony. Whether she is with someone one-on-one, in a group, or on retreat, what she is really after is helping people feel free, settled, and at home in their own lives.