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Psychedelics Today

PT554 – The Hero's Journey: Finding Your Story in Psychedelic Healing, with Mareesa Stertz

Psychedelics Today

Psychedelics Today, LLC

Life Sciences, Science, Medicine, Health & Fitness

4.6598 Ratings

🗓️ 8 October 2024

⏱️ 67 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this episode, Joe interviews Mareesa Stertz: lead of strategy/communications at the Global Psychedelic Society, co-founder of Lucid News, and filmmaker, currently finalizing her second feature film, "Confessions of a Psychonaut."

She discusses her path to wanting to create the film: how she always felt like something was wrong with her but didn't know exactly how to start her healing path, how seven ayahuasca trips didn't give her the breakthrough experience she wanted, and how she realized over time that she didn't have a hidden moment of trauma to overcome, but rather, lots of "little t" trauma – something that a lot of us have, without necessarily knowing it. She saw the true power of people sharing their stories of becoming healthier, and has found that aligning our stories to the classic framework of the Hero's Journey and Carl Jung's concept of individuation is the perfect formula for self-awareness, growth, and finding more meaning in life.

She talks about:

  • How the Hero's Journey makes sense of the abyss, and how the abyss helps us to see how much we've been programmed
  • Her formula for a good story: who you were before the event, the event, and how it changed you
  • Her Sphinx project, where she aims to bring giant sphinxes (from "The NeverEnding Story") to Burning Man, as a way for people to determine if they are "worthy"
  • Her "Talk Box" art installation, which involves strangers meeting in a confession booth to engage in meaningful conversations based on a wheel of questions
  • The power of group coherence and how much stronger a healing container can become over time

and more! 

Stertz is offering a course on finding where the Hero's Journey is in each of our lives: "Emerge: A Journey of Self-Authorship" begins on October 29. Click here for more info.

For links, head to the show notes page.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Hi, everybody, welcome back to Sagittalics today. This is Joe Moore coming out for Brack Ridge, Colorado.

0:16.3

Today on this show, we have Marisa Sturt, who's done a bunch in the psychedelic space um we finally got to

0:23.4

meet each other after knowing about each other for years at the uh what was it the Portland horizons

0:29.5

i think was the first time we met but since we've uh bumped into each other at a number of places

0:34.3

and it's always lovely to um be with marisa again i think 2023 burning man we

0:40.2

tried to give a talk together and worked out kind of and then um yeah i think we just accidentally

0:47.6

bumped into each other this year at the burn at the very last minute which was lovely and yeah today

0:52.7

we're going to talk about storytelling, the hero's journey,

0:55.3

Marisa's kind of filmmaking journey and what she's up to on a few different projects. So,

1:01.1

so different topic. I will be in Las Vegas on December 3 at Remind, the psychedelic business forum.

1:09.1

If you want to come say what's up or see this conference,

1:12.9

please come on down. Get some really cool partners and sponsors and just really excited to see

1:19.5

everybody. I loved my time there last year and really excited to see what's going to happen this

1:24.2

year. So a lot of people are going to be in town already because the,

1:28.2

let's see, the MJ BizCon event will be there. So a lot of people are just in town for that and

1:34.0

hopefully they come over. But I get some fun folks that are going to be there. Henry from

1:38.5

Tricicle Day, I think. Reggie from Hafeleaks, Micology, Psychology, Reality Sandwich, and much more. So come on down, December 3. It's going to be fun. And if you're there, please say hi. We'd love to see you. All right. On with the show, and we'll see you on the other side. Here we are, psychedelics today. Ries sisters, how you doing?

2:01.8

Doing great.

2:02.4

How are you?

2:03.6

Lovely.

2:08.7

So we saw each other a little less than a month ago out in a really harsh environment,

2:11.9

but now we are clean, mostly well.

...

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