If you’re currently on your wellness journey you’re going to want to check out Psychedelic Frequency on Audible.
BOSSIP’s Sr. Content Director Janeé Bolden caught up with acclaimed producer and recording artist Maejor ahead of his appearance at Web Summit in Portugal, to discuss his latest podcast Psychedelic Frequency where he, alongside co-host Natalie Ginsberg from the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), takes listeners into the world of psychedelic therapy. The series offers a great historical perspective, while also introducing some of the world’s foremost experts on MDMA, Ketamine, Ayahuasca, Psilocybin, LSD, and DMT.
In one of our favorite episodes, Maejor takes us to Big Sur’s Esalen Institute for a holotropic breath workshop, but he also explores Berlin’s psychedelic underground, a Los Angeles ketamine clinic, and Guatemala, where doctors are treating opioid dependency with the powerful hallucinogen, Ibogaine.
Check out our candid conversation with Maejor about Psychedelic Frequency below:
BOSSIP: Your previous Audible podcast Major Frequency explored the healing power of sound through science and spirituality, what sparked your interest in the subject?
Maejor: “I got introduced into sound healing first through the spiritual community. I thought it was a little bit woo woo, but I liked how it felt. Then, going through my experience as a cancer survivor, a lot of people started sending me all of these different ways of healing and all these different ideas and the things that resonated with me were related to sound because I was already producing and working so much with sounds and EQ and frequency and already doing it everyday so once I started learning about the healing power of it, it really just gave me a perspective that there was an opportunity to bridge two worlds, the mainstream music world that I’m producing in, and this new world of wellness and healing. So that that’s where it all started.”
BOSSIP: This podcast is really fascinating, I just listened to the episode about holotropic breathwork and was blown away
Maejor: You know it surprised me with the breathwork specifically, because I’ve also had some psychedelic experiences, and it surprised me with the breathwork how intense the experience was, without actually taking any physical substance. It’s just by breathing in that way, for that long of a time your body starts doing some crazy things. That’s what the whole show is really about — the exploration of how to use these things in an intentional way that can actually help your life.
I feel like that conversation is moving more into the mainstream. Everyday people are more open to these ideas and concepts, and even microdosing and meditation and breathwork. All of these different types of modalities are coming into the public, so I think it’s a great time… One of the things we aim with the show is it just really give people a way to do it with intention so whatever you’re trying to get out of it, you can really get from it, versus just rolling the dice.
BOSSIP: Along with holotropic breathing, while I was listening to this podcast I learned of a lot of other substances I wasn’t previously aware of. Did you become more experimental after taking on this project?
Maejor: First I want to say that all the people who did substances within the show were with therapists and in a very clinical controlled setting and they went in with a measured dosage.
They’re just not out here tripping
Maejor: Yeah because that can be dangerous. I don’t want somebody to go into something that’s dangerous, but what we wanted to do is explore, because there are a lot of people who have reported huge benefits from these types of things, so we wanted to explore what was going on, how is it etc… So we found therapists who are already working in this space. In some ways my mind has been opened further. This show definitely did open my mind. Even the holotropic breathing. I had never that before and then we did a 2 1/2 hour session straight. That’s really really a different kind of thing that where you’re doing this breathwork for 2 1/2 hours straight. You do 2 sessions, one in the morning, one at night. You have your therapist, partner, or whoever is there with you, watch you while you breathe and make sure everything’s fine, because you can go into some pretty crazy states. They set up pillows around you so it’s pretty intense.
With the therapist, one of the things they talk about is integration and we will unpack, really reflect and give it time to meditate on the experience. You don’t just go right back into the world. You know get some time and start to process that in whatever way that takes for you, it can depend on your guide or your therapist or whoever is leading you through that experience.
In the introduction to Psychedelic Frequency you talk about wanting to heal the world, how do you feel psychedelics could potentially heal the masses?
Maejor: The way that I look at it is, I call it the journey inward or the journey within. We cannot, each person themselves, cannot heal and cannot change any anything or anyone outside, but if we change ourselves, we go inside… Even something like as simple as conflicts. Two people in a conflict, no one’s going to change from someone saying, ‘You’re wrong about this! What you did was wrong! What you’re doing is wrong!’ Yelling at them or hurting them, doing something to them, that’s not going to change them. The only way someone actually changes is through their consciousness being raised and them coming into their own perspective that, ‘Hey what I’m doing is wrong.’ When you get to that point then you can start to really make some change, start to really do something. So the way psychedelics work is it works with inner sight and inner change, so that causes a ripple effect to the people around you, the world you created around you, the way that you treat people, because what you really start to learn is that as we go deeper in, you start to see how connected we all are and how alike we all are. It’s just growing compassion in a different kind of way, where the other problems just fall away naturally as a result of you realizing it’s actually a waste of time.
Psychedelic Frequency was named one of Audible’s Best Of 2023 and is available for your listening pleasure on Audible now! We highly suggest checking it out for yourself. Besides being extremely informative, we found it really relaxing and calming to listen to and believe Maejor is doing groundbreaking work that we can all benefit from.
What do you think about his theory that psychedelics could ultimately heal the world?