Still In It : 5-MeO-DMT Stories

Karen is an herbalist in southern Maryland who spent years quietly carrying what she calls a pattern of "suffering in silence" — a shame she traces back through the women in her family. Fourteen months after an intensive at Enfold, she joins Arthur to look back on what brought her there and what's changed since.
Karen talks about the physical toll that fatigue and unprocessed grief had taken on her body, the experience of being met with total honesty by her ceremony pod, and a Full Release journey she describes as a kind of whiplash between death and rebirth. She also shares how she's built simple, sustaining practices into her life since — cold plunges, acupuncture, slowing down — and what she'd tell someone standing where she once stood.
A warm, grounded conversation about shame, community, and the slow work of coming back to yourself.
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Enfold offers safe and sacred transformational experiences combining psychedelic medicines, breathwork, coaching, and somatic modalities, with a grounding in Buddhist philosophy. We come together as a community to support one another on the path of transformation with events, circles, and ongoing programs.
Ready to embark on your own transformational journey? Learn more about our programs at: https://enfold.org

Shana is an academic who looked, by all outward measures, like a calm, high-functioning, successful person. Underneath, she'd spent decades in fight-or-flight — anxiety, panic attacks, and a nervous system that never quite felt safe.
She came to Enfold after her brother went first and came back changed. Ten months later, she joins Arthur to talk about what happened in between.
Shana describes a full-release ceremony that felt less like her own story and more like witnessing generations of inherited suffering — war, grief, fear — and finally being able to let it go. She talks about coming back into her body after a lifetime of living in her head, the strange and clarifying experience of bonding with five strangers who seemed to have nothing in common with her, and the months of small, conscious choices that followed: noticing old habits in real time and choosing, again and again, whether to pick them back up.
She also talks about what's changed in how she relates to the unknown, and a new commitment to taking life a little less seriously.
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Enfold offers safe and sacred transformational experiences combining psychedelic medicines, breathwork, coaching, and somatic modalities, with a grounding in Buddhist philosophy. We come together as a community to support one another on the path of transformation with events, circles, and ongoing programs.
Ready to embark on your own transformational journey? Learn more about our programs at: https://enfold.org

David first joined Arthur on the podcast after his initial 5-MeO-DMT experience at Enfold in December 2024 — a journey that helped him process a recent autism diagnosis, years of depression and anxiety, and unresolved grief. In this follow-up conversation, David returns to talk about going back to Enfold in November 2025, this time with his partner.
Where the first ceremony felt like being shown the beauty and possibility of life, the second was different — less euphoric, more excavating. David talks candidly about confronting buried anger (some of it not even his own), learning to trust and voice his own feelings day to day, and discovering that healing doesn't mean life gets easier so much as it gets more honest. He also shares how the experience reshaped his relationship to work, creativity, and play — including a documentary project, Mile Zero, born out of his first journey.
A grounded, reflective conversation about what it actually looks like to keep doing the work, long after the dramatic breakthrough.
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Enfold offers safe and sacred transformational experiences combining psychedelic medicines, breathwork, coaching, and somatic modalities, with a grounding in Buddhist philosophy. We come together as a community to support one another on the path of transformation with events, circles, and ongoing programs.
Ready to embark on your own transformational journey? Learn more about our programs at: https://enfold.org

In this episode, we sit down with Janelle, an aviation executive from Toronto who joined us at Enfold in September 2025. Janelle arrived at Enfold desperate for change—battling panic attacks, severe anxiety, 16-hour workdays, and a recently diagnosed autoimmune condition. What she experienced over the course of five days was a reset of her nervous system and a radical shift in her relationship with her health and her past.

Janelle was introduced to 5-MeO-DMT when she noticed a dramatic shift in the energy of two colleagues who had recently returned from Enfold. Realizing that she was "more scared living another 40 years the same way" than she was of the medicine, she booked her retreat with a blank slate.

Janelle details the profound energy releases she experienced, describing how years of compounded stress and "toxic" energy living in her fascia literally poured out of her through intense physical trembling. She also shares the remarkable vision during her full release ceremony that forced her to take radical accountability for her health choices, leading to her immediately quitting a 25-year smoking habit.

Perhaps most movingly, Janelle shares how her time at Enfold helped her drop her shield of blame and hatred toward her estranged father. By seeing him as a wounded child rather than just her abuser, she was able to meet with him after 12 years of no contact, offering only compassion and love.

This episode is a powerful testament to the body's ability to release stored trauma and the profound grace that can emerge when we finally stop running from our pain.

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Enfold offers safe and sacred transformational experiences combining psychedelic medicines, breathwork, coaching, and somatic modalities, with a grounding in Buddhist philosophy. We come together as a community to support one another on the path of transformation with events, circles, and ongoing programs.

Ready to embark on your own transformational journey? Learn more about our programs at: ⁠https://enfold.org

In this episode we are joined by Patricia, a Vancouver-based Pilates and Gyrotonics studio owner who holds a special place in the Enfold story — she was part of our very first 5-day "Awakening to Life" intensive back in August 2024. Speaking with us a year and a half later, Patricia offers a rare and beautiful look into the "long tail" of integration.

Unlike some who seek out this medicine during a personal crisis, Patricia arrived at Enfold simply propelled by a lifelong dedication to self-growth. She came seeking to remove the subtle blocks that were keeping her from showing up completely in her life. With a history of psychedelic exploration dating back to the 90s, she was no stranger to expanded states. Yet, 5-MeO-DMT offered her a uniquely somatic unraveling.

Patricia takes us through the arc of her 5-day experience — from arriving at what felt like "Avalon", to a deeply tearful release honouring the healthy masculine energy of her brother.

Perhaps most powerfully, we explore how childhood conditioning shapes our bodies. Patricia shares how she broke through her mother’s mantra of "never wanting to be a burden" by boldly asking for physical support during her ceremony.

Today, she stands more centered, honouring her energy, and treating her business as a direct reflection of her internal alignment.

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Enfold offers safe and sacred transformational experiences combining psychedelic medicines, breathwork, coaching, and somatic modalities, with a grounding in Buddhist philosophy. We come together as a community to support one another on the path of transformation with events, circles, and ongoing programs.

Ready to embark on your own transformational journey? Learn more about our programs at: ⁠https://enfold.org