spirituality - Project Chronic

Recreation is Therapeutic

Miyabe — Thu, 07 Dec 2023 01:02:46 +0000

**DISCLAIMER** I’ve written these as if we’re hanging out just having a conversation. It is my opinion based on my experience as a scientist and as a part of our commuity.The information, including but not limited to, text, graphics, images and other material contained on this website are for informational purposes only. No material on this site is intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

I am not a medical professional and so I have no place giving medical advice. I am an expert on the molecular interactions of cannabinoids and their targets in the brain/body; I make theoretical extrapolations into my own life/cannabis/psychedelics use all the time, but have no formal training in physiology or general pathology outside of molecular mechanism.

I have always believed that there is a huge therapeutic value, specifically for neurodivergent adults, in recreation – so much so that my first non-profit endeavor was building opportunities for recreational music for higher support needs neurodivergent adults.

Eight years ago I attended a small acoustic concert in a living room in Larry Bird’s old house in Chestnut Hill, MA (I remember wondering why there were all these pictures of a huge, tall white guy in this Indian family’s home). Laine had been teaching violin to an extremely talented young autistic musician and two of his friends, one who played guitar, and one who played rhythm tambourine and this was their debut set together. Two other musicians with disabilities opened the show with piano and guitar. The room was filled with energy and by the time Laine’s trio took the stage, it was clearly a very successful party.

The audience was made up entirely of neurodivergent friends and family. The freedom and openness of behaviors was something I’ve never experienced. I found myself stimming and feeling more comfortable, more myself than I ever had in any public setting. Seeing the trio perform for their friends was engaging; the joy in the room was physically tangible. I had never been so aware of my own emotions in a space.

Laine and I played a small classical music set to close the concert and then a potluck dinner was served. As the night wore on, more and more unique conversations and experiences were had. These were my people. I had found community in a neurodivergent space like never before. We started playing music all together and that was the beginning of my first non-profit: The Music, Unity, and Social Expansion (MUSE) Foundation.

Until now I’ve had a really difficult time even thinking about MUSE, because it was in many ways mine and Laine’s first child. We built the non-profit from scratch by not paying ourselves and working multiple jobs to support its growth. We dedicated the first three years of our marriage to its success.

And I was devastated by the way it ended for me.

I used to think I’d write about it way down the line and air all the dirty laundry. I used to think I would feel empowered by telling my side, our side, especially because I have a keen memory especially in conflict. But in reality there’s nothing to tell besides what happened. The direction I had worked for years to build was negated, possibly because my disability, possibly because I was the only person of color on the staff, in favor of the strong opinions of two cis-hetero white men. Laine and I, and eventually another core administrative staff, were pushed to leave – all of us queer, neurodivergent adults.

I don’t think anyone needs to hear the dirty details, because sadly it’s such a common occurrence.

But now years later, I look back upon the time that I spent in that community as a huge step in my healing and a giant piece of my understanding of neurodivergent communities and the value of recreation for neurodivergent adults.

Neurodivergent adults need community support to navigate this complicated society.

We are often not fully independent and need additional types of support, especially emotional support. Feeling seen in a group of peers and knowing that you have a place among friends is critical to living a high quality of life. Humans were meant to be social and neurodivergent adults don’t get as many opportunities for that.

On top of that neurodivergent adults struggle to make and maintain friendships. Or we have atypical friendships that have blurred lines into other categories of relationship, like family. This is made worse by any atypical childhood family experiences. It can be difficult for us to understand our place in society which makes community support more important.

Recreational outlets, including situations that involve substance use for the purpose of recreation like cannabis or psychedelics or alcohol, create opportunities for neurodivergent adults to access different levels of social reward, decreased anxiety, and social bonding. Substances have been a part of our joined social experiences from humanities earliest times, just like music, or often in combination with music.

As I move into this next chapter with this new non-profit, I am feeling compelled to honor this piece of my history and push for the therapeutic value of recreational outlets.

The post Recreation is Therapeutic first appeared on Project Chronic.

The Boundless Unknown

Miyabe — Sat, 28 Oct 2023 02:35:21 +0000

I always knew I wanted to write a book, but it just never seemed to get enough momentum to make it to the finish line. I burn through my obsessions which often means they are bright, flashy, but not lengthy. I’ve made two other serious attempts at writing a book that never made it past the outline and first chapter.

It seems like it’s a theme for me that third time’s the charm.

This summer I had my first experience with dimethyltrypatmine (DMT) and, while I didn’t fully “break through,” it was life changing. It took weeks to process everything that I had been allowed to see. But I came away with a very well-defined purpose to share what I know and to create a space that uplifts others to do the same.

In the following months, I designed a completely new model for teaching science to neurodivergent adults, I wrote a book, I harvested my first ever outdoor photoperiod crop, and a I co-founded a cannabis reserach and advocacy non-profit. I feel driven by an undeniable purpose and it is absolutely exhilarating. I’m going to share some memories from this incredible and important time for me.

The post The Boundless Unknown first appeared on Project Chronic.

My Mystical Path to Farming

Miyabe — Fri, 09 Jun 2023 02:39:51 +0000

This is a multi-post series on my journey into urban agriculture as a focus point for natural medicine advocacy inspired by an interview with Emily Davis at the Community Agriculture Project.

Farming has closed the gap on quite a few unfinished stories in my life and one of them is that my college choice finally makes sense to me.

When I tell people why I chose to go to UC Davis, a university founded as an agricultural offshoot of UC Berkeley that grew into its own independence, I usually say it was about water polo – that it was the only school that would let me major in biochemistry and molecular biology while also playing D1. Which is both true and not true. I did play water polo, at least for a couple years, but I chose to go to UC Davis, because there was a sign from the universe and it was too loud to miss.

I usually lean away from talking about these feelings of mysticism openly, because in the past they’ve been leveraged against me in a clinical setting. Delusions and grandiosity are signs of both mood disorders and psychotic disorders, both of which I’ve been diagnosed with. But 2023 is authenticity so here it goes…

I have always had strong feelings of mysticism that persisted well beyond my childhood and without the addition of any substances. As a child, my grandma Kinu encouraged it, “it’s a gift,” she would tell me. “Never doubt it, and never deny it.”

Now over 16 years after I followed an otherworldly, ancestral push to attend a college that was founded as a farm and still maintains a lot of agricultural culture, it finally all makes sense. I was meant to find my way back to farming and I was meant to go through one of the most difficult times in my life at UC Davis that would force me to search through the pharmaceutical perspective before my return.

The answer often returns to community. The community and purpose that a farm creates is primal and touches deep roots that can transcend societal divides. It’s a route to sustainability; it’s the future for increasing access to foods and medicines. And we need to expand the protections and funding that go towards building small local farms for quality foods and medicines.

The post My Mystical Path to Farming first appeared on Project Chronic.

Of Molecules, Music, and Mysticism

Miyabe — Fri, 24 Feb 2023 01:46:33 +0000

Over the past 9 years of performing together, our genre of original music has been described as “fucked up folk”… It’s fitting since we are compelled to write music about subjects/emotions that we cannot express in any other way. Laine and I found our life together through music, and even started a non-profit together providing the scaffolding for a social music scene for neurodivergent adults. The therapeutic benefits of music and a social music scene (community) are undervalued and understudied interventions for mental health with real neurological, molecular mechanisms.

By far the most accessible written work on neuromusicology (the study of music in the brain) is Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks, so I’ll defer the more general findings. But I will say that after all the research I did on the effects of both molecules and music on the brain – from ancient to modern and from casual, amateur jam sessions to rigid, classical or more clinical therapeutic settings – I am certain that music acts in a complex multi-molecular mechanism that is not reproducible by any combination of molecules, natural or pharmaceutical.

"Music can pierce the heart directly; it needs no mediation [...] And there is, finally, a deep and mysterious paradox here, for while music makes one experience pain and grief more intensely, it brings solace and consolation at the same time."

- Oliver Sacks, Musicophilia

It is, however, undeniable that certain molecules enhance musical experience and vise versa, music enhances the molecules. It’s well-documented by the intimate relationships many musicians have with specific molecules that can be tools for connectivity to the artist’s creative identity. I have yet to step on stage without cannabis and I notice very distinct changes in the physical (rhythm, pitch, resonance, etc) and emotional tone of creating music.

Psychedelics take that expansion of emotional connection past what feels possible to describe. Synesthesia and beautiful visual accompaniments create a sense of connection to the divine, to the deepest part of what it means to be human, to creation for the sake of creation, and to the power of forgiveness in the process of healing. During our first experience with San Pedro, Laine and I let go of half of our physical belongings and celebrated our liberation by writing a song we named after our favorite ever-transformative stone, labradorite (here’s the first recording from that day).

I’ve been circling this concept of mysticism (which some call magic others call divine or godly, and still others call delusion or grandiosity) for years, because while I can feel the distinct difference in the classic serotonergics, my first experiences with mysticism were through cannabis as a teenager. Blazed up in AP bio, I had a mystical feeling learning about the enzyme in plants that takes carbon gas out of the air and creates solid carbon that is the basis of all life (RuBisCo); five years later, I started my research career with the enzyme soluble epoxide hydrolase and seven years later, I completed my PhD on the endocannabinoid-metabolizing enzymes

After my PhD I swore I’d never go back to school again, but I should know by now it’s impossible to set boundaries on the universe. I am currently a student in The River Course led by Dr. Joe Tafur, MD where I am sharing a once-in-a-lifetime experience of molecules, music, and mysticism with an entire community of psychedelic health professionals, activists, and scientists who want to expand our understanding of what it means to heal.

Dr. Joe Tafur is not only a doctor from UCSD and UCLA, but a trained Shipibo curandero and a spiritual leader at the Church of the Eagle and the Condor. He is teaching my classmates and me of the intangible, unquantifiable aspects of psychedelic healing that touch our souls, the missing piece of mental and physical health that Western medicine at best ignores, and at worst intentionally devalues. He is teaching us that healing is slow magic. And I feel the most connected to the magnitude and weight of this topic when he is singing to us.

I have a complicated relationship with religion and see myself as a spiritual wanderer, a bit lost and disconnected. But hearing these songs in the safety of this new community has awoken something deep within, something from perhaps even before this lifetime. The music takes me away from myself and I can start to see what tethers me and what sets me free.

The post Of Molecules, Music, and Mysticism first appeared on Project Chronic.

Reclaiming my spirituality through psychedelic exploration

Miyabe — Mon, 30 Jan 2023 18:47:59 +0000

My Grandma Kinu called us “lazy Buddhists” – and compared to the stereotypical, minimalist, sober, quiet, Westernized image of a bald-headed Buddhist monk, we are indeed very laid back. She raised me on a random hodgepodge of Jodo Shinshu (Shin/Pure Land) Buddhism and Hawaiian polytheism/animism. Her wisdom was rattled off here and there on a situation-by-situation basis as the need arose.

The summers I spent with my Grandma Kinu in Hawaii, sleeping on the floor of her best friend’s kitchen pantry, are the most formative memories I have with nature. They are the core of my belief in the living, spiritual presence of the earth. She stressed our relationship with the ocean, the ocean’s relationship with the island, and the island’s relationship with us as infinite, as deeper than can be described in words. She told me stories of the wrath of the island gods and taught me to honor and respect the earth as a living being, as the mother of all life.

Back in California we attended Gardena Buddhist Church which calls itself “a uniquely American Buddhism of Japanese origin” that has “blended American culture and customs into” traditionally Buddhist services. I learned of the golden chain of love, of accepting suffering through release, of harnessing self-reflection, of the power of listening to yourself and others. In this type of Buddhism, we do not try to achieve nirvana, our entire goal is to live with the most faith in the Amita Buddha’s teachings to be reborn in the Pure Land. Interestingly now as an adult, it reminds me of many monotheistic religions like Christianity, Judaism, and Islam; the reward for faith and service is a divine afterlife…

I don’t remember a lot from my childhood, but I know I struggled with understanding some pretty basic social constructs. Starting in middle school, I began calling myself an atheist, because I didn’t understand what that meant. A friend’s mom called me an atheist at a funeral for another friend’s father, and it stuck.

“This must be so hard for you as an atheist,” she said, “since you don’t believe in God or Heaven.” I was crying profusely – really ugly, sobbing crying – because my friend was sad and her father had been kind to me. I knew I didn’t believe in her idea of God, so I accepted that she must know more than me. I must be an atheist.

It wasn’t until high school that I learned the term agnostic, and since I definitely believed in a higher power, I accepted that new label. I had no idea that being Buddhist could even be a label that was used in place of “Christian,” “atheist,” or “agnostic” because it wasn’t explained exactly to me that way. I have a more difficult time generalizing knowledge than most people would think. Not that it really matters, because I am not truly all Buddhist.

It took me until well into my mid-twenties during my PhD to reflect upon labeling my spirituality outside of “I don’t know what I am, but I certainly have strong feelings about it.” I began seeking out religious experiences like fasting for Ramadan, attending iftar, practicing lent, observing the differences in various Christian sub-types, learning about the Hindu Vedas, celebrating Rosh Hashanah, practicing Shabbat, and closing with Havdalah. Every one made me feel closer to my own answer and I felt the common thread of love and community twist its way into the center of my belief in the divine.

But I could not feel fully supported in any of these major religions, because I am outside their range of acceptable behavior – in lifestyle, sexuality, gender identity. I also have many tattoos and consider them a central piece of my identity and relationship to my body. Plus the strongest emotional bond to my spirituality is from the time I spent with my Grandma Kinu in Hawaii and about my relationship to nature. I believe everything on earth has a divine connection.

Through deep self-reflection with the assistance of psychedelics and cannabis, I’ve realized that I’m searching for community and belonging. And just as lysergic acid amide (LSA) and cannabis helped me accept my gender identity between binaries, psilocybe mushrooms and cannabis helped me connect to my spiritual identity between categories.

My spirituality is undefined, but not unimportant. And through the exploration of psychedelics and cannabis, I will continue to grow my community and find belonging.

All of my research has been about the scientific evaluation of the therapeutic effects for mental and physical health, which are very real and exist, but neglected to take into account the spiritual and emotional component of that same healing. Now I want to bring the context of pharmaceutical biochemistry into my relationship with these living, giving beings as sacred medicines.

Grandma Kinu and I at the Gardena Buddhist Church Obon Festival (I think it’s the largest Obon in the US).

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