In this episode — Somatic Salvia guide Christopher Solomon, from Willits in Richard’s own Mendocino County, teaches Salvia divinorum from the ground up: what the plant is (a sage from the Sierra Mazateca of Oaxaca), its legal status (federally unscheduled and legal in California; banned in some states), how it is grown from cuttings, and the three ways it is taken — the Mazatec quid, the dried leaf, and a standardized extract in the five-bowl pipe Christopher invented. He explains how the gas-station “60x” extracts of the late nineties gave salvia its bad rap, why he built his practice around the smallest dose that does anything (“titrating and pendulating”), what the 2020 Johns Hopkins fMRI study he took part in found about the default mode network, a light dose as a door into meditation, and what he calls “the witness of an other.” For Richard’s book on adverse effects, they cover the ugly as well as the good: no addiction, no hangover, no measured rise in blood pressure or heart rate in the Hopkins safety work, and the one real danger at high dose, a dissociated person getting up and running, answered by a mature sitter and working in slowly.

Guest: Christopher Solomon — somatic Salvia guide and teacher; B.A. Psychology (UT Dallas); two-year somatic psychotherapy certification, Hakomi Institute of California; Body-Mind Centering training; inventor of the five-bowl Salvia pipe; founder of the Somatic Salvia Network. Participant in the Johns Hopkins salvinorin A fMRI study (2020). salviahealings.com · About · His Johns Hopkins experience report

Legal status of Salvia divinorum varies by state. Nothing in this conversation is medical advice.

Chapters

00:00 — Cold open: the perfect plant for beginners and seasoned psychonauts

00:46 — Welcome: community is the antidote to isolation

02:05 — A guest from Willits, Mendocino County

02:34 — The magic wand: education and pragmatic advice

04:20 — What is Salvia divinorum? A sage from the Sierra Mazateca

05:35 — Is it legal? Federal law vs. state law

06:50 — How to grow it: clones, shade, and nitrogen

09:07 — Harvest and the quid: how the curanderos use it

10:51 — Gas-station extracts and salvia’s bad rap

13:10 — Three ways in: the quid, the dried leaf, the standardized extract

14:37 — Reverse tolerance and the five-bowl pipe

18:37 — How long it lasts: stair-stepping and pendulating

20:33 — Therapeutic benefits: Johns Hopkins, the claustrum, and the default mode network

23:25 — A light dose: quieting the mind, dropping the story

26:02 — Enhancing the witness: “something else being there with you”

27:49 — The good, the bad, and the ugly: adverse effects

29:34 — Opioid withdrawal and the kappa opioid receptor

30:28 — The main risk: dissociation, and getting up to run

31:37 — A mature sitter

32:40 — No hangover, no fatigue

33:40 — How to reach Christopher: salviahealings.com

34:33 — Blood pressure, heart rate, and medications

37:16 — The break: the open-source archive and Richard’s books

40:10 — Closing: beginners and psychonauts, the Somatic Salvia Network, a sustainable plant

42:47 — Close: “I’m gonna do it myself”