On The Same Paige with Paige Leacey

Paige Leacey
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Hey, I'm Paige. I'm fascinated by the big questions about being human - how we think, why we change & what shapes our reality. I chat with scientists, philosophers, psychologists, spiritual practitioners, altered-state researchers & people with extraordinary lived experiences. We explore everything from consciousness, parapsychology, & psychedelics to spirituality, creativity, identity & the nature of reality. My goal isn't to tell you what to believe. It's to make more perspectives accessible so you can choose . If you're a curious but healthy skeptic who loves exploring big ideas, welcome!

  1. 6d ago

    E50. We Need to Rethink Trauma & Healing w. Dr. Rachel Yehuda

    What is trauma actually – the event itself, the way we respond to it, or the meaning it takes on in our lives? In this episode of On The Same Paige, Paige speaks with trauma researcher Dr. Rachel Yehuda about how trauma shapes the brain, body, memory and identity. Rachel explains why the word trauma is often used in different ways, how stress and trauma overlap, why people can respond so differently to the same event, and what complex trauma reveals about relationships, childhood and safety. Together, Paige and Rachel explore the biology of fear, the brain-body feedback loop, epigenetics, psychedelic therapy, MDMA-assisted therapy, ayahuasca experiences and why healing may depend on more than simply “fixing” the brain. They also discuss why trauma is not always something to erase, how difficult experiences can become part of a person’s autobiography, and why community, safety and relationship may be central to recovery. In this conversation: 💕 What trauma actually means from a clinical perspective 💕 Why “little T” and “big T” trauma can be difficult to define 💕 Why people respond differently to the same traumatic event 💕 Complex trauma, childhood experiences and relational wounds 💕 The relationship between the brain, body and fear response 💕 Why it can be hard to feel safe after trauma 💕 Paige’s ayahuasca experience and the idea of a “watershed” moment 💕 MDMA-assisted therapy, PTSD and eating disorder research 💕 Genetics, epigenetics and how environment shapes vulnerability 💕 How community, safety and relationships affect recovery 💕 Why psychedelics may bring up unexpected material during therapy Chapters: 0:00 - What actually counts as trauma? 1:38 - Why the word trauma has changed 4:25 - Why people respond differently to the same event 5:55 - Complex trauma and relational wounds 7:32 - The brain-body feedback loop 11:11 - Psychedelics and profound change 22:28 - Why healing is relational Dr. Rachel Yehuda is the Chemers Neustein Family Professor of Trauma and Resilience. Her research explores PTSD, stress, epigenetics, intergenerational trauma and psychedelic-assisted therapy. 🔗 Connect with Paige: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@PaigeLeacey Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4sVFkvFcj3DW1wuVZuGd4U Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/on-the-same-paige-with-paige-leacey/id1573526370 Newsletter: https://paigeleacey.substack.com Instagram: @samepaige__ TikTok: @samepaige__ On The Same Paige explores psychedelics, consciousness, psychology, neuroscience and the edges of human experience through honest stories and deep conversations with people willing to question what we think we know about the mind. This conversation is for educational purposes only and is not medical advice.

    E50. We Need to Rethink Trauma & Healing w. Dr. Rachel Yehuda

  2. Sep 26

    E49. Can Childbirth Feel Like a Psychedelic Experience?

    What if women naturally move through altered states – not only through psychedelics, but through movement, the menstrual cycle and childbirth? In this episode of On The Same Paige, Paige sits down with birth worker and women’s health educator Karissa Bollinger to explore the altered states that can emerge across the female experience. Karissa shares how severe PMDD symptoms, burnout and a frightening LSD experience led her to study hormones, psilocybin microdosing and the relationship between consciousness and the body. She explains why the luteal phase can sometimes feel like an altered state of its own – and how this work eventually changed the way she understood birth. Together, Paige and Karissa explore childbirth as a profound threshold experience involving identity, fear, surrender, embodiment and dramatically altered consciousness. ☕ Support conversations like this: https://buymeacoffee.com/paigeleacey In this conversation: 💕 How running, dancing and repetitive movement can alter consciousness 💕 Karissa’s difficult LSD experience and what it taught her about set and setting 💕 PMDD, intense luteal-phase emotions and feeling as though you are seeing an uncomfortable truth 💕 Karissa’s personal experience of using psilocybin microdosing while addressing her hormonal health 💕 Why the luteal phase can resemble a “good trip” or a “bad trip” 💕 The relationship between emotions, body awareness and the menstrual cycle 💕 Why childbirth can produce a profoundly altered state of consciousness 💕 Preparing the nervous system for the intensity and uncertainty of birth 💕 Using breath, pelvic-floor awareness and physical simulations to prepare for labour 💕 Sovereignty, fear and decision-making during birth 💕 Why rest and recovery matter both during labour and postpartum 💕 Birth, identity dissolution and the transition into motherhood 💕 Why attempting to eliminate fear may be less useful than learning how to experience it 💕 Reports of visions, ancestors and other unusual experiences during childbirth 💕 Surrendering the need to appear composed, polite or in control during birth This conversation explores Karissa’s personal experiences and professional framework. Research into psychedelics, female hormones and altered states during birth remains limited. This episode is not medical advice or a recommendation to use psilocybin. If you experience severe premenstrual symptoms, suicidal thoughts, depression during pregnancy or postpartum depression, please seek support from a qualified healthcare professional or an emergency service in your country. 🔗 Connect with Karissa: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wavework.birthing/ 🔗 Connect with Paige: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@PaigeLeacey Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4sVFkvFcj3DW1wuVZuGd4U Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/on-the-same-paige-with-paige-leacey/id1573526370 Newsletter: https://paigeleacey.substack.com Instagram: @samepaige__ TikTok: @samepaige__

    E49. Can Childbirth Feel Like a Psychedelic Experience?

  3. Sep 15

    E48. DMT Experiences: Addiction, Entities & Reality

    Psychedelic educator, James W. Jesso, joins the show again to discuss the profound nature of a DMT experience and what it reveals about our reality. Paige and James revisit their shared interest in the edges of human experience, specifically focusing on the intersection of consciousness and plant medicine. They unpack the complexities of navigating these intense altered states, reflecting on how such encounters challenge our traditional understanding of the mind and the nature of existence.This conversation moves beyond the spectacle of the experience itself, looking at the role of psychedelic research and the importance of integrating these moments into daily life. Whether you are curious about the mechanics of the mind or interested in the philosophical implications of these substances, this discussion offers a grounded perspective on an often misunderstood topic. Subscribe for more conversations on consciousness and the mind, and let us know your thoughts on the nature of reality in the comments. 🔗 James W. Jesso:    / @adventuresthroughthemind  James' Books: https://www.jameswjesso.com/category/...More Links: https://linktr.ee/jameswjesso 🔗 Connect with Paige:YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@PaigeLeaceySpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4sVFkvFcj3DW1wuVZuGd4UApple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/on-the-same-paige-with-paige-leacey/id1573526370Newsletter: https://paigeleacey.substack.comInstagram: @samepaige__TikTok: @samepaige__On The Same Paige is a podcast and YouTube channel dedicated to deep conversations about how the mind works - consciousness, psychology, neuroscience, and the edges of human experience.

    E48. DMT Experiences: Addiction, Entities & Reality

  4. Sep 8

    E47. SOLO: How Psychedelics Helped Heal My Deepest Shame

    Can one psychedelic experience change a pattern you’ve lived with for a decade – without magically fixing everything else?In this solo episode of On The Same Paige, I share one of the most personal parts of my story: my ten-year struggle with bulimia, the ayahuasca ceremony that unexpectedly became a turning point, and why the difficult work of integration still mattered afterwards.This isn’t a claim that ayahuasca is a cure for eating disorders, or that one experience will affect everyone in the same way. It’s an honest account of what happened to me — including the confronting first night, the blissful second ceremony, the strange entities and imagery I encountered, and what changed when I returned home.I also explore my complicated relationship with manifestation. Can you remain sceptical, care about evidence and still consciously choose beliefs that make your life better?In this episode:💕 Why altered states and consciousness became so personal to me💕 My experience of living with bulimia for ten years💕 The two radically different nights of my ayahuasca ceremony💕 Machine elves, womb imagery and the difficulty of describing psychedelic experiences💕 What unexpectedly changed after I returned home💕 Why healing did not mean that life suddenly became easy💕 The importance — and difficulty — of psychedelic integration💕 How gratitude began changing the way I experienced ordinary life💕 Manifestation through the eyes of a sceptic💕 Belief, the subconscious mind and the stories we repeatedly tell ourselves💕 The affirmation recording and binaural-beat practice I’m currently experimenting with 📚 Mentioned in this episode: The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace D. Wattles: https://www.amazon.com.au/Science-Getting-Rich-Proven-Program/dp/1585426016 My conversation with Alexander Beiner about the extended-state DMT trial: https://youtu.be/zDgwTIteHMo My Substack: https://paigeleacey.substack.com/ ☕️ To support conversations like this, shout Paige a coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/paigeleacey 🔗 Connect with Paige: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@PaigeLeacey Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4sVFkvFcj3DW1wuVZuGd4U Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/on-the-same-paige-with-paige-leacey/id1573526370 Newsletter: https://paigeleacey.substack.com/ Instagram: @samepaige__ TikTok: @samepaige__ Content note: This episode discusses bulimia and eating-disorder behaviours. It reflects my personal experience and is not medical advice or a recommendation to use ayahuasca or other psychedelics. If you’re struggling with an eating disorder or your mental health, please seek support from a qualified professional.

    E47. SOLO: How Psychedelics Helped Heal My Deepest Shame

  5. Sep 4

    E46. The Healing Power of Trance: Music, Movement & Altered States

    Can music and ritual trigger an out-of-body experience without psychedelics? Anthropologist Dr Tamara D. Turner has spent years studying trance, consciousness and healing rituals in North Africa – and eventually experienced trance herself. In this conversation, Tamara takes us inside all-night rituals among Black communities in Algeria whose traditions developed over centuries following the trans-Saharan slave trade. Through music, movement, repetition and community, participants can enter profound altered states of consciousness. Some describe leaving their bodies. Others report feeling inhabited by jinn or other entities. And unlike a recreational psychedelic experience, these rituals are often about confronting suffering rather than escaping it. We explore: 💕 What trance actually feels like as it begins 💕 Why Western medicine may describe some of these states as dissociation 💕 How music and repetition can induce altered states without drugs 💕 What participants mean when they say someone has “gone away” or left their body 💕 Jinn, spirits and the cultural meaning of “inhabitation trance” 💕 Why some people appear unable to feel pain during deeper trance states 💕 How time changes inside an all-night ritual 💕 Why community and co-regulation may be central to the healing process 💕 The relationship between trauma, ritual, music and mental health 💕 What Tamara experienced when she entered trance herself 💕 Whether consciousness is generated by the brain – or whether the brain could act more like a receiver or projector 💕 What psychedelic medicine might lose when altered states are separated from ritual, relationship and community Dr Tamara D. Turner is an anthropologist whose research explores music, trance, suffering, consciousness and healing practices in North Africa. 📚 Tamara's work: Dancing at the Thresholds: https://iupress.org/9780253075888/dancing-at-the-thresholds/ Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=XWvvxusAAAAJ&hl=en LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tamaraturner/ Her research includes Music and Trance as Methods for Engaging with Suffering, published in Ethos: Journal of the Society for Psychological Anthropology. ☕ Support conversations like this: https://buymeacoffee.com/paigeleacey 🔗 Connect with Paige: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@PaigeLeacey Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4sVFkvFcj3DW1wuVZuGd4U Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/on-the-same-paige-with-paige-leacey/id1573526370 Newsletter: https://paigeleacey.substack.com Instagram: @samepaige__ TikTok: @samepaige__

    E46. The Healing Power of Trance: Music, Movement & Altered States

  6. Aug 26

    E45. Microdosing For Depression & the Limits of What Science Can Know

    Can psilocybin microdosing actually treat depression – or are expectation and the placebo effect doing far more of the work than we realise? Dr. Rotem Petranker is a clinician, researcher and therapist who has spent years studying psychedelic microdosing. In one of the most rigorous clinical trials of microdosing for depression to date, his team gave people diagnosed with major depressive disorder either 2mg of psilocybin or placebo and tracked what happened. The surprising result? People in both groups got dramatically better – but on most measures of depression, there was almost no difference between microdosing and placebo. In this conversation, Paige and Rotem explore what that finding actually means, why psychedelic research may be far less certain than popular headlines suggest, and how expectation, media hype and scientific bias can shape what we think psychedelics are capable of. We explore: 💕 What actually counts as a microdose – and why scientists still don't know the ideal dose or frequency 💕 What happened in Rotem's clinical trial of psilocybin microdosing for depression 💕 Why both the placebo and psilocybin groups experienced major improvements 💕 The enormous role expectation may play in psychedelic research 💕 Whether microdosing improves focus, cognition or connectedness 💕 Why set and setting are so difficult to study scientifically 💕 The replication crisis and why some psychedelic research may be less reliable than it appears 💕 Why pre-registration matters – and how researchers can accidentally “draw the bullseye after firing the shot” 💕 How media coverage may be exaggerating what psychedelics can currently treat 💕 Psychedelic-assisted therapy, SSRIs and what the evidence actually tells us 💕 The meaning crisis, certainty and why humans find not knowing so uncomfortable 💕 Consciousness, physicalism, panpsychism and whether psychedelic entities should be taken literally This isn't an argument for or against psychedelics. It's a conversation about something much more interesting: what the science actually shows when we remove what we want to be true. ☕️ To support conversations like this, shout Paige a coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/paigeleacey 🔗 Connect with Dr. Rotem Petranker: Website: https://petranker.com/ 🔗 Connect with Paige: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@PaigeLeacey Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4sVFkvFcj3DW1wuVZuGd4U Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/on-the-same-paige-with-paige-leacey/id1573526370 Newsletter: https://paigeleacey.substack.com Instagram: @samepaige__ TikTok: @samepaige__

    E45. Microdosing For Depression & the Limits of What Science Can Know

  7. Aug 14

    E44. Iboga, Intuition & the Truth of Who You Are

    What is an Iboga journey really like – and what should you know before considering one? In this episode of On The Same Paige, Paige Leacey sits down with herbalist and plant medicine practitioner Rachel Marie for an in-depth conversation about Iboga, one of the world’s most intense and misunderstood plant medicines. Rachel shares her own experiences with Iboga, including her first journey in her twenties and later traveling to Gabon to undergo a traditional Bwiti initiation. She explains why an Iboga ceremony can be so different from classic psychedelic experiences, why people often describe it as confronting the truth of themselves, and what she has learned through years of working with the plant. Paige also reflects on her own Iboga experience as they explore: 💕 What an Iboga journey can actually feel like 💕 Why Iboga is different from classic psychedelics 💕 Rachel’s five-day initiation with the Bwiti tradition in Gabon 💕 The fear of confronting yourself during an Iboga ceremony 💕 Flood doses vs streaming doses 💕 Iboga, Ibogaine and addiction treatment 💕 Purging and the physical intensity of the experience 💕 The serious cardiac risks associated with Iboga 💕 Why Rachel strongly advises against taking Iboga alone 💕 Intuition, consciousness and altered states 💕 Herbalism, healing and the intelligence of plants 💕 What happens after a profound plant medicine experience This conversation is an exploration of personal experiences and perspectives around Iboga and plant medicine. It is not medical advice and should not be treated as a recommendation to use Iboga or Ibogaine. Connect with Paige: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@PaigeLeacey Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4sVFkvFcj3DW1wuVZuGd4U Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/on-the-same-paige-with-paige-leacey/id1573526370 Newsletter: https://paigeleacey.substack.com Instagram: @samepaige__ TikTok: @samepaige__

    E44. Iboga, Intuition & the Truth of Who You Are

  8. Aug 6

    E43. SOLO: Will My Sleep Experiment Change My Life?

    Could biphasic sleep change the way we think, create and connect? I’m trying a biphasic sleep schedule for one week – splitting my night into a “first sleep” and “second sleep,” with two quiet waking hours in between. The idea came from the viral claim that our modern eight-hour sleep routine is an industrial invention. Although that version of the story may be oversimplified, historical research has found frequent references to people sleeping in two separate phases during the Middle Ages. Between their first and second sleep, people reportedly prayed, reflected, journaled, created, connected with their partners – and sometimes made love. So, what might we have lost when segmented sleep disappeared from modern life? For this one-week biphasic sleep experiment, my planned schedule is: First sleep: 9:00 p.m.– 1:00 a.m. Awake period: 1:00 a.m.– 3:00 a.m. Second sleep: 3:00 a.m.– morning During the waking period, I’ll avoid screens, doomscrolling and life admin. Instead, I’ll experiment with journaling, stretching, self-massage, reflection and whatever else emerges during those strange middle-of-the-night hours. I’ll also be tracking how the schedule affects: • My energy and cognition • Creativity and productivity • Dreams • Intimacy and connection • My experience as a cycling woman in the follicular phase This video explains why I’m doing the experiment and what I hope to discover. The full journey and my reflections after the week will be shared on YouTube. Have you ever tried biphasic or segmented sleep? Share your experience below so we can compare field notes. This is a personal experiment, not medical advice. Speak with a qualified healthcare professional before making significant changes to your sleep routine. ☕ Support conversations like this: https://buymeacoffee.com/paigeleacey 🔗 Connect with Paige: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@PaigeLeacey Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4sVFkvFcj3DW1wuVZuGd4U Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/on-the-same-paige-with-paige-leacey/id1573526370 Newsletter: https://paigeleacey.substack.com Instagram: @samepaige__ TikTok: @samepaige__

    E43. SOLO: Will My Sleep Experiment Change My Life?
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About

Hey, I'm Paige. I'm fascinated by the big questions about being human - how we think, why we change & what shapes our reality. I chat with scientists, philosophers, psychologists, spiritual practitioners, altered-state researchers & people with extraordinary lived experiences. We explore everything from consciousness, parapsychology, & psychedelics to spirituality, creativity, identity & the nature of reality. My goal isn't to tell you what to believe. It's to make more perspectives accessible so you can choose . If you're a curious but healthy skeptic who loves exploring big ideas, welcome!

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