The Permission Slip

Matt Kosterman
  • 5.0 (3)
  • Alternative Health

I love everything to do with consciousness - personal growth books, meditation, psychedelics, bodywork, Tantric retreats, chakras, Human Design, channeled works, you name it! For the past fifteen years, I’ve been on a deep healing journey. I regularly engage relative strangers in conversation about topics relating to consciousness, transformation and psychedelics (sometimes to their annoyance). I've been dancing around starting a podcast for a couple years now. My imposter syndrome has kept me thinking I don't have anything worthwhile to share, while I vainly attempt to find a community with whom I resonate. I've been fortunate to work with some really gifted practitioners during my journey. They not only gave me tools to heal, they gave me PERMISSION to heal. My intention in producing and distributing The Permission Slip podcast is to share knowledge of their talents with the rest of the world. Many of us have been programmed to believe that healing only comes from those in the medical profession who have gone through a particular set of training protocols. This is not true. Doctors and therapists and the like are (mostly) well-meaning and very good at what they do. Sometimes, more often than we are maybe lead to believe, what they recommend or do is not what is truly needed for healing. In the spirit of the following passage, I'm committing to a minimum of six podcasts that will be discussions with practitioners and healers from whom I've derived personal benefit. The purpose of this effort is therefore to shed light on the diverse ways of healing as well as moving into right relationship with oneself. Credits Renee LaVallee McKenna for the inspiration to create this in the first place. Abby Bruce (ma soeur) for the encouragement along the way. Damian Wiseman for the audio engineering expertise.

  1. 3d ago

    S2 | E16 Cindy Anderson

    I'm joined by Cindy "Seer" Anderson, founder of Soulpiphany and creator of Your Spirit Guide on Speed Dial®. Cindy is a self-described mad spiritual scientist who spent more than a decade testing whether spirit-guide communication can be clear, reliable, and teachable — and she brings that same practical, skeptical-friendly approach to our conversation. We talk about her path from corporate marketing and real estate into full-time guide work, the moment everything changed on June 5, 2014, and the "fingerprint signature" she teaches her students to help them recognize their own guidance. We dig into discernment, boundaries, and what to do when something feels off, plus some genuinely moving success stories from people she's worked with. We also talk about her free Call Your Guide Challenge, and wrap with a conversation about AI's (limited) place in spiritual work. If you've ever had a knowing you couldn't explain, a gut instinct that turned out to be right, or a voice in your head that didn't quite feel like your own — this one's for you. Special Guest: Cindy Anderson.

    S2 | E16 Cindy Anderson

  2. Sep 24

    S2 | E15 Marisa Skolky

    Marisa Skolky wears a lot of hats — transformational doula, psychedelic guide, expressive arts therapist, professional singer — and in this episode she walks me through how she got to all of them. She grew up in New Jersey immersed in music and theater, and spent 16 years quietly struggling with bulimia while climbing the ladder as an assistant vice president at an insurance brokerage, making music videos for underwriters and sneaking sound bowls into business meetings on her lunch break. It took an ibogaine flood in Costa Rica for years of accumulated tools — Reiki, hypnotherapy, IFS, somatic work — to finally take hold. We get into some of the wilder edges of her healing story: an ayahuasca ceremony that appeared to heal a fractured tibial plateau overnight, and a DMT experience that put her back inside the moment of her own birth. Marisa also breaks down the five-part framework — identify, confront, release, change, grow — she uses with clients, blending expressive arts, somatic practices, and ritual (letters burned in fire, seeds planted during a journey, physical totems made by hand). We talk about the difference between crying into your chest and actually releasing energy out of the body, why so many people are afraid of their own anger, and what it looks like to build a life — and a business — around energetic integrity. She leaves me with a recommendation I'm passing along: Nathaniel Branden's "Six Pillars of Self-Esteem." Special Guest: Marisa Skolky.

    S2 | E15 Marisa Skolky

  3. Sep 17

    S2 | E14 Michele Phillips

    For this episode, I'm joined by Michele Phillips, who's spent decades helping corporate leaders reconnect with the parts of themselves they check at the door every morning. Michele traces her own path from a childhood "peacekeeper" instinct through a late-20s awakening sparked by books like Many Lives, Many Masters and the Seth material — handed to her, unexpectedly, by corporate mentors and clients. That expansion eventually led her to write Happiness Is a Habit, built on Martin Seligman's research into learned optimism, and later to a second book focused on nervous system regulation. We get into what she calls the "natural high" — the idea that most of us reach for addictive quick fixes (scrolling, shopping, drinking) the moment we feel even slightly uncomfortable, instead of learning to soothe ourselves the way we'd soothe a crying baby. Michele walks me through her "ladder up" technique for shifting emotional states one rung at a time rather than expecting a leap from depression straight to joy, and we swap notes on flow states, Landmark Forum, and the language habits — banishing words like "try" and "but" — that shape how we experience our own lives. The conversation moves into energy versus time management, why she thinks corporations in their current form are unsustainable, and how AI might actually be a mirror for our collective consciousness rather than just a threat to jobs. We also dig into gender roles in leadership — the narrow band of emotions men are permitted to show, the double bind powerful women face, and why Michele started hosting a monthly "goddess gathering" to help women reclaim emotional intelligence as a strength rather than a liability. It's a wide-ranging, warm conversation about alignment, agency, and what it actually takes to write your own outcome. Special Guest: Michele Phillips.

    S2 | E14 Michele Phillips

  4. Sep 10

    S2 | E13 Dr. Peter Grinspoon

    Dr. Peter Grinspoon is one of the most credentialed guests I've had on this show — Harvard Medical School instructor, primary care doctor, addiction specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital — and yet he's remarkably candid about his own reckoning with addiction. Twenty years ago, he lost his medical license for three years after becoming addicted to prescription painkillers, driven by the unrelenting pressure of medical training and practice. Five years into his own recovery, the same board that monitored him hired him to help other physicians walk the same road, and that experience eventually led him into addiction medicine and cannabis clinical work full time. Peter's relationship to cannabis is also deeply personal. He tells me about his older brother Danny, who used medical cannabis to manage chemotherapy-induced nausea in the early 1970s — right as Nixon's drug war was ramping up — and how it let Danny eat, keep weight on, and come downstairs to play with his little brother before he passed away from leukemia. That memory sits alongside his father's legacy: psychiatrist Lester Grinspoon, whose 1971 book Marijuana Reconsidered argued that criminalizing cannabis caused far more harm than the drug itself — an argument borne out by the roughly 20 million arrests for simple possession since, disproportionately affecting Black and brown communities. We get into the real clinical picture: cannabis's proven uses for chronic pain, insomnia, anxiety, MS-related spasticity, and chemotherapy side effects, especially for seniors navigating the toxicity of alternatives like opioids and NSAIDs. But Peter doesn't sugarcoat the risks either — teens, pregnant or breastfeeding women, and anyone with a personal or family history of psychosis should steer clear, and heavy daily use can trigger a brutal condition called cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome. He's candid about addiction too: cannabis absolutely can be addictive, just rarely fatal, which changes the calculus on how urgently it needs treating. The conversation ranges from Carl Sagan's secretly-authored essay on cannabis and creativity (published pseudonymously as "Mr. X" in his father's book) to the dangers of hyper-concentrated botanical products like 7-OH kratom, to his frustration watching big cannabis conglomerates start to resemble Big Tobacco. Peter's writing a novel now, after three nonfiction books — including his memoir Free Refills and his most recent, Aging Well With Cannabis — and throughout, he keeps returning to the same core belief: harm reduction, nuance, and treating people with compassion rather than judgment. Special Guest: Dr. Peter Grinspoon.

    S2 | E13 Dr. Peter Grinspoon

  5. Aug 11

    S2 | E12 Jeremy Robinson

    I'm back with another episode of The Permission Slip, and this time I'm joined by Jeremy Robinson, a medicine sitter working out of beautiful Northern California. Jeremy's story starts long before he ever sat with a client — a latchkey Gen X kid raised in a strict fundamentalist household, quietly absorbing bullying rather than fighting back, until he ran away at eighteen and spent a year and a half homeless in Los Angeles, sleeping in unlocked cars on dealership lots. We trace how that early self-reliance carried him into a high-stress, high-hours corporate career — the kind that costs you six years of your daughter's childhood without you noticing — until COVID forced him home and the wall he'd been running toward finally arrived. Jeremy describes sitting by a pond, recognizing the shape of depression, and the moment he realized suicide had quietly become the only option his mind could see. That's the moment that scared him into calling his doctor, and the start of a very different road. From there we follow his journey into the medicine world: six weeks of talk therapy, then ketamine that cracked him open in ways he never expected, then MDMA and EMDR work that finally let him see his own father wound clearly, and eventually psilocybin, which stripped away every identity he'd built until only a steady, unwavering candle was left. We talk about what it meant to have a guide who never once assigned him meaning — who let him arrive at his own truth instead of handing it to him — and how that principle now shapes his own work with clients. Jeremy and I get into the practical and ethical texture of this work too: how he handles touch and consent in ceremony, how he vets whether someone is really ready for the medicine, why he always starts with ketamine before moving to MDMA and psilocybin, and how he pairs newer clients with people further along in their healing so no one has to carry their journey alone. We also talk honestly about the shadow side — the myth of the instant cure, the client who spent a year hitting himself with a sledgehammer before he could finally lay it down, and why this work is called "the work" for a reason. We close on lighter ground, trading notes on indigenous music traditions, the Huni Kuin tribe's medicine songs, the despacho prayer ceremony, and Sundance — reminders that this path, however hard, is also full of beauty. Special Guest: Jeremy Robinson.

    S2 | E12 Jeremy Robinson

  6. Aug 5

    S2 | E11 Joanne DiMaggio

    I'm joined this week by Joanne DiMaggio, a reincarnation specialist, researcher, and author who's spent over 40 years helping people uncover the past-life roots of their present-day pain. Joanne grew up in Chicago's Bridgeport neighborhood in a devout Catholic household, and I loved hearing how her earliest questions about faith and fairness — asked in religion class and met with detention instead of answers — set her on a lifelong search for a bigger framework. That search led her to Edgar Cayce, Ruth Montgomery, and eventually The Search for Bridey Murphy, the book that cracked reincarnation wide open for her as a teenager. We talk about how she built her career from there: joining Edgar Cayce's A.R.E., founding her own past-life organization, earning her hypnotherapy certification, and later a master's in transpersonal studies. Joanne walks me through her two areas of focus — past life regression therapy and soul writing, a channeled form of written meditation she learned traces back through figures like Mozart. I shared my own recent past-life regression experience with her, including how the information came through for me not as imagery (I'm aphantasic) but as a distinct, located sense of "hearing" answers. The conversation gets especially compelling when Joanne shares case studies from her research — a man whose arthritis was confined only to his thumbs, traced back to a Civil War cavalry soldier who used his sword to disable enemy soldiers without killing them, and a woman with chronic sciatica linked to a past life as a jealous ballerina in revolutionary France, whose victim turned out to be her daughter in this lifetime. We also get into soul contracts, why some souls choose disability or hardship as a teaching tool for those around them, and why she sees a roughly 35% rate of spontaneous healing once clients understand the origin of their condition. Joanne closes by sharing what's next for her: a new book, Why Are There So Many Cleopatras?, answering the most common questions people ask her about reincarnation, and a new podcast called Healing Through Past Life Exploration. Joanne DiMaggio, MA, CHt, is a respected expert on the topic of reincarnation and Soul Writing.™ A member of Edgar Cayce’s Association for Research and Enlightenment (A.R.E.) since 1987, Joanne earned her master’s degree in Transpersonal Studies and her Spiritual Mentor certification through Atlantic University. She has published numerous articles and presented talks on past-life exploration, the pre-life planning session, and Soul Writing™ to global audiences. In addition, she has been a guest on nearly 100 radio programs and podcasts. She conducts private past-life regression and Soul Writing™ sessions via ZOOM. For more information, go to: www.joannedimaggio.com Special Guest: Joanne DiMaggio, MA, CHt.

    S2 | E11 Joanne DiMaggio

  7. Jun 15

    S2 | E10 Christopher Solomon

    I'll be honest — Salvia was a plant I'd never tried and mostly knew through the lens of chaotic internet videos. So this conversation with Christopher Solomon cracked something wide open for me. Christopher came to the States from Johannesburg at fourteen, studied psychology and finance, and spent years in a database job he found soul-crushing before finally following the thread that had been tugging at him since high school: a deep, ongoing relationship with Salvia divinorum. We trace his whole arc in this episode — the bizarre early experiences, the moment an "intrusive" inner voice told him to meditate first and changed everything, the female salvia entity who told him she'd always been there, and the day a small dose seemed to dissolve a physical lymph node that had stumped his doctors. From there we get into the real heart of his work: low, titrated doses, somatic awareness, and treating the plant as something that demands silence, stillness, and respect. Christopher shares how Salvia affects the default mode network more than any classic psychedelic, why it pairs so well with meditation and somatic therapy, and how he guides clients through Zoom sessions for everything from crippling anxiety and depression to inflammation, arthritis, GI issues, and insomnia. We also talk honestly about the contrast with ketamine — reverse tolerance versus addiction, "diminishing returns," and the importance of listening when a medicine tells you to back off. Whether you're a curious psychonaut or someone exploring gentler tools for healing, I think you'll come away seeing this plant in a completely new light. Christopher Solomon is a somatic Salvia guide, teacher, and inventor of a pipe that aids in the mindful exploration of Salvia Divinorum. Incorporating lessons learned directly from Salvia and as a student of somatic psychotherapy, Christopher is pioneering techniques to use Salvia as a therapeutic tool for guided self-healing, meditation, and introspection. Christopher lectures about the proper, intentional, and therapeutic use of Salvia, offering a blend of scientific, esoteric, and therapeutic perspectives. He also cultivates a medicinal Salvia garden for use in his therapeutic practice with clients. His main goal is to teach people how to use Salvia for themselves in a manner that is supportive, informative, and empowering. He has a B.A in Psychology from the University of Texas at Dallas, and received his training in somatic psychotherapy from the Hakomi Institute of California. You can find Christopher at salviahealings.com and through his community, the Somatic Salvia Network, at somaticsalvianetwork.com. Special Guest: Christopher Solomon.

    S2 | E10 Christopher Solomon

  8. Jun 8

    S2 | E9 Dr. Katie Simons, PharmD, Clinical Pharmacist, Transpersonal Hypnotherapist, Psychedelic Medicine Facilitator and Coach

    Katie Simons came to the healing world the long way around. With a doctorate in pharmacy from Idaho State University and ten years inside the Veterans Affairs Healthcare System — working in internal medicine, medication safety, and eventually as a patient safety manager — she had every credential the western medical world could offer. And then COVID happened, and the whole thing cracked open. In this conversation, Katie and I trace her origin story from pharmacist's daughter to closeted psychedelic explorer to full-time medicine guide and hypnotherapist now based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her first psychedelic experience — an epiphany on MDMA at a Phish show in her early twenties — cracked open a question she couldn't put back: Is this how happy I could actually feel? That question lived quietly alongside her professional life for years, until burnout, a divorce, and a first encounter with ayahuasca in 2022 collapsed the compartmentalization for good. We get into the pharmacology of psilocybin and MDMA — including a remarkably clear-eyed look at the actual risks (and frequent fearmongering) around drug interactions with SSRIs and SNRIs. Katie brings her clinical background to bear here in ways that feel genuinely useful and grounding, not alarmist. We talk about harm reduction for solo journeys, what to look for (and watch out for) when seeking a facilitator, and why psychedelics aren't a replacement for the inner work — they're a tool that breaks the chains, but you still have to walk out of the cave yourself. We also explore somatic breathwork, hypnotherapy, and the subconscious belief systems that keep the nervous system locked in survival mode long after the original wound has passed. Katie's framework for what healing actually means — not the absence of hard feelings, but access to choice — is one I keep turning over. And I get honest about my own stumbling blocks: the addiction to suffering, the pressure to perform as someone who's "done the work," and the places where my own nervous system still has the wheel. This one goes deep. I'm grateful Katie was willing to go there with me. Special Guest: Katie Simons.

    S2 | E9 Dr. Katie Simons, PharmD, Clinical Pharmacist, Transpersonal Hypnotherapist, Psychedelic Medicine Facilitator and Coach
See All (34)

Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
3 Ratings

About

I love everything to do with consciousness - personal growth books, meditation, psychedelics, bodywork, Tantric retreats, chakras, Human Design, channeled works, you name it! For the past fifteen years, I’ve been on a deep healing journey. I regularly engage relative strangers in conversation about topics relating to consciousness, transformation and psychedelics (sometimes to their annoyance). I've been dancing around starting a podcast for a couple years now. My imposter syndrome has kept me thinking I don't have anything worthwhile to share, while I vainly attempt to find a community with whom I resonate. I've been fortunate to work with some really gifted practitioners during my journey. They not only gave me tools to heal, they gave me PERMISSION to heal. My intention in producing and distributing The Permission Slip podcast is to share knowledge of their talents with the rest of the world. Many of us have been programmed to believe that healing only comes from those in the medical profession who have gone through a particular set of training protocols. This is not true. Doctors and therapists and the like are (mostly) well-meaning and very good at what they do. Sometimes, more often than we are maybe lead to believe, what they recommend or do is not what is truly needed for healing. In the spirit of the following passage, I'm committing to a minimum of six podcasts that will be discussions with practitioners and healers from whom I've derived personal benefit. The purpose of this effort is therefore to shed light on the diverse ways of healing as well as moving into right relationship with oneself. Credits Renee LaVallee McKenna for the inspiration to create this in the first place. Abby Bruce (ma soeur) for the encouragement along the way. Damian Wiseman for the audio engineering expertise.

Information

  • Creator
    Matt Kosterman
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    34
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Matt Kosterman
  • Show Website
    The Permission Slip

You Might Also Like