Episode #030 — Discovering Your Cosmic Soul with Amanda Rae

Melanie Branch: Yeah hello and welcome to another episode of Trailblazers Rising I am your host Melanie and I'm so excited to bring to you my special guest today Amanda she is an expert in plant medicine which is a topic that I have been deep diving and rabbit holing into more and more and more on my own healing journey as a neurodivergent woman entrepreneur.

So Amanda say hello to everybody everybody say hello to Amanda so excited to be here and then yeah let's just expand some minds together let's do it absolutely so as a psychedelic integration coach which is a mouthful and fantastic especially from like an entrepreneur perspective my business partner Christina would be very proud of you because we say this to all the people at the neuro spicy Academy to your name and your title.

Don't have to tell people exactly what it is you do it just has to make people interested and go Hey wow what's happening with that so how do you explain to the peoples that are listening what it is that you do absolutely thank you so many years ago about nine now was my first really transformative experience with a medicine called Ibogaine that helped me to heal not only from my addiction but.

Ton of like different mental health disorders and the one thing that I noticed afterwards was I didn't really have anybody to talk to that had been through what I had experienced especially at that level and so I had to spend a really long time as an experiential learner doing the wrong things to learn the right things to do but decided that ultimately what I wanted to do was help people to integrate these really transformative.

Psychedelic journeys into their life so they don't have to do the stumbling and falling the same way I did so I work with a few different medicine retreats a few different Ibogaine clinics in Mexico I also am linked up with some ketamine infusion clinics here in the U S cause it's a legal medicine here as well as running my own retreats.

I am also a medicine woman as well so I get to help people with the medicine and then after the medicine that's so interesting I love to connect with medicine people medicine women medicine men that sort of stuff because I was always told that I am a healer and the idea of you know shamanism and all of that has always come up.

But my spirit guides have always directed me more towards a what's the word I'm looking for a unique space that I have to carve out myself to help the specific people that I meant to help and it's not about and as a person who's familiar with psychedelics you understand too the labels that we need in this world is such an earthly response to our spiritual journey here.

So if you're ever out there And wondering what your labels are and where do you fit and what do you do just know that the labels are not nearly as important as the energy and the mood and your ability.

Amanda Rae: Yeah.

Yeah.

Melanie Branch: Yeah you know the mindset behind masking that really resonated with me and cut me like a knife and I make sure to remind my clients of it all the time is that masking is emotional manipulation you are trying to pretend to be something that you're not to take care of somebody else's emotional needs.

And that's not our fucking responsibility!

Not at all so if I make somebody uncomfortable this happened to me the other day I went to the gas station bleh I hate the gas station I don't want to pump my gas somebody move me to New Jersey so I don't have to pump my own gas well I'm standing there and it was one of those they're all single pumps so it's not one of the big gigantic stations.

And they're all on an angle so there's you know what ten pumps one here one on the other side one here one on the other side and I'm sit I'm at the very end one and I am a hyper vigilant asshole at the I'm not here for any man to talk to me I'm not here for anybody to come up to me don't come near me.

I have PDA autism if you take away my autonomy I will fucking attack you and I assume everybody out in the world is here to hurt me in some way shape or form just so I can go about my day with people leaving me alone right I'm not here to help you with your fucking problems I have enough people who I'm helping go through that.

I'm not here for your shit and this man Pulled up behind my vehicle in a big ass truck with his window down staring at me with his mouth open and I look I have my shades on I have my headphones on because I don't go anywhere without my protection the world is too overstimulating and I I'm I'm staring at my car with the pump behind me because you know you can see more in the reflection of your car than you can not.

And I just turn and look at him to like let him know I can see him and he's staring at me with his window down I said no other pumps open and he goes and like looked and he goes no and I said okay and he goes I'm not in a rush I said I'm not either and I just continue to fucking stare at him to be like yo bro what are you doing here?

I know I'm a hot piece of you know what get away from me right so when it comes to psychedelics the reason that we love them so much scientifically is because they really aid in something called neuroplasticity so can you explain to all of the beautiful angels who are well the moral of that story is when I when I left the gas station I made this conscious decision in my brain.

I said I can ruminate on this and I can let this piss me off and I can call my girlfriend and I can tell her about this I can tell my husband about it tonight when I get home I'm gonna say this motherfucker didn't know what he was doing he doesn't know he doesn't know his head from his ass he people can only understand you at the level they understand themselves.

And he just thought he saw a hot pink haired bitch with a great ass pumping some gas and he was going to get close to her so I had that moment where I was like all right we can let this ruin our fucking day or we can just continue on about our day and not take heed and that's because of all the work I've done on mindset and neuroplasticity.

But when you include psychedelics in that equation what happens?

It removes that physical resistance in your brain and those pathways of where you know we walk the same path we're literally what's his name joe Dispenza dr joe Dispenza talks about this 90 percent of the decisions you make every day are the exact same that you made yesterday bye bye and as a person with autism and ADHD I can tell you that 50 percent of me wants sameness and 50 percent of me is like bitch it better be different today because I'm gonna get bored and then bad decisions are going to be made.

So what are some of like the most incredible transformations that you've seen happen while using plant medicine silence.

There's a kitty! Anybody who's listening she just had an orange cat who's fixing to make biscuits on the chair behind her.

That's funny the person that I interviewed yesterday she we did her she's in Wales and I'm in Jacksonville Florida so there's like four or five hour time difference she's ahead and she had her cats were warning her that it was an hour till feeding time aLL DURING ALL DURING our call together I only have dogs because we're not allowed to have cats half my house is allergic and frankly I do not miss changing a litter box at all.

Yeah.

I think you can tell a lot about a person I can always tell if you're a neurodivergent or not based on how your animal behaves because a neurodivergent person has a relationship with their animals you have a style of communication you have layers of expectations for this behavior gets this behavior that sort of stuff.

And I've even noticed in our house because I'm so low demand living that sort of stuff that my the words that I use are anti demand so like if I hear one of my dogs chewing their paws or something like that or like one is hiding in my room and I'm like I bet the one thing that you'll hear me yell all the time is if you're chewing paw you're in trouble.

Right that's the most like I'm not saying anyone's name I'm giving you ample ample time to stop doing it and not get busted I am just I'm not saying that you're a bad dog for doing it I'm just simply saying like if this is what's happening this is this is the consequence and I said it the other day while I was on campus at the Neuro Spicy Academy we live in a 1 300 square foot historical home that we love.

But obviously everybody can hear my microphone whether I'm in the kitchen whether I'm in the living room if I've gone to pee before and I've laughed really hard and people heard me so it's one of those things where like I said the thing and then I heard people laughing in my headphones because they were like do you realize the way that you speak to your animals?

And I was Now I do

Amanda Rae: Silence yes yes silence silence.

Melanie Branch: Do you know her zodiac sign?

There you go that's funny the more that I come to learn birth charts specifically and how they can correspond with our energy levels and our personality and our mood right like I use it as a tool with my clients so that we can understand what parts are not going to change and then what parts can change especially you know like what what what's kind of just always going to be this way.

Right and so my husband is a Gemini sun with a Virgo moon and our my soul dog Clyde is a Gemini we know that for sure but we don't know his moon sign but based on the way he behaves even my husband says he's gotta be a Virgo moon I'm like I didn't know this fucking dog! I never knew a dog could be judgmental and critical and like have an idea that was better than mine but alas here we are.

Yeah.

Yeah she said she's got to run the show.

Yeah.

And that's on masking too there's so much going around on social media too of like and Meg the stallion says it really good too of like I'm not going to speak in a room full of people that don't like me I'm going to go to a different room.

Amanda Rae: Oh that

Melanie Branch: 1 like that 1 like mentally assaulted me it was a personal attack when I heard that.

Amanda Rae: Yeah,

Melanie Branch: yeah yeah it's so incredible too because like if now that I've done so much work and now that I understand what my mask was what my trauma responses are and somebody came up with there's a couple therapists that are talking about this on social media and I don't remember what their new words for it is but I interviewed 1 of her.

One of them on my podcast so I'll reach out to her after and put it in the show notes instead of calling it a trauma response which makes it sound terrible and makes it sound like something we have to fix she wants to call it like an appreciation response or something like that because that's what got you through the shit.

This was the good thing that happened right whether it's disassociation whether it was you know fawning or fight or flight whatever your response was to it that was your way of getting through it that's not something that we need to be angry about that's something we need to honor.

Amanda Rae: Yep.

Yeah.

Melanie Branch: Yeah yeah.

And you know I'm not an expert in addiction I do have experience with it I haven't I have not had alcohol since November of last year and it it literally just happened overnight I woke up one morning and I was hung over and I could barely remember the night before and it was just a night out with my husband and my best friend and no reason to have blacked out and not remembered it right.

It wasn't like I had nine million drinks and was raging but it's it was my body's way of telling me like we don't want this anymore like this did serve us and I literally I woke up and I was hung over and I wanted to start work really early but I didn't have it in me because of how I was because of the neurotoxins.

And I literally just had this space and moment that said this doesn't serve me anymore I love my early mornings I love my freedom that's why I started my business in the first place and how can I continue to coach people on how to be their most productive and motivated and consistent self if I'm making these poor choices?

But I also it came in the moment of I'm so grateful that I had this tool and it got me through all of the things that it got me through I was raised by heavy drinkers and a family of heavy drinkers the lifestyle was heavy drinking all the time it was every time everybody got together drinking was expected and.

I literally it all came together in one moment where I just said I don't want that anymore and I started pursuing because I'm not sober but when I had that realization of alcohol is literally the thing that lets me hang out with people that overstimulate me in places that overstimulate me in a scene and scenario that would normally get me overwhelmed.

And it helps me lower my fences enough to be that cool raging awesome loud dancey girl that everybody wants it always says whatever's on her mind it gave me the excuse to be able to do that so in turn my vision and view of sobriety and addiction is when we're drinking or we're doing heroin or whatever it is your choices that taps you out completely from your reality that's escapism from unhealed trauma right?

But when you're pursuing a natural plant medicine right so I'm a big proponent of kava I use kava kava regularly I have seen and heard really good things about Kratom as well and I'm like Oh okay not the stuff you buy at the gas station.

Amanda Rae: Kratom

Melanie Branch: has helped my body pain I didn't even realize how much pain I was always in until I was able to take something that made it go away and I was like Oh shit cause we gaslight ourselves.

Amanda Rae: Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah yeah.

Yeah.

Yep yeah,

Melanie Branch: anyone even though we know that he had appropriated that from indigenous peoples but we also know that that's the case with anything that we get over here in the Western world I traditional Chinese medicine I mean it's all yes,

Amanda Rae: yeah,

Melanie Branch: because that's a short that's a short trip right like that is a short journey.

Yeah.

Amanda Rae: Yeah yeah.

Melanie Branch: Yeah.

Yeah you know I think if people could really understand or ask them this question this is a question that I ask myself constantly and that I get my clients to ask themselves is who benefits from this right so if we think about the structures that are in place and the systemic structures that are in place.

I don't want to go too far fBI guys take your lunch break but if we really think about it the people that benefit from the entire system in the Western world benefit from us being unwell period point blank from every aspect that we can look at it right so I am a firm believer in taking a natural holistic deep open minded approach to improving your negative neuro spicy symptoms.

Right so we all know people with ADHD and people that are autistic and anybody who identifies as neurodivergent are main issues are with the eight executive functions you can Google that I'll put it I'll make sure it's in the show notes because I can't remember all of them off the top of my head because one of those executive functions is working memory and my working memory is shot because of I don't know so many things but I also am learning about my dyslexia.

My dyscalculia my ADHD my autism I have the persistent drive for autonomy autism so don't fucking tell me what to do I'm also finding out about my MCAS so my mast cell activation syndrome POTS I'm now finding out that I have PMDD premenstrual dysphoric disorder polycystic ovarian syndrome endometriosis.

So when I tell you I can list out my alphabet soup diagnoses and I doubt them and I say there's no fucking way bitch and my dead mom gets in my ear and is like there's no way you have all that maybe you do have all that maybe I had some of that too and that's why I had all the problems that I had.

And maybe it's all connected and maybe we could do this maybe maybe we could just give ourselves a little fucking grace.

So when you have somebody go on a journey with you at 1 of your retreats or somebody sign up for coaching with you what is the life cycle or the patterns that they can really expect like what situation is somebody dealing with when they find you and decide to work with you yes.

Amanda Rae: Silence silence silence.

Silence.

Yeah silence.

Melanie Branch: Yeah,

yeah.

Wow so much radical transformation in such a short period of time that's

I mean my spiritual awakening was wild it got really kicked off in April of 2020 when my mom died after her 18 month battle with stage 4 head and neck cancer don't smoke ciggies guys and just so everybody knows I don't work with anybody who uses tobacco products or nicotine products it's it is completely unnecessary.

It is completely designed to make you sick and if you want to work on your mindset but you can't even decide that you're better off without that stuff and that you're worthy of not poisoning your body in that way then I can't help you plus I mean if you want to know what your life being destroyed and and like my mom had to get all of her teeth pulled and removed before she died and was never even able to get her dentures fitted because we had to argue with the people that were doing all that.

So like when you talk deterioration look up people that have had a neck cancer from a lifetime of drinking and smoking it's not ideal it is not fantastic like when she got diagnosed the doctor instantly said the word hospice and she said no I'm that's not going to happen to me and she she rallied for 18 months but then when the end came it came quick hard and fast.

And it was that you know everything shut down in Florida in mid March and that's when she had started being in the hospital pretty consistently and then in April when she died you know I continued to play my role in the family of being the the muscle that gets shit taken care of like I had to say No we're all getting in there in the ER when they weren't letting anybody in in the ER.

And then No we're all getting in in her hospice room when nobody was allowed to go in hospice I said No fuck no we're getting in here and we're doing that but it triggered a spiritual awakening that I wasn't even aware could happen between my dark nights of the soul on all the terms that are out there and whatnot.

Again I'm not very big on labels or whatnot but it was months of being wild because we had nothing to do because we were all shut down of you know really realizing what my I remember her dying and me saying well then what role am I supposed to play now if it's just my dad and my sister and me am I allowed to just go do what I want to do and I don't have to sacrifice myself and take care of everybody else?

Is that okay can I and then I realized I was a scapegoat and then I realized I was this and then I realized this and And it continues to grow and change And evolve as I continue to grow and change and evolve But really the one thing that I learned is that you have to be in a growth mindset and you have to assume The best instead of assuming the worst right?

Like you have to trust your motherfucking gut right so like me with the guy at the gas station I'm not just gonna sit there and go oh hey how you doing no this guy's nefarious he doesn't have good fucking ideas and he's looking to see if I'm an idiot and he can pull one over on me and then he figures out nope pink hair but not a fucking idiot!

Get over here! Right but when it comes to people on their spiritual journey and the transformation that they get from doing the plant medicine it seems like it really speeds it

Amanda Rae: up.

Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah.

Melanie Branch: Yeah how old are you I'm 37 I feel I feel like if we would've known each other in high school we would've partied together so quick background check you tell your part I'll tell my part I was a 30 year old when I was 16 I was the youngest of two daughters my my sister and I are both millennials and my parents are both boomers so there was not a lot of there was a lot of confrontation in the house because of the different mindsets and expectations I was definitely one of those elder millennials that was raised that you can do anything you can do all the things and then I look back on my life and I'm like my parents put me in all the sports and they put me into marching band and did all but they never showed up to any of my stuff.

Like I really remember like them never showing up to any of this stuff and I remember them being like I don't care if you go have a sleep over your friends no I don't want to talk to their parents I don't want to drive you there get a ride do all this shit and now I'm like I go in my kids rooms every night.

I'm like so who are your friends what do they do how when are we gonna hang out do you want to have them over am I gonna drop you off over there are they gonna have a parent there what's going on I'm tracking you on your cell phone even when you're at the house so when I tell you that I lived a life from the age of 15 to the age of 19 when I met my husband while we were working at Hooters together and I I heard him yell food up.

I was still a hostess I still had my white shorts so for anybody who knows the Hooters background like I do I was still in my white shorts and I was up by the front door and I heard this guy yell food up bitches and I just went it was a meerkat moment I remember my whole body went and I laid my eyes on him and I went.

And then this is happening and he's eight years older than me and I started going after him I was like when are we going to hang out when are we and he was like I really want you to leave me alone I just don't I don't want you to I want you to get away from me I don't want to do this la la la and we ended up finally hanging out and became.

On like inseparable since but he was signed up for delayed entry into the Navy when we started dating so we had 7 months together and then he went into the Navy so we had been living together doing everything together and we weren't even married and engaged when he went to the Navy but I knew I was like this guy is my ticket to being able to do the things that I want to do not financially or anything like that.

But like I knew our partnership was was like what I signed up for in this life it's the only way that I can explain it and it makes my teenage years You know being 16 dating a 20 year old being 17 dating a fucking 23 year old and whatnot I look back on it now and I go Jesus fucking Christ thank God my spirit guides are so strong and thank God they got me through so many treacherous moments that I didn't even realize were treacherous at the time as an undiagnosed ADHD autistic girl running around.

But now I find myself being a 16 year old and a 37 year old's body

and I'm like what are we what are we supposed to do now and I think that is so relevant to both who you work with and who I work with of like we really have been the person that supports people and never had people that support us and now we're coming into our own we're running our businesses we're getting healthy.

We're taking care of ourselves self care is number 1 and we have to now be open to help from other people yes yeah.

Amanda Rae: Yes.

Yep.

Yeah.

Yeah yeah.

Okay.

Yeah,

yeah,

yeah yeah.

Melanie Branch: Yep.

Yep you know if we can really tap into our intuition and strengthen our connection with our higher self with God with source with the universe with your spirit guides whatever the fuck you want to call it right then you really do transform your life and your business right so like I always tell people I would rather trust my gut and be wrong but that's never happened yet.

Then go do something that I know is not right and have it blow up in my fucking face right and like as an entrepreneur you've got to make quick decisions you can't agonize over shit right we cannot sit here and go well especially as you're building a team and your company is growing and whatnot everything is for the higher greater good.

We know that but we also have to be focused on what's going to work for my energy what's going to work for my profits what's going to work for my audience what's going to do you know that sort of thing I spent the past I spent about six months completely redesigning and repositioning my coaching company my coaching business as I was building up the Neurospicy Academy with my business partner Christina.

And my ADHD brain thinks that everything is going to take five minutes or 20 minutes I have no concept of anything else so I literally was like cause people say Oh my God how do you do all this stuff that you do and I go cause my brain lies to me and says it's only going to take 20 minutes just go do it.

And then I get wrapped in it and then months later I go wait holy shit what happened we just do oh my God time is not real.

Yeah it's like really just you know we can break things down we can do things in a chronological order or we can simply trust ourself to make the right choices and like I had a 1 of my clients we've really been working on her intuition and she had what she thought was like a breakout happening like a big cystic cray owie happening.

And she's like I mean I can't have been kind of stressed but like intuitively her brain and body said take oatmeal baths and she was taking oatmeal baths and when she got to the doctor guess what it was poison ivy she had poison ivy from cleaning out her backyard or whatever the fuck she was doing and she intuitively knew how to fix it.

Amanda Rae: Yeah,

yeah.

Yep.

Yeah they just switched! Woo! Oh yeah.

Melanie Branch: Yep.

Yeah,

never absolutely not and I'm actually kind of the queen of reverse engineering things so like my business partner and I Christina when we conceptualize a new product or service or whatever it is her favorite part is the brainstorming and all the possibilities and we could do this and if she could stay in any part of any part of the.

Process of coming up with a new service or product that would be where she stays and I like that just fine but I like the action I like to see it come to fruition right I've opened multiple restaurants for other people and I love that idea of like this is the concept this is what it turned into.

Like that is the part where I really shine and thrive so together our partnership has just been fantastic because she likes to go off the rails and have the tangents and whatnot and I like to say okay let's get this train back on the tracks and it works so perfectly and so like we're working on this new quick start for the Neuro Spicy Academy which will be out by the time this episode's out.

We have been conceptualizing for a very long time and what happens is we get to this moment where she where I'm very happy with all the ideas and I'm ready to put it into action and she starts talking about a whole new project and I go Now it's time to take the action! Now it's time to take the action!

Again I have to wait until she gets to that moment so that her brain can recognize what she's doing and know that it's also one of her self sabotaging techniques to never fail because if you never make it happen then it can never fail whereas my self sabotaging is launching things and then instead of fixing them and reiterating them and editing them I just go on to the next thing.

Because I'm like well I like that topic but I learned everything about it now I want to go learn about something else.

Yeah silence.

Amanda Rae: Absolutely.

Yeah how

Melanie Branch: many if you're on my email list how many times do I send you an email that has a link that doesn't work or there's a misspelling somewhere I'm never going to get a you're you're or you're wrong I promise you that but if something if a misspelling escapes the spell check that's not my fault.

Absolutely you know what I was saying yes okay amanda before I let this go Please let everybody know where they can find you it'll also be in the show notes and whatever words of wisdom that you want to leave our audience with to ponder after they've listened to this incredible episode.

I love that.

Yeah absolutely and there's never really any failures if you're focus on learning and moving forward you know.

Yeah failure just says you didn't go according to the right plan that's all.

Yeah excellent I'm so glad to have you on my show thank you so much for being here and I will continue to be your cheerleader and your champion on social media and to everybody that's listening I love you all equally and for different reasons and I want you to do your research and take care of yourself and we'll see you again here real soon.

Okay bye

Amanda Rae: bye bye yeah.