MY TRIP TO EXETER

My Trip to Exeter

By Carolina Febres

I felt very excited as soon as they invited me to go to Exeter. I didn’t even think about my answer. I didn’t pay attention to my calendar, even though summer is the busiest time of the year for me. The answer that came out of my mouth was a big yes. I was going to Exeter.

Only after saying yes did I realize, How am I going to leave my office during the summer? I do not regret my decision, not even for a moment.

I had the opportunity to say no one more time before actually going to Exeter, and this time it was not because of my busy summer schedule. It was because my heart had been broken into a thousand pieces.

My country, Venezuela, suffered two catastrophic earthquakes, measuring 7.2 and 7.5 on the Richter scale, leaving 65,000 people missing. I was there when everything happened, and it was an incredibly difficult experience. The amount of stress my body endured was immense.

I was the one who needed to participate in the breathwork session to release all the tension that the experience had left within me. When I was asked a second time if I still wanted to go, my yes was even bigger than the first.

I couldn’t help my country, but I could help others heal their pain.

So I packed my pain and my stress and went to Exeter.

All of my therapist friends would probably say that you cannot simply pack your emotions away and keep going, and I 100% agree. But this time, helping others heal also helped me heal. I know I still have work to do on myself, but I have to say that the experience helped me tremendously.

Seeing and feeling the universality of the human experience, and witnessing humanity in its most intimate and vulnerable spaces, was deeply comforting to me. It felt as though the human experience is cherished and accepted by the universe. It reminded me that we are all co-participants in this beautiful celebration called life.

After my experience in Exeter, I was so filled with love for life that, while at the airport, I saw an elderly woman struggling to get into the restroom. I asked her if she needed help.

She replied, “You could help me if you gave me a new hip, a new foot, and a new knee.”

I smiled and said, “I can’t give you any of those, but I can give you something better.”

I gently held her face with both of my hands and gave her a kiss on the cheek.

Now, let’s be serious and talk about the actual experience.

The participants in Exeter were amazing. I found them to be incredibly open, eager to learn, and genuinely authentic. I actually felt hopeful for humanity because they were so young, yet so advanced in their emotional journeys.

One of the most amazing parts of the experience was the conversations with everyone. If we weren’t talking about psilocybin, we were talking about ketamine. And if the subject of ketamine wasn’t enough for you, you could easily join another conversation about LSD. One of the students even invited me to Colombia to help a native community preserve its traditions and plant medicine.

All of the research projects these people are working on are incredible. Never before had I heard so many conversations about my favorite topics.

I was so impressed by the research they were conducting that I have already applied to the Master’s in Psychedelic Science at the University of Exeter. That’s how much these people influenced me, and I am not someone who is easily influenced.

I also learned how to work with large groups of people. I learned so much from Jace and Elizabeth while working alongside them on the floor.

“I don’t need a diagnosis to be able to help someone.”

That was a very important lesson for me.

When we were doing the wrap-up meeting after the first session, I noticed that I immediately started trying to guess what the main challenge was for one of the participants. I was making a guess based on what I had observed. I made the comment during the meeting, and I immediately noticed the group’s reaction.

At that time, I did not understand what the reaction was about. In my well-oriented but limited clinical mind, which is trained to work with the human body, I was establishing a diagnosis.

I asked myself, What am I doing wrong?

I was doing what I had been taught to do when treating any condition.

It took me a while to realize why they had that reaction. After having a conversation with one of the team members, I began to understand that a diagnosis is not necessarily needed to help the human mind.

I don’t need to know a person’s entire personal history to be able to help them. I was operating under the paradigm that I needed to have a diagnosis in order to treat a condition. I clearly saw and felt that a diagnosis is not necessarily required to effectively help somebody in the breathwork space.

Now I clearly understand why so many well-known members of the psychiatric community are critical of the DSM. I will paraphrase something one of the team members told me in Exeter:

“You only need a diagnosis to charge the patient.”

Probably this is not a big lesson for everybody, but coming from the big box that represents the American healthcare system, which I am part of, it is a big lesson for me.

Another thing that I learned from Elizabeth, in reference to bodywork, is that when another person is called to help because one facilitator is not enough to hold the participant, it is not necessary to apply force or strength to the facilitator. In this case, Elizabeth simply held the facilitator.

It was another small but powerful lesson for me: sometimes helping does not mean adding more force. Sometimes it simply means providing support.

My heart is full of gratitude and love for the Dreamshadow community.

Caroline Febres: Carolina was born in Caracas, Venezuela. She left her country at the age of 25 and has not returned since. Over the years, she has lived in several countries in South and Central America, including Mexico and Brazil.

She moved to the USA 26 years ago. By training she is a pediatric dentist, and by soul calling she is passionate about helping people in the transpersonal world, using different tools—breathwork being one of them.

Carolina is the mother of three wonderful young adults and currently lives in Houston, Texas. You can reach her at carolinafebresdds@gmail.com.