Open Wider, Girls: Travel as a Psychedelic Journey

For us at Elemental, travel is a central component of our lives in both work and play. Elemental was, in fact, conceptualized and birthed in Croatia in 2022 as Shannon and Dori were walking through Krka National Park taking in the incredible beauty of that epic landscape. Shannon was on sabbatical at that time after being newly tenured the year prior. Dori was at the beginning of the end of an intimate partnership. They both needed to expand their worlds, and Croatia was calling. We did not know that Elemental Psychedelics would be birthed on that trip, but that’s what came through as we settled into the magic of what Croatia had in store for us.

Nearly two years later, and several more travel adventures, Dori and Shannon returned to the region. This time, Turkiye was calling. (And these French DJ’s we love, Polo and Pan, who were playing in Istanbul.) Polo and Pan were the carrot dangled to get us there, but of course Turkiye was a whole lot more than that. In this blog, we are taking a more personal turn and sharing a bit about our time in Turkiye and our conclusion that travel is itself a psychedelic journey.

Travel (and Psychedelics) Expands our Capacity to Take in More of Ourselves and the World

It’s like you spend your whole life sitting in one chair, looking at the room you’re in from that one angle, the single limited perspective you get from sitting in that chair. Psychedelics move you to the couch across the room and you see the room in a new way. And so does travel literally move you across the room so that you can take more in. In our experience, once you’ve made the decision to go on that psychedelic trip or that IRL trip, you’re going, and your perspective is forever touched and changed by what you encounter.

At Elemental training we talk about the arc of the mushroom journey where there’s the waiting, the initial anxiety in your body, the coming up, noticing that you’re not in your same environment, and that things are starting to shift. You start to meet the medicine and realize there’s no turning back. The arc, for us at least, is not all that dissimilar when we travel out of the country to a place that we know will really confront us. We’re realizing we’re in this new place, we’re not in “Kansas” anymore, and we ask ourselves: Why did we do this? We were so comfortable in our homes, plugging away at our lives, why did we take ourselves to this abyss of uncertainty and discomfort? No matter how well we’ve prepared for this, there’s still so much surrender required to drop into this new place that we find ourselves in. 

When we arrived in Istanbul, we thought we had it all planned out. We arrived Wednesday night. Plenty of time to settle in before Polo and Pan Friday night. Mornings were going to be spent strolling our neighborhood and sipping coffee first thing. We had an appointment at an “authentic” Turkish bath (Hammam) on Saturday for some surely needed pampering. We had it all worked out. 

We were….almost right. We arrived for Polo and Pan at 10pm on Friday and they eventually came on at 1am in a cigarette filled indoor venue that wreaked havoc on Shannon's throat for an entire week. (Despite everything, that show was epic and we will follow them across Europe anytime!) We learned that coffee shops apparently don’t open in the morning. And the hammam was…well, it was not about us.... Let us explain more.

It was a hot day in Istanbul and we were walking through the streets of the city, sweating like nobody’s business. We arrived at the hammam, hoping to find a cool shower to rinse the sticky salt from our bodies. Instead, upon arrival we were ushered into the hot stone room. Shannon walked in exclaiming, “No, no, I can’t do this. I’m too hot. I can’t.” The woman responds with confusion, “Lady, this is hammam.” So we lay on the hot stone and start to sweat even more profusely, enduring the physical intensity of nearly passing out. But it was also this moment when we started to sense the energy of this ancient room we found ourselves in. The room felt like a communal space used for many hundreds of years for intellectual dialogue and news and gossip. This was a place of connection. We were starting to understand this place differently, at least on an intellectual level at this point.

Soon, the women ushered us into the next room. With hand motions we were instructed to remove our towel and lay on another stone table. The foam bath was functional. This was not for our pleasure. We were being cleaned and scrubbed down, hard. We were then re-toweled and brought into the main room where we sipped a 5pm Turkish coffee (at home, we would never ever drink coffee this late in the day!), and we waited. There in the padded chairs, wet with a towel around us, people coming in and out, we waited, and we waited, until eventually we were worried about missing our dinner reservation. However, we were resolved to see this thing through because the body oil massage to come was surely going to be the relaxation we came here for. 

Eventually we were guided up to the women’s area and instructed again to remove our towels and lay on hard wooden tables next to each other. The women proceeded to dig their arms into our backs, muscles, and organs, chatting and laughing as they handled us like slabs of meat. As we grimaced and writhed, drenched in oil, waiting for the pain to stop, we noticed the intensity and energy of the women ramping up. We couldn’t tell if the women were angry or just highly animated and expressive. We didn’t know what might be going on, but being on the receiving end of their touch felt intense. After 60 long minutes, it was over, and we slid back into our clothes, back onto the hot streets of Istanbul, sweaty, oily, and confused about what had just happened. Did we receive a massage or were we tenderized by butchers? We weren’t sure. We had tipped them generously regardless, out of American politeness.

It wasn’t until we were swept away by the music at the nightclub until 4 in the morning that it all started to drop in for us. A Turkish gentleman at the club was reminding us how "in the middle of everything" Turkiye is. They share a border with Ukraine, with Iran, they have received millions of Syrian refugees, and they hold thousands of years of history of cultures merging and cultures colliding. Up to that moment, we hadn’t fully acknowledged where we were. As naive as it sounds, it was true. We took that in, and we danced. We danced for hours alongside a crowd of Turkish locals who also appeared to be tapping into their own sense of freedom and connection through Polo and Pan. Like a psychedelic journey, there’s a moment wherever everything sort of lands – the moment of clear seeing that happens after a period of disorientation. 

We had to drop our preconceived notions of what Istanbul or Turkiye or the hammam was going to be like and had to allow ourselves to be taken by the time and the place that we found ourselves in. How cliché is it that we would center our pleasure and our experience at the hammam, as if it was for us. Hammam is about community and connection; it’s not about us. Women of the local community coming together for lively discussion and gossip and sharing about their lives. Why would we think that wherever we go in the world, our individual experience is or should be centered? That it should be about us?  

By the end of five days we of course barely touched into all that Istanbul is. We came in thinking that we could understand it. We thought we would be able to lay our plans onto it. We recognized that we are outsiders, touching into one tiny point in a sea of culture and history and people. Even while incredibly hospitable, we are unimportant to this place. Istanbul does not care about us or what we want from it. We had to open wider. We had to allow ourselves to be taken. We had to see our own shadow and de-center ourselves. So much like mushrooms, we have to be willing to be guided and led by the energy of a place, rather than try to impose our energy and curate an experience for ourselves. Travel, as psychedelics, carry a whole lot of paradox and teachings.

The Hottest Place in Turkiye

This might already be evident, but to reiterate, we did no research. After we were Istanbuled, we planned to spend a cool and relaxing week by the water, flying from Istanbul to the Mediterranean coastal town of Antalya. “Antalya?” everyone we met in Istanbul asked us. “It’s going to be really hot there.” We shrugged each time and said, “Oh well, it’s fine, we’ll be working on our book anyways.” Wow, were they right. 9am beach time, 4 in the afternoon tea break, 10pm European time dinner, 1am ice cream. It didn’t matter what time of day we attempted to venture out, it was very hot and very humid in Antalya. However, we weren’t wrong; we did benefit from the extreme heat because we were forced to hole up in our air conditioned apartment, overlooking the sea, and get to work. It was here that we drafted the first four chapters of our new book! 

Oh, and guess what, we are writing a book! Our forthcoming book on Psilocybin Mushroom Integration will be published summer 2025 with New Harbinger, and we could not be more thrilled to embark on yet another creative journey together!

Our week of writing in Turkiye was a beautiful reminder of the strength of our partnership. Were we really going to be able to pull this off? Were we just kidding ourselves that we could go to a far away place and actually focus enough to get real work done? Outside of our home environment and daily routines, we found ourselves become even more creative, more focused, and abundantly able to bring forth and merge our gifts to create something new. Dori listens deeply and channels the wisdom buzzing within and around her. Shannon asks good questions and roots etheric concepts into physical form, such as in the form of precise words and coherent paragraphs. Together, we engage in a creative process that always takes us somewhere exciting. 

Each day in Antalya we wrote until we felt complete or until our brains were mush. By the end of the week, we amazed ourselves by having met every single goal we had set for ourselves! We are so excited to share this book with you in 2025! It’s a book that aims to name something about the process of integration that hasn’t quite been named yet. Beyond practices and techniques of integration, what’s actually happening as an integration process? This book is an invitation to intentionally engage and interact with the material of our mushroom journeys, so that we can make lasting change that is rooted in the way that we live our lives. 

We were so happy with ourselves that we decided to extend our trip with an extra weekend in Istanbul. We will spare you the details, but we indeed got Istanbuled once again! (“Istanbuled” is now an adjective to describe being a little too full of ourselves with our great plans and great anticipation; only to be chewed up and spit out and reminded of how small and unimportant we are.)

A Sprinkle of Cat Magic 

Because we did no research about where we were going, we were delightfully surprised by the incredible cat culture that was omnipresent in every corner of every neighborhood. Istanbul is a city of cat lovers and cats who have developed a symbiotic relationship with humans. This mutual love is evident by the piles of cat kibble on every street corner and the cat houses set up all over the city. Cats confidently walking down the street, cats in the market, cat cuddles, and a cat museum. Enjoy some of our favorite cats from our cat tour of Turkiye! You are welcome. 

Open Wider, Girls

Our tour guide in Cappadocia guessed that Dori was 25 and Shannon was 30. He was only 10+ years off for the both of us, but we did not mind a bit. “Is it okay if I call you ‘girls’?” he asked. We didn’t mind. In fact, we’re used to it. It’s our nickname to the Universe. Dori, standing by the fountain in Cappadocia one evening in a deep listening practice, hears “Open Wider, Girls,” as a message from Spirit, our Guides, the Universe, Her the Divine. This is our intention and our integration. Open wider. This is what we learned from getting Istanbuled over and over. Open wider. This is our prayer and our practice. May we continue to open wider to fit more of ourselves, our communities, and the world into our hearts.