[00:00:00] Leslie: I tied so much of my identity up into what I could get and what I could prove. And honestly, by society's standards, like that worked well for me because I was great at my job. I was earning six figures when I left, but on the inside, I felt so stuck.
My mental health was pretty bad in my twenties and then progressively worse in my early thirties, with anxiety, depression, and even PTSD, which I would get diagnosed within 2022. And so for me, I tried all of this Western medicine. I tried therapy. I tried even pharmaceutical drugs. And then I leaned on these more spiritual modalities and holistic modalities like breath work and mindfulness practices.
[00:00:44] Aneta: We often hear people wishing us a long, happy, and healthy life, but what if the length isn't what matters most? What if instead, it's the breath depth and purpose of each day that matters most? Welcome to the Live the Width of Your Life podcast. My name is Aneta Ardelian Kuzma and join me weekly as I interview guests who made changes in their own lives to live more fully with intention, gratitude, and joy. Be prepared to be inspired by their stories of how they shifted their mindset, took courageous action, and designed the life that they always wanted to live.
Welcome back to Live the Width of Your Life. My guest today is Leslie Draffin and she's a somatic psychedelic guide and sexual embodiment coach focused on helping women embrace their bodies, sex, and psychedelics. She supports conscious women and menstruators who want to heal themselves and connect more deeply with the divine through intentional microdosing, womb reconnection, pleasure activation, and cyclical living.
She believes sacred earth medicine has the power to bring us home to ourselves, awaken our authenticity, and heal the trauma locked within our subconscious. We had such an interesting conversation.
We talked a lot about her background. And how she explored different modalities and finally found psychedelics to help her heal her trauma, especially in comparison to some more traditional methods that she worked on. We talked a lot about body image, about being embodied. We talked about magic mushrooms and how they open the door to consciousness and also about reconnection as a woman back to the womb space and some of the work that she does with other women.
And it was a fascinating conversation. And, I think you will enjoy it. Take a listen.
Leslie, I'm so excited to have you here with me today.
[00:02:31] Leslie: Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here chatting.
[00:02:34] Aneta: Yeah. And you have such an interesting background. I know that you are focusing on being of service and healing, helping others heal from trauma. But tell me a little bit more about your background and how you found your way to the work that you are doing in the world right now.
[00:02:51] Leslie: Yeah. So my name is Leslie Draffin and I in a former life was a TV news anchor. Now I am working as a somatic psychedelic guide and I came to this work because of my healing journey. So I spent about 20 years deeply numbing out and punishing myself through eating disorders and alcohol abuse. I think linked to some childhood trauma and to the fact that when I was 18, I was diagnosed with herpes and I'm a preacher's daughter from the deep south of the United States. So that just threw me into this massive shame spiral. So I fell deeper into my eating disorder. I fell deeper into abusing alcohol.
And what I also did was get addicted to achieving and proving my worth. And so I tied so much of my identity up to what I could get and what I could prove. And honestly, by society's standards, like that worked well for me because I was great at my job. I was earning six figures when I left, but on the inside, I felt so stuck.
My mental health was pretty bad in my twenties and then progressively worse in my early thirties, with anxiety, depression, and even PTSD, which I would get diagnosed within 2022. And so for me, I tried all of this Western medicine. I tried therapy. I tried even pharmaceutical drugs. And then I leaned on these more spiritual modalities and holistic modalities like breath work and mindfulness practices.
But what helped create this aha within me was psychedelics. I started to work with them intentionally with the help of a guide and a coach. And they helped me overcome my challenges. They got me sober. They've helped me as I've overcome my body image issues and they really kind of lit that fire underneath this purpose that I realized I was put here to perform to do which is to help other people, women specifically who are like me.
[00:04:51] Aneta: Wow. So I want to applaud you for doing the work and for focusing in on one, identifying, Hey, even though society's telling me I'm successful because I'm making money and I have this great job and it looks like I've got all my stuff together, there's still something here that I know is wrong.
So did you always have a deep connection to understanding, like your body or understanding when something was wrong, or is this something that you sort of slowly started to discover later?
[00:05:23] Leslie: So I was so deeply disconnected from my body up until I would say around age 33. I think that was because of religious trauma, growing up in the church, the body was seen like the flesh, and it wasn't encouraged to understand your body's sensations because of my eating disorders that I started falling into around age 15, which was such a seminal age to then continue to be disconnected and not only just disconnected, like completely cut myself off from the body to try and control it, that it made me very disconnected.
In my twenties, I don't think I could have tapped into what I thought intuition was if you had paid me a million dollars. And it was really in that early year. I think I was just about to turn 33 when I had my spiritual awakening in 2019 I started to understand there was more than living in the mind. But no, it's certainly been a practice that I've developed over the last five years and I'm still working on constantly.
[00:06:22] Aneta: Yeah. So many of us are so disconnected from our bodies, especially as women, everything you said resonated with me. So, it sounds like you tried traditional medical things. You tried some spiritual things. You tried things maybe in the mental health aspect and world.
So how did you hear about psychedelics and what was your initial thought? Because as someone, as you said, who was numbing herself and maybe using substances to numb, when you hear about psychedelics, your mind is based on how we were raised or what our thought is around it. Some people think that's just a drug, but tell me about your definition of psychedelics and how you got to the point where you're like, okay, I think I'm ready to try this.
[00:07:04] Leslie: So when I was on TV, I did this weekly news segment called Your Best Life. And my boss, who is like a fan of the Grateful Dead, jokingly mentioned, and I guess it was jokingly, he brought up microdosing to me years before I ever like explored it for myself. He's like, you should look into this for a story. I was like, how am I going to do that? Because it's not legal here. Like it's a drug. So I had some deep conditioning.
I was in the DARE program. I love to say the story that I remembered just a couple of years ago when I was in third grade, might've been second grade, second or third grade. I won a t-shirt decorating contest for DARE and I would kill to have that t-shirt. So like, I was very much in that space of these are bad. These are drugs. Don't do them. They will mess you up.
So several years after my boss sort of brought this up to me and nothing came of it, we saw books like How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan come out. Some documentaries have come out. pandemic had, I think, opened up a lot of people's eyes to more holistic approaches to healing.
And then on a podcast that I was listening to, I heard a woman talking about it. And the way she explained her work as she works with folks who have sexual trauma and issues with libido and desire to help them heal those things through micro-dosing. And I immediately called her to be on my show. The second we hung up our chat, I hired her and started working pretty quickly afterward.
And in the first few weeks of deciding that I had to do some deep inner work around my belief systems about, is this bad? Is this a drug? For me, I was at this point where I'd exhausted what I could see as all other methods from the Western medical model, and I had already seen a lot of other holistic things help with my body image and my menstrual cycle. I was ready to jump in.
But for me, I think psychedelics are sacred medicine. I think that mushrooms, which I work with specifically are sentient. They can know us more than we know ourselves, when we look at how they're able to connect plants and trees and all of the things that grow underneath our soil and and make our soil so fruitful and fertile,
I see that as a way that they're also helping us when we ingest them intentionally. I think that they're good at connecting parts of us that maybe we've alienated or othered consciously or not. And so I see them as medicine.
Another thing I think that is interesting to look at is this idea that sometimes folks call psychedelics certain types of psychedelics entheogens. So like into myself, I'm looking or even another way to look at it is seeing the divine within myself. So that's sort of how I look at psychedelic medicine.
[00:09:58] Aneta: I love that. Thank you for sharing the description definition. And you said a couple of things that I think are important. One is ingesting or consuming intentionally, and then also that you worked with a guide. So tell me how you found the person that you wanted to work with, because I think it is important to talk about doing this with someone that maybe has some experience that can guide you because was there any fear that you had, like going into the experience?
[00:10:25] Leslie: I would say a little tiny bit of fear, but the fear for me was more about the risk associated with it. Like, I was really in my good girl archetype at that point, and I still battle with her now. And part of what I've realized is, part of my mission is to think about the person versus what these arbitrary I see as. Arbitrary rules and laws put onto us by an unloving government have done to us. You can see that because why is somebody in one state allowed to do something that I'm not when they're therapeutic? When we saw this with the marijuana movement.
So I found Bijou because I heard her on a podcast. And to be honest, I just immediately trusted her. I felt very connected to her. Then when I had her come over onto my show again, it was even more of this, I deeply felt this in my gut, in my womb that I trust her. And so I looked at her background a little bit, talked to her and just kind of jumped in, but there are a lot of people now getting into this who maybe don't have training.
So it is important to look for folks who have gone through this training-wise and also really go with your gut.
[00:11:37] Aneta: Yeah. That's so important to share. And did you feel like you had some sort of relief the first time that you went through the experience with your guide?
[00:11:47] Leslie: Yeah. So I worked with this person for about three and a half months and it was rocky. Like, let's be honest. It was very rocky. I was still anchoring the news. My mental health was the worst that it had ever been. And so I was already contemplating this idea of taking a leave of absence from work. Around that same time, I started working with psychedelics and that sort of just sped up the signs that I was not meant to be in TV anymore.
And so that's why I was grateful that I had the help because it was shadowy and it kind of sucked. And I describe it as like my Kali year. Everything had to burn down for me to rise from the ashes. It did not feel good. But, in the midst of all of that sort of turmoil, there were also so many of these beautiful glimpses of me finally feeling like I could slow down like I could be present.
I had already been teaching meditation for a couple of years at that point, and yet still so often I was struggling with the ability to be present enough to be in stillness. And so I started to see these little tiny glimpses of connection to my zone of safety, which I at that point didn't have the language around the nervous system and what it was doing for me. But yeah, I did start to feel good.
The other thing for me that was just mind-blowing was the way that she led sessions and it's the way that I lead sessions too, is having folks ingest their microdose before they come. We do it over Zoom and she was very much someone who like led these guided meditations.
I do that sometimes, but I'm more somatic movement based, but when we would go into meditation, I've always been someone who, when I close my eyes, can very easily picture things. You have a very vivid third eye, I'm sure. But it was like turning on just like amping up the volume to it all like I could so easily see the things that we were moving through.
I could see myself in different situations. And that's, I think, part of why psychedelics help us to get into the subconscious because we're sort of relaxed in this state of expansion and we're highly suggestible. And so that, for me felt so good and helped me connect with parts of myself that I knew were where my wounds lived but nothing I could do before this was touch those problems
[00:14:12] Aneta: That's amazing. The fact that you were on this journey and you were doing this work and still trying to maintain your job. And so it's like living in two worlds at the same time. How hard was it for you to continue to work as a news anchor, to pretend like, you were still that person while you were actively changing?
[00:14:32] Leslie: So I had already been in the changing mode for a few years. In 2019 when I had my spiritual awakening, I slowly started to bring my weirdness to work
But I also had to hold a lot back and I didn't tell anybody that I was ingesting mushrooms at my job. My boss would have been totally fine with it, but that was something that I felt, too scary to talk about. And so I kind of at that point started noticing how much I was playing a news anchor on TV. Like this was a character that I was putting on and I had to do it every day and, yeah, it was rough.
The other thing though, that started to happen that made it even more difficult was as I continued to ingest mushrooms, they started to break down the wall that I had created around my heart that I felt I had to have to report about the worst of humanity day after day after day. This is something that I kind of crafted within myself from the first moment I stepped into television, you got to put it up because you can't cry about every terrible thing that you see on the news when you're the one who's reading the news.
So, when I started to Microdose, that wall started to crumble, and there were multiple times I would cry, or I would get upset about a story, and the thing that was so weird, it's like, that's a human emotion and a natural human reaction. And yet I had been so programmed by my career to be unbiased, do it like a robot, just read the news and shut up about everything else, that it felt very bizarre.
And so right before I finally had to say, I got to take a break, there was this school shooting here in Texas at Uvalde Elementary. And it's about two and a half hours from where we live. I was solo anchoring and I think it was the night after the shooting. We had so much more information about these babies.
19 elementary kids were murdered and their two teachers. And I had to sit on the news at 10 o'clock and read about what they wanted to be when they grew up, their favorite colors, like horrible. And I just cried. I just broke down and cried. And somehow by the grace of God, I made it through that block of the news to get into a commercial break.
And my producer was like, are you okay? I was like, I am not okay. I hate it here. This is awful. And so what felt like to so many people as a breakdown for me was a breakthrough to see what I needed to see to move into a place where I was meant to be because that was a dream job. And it had turned into my nightmare.
And I think it just took magic mushrooms, kicking me in the butt to be like, okay. And so what's interesting is, I took this leave of absence. I was so privileged to be able to do that. And I was about 97 percent sure I was not going back. But something in me was like, are you stupid? You're going to give up this career that you've worked for for 15 years that you've always wanted to do your fifth grade.
The week before I was supposed to go back my corporate HR person messaged me and said we're not going to renew your contract over ethical things. And I'm like, okay, I don't know what that's about. And I'm like, don't worry about it. I'm not coming back. So I think that it was the universe again and I see this as such an interesting sign. I could have taken that as Oh no, they don't want me and I'm fired. But I think the universe was like, baby, if you don't want to make the decision yourself and you have even an ounce of worry that this isn't the right thing, let me just take it from you. So that you can know with a hundred percent assured that this is right.
[00:17:57] Aneta: Yeah. It's so interesting. I believe that. I've seen it time and time again in my life, my client's life, where we know something, we feel it so deeply, we ignore it, we try to shove it down. And then finally God or the universe says like, Hey, you know what? I'm just going to make this easier for you and you can carry on.
So what happened after the first day you no longer had to get up and go to that job? What were the emotions you were feeling? What did you decide to do? Because even though you were on this healing journey, while you're still in the job, you're still, some part of you is still like, okay, I have the stability, the security but when you don't have that any longer and your calendar is free and everything is open, I remember feeling like that's where some fear started to set in. So tell me what you were feeling when that happened.
[00:18:47] Leslie: So fearful. So what also happened in the three months where I was off was two of our dogs died suddenly. And I realized, because at this point I had sort of taken a break from working with psychedelics, but still was integrating the work that I'd been doing. So that grief of their loss, the grief of leaving the job really brought up for me grief around a divorce I'd had in my 20s, grief around my herpes diagnosis, and so all of this unprocessed grief had to come forward, and it was low.
It was a low point. Yes, I was afraid, because it was such a solid foundation of our income as a couple, but I just felt so cracked open. The good news is my husband has his own business. We own a food truck and it was just soaring at this point. And so we had already looked at the finances and we knew we were going to be okay. So I felt like, all right, I get it.
But what came up for me was that overachieving success. Like, if this isn't what I'm doing, if I'm not proving, who am I? Am I even worthy if I'm not earning six figures? Am I even worthy if I'm not constantly working and figuring out the next move? And I still struggle with that now as an entrepreneur and a coach. If I'm not creating something new and I'm not working with more clients, like, am I even good enough?
So that's been, did we even know we're going to get this deep in this podcast conversation? That's been something that came up there that I still meander through now. And God, the grief, it's just this interesting theme of my life at this point, because we lost our last dog a couple of months ago, but that's really where it was.
It was some fear around the scarcity, the grief that I had left unprocessed for more than a decade, and then the new grief and then that, God, that feeling of if I'm not doing this, what am I?
[00:20:37] Aneta: Yeah. Identity work is just like takes a lifetime. Because we spend so many years building our identity around the things that we do, the titles, the job, the money, whatever it is that external measures of success. And so much of the work that I've found with myself and with clients is redefining what that looks like for us.
How do I get to say that? I'm okay just for being, just for being who I am, just for being alive. I am worthy just by being me and then undoing some of the other things that we have been conditioned to believe. Okay. So you don't make that much money. Okay. And so what? But it takes time to do all that work.
And so what's been the most helpful as you've been sort of rebuilding what success looks like for you? And I use the word success just cause I don't have a better one, but what brings you joy or what gives you what you're seeking every single day just gives you the sense of, Wow. I'm making a difference in the world or whatever your language is around that.
[00:21:46] Leslie: Well, I think it's perfect though, what you just said about I don't even need to make that much money. I practice feeling abundant in everything I can. And so that looks like being abundant with my time. So I go as slow as possible. I take pleasure in tiny things. I know this is a thing that happens when we get to our late thirties, but I'm obsessed with watching birds now and, playing with my dog when he was still here and doing art. And so for me, that sort of helps me feel successful.
The other thing is when I notice and respond to the things triggering me without being in reaction mode. That feels like success, however, that looks, be it if something's coming up around launching and no one signs up, if something comes up around triggers in my family or this whole grief portal that I've been in since my last dog died, who was like my soulmate dog. With that specifically, I was like, all right, you know what you're not going to do? You're not going to create a new course. The week after he dies, like you've done in the past, you're not going to throw yourself into more work. You're going to sit in that shit and you're going to just let it be. And it was nasty.
It's still nasty. It comes and goes. But that's kind of, for me, what success feels like. If I go to bed at night and think, okay, it was a good day and this is what I did, maybe I met with clients, maybe I didn't, I just like watched a bunch of birds, painted some pictures, did some breath work. Ate good food. That's kind of what it looks like for me now and if you told me that that's what it would look like for me four years ago, I would have liked to laugh you off the face of the planet,
[00:23:26] Aneta: Right. Because we receive what we're able to integrate when the timing is right. sometimes maybe if there were messages that were presented with, but we're not able to receive them, we don't even recognize what they are. And so you found yourself at this point where you're able to do something different with what was happening in your life but going back to the fear.
What was your process to build your business even while fearful even though you said you were on this journey and you did get this nudge, like, okay, we're not renewing your contract? So what was that process like?
[00:24:04] Leslie: It was leaning on friends. It was leaning on the teachers that I had already been working with or following. And honestly, it was following the guidance of my womb. So ever since I came off of hormonal birth control in 2020, I have tried very hard to go by what my gut, which I believe is in my womb says to me. And so I just kind of follow that nudge. And it has been trial and error and I hate to fail. Like I hate it. And so there've been times when I'll have a successful thing that I'll do, and then the next time around, it's completely a flop.
And so looking at, and this is such a psychedelic integration thing, looking at the message in the mess and trying to figure out, okay, how did this set me up for different levels of success in different areas? What did it teach me? And can I still be okay with it meaning nothing about me? Because truthfully, it means nothing to me. And how can I continue to reinforce that confidence within myself without needing this outward? image of worth. And so that's sort of how I did it. I got additional training.
So when I started working with psychedelics, I never thought I'd be someone who was helping people, in this realm. But I looked back at a journal and I had written menstrual cycle plus psychedelics question mark early. And I just happened to look over it a year later when I was in training to be a microdosing facilitator. I was like, we knew. And I just have to remember. So the additional trainings were really helpful. I have a great support system. My husband is so supportive. He constantly reminds me that well, I'm not here to make money. I'm here to be of service and it doesn't matter how that looks. And that's, I guess, hopefully, an answer.
[00:25:57] Aneta: Yeah, no, it's so good. So let's talk a little bit about the womb reconnection. Because I know that is some of the work that you do and you've talked about the menstrual cycle. You talked about feeling disembodied for so much of life. And then some of the things that you did, and many of us do right in terms of punishment to our bodies, the things we say, the actions we take suppressing food.
Tell me more about, how you did the reconnection work, because I think as women, many of us don't think about our wombs. I mean, going down the birth control or the hormones is a whole other tangent. We probably don't have time for it, but tell me about how you reconnected to your womb space. And then you even said that that's where your gut is. That's where your intuition lives.
[00:26:40] Leslie: Yeah. So when I started the spiritual journey in 2019, I was healing from my religious trauma. I was deconditioning from that upbringing. And so I was very much drawn to this idea of the divine feminine. I would do meditations or I would join embodiment classes online, or I would read books.
And so often it would talk about this thing called intuition. I mean, what does that even mean? I don't get it. Somehow towards the middle of the year, after really committing to meditation and committing to breathwork practices that were more focused on pleasure.
So certain types of breath that I would envision like coming through my vulva and up through my body versus down through my nostrils and whatever. I started to hear this little thing inside of me say, you need to get off of the pill. You've got to get off of birth control. It is stifling you. It is keeping you from living your full cyclical expression. It is keeping you in your masculine energy because I was 95 percent masculine. That hustle, That bustle, That achiever.
And so, okay, I'm like, let me come off the pill. Come off the pill in 2020, all hell breaks loose. I don't get my period back. My hair starts to fall out. I get cystic acne and get diagnosed with PCOS. And I was still trying to masculine the menstrual cycle by doing everything perfectly right.
Eating for the cycle, supplementing for the cycle, seed cycling, and working out a specific way. No. What finally started was these deep meditations that I would do where I would envision myself going into this cave, meeting my inner self there within the cave, and speaking to that part of myself.
And sometimes I would also incorporate breath or womb massage. So just like outside the belly, touching the belly. which is triggering for someone with 20 years of eating disorders. So that was the first step. The second step was starting to learn about new ways to connect with pleasure.
I joined this membership by Rosie Reese, who owns Yoni Pleasure Palace. Highly recommend her Golden Yoni membership. I was in it for like two years. Super affordable. She's got it jam-packed with all of these beautiful lessons around connecting with this part of ourselves.
I also started to understand that we know, and we often say like our trauma is held in our body in the hips specifically, it's a big place that we hold on to this trauma and if you've ever been to a yoga class and it makes you cry, I was at Pilates today crying. Then you can bet your bottom dollar there's likely something stored in that part of your body if you're stretching that and that kind of emotion comes up.
So, as I'm exploring this idea that, is held in my body, that this trauma is in my body, that part of the disconnect within me is because I have stored energetically trauma within the fascia in my pelvis and womb area. I began exploring something called cervical de-armoring, which is a deep trigger point massage internally in the vagina.
And as I'm in one of these meditations, so it's very meditative. You've put on some candles. It's very sensual based. And when I say sensual, I mean, all senses candles and maybe oil and the lights are a certain way there's music.
You're connecting with that part of yourself with the breath, with touch, and then whenever you're ready, you can enter the vaginal canal, thinking of it like a clock, and putting some pressure on the 12, the 3, the 6, the 9, moving a little bit farther in. So, and this is a totally beginner's level, like, please don't just think you can jump into this, I'm not the expert. This is just what I did.
So I'm in my vagina, probably three inches in the upper right-hand quadrant. I feel this pinch and immediately I hear this man's voice who I had been with after my divorce, who was a total narcissist say, you fat B like you're disgusting. I'm like, what?
I haven't thought of this man in years. I was at this point in a happy relationship with my now husband, like where is this? First of all, it was his voice. It was in that space. And I'm like, dude, that is so weird, but that was in there. That was inside my body and I had not processed it. Of course, the emotion came up, anger, and I continued to breathe. I continued to do that pressure point massage.
And then I did some cord-cutting to completely get rid of it. But that I think was the thing that showed me how potent the womb is at holding on to the things that we're not consciously aware we're storing and it was also a pivotal point for me to know how powerful it could be to get that out of me. Because when I processed that through the massage, through the breath, through moving and doing a little bit of a rage ritual afterward, shaking.
I slowly started to no longer really think those things because his words had been in my subconscious and it was stored there in my womb. So as I connected to that part of myself through things like that massage, through things like breath and meditation, it started to come online. And like, it was easier for me to hear my intuition. Again, like I said, I think is in the womb.
So the gut and the womb are back right up next to each other. If we know anything about the menstrual cycle and the HPA axis, it's very deeply connected to our gut microbiome. So I just say that my intuition's in my womb because that's where she was when I went into the womb cave meditation and met her.
[00:32:17] Aneta: Fascinating and it's so true. I think it's just a reminder that when we are with other humans, we are energetic beings. And when we are with others, especially in intimate ways that energy and that experience can be stored. And it could be stored for a long period within us.
So what have you noticed since you released that and you did the cord cutting and you kind of released that from your subconscious, like what has changed or shifted for you?
[00:32:47] Leslie: At that point when I was doing that work, this is again before psychedelics, the things he had done to me, the things I experienced while dating him, were often things that came up in therapy. I was talking about them in therapy a lot, but I was not able to process them. And so when I had that experience, I'm not going to say it quickly dissolved, but over the next couple of months, it did dissolve. And it helped me no longer think that about myself.
And sure. I have bad body image days now, but it's never been as present as it was at that point. And I love what you had said about like, we're energetic beings, the womb based on its physiology itself is often this like space within us. And that's our energetic junk drawer. We love to put stuff in there. Like body image stuff. Stuff that somebody said to us when we were a kid. Sexual trauma, be it just having said yes, when you kind of wanted to say no, or you weren't wet enough to begin like all of those things, menstrual cycle issues.
And so for me, when I started to connect deeply with that area, that example of his voice is just like the best example to share on a podcast, but other things were happening like my menstrual cycle came back. After not having it for nine months because I was paying attention with intention to that space.
That's all I feel like it wanted. It wanted me to slow down enough to realize like, this is something for you, not that's happening to you. And then the other thing that started to happen for me which was added fuel to the fire when I added psychedelics was I started to understand what I liked. I started to understand my changing body. And I started to understand how to be in my sensuality without it having to always be sexual.
And so when I started to reconnect with the womb, I started making choices from an empowered place that came from this deep inner knowing. And I felt like I was awakening to things my body knew on a cellular level, maybe on an ancestral and a generational level that was like just flowing through me. This ancient type of wisdom.
[00:34:51] Aneta: Yeah. And I think that sometimes women, because it's so normalized to be on birth control, people think that they're still bleeding each month, but they're not. It's just a week when you're not taking it. That is withdrawal bleeding. So you're suppressing the entire natural cycle.
And there is so much energy and creativity and different things that happen when we follow our cycle and when we are in tune with our cycle. So what else has changed now that you have your cycle back and you're able to reconnect and understand yourself differently and maybe tap into your feminine energy? has that shifted any other way in terms of creativity or anything else in your own life?
[00:35:33] Leslie: It's shifted everything. I often say if I had a religion, it would be my menstrual cycle. So I tracked my cycle for well over a year, so diligently. I kept a journal. I kept this graph. I made a graph for my husband. So he knew where I was in my cycle. He knows so much about the cycle.
He was talking about it to his brother two days ago. And I'm hearing him from another room and he's got it right. But it defines so much of what I do and who I am, and I allow it to be something that I trust and go with. So I know when I'm going to need space to be by myself. I know when I should probably create interviews for podcasts.
I know when I'm going to want to show up on camera. I know when I'm going to need this or that. So it's influenced every aspect of my life. Every single one, my creativity. And I think for me, it just gives me a lot more compassion for myself to understand that I am cyclical being that I'm not the same day after day, but I am the same month after month.
And when you have the power to understand, so many times women feel like they're crazy. They can't understand themselves. They're never the same. That's because our society is set up for male hormones, which are the same every single day. Your hormones are very likely very similar month over month. So when you can start to understand that blueprint for your life everything makes sense, everything makes more sense. I was in Pilates a couple of weeks ago and this girl, who's a friend of mine, she's like, wow, you're really weak today. I'm like, yeah, I'm two days out from having my period. I'm so weak and in two more days, I'll be even weaker.
And before cyclical living, I would have judged myself for not being able to do things as hard. I would have judged myself for needing more rest. And now I'm, this is just my cycle. I'll be back to feeling like a boss babe in a week and a half. So see you then.
[00:37:21] Aneta: Yeah, I think that that's important for all of us to hear for women and for men to understand is we do go through cycles. That's why it's called the cycle. And it's so important to know exactly where you are and what your body's trying to tell you. Because a lot of times we're just going to power through, even though we don't feel great and it can be dangerous.
I know that even at certain times during our cycle if you're doing yoga, you have to be careful. Your joints are looser. You can easily hurt yourself. You can do things that don't feel good, especially if you're tired. And if you're lifting heavy weights, for example, your form may not be as strong.
So it's really important, but also there are days and times where we can tap into creativity greater than ever before. So give yourself time and space, maybe to do that type of work during those days. So is there something that you share or the way that you work with women to help them understand how to tap into their cycle?
[00:38:16] Leslie: So I talk a lot about it online on my Instagram @lesliedraffin and my secondary Instagram cyclical microdosing method. And I started as a menstrual cycle coach and a menstrual cycle educator. So I have courses out there. I have a freebie to explain cyclical living one-on-one and you'd asked how I had built my business. I do focus my business on where I am in my cycle.
So that's sort of how I continue to help people through it. In my coaching what I've noticed recently is I'm getting a lot of women who are in midlife or maybe a little post midlife. So folks who maybe are in perimenopause have already gone through menopause. And so naturally I think as I age, that's the folks who I find and I work with.
And so right now in this very present moment, I'm not thinking that much with my clients about their cycles, because at the moment, as I'm thinking of them, I think only one or two have an active cycle. Somebody has an IUD, somebody is, posted, but I will say, I worked with two teenagers last year, and one of them, a transformation that I watched her be 17 and have the power to understand herself at this deep level. She just blossomed in such a wonderful way.
And we ended up doing microdosing coaching together too, because she had been such a wonderful and intuitive person. And when she got to be 18, it was like, okay if this is what you want to do, we'll do it. And just to see the shift. And when I started to do the work to learn about my cycle at 33, I felt a lot of sadness that I had been so disconnected from it for so long.
And so, God, like if I could go back and give myself one thing, I would have given myself the power to understand my cycle as a teenager, because I hope as she grows, she's going to know this self-compassion aspect. She's going to know when her superpowers are turned on and how to navigate life that way.
[00:40:12] Aneta: Amazing. If others are listening and they want to work with you and learn more, is Instagram the best way to find you or is there anything else that you want to share with the audience if they'd like to learn more?
[00:40:24] Leslie: Yeah. If you're listening and you feel called to explore psychedelics, if this is something that makes you feel curious, if it's telling you, as it told me when I heard it on a podcast that, this is the missing piece of my healing journey, then I invite you to book a no-pressure discovery call, we can chat. We can figure out if our vibes click, we can go over what's happening with you and look deeply at how this work could help you.
And we'll talk about whether or not you're a good candidate because mushrooms and psilocybin specifically are very safe for most people. They're non-addictive, there's very low risk, and there are some folks that I usually say may not be good for psychedelic work. Some people with certain histories of mental challenges who are on certain medications, or people in acute stages of things like anxiety, panic, and grief.
But we can talk about that. I'd love to just give you a link to put in your show notes. You can just click it and book. And then I also have something coming up in October. It is called mindful microdosing it's a 30-day accountability group where we will be focused on mindfulness and psychedelic somatic work to help you overcome anxiety, overwhelm, and burnout.
This is a process that I feel helped me when I was leaving TV. when I was struggling with anxiety, burnout, and even PTSD. And so I'm excited to open that for the very first time with that being the focus. I've done this before, but the focus is on folks who feel anxious and overwhelmed and want a grounded and holistic way to approach healing with the community.
[00:42:04] Aneta: That's amazing. We'll include all those links. I just really loved our conversation. And there's a final question that I always ask everyone, which is what does it mean to you to live the width of your life?
[00:42:15] Leslie: I love this question. I think for me, I live the width of my life when I'm in my slowness when I'm allowing myself to taste the fruit, taste the juice, taste the pleasure of any and every experience. And I wrote this in a newsletter a couple of months before my dog passed away. Like really stopping to smell the roses and understand that while life is short, it's also really long when you allow yourself the pleasure of being in your beautiful slowness.
[00:42:46] Aneta: Such a great response. I love that so much. Savor every moment. Thank you so much, Leslie. It was a joy speaking with you and I wish you much continued success.
[00:42:56] Leslie: Thank you so much for having me.
[00:42:58] Aneta: Thank you for listening to today's episode. If today's conversation inspired you to dream again, break out of your comfort zones, or reflect on what it means to you to live more fully, then please follow this podcast because every week you'll hear more stories from people just like you who took imperfect action towards their goals, created more joy and are living the life that they always dreamt of living.