67 - Jeanette Plowes: Ibogaine Changed the Coach67 - Jeanette Plowes: Ibogaine Changed the Coach
Root Medicine
Coach and transpersonal therapist Jeanette Plowes shares how ibogaine, grief, birth and plant medicines reshaped her sense of self and the way she supports others. The conversation touches on somatic integration, sexual shame, codependency and what real preparation and aftercare around ibogaine can look like.
1:10:22•23 Oct 2026
Ibogaine, Birth, and Becoming: How Jeanette Plowes Changed the Coach
Episode Overview
- Ibogaine can act less like a set of new tools and more like a force that reshapes the person using them, shifting how they hold space for others.
- High‑functioning codependency and the “need to be needed” can quietly drain compassion and lead to burnout until they are recognised and worked through.
- Somatic integration is crucial when an experience is felt mainly in the body; actions like movement, dance or embodied practice help the nervous system trust new patterns.
- Intention setting is helpful, but trying to control the experience or its meaning too soon can backfire; meaning often unfolds gradually over weeks and months.
- Sustained change after ibogaine is supported by community, ongoing integration calls, and small, deliberate changes at home that reflect the inner shift.
“Ibogaine didn’t give me more tools to coach; ibogaine changed the person that held the tools.”
Curious about how others navigate their sobriety journey? This conversation with ibogaine coach and transpersonal therapist Jeanette Plowes might feel like sitting down with a wise friend who’s done the hard work herself. Growing up in Mexico City as a highly sensitive child, Jeanette was taken to a curandera instead of a psychiatrist, and spent years hiding her gifts and feeling like an outsider.
Her path through ayahuasca, indigenous teachings and, eventually, ibogaine brought her back to trust in her own perception – and to a very different way of supporting others in deep change. She talks honestly about high‑functioning codependency, the “need to be needed”, and the grief of losing her father. Ibogaine showed her how much of her pain came from a belief that her value lay in saving others – and how that pattern was quietly burning her out.
One line sums it up: “Ibogaine didn’t give me more tools to coach; ibogaine changed the person that held the tools.” You’ll hear how her ibogaine journey was less about trippy visuals and more about a powerful somatic experience that surfaced buried shame around sexuality, led to reggaeton dance classes as integration, and even to becoming pregnant ten days after treatment.
She links birth work and ibogaine, seeing both as rites of passage where you “give birth to a new version of yourself” and learn to trust the body over the racing mind. The episode also walks through practical prep and integration: setting intentions without clinging to outcomes, why the first 48 hours afterward aren’t the time to force meaning, and how small, body‑based experiments with fear, failure and discomfort can anchor change back home.
If you’re wondering whether you’re truly ready for deep inner work, Jeanette’s story might nudge you to ask: what are you actually willing to give back in order to heal?
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