I Spent Two Weeks In The Jungle | With Micah LandauI Spent Two Weeks In The Jungle | With Micah Landau
BrainStorm with Sony Perlman
Sony Perlman talks with Micah Landau about a two-week jungle dieta in Peru, sharing raw reflections on plant medicine, burnout, and learning to receive as much as he gives. The conversation questions unregulated psychedelic work while highlighting how deep self-care can become central to long-term recovery and helping others.
1:52:00•5 Jul 2026
Jungle Healing, Tree Wisdom and the Risky Side of Psychedelics
Episode Overview
- Stepping away from phones, comfort and daily roles can create space to feel grief, burnout and pressure that usually get pushed aside.
- Sony’s jungle "tree lesson" suggests true generosity requires drawing heavily on support and nourishment, not living as a constant sacrifice.
- Micah explains that in indigenous Peruvian traditions, plant "spirits" are understood as the active effects of plants, guided by long-developed systems.
- Traditional healers undergo years of demanding, isolating training, highlighting the risks of modern psychedelic facilitators who lack deep initiation.
- Returning from a dieta and integrating insights into normal life can be harder than the jungle itself, making boundaries and ongoing self-care essential.
“"When you get the message, you hang up the phone."”
Curious about how others navigate their sobriety journey? This conversation between Sony Perlman and psychotherapist Micah Landau might give you a very different angle on healing, especially if you've ever wondered about plant medicine and jungles. Sony returns to the mic after a long break and openly shares that he’s been feeling crushed by responsibility, grief, and the pressures of starting a new organisation.
Instead of another work retreat or standard therapy, he vanishes into the Peruvian jungle for a two‑week "dieta"—no phone, no electricity, bland vegan food, and twice‑daily doses of a non‑psychoactive plant called Ajo Sacha, plus one intense ayahuasca ceremony he mostly didn’t want to do. You’ll hear Sony describe hiking five miles uphill, trying (and failing) to purge during tobacco cleanses, and realising he felt like an outsider crashing an ayahuasca party.
The emotional heart of the episode is his "tree revelation": hugging a massive jungle tree while ants bite him, noticing how it greedily drinks in sun and water, and understanding that to keep giving to his community he has to absorb far more nourishment himself—spiritually, physically, emotionally—rather than treating his life as a constant sacrifice.
Micah, who’s spent over a decade studying Peruvian shamanic traditions and works with Somatic Internal Family Systems, breaks down what local healers mean by "spirits" of plants, why dietas are so structured, and how traditional healer training has more in common with a demanding apprenticeship than with a weekend certificate course. He links this to modern therapy and questions why so many people self‑declare as psychedelic facilitators without deep training or ongoing guidance.
If you’re in recovery, supporting someone who is, or just wrestling with burnout and over‑giving, this episode offers a raw look at stripping life back to basics, questioning psychedelic hype, and coming home with a commitment to self‑care that feels less like a luxury and more like survival. How much are you really allowing yourself to receive before you try to give?
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