Nick Polizzi: Ayahuasca & The Sacred Science

This week welcome to the show Nick Polizzi. He has spent his career directing and producing feature-length documentaries about holistic alternatives to conventional medicine. Most recently, Nick directed The Tapping Solution and co-edited Simply Raw - Raw for 30 Days. His current role as producer of The Sacred Science—a documentary about explorations in the Amazon to learn about traditional, healing practices—stems from a calling to honor, preserve, and protect the ancient knowledge and rituals of the indigenous peoples of the world.

Questions we ask in this episode:

• What inspired you to make the documentary ‘Sacred Science’?
• What is ayahuasca?
• Western medicine encourages us to take a pill to fix the problem. Can we do this with indigenous medicines?
• We are living in a world that keeps us constantly distracted. What impact is this having on us (not engaging in our own truth)?
• You mention the “way of being” that is taught by elders in the Andes and Amazon. Please explain.

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This week we are doing it with the awesome Nick Polizzi. Nick is a documentary maker and he is the man behind the doco, The Sacred Science. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend you check it out. It’s just a fascinating documentary and I’ll read the synopsis right now about it straight off the text.
[00:01:00] It says, “Witness the story of eight brave souls as they leave the developed world behind in search of deeper answers. Living in seclusion for one month in the heart of the Amazon jungle, these men and women take part in the powerful healing practices of Peru’s indigenous medicine men working with centuries old plant remedies and spiritual disciplines.”

[00:01:30] It’s just fascinating. We get into Nick’s own personal journey as well. We discuss ayahuasca, which is something that I have done myself as well and that’s why it was just great to get Nick on and talk about this with him and Stu as well today. In this conversation I have no doubt you’re going to find this very fascinating. Now Nick has offered very kindly to all our listeners if you want to watch his documentary for free now you can go to a special link which is thesacredscience.com/free-screening.

[00:02:00] Just find the website. Thesacredscience.com/free-screening. Then you can watch the documentary for free. After you listen to this interview I have no doubt you’re going to want to go back and check it out. The other thing I will add I want to give you as well because talk about ayahuasca. I actually documented my own ayahuasca journey three years ago in blog posts. They are on the 180 Nutrition website so if you want to check them out as well, go back to 180nutrition.com.au. Go to the search field on the home page and just search for ayahuasca and that’s going to bring up the five blog posts I wrote.

[00:02:30] There’s little videos in there too and I document all of my thoughts, and feelings, and everything in there. It was a very personal journey for me and one I’m very glad I shared. I have no doubt you’ll find them useful as well. Anyway, so there’s two things for you there. We do discuss all of this in the podcast as well if you want to make notes. Of course the links will be on the actual blog post of this interview as well when it’s released. Anyway, let’s go over to Nick. Enjoy.

Hey, this is Guy Lawrence. I’m joined with Stuart Cook. Hey, Stu.

 

Stu

Hello, Guy. How are you?

Guy

I’m absolutely great actually. Our awesome guest today is Nick Polizzi. Did I get that right?

Nick

Yeah.

Guy

Yeah, brilliant. Nick, thanks for coming on, mate. It’s the first time we’ve explored this kind of topic and I’m very much looking forward to sharing it across with our audience today. Just to kickstart the show, mate, if you were on an airplane flying to Australia right now, and you sat next to a complete stranger, and they asked you what you did for a living, what would you say?

Nick

Man, I’d ask them how much time they had? I guess they’d have a lot of time. What is that, a 15-hour flight?

Guy

Yeah. Exactly.

Nick

I guess I’d say I’m a documentary filmmaker, author, shamanic explorer, adventurer. Somebody who is constantly on their own evolutionary path. The medicine path I guess.

Stu

Yeah. What reaction would you get from that normally as well? What would that be?

Nick

I guess it depends on who we’re talking about? Are we talking about a suit or are we talking about a girl who just got back from Burning Man?

Stu

Burning Man. Exactly. Yeah, two very different conversations, right?

Nick

[00:04:30] Yeah, but I’m starting to find that there’s actually a pretty large cross-section of the population here in the States at least that are really interested in this kind of inner work. That kind of idea was something that even 10 years ago that wasn’t really being talked about very much. Yoga was a big deal. Yoga was this foreign thing 10 years ago or 15 years ago here in the States and now everyone and their grandmother does it. I think that we’re primed.

Full Transcript & Video Version:

http://180nutrition.com.au/180-tv/nick-polizzi-interview/