Plant Medicine: Healing, Growth, and Expansion with Pyschedelics with Jonathan de Potter

March 7, 2022

Jonathon de Potter is bringing awareness to the health and wellness benefits of plant medicine therapy. After years of corporate hustle leading him right to burnout, Jonathon took a year off that changed his life more than he could have imagined. In today’s episode of Lift U Up: Inspiring Health Stories, our guest tells his story from corporate consultant to the Founder and CEO of Behold Retreats.

A Introduction to Plant-Medicine 

Calling into this interview from his home in Thailand, Jonathon de Potter has lived much of his life abroad. From Hawaii to New Zealand, Jonathon eventually moved to Hong Kong to continue his career in consulting. After years of a life that looked great on paper –good job, great friends– Jonathon realized there had to be more to life that he was missing.  Chasing the modern idea of “success” had only led him to burnout, so he decided to try something new.

Jonathon took a year off of work and spent time backpacking South America. It wasn’t until he stumbled into his first Ayahuasca plant medicine retreat in Peru that his life transformed.

Saying Goodbye to Corporate

After his sabbatical, Jonathon went back to his corporate world with more patience. He reflects on the experience of his first retreat as a life-changing challenge. Jonathon went into the retreat not knowing what to expect, leaving gaps in his experience that he saw a space to be filled. Without help post-retreat, he was expected to take everything he learned and sit with it on his own. Jonathan knew that he was not meant to stay in the corporate world forever and in 2020 he took a leap.

Finding a Way to Transform Lives

Launched in 2020, Behold retreats provides curated programming supporting clients through plant medicine retreats. Behold guides clients through a 7-week process: 3 weeks to prepare, a 1 week retreat, and 3 weeks in recovery. Jonathon shares that the medicines they use respond to intentionality, so finding mental and emotional blind spots for clients can lead them to their best results. Behold is right for professionals, high-powered individuals, and people looking to feel whole in their mind and body.

What else can you expect in this episode?

  • How Westerners’ brains are more compartmentalized than those in other parts of the world, and what that means for interconnectivity of the body and mind.  
  • Just how physically challenging Jonathon’s first retreat was for him.
  • Why the most successful people need extra validation to feel whole, and how Behold can transform that feeling.
  • The history of plant medicines and why Jonathon considers them a neutral tool.

Where to find Jonathon de Potter and Behold Retreats: