From Market Mind to Inner Stillness: Sanjay’s Return to Self

There is a particular kind of person who arrives at a psychedelic retreat already knowing, intellectually, exactly what they need to do.

Sanjay is that person.

A former financial trader from London with 15 years of experience reading markets, managing fear and greed, and learning to keep his emotions at arm’s length, Sanjay came to Eleusinia with his intentions organized, his research done, and a clear framework for what he hoped to get out of the experience. He understood the neuroscience of psilocybin. He was drawn to the idea of new neural pathways, of perception shifts, of thinking differently. He arrived ready to learn.

What he was not entirely ready for was the part where he had to stop analyzing and simply feel.
In the latest episode of the Eleusinia podcast, Sanjay shares his full journey: from a casual holiday conversation with his brother that first sparked his curiosity about psychedelics, through ayahuasca and San Pedro ceremonies that began cracking something open in him, to his week at Eleusinia in Mexico, where two macrodoses of psilocybin and a DMT experience brought him face to face with something he had been unknowingly carrying for most of his life.

The Making of a Rational Mind

Sanjay spent over a decade and a half in trading, a profession that, as he describes it, forces you into a very specific relationship with your own inner world. You learn to recognize your emotions. You also learn to keep them from interfering with your decisions. Fear. Greed. The emotional rollercoaster of the markets. All of it must be observed and then set aside.

He became very good at that.

What he did not fully realize until much later was that the skill of emotional compartmentalization does not simply stay in the trading room. It follows you home. It becomes part of how you move through life. And it can leave you, decades later, sitting under a tree at a San Pedro ceremony, suddenly weeping for a grandfather you lost as a child and never properly grieved, because you were away on a school trip when the funeral happened and no one could reach you in time.

That moment happened before Eleusinia. But it set the stage for everything that followed.

Arriving at Eleusinia

Sanjay found Eleusinia the way many guests do: through research, through a desire for structure, and through an instinct that this was the right environment for him. The educational components appealed to his analytical nature. The setting in Mexico, 100 acres of open land, places to move, space to breathe, spoke to something else.
He arrived a few days early and spent time settling in before the rest of the group joined. He describes the feeling of the place simply: calm. Tranquil. Like something in him could finally exhale.

The First Macrodose: Life in Stillness

Going into his first macrodose, Sanjay was nervous but curious. He describes the experience as arriving once again at the same threshold he had encountered in every previous ceremony: the invitation to let go, to stop trying to steer from the inside, to surrender.

He was not quite ready. Not yet.
But what the medicine offered him instead was its own kind of lesson.

Time stopped. The world went quiet. He could hear sounds around him, and then silence, and then only his own heartbeat. And in that stillness, something arrived that felt less like a vision and more like a direct message: you are moving through life at a pace that does not leave room for the life itself. You can still progress. You are allowed to simply be.

He moved through different spaces on the Eleusinia grounds that afternoon. One he came to call the Windows of Perspective, a capsule structure where he sat watching the world outside shift and turn, seeing the other guests each deep in their own journeys, appreciating what was in front of him for the first time in what felt like a long time. Another spot he named the Chair of Gratitude, a simple chair facing a tree, where an unexpected wave of emotion moved through him. The tree faded from color to black and white and back again. He sat with it and understood: any situation can be seen either way. You choose what you look for.

He left the first macrodose with one clear instruction to himself: slow down. Be present. There is something in stillness.

The Second Macrodose: The Breakthrough

The second macrodose brought him, finally, to the other side of the wall he had been approaching for months.
He upped his dose slightly. He breathed through the nervous energy. He made a choice, a real one this time, not just intellectual acknowledgment but genuine surrender. And then something remarkable happened.
He found himself in conversation with an entity. Playful. Open. Present with him in a way that felt warm rather than frightening. She offered him a tour of everything: the most beautiful visuals, the sorrow of the world, whatever he wanted to see. He sat with it all and realized he did not want a tour of anything. He just wanted to stay in the peace.

When he asked her what the whole point was, what all of this was really for, the answer came back simply: it is about facing yourself. Facing what you carry. Taking the lessons and bringing them back into your life.
He had known that. He had read it. But sitting there inside that quiet, there was a difference between knowing something and actually living inside it.

Coming Home

Sanjay spoke with Tawnya just about a week and a half after returning to London. He described the afterglow as a thirst for life, a feeling of energy and gratitude and a gentler relationship with each moment. He has built daily meditation into his mornings and evenings. He notices the color of flowers on his walk. He is learning, slowly, to feel his emotions rather than file them away.

He is also building his own business, a transition he has been moving through all year, and he describes the retreat as having given him a kind of steadiness underneath all of it. Not certainty. Steadiness.

He plans to continue his practice with psilocybin quarterly, with DMT integrated between those sessions as a way to return to stillness when the noise of daily life builds back up.

For anyone who is analytical, high-achieving, rational, or used to being in control, Sanjay has a message. He knows how it feels to arrive somewhere knowing exactly what you need to do and still not being able to do it. He knows the particular challenge of a mind that keeps reaching for the next analysis when what the moment is actually asking for is quiet.

He also knows what is waiting on the other side.

“It takes courage. And it takes a willingness to face things that sometimes we may not want to face. But I think if you can take that jump and you can go with it, what comes out of the other end, no matter who you are and what your experience and what you’re looking for, I truly believe you’ll come out with a profound effect afterwards.”

A note for listeners: The Eleusinia podcast is audio-only. Guests are never interviewed on location, and conversations like this one take place weeks or months after the retreat experience. Pseudonyms are sometimes used to protect guest privacy. Sanjay chose to share his story openly, and we are grateful for his generosity.
If you have been curious but have not yet taken the step, this episode is worth your time.
[Listen to Sanjay’s full episode on the Eleusinia podcast.]