Sam Kabert showed up to his first breathwork experience in Santa Cruz wearing a T-shirt with the word “creator” written in collegiate-style font across the chest.
The tee resonated since he thrived bringing ideas to life, be it creative content, promotional products or podcasts. That year—2019—Kabert earned recognition for his entrepreneurial hustle, his business reaching the million-dollar mark, and making Silicon Valley Business Journal’s “40 Under 40” list.
“My facilitator opened her door, saw my shirt and said, ‘Oh how perfect, we’re all creators—you are Creator,’” Kabert shares. He also admits the gravitas of her reflection was completely lost on him at the time.
Today he is the author of a book called Overcome the Overwhelm, In it Kabert walks through a six-step process to cultivate moment-to-moment awareness, following the acronym B.R.E.A.T.H.: breathe to slow down, relax to feel, energy to reveal, accept to surrender, transform into empowering beliefs, and habits to integrate.
Before he discovered his techniques, he appeared successful. In reality, he’d emotionally hit rock bottom, enveloped by a numbing depression. Refusing to fold, he committed to climbing up and out. He’d try anything—even this bizarre breathwork practice.
That session eventually led Kabert to Ayahuasca and a path—marked with plant and earth medicine guideposts along the way—toward remembering who he was at his core.
Now, Kabert’s a creator of a different kind, leveraging personal transformational insights from deep inner work and health and wellness certifications to offer safe containers to others on their journeys toward self-rediscovery.
As someone newly exploring the idea of plant medicine, I went to Kabert for guidance on where to start, what to consider, and how to make the most of the experience when “called.”
Find Your Psychedelic Compass
Kabert advises that when embarking on a journey of any kind, it’s important to identify where you’re headed.
So ask yourself what you seek. Is it peak performance? Personal or spiritual transformation? Emotional or trauma healing? Or are you looking to explore the outer and inner limits, “psychonaut” style?
In short, get clear on your intentions. Kabert created the “Psychedelic Compass” workbook, where prompts help readers identify “if medicine makes sense for you, which medicines would be ideal for your situation, how to vet facilitators, and how to integrate the lessons and experiences of medicine ceremonies into your daily life.”
“It’s common for a certain medicine to ‘call’ you,” Kabert says, “meaning it enters your awareness in undeniable ways. It’s like there’s a force beyond words guiding you to the medicine. As the saying goes, ‘When the student is ready, the teacher appears.’”
While his book describes common medicines, their uses, and their accessibility, he stresses that nothing replaces doing “your own research to dig deeper to discern which may be best for your specific needs.”
Integrate Daily
Kabert warns against using plant and earth medicine as a crutch—an unconscious chasing of peak experiences—rather than as a tool for lasting personal growth and transformation. The key to the latter is integration. And the key to integration is staying present.
“One thing’s certain: a medicine ceremony will change you,” Kabert stresses. “How you integrate the insights that arise from that experience is more fluid, but maintaining presence—while it seems so simple—helps.”
The easy-to-remember structure allows you to tap into states of being accessible in plant ceremony—where we can rewrite the codes that have programmed us, and transform limiting beliefs that hold us hostage,” Kabert says.
Learn more at SamKabert.com.
