Meet Colette Condorcita Schmitt

Transformational Coach | Psychedelic Facilitator | Activist | Entrepreneur | Integrative Hypnotist | Psychedelic Consultant | Regenerative Designer 

When she was fourteen years old, Colette dreamt she would be seriously injured in athletic competition. Two weeks later, she broke her neck while competing in a wrestling match on her high school team, and was paralyzed from the neck down. At the time of her injury, she had an out-of-body experience that was the same vision as her dream from weeks before. The doctors told her family she had a two percent chance of recovery.

During her 4 months of recuperating in the hospital, Colette developed a technique of quieting her conscious mind and using self-directed neuroplasticity to reactivate sensation and movement in her body. She astounded doctors, defeated the odds, and eventually walked out of the hospital. As Colette recovered, she began having access to visionary states of consciousness that many use psychedelics to achieve. She began connecting with her deceased ancestors and past life memories and started having psychic abilities. Colette began having a multidimensional connection to nature and a heightened sensitivity to others’ experiences that was overwhelming and challenging to the U.S. cultural paradigm she was raised in. Integrating and understanding these changes to her nervous system was difficult and overwhelming, but her mother told her at the time that “this is shamanism, and many cultures understand this as a gift.” Colette describes to her clients and in interviews that her brain “works like how psychedelics do” and considers herself neurodivergent, having what she calls a shamanic neurotype. Colette does not identify as a shaman as she was not born into a traditional shamanic culture, but she neurologically and psychologically identifies with the ways shaman’s and traditional healers’ nervous systems function, and this is undoubtedly why her life has unfolded the way it has. She is fascinated by how this phenomenon is common around the world and is interpreted tremendously differently across cultures and between the Global North and Global South. Starting at age 17 is when Colette began experimenting with entheogens and other transpersonal states of consciousness to understand her own neurotype and to connect to her spiritual relationship with nature.

Following her injury, Colette went on to receive her BA in International Relations and International Development. She became fascinated with understanding better ecological development models focused on regenerative agriculture and permaculture in support o earth-based and community ways to live with nature. Colette’s journey led her to study and work in ecological design, permaculture, environmental activism, organic farming, and herbalism with Indigenous and rural communities in Southeast Asia, Australia, and Africa. The more she learned, the more she felt an intense connection with the natural world and how human consciousness can build direct connections with it.

This brought her to work with the traditional ayahuasca Quechua and Shipibo cultures, where she had her first experiences with ayahuasca thirteen years ago. Colette finally felt the confirmation of her own neurological experience and framework after these experiences, directly connecting with traditional curanderos and shamanic entheogenic medicines. She eventually met her teachers from the Yajé (ayahuasca) cultures of the Ingano and Siona in Colombia who have become her primary teachers in continuing her study and practice. Fascinated and armed with the certainty that the mind is capable of immense healing, she set out to learn all she could about hypnotherapy, traditional healing, and the deeper systems of studying nature as a life path. As she deepened her knowledge of entheogens and the energetics of plants, Colette expanded her studies in Neuro-Linguistic Programming, integrative hypnotherapy, and practical neuroscience.

Colette is the founder and the Board Chair of Decriminalize Nature Philadelphia, a registered 501-C4 working to decriminalize entheogens in Philadelphia by passing a resolution at the city level. She works at the premier 5-MeO-DMT retreat center as a guest facilitator, Tandava Retreat Center, and supports retreat clients with psychedelic integration work. She is also a content contributor for their safety and education platform F.I.V.E.

Colette is currently a consultant on psychedelic education, safety, and Indigenous advocacy for two different psychedelic startups.