Meet John Moos, MD

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful John Moos, MD. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with John below.

Hi John, really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?

It’s impossible to know with any degree of certainty how life’s events and experiences are going to shape our passions and purpose. For some, they believe in fate – the pre-written path we are constantly nudged back towards to fulfill our life’s purpose. For others, they believe in autonomy and agency (self-determinism), writing the pages of their life story as it unfolds in real-time. A quote from the poem Invictus remind us, “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.”

Regardless of fate or self-determinism, your path is yours to blaze. We don’t have the gift of foresight, so it will always be a novel journey to discover your passion and purpose. Anyone can find a job, establish a career, or work to make money and occupy their time. But, it takes presence, commitment, and discipline to find a vocation – a calling that aligns with your purpose and meaning.

I discovered my purpose through the crucible of life. It is the tapestry of experiences, interests, and pursuits intermingled with the wisdom of success and failure that begin to illuminate the path. I’ve carried neatly defined titles like student, EMT, and doctor, but my purpose was less conventional. My purpose became the intersectionality and embodiment of all the things I love.

Sports taught me that hard work, perseverance, and cooperation matter. With the right people, clear communication, and shared expectations, we could accomplish more together than alone. That victories and defeats are better experienced when they are shared experiences with close community. And, that teamwork, really does make the dream work.

School and education taught me the value of discipline, knowledge acquisition, critical thinking, and civil engagement. There are places where curiosity and inquisitiveness are welcomed and rewarded. That the limits to our wisdom are really only determined by our beliefs and our work ethic. Academia taught me the rules, but also gave me permission to know when and how to break them.

Medicine redefined what hard work was. I learned that life and death sometimes sit on the razor’s edge, and that my composure, decisiveness, and mastery could tip the scales either way. I learned what an unhealthy ego and maladaptive coping felt like, before eventually discovering the power of humility and healthy regulation. I learned how to create safety and transparency with confidentiality and respected privacy. The power of presence, touch, and silence. The impact my decision had on someone’s overall wellbeing, health, and mortality. How to care for a person, and not just a patient. And, ultimately, how to follow my heart, even if it meant leaving a profession I had dedicated two decades to achieving.

Parenthood taught me what it was like to love someone more than myself. It taught me that introspection, accountability, and humility matter. That the best way to parent is to role-model the beliefs and behaviors I wanted to instill in them. I learned that family is who you choose, as blood only means you’re related. I learned to be responsible for my feelings and the relationship, and that I have just as much to learn from my kids as they get to learn from me. They have their own thoughts, beliefs, values, ideas, and aspirations – and those flames need to be fanned, and not snuffed out by my ideas for them. That my ears have the power to heal far greater than my mouth at times.

Love taught me everything I ever need to know about life. Love is not difficult, conditional, or finite. It must both be given and received. It contains and connects our entire lived experience – past, present, and future; self, other, and creation. Love cannot be created or destroyed, but it can change form through physical, chemical, and energetic means. It is the universal language, one that we all speak in its various dialects. Love does not hurt, it is not spiteful, abusive, or constricting. Love is infinite, expansive, and necessary.

Addiction taught me what true pain and suffering is. What the darkness and isolation felt like. How painful it was to restore my integrity from a life fragmented and compartmentalized by trauma, conditioned beliefs and behaviors. It taught me how to celebrate small victories and to take nothing for granted. I learned what true compassion, empathy, and friendship was. I experienced what it was like to be accepted and welcomed into a group, covered in shame, humiliation, and desperation. It taught me how to transcend the limits of what I thought was possible, to defy convention, and ascend beyond the day-to-day struggles. I learned to appreciate the smallest things in life, even if they go unnoticed to others.

I’ve been learning, living, and developing my purpose my whole life. I took all these experiences and integrated them into my role as a healer – a lover, a dad, a son, a brother, a friend, a doctor, an entrepreneur, a mentor, a student, a leader, a seeker, and on. My purpose is a living, breathing entity that continually grows with me. Every experience, every obstacle is an opportunity for me to iterate on my purpose, incorporate new information, and continue to expand outwards. I’ve let of go of ideas of what I should or shouldn’t be doing, as it just creates self-judgment and -criticisms that are not helpful in navigating the open road. Instead, I’ve trusted the road and the tangents along the way to take me where I needed to go, embrace getting lost along the way, and venturing forth with the wisdom learned from those experiences.

A final few tips on how to find your purpose. Pay attention to what life is telling you. This requires listening to your senses, your intuition, and adapting when necessary. If something doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t. Be willing to pivot, adapt, shift your perspective, change your environment, establish boundaries, or speak your truth clearly. When the risks are low, this is the time to practice those skills so that they become well-trained muscles by the time it matters, and the stakes are higher. Don’t shy away from opportunities to get uncomfortable – this is your life, and you only have one. It is too precious to abandon and distrust yourself. There is no greater teacher than the present moment – so welcome both the strength and struggle. All of it is an opportunity to learn about yourself, your skills and resources, your values and beliefs, and your commitment to your vision.

All of this will help you to understand, accept, and love yourself. You must love yourself if you are going to be living with yourself for the remainder of your life. Otherwise, prepare for war – internal war. It is impossible to live with integrity or wholehearted as a fragmented, internally warring, confused person. Our foundation to explore, to engage, and to grow starts by knowing and accepting ourselves. The clearer this becomes, the easier it will be to trust yourself, to make critical decisions, and to follow your intuition free from distraction and uncertainty. This is the path that will lead you into the career or vocation that honors your values, your lived experience, and your integrity. This is what it will mean to be living your purpose and meaning, instead of grinding for your worthiness in somebody else’s.

Do the things you love, frequently and often. Pay attention and adapt when needed. Know yourself, accept yourself, and trust yourself. This is the wellspring of confidence and faith. This is what it feels like to be at home no matter where you physically are. You may not know where your life is leading you, but if you feel like you’re home, you can never be lost. Living your purpose and meaning will always be an adventure – never the same and never dull. Have the time of your life!

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

At Soul Surgeon by Moos MD, our vision is to create the conditions for love and light to shine. We aim to accomplish this using multiple platforms to simplify healing trauma so people can experience the joy of life and love. We believe healed people will light up the world with love, and we strongly believe that psychedelics play an integral part pushing this evolution. Medicine wants you to live longer. Soul Surgeon wants you to live fully.

Medication and talk-therapy models cannot keep up with the meteoric rise in mental illness, isolation, and suffering. We need new tools, new skills, and new perspectives. Our healing framework focuses on a connection-based, emotionally-attuned, trauma-informed, value-driven approach to care, infusing my values of wholeheartedness, belonging, play, and love into both my practice and principles.

We believe healing happens when the right conditions are provided. Human systems are dynamic and trend toward thriving in optimal environments. Before healing can happen, we ensure safety, transparency and trust is established. The conditions: integrity, nurturance, play, stillness, and connection are the bedrock from which the seeds of change grow outward. Love grows concentrically outward from self to other to ultimately all of creation. Your Light is the manifestation of your true purpose and meaning.

We are a boutique, healing sanctuary in Los Angeles. Our unique healing framework lies at the intersection of mysticism and medicine, art and science, and is informed by both clinical and spiritual practices. After becoming increasingly discouraged with most psychedelic medical models, I felt compelled to create a better container for healing to occur. I wanted to make personal transformation simple, safe and accessible.

As a Western-trained, allopathic medical doctor, I became dispirited by the traditional practice of medicine. Faced with burnout, loss of autonomy, defensive medical practices, and increasing bureaucracy, I needed a change, and turned my focus from trauma surgery to trauma healing. After spending years in trauma bays, overburdened emergency rooms, and operating suites, it was time to heal it before it happens. Relying on my deep experience in all contexts of trauma, I is able to apply the wisdom learned and earned from both professional development and personal experiences to support every client’s healing journey.

We are here to create the container, the framework, and the conditions to heal while offering comprehensive and tailored treatment programs for individuals, couples, and groups. We are also growing resources, education, and training for clinicians, facilitators, and companies. Your trust is our inspiration.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

Life has been an incredible teacher along my journey. However, nothing has been more helpful than learning how to change with grace. The process of change can seem obscure and complicated, but it doesn’t need to be. There are three necessary ingredients to create the opportunities for change to occur: 1) introspection, 2) accountability, and 3) humility. Introspection is our ability to reflect back on our actions and experiences with a clear and honest recollection. It is not about revising history or ignoring the “ugly” parts, but rather taking a rigorously honest inventory of what’s happened. Once we have all the details, we can move to accountability. We have to be accountable for our thoughts and actions if we are going to introduce change. Change starts with awareness, and we must name what we are becoming aware of in order to change it. If we allow our fears, insecurities, or discomfort to try to manage our reputation instead of being fully accountable for our behavior and impact, we risk stoking the fire of self-deceit. Self-deceit is growth sabotage, as we may start to believe the narrative because it feels more comfortable than the consequences of our unedited truth. Shame is fueled by self-deceit, but shame cannot survive the light. The light is when we speak truth to our shame, allowing it to be realized. Once we’ve taken inventory, named our part without excuses or rationalizations, we are ready to humbly act. Humility is important to shape our perspective. It gives us the courage and power to change while also inviting people in to witness and accept us. It is hard to send and receive empathy from a place of arrogance or hubris. You cannot manage your reputation and be vulnerable or authentic. Humility is a gentle and compassionate submission, inviting in humanity and attunement.

These three skills are the invitation into the threshold for authentic change. Accepting this invitation, and reckoning with these skills will help anyone land at a place of vulnerability, move towards authenticity, and promote an integrity-friendly environment to thrive in. Cultivating these skills is consciously choosing your most authentic self, which will have a positive impact as it ripples outward from yourself to your fellow human beings to the world at large. Find the change, become the change, create the change.

How can folks who want to work with you connect?

We are always looking to collaborate and grow as a community from a variety of standpoints. The core of our business is bringing our healing principles and practices to clients in need. This includes those struggling with mental health challenges to professionals looking to optimize their life and well-being. But, we are also developing more professional resources for healers, clinicians and facilitators, clinics and companies.

Our biggest developmental push is centered around supporting clinicians and companies. Corporate America has wellness programs to promote well-being and reduce burnout, but there aren’t similar programs being implemented in academic institutions, healthcare environments, or clinical settings. Healers need healing, too! We are developing a retreat-style format to create a safe space for healer to heal together in community. We are also on the precipice of rolling out a monthly series around principles and practice development for psychedelic medicine space holders. Ideally, we want to grow this to be able to support and advise clinicians, clinics, and companies on best practices, practical tools, and implementation techniques for their businesses.

I’ve spent the last several years reflecting on and writing out a novel healing framework, robust enough to standalone separate from psychedelic healing work, but also to complement the psychedelic healing space. This framework offers a philosophy and roadmap for holding healing work in a humanistic model. This model was greatly influenced by the wisdom learned and earned throughout my life, and is intended to be simple, accessible, and pragmatic. The framework will be at the core of wide array of offerings, education and training, retreats and workshops, and practice development. This is one of the most exciting offerings we are working on. The first draft is complete, and we expect an early 2025 launch.

While we are waiting for the formal education and training arm of the healing framework (arm 1) and the practical tools (arm 2), we are also ideating around an apprenticeship model to bring in and train new facilitators to grow with our community. It can be daunting to be out in practice by yourself, but we have the space, infrastructure, practices and protocols, information and resources, skills and experience to offer supervision, support, and guidance through all aspects of psychedelic healing work. We are looking for motivated healers agnostic of professional licensure, e.g. therapists, practitioners, facilitators, coaches, nurses, etc., who are interested in or have experience as space holders within healing containers. If that is you, connect with us!

We are always looking to grow our cross-discipline healing modalities with community practitioners. We’ve championed two new therapeutic models: psychedelic sound & energy healing and psychedelic bodywork. If you are a healer working with a discipline: yoga, sound healers, reiki & energy, breathwork, acro, bodywork, dance, meditation/mindfulness, etc., and you’re curious how psychedelics might integrate and resonate with your offerings, please connect with us.

The last initiative we are growing focuses on creating more healing containers around love, intimacy, and couples’ co-creation. We have been bringing the “Love Bath” to many couples looking to dive deep into intimacy and explore the full capacity of their relationship with clarity, attunement, and connection. If you are interested in dropping into a “Love Bath,” please let us know. We have also helped couples successfully navigate dissolution and separation with more integrity, respect, and grace. Matters of the heart can be challenging, tender, and difficult, and we want to create safe space for everyone to show up vulnerably, authentically, and respectfully as they work to disentangle and separate their lives.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://soulsurgeon.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/soulsurgeonmd/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnmoos/
• Other: https://soulsurgeon.com/thecontainer

Image Credits

Soul Surgeon by Moos MD