Psychedelic Integration
In any journey the emotional note of return can be a source of strength and satisfaction, or distress, doubt and re-consideration. When you fly in an airplane, it’s usually the way you land back on the ground that is most important.
A thoughtful integration practice acknowledges that there can be many overlapping and interwoven elements that require addressing, which might include: calming an activated nervous system, emotional meaning-making, developing new intellectual understanding, and expressing and mobilizing the new experiences and energies into our outward life.
I think one of the most crucial things that many people struggle with is bringing our transformation into the “Big Container” that is the web of our relationships, with our community, and with nature. I believe that psychedelics don’t just act on us as individuals, but through us into the bigger collective.
Our shared job is to handle all of this, starting with needs that are most urgent and pressing.
Immediate and Long-Term Focus
I practice a supportive and constructive approach that prioritizes immediate symptom relief where needed, but opens the door to long term personal development. I offer many different strategies relying on where you are, and what needs to be worked on, whether that is client-centered approach where you can be welcomed, seen and heard without pressure or judgement, to unpack experiences that those around you don’t get, or a structured and focused path based on ICEERS protocols that relies on specific therapeutic tools to get you grounded and feeling better as quickly as possible, or a mix of anything in between.
This is low commitment and for some, very focused work can sometimes be done in 3 sessions or less. And some may be looking for a collaborative ally over a longer arc of their personal journey.
My Approach
Empathic Focus, with Tools
My practice philosophy is of a collaborative, curious inquiry, rooted in genuine interest, compassion, and respect for my clients. That respect extends especially to the individual needs of each client, and the urgency of unresolved material and any disruptive symptoms they may be experiencing. Every story is different, and though I offer tools, I am also the student of your experience. For both of us, understanding your unique journey and language is a keystone of real and effective integration work.
I think it really helps when the person opposite from you is just as interested in learning your language, and unraveling your story as you are.
It can be hard to find a space to unpack and give appropriate reverence to these experiences, where we can affirm the good as well as the painful. If the ways we have changed are unseen by others, we can forget, and without an avenue of expression, meaningful lessons lay dormant becoming a weight. Trauma can become an isolation.
Some experiences can’t even be put into words, and some can’t be fully contained within the normal structure of our memory. Some are almost or fully impossible to explain. Yet, we aren’t meant to hold their emotional significance alone.
The core goal is to re-humanize ourselves. I believe you have everything you need within yourself, and sometimes it just takes a helping person to reflect that.
This practice is especially suited for those who are:
- Processing an unexpected or unplanned psychedelic experience, especially in a challenging or unsafe setting
- Struggling with unresolved or lingering effects from a past psychedelic journey
- Dealing with traumatic, distressing, or disruptive experiences related to psychedelic use
- Seeking to deepen their current integration practice and amplify its longterm benefits
- Looking for a supportive alliance to explore and make sense of their experiences
- Needing a safe and nonjudgmental space to reflect on experiences they find difficult to share with others
- Working through a backlog of unprocessed or confusing psychedelic experiences
- Feeling isolated or unsupported by their community in their integration process
- Struggling with the aftermath of facilitator or group issues in a ceremonial or therapeutic setting
Facilitator and Group Issues
Negative group dynamics with facilitators, as well as other participants in ceremonial settings are unfortunately not uncommon. Sometimes the group experience is beautiful, empowering, and well managed, and sometimes not.
With new interest in psychedelics, particularly for therapeutic and ceremonial use, there has rapidly emerged a market where anyone with sufficient confidence and money can present themselves a shaman or healer without having done meaningful and introspective work on themselves. Practitioners or centers with conflicts of interest around personal power, money, or sexuality unfortunately exist. This means there is a not-insignificant number of wellmeaning journeyers seeking help and personal growth, who become harmed instead.
My conscientious approach and ethical-oriented training with “non-ordinary” states of consciousness help reflect and clarify breaches that have happened in ceremony or therapy, toxic or exploitative power dynamics, and equip those interested in further inner work with an approach to avoid unethical or unskillful facilitators and communities.
Spiritual Emergency
Psychedelic use can catalyze powerful transformative spiritual, and energetic changes. Some of these transformations can be deep so as to become a challenge to handle, and often what is experienced goes way off the map provided by conventional therapy and psychiatry. In past times people in a spiritual transformation or crisis were often pathologized, and the way the processes manifested to the eyes of others could put them in danger as it can appear similar to psychosis or be seen as heretical to the religious paradigm of the community. And yet, throughout history many saints, shamans, or wise people have gone through such necessary transformations or initiations to step into their full calling.
This process is called “Spiritual Emergency” because it can be a fully consuming experience, and because it often requires knowledgable support. The name “Spiritual Emergence” is now also used as it emphasizes the process as the positive emergence into greater, deeper and more meaningful living.
I am qualified to compassionately support Spiritual Emergence, for those undergoing a Psycho-Spiritual Crisis or profound inner change, which does not require medical intervention or licensed professional mental health care.
Stanislav Grof describes Spiritual Emergency:
“Spiritual emergency can be defined as critical and experientially difficult stages of a profound psychological transformation that involves one’s entire being. They take the form of non ordinary states of consciousness [enhanced states of awareness] and involve intense emotions, visions and other sensory changes, and unusual thoughts, as well as various physical manifestations. These episodes often revolve around spiritual themes; they include sequences of psychological death and rebirth, [experiences that transcend spatial/temporal boundaries], feelings of oneness with the universe, encounters with various mythological beings and other similar motifs.” (Grof & Grof, 1989, 1990).
