Why integrate?
You received some big stuff on your trip — integration is the process of doing good things with it after you get back. As a psychedelic integration coach, I help you do that.
Whether your psychedelic journey was euphoric or agonizing (or both, or neither), the things you experienced in it deserve your focused attention and application when you return to the day-to-day. If you want to learn from your journey, integration is essential. And like any new activity in which we want to do well, a good coach can be a game-changer.
A definition: “Integration is a process in which a person revisits and actively engages in making sense of, working through, translating, and processing the content of their psychedelic experience. Through intentional effort and supportive practices, this process allows one to gradually capture and incorporate the emergent lessons and insights into their lives, thus moving toward greater balance and wholeness, both internally (mind, body, and spirit) and externally (lifestyle, social relations, and the natural world).”
— Synthesized from Bathje, Majeski, & Kudowor, 2022:
What is integration coaching?
Psychedelic integration coaching is structured support to help you move from exploration to transformation before and after experiencing a non-ordinary state of consciousness. Trying to muddle alone through the meaning-making and life-changing insights you gained from a psychedelic journey can be pretty rough. We weren’t meant to do this stuff solo. Having a coach who can listen, reflect, help you recognize stuck areas, work with you to identify goals, and supply personalized exercises and resources to accelerate learning and maximize outcomes can ensure the transcendent becomes transformational.
One important distinction: Psychedelic integration coaching is not psychotherapy. I do not provide therapeutic or medical services. Clients with medical, psychiatric, or psychological conditions and/or challenging life circumstances requiring licensed intervention should seek such care from professionals qualified to provide it. See the FAQ for more info about this.
What’s my approach?
I focus on the moves you can make to optimize the benefits from your psychedelic experiences. I won’t tell you what your psychedelic journeys mean — that’s for you to discern. What I do is help you to prepare for them, make sense of them for yourself, then translate your new knowledge into actionable steps you can use to transform your daily existence. You’ll likely have a bunch of new things you want to think about and do after a psychedelic experience — I can help to translate those into goals and behaviors.
Like any good coach, my job is mostly to listen, observe, reflect, suggest, support, and supply resources and exercises to help you get better at whatever you want to improve. It’s about your meaning-making, your intentions, your epiphanies, your moves.
I can’t wait to see what you’ll do!
How do I work with clients?
I use a flexible, individualized, 3-phase process: Planning, Processing, and Transforming.
The planning phase involves a tight set of activities that help one open to medicine and prepare for the psychedelic experience. Safety and intentionality are prioritized here, as is the cultivation of a good coaching alliance where trust, healthy risk-taking, playful experimentation, and collaborative goal-setting are foundational. Getting ready is often half the fun!
The processing phase happens when people immerse themselves in the expansiveness, epiphany, and perhaps even the pain they brought back from their non-ordinary state of consciousness. This is when we make meaning of it all, practice new (or very old) ways of working with it, and observe what different approaches do for us. We gotta use it or we lose it!
The transforming phase is composed by the choreography of new moves, and the consolidation of knowledge drawn from the psychedelic journey. Here we should realize the achievement of goals and have good reason to celebrate and deepen our commitments. An oft-repeated mantra can help anchor us here: It’s not so much about “feeling better,” but about “getting better at feeling.”
In general, my coaching work across these phases is primarily to inquire, listen, tend, suggest, and strategically resource clients to optimize both the pace and outcomes of their psychedelic integration. Please see the FAQ for more details about what this often entails.
What’s the cost?
Generally, my fee is $200 per 60-min session when booked one-at-a-time. But I offer discounted packages too (please see my Client Portal for a full rundown of offerings). One example:
The Catalyst Package
2-month series of eight 60-min sessions: two preparation sessions before your journey, two integration/exploration sessions within ten days of your journey, two integration/application sessions 3-4 weeks after your journey, and two integration/transformation sessions 5-6 weeks after your journey
Includes: personalized exercises, tools, and resources to deepen, expand, and operationalize your integration
Plus: a detailed pre-trip checklist to prioritize your safety and generate a focused attention to set & setting
Total cost = $1,200 (that’s 25% off)