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What is Psychedelic Integration?
In the days, weeks and months after a psychedelic journey, you have a special opportunity to initiate meaningful changes in your life.
“Psychedelic Integration” includes numerous ways to help yourself:
A. Move safely and comfortably back into your ongoing life experience.
B. Maximize the potential long-term benefits of your journey (or journeys); as well as
C. Resolve any conflicts or stresses that may have emerged.
What are the basic methods?
A. First phase – beginning to assimilate the experience and gradually reentering the flow of your life.
Joining many voices in this field: After a psychedelic experience, I suggest taking time to assimilate the experience before fully reentering the flow of your everyday life.
This means: not going directly back to activities (such as work) or interactions with other people which aren’t compatible with this goal; minimizing any screen time (and other distractions) which doesn’t clearly support your process. Ideally, you could give yourself a day or two in this phase, and begin post-journey inner attunement, as described below:
B. Maximizing benefits
These steps are particularly important after a dramatic journey.
1. Inner attunement
A few hours – or even a large part of the next few days – can be devoted to this phase: giving yourself extra time to focus inward, alone or in the company of someone who is attuned to you and respects your process.
You might want to write about the journey and its messages, or create some other form of art inspired by your recent experience. You may want to meditate, move intuitively, or close your eyes and gently aim to revisit some aspect of the journey.
Tuning inward, you may notice emotions, words, images, physical and/or energetic sensations. When you become aware of concerns and desires, choose which you might be ready to explore
2. Integrating your new awareness into your outer life – gradual changes
Perhaps a positive interest or curiosity has awakened (or reawakened) within yourself – for example, to create some form of art, be more physically active, find ways to help others, meditate, practice yoga or qigong, spend more time in nature, seek deeper connections with others, pursue your own emotional healing. In general, you could begin to move in these directions within a day or so after your journey, or whenever you’re ready.
Particularly if the journey was intense, take extra time and consider carefully before possibly acting on some new, more drastic intention. In the early days (and sometimes weeks or months) after such a journey, any abrupt and major life change is most probably premature and could be more disruptive than beneficial to your life.
3. Careful consideration and pacing of any major life changes
Examples of major decisions include: ending a long-term relationship which still has untapped potential, quitting your job, giving away your most cherished possessions, or moving across the country.
This could be a time to explore the possibility of dramatic life changes in safe, non-committal ways – without risking the loss (at this point) of anything which is – or has been – important to you. Even if you feel impelled to forge ahead NOW, you might feel very differently, very soon!
In a sense, in the early days, weeks or longer, you’re still under the influence. Your enthusiasm may drown out your awareness of less appealing possibilities (such as losses) lurking within your desired change. Both the pros and cons of major life changes need to be heard and considered.
If you still want to forge ahead with major changes many weeks later, you’ll likely have greater clarity and perspective, a more solid foundation from which to proceed.
Integration therapy can be useful in this process of inner attunement, decision-making, and integrating positive changes into your life – in ways which respect your interests, concerns, priorities … and who you are. Another option is finding and participating in an integration group.
C. Resolving any emergent conflicts or stresses
This is a typical focus of integration therapy.
In the course of a psychedelic experience, deeper issues from within yourself may emerge, often dramatically. This provides a fresh opportunity to work toward their resolution, toward healing, greater wellbeing and wholeness.
Another possibility is that the situation you were in around the time you ingested the psychedelic – shortly before or during your journey – was stressful. While in this very open inner state, you may have been exposed to (or newly reacting to) people or events which you found disturbing. The behavior of others – or the events themselves – may have been strongly discordant to your sense of wellbeing, particularly while you were in this atypical/vulnerable state of consciousness. The effects of discord – like those of bliss – can be greatly magnified while under the influence.
Hopefully you will have found a sense of safety and support soon after a stressful experience. When another attuned and trustworthy person acts as a true friend and anchor during or after this event, healing begins.
You might even have found healthy ways to rebalance yourself, to some significant degree, on your own – especially if you’ve previously learned and developed ways to recalibrate and support yourself emotionally. Of course, this can be much trickier while a psychedelic is still very active in your system, and in the hours (even days) thereafter.
Integration Therapy
Integration therapy can be extremely useful in healing trauma (old or new) and emergent inner conflicts.
In addition – to varying degrees – transcendent, intriguing and inspiring experiences can often be revisited, embodied and grounded into ongoing life. For example, you may be inspired to start a new meditation practice, spend more time in nature, or get more deeply involved with interests and activities which feel meaningful to you.
My methods include IFS, Gestalt, Somatic Experiencing, and Hypnotherapy – often with a strong spiritual dimension. I may suggest additional techniques drawn from yoga and qigong. Expressive arts can be part of the process.
More information:
To schedule a session with Dr. Laurie Greenberg in New York City or online, please contact me directly: