With the psychedelic renaissance upon us it is becoming increasingly more important to make sure that new psychonauts, patients and therapists integrate their experiences in a way that is meaningful.
Psychedelic experiences can be life-changing, and it's essential to understand the importance of integration after the ceremony. Integration is the process of making sense of the experience, finding meaning, and incorporating it into everyday life. It's an integral part of the psychedelic experience, as it helps to maximize the benefits and minimize the risks.
Integration can take many forms, such as therapy, meditation, journaling, or simply discussing the experience with friends and loved ones, if you are comfortable. The important thing is to find a way to integrate the experience into your daily life, so it becomes a part of your journey towards personal growth and transformation.
In this post we will be sharing an integration toolkit (via Google Sheets) that has been personally used (updated and tweaked) for many years that will help you make the most of your experience and journey.
Toolkit guidelines
The three-step process of preparing for a psychedelic experience includes setting intentions, integrating the experience, and identifying potential obstacles. Let's dive into each of these steps.
(A) Intentions
Firstly, setting intentions is crucial to guide your experience. It's important to ask yourself what you hope to gain from the ceremony, whether it's healing, personal growth, or spiritual insights. Without intention, the psychedelic experience can be directionless, unproductive, or sometimes even frightening.
An intention is a reason why you feel called to the medicine, a concise phrase that expresses why you seek medicine and what you desire to gain from it. In this section we will begin by writing three intentions, prioritized by their significance to your personal healing and transformation that embody what you wish to receive from this experience or how you want to change your life that will be grounded, healthy, and supportive of your ongoing transformation.
(B) Integration
The second step, integration, is equally important. It's the process of bringing insights and lessons learned during the ceremony into daily life. The real challenge is not access to psychedelics, but integrating the experience into our lives.
All transformations are essentially a shift in patterns. To achieve long-lasting results, we must disrupt and replace disempowering patterns with empowering ones. While medicine can offer new perspectives and help release negative thoughts, emotions, and energies, the work of transformation is ultimately up to you. Whatever you release during the ceremony is a result of your own actions or inactions. Without discipline and deliberate integration of new patterns, old disempowering patterns will resurface easily.
To make progress towards your (A) Intentions, it's important to break the top three intentions (above) down into manageable steps that you can work on daily.
(C) Obstacles
In the final step, it's important to identify potential obstacles that may arise during the integration process. These could be anything from mental health issues to resistance from family and friends. Obstacles are not something to be afraid of. They are part of the journey, and we can learn from them.
To achieve the steps outlined in (B) Integration, it's important to acknowledge and identify any obstacles, habits, or patterns that must be stopped or changed. As Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius said, "The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way." Although facing obstacles can be daunting, it can also be a source of motivation. Knowing what challenges you need to overcome can inspire you to find ways to surmount them.
To make progress towards your (B) Integration steps it's important to list 3 obstacles standing in the way of your (B) Integration steps to change. While we should practice to be honest, authentic, vulnerable and inspiring (for ourselves) in each step, it is critical that we do this especially in this step.
Toolkit (Google Sheets)
The toolkit is a spreadsheet that has been iterated and mastered over several years, adapting and changing it after each ceremony and now ready for public consumption.
To make the most of this toolkit I have included a completed example sheet (“Example: Completed Sheet”), so that you are able to see the level of work that is required and to help you on your way.
Please be sure to make a copy of the Google Sheets by going to the top menu and choosing “File” → “Make a copy”. Feel free to share this with friends and family.
Just as set and setting in psychedelic experiences determine the type of experience you are likely to have, integration after a psychedelic ceremony is crucial for maximizing the benefits of the experience. By setting intentions, integrating the experience, and identifying potential obstacles, you can ensure that the journey is not only transformative but also sustainable. As my personal experiences have shown, the real work begins after the session.
History of the toolkit
About 10 years ago, during my initial journeys, the field of psychedelics was nascent, with few resources on how to decrypt, decipher, and integrate experiences. So, I began creating my own process. This toolkit has undergone dozens of iterations and collaborations with professionals, and today it is used by hundreds of people.
Over the years we have reduced the number of intentions, steps and obstacles to 3. This makes most sense in both expectation setting and focus, while being concise and easy to remember and implement (aka "Magic 3").
The human brain can only hold a limited amount of information at a time, and studies have shown that the optimal number of items that can be held in short-term memory is around three. This phenomenon is commonly referred to as the "Magic Number 3."
The reason for this limitation is due to the capacity of the brain's working memory system. Working memory is a cognitive process that temporarily stores and manipulates information needed to perform mental tasks. However, the capacity of working memory is limited, and information is quickly lost unless it is rehearsed or transferred to long-term memory. By breaking down our steps into small chunks or groups of three, we can better retain and process it and hopefully take action.
