Psychedelic and Plant Medicine Integration

I've worked with these medicines for over a decade, mainly ayahuasca — and it's within the Shipibo tradition that I've gained the most experience.

For years I worked at The Temple of the Way of Light, a healing centre in the Peruvian Amazon, where I witnessed the process of hundreds of people. More recently I've worked with Soltara in Costa Rica.

Integration is the slow work of bringing an experience into the life you actually live.

A ceremony can open something — a different way of being, a different way of seeing others, the world, yourself. It can also bring you face to face with what you'd been keeping at a distance: trauma that was never fully processed, an emotional wound that never had room to heal, parts of your personality you'd rather not look at.

What happens afterwards varies. Sometimes there's a clear insight — something that needs to change, a direction you want to take — and the work is to understand what's actually standing in the way of it. Sometimes nothing remarkable happens during the experience at all, and yet something is different before and after.

And sometimes what opens is uncomfortable. You feel more, and you feel things that weren't there before. You find you want to meet people differently, which means letting go of defences you've relied on for a long time. That isn't a sign it went wrong. It's usually where the work is.

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