The highs, The Lows and The In-betweens of Integration

Ecstatic experiences are common with the use of psychedelic medicine. These experiences can be great for breaking us out of depressed patterns of thought, giving us hope, giving us an added internal resource (positive memory) and can infuse wonder into our everyday life.

The shadow side of the Ecstatic can often be a chasing of the experience while ignoring the here and now and/or a disappointment of the here and now in comparison to the ecstatic experience. In these cases, we can use integration sessions to practice going into the memory with the intention of bringing the thoughts, emotions, body sensations of the Ecstatic into the here and now. We can investigate meaning and how you can bring this experience of the ecstatic into your day-to-day life.

Challenging experiences are less common but not uncommon. These experiences are often emotional flashbacks of some kind or an uncovering of repressed internal material. Often there is an aspect of fear overtaking the nervous system. At times, there are other worldly experiences that are harder to explain.

In these cases, we can use integration to build your resourcing skills (calming, grounding skills) while investigating the difficult material. At times, I use EMDR to assist with processing when the challenging experience is linked to a specific memory. I always attune to where you are at in this process and honor the dark along with the light.

Finally, there are those in between experiences. Those “Wait, What?!” experiences. These can look like an uneventful journey leading to disappointment, an uncovering of psychic material that doesn’t make much sense or seem particularly interesting, or an experience that was overall interesting but doesn’t fit with your original intention of doing the medicine.

These sessions are often focused on investigation, mindfulness based, body-based awareness exercise to move you away from intellectualizing and into deeper knowing.

These are just some examples of the energetic material brought into integration sessions. In all these sessions I bring a healthy respect for the mysteries of the psyche and for you as a fellow traveler in this strange and sometimes wondrous world.