What to expect
Preparation
A psychedelic journey can be one of the most rewarding experiences of your life. Four out of five people who take one count it among the most important things they have done.
It is also one of the most unpredictable. I believe that’s a good reason to take preparing for it seriously: to learn what you may encounter, understand the risks and gain perspective on how to make the most of it.
Getting to know one another
We’ll explore what brings you here, what’s happening in your life and what you feel ready to work with. We’ll review your health history and medications, identify where additional professional guidance may be needed, and talk openly about the possibilities and limitations of this work. There’s room for curiosity, apprehension and any questions you might have.
Setting intentions
I think of intention setting as creating the sandbox in which exploration can happen. Giving attention to a question, a feeling, a relationship or a pattern you’re ready to understand helps establish the territory you’re entering. Within that space, there’s room to go deep, discover and be surprised. We’ll work toward meaningful intentions while holding them lightly enough to let the experience unfold.
Building trust and readiness
Together, we’ll discuss what the experience can feel like and practice ways to meet uncertainty or difficult emotions. We’ll establish boundaries around support, touch and consent, and plan for getting home safely and making space afterward to rest and reflect.
Research supports taking this time. A 2026 analysis of 12 clinical trials involving 733 participants found that better preparation was associated with greater reductions in depressive symptoms. My aim is to help you enter your session feeling informed, supported and connected to your reasons for being there.
The Journey
The journey is the main event. It’s the experience you’ve been preparing for, and it deserves the care and attention that something potentially life-changing asks of us. It can be beautiful, strange, challenging or unexpectedly quiet.
Loosening familiar patterns
Part of a journey’s potential, as I understand it, is the loosening of the moorings that hold our usual ways of thinking and operating in place. Familiar stories about who we are, what we need and what we’re capable of can become less fixed.
Early research on psilocybin suggests it can reduce confidence in negative beliefs about ourselves, while increasing empathy. Put more plainly, I think a journey can make us less likely to buy our own bullshit. We may recognize a well-rehearsed excuse, question an old certainty or find tenderness where we usually meet ourselves with judgment. A powerful feeling of truth is something to explore, not an obligation to act. What we might call the ego is invited to take the morning off.
The context matters
The mental health benefits reported in clinical trials have generally been studied with preparation, supervised sessions and follow-up support. We cannot assume that taking the medicine without that surrounding care offers the same benefits.
As an anthropologist, I also take seriously the contexts in which these medicines have traditionally been used. In many Indigenous healing traditions, the experience is embedded in ceremony, guided by experienced practitioners and connected to community life. That informs my belief that how we enter, accompany and return from an experience deserves as much care as the medicine itself.
Being with you
We’ll begin by settling into the space and revisiting your intentions and our agreements. There will be room for a sense of occasion that feels authentic to you and your beliefs.
Throughout the journey, I’ll remain present and attentive to your well-being. There may be quiet, conversation or moments when you need reassurance and help finding your bearings. I’ll support your exploration while respecting your autonomy. You don’t need to perform or produce an insight.
As the effects ease, we’ll allow time for rest and reorientation, check how you’re feeling and review your plans for getting home safely.
Integration
Integration is the ongoing process of making sense of a psychedelic experience and exploring how it affects the life you return to. You may come away with a sense of possibility, a difficult question or something you can feel but haven’t yet found words for. You may just feel somehow … different than before. We’ll work to figure out what that might mean, and how it translates into the everyday.
I think taking a journey medicine without integration is a little like taking creatine, never going to the gym and then wondering why the gains don’t materialize. In my view, the possibilities opened by the experience deserve our participation afterward. That work can be gentle, creative and surprisingly ordinary.
Making sense of the experience
We’ll begin wherever you are, with room for what felt beautiful, frightening, confusing, disappointing or unfinished. Together, we’ll explore the emotions, images and bodily sensations that stayed with you and how they connect with your life. I bring curiosity to symbols and spiritual questions while leaving space for your own understanding. Something can be meaningful before you know exactly what to make of it.
Practicing change
Research suggests psychedelics may offer a period of increased neuroplasticity, the brain’s capacity to adapt and learn. Human studies have found increased cognitive flexibility and neuronal growth after psilocybin therapy.
My approach is to make use of that possible opening. We’ll choose manageable changes, practice new responses and give repetition a chance to help them take hold. That might mean setting a boundary, returning to creative work or making more room for rest.
Returning to everyday life
I believe integration also happens through connection: time in nature, making something with your hands, being with people who know you and finding ways to contribute. I’m interested in how your experience finds expression in the way you care for yourself and participate in the world.
We’ll pay attention to your sleep, mood and ability to manage everyday life. If you’re unsettled or overwhelmed, we’ll focus on steadiness and identify any additional professional support you need. Integration can unfold over weeks or months; my role is to accompany that process with warmth, discernment and practical support.
