While there is great promise for psychedelic medicines to treat serious mental health conditions, the astoundingly complex nature of the psychedelic trip doesn’t fit neatly into the “psychological” or sometimes even the “human”. This means that preparation and integration need to be holistic and relational to the extent that we acknowledge our various capacities for knowing the world and our deep interconnectedness with the world. Preparation and integration practices should honor your personal story, and your cultural and social background, and empower you with the freedom to surrender to the fantastic flow of the breath of life. This means talk therapy can only achieve so much in this process– sometimes a force in your psyche or in your field needs to be danced with, given praise, or given a feminine receptivity, a simple audience for it to freely sing its song.
Mindfulness
Doing a mindfulness meditation practice each day is a great way to prepare for a psychedelic journey. There are many styles of meditation out there– find one that works for you. It could be a sitting, silent meditation, or a more active style such as Tai Chi. You might try chanting or vocal toning, which is the practice of vocalizing a long vowel tone, such “aahhhhh” or “oooohhhhh”, followed by a deep, soft inhalation, and then repeating that process for 10 minutes. If you’re curious to try different styles of meditation, google “easy meditation practices”, and try some out for yourself.
Focused Journaling
Therapeutic or “focused” journaling is the practice of writing in a journal in a systematic way (example: 15-20min per day), where you answer journaling prompts. Google “journaling prompts” and try one out per day. Here is a great article that has some prompts about relationships, personal growth, and work life.
Another interesting journaling method for exploring your unconscious is “morning pages”, developed by Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way. Simply, devote 5 pages of stream-of-consciousness journaling first thing in the morning. Keep a journal next to your bed, and before doing anything else after waking, journal until you fill 5 pages. Don’t censor yourself. Don’t judge anything that comes out. Don’t even look at the journal entry again after you write it. The idea is to let your whole being participate in the writing process, and through this, you might find yourself feeling a little lighter and more connected to the mysterious world of your dreams and unconscious.
Nature
Spending time in nature is excellent practice for preparation and integration, because it’s good for our nervous system and also compels contemplation. Go for a walk each day in nature, somewhere not too busy or noisy if you can, and allow yourself to open to your senses. Pick one sense, like “touch”, then just focus on the sense of touch for 15 minutes. Just be curious what the sense of touch feels for that 10 minutes in nature: perhaps you feel the various qualities of the air, or touch trees, plants, or water. You could try “smell”, “sight”, or “sound” too!
Story
Psychedelics have the tendency to shift our stories. The stories we tell ourselves, about others, the world, or the stories we have about ourselves that we aren’t even conscious of. It’s important in the preparation stages of psychedelic therapy to get familiar with your stories. One way is to make a timeline of meaningful events and times in your life.
Take out a blank sheet of print paper and a pen. On the left side, halfway between the top and bottom of the page, place a dot and under it label it “My birth”. On the right side of the paper, at the same level, put a dot and label it “today”. Connect the two dots at either end of the paper with a line.
Then, starting from your birth, place any meaningful event, or periods in your life along the line from Birth to Today. After you fill out the timeline with events and periods in your life, starting from Birth, draw a line that goes up or down depending on how those events or times in your life were for you. Trend the line up if they were good events, and trend the line down if they were difficult events.
This project can be a valuable source of focused journaling. You could pick an event or period in your life, and journal freely about how that impacted your timeline, and how it held meaning for your life.
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