Answering these questions will help to "prime" you for the experience, bringing focus to your current situation, your highest goals, and what your role is after the experience is over.
Intentions give clarity and depth to your experience and give you strength and perseverance during tougher
Psychedelic experiences will stretch your conscious awareness outside of your everyday reality
A curious-observer mindset allows you to see your life from an outside perspective
Practice bringing calm in the face of stress, tension, or worry. Avoid intense drama, toxic relationships
Your experience will take you beyond your normal reality and into a series of altered-reality experiences
You must do your research when it comes to medical safety. Know that there are medical, psychiatric, and pharmaceutical contraindications with many psychedelic substances, and that you need to get well informed here to ensure a safe experience.
The cleaner, healthier, and more hydrated your body is, the better the experience will be. It is best to avoid processed, sugary, fried, and junk foods. Incorporate a wide range of vegetables and greens, lean meats, nuts, grains, fruits, and seeds into your diet (depending on your personal dietary choices and restrictions).
A relaxed body going in will soften and deepen your experience; a tense body holds resistance, traps energy, and inhibits the flow of the experience. Prepare now through body relaxation practices. Continue to breathe, relax, stretch, and open.
Get some light to moderate cardio exercise leading up to your experience to support you through the intensity and duration of the experience. Flow activities like swimming, dance, moderate weight-lifting, yoga, and qi-gong build endurance and balance neurochemistry.
Pay attention to your body and what it is communicating. Everything will be magnified during your experience, so start paying attention to what your body has to say to you. If feel you need to reduce stress, modify your diet, or do some light exercise and stretching to alleviate discomfort, do it.
Where is your spiritual awareness on a daily basis? How tuned into your true self are you? Do you contemplate the purpose of your life? How can you deepen the spiritual dialogue within yourself? If you have a spiritual path, tune more deeply into it while remaining open minded about what may happen. If you do not have a spiritual path, be open to having a new experience that may give you a new perspective on life's biggest questions.
Tune into your inner guidance system (intuition, instinct, higher knowing, gut feeling, wisdom). Inner guidance and feedback can come through your mind, heart, body, or through external signs, situations, and people. Differentiate temptation, desire, and cravings from your highest truth and wisdom.
Meditation is one of the best ways to prepare for a psychedelic journey. Meditation teaches you to go beyond the mental chatter, to let go of stress and anxiety, and to open your awareness for expansion. Meditation prepares you for a transpersonal experience and can ease and enhance your experience.
Think beyond your pursuits and goals, and contemplate your higher purpose and spiritual development. Psychedelics present a profound opportunity to awaken and grow spiritually, and having a sense of higher purpose activates strength, courage, determination, and perseverance in every area of your life. Acknowledging things like family lineage, the collective good, what the afterlife may be, and what the source of life may be, brings depth and new insights to this kind of journey. It is not important to have a spiritual path or to have any answers, but rather to be open to these questions from a place of curiosity.
Identify where you will go after the experience. It is important to set aside time and space to integrate your psychedelic journey. This space needs to be as supportive, peaceful, therapeutic, and nourishing as possible. A stress-free environment is key.
If you experience is happening outside your home, clean, refresh, reorganize, and restock your house beforehand so you have a nice place to return to. A fresh home supports a new start. Clean spaces reflect a clearer and more focused stress-free mind, which supports positive change.
Spruce up your home with positive stimuli and healthy activity options. Choose activities that deepen, not distract, your integration. Incorporate stimulating, inspiring, creative, and engaging things to inspire creativity and spark ingenuity. Many people find benefit in creative writing, arts, and crafts.
Inform those close to you of your journey and process. Share what you're doing and why. Let them know where you'll be, and keep them in the loop.
Express yourself truthfully to your loved ones, and talk about your intentions and vulnerabilities. Ask for what you need, including accountability. Allow them to share feedback and accept it without resistance. Get them on your team.
Enhance your real social network and relationships. Move toward the relationships that help you become a better person, and away from the toxic relationships. Develop new standards for relating and bonding.
Outline and complete as many tasks and responsibilities beforehand so you're not burdened with things to do afterwards. Schedule adequate time for integration, and then schedule everything else around that.
Outline your goals and action steps so you have clarity and feel directed and motivated after your experience. Knowing your goals helps you move into alignment with them. Think about areas of self-improvement too.
To support your integration, establish a daily discipline, or mind-body-spiritual practice. A daily discipline improves character, which improves habits and quality of life.
Success with psychedelic journeys is directly proportional to your integration. Just winging it, or taking it as it comes does not work well. Get educated on integration, both from this workbook and elsewhere.
Track your insights, realizations, and breakthroughs as you approach and prepare for this journey. Paying attention to your insights now will help you stay alert and receptive to them within and after your experience.
Locate and set up specialized support before and after. Surround yourself with others who understand and who will have a positive impact on you. Specialized community extends your integration efforts, solidifying positive changes.
Our home sanctuary has been created and designed specifically to facilitate private, immersive healing experiences. We offer full-day private sessions devoted completely to YOU and your personal journey on planet Earth, or you can be included in a sacred ceremonial circle designed to encourage fellowship and deep internal healing. It is an opportunity to explore your deeper consciousness, usher in life-changing revelations and creative breakthroughs, give space for deep emotions to be processed in a new way, and expand your relationship with yourself and the world around you. It will be personal, sacred and profound. Having heart-opening mystical experiences help reconnect us with who we are, and can be a catalyst for powerful healing and transformation. We will serve as your multi-dimensional doulas- your guides, ally, support and nurturing presence. It is our honor to create an extremely safe and comfortable container, in which you feel so taken care of. Our Retreat (home) is a beautiful, graceful environment and is designed with your comfort and relaxation in mind. Venturing deep within can be magnificent as well as challenging. It is important to enter this work with intention, surrender, trust, and care. We encourage emphasizing your self-care and wellbeing leading up to your retreat. We will discuss supportive practices, routines and rituals that can support you before and after your ceremony. If you are interested in working together, we will begin with an over the phone consultation and conversation. This will be an opportunity for us to get acquainted, for you to ask questions, and for me to learn about YOU. Who you are, where you’re at, what themes are up for you in your life, and anything else you feel called to share. If you feel a Yes to booking a session, we will set up a call in the weeks before your journey to further explore and develop your intentions for this work. We will provide you with recommendations on how to prepare for your retreat- personalized practices as well as suggestions around preparing your home space to be a really sweet environment to return to. Prior to your Sacred Meditation, you will be invited to a (a) Biofeedback session to work on understanding your Perceptions. This experience opens you to new ways of seeing things, it’s called Perception Reframing. Old perceptions that may be stuck and damaging are released and you become free to choose better ways to be more conscious on a day-to-day basis.
Awareness of breath is your primary lifeline to ground you in both worlds; it will help stabilize you and get you through any challenging moments. The only way out is through, and you can get there through focusing on your breath.
Surrender and let go of the need to control the experience, relax the mind, let go of the need to know everything, embrace the infinite love and mystery that is within the psychedelic space.
Let go of the outside world, home-life, relationships, and all the to-do's, and turn your focus inward, observe your own innerworkings and psychological patterns, close your eyes when you can, and truly see yourself.
Notice when your mind and body get tense, caught up on something, uncomfortable, afraid, in denial, defensive, judgmental, angry, and so on. Consciously release this tension.
Leave out the self-judgment, criticism, and worry about whether you're doing it right or not. Just be where you are and accept how you and the substance are showing up, whatever that looks like.
Lean into the experiences you encounter, especially very difficult ones. Saying yes opens the gate and allows you to get through to the next level or phase. This is what you are training for, and where the rewards come, and this shows your acceptance and appreciation for each opportunity.
Have faith you are where you're supposed to be, doing the work you are intended to do, and having the exact experience you need to have to get the results you want.
Continue to introspect, continue your meditative exercises and integration activities after your experience, and don't rush out of your experience and jump into old comforts and patterns.
Listen to those who experienced the work
Sue Adamson, BC
Clinical Director – Retired
Richie-Ann Rodriguez, MD
Coquitlam, BC
By: Retreat
May 29, 2024
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