“What one does with a psychedelic experience may be more important than the experience itself. Without integration, the experience may remain merely a memory, no matter how beautiful.” – Walter Pahnke

Importance of Integration

All too often people believe that the psychedelic journey, itself, is the magic bullet that will ameliorate all their problems. This belief is, sadly, false. Psychedelics can open the doorway to new insights of both your own personal biographic history as well as from other dimensions. With adequate preparation, one can walk through that doorway and explore and find answers. Once the journey is over then the real journey of integrating your insights becomes key.

Each of the different types of psychedelics offers an open state of a “critical window” for integration. For psilocybin, specifically, this is a few weeks. During the critical window your brain experiences much more neuroplasticity where old neurons can dissolve and new ones can form. Think about it like a mountain with freshly fallen snow – you now get to create new ski tracks down the mountain, free from old ruts. It is during this window that using IFS becomes essential.

IFS is also a non-ordinary state, much like psychedelics. When we pair IFS within this critical window we capitalize on this neuroplasticity. I have found that doing a series of intensive session blocks (10-12 hours in the first two weeks post journey: two 3-hour series of sessions one week and possibly two or three two-hour series of sessions) to help clients take immense strides down their healing paths that would otherwise take many months or never happen without the intentionality (missed opportunities).

How We Schedule Intensive Packages

It is ideal that you and I schedule integration intensives before you have your journey to ensure schedule availability. In some instances, my calendar can accommodate shorter notices. One 90-minute integration session will be had the day after your journey. From there, we would schedule two or three sessions the first week after your journey; and schedule two or three sessions the second week after your journey. We slate all up front and remove from the calendar ones we will not need.

Welcome Invitation – A Sweet Window of Time

I encourage your protectors to consider joining in as allies to your system’s healing in our sweet window of time. They might call this “brave space.” By this I mean, we will listen to and address each concern they have as we work together and ask what they might need to help you make the most of this time (to get the most for your money and time). If in the integration phase of our work they can continue to give you the needed space to conclude what might need to be completed, their reward can often be a shift in role to their preferred role and/or unburdening themselves (i.e., yielding relaxation and lightness).  

In all integration sessions, we will use IFS to fill in any gaps that may not have naturally occurred in your medicine journey. In your first integration session the morning after the journey, it is possible to pick back up right where the journey left off with your protectors’ collaboration in giving space to continue the work (hence, allies in healing). For example, we may continue the witnessing of a part you were with in the journey, provide a missing experience, unburden, and retrieve it. With each subsequent integration session, we have this possibility to continue to complete what is wanting to unfold within you during this sweet window of time. Brave space… 

Our sweet window of time of integration will be encapsulated into an intensive series of weeks. Each session will be between 90-minutes to three hours, depending upon what your system is up for. Our second and third integration will be the week immediately after your journey (i.e., a few days post journey); and integration sessions four and five will be the subsequent week. A shorter, 60-minute, final wrap up session can also be scheduled if that feels best.

Below is an image of the Window of Integration or Psychedelic Open Space as a visual for this concept. This was a study with mice, so we can imagine expanding this for humans. IFS being a non-ordinary state of mind (like psychedelics – we can think of IFS as its own kind of medicine) may extend this window of integration when protectors grant us access to move into the deep work of witnessing and unburdening of exiles.

As might be expected, helping your system relate to and understand what you experienced is also a piece of the integration. Integration is the physical therapy post injury or surgery that when followed yield greater results. Integration is how you take what lessons you learned from the journey and incorporating them into your daily life. At every step, we will welcome and hear each part who needs to express something. Whatever you and I do not complete in our sweet window of time, you can bring to your regular therapist or support person. I will provide Daily Parts Meditation Practice^®Parts Maps and Parts Catalogue Cards for you to work with on your own, if desired. You or I can also send these along to your therapist if you have signed a Release of Information form. 

Please read this as simply invitations to your protectors to consider being allies in healing to make the most out of our sweet window of time together from an IFS perspective. I am not attached to an agenda or outcomes around our work, rather I want to provide maximum support with your unique process and healing. I look forward to answering any questions you have and connecting soon. Thank you!

“Integration is not the same as blending. Integration requires that we maintain elements of our differentiated selves while also promoting our linkage.” ~ Daniel Siegel, MD.

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