How to Prepare for Iboga: A 6-Step Guide from Someone Who's Done It Twice
Your ceremony starts long before you meet the medicine. Here’s the preparation framework I use personally, and with every client I guide through Iboga.
Your Iboga journey doesn’t begin in ceremony. It begins the moment you say yes.
The instant you send that deposit, fill out that intake form, or make the inner decision that you are doing this, something shifts. You might notice themes start surfacing. Suppressed memories come forward. Emotions that have been quietly waiting for this moment begin to rise.
This is what I call the psychedelic preparation stage. And if you're working with Iboga, don't underestimate the importance of this stage.
I’ve worked with Iboga twice now, across four ceremonies. The second time, having learned a thing or two, I went in with a preparation process that was significantly more intentional. What came out of ceremony was proportionally deeper. That’s not a coincidence or luck.
I’m a Core Energy coach who has worked with clients preparing for and integrating psychedelic experiences for several years. In that time, I’ve developed a six-step preparation framework that I use personally and share with the people I work with. This is the foundation of that framework.
Here’s what I want you to understand before we dive in: Iboga is not like other plant medicines. It is direct. It is precise. It is one of the most powerful mirrors I have ever encountered. If you go in without preparation, Iboga will still meet you, but preparation is what allows you to meet it back with clarity about what you’re actually asking for.
Listen to the Source Episode
This post is adapted from Episode 120 of Modern Psychedelics: “A Step by Step Guide to Prepare for Iboga.” I recorded it while deep in my own preparation process for my second Iboga ceremony — you’ll hear the whole thing play out in real time. Listen here →
1. Why Your Iboga Journey Begins the Moment You Commit
I’ve said this before and I’ll keep saying it: your journey does not begin or end with the ceremony or retreat.
Many people believe that the moment you energetically commit to working with Iboga — before any ceremony, before any physical protocol — the medicine starts working with you. I’ve seen this happen consistently in my own life and in the lives of my clients. As soon as you commit, things start moving.
Your job in this first step is simply to recognize that what’s happening now is part of the process. Own the decision you’ve made. Approach it with reverence. You are agreeing to sit with one of the most ancient plant teachers on earth — one that has been used by the Bwiti people for generations as a direct access point to truth, to self-knowledge, to the root of what needs healing.
Iboga may be one of the most ancient trees on the planet. This is not a casual thing. Recognizing its weight helps you drop into a more receptive, intentional state from the very beginning.
Your Action for Step 1
Acknowledge that the preparation period has begun. Open a note on your phone — messy, rough, just somewhere to put things — and start writing down what’s already coming up for you.
2. Go Into “Detective Mode” Before Your Iboga Ceremony
Step 2 is where the real work lives. Think of yourself as the detective of your own life. Your case: what is actually going on below the surface? What are the patterns, the wounds, the desires, the confusing, unresolved things you’ve been carrying?
You’re not looking for answers here. You’re gathering evidence.
What does this look like in practice? Start noticing:
How are you speaking to yourself right now?
What is triggering you, and what specifically about it bothers you?
What relationships feel stuck or unresolved (even ones from years ago)?
Where do you feel resentment? Who do you feel owes you something?
What limiting beliefs keep surfacing about yourself, your life, your future?
In what ways are you limiting yourself — what is the glass ceiling you’ve put on yourself?
And equally important — what are you calling in? What does your heart desire that you haven’t given yourself permission to name? Where do you want to be in one year, five years, ten?
Iboga works with both sides: what needs to be released, and what is ready to be received. Bring both.
The method is simple: keep a running note on your phone or a dedicated little journal. Don’t edit, don’t clean it up, don’t curate it into something presentable. Write it down in whatever messy, stream-of-consciousness form it comes in. You’re capturing the energy and essence of what’s surfacing. Making it look good or sound perfect doesn't count here. Stay broad and just focus on everything you'd like Iboga to help you with.
You can start this process anywhere from one month to four months before ceremony. I started mine when it became clear I was working with Iboga again — and added to the note for months. Some threads deepened over time; others naturally resolved before I even got to ceremony.
On support: Two types of allies are especially valuable during this phase. The first is human: a therapist, coach, mentor, or trusted person you can process with as things surface. When I committed to my second Iboga experience, memories from an ancient friendship I hadn’t fully processed started rising almost immediately. I went back to my therapist. That was an essential part of my preparation, not an optional add-on.
The second type is a plant ally: microdoses or low doses of supportive medicines, if that’s appropriate for you. Always speak with your Iboga provider about timing, contraindications and what’s safe to work with during prep.
3. What Energetic Ground Rules Should You Set Before Iboga?
Preparation for Iboga isn’t just what you do. It’s how you show up in the weeks and months leading up to your ceremony.
Step 3 is creating a personal preparation protocol: your ground rules for energetic hygiene. This is how you stay grounded and strong while all of the material from Step 2 surfaces.
Your provider will give you specific dietary and substance guidelines. Follow those completely and without negotiation. Iboga has real physiological requirements. But beyond your provider’s protocol, I’m talking about something additional: what do you need to feel rooted, nourished, and clear?
Here’s an insight that landed for me from a pre-ceremony call with one of my Iboga providers: when we meet Iboga, we want to be strong. The stronger and more grounded you are in body and mind, the more you can receive. That’s not a an excuse to be hard on yourself; it’s a reason to take care of yourself with real intention.
My own ground rules for my second Iboga preparation included:
No cannabis for one month before ceremony (I was using moderatly during this time)
Moving my body at least three times per week (yoga, pilates, runs, long walks)
Eating nourishing, grounding whole foods, including lot's of animal protein, and reducing allergen foods for my body
Noticing every time I felt like “a victim to money” and consciously choosing a different response
Being gentle with myself when I missed a day (and I did miss days)
These aren’t restrictions. They’re acts of self-love and what allowed me to arrive at ceremony with a clear, receptive energetic system.
Your list will be unique to you and to what you’re working on. But write it down. The act of committing to a preparation protocol is itself a signal to the medicine that you’re ready to be met.
4. How to Identify the Themes You’re Working With Before Iboga
After weeks or months of gathering notes (Step 2!), you’ll reach a point where you need to consolidate. Step 4 is reviewing everything you’ve collected and identifying the core themes of your current work: the 3 to 6 things that this particular season of your healing is actually about.
Ask yourself as you go through your notes:
What keeps showing up across different entries?
What feels most unresolved? Not just intellectually, but in the body?
What patterns connect your financial situation, your relationships, your sense of self?
Where are you giving your power away?
What are you most afraid to step into?
How are your fears showing up in your life?
You might start to see several themes start to emerge. Going into my second Iboga ceremony, my six themes were:
- root chakra healing (lineage patterns around abundance and security; Father wounds)
- identity and self-worth (releasing the need for external validation)
- sacral chakra healing (intimacy, creativity, feminine energy)
- financial stability and career clarity
- creativity versus the things that drain my energy
- what I was actively calling in for the next chapter of life
Once you have your themes, organize your notes under them. This becomes your map.
5. How to Use the Chakra System to Understand Your Iboga Preparation
This step almost didn’t make it into my preparation, but it ended up being one of the most clarifying pieces of the entire process. This isn't for everyone, so no worries if you want to skip Step 5.
Mapping your themes to the seven chakras can reveal something you might not have seen on your own: which energy centers are asking for attention right now, and why that makes sense given where you’ve been.
I had been in deep plant medicine work for years before my second Iboga experience. When I mapped my themes to the chakra system, I realized that almost everything I was working on sat in my lower three chakras — root, sacral, and even a little bit solar plexus. Of course. My earlier works had focused on heart, throat, and third eye. I had bypassed the root for years. It was time to go back to the foundation (nothing better to get to the root than with Iboga!)
Here’s a quick reference map to work with:
Look at your themes from Step 4 through this lens. Which power centers do they point to? This doesn’t require you to become a chakra expert or believer; it’s just a framework that gives your preparation work a deeper energetic map. You might be very surprised at the connections this step reveals!
6. How to Write Your Questions and Intentions for Iboga
Here’s what makes Iboga fundamentally different from most plant medicine experiences: you come in with very specific questions.
One of Iboga’s most distinctive gifts is its capacity to provide direct access to "truth"; a direct line to your own knowing. Not always, and not guaranteed. But when it happens, people receive clear, precise insight that feels like something they’ve always known but couldn’t quite reach. Having specific, well-formed questions gives the medicine a blueprint for where to take you.
Under each of your themes, write the questions you would ask if you had a direct line to your intuition. The best are usually (but not always) questions are open-ended, so start with what or how rather than yes/no structures.
Not “Am I on the right path?” but “What is the most important thing I need to see about my path right now?” Not “Should I stay in this relationship?” but “How am I contributing to the dynamic in this relationship" or "What needs to change in this relationship?” You see the difference? One invites a direct answer; the other closes things off before they can open.
This list of questions, organized under your themes, is the document you bring into ceremony. It represents months of honest self-inquiry. It gives Iboga somewhere to start.
Six steps. Months of honest self-inquiry. All of this before you ever arrive at ceremony.
That's the point. Preparation isn't preliminary — it is part of the experience. The themes you surface, the questions you refine, the ground rules you set for yourself: these aren't warm-up exercises. They're how you meet Iboga at depth rather than from the surface.
What becomes possible with this level of preparation? You arrive in ceremony already in relationship with your material. The medicine isn't introducing you to your wounds because you've already been spending time with them, naming them, organizing them into questions. That precision gives Iboga somewhere specific to go. And in my experience, that's when the work gets real.
Ready to Go Deeper?
Doing the Work with Iboga
This framework is the beginning. The full preparation and integration process — including how to work with what surfaces before ceremony, how to write your questions in a way that opens you up, and how to navigate what comes after — is what I take clients through in detail in my program.
Doing the Work with Iboga is a 1:1 supported container that meets you wherever you are in the Iboga journey.
