081 | 11 Practical Tips for Psychedelic Integration (From a Coach)
“This is not a process of fixing yourself or becoming this perfect version of yourself. This is a process of coming to know yourself more deeply, understanding yourself more deeply and becoming whole. ”
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I have received many requests to dive deeper into how to “do” integration, so I created this episode for you. I share 11 practical tips for your post-psychedelic integration process, and I think a lot of what I have to say will surprise you. You will find plenty of coaching prompts in this short and sweet solo episode. Happy integrating!
In this episode, I talk about:
The myth of integration
The two phases of integration
Why rest is the first integration step
How to digest your experience
Separating the facts from the story
Revisiting your intentions
Making big life decisions after a psychedelic experience
Nourishment and wellbeing during integration
The process of becoming whole through authenticity
Focusing on the journey with grace
Making your environment work for you
How to enjoy the journey of healing and transformation
Remembering that you’re not broken
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Where to find Lana:
I was introduced to psychedelics in my early 20s within rave culture, and few years later I began to use plant medicine ceremonially.
Many circumstances aligned leaving me shattered, and I began the journey of putting myself back together. Plant medicine & psychedelics saved me from depression, anxiety, and a life of feeling unworthy. This is now my life’s work and I have devoted myself to sharing psychedelics and plant medicines with others because I have personally experienced how effectively they can catalyze growth, healing and connection.
This idea for Modern Psychedelics came to me during a journaling session in early 2020. I was learning so much about psychedelics at the time (while experiencing the benefits firsthand), and I had a deep desire to talk about these topics with people in the field. Upon launching the Instagram community, the page grew tremendously over a short period of time and continues to have high levels of engagement.
I am a 3x certified professional life coach, and I work with people who want to better their lives by deeply integrating insights from their psychedelic experiences. I believe that we don’t have to spend our entire lives healing, and that the purpose of life is to live in the present moment.
Looking for a professional coach to support you on your psychedelic path?
Look no further! Along with being the host of the Modern Psychedelics Podcast, Lana is a 3x certified professional coach who works with people on the psychedelic path.
Podcast Transcipt
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Lana Pribic: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome back to the show. So today's solo episode is highly requested. I actually had sent out a community feedback form a couple months ago, and I asked you guys what you want more of, what you want less of, and for the people who filled out the form, there was quite a few people saying that they wanted to understand how to do integration.
They were like. I love the integration episodes. I love hearing your process, but like, how do I actually do integration? So this episode is for you guys who are wondering that. You've come home from a retreat, you've had this experience now. What do you do? How do we take those insights and actually turn them into change or weave them into your life?
So integration is that period of time after a psychedelic experience where we weave what we learned or experienced into our daily life, into our way of being. I believe integration to [00:01:00] be an ongoing, potentially never ending process. Therefore, it's not something that we can check off or complete.
Therefore, integration is not really something that we do. Integration is. It's a lifestyle. It's a way of being. It's more about who you're being than what you are doing. So that's the first thing I want to lay out there. just like with creating an intention, there's no right way or wrong way.
It's not really a scientific formula. It's more of an art, it is this unfolding process that we take part in.
So today I'm going to be sharing with you guys 11 Practices, tips, things to keep in mind to help with your integration process. But do not mistake doing practices themselves as integration, right? So since integration is about changing your way of being and evolving your way of being [00:02:00] in the world, it's not about like completing things off a to do list.
So For example, a lot of people will say, meditate for integration or cold plunge for integration. Or, I like to microdose or consume cannabis for integration. It's integration is not doing those things. Integration is the way that you are using those practices to create space for the integration process.
Okay, so just keep that in mind. So the practices are not as important as who you are doing them and how you are showing up for them. So here are some of the tips for how you can approach your integration process. And there's really two phases. So the first phase is creating meaning through insights. And continuing to increase your understanding and your awareness of what you actually experienced.
Phase two is taking action to bring those insights into the day to day it's where the work happens. It's where you actually take what you learned [00:03:00] and you use it to create changes. And you can flow back and forth between these two, because the insights and awarenesses continue to evolve over time, so you can you can flow in between, it's not a linear process.
So let's get into the 11 tips. Guys, number one, immediately after rest, okay, rest, sleep, clear your calendar as much as you can. This is the first most crucial step. You need to regain your energy and come back to baseline. A lot of the times, these retreats. are very physically exhausting. They may be nourishing for our spirit.
They may be nourishing for our emotional body, but they can be very physically draining for staying up throughout the night for going to workshops for, just purging, doing medicine work. It can be deeply draining. Processing emotions is very draining. So the first thing we want to do is rest, rehydrate, refuel, , recharge, and come back to baseline using very gentle. Wellness practice is like [00:04:00] lots of sleep, lots of water, gentle movement, fresh air, nature. We want to regain that physical strength that will help us with the rest of the process. I'm not going to judge you if you do this because I've done it.
many a times after coming home from ayahuasca ceremonies. But, maybe resist the urge to order a pizza when you get home. And just try to stick with the diet and the nourishment. And I'm not judging because I don't do it perfectly. But yeah, just focus on that physical well being, number one.
Okay, number two, digest. So we're going to rest and then digest. So once you've rested and come back to baseline, Debrief. Recap your experience. Recapture what you experienced without trying to analyze it too much yet, okay? Just revisit your notes from the experience if you took any, stick to the facts of what happened, but don't start to create meaning or story around it quite [00:05:00] yet.
Just, capture what you saw, capture what you felt, capture what stood out to you, what you learned any insights you may have had during the time. And once we've done that, we can move on to number three, which is meaning making. This is really, I think the most important part of the experience.
the experience itself doesn't mean anything inherently. You are the one who gives it meaning. So at this stage, it's important to be very conscious of anyone or anything that may interfere with your meaning making process, because the most impactful experience for you is the one that empowers you to decide what your experience means for you.
What is true for you? What did this mean for you? Of course, there are some asterisks that I would place here, for example in certain cosmologies, [00:06:00] certain visions, certain experiences may mean certain things within that medicine lineage or within that culture. And maybe your facilitators or shamans may.
Provide you with, what seeing a jaguar means or what seeing a serpent means or what seeing a vision of a tiger jumping through the sky means, and you can still listen to these things. But remember, you're still the one who gets to filter that and Decide if that meaning is aligned with you or how you can take that on to be your own.
So when making meaning out of our experiences, it's important to keep in mind the difference between true and truth. The difference between the facts of what happened and what the story or meaning that we're creating is. So I'm gonna spend quite a bit of time here. Maybe you want to take notes here, but this is something that I teach my coaching clients and they find it Immensely useful.
So I hope that it's useful for you. During my training at IPEC, we were taught that there is a [00:07:00] difference between truth and true. So truth, capital T truth, is indisputable. It's what is actually happening or what has occurred. It's the facts. Truth is true regardless of group consensus. Truth does not really need to be validated.
It's just true. Sometimes we think that what we are interpreting is the truth, but it's just that. It's our interpretation. It's the story that we're creating. Truth does not depend on interpretation. It exists regardless of interpretation. So understand that what you see is what is true only for you. Your interpretation is your truth.
It is not the truth. So in a psychedelic journey, Truth is the facts, right? What happened, what you saw, what you experienced, what you felt. This is why I want you guys to focus on that digest process before this, like what are the facts?
So on the other hand, true is the story. It's the [00:08:00] meaning, it's the interpretation that we create from what happened. So truth is what happened. True is the story that we create from it. When we create stories and explanations, we create what is true for us. We create the story.
for ourselves. And what we see as true, we interpret through our own unique subjective filters and experiences and the way that we experience the world. So this is not good or bad. It just is. But if we're aware of this difference we can use it to our advantage. Since we know that our stories are just stories and that our meaning is just the meaning that we decide to give to it, that's actually really empowering because we can align our stories and our meaning with what we want in life.
We can align it with what we want to experience and what we want to achieve and who we want to be. So use this to your advantage. It's not anything to be overwhelmed by. It's perfectly neutral.[00:09:00] . Another thing to note here is like the stories that we create, the meaning that we create it, it's not truth, but it plays a great role in our life. It makes a major impact in how we operate and how we show up. So we may as well choose the stories that empower us. So I wanna give you guys an example.
So let's say that someone experienced abandonment early in life, right? Maybe they had a parent who left them, who left the family. So the facts, the truth is that, when I was five years old, my father disappeared and left our family and he never showed up after that, right? That's the facts.
Notice how just neutral and not charged that is. Now, when we take this fact, this truth, we can create stories out of it. We can make it mean that we weren't lovable. We can make it mean that we weren't worth our father's love. We can make it mean [00:10:00] that our father never loved us. We can make it mean that, we pushed our father away.
We can make it mean all sorts of things. We can also make it mean that Maybe my father wasn't ready to be a father. . We can make it mean that because of this experience, I learned so much and I am who I am today and I'm really proud of who I am today. The story that we create is in our hands.
So what story do you want to create? What meaning do you want to create from what you experienced? Another thing to note here is that often the difference between truth and true, the difference between what happened and the story that we create, it can become obscured when we're feeling stressed or drained or just, just low, energetically low.
Lana Pribic: Because the way that we're experiencing our current reality will shape the way that we. Interpret it. So just keep this [00:11:00] in mind when integrating, just how you're feeling, where your energy is and how, what your current experience is, is informing the meaning that you're creating. If you're feeling a little stressed and a little low, maybe it's not time for meaning making.
Maybe it's time to just like witness and hold the thoughts that are going on in your head without making them mean anything. And this is why it's also a good idea to do this when you're calm, when you're at ease, and also why that first tip that I mentioned is important to just rest and digest before getting into some of the heavier lifting of integration.
So Again, you're going to flow in and out of this meaning making phase. Just remember that your experience can mean whatever you want it to mean. And I empower you to get into the driver's seat of that because this is like the [00:12:00] building blocks of how we create the life that we want to create. So let's move on.
That was a big one. Number four is to revisit your intention. Reflect on how your intention was present within your journey. So sometimes it's not so obvious looking back at who you were when you set your intention. How does that intention seem to you now? I have a really funny story about this.
So those of you who know about Iboga, you will know that this is a medicine where you get to potentially meet your soul and ask your soul any question that you desire. So part of the preparation process for Iboga is creating a list of questions that you want to ask your soul when you meet up. And man, I remember after my first journey, I didn't get to, I didn't get to actually ask those questions in my first journey.
But I remember going to my room the next day after my first experience with Eboga and looking down at my list of questions and just laughing because my level of [00:13:00] consciousness. when I was crafting those questions was dramatically different than who I was after that first experience. And I remember, yeah, I just laughed at them and put them away.
It was almost like they were like a little irrelevant. And it wasn't a bad thing. It was just, it was actually quite humorous. So yeah, just revisit your intentions. Who were you before and who are you now? How do those intentions seem to you now? In what ways did you learn about what you intended to learn about, right?
What's different for you now as a result of the experience and what about your intention surprised you? How can you even take what that intention was and evolve it into perhaps your next intention, your next steps. So those four are really focused, focused on that first phase that I talked about, the creating meaning through insights.
So moving into action is the next phase, but again, it's not linear. You'll flow in and out of it. Only once [00:14:00] you've really gone through the process or initiated, you've had a good start in at least initiating the process of creating meaning, you'll be ready to move into action. So the following tips are for the action phase of integration.
So tip number five, this is such a good one that again, I, that I heard at a integration workshop when I was at Reunion, wait at least a month before making any big life decisions. So moving somewhere, changing jobs, leaving or starting a relationship. Just let it sit and digest, let the medicine take its course, let the insights land, just, respect the process.
I remember what one of the facilitators said at reunion that stuck with me was, if it's true for you now, it will be true for you in a month. I love that. There's no rush. Let time do its thing [00:15:00] and just know that you're in a very tender state after a big experience. So just. Rest, digest, and trust.
Trust the timing. Trust time. Trust nature. Trust the timing of nature. Okay, number six is to focus on your well being maybe a little more than you normally would. And guys, being just gentle goes a very long way here. Good quality food, lots of good quality water, lots of sleep, gentle movement, time in nature, fresh air.
This is always important, but during the heavy lifting phase of integration, it's even more important that you are in good shape for yourself so that you can show up for yourself so that you can really partake in this process so that you are not. creating any tension or resistance or lethargy that doesn't have to be there for this [00:16:00] process.
Just do yourself a favor and just nourish yourself and take care of yourself. And this can be in super gentle ways. Maybe you just want to put your phone aside and not turn it on until, after you've had some time to yourself in the morning, right? Just like really simple things. You don't have to be going, signing up for a gym membership or a fancy yoga studio or any of those things.
Just. Take care of yourself, you know yourself, you know what you need, just listen to that. Number seven, you may want to consider micro dosing. I personally have found micro dosing to be a very helpful practice in deepening insights, reducing the friction and resistance between. My old self and my new self , my old habits and my new habits.
Especially if there are concrete, behavioral, or habitual or thought process changes that you wanna make. So again, this is gonna be later in the process. This isn't something you wanna dive into right away. This is something that you want to turn to [00:17:00] when you've digested, you've understood what the experience has meant for you, and you have an understanding of what changes.
You want to make from there. Microdosing can be an amazing practice to just reduce some of that friction between just the friction of habit change that we all go through, like building new habits and new behaviors and even building new thought processes is not easy and we all could use a little bit of help with that.
Microdosing might be useful for you. I personally love cannabis as part of my integration process. I shared quite a bit about this on my Instagram. I'll go to cannabis sometime after an experience when I've done the journaling and I've done the processing and I will consume some inhaled cannabis and just whoa.
It'll open things up even more. So this is just through knowing yourself, knowing about what you need, what works for you, but all the plant allies and even substance allies can [00:18:00] work together in beautiful ways.
Number eight. During this process of integration, focus on being you, focus on your authenticity, focus on how you can lean more into yourself and be more of who you are. Because that's that's ultimately what integration is. It is, I think like the Latin root of the word integrate is to become whole.
But the process, the journey of becoming whole is being you, all of you, all parts of you leaning into all of the emotions, all of the parts of you that are seemingly contrasted to each other. I've shared a little bit about this with you guys before, but for the longest time, like I went from the rave space with psychedelics into deep medicine work and no rave space.
And now I have found a way to integrate and be in both spaces because I've realized that Oh my gosh, they're both [00:19:00] a part of me. They both complete me. They both make me feel whole. The light in the dark, right? I spent so much time with medicine work tapping into love and unity and all of that.
And there's also like darkness and duality and Just like really intense polarity that exists within all of us. So yeah, it's this process of becoming whole and like making space for all of it and integrating all of it. So focus on what feels like you and focus on what you're resisting because it's not you versus what you're resisting because you have some judgments around it being you.
Very important difference. , I came across this quote scrolling through Instagram the other day. It's a Chinese proverb. Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are. [00:20:00] I'm going to put a little asterisk there. If that tension is because of you judging this part of you, that. you think is bad or wrong, I would explore that a little bit.
Versus maybe something is just not you. I'm sorry, but country music is just not me. Okay. I just know that. Okay. There's a difference between there's a difference between the two. So I hope that helps you guys and helps you use this integration process as a time to really become whole, to focus on your authenticity and just to be unapologetically yourself.
Cause that's what the world needs you to be. Okay. So power to you. Okay. So number nine. Focus on the journey and have grace. Oh my goodness. Integration is a great time to develop grace, acceptance, loving, kindness, and unconditional love for yourself. Cause shit is [00:21:00] going to come up. Your demons are going to come up.
Your darkness is going to come up. Your triggers are going to come up. Your shadows are going to come up and there's nothing wrong with that. It's actually quite a gift. Cause it's the process of becoming whole, but learn to. Have grace for yourself and to focus on the journey on what's happening for you right now on what is true for you right now on who you are in this present moment instead of Like you can keep an eye on where you're going But don't focus your energy on where you're going focus your energy on where you are and how you can use that Present moment energy to get to where you want to go Sometimes we focus so much on where we want to go that we miss how fucking great We are and everything is in the present moment.
So I don't want you guys to miss out on that and focusing on the journey allows us to
To see what is already in front of us And a lot of the times when we see what's [00:22:00] already in front of us. We see that actually not much is missing And then this integration process becomes this journey that's fun and exciting and it's full of exploration and curiosity rather this like heavy energy of like where I am right now is wrong or bad and I need to just get past this or through this so that I'm on the other side.
No, this is the side. So enjoy where you're at. So practically speaking, it's not so much about what you're doing to change your diet, let's say, as it is about how you're relating to your body and your health right now as a result.
Notice how you feel when you are being the person you want to be versus when you are being the person that you have trained to be or that you're trying to be. So know that some changes are going to take time. Okay. Some will be effortless. Some will happen right away. But if part of your integration process, let's say is [00:23:00] shifting into a career that offers you a lifestyle that you want to live.
and that is more aligned with you and who you want to be and how you want to experience life, know that a career change is something that's going to take time. And I know that so many of you out there can relate to this because it's the biggest thing I coach people on, but it's going to take time. So you might as well focus on the journey, keep the outcome in mind, but focus on the journey.
It's going to take time and it's going to take work. No psychedelic is a magic wand, but they can illuminate our truths, right? They can be a magic wand for illumination, but they're not going to. Do the thing for us. So Yeah, just focus on what you can do today I know that some things take time and just like fully commit yourself to yourself in the process Okay, number ten.
I love this one. Make your environment work for you I don't know about you guys But my environment plays a huge role in how I experience life and how I feel every day. So [00:24:00] After a psychedelic experience, you will probably have an idea of some changes that you want to make. So make it easy for you to make those changes by creating an environment that supports those changes.
Okay, so for example, maybe you realize that you wanted to spend less time on screens and more time reading, right? Your spirit is like here to learn and to absorb new information and to make the most out of life and it wants To read books and to experience adventure through novels or, learn new things and expand its consciousness.
Let's say, I'm obviously speaking from experience here, but let's say that's one of the things, right? How can you make your environment work for you, right? You can create a cozy little nook in your home that is specifically for reading, right? And enjoying a [00:25:00] book and maybe you purchase a mug that you love so that you can drink tea and just like really enjoy the process of reading and this habit change.
That's one example. Maybe you're feeling inspired to keep your space more tidy and clean because maybe you realized, maybe you attended this retreat and you really appreciated how, like clean and organized it was and how much more clear your mind was when you didn't have all the clutter in your house with you and you only had what you needed.
And you're feeling inspired by that. You can stock up on cleaning surprise and set a weekly date for yourself to actually enjoy keeping your space clean and organized, listening to music, taking a weekend to organize and declutter your kitchen. Just really making that.
space, a portal for the change that you want to take place. I [00:26:00] know that a lot of people are often very inspired to create a diet changes. I know that I have been recently. So again, look at your kitchen, right? Evaluate your kitchen. Is your kitchen full of foods that you don't want to eat? If you don't want it in your belly. You don't want it in your kitchen, like cleanse and declutter and clean your kitchen out. Does your kitchen, when you walk into it, inspire you to cook nourishing foods that you want to eat?
How can you create a kitchen or a space that inspires you to be who you want to be, right? This is like very 3D Matrix y stuff, very human stuff, but I promise you it makes a huge difference. Make your environment work for your integration process, whatever that looks like for you. I hope that some of those examples helped.
And the last tip here, number 11 that I want to leave you guys here with is to remember to enjoy the journey, not just be [00:27:00] present for the journey, not just to focus on the journey, but to really enjoy it. You can enjoy the healing. process. You can enjoy the process of transformation. It took me so long to realize this.
I remember for so long, like I was just in this healing hole and sure, maybe I needed to be for a while and maybe I needed to be a hermit for a while. But at one point I realized like. I don't need to keep locking myself away and secluding myself and being this hermit. I can still go out and enjoy myself and be in community, even if you're in an integration process.
Aren't we always? You don't always have to be working on yourself. You don't always have to be fixing yourself. Part of the process is also being present for joy, is being present for fun and finding the medicine in that. My whole journey with psychedelics changed when I also started incorporating fun, [00:28:00] recreational, just bliss, joy filled experiences.
There is so much spiritual medicine in that, you guys, joy and bliss is the highest energetic, conscious awareness that we can experience. It is a high. energetic level that we can experience. So there is medicine in that we can weave some of that into those times that are tough, and those times that are deep and.
And yeah, I think it's just really important to remember that you're not broken, that you don't need to be fixed, that there's nothing to be fixed. This is not a process of fixing yourself or becoming, this perfect version of yourself. This is a process of coming to know yourself more deeply, understanding yourself more deeply and becoming whole.
And it's going to be a never ending, lifelong process and it doesn't have to be [00:29:00] about healing. It can just be about you knowing yourself more deeply. And know that the healing ends when this dialogue that we need to be healed and that we need to be fixed because we're broken ends. And then this work just becomes a lot more fun and a lot more right.
So I know that. Not everyone is there yet. I know that not everyone is ready to enjoy the journey and to bring fun into their process. But when you are lean into it and just see what happens. So there you have it. Those are my tips for integrating a psychedelic experience. If this was useful for you, share it with a friend, share it online on social media.
And if it was useful, I would also love to hear from you, maybe leaving a five star review on Apple podcast. That really helps send me a DM. I always answer you guys. And also if you guys are integrating a lot, if you're really on this journey of self discovery of [00:30:00] growth, of. Wholeness of becoming whole of authenticity of focusing on the journey and not the outcome.
And you want to work with a coach, know that I am currently onboarding new clients for my practice. So if you want to get in touch with me, hear more about coaching, I will leave a application form for coaching in the show notes. And also you can visit my websites, read tons of testimonials that I have from clients who are also on the psychedelic path and also read about my entire program there.
So I'll leave you with that, sending you lots of love. Remember to focus on the journey, remember to enjoy the process, remember that you're not broken, and remember to be gentle and loving with yourself. Send you so much love, keep doing the good work, and I'll see you in the next episode. Bye everyone!
