059 | 5 Things You Might Not Know About Psychedelic Integration
“Integration is simply the homework that we do after a powerful psychedelic experience. And unless we do that homework, chances are this is gonna be just another experience that didn’t really mean anything to us and it didn’t really make desired changes in our lives.”
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Psychedelic integration is deeply personal. There's no guidebook. There's no right or wrong way to do it, but there are a few things that we can keep in mind to really make the most out of these powerful experiences. Today I am sharing five things you might not know about integration, and coaching prompts to take your process deeper.
We want to make sure that we are educated about and prioritizing integration. Whether you are experiencing psychedelics in a clinical, ceremonial, or recreational container, integration is required if you really wanna make the most out of the experience.
In this episode, I talk about:
There is no destination, there is only the journey
How to maintain judgment over curiosity during integration
Meaning-making matters & how to create powerful meaning
Differentiating Truth from perception
Taking action AND allowing insights to deepen
Creating space for insights to deeper and the path forward to reveal itself
Giving the psychedelic integration process time and space
Integration that happens within a psychedelic experience or ceremony
“Integration is deeply personal. There’s no guidebook. There’s no right or wrong way to do it, but there are a few things that we can keep in mind to really make the most out of these powerful experiences.”
LISTEN
“The only meaning your experience has is the one that you give it. Like I said in the beginning, this is a deeply personal path. There is no teacher, other than your own internal wisdom combined with the wisdom of the plant.”
Things Mentioned In This Episode:
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 Trasnscipt
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What is integration? Other than being a massive topic in the space, integration is simply the homework that we do after a powerful psychedelic experience.
And unless we do that homework, chances are this is gonna be just another experience that we just went through and it didn't really mean anything to us and it didn't really make desired changes in our lives.
We definitely wanna make sure that we are educated about and prioritizing integration. Whether you are experiencing psychedelics in a clinical, ceremonial, or recreational container, integration is required if you really wanna make the most out of the experience.
Integration is deeply personal. There's no guidebook. There's no right or wrong way to do it, but there are a few things that we can keep in mind to really make the most out of these powerful experiences.
In today's episode, I'm gonna be sharing five things that [00:01:00] you might not know about integration.
These are nuances that I've picked up during my work with medicine in ceremony, and also from partaking in recreational containers.
I'm gonna be providing you with some coaching prompts to really help you deepen your integration process, so stay tuned for that. All right, let's dive in. But first, a word from today's sponsor.
So the first thing that you might not know about psychedelic integration is that da, there's no destination. There's no end point. Integration is a journey, and the more that you do this work, it's more than a journey. Integration actually becomes a lifestyle, a way of living, a way of being a way of existing.
And that is a way of mastery and growth. You realize that there will always be more opportunities for learning and growth. There's always gonna be another layer of the onion to peel. There's always gonna be a [00:02:00] deeper insight. There's always gonna be a way that you can take action that aligns more with your integration insights.
The lessons continue to come through and the insights teach at new depths, at new levels as the process continues. It is so juicy to watch it all unfold, especially if you start doing this work over a longer period of time, really working with medicine in life. So I wanna give you guys an example of this.
During my Iboga experience, which if you guys haven't heard about yet, I highly recommend you check out episodes 45 and 49 because wow, that was my most powerful psychedelic experience to date.
But one of the biggest insights I got from this beautiful medicine is that nature has all of the answers and.
That you are nature. There is no separation between [00:03:00] me and nature. I came from nature. I came from the earth. And because I am a being of the earth, anything that I wanna know, I can look to nature for. It is the provider of all of our resources. It is the provider of all of the answers. And this is something that I think a lot of people in working with psychedelics come to know in different ways.
So the integration of that, right? What is the end point in that? How do I know that I fully integrated that insight? I can't, it's not gonna be like, okay, I bought my property in the jungle and now I have like fully integrated this insight that Nature has all the answers, and I am nature.
No, there's always gonna be a deeper way. It's gonna be a lifelong journey for me to continue integrating this beautiful special connection with the Earth. It's gonna inform,[00:04:00] it already is informing, the food that I eat. The clothing that I wear, I'm like sewing my own clothes now from, organic materials, where I want to live, how I want to live, how I want to spend my days, the way that I exercise.
There's always gonna be deeper layers of integration that is going to unfold throughout the rest of my life. But I know that this insight that I received this wisdom that I received from Iboga is massive and huge, and something that I will get to chew. on For the rest of my life and for me, that's really exciting.
I love the journey. I've reached a point in my process where I'm all about the journey. I always say the juice is in the journey. I'm not a results oriented, outcome oriented person, and I definitely have plant medicine and coaching to thank for getting me to that point, but seeing integration as this unfolding process, this unfolding journey, it makes life so [00:05:00] just juicy.
So if you're listening and you're like, okay, cool, but I'm not there yet. I have a coaching prompt for you to work through to, that might help. Start seeing integration as this journey instead of a destination. And let me tell you, it really takes the pressure off of the work, takes pressure off of your life when you start seeing things in this way.
To really embrace the journey, what I would recommend is taking yourself out of your life and becoming the observer that is watching it all unfold. So this looks. Part of you is here, is experiencing what is happening to you, but you also have that higher level of conscious awareness that is also just like keeping an eye on everything that is going on and is just like watching it all unfold.
This bird's eye perspective helps us see [00:06:00] that there is a greater picture, a greater, a greater unfolding that is happening before us as we integrate. Insights and it's really beautiful.
Something to practice to really do this is to embrace curiosity over judgment. To practice allowing rather than forcing.
And the first step to removing judgments. Cuz it's really hard to be the observer, right? That bird's eye view observer, if we're in judgment of what is happening to us, right? Being the observer really takes removing those judgments, and the first way to remove those judgments is to be aware of them. So something like a judgment journal is great.
This can be as simple as keeping a phone, a note on your phone and just noting down every time that you have a judgment about someone or something.
With integration, [00:07:00] judgements can sound like, it's not happening fast enough. That's the biggest one. It's not happening the way I want it to.
Any attachments to way that thing should look. Anytime we're using the word should or have to, that means that there's some sort of judgment presence. So just be really conscious of any judgements around your integration process, how the journey is unfolding for you, and take note of that.
The next step is to start taking note of how your judgment might actually be blocking the process from unfolding in front of you, from blocking you, from just enjoying the journey and treating it as exactly that a journey, not a destination.
So when we really hold on too tightly to our judgements what we think is best, [00:08:00] the way that we think things should go, we block ourselves from be seeing the opportunity that is present for us.
And when we see integration and life itself as a journey, ah, there's so much opportunity available for us.
Let's move on to number two, meaning making matters. The only meaning your experience has is the one that you give it. Like I said in the beginning, this is a deeply personal path. There is no teacher. Other than the plant, if you're working with plants there is no teaching other than your own internal wisdom combined with the wisdom of the plant, right? You are the one who activates the wisdom of the plant when you consume that plant. So be very careful that the meaning that you are creating from your experiences is coming from you and not from others.[00:09:00]
You're the only one who gets to decide what your experiences mean for you. So a masterful shaman or a masterful guide may guide you. In certain cosmologies, like with ayahuasca, specific visions do mean specific things, right? Seeing a jaguar in a vision has a very specific meaning in the ayahuasca cosmology.
And a shaman might be able to give you insights on what your visions mean within the context of ayahuasca. However it is up to you to determine what that means for you and how it applies to you. So episode 54 with Adam Aronovic is a great place to start diving into how meaning making can get a little dangerous when we start applying very specific lenses to our meaning making.
So sometimes the lens of the retreat [00:10:00] center, or of facilitators and guides can start impacting our meaning making, and that's something that we definitely want to be very careful of as we take that meaning into our integration process.
A coaching prompt for you here is to focus and be aware of the difference between truth, universal truth, the facts of what happened and what I call lowercase t true.
So capital T truth is, it's universal truth. It's the facts of what actually happened. Lowercase t True is something that is true for us, but is not necessarily universally true. So the meaning that you create is true for you.
It's not universal truth, but it is true to you. It is your personal truth. It's the meaning that we create from the fact. I encourage you to create meaning, to create trues that move you forward, that align with the [00:11:00] life that you wanna create.
If someone is inserting a meaning on your experience that does not feel right in your body, you do not have to take that on. So be very wary of coaches, facilitators, guides, and even shamans that tell you that there is only one meaning and who do not encourage you to dive into what this experience means for you because it is your experience.
So the third thing that you may not know about integration. It's not just about taking action, it's also about allowing the insights to deepen and as the insights deepen the actions that follow those insights deepen as well.
I wanna give a visual here. You know those like Russian dolls, those like that like Russian doll set where you like open one and there's another one and there's another one, and there's another one and there's another one.
I want you to think of the insights [00:12:00] that come through during the integration process as the Russian dolls, but I want you to think of it as this, like you just never run out of the Russian dolls. There's always another doll that you can open. There's always another way that you can look at this.
There's always a way that you can continue to deepen that insight.
That example I gave nature has all the answers and you are nature like that is a Russian doll that I'm gonna continue opening and finding meaning around for the rest of my life, right? There's always a level deeper that I can go with that.
And because with each level that you go down, you're meeting the new insight from that new level. So who you. When you receive the even deeper insights is constantly gonna change, and that's the thing that allows you to receive the deeper and deeper insights.
On the topic of insights, deepening as [00:13:00] insights deepen within you and become a part of who you are, as they become, your new internal truth. Your new perspectives, the places from which you now operate within the actions are gonna naturally follow. This is why as a coach, I work with Core Energy.
I work on creating transformation from within with my clients, and we wanna do the same thing when we approach psychedelics. We really want to integrate those insights deeply within us and examine our core beliefs and the way that we operate within the world from an energetic.
From the level of our perspective, from the level of how we're actually viewing and experiencing the world, and when those insights become so deeply integrated within us, the action is just gonna naturally follow. It's gonna be effortless, it's gonna be easy, and it's gonna be like, duh. Of course, that's what I should do.
Right, and an example I can give you from my personal integration process with this [00:14:00] is, so for years I have been like scheming to leave Toronto. I have been daydreaming about moving to a tropical country, or the Mediterranean or Europe. I just wanted to get the heck out of here as soon as possible.
After my Iboga experience, I realized how important family was to me. And I had such a reckoning with the mortality of my parents being in their sixties, and I had such a reckoning with the fact that they're not gonna be here forever. And all of a sudden, family became so much more important to me than it ever was.
Healing. The relationship with my family became so much more important than it so spending time with them became important to me as well. And how that played out is, It was like, yeah, duh. No, I don't [00:15:00] actually wanna live anywhere else. I actually really wanna be close to my family. That's what's important to me.
So that inner shift of my values took place, and as a result, I was so easily able to release this desire, which honestly was probably coming from wanting to escape. And when I stopped wanting to escape myself, I stopped wanting to escape life, whatever. And. Yeah. As a result, I'm just so happy, so content to be firmly rooted and grounded in Toronto, close to my family, spending time with them, I know that's what's important to me now, and I'm at such peace with
It's, so often I see this so much with my coaching clients and I definitely used to have this tendency, but we just wanna get to the end of the road. We wanna get to the destination. We want to start seeing the results. We wanna like spring into action. As soon as we get, that insight.
This is when we see, someone has an ayahuasca ceremony and they like go home and [00:16:00] break up with their partner and move across the country and all this stuff and Whoa. Just breathe. Just sit with it. Just let it sit, let it unfold. The insight might, as you continue to open that Russian doll there might be deeper and deeper layers of insights there, right?
What's beneath that desire? Dig into it All that to say insights are layered and layered, and there's no end to how deeply you can develop an insight. So really give yourself the space for those insights to deepen and to connect to your life. And then the actions will become clear and effortless.
And that's gonna lead me to my next point here, the fourth thing about psychedelic integration that you might not know is that integration requires a lot of time and space. One of the most important questions to ask yourself before a significantly large dose of anything is, do I have the time and space to let this.
All this new information and energy that you receive [00:17:00] is going to require breathing room. It's going to require love and care and nurturing from you. It's like inviting these new insights and awarenesses about yourself. It's almost like nurturing a newborn baby, right? It needs to be taken care of and tended to.
You can't just, Let it into your home and then not pay any attention to it. That's definitely not what we want to do here. So make sure you're asking yourself, do I have the space to tend to my integration process? A coaching prompt for you here is to really take inventory of your life on all levels and just make note of what's distracting you from creating space.
I get it. We all have really full lives. We all have a lot to do, especially parents. Shout out to parents, oh, I know how much you're doing. I don't think I could possibly know until I'm actually a [00:18:00] parent. But all that to say, we all have a lot going on and choosing to embark on the psychedelic path and to start inviting these.
Yeah, newborn babies into our lives. It is like having a it is like having another, metaphorical child to take care of. . Do you have the space for that? And then in taking inventory of what in your life is distracting you from creating space? You wanna look at your schedule, your relationships, your habits.
So are you maybe saying yes to every calendar invite that comes your way? Are you saying yes to every client that comes your way or work opportunity that comes your way? What's beneath that? Are you checking your phone first thing in the morning or last thing at night? And what's beneath that?
Really think about how you can create space for yourself, because I'm trying to think of a good metaphor. It's like when you know [00:19:00] that you're about to give birth to a baby, right? What is the thing that all moms go through, and this is, I'm pretty sure this is like a hormonal, biological thing, but they go through this nesting period, right?
They're preparing the home. They're getting all the supplies needed to really take care of this baby. They're also taking the junk out, right? They're clearing the space. They're clearing the energy to invite this newborn child into their home.
Treat your psychedelic experiences exactly like this, and clear the space, clear the garbage in your life, in your space, in your calendar, and give these new insights in your life room to breathe.
So for me, this is where I really love cannabis. So my life is so full and with the assistance of this plant medicine it's one that really encourages me to create space in the mind. So for me, I have been [00:20:00] practicing, like spatial minimalism for like almost a decade.
So with my space and things like that, my digital space I have a lot of space. For me, it's more creating mental space and cannabis really helps me create mental space. Unplug from work, unwind, just chill out, take a step back. And when I do that, the medicine allows my mind to enter the space where I'm really just wandering and because my mind is wandering, there is space to think of new perspectives and take in new perspectives and insights in a way that I normally can't.
I'm not saying that you should use cannabis. That's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying find what works for you to create space. In your life and in your mind so that you can really honor this integration process.
And the last thing that you might not know about integration is something that I learned [00:21:00] very recently, and it is that sometimes integration can happen within a psychedelic experience, within a ceremony.
This is a really interesting one because the deeper your relationship with these plant allies gets ceremony and integration kind of start to become one, like I said, Integration becomes a lifestyle ceremony, also becomes a lifestyle.
And you take those pieces, those aspects of ceremony into your life and you take those aspects of integration into ceremony and yeah this one's a little hard to explain unless you've experienced it, but I guess the best way I can explain it is with an example, the first time that I experienced this happening was with my.
Three year anniversary with Ayahuasca which I talk about in episode [00:22:00] 44. And I had a very beautiful experience during the ceremony where essentially three years of medicine work, all just, who just came together through this visualization that I had and the person that I was in that visualization in the Ayahuasca experience was a version of myself that had fully integrated three years of medicine work.
Like everything that I learned was encapsulated in the energy that I showed up in, in that vision, and that was really beautiful because the message there was like, this is who you are now. This is who you are now. This is your life now. Like you already are this person. So acknowledge that you are this person.
Acknowledge that you are this version of yourself and go be it. Go be it. [00:23:00] It was like having to give myself really permission to like fully step into this version that had done a lot of deep work with Mama Aya for three years. I hope that example shows you how integration can take place within the experience.
So there you have it. Five things that you may not have known about integration. I hope that you enjoyed learning about these things. Definitely send me a message on Instagram or an email about any ways that this information has helped you. I absolutely love to hear from you guys and. And if you are feeling inspired to work with me as your coach, if you are on the psychedelic path and you would like to take this journey with me, definitely get in touch.
I'll leave the application for coaching in the show notes, and I wish you all very fruitful integrating talk to you in the next [00:24:00] episode
