It is widely understood that psychedelic therapies can make significant impacts in neuroplasticity, creating lasting shifts in mood and habituated patterns. Whether you are seeking to understand yourself better, explore the nature of consciousness, or heal PTSD, depression, or anxiety, this can be exciting and hopeful news. In order to make the most of these powerful medicines, however, integration and preparation are key.

Please note, I do not offer plant medicine ceremonies or psychedelic therapy myself. Rather, I support clients who are either preparing for a session that they have arranged independently or are working to integrate an experience they have already had. This allows clients to get extra support before and/or after their medicine sessions. This can look like:

Before a Psychedelic Session: Your psychedelic experience will be most powerful if you’ve taken time to prepare, set a clear intention, and gained a level of comfort working in an altered state. If you’re new to psychedelics, your first experience can feel as though you’ve been dropped into a new country without a map. How do you navigate this entirely new type of experience? Together, we can support you to become more familiar with this new terrain and approach it with intentionality. This will allow you to embark on the journey ahead with greater clarity and comfort, and get the most benefit out of your experience.

After a Psychedelic Session: One of the great things about psychedelic experiences is their power. Often, clients feel as though they’ve been through years of therapy in just a handful of hours. New information, emotion, and insight may come to light for you, sometimes at a speed and volume that feels extremely hard to digest. Now that you’ve had these powerful experiences, how do you make sense of them? What does it look like to bring this new knowledge into your life and continued healing? Using Depth Hypnosis and Shamanic Counseling, we can revisit the experiences and issues that have emerged and support you to process and integrate them fully.

Depth Hypnosis: Depth Hypnosis is a powerful therapeutic modality created by Isa Gucciardi, PhD. and stands at the crossroads of Buddhism, shamanism, hypnotherapy, and transpersonal psychology. I am honored to offer Depth Hypnosis to clients worldwide over Zoom and phone. A spiritually-centered counseling form, Depth Hypnosis uses guided meditation and altered state work to help clients resolve issues quickly and deeply, connecting them to their own innate ability to heal and grow. Depth Hypnosis works on all levels: mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually. To learn more about classes and other offerings taught by Depth Hypnosis creator Isa Gucciardi, please visit the Foundation of the Sacred Stream website.

Shamanic Counseling: Applied Shamanic Counseling is a form of spiritual counseling that supports you to learn to use the shamanic journey as a tool for inquiry and healing. With my support, you will learn to enter an altered state (typically assisted by the sound of drumming), connect with a guide, and begin a powerful process of healing through the shamanic journey.

One of the things that I find most powerful about using Depth Hypnosis and Shamanic Counseling to support clients integrating psychedelic experiences is that we are going back into an altered, trance-like state to explore the material that has come up in the medicine session or ceremony. 

By doing altered state work, we get closer to the type of mental and emotional state that you had during your psychedelic experience. Clients find they are able to do deeper work, integrate with more ease, and make greater meaning from their experiences this way. In fact, studies have shown that shamanic journey work elicits many of the same insights a person might experience using a variety of psychedelics.

Broadly speaking, during a session with me, you can typically expect to spend time in inquiry and discussion around what you’d like to work on, and in a lightly altered state of consciousness brought on through various forms of guided meditation and hypnotherapy. 

Sessions may include hypnosis, regression, clearing of energetic or mindset blockages, work with dreams, shamanic journey practice, ancestral lineage work, plant medicine integration, and more. For each session, please be sure to be in a quiet place where you can close your eyes, lay down or sit comfortably, and relax without interruption.

First things first: Hypnosis is often very misunderstood. Most forms of hypnosis that we’ve seen, whether in movies or in real life, are examples of stage hypnosis. You know what this looks like: a hypnotist leads someone into a trance where they cluck like a chicken or become convinced they’re a pirate captain. This is definitely not what we’ll be doing!

Whether we’re working with Depth Hypnosis, Suggestion Hypnosis, or Shamanic Counseling, you’ll be guided into a gentle trance state through meditative techniques, shamanic drumming, or guided imagery and relaxation.

In this altered state, you might perceive things in a variety of ways – through your inner senses of sight, hearing, smell, touch, or an intuitive sense of “just knowing.” You’ll be supported to broaden your perception, deepen your intuition, and come to know new inner landscapes. For some, this experience is quite vivid and for others it is more subtle and strengthens with time and practice. Every person experiences the altered state a little differently, and the best way to understand it is to try it out for yourself.

You’ll also be in control and aware of your surroundings at all times. Often, clients describe this almost as if they are inhabiting two worlds at once. You may be laying on your couch, knowing you are at home, and also journeying into an imaginative and unique inner world at the same time. Working with me, you will be actively sharing your experience in the altered state and we will be working together to guide you to the appropriate inquiry and healing for your needs. You will always be capable of asking to be counted out of the trance state if you become uncomfortable.