Doing the Deep Dive
& Integrating your
Plant Medicine Journey
Ensure you have the tools and awareness to integrate your plant medicine journey (whether your experience felt expansive, destabilising, emotionally activating, or simply different from your familiar sense of self) into embodied wisdom.
The principles of Hakomi will give you the capacity to be in harmony with whatever has risen, and to deepen your connection with the living intelligence of Life.
Is This For You?
Psychedelic and plant medicine journeys can open the heart in ways that feel both beautiful and bewildering. After the ceremony comes the living — and this is where the edges appear.
You may encounter:
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a heart that suddenly feels too open
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old wounds rising to the surface, asking to be met
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a body that trembles with what it remembered
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a sense of being in-between selves — the old no longer fitting, the new not yet known
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insights that feel true, but fragile in the daylight of everyday routine
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a longing to return to the vastness, rather than stay with the realities of daily life
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a sense of being alone in the experience, unsure how to speak it aloud
None of this is failure.
It is the very shape of awakening in motion.
Integration is the slow weaving of insight into embodiment — breath by breath, sensation by sensation, step by step. Embodiment is one of the most important and healing dimensions of integration, especially after non-ordinary states.
If this resonates with you, know that support is here. Integration is where the medicine becomes lived, not remembered.​
It's about Coherence
The modalities of Hakomi Mindful Somatic Psychotherapy and Internal Family Systems are well placed to hold and contain your deep 'altered state' experiences (be it psychedelic-assisted, plant medicine or a spontaneous spiritual awakening) and to enable your human-ness to reshape in a coherent way with your new view on the world and your Self.
Ram Dass, in his book Paths to God, talks about our ability to receive the downloads of knowledge from the planes of higher consciousness.
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It's all very well receiving the download, says Ram Dass, but if the knowledge does not have a coherent respository within the mindbody, then it will become like a forgotten book in a dusty library.
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This knowledge will not turn into wisdom, and it is wisdom that makes the experience meaningful, and, dare I say, useful.
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So how do we do that?
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The new insight or felt experience needs to cohere with its environment - that is, the mindbody.
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The Hakomi method is specifically beneficial to enable our body and mind to send a unified signal, rather than mixed messages, and to bring that back to a meaningful, digestible morsel of knowledge, and transform it into wisdom. Without digestion, or assimilation, our experience can sit uneasily within us, creating internal conflict.
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So let's bite-size your experience, slow it, ground it, and listen to the wisdom that is ready to be embodied on your journey.
Together we can set the right conditions for this experience to bring long-lasting beneficial change in your life and to the wider collective.
Coherence & Embodiment
# Body Wisdom
This is about connection to Self and becoming clear about the signals your body is sending you.
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After a big experience, our mind can make little sense of what just happened, especially if our nervous system has set off an alarm or warming of some sort, then we're left wondering what on earth we have ... unearthed??!!
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We might respond by focusing on positivity and demanding peace and ease and 'everything's alright', but clearly, something is getting activated, and without a clear appreciation of this signal, we can become more anxious, more avoidant of new experiences.
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When the tide has shifted.
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Psychedelic journeys can strongly impact the nervous system, so integration is also about helping to re-regulate the nervous system post-experience.
If you are in a fragile post-journey state, we can start with grounding, resourcing and turning our attention towards what is naturally self-soothing in order to reassure your nervous system.
Alongside that, there is some deeper work.
Perhaps a greater sensitivity has woken up.
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Perhaps a door to your psychic basement has opened up where a deeper layer of your unconscious has come forward.
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The journey-work has shifted the game. What was tolerable before is now no longer.
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That's an interesting place to land hey.
One part of the big puzzle is to acknowledge the body-story. Not to rehash or indulge, but rather to give our felt sense the honesty and time s/he needs to feel and make sense of the experience.
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Typically sense-making happens at the level of mind, but our deepest and truest wisdom is held and known in the body.
In our hakomi sessions, I will guide us towards our present moment awareness of body and become curious about what's being held there, as well as what is wanting to be let go of.
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We allow for shaking, tremors, movement, and also the more subtle practice of studying our impulses and habituated gestures and posture. It's all there, revealing what is tender and true beneath.
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We learn how to connect to Self through our present moment and body awareness to find the coherence of truth, wisdom and the healing impulse within.​
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Are you ready?
Book a 1:1 integration session or schedule a free discovery call using the button below.
Coherence & Connection
# Interbeingness
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We have spoken about Self-connection, but what about the more synergistic connection of interbeingness?
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We can explore this from multiple dimensions, the inter-being-ness of ...
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our parts (the internal constellations that makes up our psyche; see Internal family system below)
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our family constellations
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our society/culture/nationhood and collective consciousness
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our shared humanity and spiritual evolution
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our earth/gaian consciousness
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our cosmos and expanded consciousness
In our Hakomi sessions, all of these dimensions can be present in the field, and with present-moment awareness, we attune to what is arising now for healing, governed by our own personal predicament, as felt in our mindbody experience.
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As we heal our own small part within the whole, we create synergistic health for the whole.
In a Hakomi session we create space for...
# Internal Family Systems
Internal Family Systems is increasingly recognised within psychedelic medicine as one of the preferred modalities to help heal and restructure the psyche.
Plant medicine and IFS are an exceptionally powerful combination that allows us to explore and integrate all the fractured Parts of our identity; our Managers, our Protectors, our Exiled parts, and to facilitate the opportunity to support these parts in returning to relationship with Self.
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In order to survive or adapt to stressors and traumas in our life, we created adaptive parts that were able to manage our experiences early on in life.
As we facilitate communication between our Parts, hearing their story and the role they have played, we are better able to invite them home and integrate them back within our core Self.
My role is to support this flow of reconciliation and reclamation.
Working as a guide, I can support your process of navigating confusion, overwhelm, or meaning-drift.
Coherence & Integration
What is integration?
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Integration is when we return to a known community that recognises and understands that we have become a different person because of the separation and the ordeal.
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~ Michael Meade​
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A Hakomi integration session
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Integration is not just “making sense,” but caring for the impact in our life, nervous system, and ongoing path. It is the practice of bringing insights, emotions, and somatic energies from our psychedelic journey into our daily life—so the medicine doesn’t just stay in the experience, but becomes a living part of our on-going existence.
Before integration can happen, creating safety and an alliance with our polarised parts and our unconscious is foundational. How long this takes depends on the individual, as attachments to the trauma, and the depth of one's spiritual practice are indicators of how fast and far we can go in a session.
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An integration session might look at exploring where your behaviour with your values feel incongruent. In Hakomi we use an embodied enquiry approach into the following questions...
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What is it like to look through these new eyes at the world?
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What in your life are you finding difficult now?
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What would your life look like to be more congruent with your values?
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What Needs have more value now?
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What needs attending to now?​
Coherence & the
Hero's Journey
Integration & the Hero's Journey
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In The Hero's Journey, Joseph Campbell talks about the initiatory experience. It is a rite of passage with ritual and ceremony. The stages of the Hero's Journey are...
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First stage is Separation.
Second stage is the Ordeal. Or the Challenge.
Third stage is to Return.
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These stages are common to us all, however, most of us in today's society are carrying wounds like unprocessed initiatory experiences, lacking ceremony and context.
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Trauma is like that. In terms of how the nervous system responds, trauma is an initiatory experience for a person, perpetrated at the wrong place, at the wrong time by the wrong person.
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No doubt, you have had an initiatory experience. In lieu of ceremony and context, these experiences will keep happening as the psyche wants to transform. There is an innate movement within us towards wholeness. And so we keep going through separation experiences until we find a separation that unifies.
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Integration is about ensuring the Third Stage is attended to, and in this way, the Hero can integrate into his or her psyche the 'new information', and contribute that knowingness back into their community.
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Coming Home
As on-going support, and complementary to the container we are holding together for your integration, you may also like to consider attending or fostering a safe sacred sharing circle space with trusted friends. In this way, you are being witnessed in your growth, and held accountable by your peers in how you wish to show up for your self and others.
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The integration piece is about building our capacity to reside in this new state of being while also being in engagement with the world around us.​​​​
Important information​
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Not everyone’s journey looks the same; you may integrate smoothly or you may need more time, support, or community.
If you experience prolonged distress, intrusive thoughts, or destabilisation, it may be helpful to work with a mental health professional in addition to integration work. My offering does not replace psychiatric or clinical care when that is needed.
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Disclaimer
The content on this page, and the integration support I offer, are intended for informational, educational, and therapeutic purposes. They are not a substitute for medical, psychiatric, or crisis care.
If you are experiencing acute distress, suicidal thoughts, or a mental health emergency, please contact your GP, call 1737 (Need to Talk?), or seek immediate help through local emergency services.
My integration support is based on my training in somatic psychotherapy (Hakomi) and is designed to help you process, make sense of, and embody your experiences. I do not provide psychedelic facilitation, prescribe or supply any substances, or guarantee any particular outcome from psychedelic experiences.
Any decisions regarding psychedelic use, medical or psychiatric treatment, or changes to your wellbeing plan should be made in consultation with qualified healthcare professionals. This is especially important if you have a history of mental health conditions, are taking prescribed medications, or are under the care of a mental health provider.
By engaging in integration work with me, you acknowledge that psychedelic and plant-medicine experiences may involve psychological, emotional, legal, and physical risks. You take full responsibility for your own choices and understand that integration is a gradual process rather than a guarantee of specific outcomes.
Confidentiality
All information you share with me in the context of therapeutic support is treated as confidential and is protected under the Privacy Act 2020 and the Health Information Privacy Code in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Your personal information will not be shared with anyone else unless:
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you give explicit written consent,
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I am legally required to release information (for example, a court order), or
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there is a serious and immediate risk of harm to yourself or others, in which case I may need to contact appropriate services to ensure safety.
I store session notes and personal information securely, and you are entitled to access or request correction of your information at any time, in accordance with NZ privacy law.
