Solitude: The most vital psychedelic integration practice.

I believe the most powerful healing and psychedelic Integration tool is - solitude.

Taking time in alone, devices off, with no distractions to truly listen is the only way the deeper layers of healing can happen.

9 months ago I found myself going into burnout- my nervous system was fried and my body said NO.

This was one of the most challenging things I’ve ever experienced.

Every day I would wake up and feel this sense of urgency and ask my guides if there was anything I needed to do that day- the answer was always “Rest. Release expectations of what ‘the work’ looks like and allow yourself to fully relax. This is the way towards your dreams”

It wouldn’t be long before I would ask again, habitually thinking surely Im supposed to be DOING something. Surely I’m supposed to be working on my IG or youtube. Isn’t action the way. And the answer would be the same.

Over the next 4 months of deep rest, I would slowly receive messages from my body asking me to reflect on moments in the past when I had pushed past my body’s request to slow down, not go on a trip or to a social gathering. I would tune into these moments and remember how ungrounded I felt and how I would just keep going. I was trying to keep up with other peoples expectations of me and I was slowly depleting my inner light.

I reflected on moments when I had been at social gatherings and had acted “weird” and I realized that what I had called social anxiety was actually just me staying in social gatherings past my capacity. Anytime I pushed past my capacity I would become a fragmented version of myself- not fully whole.

I would recharge in between these events but never enough to fully hear what was happening under the surface and stop the cycle. Eventually my body forced me into stillness long enough to fully Get it.

As each of these memories surfaced I would silently tell my body “You are safe now, I am no longer operating that way”- and every time I did this my vitality came back more and more.

This went on for months and when I was starting to feel a bit more like myself- I was called to sit in ceremony with Grandmother Ayahuasca. The medicine revealed to me the areas of my life that I was still leaking energy and the root cause of the burnout. She showed me that this was something that I had carried from the moment I was born and my mom held me in her arms. I could feel her nervous system was in survival mode. She showed me how my own nervous system translated this to mean that it wasn’t safe to fully relax, that I needed to stay in a state of hyper vigilance in order to survive. I began to understand that this was something I carried within my DNA from both sides of my family. This is why regulating my nervous system wasn’t as simple as having faith in the divine plan, doing yoga, somatic practices and creating a “soft life”- what was in my DNA needed months of stillness for me to fully feel and ultimately take responsibility for.

This process has given me so much compassion for myself for times when I felt like I wasn’t my best self. I now see how I was pouring from an empty cup and moments that others in my life weren’t either.

Doing this work is what has allowed me to rebuild my nervous system capacity from the ground up and reorganize my life around what my body truly needs, wants and the pace in which sustainable transformation can happen.

This process has also served to show me how under resourced I was when I began working with psychedelics. Psychedelics expanded my consciousness at a rapid rate and because of this I chose to make massive changes in my life. I changed careers, left my financial stability behind to follow my souls calling, moved to another country, got divorced, and watched friendships that I thought would last a lifetime end. All of this change was too much and too fast for someone who didn’t have the mental, emotional and financial resources to stay grounded amongst that much change.

This experience has taught me how to be a better medicine woman. I can now pour into my medicine space from a full cup and have implemented a second level of discernment to my application process to ensure that when someone enters my ceremony space that they are resourced enough to integrate the immense transformation that is possible.

Being resourced means to have like minded humans to lean on during your integration process-people who understand the ins and outs of integrating an ego death, the ability to take time off from work to properly let the medicine land without diluting it with outer responsibilities, the resources to hire support along the way, the ability to properly nourish and take care of the body, and a stable practice like journaling, meditation, breath work, or yoga to keep one in connection with self- and the most important resource is the awareness that true transformation doesn’t happen overnight. I believe all of these things must be in place in order for me to feel good about welcoming someone into a deep medicine journey where their perception of reality can shift overnight. One needs something stable to come back to in order for that shift to turn into something that benefits their human experience instead of destabilizing it.

There have been many moments along this journey that I have felt overwhelmed with about how challenging my own healing journey has been- but ultimately I feel so grateful, knowing it has all served to make me a better medicine woman. I learn through lived experience so that way I can be certain when I welcome someone down this journey that it will be a positive catalyst towards their highest timeline.