“Spiritual intelligence is the capacity to conduct our life in such a way that it reflects deep philosophical and metaphysical understanding of reality and of ourselves discovered through personal experience during systematic spiritual pursuit.”
– Stanislov Grof
Safety and trust are imperative. Facilitation requires the ability to hold safe, compassionate, loving space for the duration of a participants medicine journey. Additionally, a facilitators primary responsibility is to create a warm and comfortable set and setting for the journeyer, and to possess a certain degree of intuitive intelligence with the ability to trust one’s instincts impeccably. It is imperative facilitators have extensive personal, lived experience with a wide variety of entheogens and medicines, both plant-based and synthetic. Experiential knowledge is key for attunement with the journeyer, the various stages, peaks and valleys they may travel in their journey, the ability to feel into the mystical and numinous realms, and to bare witness to the journeyer’s experiences.
Facilitation requires the ability to hold the ‘tension of opposites’, let go of the reins, and to allow the medicine to direct a participants individual journey. The adage ‘less is more’ holds true when facilitating medicine journeys. An effective and proficient facilitator understands this and is aware of soma’s ‘the body’ inner healing intelligence. Body, mind, psyche, and soul, have the capacity to heal inner conflict, wounding, and confusion given the right container, circumstances, and environment. Soma’s inner healing intelligence blossoms in safe, loving, nourishing, sacred, and contained environments.
Plants are analogous to the inner healing capacity of the body. Plants have an innate wisdom and intelligence. They know how to grow, thrive, and blossom all on their own if provided with a safe, nourishing environment. Much like plants, the body and mind posses their own inner healing energy and capacity and must be respected and nurtured as well.
Integration Process
Integration is a vital component of a medicine journey. Integration should be viewed as a sacred, immersive opportunity to be mindful, reflective, and to connect with one’s higher self and source ‘God’. The integration process is imperative for grounding journeyer’s through clarity and understanding, and to make meaning of a journeyer’s experiences, and the wisdom, knowledge imparted to the journeyer. Assisting journeyer’s in understanding the mystical and numinous is necessary for integration of participants medicine experience.
Integration of a entheogen/ psychedelic experience takes time and effort. It does not magically happen overnight. Entheogens “psychedelics’ tend to bring emotional and psychic content to the surface. Dr. Stanislav Grof describes psychedelics as, “non-specific amplifiers of mental/psychic processes,” which alludes to the conception psyche processes the most highly charged emotions within the body and mind.
This ‘psychic materia’ may have been repressed for months or years. And can be highly emotionally charged. Essentially, energy begins to move through the body, thus rising to the surface, during and after, an entheogen experience. As such we become more aware of what is going on around us and internally.
Plant medicines remind us of where we come from and who we are. We tend to forget who we are at times. In a sense it is a form of conscious amnesia. Entheogens tend to create space and open us up to our true story and remind us of who we really are.
Jung believed we had a personal responsibility to commit to inner growth for two purposes. First, to ascend to a higher level of consciousness, and secondly, to ascend unconscious psychic materia into the collective conscious. Jung believed body and minds inner healing capacity was imperative to the individuation and self-actualization process and to evolve from a psychological and spiritual perspective. Medicine journeys provide an opportunity to heal past trauma wounding, evolve and move into higher consciousness, and grow spiritually as humans.
Integration assists the journeyer to gain clarity around new insights, revelations, and potential shadow constructs being processed. Integration assists journeyer’s with understanding of archetypal imprints, and to validate the truth of their experience. Integration assists in letting go of undesirable programming, moving onto acceptance of the past, forgiveness of self and others, and to realize self-love. In essence, integration assists journeyer’s with psychic stabilization. Often integration can guide or direct clients on ways to create on-going self-care practices, which in turn assist in the self-actualization and individuation process.
Standard integration protocol suggests at least three integration sessions per medicine journey. However, an integration specialist should provide integration coaching for as long as the journeyer requires or feels it is beneficial to their integration process. The goal of integration is for the client/ journeyer/ participant to feel complete with their medicine journey experience.
Integration specialists should possess a strong background in trauma-informed practices and methods, a solid understanding of somatic, embodiment and breath work practices, and the ability to assist clients in making space for their ‘inner healing’ intelligence to emerge and flourish.
The integration process is about creating space and wholeness in various realms of life.
Integration Goals:
Entheogenic medicines allow psychic materia to rise into conscious awareness, which may, or may not, have been repressed in the unconscious domain. The medicine often reveals profound insights and truths regarding past trauma wounding, memories and events. The clarity and understanding received assists journeyer’s in processing and integrating adverse past experiences, which may have held them back from actualizing love, connection, touch and happiness at the deepest levels. Movement into self-acceptance, self-forgiveness and self-love can provide individuals with a newfound sense of peace and freedom.
ENTHEOGEN DISCLAIMER: Dr. Michael Hofrath does not provide psychoactive or controlled substances. Many controlled substances are illegal. The illegal use of a controlled substance may result in criminal consequences. Using controlled substances outside of the lawful supervision of a medical professional may also result in serious health complications including death. Please use your best discretion and consult with a medical professional to ensure entheogen medicines are right for you and conduct due diligence when seeking an entheogen facilitator or practitioner to work with.
Nothing contained on this website is intended to encourage the use of illegal substances. Given that psychedelics continue to be used illegally by people around the world, the educational information on this website encourages safe, sacred, and effective journeys with entheogens, if these powerful tools are to be used at all. Using entheogen is not without risk and can potentially produce extremely uncomfortable, frightening, confusing, painful, and psychologically destabilizing experiences.
While entheogens can be a valuable adjunct to the sincere analysis of one’s inner world and perceptual relationship to the outer world, they can also be a source of disorienting delusion, confusion, and psychological destabilization for those unfit, unequipped, or unprepared for such powerful experiences. Entheogen medicines/ substances can cause long-lasting changes to personality and cognition. Individuals can also possess undiagnosed genetic, developmental, neurological, endocrinological, or traumagenic conditions that negatively interact with the psychedelic chemical and experience.
Begin Your Journey
Access 3 Chapters of Dr. Hofrath’s Ebook
“The Healing Power of Somatic Body Psychology”
Heal the Body, Heal the Soul
What is it that makes human beings so susceptible to the devastating effects of trauma?
In this pioneering ebook you’ll learn how to process, integrate and dissipate adverse traumatic memories and heal your soul for balance and alignment in body mind and spirit.
Somatic science evolved from observing how animals overcome traumatic events. Animals have the uncanny ability to dissipate adverse over-reactivity, emotional flooding, fear based behavior, rumination, shame and guilt from their consciousness. Despite frequently facing life threatening situations, animals can quickly return to their normal way of being without holding on to traumatic memories.
