Psychedelic Assisted Therapy and Entheogenic rituals are very popular right now. Acupuncture, Body-Centered Life Coaching, and Traditional Mexican Medicine each offer support for Psychedelic Integration in their own ways. In this article, you’ll learn more about how three different healing modalities can help you with your integration.

Acupuncture

“Because acupuncture and psychedelics are holistic therapies that help the individual gain awareness of the connection between the mind, body, and emotions, they are ideally suited to promoting mindfulness and awareness of oneself on a deeper level.” - Nicole McCray, Psychedelics and Acupuncture in Tandem.

Stress
Anxiety
Life Transitions
Depression
Pain
Grief
PTSD

These are just some of the reasons people turn to Psychedelic Medicine, also called Entheogens. They are also reasons people come to see me for acupuncture. The combination of the two can be very powerful to help with integration of psychedelic medicine. In my practice, I offer acupuncture alchemy sessions for people before and after psychedelic rituals or therapy sessions.

I can not provide my patients with any psychedelic substances to take, nor can I direct on where you might find such substances. My acupuncture alchemy sessions do not take place during the patient’s psychedelic ritual or experience. Instead, they are meant to focus your intentions before a psychedelic medicine experience, or to recenter yourself and explore your emotions after your experience is finished.

In an acupuncture alchemy session, we’ll first discuss your intention for your psychedelic session or ritual, which you may have already thought about or discussed with a therapist. What do you want to manifest? What do you want to change in your life? What do you want to discover?

Each acupuncture session is tailored to your intention. Sometimes I will explain the actions of the acupuncture points as I insert the needles. Patients have told me acupuncture helps their psychedelic medicine experience go more smoothly, and they experience the effects of the medicine more quickly. Most of my patients find acupuncture before and after psychedelic medicine helps to integrate the experience into their daily lives afterwards.

Body-Centered Life Coaching

Like my acupuncture alchemy sessions, Kate's Body-Centered Life Coaching does not deal with guiding patients during their psychedelic medicine experience. Instead, Kate meets with clients before and after their psychedelic experiences to help them integrate their journey. Sometimes she will look at a client’s birth chart before their journey to see what the current transits are and discuss them from an archetypal astrology perspective. One of her clients applied this information to the intention for his journey.

After a journey, her work begins with the client’s journaling of the images they saw during the journey. Working with the principles of sensory-motor psychotherapy, Kate and her clients explore “where the image arises, then you turn the page and find, okay, now where, what do you notice as you tell me about that image and experience what's happening in your body? And then the body is always going to signal through sensation . . . it's in service to that, to be grounded, to let it take up practical resonance, residence and resonance in the body.”

Traditional Mexican Medicine

While Kate and I work with people before and after psychedelic experiences, Krystal Brisette Vélez-Gómez-Edwards works with people for the whole journey. Krystal is a traditional Mexican medicine keeper and psychedelic ceremonialist. She says her role “is to hold sacred space for those participating in psychedelic healing. I guide individuals through their journeys, providing support before, during, and after ceremonies to ensure they are spiritually, mentally, and emotionally prepared and guided.”

Krystal says her work is deeply rooted in her Mexicana lineage. “I honor the ancestral traditions that have been passed down through generations. My calling in this field is to offer this ancient wisdom and facilitate healing through non-typical states of consciousness.

Integration

“If one’s intention is the seed of what they are calling into their life, and a journey is the ritual that opens that seed into a sprout, then integration is nourishment that helps it grow healthy, far-reaching roots into the Earth. If you do not commit to tending the living, evolving process that is your life, no one will. When we commit to the process of integration, we honor the transformation that has occurred.” - Françoise Bourzat, Consciousness Medicine

I wrote an article many years ago about the let-down period after an amazing event in our lives, and that can be applied to psychedelic medicine experiences. Sometimes it’s called ‘Con Drop’ and in alchemical terms, it’s called ‘Nigredo.’ This dark time of nigredo is essential to integrating these experiences into our daily lives. Read more in my Connunctio and Con Drop article.

“In a sense, it is simply to 'bring here, what you experienced there.' Although sometimes the journey can seem dark or unusual, there is always a message and a lesson to integrate into your human experience here.” - Krystal Brisette Vélez-Gómez-Edwards

Krystal explains that the integration work she does “most often includes one-on-one discussions, reflection practices, and creating personalized healing plans, inclusive of many modalities like breathwork, journaling, energetic cleansings, prayer, etc.. The intention is to ensure that the profound mind and spirit expansions are embodied in a way that leads to long-term growth and healing.”

In addition to working with Krystal, Kate, or myself, you might find any combination of these as part of your integration process: meditation, walking, dancing, making art, singing, psychotherapy, and doing yoga.

Honor Sacred Cultures and traditions

“It’s important that as we work with these powerful tools, we do so in a way that respects and supports the people and the lands from which they originate.” - Krystal Brisette Vélez-Gómez-Edwards

If you are partaking in psychedelic medicine, how did that medicine get to you? Have you thanked the people who cultivated the medicine? Have you thanked the plant or animal itself?

Krystal says “When it comes to honoring the traditions of these medicines, it’s crucial we acknowledge their origins and the cultures that have safeguarded them for centuries. These practices come from Indigenous communities that hold sacred knowledge of how to work with the medicines responsibly and properly. There’s a growing concern about cultural appropriation and the commercialization of these sacred practices without giving back to the communities they come from.”

Kate adds “In terms of LSD, ketamine, to be mindful that there are spirits associated with what has been synthesized in a laboratory and to just in the simplest way acknowledge to ask to be guided wisely and to acknowledge that they're present.”

An entheogenic medicine experience doesn’t start and end on the day of your journey. Preparation, finding resources, honoring the medicine, and integration of your experience are also key. Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, Krystal, Kate, and I can help you work through the emotional and spiritual elements of your journey. You’ll find trusted resources and articles below. Check out the Psychedelic Support Network for practitioners in your area.

Resources

Krystal Brisette Vélez-Gómez-Edwards: https://www.curatecorazon.org/

and https://www.thecurandera.com/

Kate Jones, Body-Centered Life Coach: https://www.katejonescoach.com/

and another interview I did with her here:

https://www.cicutoacupuncture.com/new-blog/2019/9/10/embodied-grace-an-interview-with-kate-jones

https://psychedelic.support/resources/psychedelics-and-acupuncture/

https://psychedelic.support/network/denise-cicuto-lac/

https://psychedelic.support/resources/psychedelics-and-acupuncture/

https://francoisebourzat.com/book/

https://lauranorthruppsychotherapy.com/integration-therapy

https://www.lauramaenorthrup.com/inside-eyes-podcast

https://www.sapiens.org/culture/medicinal-psychedelics-indigenous/

https://rickyfishman.com/2023/04/11/ego-and-entheogens-in-a-world-gone-mad/

https://rickyfishman.com/2022/03/04/bufo-alvarius-and-the-entheogenic-revolution/

https://psychedelics.berkeley.edu/religion-spirituality/

Note: The paintings are by Danielle Razik, from hir three dragon series. You can learn more about hir in an interview here: https://www.cicutoacupuncture.com/new-blog/2019/8/17/healing-through-art-therapy-an-interview-with-danielle-razik

Alternative Medicine support for Psychedelic integration