Services
Individual Sessions
1. Complementary meet and greet (20 minutes at Hidden Springs): This is an opportunity for us to meet and ensure that a psilocybin journey is a good fit for you. We will ensure there are no contraindications and begin to build trust and rapport.
2. Intake and Preparation (3.5 hours over 3 sessions): During the initial intake (1.5 hours at Hidden Springs) you’ll be invited to share some of your life story, family history, current situation, goals, intention to heal and anything else that draws you to explore your heart, mind and consciousness with psilocybin. We will elaborate the process of creating an intentional space that supports your inner exploration with compassion, awareness and care. We will answer any questions that might arise about the process. We will begin to explore your intention(s) for the session and have an honest conversation about setting realistic expectations for your journey. We will begin to discuss the optimal dosage of psilocybin for you: this is based on previous psychedelic experiences, sensitivity to substance and medicine, and comfort level/courage to intrepidly explore your inner world. Throughout the intake and preparation sessions we will continue to cultivate trust and rapport.
The first preparation session (1 hour) is at Omnia Group Ashland Service Center to allow your nervous system to calm and familiarize itself with the physical setting where your journey will take place. We will review the paperwork you’ve completed for the service center, including your transportation plan after the session, dosage and consent to therapeutic touch (hand holding, hand on the foot or shoulder). We will discuss what to eat before the psilocybin session, what to bring, and how to prepare for the time after the session is completed. We will discuss what music is optimal during your journey and discuss the importance of mindfully creating a space to which you will return after you “land”.
The second preparation session (1 hour) is held at Hidden Springs and we will continue to hone your intention and answer any questions before the day of your journey. If for any reason you don’t feel prepared for your journey, it is ok! We can have more preparation sessions as needed. There is no rush, healing has its own trajectory and we want you to feel prepared and trusting before your journey.
“Like all explorers, we are drawn to discover what is out there without knowing yet if we have the courage to face it.”
~ Pema Chodron
3. Psilocybin Administration (5-8 hours depending on dose): On the day of your journey we will meet at Omnia Group Ashland Service Center. We will set up your “nest”, arrange your intention table of meaningful items or photos, and address any parts of you that might be feeling nervous. Anticipation, excitement and nervousness are normal before a psilocybin journey, and we want to welcome “all parts of you” with radical acceptance, curiosity and compassion. We will revisit and re-state your intention(s), knowing that we hold intentions “open-handedly” with beginner’s mind. There will be a time to offer gratitude and appreciation to anyone in your family lineage, ancestors or guides, if you wish. After the session is complete and you have fully returned from your journey, we will have some time to process your experience, but because these journeys are often beyond words, there is no rush to prematurely describe them. When you feel complete, we will contact your pre-arranged ride home to pick you up.
4. Integration (1 hour): Integration follows the psilocybin administration session. Integration can be thought of as the process of incorporating all the aspects of your experience into the wholeness of your being. Transmuting altered states into altered traits. Integration involves taking the feelings, insights, epiphanies, “a-ha!” moments, and symbols from your journey and “landing” them in your daily life. (As the Buddhist author Jack Kornfield writes, “After the Ecstasy, …..then the Laundry!” Integration cultivates the possibility of living authentically in alignment with your deepest values. Personalized exercises and practices are explored to deepen your inner knowing, wisdom, and commitment to action.
“Of course, the drug does not produce the transcendent experience. It merely acts as a chemical key–it opens the mind and frees the nervous system of its ordinary patterns and structures. The nature of the experience depends almost entirely on set and setting. Set denotes the preparation of the individual, including their personality structure and their mood at the time. Setting is the weather, the room’s atmosphere; (trust for providers); and cultural–prevailing views as to what is real.”
~ Timothy Leary
Group Sessions
The shared experience of journeying in a group creates great potential for healing. For generations across time, across cultures, and across the world, healing has happened in communities, when we witness and are witnessed in this process and we begin to embody the sense that we are all connected in more ways than we ever dreamed. In a culture suffering from loneliness and perceived separation, group journeys offer a balm for this alienation. The psilocybin group experience induces an interconnected awareness that allows us to deeply connect with our Self, what is most meaningful, and, to each other.
During the medicine session, this is not group talk therapy although we are together in the same room each person is having their own experience with the medicine. Typically, everyone is wearing eyeshades and music is playing while at least two facilitators carefully watch over the group, providing support when needed, but mostly leaving participants to explore their own innate ability to heal themselves, with support from others. All is welcome in this space: laughing, crying, and complete silence, it is all ok and requires no explanation.
“Every experience of love nurtures us toward the story of inter-being, because it only fits into that story and defies the logic of separation.”
~ Charles Eisenstein
After each participant has fully “landed” from their journey, we will have time to share experiences of transcendence, of entering the depths of sorrow, of embodying joy and playfulness, and of connecting deeply with those around us. Following a group medicine session, we find that we are better able to do those things in our everyday lives: with our families, our friends, and our community. We bring these self-discoveries back to those we love, facilitating a deeper connection with others, and ourselves. And for those who feel they lack those relationships in their lives currently, practicing this kind of vulnerability opens the door of possibility that community is not only possible but accessible.
Connection often doesn’t just happen in the culture we currently live in, it’s not a given – it must be sought out and practiced. Journeying together in a group with a shared purpose gives each of us the opportunity to practice vulnerability and connection with others in ways we are not often afforded in our everyday lives.