Psychedelic Integration

integration

Notes on a Personal Practice

In my youth, psychedelics were a touchstone of expanded experiences and possibilities; I was homesick for something I couldn’t name, couldn’t describe, but which carried a sense of loss, a forgetfulness. Psychedelics offered tantalizing reminders that something had been taken. Stolen, even. Lucid dreams, OBEs, meditation, liminal awakenings periodically rekindled this longing for reconnection.

Currently, I’ve returned to psychedelics, not as reminders but as a practice for awakening. This involves integration both ways. Integrating psychedelic realizations into daily life and integrating practices of daily life for delving into psychedelic realizations more profoundly and capably.

What follows is less a guide than a rough inventory; tools and frameworks I’ve reached for, named here more as waypoints than explanations. Each deserves its own exploration, and I may return to them in more depth in future posts. For now, consider this a glimpse at the workbench.

Models and Tools - Laundry List

  • The psychedelic experience can reliably map onto stages. Stanislav Grof created one of the best maps for this territory with over a thousand LSD sessions with subjects. His map helps understand, especially, the somatic weight, “body load”, that often hits hard at the beginning of an intense trip. His theory is that the birth experience is our most profound memory in life, coming into this existence (again) for the first time.

    It starts with oceanic oneness in the womb, progressing to the duress of labor, a fundamental sense of “wrongness” in paradise, extreme pressure, trying to escape, chaos and finally dramatic expulsion and opening into a bright new reality exploding with new perceptions.

    A usual progression in psychedelics re-energizes these deep memories, usually starting from stage 2: something is wrong. Progressing through struggle, chaos, fear we’re dying and emergent, amazing new experiences and insights. Sometimes we get lucky and hit the first stage of oceanic oneness right away, but usually that comes after the other stages are mitigated.

  • The Body Keeps Score. This book title nails it. Psychedelics highlight, viscerally, our somatic blockages. Memories perhaps and energies stashed and stuck in our physical bodies. As if we are trying to lock away aspects of being we’re not ready to confront or resolve.

  • Release is a learned skill. It’s more than relaxing, although the ability to relax completely is a good barometer of how well we’ve mastered the arts of release. As important as this skill is, it’s not something we’re typically taught. We have to discover, self-educate, find resonant sources to unlock this ability.

  • The Sedona Method is one of these unlocking tools. I knew of it, along with a slew of other new agey approaches, but it regained renewed relevance when I started working with releasing the energies highlighted in stage 2 of Grof. Its strengths are its simplicity and the fact it’s not an intellectual process, like some other approaches (e.g. ACT, CBT.) It’s also a powerful mindfulness process without being disassociating.

    In essence it’s radical acceptance: this feeling, right now, can I allow it to be here? Earnestly. Not in order to get rid of it by “accepting it.” But as in, can I just sit here with this without trying to run away from it, avoid it, distract myself from it…just be present with it? But the method takes it further by simply asking some questions. “Can I let this go?”, “Would I let it go?” Because sometimes, even if it’s a feeling we don’t like, we don’t want to let it go. It is serving some purpose. And the map of the Sedona Method identifies these purposes as falling to three realms: needs for approval, control or security/fear of death. And we can work with the fundamental drivers of our moods and states of mind with this simple, clearing process.

    Not only are there opportunities to do this in our daily life but these challenges can be particularly accentuated in psychedelic states. And the practice carries both directions. Releasing in states of high plasticity in psychedelics is a force multiplier in mastering this skill in daily life. And practice in daily life prepares our “set” for whatever arises in our psychedelic sessions.

  • Internal Family Systems richly complements the Sedona Method. Many times these somatic blockages just appear to be imprints, burdens the body is carrying but sometimes these burdens are carried by parts of ourselves that have reasons. With particularly sticky blocks it can be useful to dialog.

    This system also is a pragmatic mindfulness practice. Just as the Sedona Method can help dis-entangle awareness from somatic suffering and be present “with” the suffering rather than identifying “as” the suffering, so IFS can allow us to understand how a part of ourselves is working against us without “blending” with or identifying as that part. This provides a neccesary distance to understand what a part of ourself is trying to do while also providing a stable Self that allows the part to unburden.

    Sedona Method helps navigate our energies, IFS helps manage our daemons. Both approach this by retaining our “seat” in awareness. And both practices are reinforced and mastered more quickly in states of plasticity (even microdosing) and practiced more effectively in daily life giving even better footholds navigating challenges evoked in altered states. The only thing carried with us between the two is awareness/presence. The models and tools are just ways of directing attention to skillfully invoke this consistently.

  • Somatic techniques. A handful of methods have tactical applications in soothing sympathetic nervous system responses and are useful in learning how to relax and reduce this fight/flight tone we’ve habituated to. Humming sets up vibrations in the body that work in powerful ways and has a long history of application, breathing patterns: 5:5, 4:6, longer exhales or box breathing helps reset the vagus nerve and improves HRV resilience. Stretches and Yoga smooth the fascia and often feel incredible in harmonizing the often chaotic energy releases and can happen spontaneously. Posture, especially keeping arms and legs uncrossed and symmetrical helps open to energy and flows whereas crossing may indicate subtle ego and protective boundary orientations.

  • Gateway and Focus States. This is the Robert Monroe Gateway system in the form of audio tracks with binaural beats. I’ve been using these for years and their utility is enhanced with psychedelic meditation. These are tools for “shaping” awareness, from Focus 10, which is releasing awareness completely from the body and physical, to Focus 12 which is expanding awareness to Focus 15 a state of no-time. These become even more realized locales and accessable states when trained in with plasticity and offer deeper accessibility in daily life where they can be tapped for what Roberts refers to as “high-value ideas” in The Psychedelic Future of the Mind.

  • Non-Dualism appears to be where most of this is headed. Psychedelic meditation and journeys hammer the release of clinging to blockages, identities, core beliefs and conditioning and simple presence and awareness starts becoming more luminous in all states of mind and situations. And touching bases periodically with non-dualism and ego-loss experientially rather than intellectually and theoretically provides concrete calibration for the compass home. It feels right.

The Practice

  • I use 5-meo-dmt in conjunction with meditation, titrating up in increments to whatever level I feel capable and called to work on during the session, which lasts from 30 minutes to and hour and half.
  • Once every few weeks, I will immerse in a high dose of psilocybin mushrooms or LSD for a more intensive practice.
  • During the week I practice meditation and yoga daily, work with the releasing and somatic techniques as part of my daily flow and also cultivate good sleep hygiene for resilience and lucid dreaming.

I thought I would capture this “you are here” moment in my journal. It represents a life stage where psychedelics have become part of my discipline with a very specific intent. I think psychedelics are powerful, spiritual tools and their potential is vastly unrealized when used just for recreation or a passive consumer type “here we are now, entertain us” with flexes of hedonic tourism.

Resources

23 Feb 2026
Tools, Meditation, Psychedelic, Psychology
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