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Private Practice Startup Podcast
Episode 359: Psychedelics 101: Promoting Healing & Reducing Harm in the Psychedelic Space
00:41:55
Kallie England
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- [00:02]
Unknown Host
Welcome to the Private Practice Startup Podcast where we help mental health professionals grow their dream practices and live a life they love. We chat with successful private practitioners, business coaches and marketing experts bringing you tons of practice building tips. We invite you to take advantage of our private practice paperwork and our signature marketing E course and we have a gift for you. This is the exact methodology we use to create our six figure private pay practices have helped many other therapists do the same. Go to private practicestartup.com and on the homepage click the button to download a free copy of your dream private practice playbook. Now on to today's episode.
- [00:42]
Kate
Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Private Practice Startup Podcast. We hope you are doing well today. I'm excited for today's topic because this is a topic that's emerging in the mental health field and a topic that we have not had on at all. So kind of doing a part one and part two of this topic today. So before we get to that, I hope that you joined us last week if you have ever wanted to do a masterclass. Kate and I have been presenting for many years through the Private Practice Startup and I really love doing masterclasses. We host probably one every other month and we're going to give you our blueprint on the podcast we did last week on how we run an effective masterclass. So if you just want to polish your masterclass, if you want to learn how to do one, definitely check out that podcast and share it with a fellow colleague. So today we're diving into the world of psychedelics in the world of therapy. So today's topic is going to be psychedelics 101 promoting healing and reducing harm in the psychedelic space. And our guest is Callie England. So Callie is a LMSW is a nature based experiential therapist, yogi, occasionally successful gardener, psychedelic expert, soul tender and facilitator from Ann Arbor, Michigan. She teaches adventure and experiential therapy at the University of Michigan School of Social Work. C founded Akasha Wellness, a holistic experiential psychotherapy practice. Great Lakes Adventure Therapist, a fun loving professional group and co founded the Adventure Therapy program at University of Michigan Adventure Leadership. Her deepest love is creating safe sacred space where deep transformation can occur. Welcome Cali.
- [02:22]
Callie England
Hi, it's nice to be here. Thank you for having me.
- [02:25]
Unknown Co-Host
It's great to have you here. Yeah, we're really excited for this topic because it is a newer niche in the mental health profession and this is really your expertise. So tell us a little bit about your journey in becoming a therapist and how you became passionate about the psychedelic space.
- [02:44]
Kate
And before we dive in, let's just take a quick moment for our sponsors. Sorry, guys. If you've decided to accept insurance as part of your private practice business model, you likely have some questions ranging from how do I know what to build? To why is this claim not processing? Practice Solutions is here to help you answer those questions. You can find a ton of resources on their blog or join hundreds of mental health providers and hiring Practice Solutions expert billing team to manage your insurance billing. They've assembled some of the best billers in the US to manage your eligibility checks, Claim submissions, follow up on denial management. And to maximize your insurance reimbursement and improve your cash flow, they now also offer solutions for private pay billing, including management of digital and physical statements, payment collections and posting, and client aging reporting. You can spend less time billing and more time caring for your clients and growing your practice. With Practice Solutions, they're offering private practice startup listeners a free consultation as well as 15% off the first three months of billing. Visit practice sol.com startup nation and schedule an appointment. That's practice sol.com startup nation. Back to you, Kelly.
- [04:08]
Callie England
Yeah, so, you know, the way I got into psychedelic work and the way I got into therapy are actually kind of the same origin story. So I used to live in pretty severe chronic pain. I had chronic migraines pretty much all through my 20s for about a decade, and I was having 28 pain days per month. And I was trying everything. You know, obviously, like once you are experiencing that much discomfort and distress, you're trying everything to help yourself. So in my professional world, I was trying like different jobs, different roles, trying to find, you know, a setting that felt better to me, that was lower stress, more authentic. And then in the healing realms, you know, I tried everything Western medicine had to offer and nothing really worked. So I started getting a little bit more esoteric. Acupuncture, you know, Chinese medicine, things like that. And kind of the breakthrough happened for me when I discovered yoga and plant medicines. And I met somebody at a yoga retreat who said, I think you need ayahuasca. And I was like, what is that? I had never heard of this. I was super straight edge, had never tried any drugs. I barely drank alcohol. So this was like a shocking idea to me and I was desperate. So I'm like, okay, okay, like, I trust you, you know, he became a very good friend. Like, I trust you. If you think this might help me, sure, I'll check it out. And so long Story short, like, it took a while to find ayahuasca. It's not something that you can just go down to, you know, your corner store or your friendly neighborhood pharmacy and find. And also there's legal issues around it. So there you kind of have to know somebody at. And this was maybe 10 years ago. So even really back then, it was much more secretive. You really had to know somebody. And so it took a long time to find somebody who knew somebody. And even then, you know, it's a little scary. You're like, who is this strange person that I found through a friend of a friend of a friend? So I did some pretty extensive vetting before, you know, entrusting myself to this experience. And I had the most transformational experience of my entire life. I went from 28 head pain days a month to two nights of ceremony. And after that, I was pain free for nine days. And then I settled back into a rhythm of about 15 pain days per month. And then several months later, I did another ayahuasca ceremony and settled into a pattern of maybe like four pain days a month. And it's gotten better and better since then. So it's kind of easy to see how I became such a convert. Like, I became a pretty big psychedelic proselytizer. And, you know, it was so far outside my wheelhouse. You know, my friends and family were shocked. And, you know, my parents, like, you know, love and care about me. And so they're like, what. What happened? What finally worked? I'm like, well, psychedelics. And they were baffled. I was baffled. Everyone was baffled. But it. It's my miracle story.
- [07:23]
Kate
Wow.
- [07:25]
Callie England
Yeah. And that's the short version. But I think the most important part of that story is knowing that you can't just, you know, do some psychedelics, and that fixes everything. You have to approach it in a way where you are a student and the psychedelics experience is there to teach you and give you a lot of homework, and then you have to actually go do the homework and apply those changes in your daily life. So I made radical lifestyle changes, and that's what really made my healing, like, stick. You know, I was pain free for nine days, probably because of the psychedelic medicine itself, you know, and the mechanism of action it has in the brain and the nervous system. But that wouldn't have lasted if I hadn't actually followed the instructions that I received from the ceremony and actually made major lifestyle changes. And, you know, I had been open to doing those lifestyle changes before. I just didn't know what they were and so the psychedelic experience helped me understand what it was that I needed to do.
- [08:23]
Kate
Can you talk a little bit about that and give us a little bit more insight?
- [08:27]
Callie England
Sure. I mean, for me, and this is different for everybody. So, like, my personal story, the way it shook out was I was shown what my relationship with my body was and how it was not helpful. And my body and my mind, we were not on the same team. And so it was actually really sweet. The vision I got. I had a beloved therapy dog at the time, and the medicine showed me that the my two legs had turned into two dogs to of my little doggies. And it to me was crystal clear, like, oh, I need to take care of my body with the same love that I take care of my dog. Like, I don't expect him to do the right thing all the time. I know that he has instincts and urges that aren't always in his best interest. And I know that it's my responsibility to, you know, feed him quality food and walk him and, you know, all the things we do for our beloved animals. And I realized I was giving my dog more love and care than I was giving my own body. And, you know, I don't think I'm unique in that. I think that's such a phenomenon, particularly in Western society, where we're not taught to consider ourselves as animals that need tending and love and care.
- [09:38]
Unknown Co-Host
Wow, that's so cool to hear about your experience. I appreciate you sharing that with us and tell us a little bit about, like, the timeline of when you started to expand your practice into this area with offering psychedelic services to your clients.
- [09:54]
Callie England
Yeah, so I had that profound psychedelic experience three months before I started grad school. So I had the psychedelic experience first. And I had already intended to, you know, go to social work school with the goal of becoming a therapist. And it became really clear that I wanted to become a chronic pain therapist to help other people. You know, a lot of us have this origin story. We all want to help people with what we have dealt with. And so for the first, you know, lot for a long time, these were very separate avenues of my life. I was going to, you know, at a standard social work school. I went to the University of Michigan. So, you know, very academic focused, very theoretically focused. And I was learning all of the, you know, Western nuts and bolts of therapy. And after I graduated from that program, I worked at a chronic head pain clinic for a couple years. And so I really honed my craft with our Western approaches to therapy. And then meanwhile, I was studying plant Medicine just in my personal life and deepening in that practice. And so that's kind of one of the first things that I want to highlight is the critical importance of learning both. If you're going to come into this work as a therapist, you need to have a deep, deep understanding of standard therapy and all the different modalities of your craft. And you need to have a separate understanding of psychedelics and their mechanism of action and how they impact the body and the mind. And these two things work really well together. But I think the, the thing that I'm most concerned about in this current psychedelic boom is how people are shortcutting some of that and just jumping into psychedelic assisted therapy right away. Yeah, I was studying these two things, you know, separately and, you know, working hard to learn everything I could about chronic pain therapy and then studying plant medicine on my. And it wasn't until, let's see, 2020 that I started combining them and doing psychedelic assisted therapy. So I had been studying psychedelics for seven years already. I'd been, you know, in graduate school and practicing as a therapist for seven years already before I felt confident and competent to bring them together.
- [12:13]
Unknown Co-Host
And what do you recommend for therapists as far as trainings go? Are there certifications? How would you get trained to be able to skilled enough and experienced enough to offer psychedelic assisted counseling?
- [12:27]
Callie England
Well, it's kind of the wild west out there right now. Early stages. Early stages, yeah. So a bunch of trainings have popped up and of varying quality. And so this is what scares me a little bit is I see, you know, quote unquote certifications that pop up that are like a weekend online program. And now you too are certified, right? Yeah, that's really scary to me. And I see a lot of young practitioners, you know, social work students, maybe limited license practitioners who are really passionate about this modality and starting out their practice with psychedelic assisted. And you know, I applaud and admire their enthusiasm, but, you know, I'm concerned that they haven't really built this foundational skills yet in either arena. So, you know, do your due diligence. You know, I wouldn't trust a short program. I would say that you need at least a one year minimum program and those are out there. And it also kind of depends on how you want to go at it. Like do you want to do psychedelic assisted therapy or do you want to practice psychedelic healing from a traditional or more indigenous approach? And this is also where it's, you know, kind of the wild west and there's pros and cons of legalization. There have been, you know, indigenous or indigenous trained facilitators holding healing ceremonies for millennia. And as legalization in some jurisdictions has come forward, that's come with like, certification requirements. And often these, you know, practitioners of lineage and tradition are shut out of these certification requirements because they don't have mental health degrees. And so, you know, this is one of those sticky, tricky things like, do we want certification, do we want oversight? Do we want, you know, a body of experts kind of to be a reference point to set some standards and make sure that we're all doing a really good job? Yes, of course. Absolutely. That's how we protect clients. And do we want to use, you know, this indigenous and folk wisdom that has been around for thousands upon thousands of years? Like, yes, of course it would be foolish to not take advantage of that resource and the, you know, millennia of wisdom. So how can we find a middle ground where we're respecting the tradition, we're not culturally appropriating from that tradition. And we're also doing our due diligence within the community to make sure that psychedelic practitioners are, you know, holding some standards of safety and care.
- [15:14]
Kate
Yeah, Very, very important. Let's just take a quick moment for our sponsor.
- [15:21]
Unknown Co-Host
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- [16:36]
Kate
Trying to navigate all the things as a therapist is hard, especially when you're trying to stay focused on the most important thing, your clients. Of course, that's why TherapyNotes makes billing, schedule, scheduling, note taking and telehealth incredibly easy. Also for all you prescribers out there, Therapy Notes is proudly offering e prescribed services. One of the things that I love about Therapy Notes is that they really have the clinician in mind. Working with a company like Therapy Notes helps streamline the back end of your business. If you're a busy therapist, good quality support is essential. That's why Therapy Notes has telephone support seven days a week. No wonder why they're the number one top rated EHR and why more than a hundred thousand therapists trust them. Therapy Notes is offering two months of their EHR absolutely free, no strings attached. So go to therapynotes.com and enter the code PPS. That's therapynotes.com and enter the Code PPS. So on the flip side, Cali, being a client, what would you advise someone to like, how do they go about finding the right therapist, you know, for this process? What are some red flags or what are some things that they should look out for?
- [17:54]
Callie England
Yeah. So I would recommend any potential client to not be shy about asking as many questions as you need. You know, I think often clients who are seeking therapists are intimidated. You know, we therapists are the ones with the credentials and the letters behind our names. And clients don't always speak that language. And so often they'll just, you know, go with the first person who feels remotely friendly or comfortable to them. And, you know, when you're considering taking a psychedelic journey, that's a profoundly vulnerable space. Like, you are very, very open to suggestion. So I would encourage anybody considering that path to ask as many, many, many questions as possible. So where did this therapist get their psychedelic training? How long was that training? And you know, this is one of those tricky questions. Has the therapist experienced psychedelic healing themselves? And this is a tricky one because the western model is going to say that anybody can facilitate a psychedelic therapy experience and that you can learn and train in the skills and offer this to a client. And you know that that's a little spooky to me because how can you truly offer empathy and validation to your client having this huge experience if you don't understand that experience yourself? And this gets really, really squicky with issues of legality. So, you know, some states, some counties have either legalized or decriminalized and other jurisdictions haven't. I know that some therapists choose to get around this by traveling to either other countries or other jurisd where it's legal to have an experience. There are other ways to have a legal experience, such as finding a facilitator who is affiliated with a church. And they have some exemptions from some of the restrictions. So it's a little bit of a tricky business. And in some places, like where I live, my county has decriminalized in theogenic plants, but my license is held by the state, so I'm in a very legal gray area. So is it safe for me to say to a potential client who's vetting me, like, yes, I have debt of experience myself? Well, yeah, I had my experience in jurisdictions where it was legal. So I would want to, you know, make that caveat because I certainly don't want any therapist to put their credentials, you know, their livelihood at risk. And I also don't want therapists guiding an experience that they don't deeply understand. They haven't been initiated into themselves. So, yeah, for a potential client asking those questions, why is the therapist doing psychedelic work? What drew them to that? How long was their training? What's their personal experience with that particular medicine? And, you know, this is a little bit taboo in the therapy world, but in the psychedelic world, perhaps asking, you know, do you have former clients who would be willing to speak with me about their experience? So this is very normal in the plant medicine world, but, you know, a little bit, you know, unusual in therapy land. And so that gets into all sorts of issues of hipaa, of course. And so you would want to be really clear on, you know, if you have somebody that you have worked with in the psych psychedelic realm who perhaps is not a therapy client who might be willing to share their experience with potential clients.
- [21:23]
Unknown Co-Host
Yeah, this is all really helpful. I appreciate you talking about these different areas to consider. And I'm wondering, I would imagine that every therapist in this space has a different approach. Right. And some might be more directive, some might be more collaborative. How collaborative is the psychedelic assisted counseling process with finding providers? If you're in an area where this is legal, like, talk a little bit about how you find the right providers to partner with or collaborate with and what that process looks like. Of course it's going to be different from area to area, but based on your experience.
- [21:59]
Callie England
Yeah, it really. It really depends on what the legalization status in your area is. So here in the decriminalized county where I live, you know, the therapists are extremely collaborative with each other. Like, we really want to just, you know, find the right practitioner for our clients. So I actually get more referrals for psychedelic integration therapy, for example, from other therapists than from clients reaching out themselves. So often therapists will encounter a client who is sharing either their for a psychedelic experience or their desire to integrate a psychedelic experience, and the therapist realizes, oh, that's out of my scope. And so they'll, you know, do a search and reach out to a therapist where it's more in their scope. So that's where most of my work is coming from, is the therapist referral network. And, you know, I. I love therapists. You know, we're all in this business because we truly want to help people. And so I found it to be really friendly, really collaborative, a really strong, positive network. I can't speak to other areas where perhaps there's statewide decriminalization. I would imagine there's perhaps some more competition popping up there. But in my area where it's a little bit more rare, everybody's just excited that there's anybody with any expertise, and we're happy to send our clients to them.
- [23:17]
Unknown Co-Host
What are the different options under the psychedelic umbrella that are used in these types of sessions?
- [23:24]
Callie England
Typically in psychedelic assisted therapy, it tends to be either psilocybin, so magic mushrooms, or a lot of people call ketamine assisted therapy psychedelic assisted therapy. And that's also a little bit of a squishy area. Ketamine is not a psychedelic, actually. You can talk to your friendly neighborhood psychiatrist about this. The mechanism of action of ketamine is actually that it's, you know, a. A tranquilizer. What it induces is probably akin to a dissociative state. So it really helps a client get perspective on their issues. You know, it helps you take that step back to the wise mind and just see a different perspective. And, you know, that's really wonderful for people who need that level of help. But it's. It's not a true psychedelic. And so I think it's important to understand that distinction because a lot of people are really keen on ketamine assisted therapy because it is legal in most places. It's much more accessible. So it's sort of rushed to the forefront. Even though it's not truly a psychedelic, it's very convenient in a lot of ways, the experience is much shorter. So you can go to the therapist's office, have a ketamine experience, and go home that afternoon and resume your life. Whereas if you're working with psilocybin or some of the other plant medicines, you need to set aside a lot more time, ideally minimum 24 hours to prepare, have the experience, sleep, and then the next morning, you know, be okay to drive home and reenter normal life. So those are kind of the most mainstream ones in terms of therapy. What I'm also seeing is people who are therapists partnering with some of our traditionally trained or indigenous trained facilitators. I'm a little bit unusual in that I've done both paths. I went to a two and a half year training program to be certified in plant medicine and holistic healing. And I have my therapy license. Most people choose one or the other. And so so often a licensed therapist will partner with somebody who has done that extensive training and the therapist will provide the preparation, care, you know, some therapy sessions ahead of time to help with intention setting. And then the facilitator will offer psilocybin or ayahuasca tend to be the most commonly found in the US and then the therapist will take back over and guide integration and therapy sessions in the weeks following. I actually really love that model because you're getting the best of both worlds.
- [26:00]
Kate
Yeah, this is all curious of how that works.
- [26:02]
Unknown Co-Host
Yeah, go ahead, Katie.
- [26:03]
Kate
No, no, go ahead. I was just making comment.
- [26:05]
Unknown Co-Host
Yeah, I was just saying this is all really, really helpful. And I know we're kind of talking like 101, what we need to know about the basics and whatnot. And I'm. And in our topic title is about harm reduction. Right. And the potential for harm if you're working with someone who really doesn't have the level of expertise in this area. And I'm just curious, you know, how risky is it for a client to have a psychotic experience or to have a psychedelic experience and then to have it induce a psychotic lasting effect for them that maybe that's something that they have to deal with moving forward? Like, I'm just curious.
- [26:43]
Callie England
Yeah, that's a really great question. So it depends on what medicine you're working with. I have not heard of that happening with ketamine or psilocybin. When I have heard of really adverse outcomes, it has usually been with ayahuasca and it has usually been one of two mistakes happening. One mistake is from the facilitator's end. If a facilitator is mixing inappropriate other substances with ayahuasca, that can be extremely dangerous. So you really want to make sure like that your ayahuasca facilitator is only including two ingredients in that ayahuasca brew and not just adding something else because that's when we get some really dangerous interactions. The other side of that, what are those things, Callie? People get creative so just different plants. So they might think, oh, this plant is helpful with heart opening. So I'm going to add that to ayahuasca and that'll just make it an even better experience. So I, I can't even tell you what people might come up with. It's usually another plant from the facilitator side. Now from the participant side, when you are preparing for an ayahuasca experience, there are many, many potential interactions with common pharmaceutical medications or common foods that can create adverse outcomes. So some of these are just foods that might give you a terrible headache. So it's unpleasant but not really going to harm you. But mixing ayahuasca with most antidepressants has the potential to be lethal. So you want to make sure that you know from the participant side you are following the instructions that your facilitators gave you very strictly. We run into problems when people lie about what medications they're taking because they want the experience so badly and they don't understand that, no, this is a potentially fatal interaction that is much, much, much less likely to happen. With psilocybin, if you are taking an ssri, it actually makes the psilocybin less effective. So you're kind of having the opposite problem. You're less likely to have a big psychedelic experience, but you're also less likely to have an adverse outcome. So that's why a lot of people feel more comfortable working with psilocybin because the risk profile is just a bit, a bit lower.
- [29:07]
Kate
Interesting. Very helpful information. I've never heard of any of that, so thank you for that.
- [29:12]
Unknown Co-Host
Yeah, it's also interesting. We're talking about the, you know, the basics of what's important to know. And you're doing such a great job of navigating this and educating us. What else have we not touched on that you think is really important for us to talk about today?
- [29:28]
Callie England
You know, I touched on some of my concerns about therapists straying into the psychedelic realms a little bit too soon. I think it's only fair to talk about the flip side of facilitators who are maybe straying into the therapy realms. So often when people come into facilitating psychedelics from that more traditional or indigenous perspective, they are often coming from profound experiences of their own healing. And so they're kind hearted, well intentioned people who may or may not have gone through extensive training programs themselves before they're serving medicine. So that's something to keep an eye on. You know, if you choose to go to a psychedelic experience through a church, for example, or by traveling to an indigenous community and on a different continent, you know, how, how long have they been in training? What did their training look like? One example of how this has looked historically is the Shipibo people. They're an indigenous tribe in Peru, and they're kind of like the most profound, famous protector and carrier of ayahuasca. Their training program is often years of solo practice in the jungle, where they are learning to talk to the plants and hear the plants and sing the songs of the plants. And so this is a lifetime practice for them. It is a profound lifestyle commitment. And they have often been studying for between six and ten years before they are serving that medicine as solo practitioners. You can compare that to what we see popping up in the States, and people have done 30 or 40 ayahuasca ceremonies, and then the classic line is always quote, the medicine told me to serve it, end quote. And so this is also tricky because, yes, every good practitioner, the medicine has told it to serve, and also every bad practitioner, the medicine has told them, or they think the medicine has told them to serve. So, you know, just asking that question, like, have you sat 30 times or 3,000 times? You know, where are you on that spectrum? What has your training looked like? And is that facilitator, facilitator straying into therapy in a way that feels unethical, It's a little bit across the boundary. So, you know, again, I just want to emphasize the partnership of a traditional facilitator and a therapist, I think is the best way that we can serve both needs and have safety kind of all around so that we don't have non therapist facilitators trying to do therapy and not knowing everything that's, you know, critical there for harm reduction and safety. And on the flip side, we don't have therapists serving plant medicine or other psychedelics without understanding all of the subtleties and dangers that can come with that profoundly vulnerable, profoundly open space.
- [32:25]
Unknown Co-Host
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I've got one more question for you that I'm curious about before we start to wrap up our episode here. And in your approach, how do you offer the psychedelic assisted counseling? Do you have different packages? Like, how do you have that service organized under your portfolio? You know, whether it's you're offering therapy after they've had the experience or you're going through it with them, or. I'm just curious what that looks like with the different offerings and how you have that packaged.
- [32:59]
Callie England
Yeah, so because I'm in this interesting legal situation where I have a state therapy license and a decrimp county, I have completely separate businesses. So just like you see with people who are doing therapy and coaching. It's the same thing, you know, separate LLCs, separate paperwork, separate client streams. So if I have therapy clients, I'm sticking with the straight and narrow of, of therapy that is legal in my state. Often I'm getting referrals from other therapists who have clients who they think would benefit from a psychedelic experience. And so they come into my separate business where I'm not acting in capacity as a therapist. So their therapist is providing therapy ahead of time, helping them set their intentions. I'm providing a retreat that is the psychedelic experience, and then I'm sending them back to their therapist for integration care. I'm consulting with their therapist before and after, you know, to make sure that the client is getting the support that they need. But that's the way I have found to navigate the legal situation that I'm currently in. If clients approach me and want to work with psychedelic medicine, I make sure they, you know, understand very clearly that I cannot work with them in the therapy capacity. I can only work with them in this, you know, psychedelic, you know, coaching capacity. And so I keep those very separate. I do. If they're my own clients and not working with an outside therapist, I have a minimum package of at least one individual meeting ahead of time just to get to know each other and vet each other. And then I tend to work in small groups, intimate groups of 2, 3, 4, 5 participants at a time. So a week before our experience, we have a one or two hour meeting where we get to know each other, we answer questions, and we start to really settle in. And then I require participants to go on what is called a, a diet. We need a better word because diet is a pretty charged word. But all that is, is just making sure we're reducing exposures that might cause distraction or harm in the psychedelic space. So reducing certain foods. You know, if you eat a bunch of junk food and then go into psychedelics, you're probably not going to have a super great experience physically. So just offering guidance on what but you know, food to reduce, you know, just for this week ahead and the week after the experience. Also, reducing social media is profoundly helpful. Reducing social time just so you can get quieter and feel your own self. You know, all the things that any good therapist would tell somebody. Preparing for a retreat, right? Do more yoga, do less TV, things like that. And then I have a 24 hour minimum container. So people arrive to the retreat, let's say around early afternoon, we set things up and then we have quiet time so that they're Able to, you know, really be with themselves, drop in. And then we have the experience usually lasts five or six hours. And then we share a meal together, and we stay in our quiet time. We go to sleep and in the morning, maintaining silence so people have an opportunity to just really feel and hear themselves. It's like journaling time in nature. You know, gentle movement is a great way to navigate that time. Then we have a nice healthy brunch after everybody's slept in, and then we do some integration. So we're starting that integration care right away. And, you know, in that immediate aftermath of the psychedelic experience, I think it's so important that people have the choice to either keep things really quiet and close, because if you've just had a profound experience, you're maybe not ready to share it yet. Or they also have the resources available if they want to talk something through. They have that integrative therapeutic support available to help them navigate what happened, especially if they had a difficult journey. It can be really helpful, you know, the next morning to have somebody who understands, who can talk them through and help them make sense of that. And then this is the critical component. Nobody leaves until they're fully back in their bodies. So often we see, you know, facilitators offering experience and saying, okay, goodbye. It's like, well, is this person really fully grounded? Is it safe for them to be driving yet? So creating that spaciousness so that nobody is leaving the retreat site until they're fully back. They've had a good sleep, they've had a good meal, they've had, you know, a good conversation, they're feeling supported, and, you know, hopefully they're staying around for the entire day, maybe even ideally, a second night of non medicine, Just quiet time and rest. And then folks go home. And again, we're sticking with that healthy diet, with that reduced social media, reduced media exposure. And then we're meeting again as a group about a week later to close the container. Because just because your experience is over, you don't feel high anymore, doesn't mean that your psychedelic experience is over. People are still having insights coming in, you know, in days or weeks or even months to come. So creating that support, encouraging them to slow down and do some integration practices, you know, in that especially first few days to a week afterward, but several weeks afterward is a step that I think many, many therapists and facilitators overlook. And that's where often the most critical work happens. Because it's just like I shared with my own experience, Ayahuasca told me Take better care of my body. I had to actually do that in real life. And we all know change is so hard. So getting support in that first week or two and making whatever changes you need to make in real life, I think makes a huge difference on whether that psychedelic experience, experience sticks and like, gives that person the change that they were seeking or, you know, was just a fun light show.
- [39:00]
Kate
Gotcha. Well, Kelly, this has been really awesome to hear you chat about this, enlighten us, share with us, kind of navigating things, harm reduction. We really appreciate having you here today. And I know if people want to connect with you more and I know you also have a resource for them. What is that called and where can they find that?
- [39:19]
Callie England
Yeah, they can find that resource on my website. So I'll post a link and there's a downloadable on there with integration inspiration. So it's on the page that is labeled Psychedelic Integration Therapy. So this is through my therapy website. So this is not about, you know, psychedelic experiences themselves. This is about, you know, how to support a client or support yourself if you've had a psychedelic experience, maybe outside a therapy container and how can you. You make the most of it afterward or how you can support a client in making the most of that. So there's some suggestions for some practices, some scripts for some contemplation, some meditations, some art. So yeah, that's available for a download and that'll be up indefinitely, so there's no rush to find it. That'll be living there. And of course you can reach out directly if you would like consultation on how you can support clients in their psychedelic integration or where you can look for more training if you want to pursue this yourself.
- [40:20]
Kate
Awesome. And we'll go ahead and post that on the show notes page as well. Thank you so much for being here, Callie, and imparting us with your wisdom, your experience and your passion, really. So thank you.
- [40:30]
Callie England
Yeah, thank you for having me. It's such a delight to be able to share this area that I'm so passionate about.
- [40:36]
Unknown Co-Host
Yeah, I mean, it's clear that you're an expert in this space and so passionate and I mean, I'm taking away so much. It was very enlightening, like Katie said. Startup Nation, we hope you enjoyed today's special episode. We have a part two coming up next week with another provider, so that'll be really interesting to listen to. And we want to encourage you to subscribe, rate and review the show. We love hearing your feedback. And in all of these episodes, we're just trying to meet your needs and support you and inspire you along the practice building journey. So if there's a topic we have not had on yet, let us know and we look forward to hearing from you. In the meantime, stay inspired everybody.
- [41:12]
Kate
Take care.
- [41:17]
Unknown Co-Host
Thanks for joining us on the Private practice startup. Visit theprivatepracticestartup.com for awesome resources, free trainings, attorney approved private practice paperwork, and so much more.