What happens in a Psychedelic Integration Session?

-Bridging Realms-

The Embodied Imagination Process

1. The Session begins with presencing, allowing you to land, feel centred and safe to begin.
   

2. When you are ready, you will recount your Psychedelic Experience, Dream, or Memory, in the first person, as though it is happening now. The facilitator will listen with embodied presence, taking note of the images, language, and details that stand out.
   

3. You will then be asked to put the dream or experience aside, and the facilitator will read back the images, asking for your waking-life associations to each thing. 
   
   Note: Images are often symbolic rather than literal, and exploring our associations can often reveal a deeper understanding of what the experience or dream is speaking to.
   Why this experience, for you, now?
   

4. From your associations, intentions and intuitive curiosity, we will make a plan of where to go in the dream or psychedelic experience for embodiments.
   

5. You will be guided through a body scan, into the hynogogic state- a space between sleep and wakefulness (similar to a meditative state or what’s felt in Yoga Nidra.)
   

6. With guidance and focused attention, we will then explore the environment of the psychedelic experience or dream as though we are in it, now.
   Working with the imagination and the felt sense, you will be guided to merge perspectives with different images- attuning to what is felt, and where it is experienced most strongly in the body.
   
   Note: As you explore each image, you embody its novel perspective and transmission. In this way, you can glean insights from outside your habitual consciousness, embody supportive characteristics, and integrate disparate parts of your self to your waking consciousness.
   
   During a typical session, 2-5 images will be ‘anchored.’ This means taking an ‘internal snapshot’ of the feeling, within the body, that can be recalled later.
   

7. Lastly, you will be guided to recall these 2-5 feelings, and hold them in your body, at the same time. This is called the ‘composite.’ Here, an alchemical-like process occurs, where the sensations may combine to form something new, or something may want to be spoken.
   
   Note: Psychologically and Neurologically, the capacity to hold diverse feelings simultaneously is fortifying, and builds resilience. It allows us to remain flexible and open, rather than stuck in habitual patterns of thought. We can encourage less polarised emotional processes and create more room for emotional nuance and subtlety. For example, holding a difficult emotion like fear alongside a softer or more empowering one, like joy, has the capacity to alter the experience of the first, providing internal resource and an opportunity for rewiring the brain and body.
   

8. You will be guided gently out of the hypnogogic state and reorient to the room.
   

9. You will be given your ‘composite’ and invited to continue sitting with it for as long as it feels potent. This is not a one and done, and the invitation is to create a quiet space to be with your sensations, as the messages and perspectives emerge over time.