Dear IEC Friends,
As more and more people turn to mind-altering substances like ayahuasca, magic mushrooms for healing, personal, spiritual growth, as its increasingly becoming a legal, and safe addition in an integral life practise, its important to examine their use through an integral lens.
By understanding the benefits and risks of these substances from a holistic perspective that takes into account their impact on individuals, society, and the environment, we can better navigate their use in a safe and responsible manner.
From ayahuasca to integration therapy and their role in a global awakening, we’ll dive deep into the transformative potential of these substance induced altered states, through the 3 abstracts of each presenter in the thematic section of Psychedelics at IEC on Saturday, the 27th of May from 11:30 – 13:30. You can find them in our final program, and read along to see the details of the presentations:
Guided Psychedelic Journeys for Personal Growth
By April Rains & Miriam Van Groen
Supported psychedelic experiences have great potential, and bring with them great responsibility. In this presentation you’ll hear what success factors can be deduced from the many hundreds of people we have supported at Guided Tripping. We’ll touch on preparation and integration, the varieties of experiences, and go into risks.
Interestingly enough those are not so much the widely feared ‘bad trips’, but usually more to do with an inability to value the experience for what it is (due to it not matching the hyped expectations/projections), or an inability to integrate the experience into daily life.
We’re looking forward to sharing our two cents to help you navigate the Integral dimensions of this expansive field.
Guided Tripping started supporting legal 1-day, 1-on-1 psychedelic experiences aimed at personal growth in 2017. Since all our Guides have a background in Circling, it could be said we Circle people while they’re in open and expanded states of consciousness & beingness.
Ayahuasca – Stories of Experience
We will be telling our stories of our recent visits to Rythmia Life Advancement Center in Costa Rica. Within a week, up to 90 participants experience their “miracle”. This is brought about through four nights of ceremonies drinking Ayahuasca, a plant medicine served by Shamans coming from a 5000 year old lineage from the Amazon in Columbia. We will share music and images, while telling our story through poetic means.
Rythmia offers a very supportive and professional setting, including medical examination, breathwork, yoga, integration sessions, sharing circles, healthy food and comfortable accommodation. In this way, light workers and light warriors are empowered to heal themselves, in order to contribute to the shift towards living in harmony with the earth.
To date, 14,000 people have undergone this experience. They also take part in a survey, both immediately at the end of the week and 6 months after their Ayahuasca ceremony. The results of this research clearly show the healing power of plant medicine.
When an ambitious psychedelic explorer, also known as a psychonaut, asked Ken Wilber about taking Ayahuasca, he had to say this:
Psychedelic Integration and Planetary Awakening
How can psychedelics truly serve lasting planetary awakening? In the last decade we could observe a resurgence, increase in popularity and even hype around psychedelics as tools for healing, personal development and numinous experiences.
Even Netflix has made a 4-part documentary on them. However, with the hype there is also a growing critique of what some call the psychedelic renaissance, whilst others the psychedelic gold rush.
Personal experience, research and work in psychedelic transformation and integration have shown me that psychedelics can indeed serve as a tool for planetary awakening. The way in which this can happen, I argue, is by nurturing the importance of psychedelic integration. Simply having an experience, no matter how interesting and visually rich is not enough for lasting transformation.
For psychedelics to serve individual and thus planetary awakening, there is a need of a shift beyond experience towards more integration. Proper integration would in turn lead people to develop an integrative attitude on life and perhaps even integral life practice as a nourishing soil to sustain the insights from the experiences and bring them back into daily life.
With Love
The IEC Team