Psychedelic Therapy & Integration
Elena Ryabtseva, MS, LMHC, CGT
Psychotherapist, Educator, Independent Scholar
The Roots
From Eleusinian mystery rights of ancient Greece to the surviving modern day ayahuasca tradition of the Amazon, psychedelics and plant medicine have always played a major role in the development of human consciousness. Traditionally, psychedelic or plant medicine ceremonial use happened in a community and under the guidance of a shaman or another priestly figure. The intention was that of transformation and coming into a deeper alignment with oneself and/or others, be it for the purpose of healing one’s mind-body-soul or as initiation into the next stage of life.
Psychedelic medicine creates a powerful momentum for change.
Life’s liminal spaces: feeling stuck or broken, existential despair, feeling lost in life
Life’s thresholds: diagnosis and illness; birth, adoption, abortion, or miscarriage; perimenopause; death and dying
Life’s transitions: separation, divorce, and other relational loss, coming out, career transitions, relocation or immigration
Unmetabolized pre-birth, birth, and early developmental trauma
Intergenerational, ancestral, and cultural trauma
Grief
Shadow work
Blocked creativity
Longing for connection to spirit and the universal web of life
Psychedelics Now
Recent research provides staggering evidence of the effectiveness of psilocybin, ketamine, and MDMA for a number of mental health conditions. Indigenous plant medicines such as ayahuasca, peyote, san andreas, and iboga, while less researched in controlled settings, have shown profound results in the treatment of trauma, addiction, depression and anxiety.
Psychedelics are a powerful medium for enhancing and deepening one’s ongoing psychotherapeutic work where trauma and cultural conditioning have created an impasse in access to a person's depth and aliveness. Term “psychedelic therapy” is an umbrella term that refers to a variety of theoretical orientations of talk and somatic therapy.
My Approach
Together, in an ongoing conversation, through intention and commitment to your process of becoming, with supportive and grounding somatic practices, we gradually encounter and incorporate the emergent lessons and insights into the whole of your life. I choose to work from an embodied Jungian analytic perspective.
In my personal and professional experience, this approach is one of the few modalities that recognizes realness and autonomy of inner knowing and the wisdom of body-self. I believe, a subjective experience emerging from the depth of one’s own psyche, from beyond a person's ego identity, is what unlocks our innate capacity to heal.
However, any medicine can become a poison, when used without discretion or compulsively. An ongoing process of psychedelic integration is an antidote to the western cultural phenomenon of spiritual bypassing. By doing our own work, healing our personal wounds, we also make a contribution to healing collective wounds.
Together, we can
dream your life
into being
“I’d rather not talk about integration as a term but, instead, consider lifelong learning about how to be human, how to inhabit our bodies, how to realize our interconnectedness.”
Integration
Psychedelic experience brings a shift in perspective, but this shift is only the beginning of a long journey of transformation. Effective psychedelic work consists of three parts: a so-called “peak experience” (new embodied and/or conceptual experience of self, insight, revelation, or encounter with the ineffable) during a journey in the medicine, a process of integration, and support of the community.
"Integration is a process in which a person revisits and actively engages in making sense of, working through, translating, and processing the content of their psychedelic experience.” (Bathje, 2022)
We cannot get rid of our deepest wounds and exiled parts of ourselves, but it is possible to enter a new relationship with them. As our inner space expands, a new sense of self emerges, and we can weather internal and external storms with more grace.In my approach to a therapeutic process, I integrate embodied awareness interventions, breathing exercises, and work with the nervous system with traditional present-centered talk therapy.
In my theoretical orientation, I draw upon Gestalt therapy, body psychotherapy, attachment theory, feminist theory, energy psychology, myth and fairy tale narratives, and the transpersonal approach.
My clinical practice is informed and supported by 1500+ hours of advanced post-graduate training, a long-standing meditation practice, and 10+ years of movement practice. Find out more about my approach by visiting individual therapy, trauma therapy, LGBTQ therapy, and meditation and embodiment pages. Therapists interested in personalized body psychotherapy training and developing the embodied transpersonal approach will find more information by visiting the supervision page.
Dimensions of Integration
Physical and somatic: a new relationship with one’s own body
Emotional: increased capacity to feel
Cognitive: releasing outdated beliefs and deepening one’s self of self
Relational: reshaping of one’s relational/attachment style
Intergenerational and ancestral
Spiritual
Community, reciprocity, and accountability
“Psychedelics awakened in people not just a thirst, but a sense of the possibilities for exploring the mind and body - that they could live in a different way.”