Plant Medicine Ceremony
Preparation and Integration

Helping you get the most from your experience

I want to assist you in having the best possible ceremony.

While I neither offer ceremony, nor make recommendations, I do believe that plant medicine is a powerful, accelerated, and potent path to healing.

To that end, I would like to provide you with information and guidance when preparing for ceremony that supports you having valuable outcomes.

I also want to share with you the benefits of working together before – and after – your ceremony.

Good preparation – essential

Your level of preparedness dramatically affects how your journey unfolds. You want to have the best possible experience while equipping yourself with tools to integrate what the plant revealed to you.

How does one best prepare for ceremony? What do set and setting have to do with it? Where do I even begin?

As you search for a ceremonialist

In preparing for a ceremony, you must consider both PRACTICAL and SPIRITUAL aspects.

In locating a ceremonialist, it is wise to enlist both your practical self and your heart self.

As this body of work meets a more mainstream audience, DISCERNMENT IS KEY. Keep searching until your heart, mind, and body feel aligned.

I personally suggest seeking recommendations from trusted friends and allies, or at the very least, talking with previous participants.

Asking the important questions

On a practical level, you should ask the ceremonialist very important questions in your process of discerning who to work with. When asking these questions, listen with your heart, body, and mind. Follow your intuition.

Medicine: Where did the medicine come from? How was it prepared? Who prepared it? Will other plant medicines be used during the ceremony? What are they, and what is the intention of their use?

Logistics: What is the size of the ceremony – how many people? Are there individual healings during the ceremony? How will I be supported if I’m having a hard time?

Experience: How long have they been holding ceremony? How were they trained and with whom? Are they currently in relationship with a mentor? In what ways do they maintain themselves?

Finding a good fit

As you listen, notice how your body feels, does it open? Contract? Do you perceive anything that does not sit right for you? Pay attention, as this is critical information from your expanded self.

While working with plant medicine requires a balance between self authority and surrender, HOW a ceremonialist answers the above questions is key to discerning if it is a good fit for YOU.

If you don’t get all the answers you want, I strongly suggest you continue your search!

Plant medicine is powerful – especially if this is your first time using plants in ceremony – which is quite different from recreational usage. You want to be very clear about who you are working with and evaluate them to the best of your ability.

Analyzing SET and creating the right SETTING

SET is YOUR mindSET.

This is the state of mind you bring to the experience itself, and that state of mind is influenced by your general day-to-day mindset.

Are you curious? Open? Fearful? Anxious? Depressed? What are your expectations of the ceremony? What expectations do you have of yourself? What are your emotional, physical, and spiritual states, past and present?

Kay’s healing

Even though Kay’s mother had died 8 years ago, she never fully grieved the loss or completely resolved her feelings of guilt. Kay carried on with her life – rarely thinking about this unresolved past.

In the ceremony, the spirit of the plant took Kay to the end of her mother’s life, having her relive the entire experience. While it was initially a shock, Kay surrendered to the guidance of the plant and re-experienced this ending from the perspective of the sacred witness – with great compassion – forever releasing her from the sadness and guilt that had silently plagued her for years.

While this was a tender, vulnerable, raw experience for Kay in her life, she could be curious and receptive to what the plant was revealing to her. As a result, she received great healing benefit.

SET also equals level of self-awareness and understanding.

Are you brand new to self-inquiry work? Have you done therapy or any kind of personal growth? Have you done any type of altered states work?

And SET speaks to your personal and familial history.

What life challenges have you experienced? What past or present trauma has affected your life? What are your familial lineages in blood, geography, education, and health (physical, menta, and emotional)? What is your relationship with addiction? What beliefs were you raised with about the world beyond form?

Geeta’s empowerment

Raised in India, Geeta suffered greatly in her youth. She sought comfort in the temples becoming a devotee of Ganesha. As an adult, she sought healing through therapy and trauma recovery programs.

In ceremony, Ganesha appeared as the spirit of the plant and took Geeta on wild rides of reality that were far from her experience as a human. Though scared, she trusted Ganesha to see her through in her adult life as he did in her childhood. Ganesha offered her strength and courage to view what the medicine chose to show her. For Geeta, Ganesha resonated with her life experience and offered comfort and strength.

Your experience

You may find guidance and comfort from Einstein or George Carlin, a relative or even a long-gone family pet. The point is, your experiences and influences affect what you see and where you source strength and guidance.

The degree to which you have explored the multiple dimensions of yourself will deeply impact how you experience your plant medicine ceremony.

SETTING

Setting involves the space, your fellow participants, the facilitators, sounds, smells, rituals, location, time of day, and the flow and structure of the ceremony.

Ask yourself, “How do I feel in an environment outside myself”?

If you generally feel safe, happy, supported, and secure, your needs for ceremony will vary greatly from one who is actively dealing with trauma, self-esteem issues, or health challenges.

Certainly, doing ceremony in a natural jungle will be quite different from ceremony in an urban jungle or a therapeutic office.

Whatever you choose, it is important to understand your personal needs for care and oversight during a ceremony – and to be clear about SET and SETTING.

Ultimately, SET is about YOU.

And SETTING is about everything outside you in the physical environment.

Optimizing my help

Clarifying your intent

A key aspect to ceremony is intention. What is your motivation for doing ceremony? How clear are you on this? How are you resourced when the ceremony gets challenging? What allies or helping spirits can you call on for support?

Through discussion and inquiry, we’ll craft an intention that resonates for you. In addition, we’ll discuss how to hold this intention gently as the spirit of the plant takes you and you find your balance between navigating and surrendering to the experience the plant offers you!

Through guided meditation, you’ll meet the spirit of the plant to make further inquiries about your intention and how to best prepare.

Discovering your spirit guide

In session, we’ll discuss your current situation and get you connected to a helping spirit – we’ll also engage in guided meditation to the spirit of the plant.

Whether you’re looking forward to your first ceremony or have already done it, learning how to connect with the spirit of the plant and be in RELATIONSHIP with it will help you prepare and deepen your experience.

The world of spirit often speaks in sounds, signs, and symbols that are not always interpreted correctly by the egoic mind, as shown in Eric’s process:

Eric’s epiphany

Eric was challenged by ceremonial scenes and sounds he interpreted as a war zone. Because he had never been in the military, this imagery did not make any sense to him – yet troubled him.

In a guided journey, the spirit of the plant showed him the sounds he heard were not a helicopter – but the sounds of his mother’s heart beat – in the womb.
The spirit of the plant continued to show him that what he had interpreted as a war zone was actually relationship challenges in the home environment prior to his birth. It was an “aha” moment for Eric – the missing puzzle piece that grounded and deepened his healing.

Reaching greater levels of awareness

Entering some kind of altered state of awareness opens the lens of perception showing you more of what there is to learn.

In our work together, you’ll initially reach this deepened state of awareness through a guided meditation, which translates perfectly into learning a journey process you can do on your own any time.

By learning to work with the spirit of the plant, you can mine your ceremony experience for every ounce of healing it offers you, deepening and elevating your healing process.

Connecting with a Resonance Keeper

You will ask the spirit of the plant to show you a tool called a Resonance Keeper.

What is resonance keeper and how does it work?

Samuel’s autonomy

In his guided meditation to the spirit of Ayahuasca, Samuel asked to meet a Resonance Keeper and was guided to a familiar spirit ally, St. Germain. He was shown that he should bring a crystal he had to the ceremony and, when he was challenged in the medicine journey, he was guided to call upon St. Germain.

In our post ceremony integration sessions, Samuel shared that when he didn’t like what he was experiencing, was confused or deeply challenged, he held his crystal and called upon the spirit of St. Germain.

He discovered the challenging or confusing “scenes” that did not require his explorations dissolved in the presence of St. Germain, while those that did require his deeper surrender and exploration did not dissolve, and he was emboldened to explore them for a time and call it quits – at his choosing.

This control gave him a sense of empowerment and courage that deepened his capacity to dive deep with the plant. His spirits lifted as he felt “in relationship” with the spirit of Ayahuasca.

Integrating your experience after the ceremony

The plant will show you many things. Depending on your worldview before your ceremony, you may be presented with images or storylines you do not understand and wish to unravel.

In post-ceremony integration, we combine guided meditations to the plant spirit and energetic support to deepen the ceremony’s revelations.

Whitney’s deepened healing

Whitney contacted me post ceremony. She had been shown deeply unsettling scenes and felt they held healing wisdom she could not access on her own.

In our healing container, she was guided to the spirit of the plant to whom she could ask questions to achieve a deeper understanding of her experience.

Through this process, she came to recognize areas of her life where she felt deeply disempowered; how the way she was relating to others drained her energy and left her feeling angry and alone.

Deepening our work together, she was able to trace these feelings to very difficult childhood experiences. And, with the support of the spirit of the plant, she healed her wounds on an energetic and emotional level. In her outer life, this transformed her familial relationships and allowed for reconnection and forgiveness.

Allowing the experience to unfold

Post-ceremony integration can take weeks, months, even years – while some aspects can forever remain in mystery. While every ceremonial experience is unique, it’s often a mixed bag of material that spans the range of emotions between rock bottom fear – and bliss.

If you have residual discomfort from your ceremony, learning to work with the material presented and integrate it into your life will liberate the energy and bring healing. The intention of the plant is HEALING. The material offered in ceremony is for your healing benefit – learning how to work with this material is a learning process.

Getting support every step of the way

It’s your journey, but you don’t have to make it by yourself.

Ceremony is potent and can challenge your worldviews. Having an experienced professional by your side, to guide you as you continue your work with the plant, supports continued integration and discovery.

Schedule a Free Call From preparation to post-ceremony integration and continued evolution, I’ll be with you to help you get the most of your experience and to become the person you want to be.