Laura: It’s pretty remarkable to see how far we’ve come and how many more people are speaking about integration these days. Do you think we’re still in the phase of just scratching the surface? A lot of people sort of paying lip service to this understanding that integration is important but not really implementing it to the degree that we really should be or can be?

Marc: That is a good question. I always think about what is the right dose of integration.

Yeah. And I think that in the past, we didn’t pay a lot of attention to integration at all. And in a way, many times in retreats and ceremonies and psychedelic experiences, the part that is usually lacking in attention is integration for some very good reason. Sometimes we are tired of that experience, or the workshop ends at a certain point, and then.

That’s it. No, but also there’s been a growing debate around integration in the last years to the point that sometimes I think maybe we go a little bit too far. You know, it seems like in order to do a proper integration, you need to pay someone services or go to a specific circle or whatever. And I don’t think that that’s exactly what’s needed in integration, not the needs that people have will depend on their personal situation, on the experience that they had, on what they are trying to achieve.

You know, so I think that integration should remain some sort of an open field for people to choose what is best for them in different contexts and different situations. So What I do think is that there’s still a lacking of understanding of what integration entails when a practitioner is offering integration.

Many times, there’s not a specific knowledge that people have known. I have the feeling that there’s a lot of practitioners that they offer integration services, but that’s difficult to really understand what kind of work they’re offering or what’s the theoretical paradigm in which they are working or what kind of practices.

They implement in this work of integration. So, yeah, I think that there’s still need for more definition of what kind of integration are there.

Laura: I want to dive into that. What does integration really entail? But first, I want to sort of back up and ask you when do you think people should start thinking about integration?

Like in your mind, if someone is like I feel called to work with this medicine, and I also want to ask you about the differences of integration with different medicines, I think it’s different to integrate a psychedelic experience in Western culture versus going down to the Amazon. Um, and that context of integration, but in your mind, when someone says, I’m going to start working with a psychedelic, I feel called, when do you think that they should start thinking about integration?

Marc: In my opinion and experience, the sooner the better,

And maybe it’s not thinking about integration, it’s thinking about preparation. I do believe that one hour of integration is worth five hours of integration, you know, so if we start paying attention to what we’re doing, what intention do we have, the kind of setting, the context, everything that we do before the experience, we will have less work after the experience, we will have less needs for integrating the experience in a more specific way or working with a specific practitioner. Yeah.

Laura: Did you mean that one hour of preparation is five hours of integration? Is that what

you meant?

Marc: Yeah. I mean, don’t quote me on that. That’s not the exact math.

No, but, but I would say that, that, yeah, if, if we have a proper preparation, um, then the integration process is going to be much smoother and shorter. So I would say that. Many times, having, I don’t know, five, six hours of preparation, like a previous sort of therapeutic process, uh, then makes integration really easy.

And then you only have to spend two or three hours of integration, and that makes a really, uh, good package. Yes? So more focus on preparation than on integration. I think that that’s the direction that I think that we should be moving forward. So…

Laura: Okay, great. So let’s start with preparation. To you in your mind, what constitutes…

A good amount of preparation and what is involved in that from your perspective,

that will depend on the context in which people are working. Yes. So , for example, in clinical trials in psilocybin clinical trials. There’s some clinical trials and they entail very little preparation. We could say, uh, so 3 sessions before the actual experience.

That would be a total of maybe 3 and a half hours, 4 hours of preparation. Yeah, that. is a reasonable amount in a clinical study and it has proven to be enough for people to feel ready and safe to go into an experience, even if it’s the first time that they’re taking a psychedelic substance. Yeah. And then in these , three and a half, four hours of preparation, the focus usually is very specific on covering certain topics that have to do with significant events that people have gone through in their lives that they could.

Come up during the psychedelic session, also in somehow educating people on what to expect, what kind of experiences are possible, what to do with those emotions, all the experiences that arise during the journey, and also to somehow practice. the capacity to bring the awareness into the inner process.

Yeah. It’s essentially the most important thing that someone has to do or we need to do when we go into a psychedelic journey is to be able to stay in touch with our own experience.

Sometimes there might be emotions, memories, thoughts, physical sensations that they are coming up, but for whatever reason, we are somehow detached from that experience.

We are focusing very much on something on the outside or we’re somehow over. trying to fight or change what we are feeling. So training the capacity to have awareness about our own experience in a way that could be, I don’t know, mindfulness practice or the capacity to observe what is going in my internal experience.

That is something that in my opinion should be practiced before the psychedelic experience. So people will be able to navigate through anything that appears in the experience. Even if it’s a positive experience or a challenging emotion, you know, so this attitude of being in touch with whatever is going on without having to change it, judge it, or modify it in any way.

So that is part of what a good preparation should entail. I would like to say that if someone is coming to a psychedelic experience with a lot of symptoms, so to speak, if there’s a lot of anxiety, if there’s intrusive thoughts or obsessive or compulsive behaviors, um,

then in my experience, it is very useful to try to deal with that before the psychedelic experience to try to somehow clear the path and reach a level of stability or adaptation that is more functional for the person.

So then when they go into the experience, they can somehow go deeper and easier. They don’t have to deal with the intensity of the most more course emotions, so to speak. So I think that when symptoms are present, it is important to address them before the psychedelic experience.

Oftentimes, I like to start with just the question, why, why are you here?

Why now? Why do you feel called? And that also opens up a lot of information to work with, to sort of say, okay, , what are the patterns that have been unfolding in your life? And what change are we looking to accomplish? Is that something that you, where you start?

And, does that give you a lot of information that then steers change? Sort of the right direction.

Marc: Yeah, absolutely. That’s a very good question. And I forgot to say, you know, that working with intention on top of everything else that I mentioned before working on the intention, what is bringing you here?

Why are you choosing to have this experience? What are you hoping to get with this experience? And I think that elaborating on the intention can be a really important part of the preparation. Sometimes people will have what’s looks like an intention, but could be more on a, uh, like a passive expectation.

Yeah. I want to heal. I want to cure my depression. I want to get rid of my PTSD, you know, like things that are really black or white, but also not very easy to measure. Yeah, so working and spending some time during preparation in order to clarify the intention and phrasing it in a way that is at the same time, uh, measurable, so to speak, it’s like, all right, so you want to hear your depression and why is important to heal your depression?

Because then I don’t know, I’m going to be able to have a better relationship with my family and be more present for them. And how would that look like? What would you act? What would you do? What would you say? No, what would they see? that they could see that you’re having a better relationship with them.

So going all the way from, um, expectations, ideas, thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. Now, what is going to happen in that, in that scenario? And also at the same time that the intention is open enough to accept flexibility in the experience. If someone has the intention of working with my, uh, the relationship with my father, and then in the psychedelic experience, the father doesn’t come up. One might be disappointed, but maybe if we phrase the intention in a certain way that could leave a door open to insights, for insights to come in different directions, then we can see that something that initially doesn’t seem to be, um, related to the intention that we’re having, it actually does, you know, some days after the experience

that’s why I always like to, um, I suggest to people that it’s okay to have an intention, which should work on the intention, but on the day of the session, leave that intention at the door, go to the experience with an open mind and an open heart. And then when you finish the session, you recover the intention.

And then we’ll see if it has something to do with your original plan or not. Yeah.

Laura: Do you have a particular set of flight instructions, a mantra that you really Find very useful to help support people on a journey.

Marc: Yes. One of the metaphors that I usually use when someone asks me to work in preparation for a ceremony that they are going to go or whatever, I like to bring the metaphor of the kayaking or a trip with a canoe on a river in which when we decide to do that sort of trip, you, um, there’s certain things that you prepare.

You prepare your gear, you prepare your, I don’t know, the waters that you need to carry. The clothes that you’re going to take that day the hat, but then you jump on the canoe. You started paddling into the river. I want you in the river. You’re not really choosing much. You’re not choosing if the water is going slow or fast.

You don’t choose if the river turns left or right. You don’t really choose if the weather is cloudy or rainy or sunny. You don’t choose if there’s some rocks in the middle of the river and all of a sudden, the waters get a little bit bumpy. Well, we do choose the attitude that we have in that, in that experience.

Yeah. If the waters are calm and slow, how do I allow myself to experience that? If the waters are fast and scary. What do I do with that? And then like in a canoe trip, what we do is to go with the flow. We follow the direction of the waters. Yeah. If there’s some, uh, bumpy waters, it’s not that we turn around and try to go against that water.

We do actually the opposite. We start paddling and we go towards that part of the river. And then we cross that part of the river. We overcome that moment of rapid and intense waters and then things change. Yeah. So I think that that’s a good and useful metaphor. to imagine how a psychedelic experience look like.

Laura: I really appreciate that. I think metaphors are so helpful and they’re really powerful tools for practitioners, for facilitators, for coaches, because they offer a way of making sense, right? They’re a tool for making sense of the experience and reveal certain things that I feel like they don’t always reveal if we’re not using metaphors.

So I really want to emphasize the importance of that. And that’s a great metaphor. I haven’t heard that one. And it’s also a great metaphor for life. It’s like, are you trying to swim against the current? Are you, we don’t always have control about what happens to us, but we do have influence over how we respond to what’s happening.

So I really appreciate that.

I recently came across a very short paper was a, Just a two page paper written by a woman in the 90s and we always hear the term set and setting but she Referred to it as set setting and matrix. I think it’s dr. Eisner

have you heard this term set setting and matrix and matrix refers to the embedded reality that we come from, the. scaffolding of the family, the culture, the mindset, it’s bigger than just set, which is us, our attitude, beliefs, and, and mindset going into it, but really about like the culture and what we’re coming with, you know, and the environment that we’re in beforehand and the environment that we return to.

So I’m curious. If you’re familiar with this and maybe if not still taking that into consideration because there’s a lot of people that are coming to these experiences for the first time and so for you, does preparation extend to how this individual might talk to their families about it and prepare them for their return back into their environment?

Marc: Yeah, I haven’t read that paper. The surname Eisner could be Betty Eisner, who was a researcher back in the 60s. And I have not heard that specific term set, setting, and matrix, but it makes a lot of sense. There’s, uh, some modern papers by, uh, Israeli researcher called Ido Hartogson he’s written a book about set and setting. I think it’s called American Trip, a history of set and setting in the United States or something like that. Um. what he describes is the influence that this larger set has on the experience. Yes. So we are part of a culture and we are part of a certain society and certain worldview, and that also changes over time.

So the way that we experience our own internal experiences is also tainted by the atmosphere of the times. One of the things that, that either says in his book and in his papers is that when people at the beginning of the psychedelic research, they would have this paradigm of the psychotomimetic research.

So psychedelics, mimicking, psychosis. A lot of the experiences that people reported were with that language with, I had a transient psychosis. I went to the world of madness and then I came back. Yeah. So what he argues is that that was a paradigm that they were in. So psychedelics do that. So when we go into the experience, we gonna interpret that as such, uh, also in the hippie era, no people would have this enlightening and freeing experiences. So the focus was very much on liberation, on attending Samadhi, uh, illumination, this kind of experiences. And people had those experiences and they talked about their experience in psychedelics with those terms, yeah, if you look at Timothy Leary around us and all the people around that time, they talked a lot about in spiritual terms, maybe now we are in a different culture.

We are more in a psychological moment and we make more focus on trauma, for example, and then there’s a lot of experiences that are. registered and reported as having to do with healing trauma and going to the shadow or whatever, you know. So I do think that the overall matrix, and I think that’s a good word, the overall matrix in which we live in does have a really strong impact on the type of experiences that we have.

For example, and that can also depend also in the school or the technique that we’re using. For example, in holotropic breathwork, since it’s Part of the work of Stan Grof and Stan Grof spoke about this, uh, perinatal matrices and the importance of the trauma of birth. You see a lot of people reporting experiences that have to do with the reliving their own birth.

Yeah, same thing with rebirthing, this breathing technique. Most people report having had some sort of rebirth experience, but there are other breathing techniques that they also induce an unordinary state of consciousness, and in those contexts, you don’t find people explaining their experiences in rebirth terms, you know, so I think that that setting has also a huge influence on what will happen in our experience, so definitely we’re part of a cultural matrix and yeah, that will have an impact on the way that we experience what we experience, even the content of what we experience.

Laura: Yeah, I think this is one of the more interesting topics in the psychedelic space right now because it’s such a heavy medicalized lens and so many people in Western culture are stepping into awareness around psychedelics in the context of psychedelic assisted psychotherapy, which is, from my perspective, just one of many different options for what this can look like. And so, you know, even this term thinking of, of psychedelics as ideogens, for example, and tools for enhancing creative cognition puts a completely different spin on it.

And of course, I think it depends on where we’re at in our lives and , where we’re at in our journey to, you know, my journey 25 years ago looks very different than how I journey today. It’s completely different based on the depth of experience that someone has. Um, so I, I do find that this is a very interesting topic and just always reminding people that there’s a lot of different ways that we can interact and engage with these medicines.

But are you noticing that, that a lot of people who are stepping in , are coming in with a medical lens and not even aware that they’re looking at it through that lens?

Marc: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that this is one of the challenges of our times, you know, that it almost seems that you need to have a, I’m going to integrate a little bit, yeah, but to show the point that you need a diagnose in order to justify your psychedelic use.

You know, like, okay, I need to go to a retreat because I have depression. I need to heal that depression. So I find in my practice that people somehow they look to diagnose themselves in order to feel that that the psychedelic option is Something that they can, they can do, you know, yeah, and I agree with you.

The medical lens is just one lens that we can look at psychedelics. But if we think even in the origins of Western psychedelic use, think about Aldous Huxley, he was not talking about therapy at all. No, he’s talking about philosophy, ontology, other uses of psychedelics. So, um, I, I do think that the, um, Putting too much emphasis on medicalization of psychedelics or focusing only on therapeutic uses makes us see things through a very specific lens and therefore we need to see ourselves through that lens as well.

So I’m doing a psychological use of psychedelics with the intention of healing something, you know, but that is part of the healing paradigm, but we could be using psychedelics for recreation, which a lot of people do, you know, and it’s perfectly valid. People do have transformational and healing experiences also in recreational settings, or we could be using psychedelics for community building purposes.

And just the fact of sharing meaningful experiences and as it happens in organized religions, people gather on certain dates of the calendar to celebrate certain events that are considered to be important and they share. That experience. So sharing experiences that are especially something that builds um, connectedness in communities and create some sort of bonding with other members of the community.

Why that is not a legitimate use of psychedelics. You know, I think it is. I think it could be one of the more important use of psychedelics to recover these kind of daily rituals or maybe not daily, no, but seasonal sort of rituals that people would go through and that would add sense to their lives.

They would add also a social dimension. That we’re lacking so much in these days in which everything happens online and we live more and more atomized, no, so

yeah, there’s quite a few people that are pretty prominent in the psychedelic space who I think share the same sentiment. I recently heard someone express, you know, at the end of the day, I think we might just realize that the best use for psychedelics is with friends around a fire outside in nature.

Just real simple, for example, and I really welcome that perspective and I also support people who feel like they need an additional level of safety of care and I’m curious, I know it’s going to, of course, depend on case by case scenario, but for people who are stepping more into integration coaching guide work, How many preparation sessions do you think is really kind of minimum to help support a feeling of psychological safety?

Because I think that that’s actually what a big part of preparation work is, is establishing a level of trust and safety for that person. Um, do you have a sort of a range that you like to suggest?

Yeah. Well, I think that everything can be done in any way, but that will depend on, depend on the paradigm and the setting that you’re working in.

For example, when working in clinical trials, it becomes somehow easier to do shorter, uh, processes because you do have a structure that allows you to do that. There’s a screening, there’s a psychiatrist that checks certain aspects, there’s an insurance in the hospital that covers potential problems that would happen, there’s the legal paradigm that somehow is covering you, so that gives an extra layer of safety for everybody.

The participants feel that they are safe because they’re doing something serious in a hospital or whatever, no? The practitioners or the therapists, they feel safe because they’re working for an institution and they are backed by the hospital and the pharmaceutical company or whatever. So that gives you a certain sense of safety and that people that work on the underground probably don’t have.

Yeah, they meet a person that maybe they have not met before, they don’t know anything about their psychological profile, they don’t know much about how severe the depression or the anxiety or whatever it is, you know, so that can give another sense of not being so safe and maybe requiring some more sessions.

Yeah. So I think that this will depend in many factors, the setting, but also the person and the therapist. I think that safety is something that needs to be, uh, built both ways. No, the, the participant needs to trust the therapist and the therapist needs to trust the participant. And that might take longer or shorter.

Definitely. I would think that four or five preparation sessions is usually a good number, sometimes a little bit more. It can be done with less. I wouldn’t go with less than three really. I think it’s important to get a feel of the person, to get to know them personally, meet physically before you have the session.

Um, also know the space in which, uh, the session is going to take place. That can be something that is helpful, you know, but maybe for someone that’s already experienced with psychedelics and they just want to go to a retreat or a ceremony. They don’t need much. They talk with the facilitator on the phone before going there.

They sign up and they show. At the venue that day, you know, that’s also a possibility that’s already happening. So I don’t think that there’s a close number, then we just either you do it or you’re doing it wrong. No, I think it will depend on on each case, but on an individual one on one setting with people that have very limited experience with psychedelics before I would say that four or five sessions would be a minimum, sometimes six, seven.

But I don’t think that there’s a need for 20 sessions, you know, so.

What’s your perspective on introducing microdosing as an effective preparation, as an ally in the preparation process? Are you noticing that happening more? People who are a little more on the like, nervous, anxious side, to help them actually develop more trust between their relationship and the medicine, aside from the person supporting the process.

That’s a very good point. It’s not something that I had thought very much before, but something that I’m encountering more and more, you know, that people that they, they tell me, Hey, I’m thinking about having a psychedelic experience, going to an ayahuasca retreat or doing these mushrooms retreat in the Netherlands, wherever.

But what do you think if I start taking some microdose of mushrooms before that to see what happens? Yeah. So that’s not an idea that we have. What I would have come up with, but people have that idea and I think it can be a good way to get more familiar with the substance or the spirit of the plant or however you want to understand that.

And for some people that might be enough. Maybe that works. They reach a stability that they’re looking for and they don’t feel the need of having another experience. I had a client many years ago that he was doing microdosing on himself. It was working very well for him. It was decreasing the craving for alcohol, improving the relationships with his family.

So it was working very well for him and he didn’t really have an intention of, um, having a microdose experience. Yeah. And some time later, he thought, maybe one day I will want to try to have a bigger dose, but for the moment it’s working well for me like this. So yeah, I think it is an option. Although the paradigms that operate behind the micro dosing and the macro dosing are different.

Now, when we do micro dosing, we’re thinking more of a Um, I don’t know, chemical, biochemical, uh, neurophysiological sort of paradigm in which the substance is doing something in your brain, is helping you to achieve some chemical stability or whatever. I don’t really know, no, what, what happens there. But when we do , a macro dose, that’s a more psychological approach.

You’re going to have an experience and through the experience, not the, the chemistry, then is the experience that’s going to bring the change or the potential transformation. So sometimes we would need to. to transition from a more chemical approach to a more psychological approach, which some people might have troubles in adhering to one or the other.

So

Laura: I find it really helpful, especially because I think there are some people who even want to start microdosing. They have this intention that they’re like, I want to microdose because I want to feel good. But actually I see it so much where initially they don’t feel good. They’re microdosing and after years of shoving emotional experiences and repression under the rug, they create space to feel to open and that that’s actually a great space to start working with sitting in the middle of discomfort of uncomfortable emotional experiences and actually working with some techniques in that space as a preparation to go deeper. And I do think it’s interesting to look at.

Marc: Yeah. And I had not thought it that way, but now that you say it.

Um, being open to try a micro dose might also imply a certain openness to explore inside. It’s like, all right, now I feel ready to do something different to what I’ve done before. And that also talks already of a certain psychological flexibility that’s starting to happen there to create space for emotions that might have been repressed.

But maybe one is Too scared to go into a big experience and find everything there all of a sudden. So yeah, it sounds like a useful approach.

Laura: What’s your perspective on quote unquote bad trips? And in terms of preparing people for challenging experiences, is that part of your preparation mindset of setting people up to have an attitude around

challenging experiences and maybe even reframing it away from quote unquote bad trips, which I don’t think is a helpful narrative anyways. What’s your perspective on that?

Marc: Yeah. Um, I think that bad trips do exist in the sense of a too intense experience in a not supportive setting.

And then all of a sudden you’re not safe, not just psychologically, but even physically, you know, like taking, um, I don’t know, 500 micrograms of LSD for the first time in a concert in a big place in a city that you’ve gone for the weekend. That sounds like a bad idea. No. So that could turn into a really, really difficult experience.

And I do think that in that case, that could be a bad trip because it’s not just because of the internal experience that you’re struggling. It’s because everything else as well. Um, I think that people should be. open to the possibility that in this canoe trip that we were talking before, there can be moments in which, I don’t know, things happen.

You are cold, you get wet, and all of a sudden there’s a scary moment in the river, you know? But it’s, um, I would say that most trips do involve a certain moment in which we can experience emotions that are somehow a little bit more challenging, but that’s like, um, like a movie. Who would go to watch a movie That everything was cool.

And then, you know, like that kind of narrative, even in comedies, you always have a moment in which something happens, you know? So I think that psychedelic trips are a little bit like that. Most of our exp