What is the advised aftercare strategy following a psychedelic journey?
Other than hydrating and replenishing yourself with dopaminergic foods such as bananas and fish, it’s taking the time to integrate the experience — that is, knitting the knowledge that you downloaded from the intuitive self into the context of your life.
You can integrate a psychedelic trip on many levels: interperonally (i.e. through conversation with other psychonauts), through creative expression, through finding quiet time in nature or artichitectural structures of solitude, through movement and through psychotherapy with a therapist trained in integration therapy.
Creative expression can involve expressive movement, art, music, poetry. Creativity is the language the soul speaks. Creativity is intuition, emotion and deep unconscious expressing itself through a physical medium.
Scheduling quiet days after a ceremony allows the medicine to permeate deeply into the body. Dan Engle, board certified MD in psychiatry and neurology and fellow psychonaut (TW: @drdanengle) recommends flotation tanks. Shamans encourage being in nature or meditation (or meditation in nature) to find further healing in solitude.
However, in addition to solitude and simply allowing the medicine to percolate, I recommend somatic-oriented psychotherapies (such as AEDP, and other interventions) as an important method to tune into the big and small sensations in our bodies.
Psychedelic integration through psychotherapy is a multidimensional approach to integration. It is also interpersonal integration – you have a witness to reflect back to your the importance of what you experienced, you get the energetic presence of an attuned therapist. it’s also a quiet environment where the space is completely for you and your psyche, and given the right materials, space and encouragement, it’s creative expression as well.
In summary, integrating your psychedelic experience with a counselling professional is multidimensional: It's creative expression, It's a time of solitude, it's allows you to tune into your body, and it's interpersonal relating.