Psychedelic preparation & integration
Two halves of one piece of work. What you do in the weeks before an experience decides how safe it is, and what you do in the months after decides whether it changes anything.
Work with me
Psychedelic integration with a psychotherapist, online
The ceremony ends, and then you are back home with a mind full of questions. Integration is the work of turning what you experienced into steady, lasting change.
What integration is
A strong psychedelic experience can show you a great deal in a few hours: old grief, a truth about a relationship, a sense of what your life could feel like. What it cannot do is change your daily life for you. That part happens afterwards, slowly, in the weeks and months where the experience either settles into something real or fades into a story you once told.
Integration is that work. In sessions we take what happened, in ceremony, in a retreat, or in a difficult trip, and give it a place: what it means, what it asks of you, and what concrete changes follow from it. We also work with your body, because insight that only lives in your head tends not to last.
I work online, in English, with clients across the US, Canada and Europe. If you are still deciding whether to sit with a medicine at all, start with preparation instead: the work before an experience shapes everything that comes after.
When the insights did not become change
This is the most common thing people bring me. The experience felt enormous. You saw clearly what needed to shift. And six months later the same arguments, the same anxiety and the same habits are still running your days.
That is not a failure and it does not mean the experience was false. It usually means the insight never had a bridge into ordinary life: no structure, no support, and a nervous system still bracing the way it always has. Integration builds that bridge. We slow the experience down, sort what matters from what dazzles, and translate it into changes small enough to survive contact with a normal week.
“She's helped me work through things, and understand them, that other health professionals never managed to identify.”
When the experience left you feeling worse
Some people come back from a ceremony more anxious than they went in. Sleep gets strange, the world feels thin, old trauma feels closer to the surface instead of resolved. If that is where you are, I want you to know it is more common than the retreat brochures suggest, and there is a way to work with it.
This is where working with a clinician matters. I am a warranted psychotherapist, with formal training in psychedelic harm reduction and integration, and I have spent years inside these traditions myself. We work at the pace your nervous system can handle, without forcing you back into the material that overwhelmed you.
I wrote a guide for exactly this situation: when a ceremony leaves you feeling worse. If you are in crisis right now, please contact local emergency services or a crisis line first. Therapy is not an emergency service.
How I work
My base is Gestalt psychotherapy: present-focused, relational, and interested in what is happening in you right now rather than only in the story of what happened then. Around that I use somatic work, which means working with the body, and mindfulness, which trains the attention you need to notice change as it happens.
The other half of my background is lived. I have completed four master plant diets in the Amazon and five Vision Quests in the Nahuatl tradition of Mexico, the last one seven days long, and I have more than ten years of experience teaching meditation and holding retreats in Peru, Mexico, Spain and Malta. When you describe what happened in your ceremony, you will not have to explain it from zero.
What I do not do
I do not provide, source or administer any substance, and I do not recommend specific medicines, doses or ceremonies. I do not promise healing, and I would be careful with anyone who does. What I offer is preparation, integration, education and harm reduction: clinical support before and after experiences you choose to have, wherever you have them.
Who this is for
- You sat in ceremony months ago and the insights are fading without anything really changing
- You feel worse since a psychedelic experience: more anxious, less grounded, or strangely flat
- Old trauma surfaced during an experience and you do not want to face it alone
- You have a retreat behind you and no support structure in front of you
- You want to make sense of one big experience before deciding whether there should be another
In their words
I met Asha three or four years ago in Spain, during plant medicine therapy, and I've since been to a retreat she organized in Peru and kept doing integration work with her after ayahuasca ceremonies for the past three and a half years. She's helped me work through things, and understand them, that other health professionals never managed to identify. I've made more ground than I have in a very long time. Asha is professional and committed, and she has real principles as a therapist: whatever I share with her stays completely confidential. She's the most reliable therapist I've worked with, out of three. After some difficult sessions she was always there, and I haven't recommended anyone else in her place.
Questions people ask
How soon after a ceremony should integration start?
Sooner is easier, because the material is still fresh and your motivation is high. But there is no expiry date. I work with people weeks, months and sometimes years after an experience. If something from long ago still tugs at you, it is not too late to work with it.
How many sessions does integration take?
It depends on what surfaced and what you want from it. Some people need three or four sessions to land one experience. Where an experience has stirred up older trauma, the work can become ongoing therapy. We review together as we go, and you are never locked in.
Do I need to have had a difficult experience to benefit?
No. Integration is just as useful after a meaningful, positive experience. In fact that is the best moment for it: you have clarity and energy, and the work is to turn them into changes that survive ordinary life.
Does integration work online?
Yes. I have worked online for years, with clients across time zones in the US, Canada and Europe. The work relies on attention and conversation, not on a shared room. Clients are often surprised by how quickly the screen disappears.
Will you recommend a ceremony, retreat or substance?
No. I do not source, provide or recommend substances, doses, facilitators or ceremonies. If you are considering an experience, I can help you prepare, think through safety, and ask better questions of the people who would hold it. That is education and harm reduction, and it is where my role ends.
Related pages
Psychedelic preparation
The most important part of a ceremony happens before you arrive. Preparation is how you give a strong experience the best chance of helping rather than hurting.
Trauma-informed psychotherapy
Trauma is not only a memory. It lives in how your body braces, scans and shuts down. Therapy that ignores the body asks half of you to do all the work.
Guide: Feeling worse after a ceremony
You did the work, you sat with the medicine, and you came home feeling more raw than healed. This page is for right now, and for what comes next.
