IGOR DOMSAC | December 12, 2025
In recent years, traditional Indigenous medicines have expanded internationally beyond the territories where they have been used for centuries for ritual, medical, or community purposes. Ayahuasca, peyote, psilocybin mushrooms, and iboga are now circulating in clinics, spiritual retreats, and Western therapeutic settings. However, as these practices expand, a question that transcends the initial enthusiasm becomes apparent: what happens after the session?
The answer lies in a concept that is becoming increasingly central to the psychology of expanded states of consciousness: integration. This process, described by research teams such as those at Johns Hopkins University and the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), consists of accompanying the experience so that the contents that emerge during it can acquire meaning and translate into real changes, rather than being diluted or transformed into discomfort.
From rituals to psychotherapy
In Amazonian communities, the ritual framework surrounding these practices serves to provide order and meaning. Each element — the songs, the diet, the hierarchies, and the spaces for speech — acts as a symbolic architecture designed to contain what emerges during the ceremony. Anthropologist Luis Eduardo Luna [1] described it as a sound and energy map that guides the healing process, alluding to the way in which icaros orient the visionary journey and help to reintegrate fragmented emotions.
The diet, for its part, is not reduced to food abstinence, but operates as a perceptual and relational discipline. According to ethnobotanist Eduardo Kohn [2], such practices foster an “ecology of attention” that strengthens the bond with the environment and prepares the body for dialogue with the invisible.
When these devices are transferred to urban contexts — retreats, clinics, or therapeutic circles — they lose their frame of meaning. The ritual gestures are preserved, but often emptied of the network of social reciprocity that gave them coherence. Anthropologist Marita Cárdenas Timoteo [3] has pointed out that, without this community structure, “healing ceases to be part of collective life and becomes an individual experience that can be overwhelming.”
This loss forces us to rebuild new forms of containment. Psychological integration then emerges as an attempt to repair the fabric that linked experience with everyday life. In the words of anthropologist Glenn Shepard, [4] it is a process of “symbolic translation” between Amazonian relational logic and the internalized view of Western culture.
In this void, integration does not replace ritual, but it does take on part of its ancestral function: to offer a space where experiences regain meaning, where emotions are put in order, and where experiences cease to be isolated episodes and become learning opportunities. Integrator and anthropologist Gerónimo Tejedor points out that this difference is not only ritual or methodological, but ontological. “In Indigenous frameworks, the experience with teacher plants is not usually an ‘extraordinary event’ that must then be integrated,” he explains, “but rather a moment within a relational continuum that involves territory, community, ancestors, humans, and non-humans.” From this perspective, he adds, “it is not a matter of integrating an internal experience, but of reordering relationships between multiple agencies.” In non-native contexts, on the other hand, this framework appears fragmented, and integration emerges as a compensatory practice that attempts to reconstruct, in another way, the supporting function that was previously distributed among ritual, community, and territory.
Beyond the “trip”: the risks of not integrating
Research from Johns Hopkins University and Imperial College London has shown that intense psychedelic experiences can open doors to both relief and suffering. A study of nearly 2,000 participants who had ingested psilocybin revealed that a significant proportion experienced persistent anxiety, emotional disorganization, or work difficulties in the weeks that followed. As Gerónimo Tejedor warns, one of the risks in non-native contexts is trying to “close” the experience too soon: “when we rush to an explanation, we can neutralize precisely what the experience was destabilizing.”
The absence of integration not only increases clinical risk, but can also lead to the idealization or trivialization of the experience. Psychiatrist William Richards, [5] a pioneer in modern psychedelic research, emphasizes that the session itself is only the beginning, as the real work consists of making sense of what has been revealed and embodying it in daily life.
The art of making meaning
Contemporary models of accompaniment, such as Psychedelic Harm Reduction and Integration (PHRI), propose a non-pathologizing methodology that combines psychotherapy, harm reduction, and mindfulness. Its purpose is not to reinterpret the experience from the therapist’s authority, but to help the person translate it into their own vital language. From his clinical experience, Tejedor emphasizes that integrating is not the same as interpreting: “accompanying is not translating the experience into a closed meaning, but rather sustaining a space where not everything has to be known yet.”
Other approaches, published in journals such as Frontiers in Psychology, describe integration as a step-by-step process: first containing and validating, then exploring symbolic or emotional meanings, and finally translating them into concrete transformations in relationships, habits, or life purpose.
In 2025, an interdisciplinary group presented the THRIVE model, which combines clinical protocols, Indigenous knowledge, and self-care habits—such as rest, nutrition, and community connection—to sustain long-term effects. All agree on one essential idea: integration is the natural continuation of the ceremony or therapeutic session.
Between ethics and safety
Integration not only serves a psychological function: it also implies an ethical responsibility. Accompanying someone who is in a vulnerable state requires preparation, clear boundaries, and an environment that prioritizes care. In contemporary clinical research, ethics has become as crucial as pharmacology.
Tejedor emphasizes that one of the main ethical risks arises when the integrator takes the place of the one who “knows” what the experience means. “The central challenge is to sustain openness without colonizing it,” he says. “When we try to lock an experience into a psychological explanation or interpretation too quickly, we can lose the vitality and openness that it brought with it.” In his view, integrating does not necessarily mean giving meaning, but rather “creating the conditions for meaning to emerge without violence,” avoiding turning integration into a new form of symbolic authority.
The Johns Hopkins University safety guidelines, developed by Roland Griffiths, Matthew Johnson, and William Richards, warn that the risks associated with psychedelics do not come solely from the substance itself, but from a lack of support before and after the experience. The team explains that a safe session requires psychological preparation, medical screening, constant accompaniment, and post-session support, factors that apply both in the laboratory and in other therapeutic contexts. For David Londoño, the ethical boundary is not always clear: “respecting the autonomy of the experience does not mean abandoning discernment.” On the contrary, “knowing when to accompany also means inviting people to question a narrative that may lead to risk.”
Outside the clinical setting, at ICEERS we work precisely to offer this support in situations where containment has failed. Through the El Faro Support Center, a pioneering and free international service, we offer up to five online psychological integration sessions to people who have had difficult experiences with ayahuasca, iboga, peyote, San Pedro, or other traditionally used plants.
This program, managed by psychologists and therapists trained in harm reduction and intercultural support, offers a confidential space where sharing experiences can lead to understanding and learning. It is not conventional psychotherapy, but rather a temporary support process that helps restore emotional balance, understand what has happened, and guide future steps, referring participants to specialized professionals when necessary.
The Support Center’s approach is based on a deep conviction: that safety depends not only on the substance or the physical environment, but also on how the experience is sustained. Therefore, integration is understood as a form of applied ethics, a practice of care that continues after the ritual or therapeutic session.
For integrator David Londoño, this care involves a delicate balance between respect and discernment. “Acting from a deep respect for the other person’s internal, cultural, and spiritual territory requires avoiding colonizing their experience with your own ideas or prejudices,” he points out. However, he warns that absolute non-directiveness can also be problematic. “There are situations in which an interpretation can lead the person into risky scenarios — for example, believing that they have been ‘chosen’ to fulfill a grand mission. In such cases, accompanying means inviting them to pause, to look again, to ask themselves where that interpretation comes from and where it might lead them.” It is not, he concludes, a matter of imposing a meaning, but of opening a space where that narrative can be explored critically and responsibly.
As psychiatrist William Richards summarizes in his book Sacred Knowledge, “the session does not represent the end, but the beginning of the real work.” That work — accompanying, listening, contextualizing — is precisely what projects like ICEERS help to make possible: an accompaniment that respects both science and cultural sensitivity, offering real tools where silence, guilt, or misunderstanding could prolong suffering.
Integrating without appropriating
There is, however, an additional risk: turning integration into just another product on the spiritual or therapeutic market. Some authors warn that reducing it to an individualistic technique can erase the community and ecological dimensions that underpin traditional uses. Tejedor puts it clearly: “in non-native contexts, integrating is not about reconstructing the missing world, but about avoiding replacing it with the authority of the person accompanying.”
Therefore, integration should also function as an exercise in intercultural responsibility: recognizing where these practices come from, but understanding that, in contemporary contexts, many of them now circulate separately from the community and territorial frameworks that traditionally sustained them. This distance — amplified by the rise of the spiritual market — makes a solid approach to integration even more necessary, one that is not limited to individual reflection but acts as an ethical commitment. Integrating means taking care of the processes that are opening up and ensuring that there are support networks capable of accompanying those who might otherwise be isolated or left without guidance after significant experiences. Integration thus becomes a communal and ongoing task, indispensable for responsibly sustaining what emerges in these already decontextualized spaces.
A psychedelic experience can alter perceptions and psychological structures in a matter of hours. But without a process to help digest that change, the revelatory becomes confusing, and the therapeutic can become risky. Integration acts as a compass after the storm: a space where storytelling, reflection, and accompaniment allow vision to become knowledge.
In non-native contexts, where symbolic frameworks are diluted and rituals are mixed with modern psychology, integration is not an additional luxury, but a vital necessity. Because only when the experience finds its place in the biography, in the community, and in the body can the experience be truly integrated.
Towards a culture of care
In recent years, various clinical teams and research organizations have begun to systematize accompaniment methods, combining psychology and harm reduction approaches to respond to the specific needs of non-native contexts. Among them, the psychedelic integration course developed by ICEERS Academy has established itself as an ethical and educational reference for care professionals and facilitators working in non-native contexts. In the words of Londoño, “integration is not sustained by tools alone, but by a shared culture of responsibility, where no one is left alone with what opens up.”
The course offers a journey that transcends theory. It invites reflection on the role of the companion, on the boundaries between support and direction, and on how to create safe environments that are sensitive to the realities of non-native contexts. The modules cover everything from the neuropsychological foundations of integration to the relational dimensions and practical challenges of any accompaniment process in these environments.
Inspired by more than a decade of clinical, harm reduction, and ethnobotanical work, ICEERS’ approach is based on the recognition that all practice takes place within specific cultural contexts, even when these are already fragmented or detached from their original frameworks. Rather than attempting to unite fields that currently operate separately, the purpose is to keep in mind how these contexts influence the way each experience is lived, interpreted, and accompanied. Integration is not taught as a closed technique, but as a living practice: attentive listening to what each person needs in order to transform an experience into a process of sustained growth.
Ultimately, integration means reweaving. It means stringing a thread between the ancestral and the contemporary, between emotion and thought, between vision and action. In non-native contexts, where ancient rituals no longer support this task, training spaces such as those promoted by ICEERS Academy offer an opportunity to cultivate a new ethic of accompaniment: more conscious, more informed, and above all, more humane.
Ultimately, psychological integration does not seek to establish direct bridges between systems of knowledge that, to a large extent, remain distant and whose depth is often poorly understood in Western contexts. The ancestral knowledge of Indigenous peoples forms integral biocultures, and any attempt to represent them from the outside runs the risk of describing them in a partial or inaccurate way. Rather than translating or appropriating these traditions, integration can open spaces for curiosity, listening, and personal exploration. At ICEERS, we do not aspire to represent this knowledge, but rather to contribute to a global culture of care and responsibility that is currently lacking. Our goal is to strengthen the community’s capacity to accompany vulnerable processes and to promote ethical and coherent support for the experiences that people go through.
Where traditional frameworks dissolve and cultural references transform, integration offers continuity, containment, and meaning. It is not an accessory addition, but rather the process by which an experience becomes embodied learning. Fostering a culture of care and responsibility—critical, ethical, and sensitive—allows experiences with teacher plants to generate roots, understanding, and maturity, while honoring the paths that made them possible.
In this global scenario in which practices shift and meanings are reconfigured, the World Ayahuasca Forum stands as an essential place to debate and advance integration. Its vocation for intercultural encounter—between Indigenous communities, mental health professionals, activists, academics, and facilitators—fosters a broader and more nuanced understanding of what it means to accompany experiences outside their territories of origin. There, integration is approached not only as a psychological process, but as an ethical and cultural commitment that requires dialogue, training, and shared responsibility. In a world where rituals change and narratives multiply, the Forum offers a framework for collectively imagining and building a more humane, informed, and respectful culture.
____
[1] Luna, Luis Eduardo (1986). Vegetalismo: Shamanism among the Mestizo Population of the Peruvian Amazon. Stockholm Studies in Comparative Religion.
[2] Kohn, Eduardo (2013). How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology Beyond the Human. University of California Press.
[3] Cárdenas Timoteo, Marita (2018). Music, Healing, and Cosmology in the Ayahuasca Practices of the Ucayali. Master’s thesis, Pontifical Catholic University of Peru.
[4] Shepard, Glenn H. Jr. (2014). Will the Real Shaman Please Stand Up? The Recent Adoption of Ayahuasca among Indigenous Groups of the Peruvian Amazon. Anthropology of Consciousness, 25(1): 104–137.
[5] Richards, W. A. (2015). Sacred Knowledge: Psychedelics and Religious Experiences. Columbia University Press.
Categories:
Noticias
, NEWS
Tags:
psychoactive plants
, psychedelic therapy
, integration
, psychedelic integration
, course