WHAT IS INTEGRATION?
“Psychedelic integration is a process during which a person reflects upon, organises and assimilates the insights and feelings from a psychedelic journey into their body-mind experience and their day-to-day life, in order to support lasting personal and habitual changes. It is the single most important predictor for a successful long-term outcome when working with plant medicines / psychedelics...”
- ESSENTIYA
WHY DO WE NEED INTEGRATION?
Long before our intellect can intervene, our emotional body kicks into action to determine our mood, reactions and behavioural responses to situations day to day. This aspect of us is governed by the limbic system of our brains, which oversees nervous system activity beneath our conscious awareness. It is the first responder to any situation where there is a perceived threat to our wellbeing and survival.
Throughout our lives, every time this system has gone into high alert and acted to protect us from something (often known as the fight, flight or freeze response), it has left an imprint on our physical body, mental body and energy body.
These imprints of body-mind memory add up to all the moments that have caused us pain, discomfort and emotional loss in our past. And they can continue to trigger us before we’re even aware of what’s happening in any even mildly similar situations in the present, since the fear centres in our brain are primed to be on high alert for such things.
They distort our perception of reality, placing a filter between us and an authentic experience of life as it happens. Often they may take the form of beliefs that limit us in our thinking, behaviour and ability to fully feel, such as “I’m unlovable unless I achieve;” “I’m not good enough;” “I don’t fit in;” “I never succeed, why try?”
These beliefs or ‘programs’ may often have been learned, adopted and cemented in response to challenging experiences earlier in life as our brains developed. It is as though we become fragmented, trying to answer to all these beliefs, rather than feeling integrated, whole, our Self.
Often, we’re not conscious of the imprints that form the basis of these unhelpful programs, nor their impact on our present lives. Yet a psychedelic experience can bring them quite suddenly to the surface as clear insights. So, integration is the process by which we use practical tools to dig deep into these insights and take an honest look at what they can teach us.
MAKE IT MORE THAN JUST AN EXPERIENCE
By being consciously aware of these imprints and their effects - creating space for them, allowing ourselves to feel them, giving them compassionate and loving attention - we are eventually able to integrate what is of value into a more conscious, less reactive way of being, and to release what is not of value.
In essence, the integrative process is our higher Self, our ‘adult Self,’ reframing, re-parenting, comforting and bringing these painful fragments in from the cold, not shutting them out any longer through suppression, sedation, escapism etc.
By seeing, acknowledging and releasing fear-filled beliefs and old, unhelpful programs, a transmutation occurs, a homecoming back to balance, alignment, emotional mastery, authentic self-expression - and to life as it happens, unencumbered and uncoloured by the past.
If one’s intention is healing, without integration, a psychedelic experience remains just that; an experience. Yet a regular body-breath-mind practice can ensure the insights gained remain alive and accessible, and can make space for further insights to follow without the need for psychedelics.
“Healing is becoming whole; integrating all the parts and recognising all these aspects of yourself that you’ve loathed and rejected and tried to run away from. It’s coming back to your authentic Self, which never went away, but you lost contact with it. If trauma is a loss of connection to Self, then healing is the reconnection to Self. When you find that the things that used to trigger you, don’t get you so upset anymore... but when you do get upset, you get over it much more quickly... Really, it’s when the past starts to loosen its hold over your present.”
Dr Gabor Maté, trauma, child development and addiction expert, and bestselling author of the paradigm-shifting books, When the Body Says No and The Myth of Normal (see my Books page)
