FOR INDIVIDUALS
If you feel called to an encounter with the medicine and are unsure how to start, that is a good time for a conversation that may help you orient. If you have had one or more encounters that seemed to have opened a door you are unsure how to enter, that is similarly a good time for a conversation. I can help you develop a strategy for either circumstance, including a program of preparation and integration that is one on one or in collaboration with another professional who is supporting your work.
FOR THERAPISTS
I have spoken with a number of therapists. Some are looking for a facilitator to work with a client who has expressed interest in a medicine experience. Some have inquired how to approach a medicine experiences themselves. I enjoy working collaboratively to support the integration of the medicine work with a renovated therapeutic model that can better serve this burgeoning population of people reaching beyond their current horizons. What is perhaps unique about my work is its examination of individual client issues and experiences from the cosmological and ontological perspectives of Western, Asian, and Andean cultures in light of my own extensive experience with various shamans and medicines. Looking at this movement from a big picture perspective tends toward simplification, rather than complication, of the strategies for personal change.
FOR MEDITATION TEACHERS
Before my first encounter with ayahuasca, I had meditated regularly for at least fifteen years, including a number of six-day vision quests in nature. The medicine changed the way I meditate and my purpose in doing so. American meditation culture has been deeply affected by a single fact relayed to me by a Buddhist Roshi: everywhere Buddhism planted itself—Tibet, China, and Japan—it formed a relationship with an underlying shamanic culture. That was not the case in the West for the simple reason that European colonization decimated First Nations’ and Native American practices while Western Christianity prohibited mystical practice, leaving the West without. If we are going to use meditation effectively to help integrate the medicine experiences, we will need to renovate. The medicine has shown me a specific way to do that.
FOR FACILITATORS
I have developed a program for preparation and an approach to integration that relies on experiences and trainings going back at least thirty years. My own ceremonial experience with the medicine extends back twenty years. I am happy to work with facilitators who wish to have another perspective on how to prepare clients for ceremony, support them in ceremony, and approach a program of integration beyond a general referral to therapy, meditation, yoga and other generally available self-help practices. My approach relies on a unique comparison of two cosmological views that describes the alternate contexts within which this work is done. I think this perspective simplifies the cognitive challenge rather than the opposite.
