Facilitating Psychedelic Experiences
A safe and intentional experience usually requires a facilitator who can remain present and supportive for a journeyer’s psychedelic experience. A facilitator can play a crucial part in a psychedelic journey.
A facilitator supports the journeyer. Being a facilitator entails having a responsibility towards another human being, which necessitates establishing certain safety measures. Finally, and as importantly, being a facilitator requires holding space while offering unconditional support to the journeyer.
It is a matter of clarity. It is a matter of tenderness.
— María Sabina
Facilitator Types
A facilitator is a trusted individual who will care for the journeyer by providing a supportive presence during the psychedelic experience. A facilitator can be a sitter, a guide, a shaman or a therapist.
A facilitator can play a crucial role in supporting the safe and healthy unfolding of a psychedelic experience. Many people can journey without a facilitator, however, a facilitator is always recommended because unexpected events requiring assistance can occur. A facilitator can also help integrate your psychedelic experience by providing support and facilitating the integration process.
A sitter has no license or training, but if experienced and knowledgable can provide adequate support through presence and care. A sitter is suitable for individuals who do not suffer from serious health conditions such as major depressive disorder or PTSD. A sitter can be a trusted and loved friend or relative that accepts and understands psychedelics as medicine.
A guide or shaman is trained through their own use of psychedelics within or without a tradition, such as the Mazatec people of Mexico, the Shapibo people of Peru or Western psychedelic therapy. A guide could be trained by a combination of Western psychotherapy and traditional psychedelic practices, while a shaman is trained directly from and mostly through their cultural lineage. Experienced guides and shamans have extensive knowledge and understanding of the psychedelic experience, in addition to ancestral knowledge. Depending on training and background, guides and shamans may or may not be the best facilitators for people suffering from serious health conditions.
A psychedelic therapist has therapeutic training and a related license recognized by a national board. This training and license allows therapists to practice therapy, psychotherapy or psychological counselling. Their training is often rooted in Western models of healing and therapy, and will most likely not have as much knowledge and understanding of the psychedelic experience and ancestral knowledge as a guide or shaman. Therapists are often, but not always, best for those suffering from severe health conditions.
Choosing the right facilitator is important to ensuring a safe and effective psychedelic journey.
Not every journeyer will want or need a facilitator, however, a facilitator is always recommended.
True compassion does not come from wanting to help out those less fortunate than ourselves, but from realizing our kinship with all beings.
— Pema Chodron
Responsibility
As a facilitator, you are responsible for supporting a human being who will be undergoing a delicate, nuanced, powerful and sacred experience.
Being a facilitator involves a responsibility towards the individual whom you are facilitating. Psychedelic journeys often require the journeyer to leave their body unattended. Thus, the journeyer must be capable of completely trusting their facilitator to surrender to the psychedelic experience. Moreover, the facilitator must be capable of trusting that the journeyer is personally prepared for and equipped to handle the substance, dose and depth of experience they are accessing with psychedelics.
As a facilitator, it becomes your responsibility to provide a comforting and supportive presence for the journeyer while also being able to take care of situations that may interfere with a smooth and successful psychedelic experience for the journeyer. Emergency situations can happen, and knowing how to handle these situations is the facilitator’s responsibility while the journeyer is under the influence.
Although responsible for the physical safety of the journeyer, a sitter is not a guide, therapist or shaman, and is not responsible for the psychological or spiritual safety of the journeyer. Instead, the sitter must support these aspects of the psychedelic experience without attempting to influence them.
The facilitator-journeyer relationship is sacred and must be built upon mutual trust, understanding, and respect.
Use your intuition. Ensure you feel comfortable with your facilitator or with your journeyer. Don’t rush the process, take your time and feel it through.
As a sitter, support the journeyer, but do not guide or therapize the journeyer’s experience.
Be here now.
— Ram Dass
Safety Measures
Facilitating a psychedelic journey will require safety measures, including making an agreement with the journeyer and being ready to deal with the unexpected.
Making an Agreement
An explicit verbal or written agreement will be beneficial to both the facilitator and journeyer because the relationship is based in mutual trust.
Make the implicit, explicit. Be open and honest. Put everything on the table and seek understanding.
A successful facilitator-journeyer relationship must be founded upon deep trust and understanding. Whether explicit or not, the relationship between a facilitator and a journeyer is a contract between two people, and thus working through the relationship contract together to ensure mutual agreement and understanding is essential to ensuring safety and success for the journeyer and facilitator.
A facilitator must be a trusted friend or family member, a trained guide or therapist, or an experienced shaman from a trusted lineage. Regardless of how well you know each other, it’s important to make the implicit, explicit. Here’s a list of potential boundaries to explore and agreements to make explicit:
Physical boundaries
How comfortable is the journeyer with physical touch?
How comfortable is the facilitator with physical touch?
What parts of the body are you open to being touched?
As a journeyer, do you trust the facilitator to respect your physical boundaries while you leave your body in a vulnerable state?
Sexual boundaries
Is there a potential for the journeyer to manifest sexual behaviours towards the facilitator? If so, is the facilitator prepared or equipped to handle it?
As a journeyer, do you trust the facilitator to respect your sexual boundaries while you leave your body in a vulnerable state?
Emergency situations
As a facilitator, do you know what to do if the journeyer becomes violent?
Is the journeyer open to having emergency services being called?
Is the journeyer okay with the use of benzodiazepine such as Xanax?
Preparing for the Unexpected
Unexpected events occur. The facilitator must be ready to handle these events in case they happen. The journeyer may act out in inappropriate ways or put themselves or others in danger.
The facilitator must be ready to handle any event. On top of the contract which requires discussing any potential events and plans of actions in case these events occur, the facilitator must know what they will do in the case these events occur.
A contract will ensure that the facilitator and journeyer know what they’re getting into, allowing for mutual safety, respect and understanding.
Being ready for unexpected events is crucial.
The key to becoming an excellent psychedelic facilitator lies in holding no expectations for the the outcome and knowing it is not you who is doing the healing.
— Natasja Pelgrom
Holding Space
A facilitator is a humble, empathetic being who fully trusts the intelligence and wisdom of nature, and holds a space for the psychedelic process to unfold naturally.
At times, the journeyer might depend on the facilitator for support. It is the facilitator’s duty to support the journeyer in whatever way they can.
As a facilitator, it is vital not to try and control anything. Because all psychedelic experiences are different and unpredictable, surrender is key for both the journeyer and the facilitator. The facilitator holds a space in which the person undergoing a psychedelic experience can feel safe, supported and comfortable.
The journeyer may ask you to bring them water or a tissue. Sometimes, a hand is in need of holding or a shoulder in need of touching. The journeyer may want your help walking to the restroom, or for you to change the music, change the lighting, or grab extra blankets. The journeyer may also just need you to listen to their stream of consciousness dialogue as they express their experience.
Nothing is out of scope for a facilitator to support the journeyer, as long as the relationship is based on preset and mutual trust, agreement, understanding and respect.
A vast inner intelligence resides in consciousness, and this intelligence will be guiding the journeyer.
The facilitator’s role entails supporting this natural process of healing and growth without imposing their own selves and beliefs on the experience.
Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others? Because of this, the time is always right to do what is right.
— Martin Luther King Jr.
Unconditional Support
Unconditional support entails being of service to the journeyer, letting go of any judgment and need for control, while remaining open and present.
If you are already working with psychedelics for your own healing and growth, unconditional support will eventually become a crucial component of your own healing and growth. An act of service requires putting our selves aside so that we may be fully present and available to another being. Being present an available necessitates being non-judgmental, kind, compassionate and accepting towards the other being. No matter what the journeyer is going through, as a facilitator, it is your duty to be there for them and provide unconditional support.