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My first Ayahuasca ceremony took place one year ago in Costa Rica. I was thinking about it for a long time, but haven't been actively looking for a place to do it. I was waiting for the plant to come to me. And eventually, it did, when I met a friend on the road buying pipas for her pre-ayahuasca diet. I directly signed up! If not now then when? 

The practice of integration is essential for fully processing and implementing the lessons of a psychedelic journey into a balanced lifestyle. Integration is often linked to the days, and weeks after the psychedelic experience when the participant digests the happenings, insights, and epiphanies of the ceremony and pan it for gold, looking for lessons and practical ways of improving their lives with it. What happens, however, if we start the integration before the psychedelic experience, during the phase of preparation?

A psychedelic bad trip can happen even to the most experienced and well-prepared psychonaut. Knowing how to deal with a bad trip peacefully and how to integrate the lessons into ordinary life is key to giving meaning to the trip and learning from it. In everyday life, we encounter situations that challenge us as a psychedelic trip does, and learning how to integrate a bad trip and improve from it will also prepare us to grow from the challenges of life.

You’ve just been through one of the most transformative experiences of your life, journeying through a roiling mass of emotions, thoughts, visions, ‘downloads’, memories, and amplified residues of recent activities, and it’s hard to put them into words. Salman Rushdie writes in his magical masterpiece, The Ground Beneath Her Feet that ‘five mysteries hold the keys to the unseen: the act of love, the birth of a baby, the contemplation of great art, being in the presence of death or disaster, and hearing the human voice lifted in song. These are the occasions when the bolts of the universe fly open and we are given a glimpse of what is hidden: an eff of the ineffable.’ I would add that there is at least one more key that can unlock the doors to divine intimations and profound transformations: freeing up the human body in a visceral, life-affirming, effortless dance while tuning into the eternal, creative life force (Axe) – with the help of psychedelics. However, that key to the unseen is not always a gentle fit. It can be a Trojan horse.