Tony Martin

About Tony Martin

Life is a challenge and a gift.

Growing up with caregivers who experienced personality and substance use disorders was difficult, and it also instilled in me a sensitivity toward the emotional pain of others. The greatest insight from my youth is that underneath the harm we do to one another ultimately lies a wholesome desire to be loved. This insight informs how I show up for you.

Working my way from restaurant cook to Chief Financial Officer of Upworthy while working across the globe was an incredibly rewarding experience. To realize the success assigned value by society, while also recognizing deep and profound unhappiness, was a wake-up call. This experience informs how I show up for you.

Earning a degree in psychology and a graduate degree in clinical social work expanded my awareness of the ways societal conditioning creates individual and collective suffering. In the process, I’ve learned how traditional Western therapeutic relationships include a problematic power dynamic. This learning informs how I show up for you.

Practising and teaching secular mindfulness and Buddhist insight meditation is the gift of a lifetime, but not without challenges. I am trained as a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction teacher and completed Spirit Rock’s Liberation through Emptiness and Awareness Practices year-long program. I have spent days and weeks on long meditation retreats, including sitting in 10 days of silence after learning of my father’s passing. This enabled me to reflect deeply on the nature of grief and loss, as well as the gift of life. This practice informs how I show up for you.

Journeying with psychedelics has woven my diverse life experience into the view that the vast majority of what we call suffering, lies not in the situation but in our response. I am aware of how the preparation and integration of psychedelic experiences can empower liberation from craving, aversion, and delusion. This awareness informs how I show up for you.

Tony Martin's approach to integration

James Baldwin said, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” It is in the spirit of this powerful perspective and the insight gained from my healing journey that I offer myself as a psychedelic integration coach.

I believe psychedelics are catalysts for opening up the mind to engage with how subconscious experience drives conscious thoughts, emotions, and behaviours. My coaching approach is defined by the 3 C’s: collaborative, challenging and compassionate. Together, we explore the conditioning that has led us to view the world in terms of subject-object relationships. We begin to dismantle the fundamental construct of human experience as separateness. By doing so, my wish is that you begin to see your ‘self’ no longer separate from the ‘other.’ This direct experience of interconnectedness can serve as an anchor to come back to during integration and future psychedelic journeying.

Integration involves not just working with a psychedelic experience but also the causes and conditions which led you to the journey. Together, we discuss the law of cause and effect and the capacity to move from reacting to responding. I want to instil in you the importance of seeing psychedelics as a spiritual and therapeutic experience, not just a magic substance. I believe this shared understanding will empower us to go deeper and decrease the likelihood of unmanageable difficult experiences.

Subjective feelings following psychedelic use include, among others, a more flexible sense of self, enhanced attention and heightened sensory perception. Being open and vulnerable is a beautiful gift. It can also be challenging. Safety, comfort, and trust are hallmarks of fruitful psychedelic integration. The risk of harm is reduced, and positive outcomes increase when people can engage in both integration and mindful preparation. I invite you to reach out for support to me, or another coach that you resonate with.

Tony Martin's offerings

• Ca 120€ per hour