EMBARK

Psychedelics are well known to catalyze profound mystical, spiritual, and religious experiences. In recent decades, a large body of research on psychedelic-based therapy shows that participants often report profound encounters of an existential or spiritual nature, and that these experiences hold therapeutic benefit, with some participants even claiming that they are among the most meaningful experiences of their lives.

Participants may experience diverse phenomena such as a sense of transcending time and space, a sense of deep insight into the nature of reality, encountering ancestors, entities, or guides, feelings of oneness with the universe, and an awareness of the interconnection between humans and all life. More challenging encounters are also common, such as intense terror of losing one’s sense of self, or confrontations with death. Both beautiful and challenging experiences can be skillfully supported.

It’s important for a facilitator administering psychedelic medicines to help foster a frame in which participants can prepare for the possibility of profound and sometimes challenging experiences, surrender to them if they do arise, and understand and integrate them afterward. EMBARK trains facilitators to help participants translate their psychedelic-occasioned spiritual experiences into resources for healing and meaningful change.

In EMBARK, mindfulness refers to the practice of focusing awareness on inner experience, bringing attention to what is happening moment by moment in the present. It centers around cultivating a state of “observer consciousness” that bears witness to thoughts, sensations, and experience. Individuals participating in psychedelic-based therapy often find benefits from the practice of mindfulness, such as greater psychological flexibility, less fear and more acceptance of challenging emotions and thoughts, and connecting with a “deeper” or “truer” self that is less identified with one’s emotions and beliefs.

EMBARK employs mindfulness techniques from evidence-based treatments to support participants not only with navigating the psychedelic experience, but also for managing triggers and tolerating distress and achieving their post-treatment goals. EMBARK facilitators are trained to support participants in practicing mindfulness throughout the course of treatment to help them foster a nonjudgmental, compassionate approach toward themselves and their experiences, develop a renewed relationship with their own challenging thoughts and feelings, and cultivate an inner resilience essential for growth.

Symptoms of trauma and core beliefs are often held in the body. In psychedelic-assisted therapy, the body can act as a doorway into deep healing. Participants undergoing psychedelic-assisted therapy with psilocybin have described experiencing a range of embodied phenomena such as enhanced or altered perception of their bodies, changed interoceptive awareness, cathartic discharge of trauma through trembling, shaking, movement, or vocalizing, and even changes to their sense of self as embodied beings. 

EMBARK embraces the body as a site of wisdom and healing. EMBARK draws from pioneering somatic (body-centered) therapies in the recognition that the mind and body are not separate, and it may be more helpful to speak of the mind-body as a single whole, particularly in the context of non-ordinary states of consciousness. The EMBARK approach employs somatic techniques throughout treatment to guide participants to trust the body’s intelligence and natural ability to heal. As somatic experiences may indicate a response to past trauma, therapists and facilitators receive training to work with emergent somatic material within a trauma-informed frame. Symptoms of trauma and core beliefs are often held in the body. In psychedelic-assisted therapy, the body can act as a doorway into deep healing. Participants undergoing  psychedelic-based therapy with psilocybin have described experiencing a range of embodied phenomena such as enhanced or altered perception of their bodies, changed interoceptive awareness, cathartic discharge of trauma through trembling, shaking, movement, or vocalizing, and even changes to their sense of self as embodied beings.

EMBARK embraces the body as a site of wisdom and healing. EMBARK draws from pioneering somatic (body-centered) therapies in the recognition that the mind and body are not separate, and it may be more helpful to speak of the mind-body as a single whole, particularly in the context of non-ordinary states of consciousness. The EMBARK approach employs somatic techniques throughout treatment to guide participants to trust the body’s intelligence and natural ability to heal. As somatic experiences may indicate a response to past trauma, facilitators receive training to work with emergent somatic material within a trauma-informed frame.

Participants receiving psychedelic medicine in a supportive context  are often opened to deep emotional experiences beyond what they are able to access in their daily lives or through regular psychotherapy. Many describe transcendent feelings of joy, bliss, and love, and also moments of emotional difficulty like despair, fear, sadness, and grief, often in the context of a healing catharsis. At other times, participants find themselves confronting challenging beliefs about themselves with a directness that they would normally avoid. With appropriate integration support, these openings can lead to lasting psychological change.

The EMBARK model supports participants with identifying, welcoming, and experiencing affective (emotional) states more fully. EMBARK training prepares facilitators to support participants through extreme emotions and coming face-to-face with core psychological wounds. EMBARK trained facilitators employ cognitive techniques to help participants confront, accept, and shift seemingly intolerable thoughts and feelings, and encourage participants to understand how negative feeling states often drive behaviors in everyday life.

EMBARK’s approach centers the idea that people are not lone, atomized individuals, but rather deeply connected and embedded in human relationship. Often in psychedelic experiences, people have experiences of seeing their mother or father, siblings, grown children, past romantic partners, and other meaningful life connections. 

Psychedelic medicine holds a unique capacity to dissolve boundaries between self and other, and to bring the ways that a participant has been shaped by relationship to the forefront. Their relational history, including attachment ruptures and relational trauma, often from childhood, can emerge in their internal experience or may be brought to life in their relationship with the facilitators. When responded to skillfully, these emergent dynamics within the therapeutic relationship can offer corrective emotional experiences and opportunities for relational repatterning. 

EMBARK goes further than other approaches to psychedelic-based therapies in emphasizing the relational domain. Facilitators are trained to attend to relational cues as they arise in the present moment, guiding participants to bring awareness to how their past has shaped their present way of relating. Participants can then explore different ways of relating, setting healthy boundaries, experiencing greater safety in relationships, and expressing themselves more authentically. With therapeutic support, participants can internalize and integrate these new experiences and carry them into their lives as new beliefs about themselves and new ways of relating to others. 

Psychedelic facilitation presents a critical, neuroplastic window to make changes in one’s life according to your own goals. After a medicine session, participants often emerge with a new perspective on life and a strong readiness and motivation to make changes to the way they live. With appropriate integration and therapeutic support, this moment of enhanced motivation offers an opportunity for making and sustaining such desired shifts, bringing the insights and healing of the psychedelic journey into everyday life.

Keeping momentum refers to this process of integration, translating altered states into altered traits. In planning for the future, EMBARK recognizes that setbacks are inevitable, but setbacks don’t have to become full-blown relapses. EMBARK prepares facilitators to support participants in taking concrete steps towards meaningful change in their lives.