Integration is the most important part of your psychedelic experience. It is where the work of transformation really begins by unpacking the elements of your consciousness-expanding journey and beginning your personal meaning-making process. Somatic Integration connects your body and mind by applying mindfulness and body-based actions, such as movements and breathing practices, to reclaim your embodied wisdom. Regardless of the depth or significance of a psychedelic experience, the magic only happens once you take action in your daily life.

New Neural Pathways

Following a psychedelic experience, your brain is primed for positive change, due to neurogenesis, the growth of new brain cells, and neural pathways. While this growth process happens only in very specific areas of the brain, it appears to result in improvements in learning, positive perspectives, and memory.

A Perfection to the Unfolding

If psychedelics such as psilocybin can boost the process of neurogenesis, honoring integration highlights your valuable opportunity to glean all the growth from the journey. Take full advantage of your ability to perceive from a new angle and reinforce new, more soul-supportive habits. Some parts of your journey may have been extremely difficult while other parts offer ineffable pearls of wisdom.

Directing you to your Wholeness

Whatever aspect of life needs to be tended or pruned will bubble up to the surface. Using a garden metaphor, your preparation was about planning what you’d like to grow, pulling weeds, and clearing your environment, the journey was about digging in the dirt, honoring all the richness it contains, and the integration is about protecting your new sprouts, nurturing them and paying attention to their unique needs. Integration is an ongoing, life-long process.

Self-directed healing

Somatic integration is about following the wisdom of your body. It is a bottom-up approach of trusting the innate wisdom of how your body wants to move and express emotion. For example, in a recent psilocybin journey, I felt inspired to get up and dance, My whole body wanted to move with the music and I could feel the energy flow like a river through my muscles. Part of my integration process continues to include dancing and moving, because of its sheer pleasure. During another journey, I was inspired to sing. My somatic integration now includes a daily practice of chanting in the mornings. I sing for the way it feels, not for the way I sound (LOL!)

Small actions repeated many times

What small, yet concrete, body-based action step are you willing to take today, to weave a piece of your journey into the life you are living now?

Some suggestions for actions you can repeat many times a day:

• An upright posture (to feel confident and competent)
• A gesture that emphasizes a trait you admire (an open palm to indicate you’re inviting someone else to talk before you do)
• A facial expression with a slight smile and head tilt (to reveal your presence or compassion)
• Deep breath in a moment of stress (to nudge your nervous system toward resiliency) 
• Singing, chanting, reciting a mantra

Rooting in your New Skills

Small actions, when repeated many times, become habits and eventually turn into unconscious competence. Unconscious competence represents a level of proficiency that has you skillfully performing your particular action expertly without even thinking about the process or circumstance. That’s literal transformation.