Psilocybin Assisted Therapy Blog
Aurora Healing Gardens Psilocybin Service Center
Transformation Is tough. There is no getting around it. Being born, growing, learning, changing based on that learning is hard work, and you can’t get out of it.
Most of the time becoming more aligned with one’s authentic self, doesn’t just happen on its own, especially as we grow older. But the nagging ‘call’ to become is a like a quiet sound in the background that just keeps getting louder until we can’t ignore it anymore. In learning and gaining efficiency at navigating our chaotic society, it is so easy to completely forget the person we once were.
Just like a baby who has ‘ripened’ in utero, sometimes we reach a point in life where who we are, and how we have manifested our life, just doesn’t ‘fit’ anymore. Maybe we worked very hard to realize our dreams and it was wonderful; or maybe it wasn’t what we thought it would be, but regardless, something has changed on the inside and a persistent incongruity between ‘how’ I am, and ‘who’ I am has become an irritating white noise in the background. Something has to change, to die, and to be born.
For almost 35 years I have been a witness to, and assisted women going through labor. The process of one person becoming two is intense, astounding and never becomes common place. It is truly amazing, every time, no matter how the birth goes. All I can do is to try to protect the space and provide the Mother with what she needs, but she has to do the work.
I have been so struck, even from the first day of entering the world of Psilocybin Therapy, and becoming a facilitator, at how much like birth this process is. Many people seek it out for help with chronic mental and emotional issues, or alcohol and substance use disorders. And most of those people find a tremendous amount of help with it. But what so many are also finding in this most mysterious shifting of energies, is themselves. Psilocybin can help a person ‘see’ the truth that lies within and around the sometimes confusing and conflicting beliefs about life, and about self. And once something has been ‘unbelieved’, it can become much harder to continue to live in a way that doesn’t serve one’s organic nature.
People often reach out to me asking if Psilocybin Therapy might help them. Their stories are sometimes tragic and desperate, and sometimes just needing to break out of a sense of being trapped by their life circumstances and needing help finding a new direction. And while I always tell people there is no guarantee of help, I have seen this be a truly transforming event for many of my clients. One of the most striking effects is that it can somehow 'reframe' the narrative of the past. It doesn't negate the past, or change the past, but it can help a person see the past, and their place in it, from a much broader perspective. And even sometimes just a small change in relation to one’s memories and life experiences can help to reconcile the feelings associated with them.
It can also help people find a much more conscious relationship to other living things, both in the plant and animal world and in the human world. For me personally, it was like 20 years of therapy in 5 hours, and I will never be as unconscious of nature as I was before.
Prior to the formal structure of Psilocybin assisted therapy, ingesting psychedelic mushrooms was referred to as a ‘tripping’, or a going on a ‘journey’. And some people do experience it in that way, but it can also be not unlike a lot of other things that people do to help expand their awareness, or have a spiritual experience. Meditation, ceremony, ritual, breath-work are all conducive to expanding the capacity to see, feel, understand and to BE.
Psilocybin has beneficial effects on the brain other than resolving depression and anxiety. It is an anti-inflammatory, helps neuronal activity and the brain make new neural connections. We all have the experience, especially as we get older, of the mind becoming more and more efficient at processing information during day to day life. It takes less conscious thought, less intention, less attention to get through the day. And while there can certainly be some beneficial aspects to this, such as learning a musical instrument and driving a car, or any physical skill one needs to master, it also has a numbing effect on our experience of being alive. The brain unconsciously goes down the same neural tracks, thinks the same thoughts, does the same things and we become less and less aware of being alive. Psilocybin can help to open up new tracks, and suddenly it can feel like we have more choices, things seem brighter again, like when one was little.