Your Essential Guide to Setting Up a Supportive Set and Setting for Psychedelic Therapy

In the transformative journey of psychedelic integration therapy, a supportive set and setting is central to how your experience will emerge. The things you’ll consider when setting the space will also vary depending what kind of medicine you are sitting with. 

Here are some useful guidelines on how to establish a nurturing environment that fosters safety and openness, necessary for a meaningful psychedelic experience.

Understand the Importance of Set and Setting

Set refers to one’s mindset going into the psychedelic experience. This includes intentions, expectations, and emotional state. Setting is the physical and social environment where the experience takes place. Both elements are pivotal in shaping the journey’s outcomes, influencing your comfort level, depth of insight, and safety.

Cultivating the Right Mindset for a Psychedelic Journey (Set)

Intention Setting: 

Begin with curiosity and clarity. 

Feel into what you hope to uncover or explore during your experience. This could be healing, seeking insights, personal growth, or something else personal to you.
What is drawing you to this medicine, now? 

Seeding an inquiry into the body and feeling what emerges from the heart can be a helpful place to start.  Remember to hold your intentions lightly, without rigid expectation, as what emerges from our psychedelic journeys can be different from what we expect to encounter.

It can be said that the journey begins as soon as we decide to sit in ceremony, and opening up a dialogue with the spirit of the medicine through meditation and offerings opens an environment of reciprocity and engagement.  

Encountering a revered guide or teacher, how would you approach? What is the inquiry you are holding in your heart?

Are there any situations, questions or concerns you’d like to address before the journey? Checking in with trained psychedelic specialist like those in our directory can help you work through any barriers or worries you might have, and help you enter the experience from a resourced and supported emotional space.

Emotional Grounding: 

Engage in practices that promote calmness and balance. This is helpful in preparation, and as tools to come back to during your psychedelic journey. Meditation, breathwork, yoga, spending time in nature, grounding self-massage, or other practices that suit you, are beneficial in preparing mentally and emotionally.  Consider limiting your screen time leading up to the journey.

Educational Empowerment: 

Understanding what to expect from your medicine experience can significantly ease anxiety. This can be regarding the effects, duration, ceremony specifics, and contraindications. Consult with a specialist in psychedelic integration therapy to build a knowledgeable foundation for your particular situation.

Designing a Safe Setting for Psychedelic Experiences

Choose a Comfortable Environment: 

Whether it’s a designated room or a natural setting, ensure the space is safe, private, and free of unnecessary disturbances. Comfort can be enhanced with familiar items like cushions, blankets, or personal mementos. 

What would you like to have with you? 

Is there anything you’d like to bring that links to your intention? 

Do you have easy access to the things that you need, like a bathroom, water etc? 

Are you in a place and time where you won’t be disturbed?

Controlled Sensory Input: 

Light, sound, sensation and scent can profoundly affect your experience. 

Soft lighting, specific music, or the absence of noise can help guide your emotional and sensory journey.  

Consider wearing an eye mask if you’d like to journey internally.

Music for Psychedelic Journeys:

Traditional Ayahuasca journeys are guided by Icaros sung by Shamans. 

Research Centres like John Hopkins, Imperial College London, and MAPS have all created playlists to guide your psychedelic journey, as well as other great musicians like East Forest, and Jon Hopkins.  You can also create your own playlists to guide you with the music that speaks to you. Remember if you’re playing from Spotify, it’s definitely important to have an ad-free account! Ideally download the playlist and turn your phone to airplane mode so you won’t be disturbed at the wrong moment.

Supportive Presence: 

If involving a guide or tripsitter, choose someone you trust and feel comfortable with.  A guide should be experienced, trauma informed, emotionally and spiritually attuned and have thorough safety protocols. Consider talking to your safe person/people before the journey around your touch boundaries and make a plan (that could be non-verbal) around what you’ll do if you need assistance.

Group Settings: Sometimes, sharing the experience with others undergoing similar journeys can amplify the sense of safety and belonging. Ensure group dynamics are conducive to openness and support, and be aware that a lot can arise during a session.  Individual sittings may suit you better.

Post-Experience Integration: Set up support for the aftermath. This might include integration sessions with a specialist, reflecting with an understanding community, journaling, time in nature, and other continued personal reflection practices. 

Ensure you don’t schedule anything for immediately after the journey and keep things spacious as possible in the time afterwards to allow yourself time to settle and absorb the messages.

Overall

Creating a supportive set and setting is a foundational aspect of a psychedelic journey. By attending to both the internal landscape (set) and the external environment (setting), practitioners and participants can maximize the therapeutic potential of their experiences, paving the way for profound personal transformation. Each step taken in preparation enhances the safety, efficacy, and overall depth of the psychedelic experience.

Want to go deeper? Join our July Training.

If you’re a Therapist, Health Practitioner, or Guide and looking and wanting to learn how to serve this moment of Psychedelic remembering in the most supportive way for journeyers and the medicine, consider joining our upcoming course.  

Awake in the Dream School’s Psychedelic Preparation and Integration 6-Month training starts in July.  Get in touch to find out more or enroll here.

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Towards Right Relationship and Reciprocity in Psychedelic Spaces

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Why Dreamwork is a perfect method for Psychedelic Integration