Plant Medicine
I was first introduced to folk plant medicine ceremonies in 2012, while working for the Evolver Social Movement — one of the early hubs of the western psychedelic renaissance.
In 2020, I began learning to serve and hold ceremony — not through a calling or a vision, but because I was stuck in the aftermath of a pivotal breakup. I wanted to be around people in a healing context — so I asked if I could help out at a retreat. That turned into a four-year apprenticeship.
I've assisted more than 50 retreats and private sessions, working with hundreds of people along the way. I know that I’m just scratching the surface, but this is what I’ve learned so far.
Plants have always been humanity's greatest ally — they have been here far longer than we have, and they carry a wisdom we are only beginning to remember.
As Robin Wall Kimmerer writes in Braiding Sweetgrass, "humans are 'the younger brothers of Creation' reminding us that we must look to other species for guidance."
Plant medicine is not a trend. Every culture has maintained some relationship to plants as healers, but many of the visionary plants used in ceremony today were first worked with by indigenous peoples, often for thousands of years.
Western culture has largely lost its own living relationship to plant medicine — that severance happened gradually, over centuries, as industrialization and institutionalized religion replaced older ways of knowing. As a western person working in this space, I think it's important to acknowledge what we've lost and to be thoughtful about how we receive what others have fought to protect.
Plant medicine is relational medicine, and working with them is a co-creative process — unique to each person. They have the power to inspire insight, change habits, release trauma, and potently activate our spiritual impulses.
The most common experience I've witnessed is a restored sense of connection. Reconnection with the self. With the body. With emotions that have been locked away. With loved ones, with those we haven't yet forgiven, with our worst enemies — even with ancestors, and with those not yet born. With other-than-human kin, the land, the planet, and something larger than all of it.
Plant medicine is not an intellectual journey — it is a felt one. For many people, it moves through the body in visceral waves — the nervous system releasing what it has long been holding. There is a difference between knowing something and feeling it, and experiencing it.
I've witnessed things in ceremonies that defy ordinary explanation — life-changing visions, spontaneous spiritual awakenings, and miraculous body healings that stretch the edges of human logic. I’ve also seen the flip side. Every moment of radical healing can be offset by an equal amount of confusion, grief, existential terror, disturbing visions.
I’ve seen people ingest too many ceremonies too quickly. Use sacred plants as a means of avoidance or develop a sense of spiritual superiority. Emotional maturity doesn't automatically come from consuming plants. I don’t think any of this is inherently wrong, and sometimes even necessary for our growth, as we often come to deeper truths by way of our illusions.
Not everyone feels something during a ceremony — and I've come to find this just as revealing as any vision. Sometimes it reflects an unconscious armor — years of numbing or controlling experience that makes surrender feel impossible. We live in a culture habituated to intensity, and when intensity doesn't arrive, we assume nothing is happening. Visions and intensity can actually be a distraction. Sometimes the most profound shifts happen in the absence of drama; stillness itself is the message.
A good rule of thumb is to avoid making major life changes immediately after a ceremony. Instead, integration is about building incrementally — developing habits that align with your values and sense of purpose. This might look like deepening connections and social support, offering your time in service to others, or increasing engagement with the non-rational dimensions of life: creativity, art, dancing, nature.
It's also worth naming the challenges. Returning to daily life can feel disorienting. Unresolved anxiety, grief, or trauma can surface in the weeks that follow — sometimes unexpectedly. And explaining what happened to family and friends who weren't there can be difficult. There's no rush to share your experience, and honestly, you never have to.
At the heart of all of it is something simple: all healing comes from caring, compassion, and love. The ceremony doesn't transform you — you transform you.
What to look for in a guide / my approach:
The people who hold ceremonies carry a real responsibility. Feeling safe during a journey is largely rooted in the relationship you have with the people who accompany you — and that relationship is built before the ceremony begins, not during it.
Someone worth working with will take time with you beforehand. They'll talk through benefits and risks, expectations, concerns, and any potential interactions with your current health and lifestyle. They should be well-versed in the pharmacology and contraindications of the medicines being used, and committed to responsible use above all else.
Each ceremony creates a distinct energetic ecosystem between guide, participants, and plants. In a properly held ceremony, nothing intentionally pushes participants beyond their physical and psychological limits. The person holding space must be capable of handling challenging situations, adverse reactions, and navigating between realms of consciousness.
What often goes unspoken in modern psychedelic academia is the supernatural and paranormal dimensions of this work. These experiences are far more common than mainstream research acknowledges, and they are not new. Shamanic traditions are among the oldest spiritual practices known to humanity — archaeological evidence points to trance states tens of thousands of years old. This is the oldest technology we have.
A good guide doesn't pathologize your experiences or explain them away. They hold space for you to discover what they mean — on your own terms, in your own time.
What I look for most, and what I try to practice myself, is power-with rather than power-over. I don't pretend to have the answers or make promises about what will happen during your journey.
I'll walk with you, play with you, pray with you (if that’s your thing), sit with you in ceremony. Before and after.
If you feel called to sit in private ceremony with me, there are a few things worth knowing:
I am selective about who I work with — based on mutual readiness, safety, and energetic fit.
Before we consider sitting together, I require that we establish a genuine connection: a minimum of three sessions, either in person or by phone, at my discretion.
We work at night, and I require an overnight commitment.
Afterward, I ask for a minimum of two integration sessions — by phone or, preferably, somewhere in nature.
Please note that I am currently in a discovery process of incorporating ceremonies into my practice. There will never be any explicit exchange of sexual energy in ceremony. Plant medicine wakes up the body — which is part of its healing power, and also where harm can occur. Many people come to ceremony hoping to heal sexual trauma, only to leave having been re-traumatized by the very person holding space for them. This is a well known problem in the plant medicine world. I hope that my years as a S*Wer grants me a particular sensibility and responsibility around these dynamics — the subtleties of power, the importance of boundaries and consent, and the sacred nature of the body.