Interest in psychedelics is growing rapidly. More and more psychologists, coaches, physicians and other professionals are exploring how to facilitate psychedelic experiences. That is a positive development.

At the same time, this development raises an important question:

When are you actually sufficiently equipped to guide someone through a psychedelic experience?

In our view, facilitating a psychedelic experience is not something you simply do on the side from time to time. Especially not when people come with deeper personal issues, or when working with higher doses and more intense non-ordinary states of consciousness.

We see it as a profession.

And for us, that profession rests on a number of pillars.

1. You need to know the territory yourself — including what comes afterwards

You can learn a great deal about psychedelics from books, scientific publications and training programmes. But as a facilitator, you are guiding someone through a fundamentally different state of consciousness.

In our view, that also requires lived experience.

You need to have experienced what it means when your normal mechanisms of control fall away. How strong the urge to hold on can be. And why letting go of control and being able to surrender to whatever arises can be such an important part of a psychedelic experience.

You need to know what it is like when fear, grief, shame, anger, old memories or unexpected feelings arise. Not only from theory, but from your own experience.

But for us, personal experience does not end there.

You also need to know the process that follows a psychedelic experience firsthand.

What happens when an experience has revealed something you can no longer put away? When you have seen something about yourself, only to discover that insight does not automatically lead to change? When old patterns simply return? When you have to explore what an experience really means and what you want to do with it?

That is integration.

For us, personal development therefore means not only having had psychedelic experiences yourself, but also seriously engaging with what those experiences brought up. Being willing to look at your own patterns, triggers, fears and shadow sides. That can happen through therapy, supervision, bodywork or other forms of in-depth self-exploration.

Because how can you help someone integrate a confronting insight if you have never experienced yourself how difficult it can be to actually apply an insight to your own life?

Why do we consider this so important?

Because as a facilitator, you bring yourself into the space.

When you become uncomfortable with someone else’s grief, fear, anger, silence or loss of control, there is a risk that you intervene because you cannot tolerate the tension.

A good facilitator needs to be grounded enough to remain present.

Not trying to direct the experience. Not trying to rescue someone. Not intervening because of your own discomfort.

You need to be able to hold the space, especially when someone is in a completely different state of consciousness.

Sometimes the most important thing you can do is simply be present and allow the process to unfold.

And when the experience is over, another part of the profession begins: helping someone explore how the experience can find a place in real life.

2. Personal experience must go hand in hand with solid theoretical knowledge

Lived experience alone does not make someone a professional.

A facilitator also needs to understand what psychedelics do, which psychological and physiological processes may occur, what the contraindications and risks are, how set and setting influence the experience, and how different psychological vulnerabilities may manifest during an experience.

And just as importantly: you need to be able to recognise when a psychedelic experience is not appropriate.

There are now various training programmes for this. Some are very comprehensive, such as programmes offered by ADEPT/Open Foundation, IPI and the Experiential Training Institute. There are also shorter training programmes and courses, including those offered by RINO.

This development is logical and valuable, but it has also created enormous variation in content, depth, personal experience, supervision and practical training.

As a field, we will therefore increasingly need to learn how to separate the wheat from the chaff.

A certificate says something. But not everything.

3. And then come the hours of practice

Theoretical knowledge and personal experience provide a foundation. After that, you have to learn the profession in practice.

Under good supervision. Alongside experienced colleagues. And by spending many, many hours actually sitting beside people.

Because no two psychedelic experiences are the same.

Someone may lie almost completely still for hours. Someone else may enter a state of intense grief. Memories or re-experiencing may arise. Fear. Resistance. Ecstasy. Confusion. Physical release. Or disappointment because the experience unfolds completely differently from what someone expected.

As a facilitator, you need to continually assess:

What is happening here?

Do I need to do something?

Or do I need to do nothing?

That requires experience.

It also matters which substance is being used and in what context. Facilitating an experience with psilocybin-containing truffles has a different dynamic from working with ketamine.

Individual and group facilitation are also fundamentally different.

Both can be valuable, and both have their own advantages and disadvantages. With individual guidance, you can focus entirely on one person. In a group, a shared dynamic also emerges in which participants can consciously and unconsciously influence one another.

That requires a different set of skills from facilitators.

That is why practical experience matters so much.

4. The experience is not the end point

Perhaps one of the biggest misconceptions surrounding psychedelics is the idea that the experience itself does the work.

A profound insight can be meaningful.

So can an emotional breakthrough.

Re-experiencing something from the past can bring a great deal to the surface.

But then comes what we believe is the most important question:

What are you going to do with it?

During an experience, you may see with absolute clarity that you are constantly crossing your own boundaries. But afterwards, will you actually dare to say no?

You may deeply feel how much distance has developed between you and your partner. But will you have the conversation you have been avoiding for months or years?

You may suddenly see how your own need for control is keeping you trapped. But what will you do the next time uncertainty arises?

You may feel how much grief, anger or fear you have been carrying for years. But are you willing to continue working with it after the experience?

You may experience what truly matters to you. But what choices will you then make differently in your relationships, your work or the way you relate to yourself?

An insight during a psychedelic experience can arise within a few hours. Integrating it into your life can take months or even years.

That is what integration is about.

A psychedelic experience can make something visible or tangible that was previously difficult to access. But that does not mean it is automatically integrated into someone’s life.

In a sense, that is where the real process begins.

That is also why we believe it is essential for facilitators to know that process themselves. Not only the psychedelic experience, but especially the sometimes long and confronting process of deciding what to do with that experience afterwards.

How we approach this at Magnolia

These principles also shape the way we have designed our different programmes.

Magnolia Experience

At Magnolia Experience, we offer programmes with psilocybin-containing truffles for people who want to explore a psychedelic experience for personal development, curiosity or deeper self-exploration.

Experience explicitly does not constitute medical care. No diagnosis is made, and the programme is not intended to treat psychological or medical conditions.

That does not mean, however, that we approach the experience as an isolated event.

The programme includes screening, extensive preparation, a guided experience day and integration.

Magnolia Health

At Magnolia Health, we also offer programmes with psilocybin-containing truffles.

Health likewise does not constitute medical care or treatment.

The difference from Experience lies, among other things, in the target group and the more extensive medical screening and medical support surrounding the programme.

At Health, a medical assessment takes place beforehand to determine whether participation is appropriate. The facilitator is a psychologist or physician, and medical support is available during the experience day. Here too, the programme consists of more than the experience itself. Screening, extensive preparation, the guided experience day and integration together form the programme. Integration is explicitly intended to help make sense of what someone has experienced and translate new insights into everyday life.

Magnolia Therapy

At Magnolia Therapy, the context is fundamentally different.

Therapy provides specialist mental healthcare, involving diagnosis and treatment by a multidisciplinary team.

Importantly, ketamine is not the treatment around which the programme is built.

At its core is an intensive therapeutic programme in which we create optimal conditions to support recovery and change. Depending on what is appropriate for the individual, we work with approaches including cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), psychodynamic therapy and interpersonal therapy (IPT).

Ketamine can be used as an additional and supportive intervention.

At Magnolia Therapy, we work with both racemic ketamine and esketamine. Both influence the state of consciousness. This non-ordinary state of consciousness can be relevant within a therapeutic process, but in our view it never stands apart from the therapeutic work before, around and after it.

Different contexts, the same responsibility

Experience, Health and Therapy are therefore three clearly distinct programmes.

Experience and Health offer programmes with psilocybin-containing truffles and do not constitute medical care. Health includes more extensive medical screening and medical support.

Therapy provides specialist mental healthcare, in which psychotherapy and other therapeutic interventions form the foundation and ketamine can be used as a supportive intervention.

Those differences matter.

Someone who is healthy and stable and wants to have an experience out of curiosity or for personal development requires something different from the facilitator and the setting than someone who is deeply struggling.

In our view, the more complex the issues, the greater the vulnerability and the more intense the non-ordinary state of consciousness, the greater the responsibility of the person facilitating it.

That is why we keep returning to the same elements:

screening, preparation, professional facilitation and integration.

Making psychedelics accessible is relatively easy.

Creating a context in which someone feels safe enough to let go of control, remaining steady when an experience becomes intense or difficult, knowing when to intervene and when specifically not to, and then helping someone make sense of what happened is something entirely different.

That requires theoretical knowledge.

Personal experience.

Self-exploration.

Supervision.

And above all, many hours of practical experience.

That is what we at Magnolia mean by professional expertise in facilitating psychedelic experiences.

Curious how we apply these principles across our programmes? Explore Magnolia’s different pathways.