Weaving the Extraordinary into the Ordinary: What Psychedelic Integration Really Means
The topic of psychedelic integration has been coming up a lot lately in my practice, in conversations with fellow practitioners, and in the questions I hear from people who've had profound experiences with non-ordinary states of consciousness. It's a word that gets thrown around quite a bit in psychedelic circles, breathwork sessions, and spiritual communities, but what does integration really mean?
Creating Wholeness in Life
The etymology of the word integration comes from the French intégration, which means "act of bringing together the parts of a whole." It also comes from the Latin word integrare, which means "make whole" or to "begin again."
Integration is about creating wholeness in one's life—weaving together the extraordinary experiences we have in non-ordinary states with the ordinary fabric of our daily existence.
When I speak about integration, I'm mostly referring to the integration of traumatic experiences and experiences with non-ordinary states of consciousness—either spontaneous experiences or those voluntarily induced through substances, breathwork, or other spiritual practices. A Kundalini awakening through yoga, for example, or a profound insight from a psychedelic experience, or a vision that emerges during a shamanic journey. The profound shifts that can happen during Holotropic Breathwork.
I think about non-ordinary or extraordinary experiences as one's involvement and relationship with subtle energies or the energy body. Trauma, such as a near-death experience, can elicit such an experience. It can produce profound shifts in consciousness that might leave a person feeling ungrounded and disoriented. When a non-ordinary experience is elicited, it has the potential to turn your world upside down.
Moving Toward Wholeness, Not Arriving
Stanislav Grof gave us the concept of holotropic experience—from the Greek holos (whole) and trepein (moving towards). Integration is inherently holotropic: you're always moving toward wholeness, never fully arriving.
This reframing helped me immensely in my own process. I always felt like after a big experience, I needed to “arrive” somewhere. I saw a vision of where I should or want to be, but the integration process took me somewhere completely different. But what I've come to understand is that wholeness itself changes as life changes. What felt whole at 25 looks different at 35. What felt integrated after one journey might unravel with the next.
This isn't failure at integration, but it's the nature of the unfolding process.
Weaving the Fragments Back Together
In the context of traumatic experiences, one's psyche might become fragmented. In the shamanic world, this fragmentation can also be viewed as pieces of a person's soul becoming lost or trapped in the trauma. Integration techniques help to bind these fragmented pieces back together again.
In shamanic healing, a shaman may perform a "soul retrieval" to help bring back missing pieces and weave the experience back together. This is the work of integration. It’s not just understanding what happened, but actually reclaiming the parts of ourselves that got split off or lost.
After a traumatic experience or an experience with a non-ordinary state, people usually ask the question: "What do I do now?"
Integration is about turning inward and learning how to work with whatever experience is emerging. It's about creating a relationship with what came through, rather than trying to figure it out or make it make sense in some linear way.
Between Rigidity and Chaos
Dan Siegel offers a framework that I find really helpful: integration is linking differentiated parts into a functional whole. It's the flow of energy and information within your nervous system and between you and other people.
He describes integration as the ability to flow between two extremes: too much rigidity (stuck patterns, inflexibility) and too much chaos (overwhelm, destabilization). Integration lives in the middle ground—harmony, flexibility with coherence.
Psychedelics and other non-ordinary states temporarily increase chaos by creating neural flexibility. Your brain becomes more malleable, more open to new patterns. But without integration support, one of two things tends to happen: you snap back into old grooves (rigidity returns), or you stay dysregulated and overwhelmed (chaos persists).
Integration is the containment that allows flexibility to become functional.
There's No Single "Right Way"
One thing I want to emphasize: there is no single "correct" integration process. Just as there's no single psychedelic journey, there's no standardized path through integration.
The work is deeply personal, shaped by your history, your nervous system, your relationships, and your context. What works for one person might not work for another. And that's okay.
Integration can draw from Indigenous practices, somatic work, Jungian analysis, transpersonal psychology, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, shamanic journeying, energy work, nature connection, and so many other approaches. The "right" approach is the one that resonates with you and supports your process.
What Integration Isn't
Before we go deeper, let me clear up some misconceptions I hear often:
It's Just Talking About Your Experience
Processing what happened is one part of integration, but true integration includes nervous system work, behavior change, somatic practice, and meaning-making that unfolds over time. As my colleague Lauren Taus says, "Life is a body-based exercise, not a cognitive one." You can't think your way into integration. You must also embody the insights.
Insight Automatically Leads to Change
This is perhaps the most seductive lie. You can have the most profound realization of your life and still not change a single thing. Insight without action is just interesting information. Integration is what carries insight into embodied transformation. Integration takes focused work and effort. You need to show up and actually do the work to create change. Insight can be the seed. It can be the image that motivates you to take the first step, but ultimately, you need to show up for yourself.
It's Quick or Linear
Integration is tidal—it comes and goes over a lifetime. Sometimes it gets worse before it gets better. Themes repeat across multiple journeys and life stages. What Grof called COEX systems—emotionally charged patterns—reappear again and again, each time offering new layers of understanding.
"After the ecstasy, the laundry." — Jack Kornfield
It's About Staying Blissful
Integration is about wholeness, not perpetual euphoria. The work often involves grief, anger, resistance, and discomfort. You can't bypass the difficult emotions. As Lauren Taus bluntly puts it: "You can't bypass the 'F-you' in integration." Those difficult emotions aren't obstacles—they are integration.
It's a Solo Journey
Your brain is a social organ, designed for relationships. Integration doesn't happen in isolation. Being witnessed matters. Shared meaning-making matters. Community isn't a nice-to-have—it's essential.
Integration Begins Before the Experience
"The first step toward successful integration is made during the preparation period before the experiential work begins." — Stanislav Grof
This is an important lesson that we all need to remember. Integration doesn't start after the experience—it starts before. How you prepare shapes everything that follows.
Preparation includes:
• Setting intentions (which activates the unconscious and signals readiness)
• Journaling and dream tracking
• Understanding your trauma history within the appropriate scope
• Creating boundaries around collective noise (news, social media)
• Building a navigation toolbox of practices
• Gathering community support
Preparation creates a softer landing for what emerges. It builds the container that allows you to hold whatever arises.
The Critical Window After the Experience
After a psychedelic experience or deep breathwork session, your brain enters a state of heightened neuroplasticity. This isn't metaphorical but it's a measurable biological state where your nervous system and brain are primed for rapid learning and pattern change.
This window is both an opportunity and a vulnerability.
What to avoid during this time:
• Making major life decisions (quitting jobs, ending relationships, moving)
• Taking symbols literally (more on this below)
• Unconsciously reinforcing old habits
• Spiritual bypassing—using "love and light" to avoid difficult material
What to embrace:
• Small, sustainable behavioral changes
• Nervous system regulation practices
• Establishing supportive routines
• Connection with trusted others who can witness your process
The Unfolding: Integration Over a Lifetime
This is the part most people forget exists. Integration is non-linear, tidal, and lifelong.
In my own journey, I've watched this pattern repeat in myself and others:
• First few weeks: "Everything has changed! I'll never be the same!"
• A few months in: "Wait, I'm back where I started. Did anything actually change?"
• Six months later: "Oh... I see. Something is shifting, just not in the way I expected."
• Years later: "That journey is still teaching me. New layers keep revealing themselves."
This is not failure. This IS integration.
Working with Symbols: An Invitation, Not a Command
This is where I see the most harm happening, so it deserves special attention.
Psychedelic experiences, breathwork sessions, and shamanic journeys speak through symbols—images, emotions, sensations, archetypes. Much like dreams, the material is layered, personal, non-rational, and symbolic.
Symbols are invitations to inquiry, not commands to act.
A vision of leaving your relationship doesn't necessarily mean you should leave tomorrow. It might mean you need to set better boundaries. Or a part of you needs more freedom. Or you're outgrowing old patterns within the relationship. Or something internal needs to die or transform. The meaning reveals itself slowly, through patient reflection and embodied listening. Bring the image inside and work with it. How does the image relate to YOU vs the person or external factor? What is the symbol/image teaching you about yourself?
How to work with symbols:
• Build a relationship with the symbol and don't try to decode it right away
• Notice what it evokes in your body, in your emotions, and listen to what it is whispering to you
• Track it over time—how does your understanding shift?
• Let meaning unfold—don't force it
• Hold it loosely—today's interpretation might not be tomorrow's
Sometimes meaning comes later. Sometimes it doesn't come at all. And that's okay.
Integration as a Relational Process
Louis Cozolino reminds us that the human brain has evolved as a social organ designed for relationships. Integration is not solitary. It's about embodying insights within community, bringing learning into the functioning whole of our interconnected lives.
Psychedelic researcher Rosalind Watts offers a beautiful metaphor: trees in a forest are connected underground through vast mycorrhizal networks. They share nutrients. They communicate. They support each other through hidden channels.
Humans integrate the same way.
Integration happens through:
• Shared meaning-making—speaking your experience aloud allows it to take shape
• Witnessing—simply being seen and held in your process
• Grounding—connection reminds you that you belong to something larger
• Co-regulation—your nervous system regulates in relationship with others
"Integration doesn't always require advice—sometimes it requires being seen."
Practical Integration Approaches
Integration needs to address all domains of living. Researcher Geoff Bathje and colleagues developed a framework showing six dimensions:
• Physical: Safety, recovery, somatic processing, sleep, nutrition, movement
• Psychological: Meaning-making, narrative, emotional processing
• Relational: Community, identity, relationships, family systems
• Spiritual: Worldview, values, transcendence
• Environmental: Connection to nature, ecological awareness
• Cultural: Context, values, collective systems
Neglecting any single domain limits the depth and sustainability of integration.
Embodied Practices That Support Integration
• Somatic tracking—where do insights and emotions live in your body?
• Movement—dance, yoga, walking, embodied practices
• Breathwork—nervous system regulation
• Art-making—drawing, painting, non-verbal expression
• Nature immersion—time in wild spaces
• Journaling—stream-of-consciousness, not analytical
• Dream tracking—the unconscious continues speaking
Notice what's not on this list: excessive analysis, trying to "figure it out," forcing meaning.
Helpful Metaphors for the Journey
Integration teacher Marc Aixalà offers several metaphors I find helpful:
• The Seed: The experience plants something within you. Integration is the ongoing care that allows it to grow. You cannot rush this.
• The Tide: Integration comes and goes. What felt so present may fade, then return months later.
• The Bridge: Connecting non-ordinary insights to ordinary life, learning to walk between both worlds.
• The Puzzle: Each experience adds new pieces. The whole image changes gradually, not all at once.
Support for Your Integration Journey
When I was on my own healing journey after my near-death experience, I had nowhere to look or turn. Instead, I found mentors and teachers to help me through the process. I found that learning about these states of consciousness was incredibly helpful.
That's why I offer coaching and psychospiritual education. I take an educational approach as well as a peer support approach—meaning that I draw upon my own personal experiences and my knowledge of working with non-ordinary states.
I believe that each person has the capacity to heal and create wholeness in their life, and has all the answers inside of them. Instead of offering a "cure" or a "fix," I offer support and guidance.
If you’re looking for support on your psychedelic journey, schedule a free 15-minute call.
The Journey Continues
Integration is not a task to complete. It's a relationship. A direction. An ongoing movement toward wholeness—knowing that wholeness itself keeps evolving.
"Great dreamers' dreams are never fulfilled—they are always transcended." — Alfred North Whitehead
The extraordinary doesn't stay extraordinary. Life pulls everything back toward the ordinary—the laundry, the dishes, the daily routines. But integration is the art of weaving what was revealed in non-ordinary states into the texture of everyday life.
Not to stay in the bliss. Not to hold onto the insights. But to let them shape how you move through the world. How you show up. How you relate. How you live.
Questions for Reflection
As you sit with your own integration process, here are some questions worth contemplating:
• Where have I rushed integration in the past, trying to force meaning or closure?
• Where have I avoided it through bypassing or over-intellectualizing?
• What themes keep repeating across my experiences and life stages?
• How is integration already happening naturally in my life, even without my effort?
• What small, low-resistance changes feel sustainable right now?
• Where might community support deepen my process?
• What symbols am I trying to solve instead of relating to?
• Do I actually need to integrate this experience—or simply let it unfold?
If you're struggling to integrate a difficult experience, I would be honored to talk with you and offer any guidance. The work matters. And you don't have to do it alone.
Many blessings on your journey.
— Kyle
