Isa Gucciardi, PhD, holds degrees and certificates in transpersonal psychology, cultural and linguistic anthropology, comparative religion, hypnotherapy, and transformational healing. She has been a dedicated Buddhist practitioner for forty years and has spent over thirty years studying spiritual, therapeutic, and meditative techniques from around the world. Isa has worked with master teachers of Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism and Sufism, as well as expert shamanic practitioners from a variety of traditions. Isa is the creator of Depth Hypnosis, a groundbreaking therapeutic model that has won rave reviews from psychotherapeutic and spiritual counselors alike. Isa teaches and speaks nationally and internationally, and has published numerous articles, podcast episodes, videos, and the books Coming to Peace and Return to the Great Mother.

She maintains a private practice with institutions and individuals in Depth Hypnosis and Coming to Peace processes. Isa speaks five languages and has lived in eleven countries. She is the mother of two children and lives with her partner in San Francisco. She is the founding director and primary teacher of the Foundation of the Sacred Stream. For more information about training opportunities and to learn more about Isa’s upcoming workshop on Plant Medicine: Preparing & Integrating the Experience, go to www.sacredstream.org.

ACISTE recently had an opportunity to interview Isa about her views on the use of psychotropic plant medicine for psychological and spiritual transformation. Given the recent resurgence of clinical interest in the use of psychedelics for treating mental health concerns, we hope this two-part (Feb/Mar) interview will encourage therapists and others to further educate themselves about the unique integration needs of those who choose to engage plant medicine for healing and guidance. In today’s interview, she offers practical counsel to support professionals. To read Part 1, click here.

Q: What is your understanding of recent research on plant medicine in certain populations and for certain conditions?

As I mentioned in the first part of this interview, the work at Johns Hopkins has been very important. I think the work that MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies) does is even more important because this organization advocates for the exploration of plant medicines and other psychotropic substances as a tool for self-development within the clinical setting. This goes beyond using psychotropics as a medicine for illness and brings them into the clinical setting to help support a process of personal transformation. Michael Pollan’s book, How to Change Your Mind, has created an important bridge for helping psychotropic plants be better understood by mainstream organizations and individuals.

The history of scientific research into psychotropic plants always seems to have at least two camps: those who want to be very deliberate and slow in gathering data and providing analysis, and those who want to work with these substances in more generalized settings in order to create social change. The former wants to maintain a platform for continued funding for research, and the … latter wants to help transform awareness even if it challenges the status quo. Both camps have strengths and weaknesses in their approach to bringing these plants into the mainstream clinical and social setting.

But we must remember, modern scientists are late to the party. Shamanic practitioners all over the world have been doing both – gathering and analyzing data and transforming awareness – for millennia.

Q: Any opinions on using these drugs outside of intentional settings, like at parties or festivals?

I am a purist with very particular opinions here. I will offer those opinions, but in doing so, I don’t mean to judge other approaches. I don’t think plant medicines should be ingested anywhere except in a sacred setting, in a sacred manner, with a sacred intention.

I feel it is disrespectful to the plants and potentially dangerous to the individual to ingest plants for recreational purposes. Plant medicine should always be ingested with the assistance of someone who is capable of moving between the worlds of ordinary and non-ordinary reality at will and who can help the person keep the experience highly internal.

Uncontrolled social interactions between people who may have taken multiple mind-altering substances can create a potentially harmful dissolution of personal boundaries – between self and reality, and self and other – that don’t readily right themselves without the proper intervention.  I think I am probably more of a hardliner here than the plants themselves are. But that is my position.

Q: How does one best prepare for the use of these psychoactive plants for spiritual and psychological exploration and evolution?

It all starts with an open mind and a spirit of discovery. It starts with a desire to know more about the mystery we are living – and the mystery of who we are as human beings. Neil Goldsmith offers a powerful insight in his work on psychotropic plants. He says it is helpful to look at psychological and emotional imbalance as a symptom of spiritual immaturity rather than as a pathological process.

In this context, the work with the plants then becomes a process of spiritual maturation. This is a helpful perspective to cultivate as one is preparing to engage with the plants because the experiences with the plants can be so stirring. If we understand that we are being shown where we need to mature spiritually, the encounter with the plants takes on a new and powerful meaning. This paradigm also offers a big enough and flexible enough container to help metabolize the information coming out of plant sessions. One of the reasons that people don’t integrate their experience in a complete way is because they don’t have this kind of container or paradigm in which to place their emerging understandings.

There are many ways to work with altered states of awareness in the clinical setting – including hypnosis, meditation, dream work, and the shamanic journey. People who have an understanding of altered state work in these kinds of contexts are better prepared for the altered states the plant induces.

It is helpful, for instance, for people to begin to watch their dreams more closely and spend more time learning how to interpret their dreams as they approach working with the plants. Dreaming is a familiar altered state for most people. As they focus inward in this way, they begin to enter the world of expanded consciousness altered states can provide.

Further, the language of the plants is very similar to the language of dreaming, so brushing up on learning to plumb dream images for deeper meaning can be very instructive and supportive to helping people navigate the altered state of the plant medicine experience. Further, dreams will often provide a theme or focus for intention in entering the plant circles. It is helpful for people to begin to understand how inner guidance emerges through dreams because it is similar to the way guidance emerges in working with the plant.

Another excellent way to prepare for the plant experience is to clarify one’s intention for engaging with the plants. Developing clarity of intention beforehand is very helpful in focusing and metabolizing the experience afterwards. Even if the plant offers insights that don’t readily seem to apply to the intention going in, the process of training one’s mind and heart through the development of intention helps contain whatever information the plants provide.

The shamanic journey is an invaluable tool, not only in developing intention before the plant ceremony but also, penultimately, in metabolizing and applying the insights the plants provide. I always recommend that people learn how to journey when they are working with plants. For those who want to understand the world of plant medicine but do not want to ingest substances, the journey, taken in proper context, provides an alternative pathway to understanding.

This is important information for counselors who want to be able to help people with the integration of their experience but do not want to ingest the plant medicine themselves. They can hone their facility with altered states through other methods such as dream work and the journey, and thus augment the clinical skills they have already developed.

In traditional settings, there is a preparatory period of supervised fasting in terms of specific types of food and mind-altering substances, sexual abstinence, and prayer that is prescribed. This type of preparation is also very helpful for modern initiates, especially when they are educated as to why these preparations are so important in traditional settings.

Q: How do you know you’re ready for this kind of experience? 

If you are drawn to plants, it is very possible that you are already ready for the plants. It can be a big step to consider ingesting these plant medicines, and it is important to undertake this process seriously. The more you work through any hesitation or reservation you have, the more information you will receive as to whether the hesitation is a healthy respect for the power of the plants or an actual resistance to them.

Q: What would be contraindications to participating in plant medicine ceremonies?

I know there are a lot of ceremonies that include other psychoactive substances beyond the plants – or multiple plant medicines as part of the ceremonies. Again, I am a purist, and I think it is helpful to only ingest one plant, or one combination of plants such as ayahuasca, in any given ceremony. I would not recommend that people participate in ceremonies where there are multiple rounds of different types of psychoactive plants or man-made substances – especially in their first experience. I know there are many facilitators who would disagree with me – and I respect their point of view, while holding my own.

Many plant medicines are contraindicated for those taking anti-depressants. I don’t think people who are highly dissociative should ingest plant medicine without careful evaluation and supervision before, during, and after the experience. This is also true for people who are aware of any trauma that they may have experienced and who are trying to gain more insight or understanding about its effect on them.

I think plant medicine is most helpful to those who are seriously engaged with trying to understand their deeper experience. It is especially helpful for people doing deeper work who may feel they have hit a roadblock in their personal development. It is also helpful for those who feel they have hit a plateau in their self-development and are seeking instruction regarding the next steps on their path.

Q: How can we best support those who’ve chosen to engage in plant medicine, perhaps in situations where they were not well prepared or offered aftercare?

I would recommend that clinicians pursue training that focuses on clinical approaches to the integration of these experiences. The Plant Medicine Insight Integration program at the Foundation of the Sacred Stream is one such training – and there are others as well.

I would like to offer a few points to clinicians that might help them help others with these experiences:

• Take a non-judgmental approach
• ‘Normalize’ the level of disorganization that people may be feeling: i.e., “It is completely natural that you should feel disorganized after this kind of experience because you have had an encounter with powerful forces within you that you should not be expected to fully understand without help.”
• Gently provide context and education about the way plant medicines and related psychotropic substances would be approached in a ‘traditional’ setting and contrast it with the setting they experienced. This helps them become less likely to feel that there is only something wrong with them.
• Review everything you ever learned about the activity of the shadow in Jung’s writings.
• Recognize that people have likely had an encounter with their own shadow material in an uncontrolled way when they have had a ‘bad trip.’
• Recognize that they may have also had an encounter with other people’s shadow material in an uncontrolled way that can be traumatizing in a different way and requires different types of interventions.
• Recognize they may have come into contact with an experience of the divine that they may be having trouble metabolizing in a way that does not challenge their current spiritual beliefs (or lack thereof).
• Take a complete biography of all of their use of every type of mind-altering substance. Establish their relationship to these substances and the states they produce. Look for addictive tendencies.
• Take a complete biography of their engagement with religious and spiritual traditions.
• Take a complete account of the actual experience from start to finish.
• Ask them to give a detailed account of their fears, the meaning they are assigning to the experience, and their hopes about how the therapeutic intervention will help.
• Ask about any dreams they may have had before or since the experience.

Q: What kinds of therapeutic/clinical approaches would be the most helpful in integrating these experiences?

After completing what I suggest above, clinicians can apply the types of clinical interventions they might normally offer. I know there are many excellent approaches, but because I work primarily with Depth Hypnosis and Plant Medicine Insight Integration processes, I would focus on establishing a strong connection with inner guidance either through hypnosis or the shamanic journey first – and then work with that guidance to mitigate the effect of the trauma through Depth Hypnosis and applied shamanic processes that include regression therapy, soul retrieval, and insight inquiry.

Q: Is there anything I haven’t asked that you think is important for our readers to know on this topic?

People who do not have a lot of experience with plant medicine circles may not be aware of the types of power dynamics that can arise in these settings. It is not uncommon to find both traditional and western facilitators who have may serious imbalances around the exercise of personal power. These problems can affect people’s experience of the plant circles and the plant in ways that can be confusing unless they are addressed directly.

Rachel Harris, in her book Listening to Ayahuasca, outlines some of the abuses of power that people might encounter in these settings. Much of the post-plant circle integration and therapeutic work can center on the recognition and integration of these types of issues rather than only the issues the plants may highlight.

I would also recommend that people understand that working with the plants in this way arises out of a much larger context of working with plant intelligence. The work with plants to heal disease, to facilitate ceremonies without altering the state of consciousness so fully, to nourish and shelter has been the purview of shamanic practitioners for millennia. It is important to recognize and respect this larger context to have as full an understanding as possible about the ways in which plants work.

It is also important to recognize and remember the ecological and planetary context in which plant medicines operate. People who fully integrate their experience with plant medicine generally tend to rekindle a more harmonious relationship with the earth. If they do not do this spontaneously, they can be easily and gently guided to do so. In this way, the clarion call to planetary health that work with plant medicine can provide can offer a path back to safety and sanity for the earth and all her inhabitants.

To learn more about Dr. Gucciardi’s work, please visit www.sacredstream.org or www.isagucciardi.org.

**PLEASE NOTE: ACISTE does not take a stance on the use or non-use of plant medicine or psychedelics. We recognize that each individual’s life journey and process of integration is unique and will have unique needs. Please visit www.aciste.org for more perspective on our organizational mission, vision, and values.