Training
The Innate Path psychedelic education program is a full psychotherapy training composed of an in-person component followed by an 8 month apprenticeship with bi-weekly group supervision. The in-person component consists of 3 modules spread out over 4 months (11 days in total). We have training sites around the US and you are welcome to apply and travel to a training that is not local to you.
Costs:
11 day in-person component (spread over 4 months): $5,700 (3 payments of $1,900)
8-month follow up apprenticeship: $430 per month
This program is not a sitter school for the general public. We only train mental and medical health professionals (and students) interested in providing psychedelic psychotherapy to individuals with mental health conditions. The skill sets required for psychedelic therapy are quite different from the skills most of us learned in graduate school. Our approach is to provide a comprehensive training in a non-ordinary state somatic psychotherapy as a foundation on which we add psychedelic skillsets. Here are some of the components of this training that we find greatly support clients in altered states of psychedelic consciousness: body orientation (autonomic nervous system processing), bottom-up experience focus, relational transference work (essential for complex PTSD), physical touch, attachment work, and parts work.
We find that non-ordinary states of consciousness require a non-ordinary state psychotherapy to make best use of what these medicines have to offer. The powerful revelations and memories that emerge during psychedelic states will very quickly overwhelm the rational, verbal, cognitive capacity. The body, with its unique felt sense pathway, is far more equipped to process the charge we frequently find in these states. We recommend viewing the video below which is made up of clips from our combat veteran pilot study. It will give you some sense of how this work can look.
One way in which our training will differ from non-directive sitter trainings is that we posit a more active role for the clinician. Our approach is based on the idea that human relational wounding requires human relational healing, and the therapist is called to play an active part in the client’s process. We have found in our clinics that an over-reliance on medicines promotes a passivity in the clinician and frequently, very significant therapeutic opportunities will be missed. Psychedelics are fundamentally catalyzers of innate healing intelligence and tendencies we already possess. Psychedelic medicines amplify these mechanisms, they are not a replacement for them. As such, we develop the student’s eye for understanding and engaging core healing processes before adding the complication, speed and power that psychedelics bring with them.
The approach we use is effective with readily accessible psychedelics (ketamine and cannabis), and can apply to other medicines that are in an approval process (MDMA & psilocybin).
IPPC Apprenticeship
After your initial 4 month training, there is an 8 month period of support from us as you implement this work into your practice. This is the length of time therapists in our own clinics need to become competent psychedelic therapists. This is much more than a non-directive holding of space for a client as they go in with eyeshades and headphones; you will be learning an entire non-ordinary state psychotherapy model that is designed to work with these medicines, and which calls on you to serve as an active, engaged, relational guide. Most of our students face three challenges in this training and in their development as psychedelic psychotherapists: 1) the theory involved in experiential, somatic, non-ordinary state psychotherapy is very different from what most of us learn in grad school. 2) You will be asked to build new therapeutic muscles through repeated hands-on practice trades (during and between training modules). 3) The most significant challenge you will face in becoming a psychedelic therapist is your own personal unworked stress, trauma, attachment, dissociated parts, and developmental wounding. Any unworked material from your history will make itself known in your psychedelic therapy practice. This will manifest as powerful counter-transference or other reactions as you begin to implement this work into your practice. This is normal, we expect it with every student. It is not something that can be resolved immediately but is an ongoing project.
Our goal is to support you with all of this for that first year as you take on more and more psychedelic therapy clients. Your cohort will be assigned an Innate Path faculty member who was part of your in-person training team to follow you throughout this 8 month period. They will provide you with bi-weekly group supervision. You will also have access to all the other videos, continuing ed, marketing and practice support materials we are developing for the Innate Path Practitioner Community (IPPC) which you are welcome to join after this 8 month period is over but this is not required.
Continuing Ed. Accreditation
Innate Path is accredited to provide continuing education in counseling psychology through NBCC (ACEP No. 6484). You can receive continuing education credits for our in-person trainings as well as our monthly topical live webinar series during your apprenticeship year.
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