Harm Reduction & Facilitating: Weeding out the Charlatans
Psychedelics are entering the public arena at a rate that continues to grow day by day. And with that, the amount of people seeking peak experiences will increase. Coincidentally, the amount of facilitators is steadily increasing as well. Some facilitators are going through designated programs, or sitting with masters as apprentices before starting their own practice, and some facilitators believe that having one or a few peak experiences qualifies them to hold space for another in a psychedelic journey.
Harm reduction is an art and a science. It’s one part practice and one part experience. To understand all that can arise in a psychedelic space is to have a vast amount of experience within containers. Preferably various containers, as seeing different approaches from masters can inspire depth of presence and commitment to service in new and embodied ways. It merely is not enough to sit through a program or to have had a few experiences of your own. One must practice being in service, holding space for these medicines to perform their healing on clients. Without this experience, the space for harm to enter into a healing container is greater than it should be. A lot can happen when someone is having a peak experience. Healing trauma is a big reason people come to these medicines. Therefore being trauma informed and understanding the nuance of showing up for someone engaging their trauma in these containers is a basic need. This is hard to do when we as humans love to relate by bring our own experience into the mix. But the answer is always to leave as much of your own experience at home and just be with clients and the totality of their experience.
If you’re looking for a facilitator, always be sure to ask about their experience and what qualifies them to hold space for you. Their answer will tell you a lot, it won’t tell you everything but beware of the facilitators taking short cuts as they are often motivated by the power that comes with facilitating these medicines and producing healing containers. This power can be corrupted, used in ways to exercise the facilitators childhood wounding of needing to be seen, valued, admired, etc. As you pay close attention, also asking the facilitator where their authority comes from to hold this medicine. Be wary of the egoic answers and lean into the answers that feel humble.
This is a sacred space, a container that will take the shape of the work that your facilitator has done on themselves. If they’re embodied and full of love, you’ll experience the essence of that in the container, and if your facilitator hasn’t done their work in areas of interest to you, you’ll feel that just the same.
To be a facilitator is to be committed to the work in a relentless way. With each layer of themselves that the facilitator pulls back, they become better servants of the medicines with which they work. When you trust your healing with another, you have every right to know how hard these individuals work on themselves. Of course, no facilitators are completely healed of all their traumas, perfection isn’t possible. Instead seek out an earnestness to be transparent, to be in integrity, to hold power with reverence and humility and you’ll find a container that you can thrive in.
