Marc Aixalà - Psychedelic Integration: Psychotherapy for Non-Ordinary States of Consciousness

Psychedelic Integration reminds us to go slow, metabolizing our insights into practical gains, weaving Indigenous knowledge with harm reduction precepts, helping transformational medicines work to their fullest potential, with support, compassion, and practice. Marc Aixals book highlights all this and morerequired reading for anyone interested in what psychedelics have to offer.

Julie Holland, MD, Author of Good Chemistry: The Science of Connection, From Soul to Psychedelics

With years of experience and a comprehensive understanding of non-ordinary states of consciousness, Marc Aixal offers us a necessary and timely book that anyone interested in healing or growth through psychedelics, breathwork, or contemplative practices could benefit fromtruly examining and understanding the process of integration. Without integration, assisted or on ones own, the full journey isnt complete.

Anne Wagner, PhD, Psychologist, Founder of Remedy and Remedy Institute

In his writing, Aixal eloquently navigates the tension between rigorous scientific research and real-world clinical practice, integrating various psychological and therapeutic schools of thought, supported by his clinical experience. The field of psychedelic integration is in need of replicable approaches that can be studied, taught to professionals, and disseminated to patients in need. Marc has provided us with such a model with resounding success.

Ingmar Gorman, PhD, Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Fluence

Marc Aixal approaches everyone and everything with humility and compassion, and his insightful book on psychedelic therapy and integration is no different. As psychedelic therapy continues to mainstream, many are left without understanding of integration as the most fundamental part of psychedelic healing. This book emphasizes the social dimensions of integration, with a therapeutic model that demonstrates how community and social change contain the key to personal growth. An incredibly helpful read for anyone considering psychedelic therapy! Aixals focus on integration is needed now, more than ever.

Natalie Lyla Ginsberg, MSW, Global Impact Officer at the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies

With a clear and direct language, Marc Aixal immerses us in ancient and modern psychedelic research, therapeutic practice, and their spiritual dimensions, opening new horizons in the field of skillful integration and giving us an innovative vision anchored in therapeutic traditions and psychedelic lineages alike.

Chris Timmermann, PhD, Centre for Psychedelic Research, Imperial College London

Psychedelic Integration gives us efficient and replicable frameworks and structures aimed at helping people ground their exciting, intra-psychic, interpersonal, or transcendental insights into the less glamorous, mundane dimensions of ordinary life. This book is a wonderful, elaborate, and heart-based blueprint for those of us who are at the service of helping each other make sense and create meaning out of our non-ordinary journeys so we can induce long-lasting positive changes in our lives, our communities, and the world at large.

Adam Aronovich, PhD Cand, Director of Therapy and Integration at R Precision Health, and Ayahuasca Community Committee at Chacruna

Psychedelic Integration shows the importance of an integration process for facilitating the transition from the psychedelic experience to deep, long-term, and sustainable change. This book is an essential read for anyone who is, or aspires to become, a psychedelic therapist or integration provider.

Ido Cohen, PsyD, Founder of The Integration Circle

Marc Aixals dynamic model for psychedelic integration gathers insights from Indigenous and spiritual traditions and Western psychology alike, inspiring therapists from different schools, facilitators from multiple traditions, and anyone interested in psychedelic therapy, regardless of their background.

Bia Labate, PhD, Executive Director of Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines

Psychedelic Integration is an important contribution in an evolving field of specialism that offers a necessary framework for supporting experiences in expanded states. This book will accompany many practitioners as they support people on their journey into the deep.

Maria Papaspyrou, Co-founder, Institute of Psychedelic Therapy & Co-Author, Psychedelics & Psychotherapy: The Healing Potential of Expanded States

PSYCHEDELIC INTEGRATION

PSYCHOTHERAPY FOR NON-ORDINARY STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS

MARC B. AIXAL

FOREWORD BY JOS CARLOS BOUSO, PHD

SYNERGETIC PRESS

SANTA FE LONDON

Copyright 2022 by Marc B. Aixal

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher, except for the quotation of brief passages in reviews.

Published by Synergetic Press | 1 Blue Bird Ct. Santa Fe, NM 87508

& 24 Old Gloucester St. London, WCIN 3AL, England

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022937350

ISBN 9780907791393 (paperback)

ISBN 9780907791584 (ebook)

Cover design by Amanda Mller

Book design by David Good

Managing Editor: Amanda Mller

Project Editor: Noelle Armstrong

Printed in the USA

To my parents, Carlos and Maria Isabel, for their unconditional support.

And to my grandfather, Rafel Aixal, a man of integrity.

In the April 2010 issue of Playboy, the American adult entertainment magazine, Steven Kotler published an article titled: The New Psychedelic Renaissance. The article began with the story of Mara, a 33-year-old woman who was diagnosed with terminal colon cancer a year earlier, a very unusual medical situation for someone so young. Mara was about to take 110 mg of MDMA in an underground session, hoping to work on the emotional situation she faced at the end of her life. The article echoed the therapeutic work with hallucinogens (we will discuss this term later) that had been done by underground therapists for the previous forty years, ever since these substances were classified as dangerous drugs and their use was banned. Likewise, the text also illustrated instances of LSD and psilocybin underground therapy, and no less importantly, it communicated to a general public how therapeutic research with these substances had returned, after forty years, to the domain of scientific research authorized by governmentsin this case, in North America.

The studies carried out by MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies) with MDMAthe drug popularly known as ecstasyfor the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) were already underway, as was the research with psilocybin studying its mysticomimetic potential, which could address the existential anguish suffered by people who were at the end of their lives. It could also serve people who wanted to abandon drug dependence, including alcohol and tobacco. After forty years of prohibition and being ostracized by the scientific establishment, even as they were still being used in recreational contexts or in underground therapies, these substances were coming back, with renewed interest, to the field of therapeutic research. The