Integration: planning and meaning making with Kyle Buller

My unofficial Vital Study Zine #18 with observations from Vital Psychedelic Training and recent happenings in the space

From Transcendent Country of the Mind by Sari Soninen published by The Eriskay Collection

‘Integration is something that the psychedelic space talks about a lot, without ever going into detail about what it is.’

Thjat’s according to Jungian psychoanalyst Scott J Hill in his seminal work, Confrontation with the Unconscious: Jungian Depth Psychology and Psychedelic Experience. (On which topic, much more later down the line).

And it’s fair to say that early integration programs were pretty toss: some progressive psychotherapy here, some wellbeing basics there, plus some toned-down underground and/or Groffian tactics drip-fed to the receptive.

To be fair, rectifying the psychedelic experience and life in post-industrial society is hard enough as it is. Helping a vulnerable individual to navigate it while reamaining within the bounds of a socially acceptable therapeutic practice arguably more so.

Nonethless, unprepared clinical trial psychologiosts and wellbeing hustlers in plausible knitwear alike mostly ended up fruitlessly recommending meditation apps to mind-blown metropoles, after they’d seen ayahuasca on Netflix and naively presumed it’d be like that immersive Salvador Dali show. 

“No dramatic life changes within the first fortnight”

Psychedelic integration therapy was showing the whole space up, frankly.

So fair play to Vital Psychedelic Training headmaster and consciousness thought leader Kyle Buller. He took time to assemble a worthwhile integration manual while interning at MAPS, and presented on the topic to begin Module Five of Vital’s year-long psychedelic training programme. 

Even for total edgelords, actual integration is not to be sniffed at. Because it concerns the subject of… making your trip go on forever.

Sort of. The golden you who blossoms under the medicine can be ‘integrated’ to a certain extent. 

Using techniques like Jungian depth analysis, those seemingly fantastical visions can be understood as unconscious guidance; in a similar manner to dreams. This is good news for those of us who receive a sensation along the lines of ‘Why are you worrying about that? Think about this,’ when we run our carefully prepared list of neuroses – ‘intentions’ – past the medicine.

Likewise, going for a walk in the woods while listening to John Hopkins does help one not feel so shitty to be back in reality. Troopers like Dr Sam Gandy (coming up later in the integration module) have got stats on the benefits of setting trippers free into nature. Which is the one thing us recreational yobs could’ve told you about integration. (Back the outlaw days we made do with a KLF CD, David Lynch’s version of Dune and lashings of soap bar.)

Guess what also helps with your psychedleic integration? Meditation, which, long story short, aids effective neuroplasticity, clarity and homeostasis.

It’s all in this laudable round-up paper from Geoff J. Bathje  out of Chicago’s Adler University, Psychedelic integration: An analysis of the concept and its practice.

And here’s my edit of Top Integration Tips from the week’s barrage of alternative self-improvement intel. And remember everyone – “No dramatic life changes within the first fortnight following the experience,” says Kyle, “…preferably longer.”

These five items I pulled from the week’s research are themed along Vital’s natural element-themed structure. Air provides an overview of psychedelic use, Fire concerns therapeutic applications, Water covers ‘space holding’ – the art of keeping it together, Earth is where you’ll find medical matters, and Ether discusses integration, the process of bringing psychedelic power into regular life.