Journey aftercare

A six-week guide for integrating your psychedelic experience

Dear journeyer,

You have been through an intense experience which led you to be in an excessively open and receptive energetic state, and it is normal to feel physically or emotionally depleted afterwards. A great deal has shifted, consciously and unconsciously.

New neural pathways may well have been forged – let that sink in for a moment! Sacred plants and fungi can change lives, and integration is what allows those changes to take root in your future self.

The afterglow may last a few days or weeks, but sooner or later reality sets in and familiar habits creep back. Without gentle, continued effort to ground what has emerged, the mind tends to return to its old patterns. Good aftercare is the bridge.

Think of these coming weeks as a season of sacred composting and regeneration of the body and soul. You’re in the cocoon.

Whatever the journey loosened, the old stories and the tired armour, is now softer material, and the soil of your life is gently working it over. From the outside compost looks like very little, yet underneath, warmth and unseen labour are slowly turning it into vital soil that can feed new growth.

We want to help you keep tending what you have discovered, so that nothing important fades. Integration is the practice of mindful, deliberate nurturing that translates insight into tangible, everyday life. It might be as simple as introducing a healthy new habit, or it might mean going deeper into revealed hurts and self-sabotaging patterns through somatic therapy.

We are sharing this aftercare guideline to support your grounding and integration.

Let’s dive in! β™‘


Suggested Guided Meditations:

The day after your journey

  • Write down your dreams when you wake up to see if there are hidden messages in there for you. Sometimes the ceremony continues in your dream state.

  • Refrain from alcohol for another week (or longer). This will have an enormously positive impact on how you integrate your journey and will prevent you from numbing what has arisen, to be able to work with it.

  • Stay quiet and introspective; don’t over-share your experience with loved ones just yet as you might lose some vital insights. Stay off your phone as much as you can.

  • Refrain from being with people from outside the medicine circle as much as possible.

  • Later on, be mindful about how to share and with whom – hearing someone who just doesn’t get it jeering at your adventure can damage the delicate seedlings planted in your psyche and the new neural pathways made during the journey. 🌱

  • Don't make any life-changing decisions the first few days, let the insights sink in first.

  • Hydrate yourself profusely with water and herbal tea. 1,5 to 2 L would be ideal. Make sure you get replenish on electrolytes too.

  • Eat grounding foods. Root vegetables, beans, brown rice, nourishing broths, etc.

  • Take a long, gentle walk in nature, especially the day after. Bonus points: walk or stand barefoot on the earth or touch a tree for a few minutes. This article will explain why.

  • Listen to beautiful music. This playlist will do the trick, and I have many more on my Spotify account, so feel free to explore. All the ones with a little branch 🌿 are medicine music.

  • Journal! You will find writing prompts below that will help you reveal more insights.

  • Delve into your artistic expression. Make a drawing or a painting of your visuals or insights, or to translate what you are feeling. Don’t aim for perfection, let your soul speak.

  • If you have a bath, take one, ideally with sea- or magnesium salt. Or in the sea...!

  • You might book a relaxing massage.

  • Move your body in ways that feel nourishing. Stretching, gentle dancing, yoga…

  • Please enjoy some deep self-care and don’t rush back into your daily habits.

  • Please get in touch with us by voice note or text message if you have any doubts or questions after your experience, or if you are feeling a little off. We are here for you!

  • You might ask yourself how to navigate relationships after a transformative psychedelic experience, especially when our loved ones haven't shared the same journey. This blog post contains some advice on that.

β€˜β€˜Intentionality and integration illuminate and reveal what the subconscious works tirelessly to conceal.’’

– Terence McKenna

A surreal painting featuring a woman with closed eyes, sitting in a landscape with mountains and a night sky. There are several suns or moons, animals such as a bison, a horse, and a ram, and mystical elements like flowing water and celestial bodies.

Visionary artwork by our friend Aphra Natley

In order to integrate the medicine’s lessons into your daily life and recalibrate your system after the intensity of the ceremony, it's essential to set aside time in the days after to ponder and metabolise the experience before diving straight back into your obligations. Give yourself as much time as possible to allow new perspectives to settle – the more days the better! If you feel you have miscalculated the length of your needed rest time, take an extra day off from work. You will deeply thank yourself for it.

We will contact you for an 1,5 hr long integration video call to be scheduled in the days or weeks after the journey.

Again, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us before the integration call if you have any doubts, questions or face any difficulties after your experience. We are here to offer support!

Podcast episode suggestion: The Resolution of the Longing – Gangaji

A person sitting down, writing in a notebook with a pen, wearing multiple bracelets on their wrist.

πŸͺΆJournal prompt: one day after your journey

Through writing and making art, you will recover lost aspects of your journey, process deep emotions, and uncover what is really needed from you after a ceremony.

  1. Leave the next first page of your journal empty before continuing.

  2. Categorise your journey based on major themes. In your journal, write each theme on a page and leave 10+ pages free per theme. You are making chapters. This will allow you to process each theme as new insights arise. Don’t worry if things seem incoherent at first, just write everything down that comes to mind and heart.

  3. Leave pages in between for drawings of visuals you might have had.

  4. Some questions you might ask yourself to get you going:

    • Did I have any areas of difficulties, attachments, resistance that showed up? If so, what am I learning?

    • What insights, ideas, ways of being, opportunities did I experience? Were there visuals, symbols, or imagery? If so, what might this symbolise for me?

  5. Use the previously mentioned first page to try to boil down what the essence of your journey was in one or a few sentences – the key lesson. This may evolve over time as your integration progresses.

    • What themes am I noticing?

    • What are my biggest takeaways from this experience?

    • What is really needed from me in order to change?

Your testimonial

If you wish to support us, please share what your experience with us has meant for your life in your own words. Thank you so much!

A butterfly with cream, black, blue, and orange markings perched on an orange flower

We all carry the memory and wisdom of our ancestors, the memory and wisdom of nature and the mystery of the universe, the mystery of life. When we wake up to this memory, we remember who we really are and what our relation is with Mother Earth and the universe. We remember that we all are held in the hands of eternal love and that we all are one. And because we all are one with our people, our lands, with the trees, animals, with our planet and the entire universe, all of our relations become sacred.

Luz Ampuero, Peruvian Medicine Woman

Challenging ceremonies: finding meaning

In our experience, the most challenging ceremonies can often be the most transformative. Even after having done years of extensive inner work, earth medicines can illuminate deeply repressed pains or self-sabotaging patterns that linger in the subconscious and within the body. As we ingest the medicine, our usual coping mechanisms fall away, revealing layers of pain, shame, grief, guilt, or fear that we may have avoided for years, or even most of our lives. Sometimes, an issue we thought resolved resurfaces, showing a deeper layer ready for healing.

Though you may feel unsettled or confused right now, take heart β€” this is a profound opportunity. Something has risen to your awareness, inviting you to see it with love and compassion. A part of yourself that once had to hide for survival, most probably as a child, is now ready to be fully seen and integrated into the wholeness of who you are.

Any challenges that arise during your psychedelic journey come into your awareness solely to be felt, integrated, and transformed. Greet them with unwavering curiosity and compassion, giving them your full, loving presence. Without exception, you’ll find that behind every unpleasant sensation there lies an innocent part of yourself yearning for love, understanding, and wholeness. Paradoxically, the path to healing is in moving toward discomfort β€” this is the key to dissolving blocks and fostering true transformation.

In our experience, there can be intensely difficult, yes β€” but not β€œbad” trips, as even the most challenging ones can reveal profound insights and lead to powerful growth and healing once fully integrated.

Rest and softness are part of the journey. Heavy numbing or constant distraction can blur what is surfacing though, so let your comforts be ones that nourish you, and take things one gentle step at a time.

The real work begins after the ceremony. And will get through this, at a pace that is right for you. Just be patient and compassionate with yourself and follow the guidance on this page.

Suggestion guided meditation: A Practice of RAIN – Tara Brach

β€œOvercome any bitterness that may have come because you were not up to the magnitude of the pain that was entrusted to you. Like the mother of the world who carries the pain of the world in her heart, each of us is part of her heart and is, therefore, endowed with a certain measure of cosmic pain. You are sharing in the totality of that pain. You are called upon to meet it in joy instead of self-pity.”


Sufi master Pir Vilayat Khan

Two people holding hands on a table, one right above the other.

One on one support

It’s important to understand that you don’t have to do this alone. If you feel like much has surfaced and you would benefit from more support and guidance after the ceremony, Andrea from Stellar Folk is available with Somatic Inquiry. We also heartily recommend the incredibly skilled somatic therapist Joella May and talented Aphra Natley for shamanic art therapy. If you want to explore your voice, try Bettina Maureen. If you feel like working with dream interpretation, EbyΓ€n Zanini is your person. Find more on the online 1:1 sessions page.

You are also free to find a local somatic / body-based therapist you resonate with. We emphasise on the word somatic (β€œof the body”), because this is where trauma is stored. With just regular talk therapy we stay in the analytical mind where our ego and coping mechanisms still run the show, and therefore, oftentimes, we don’t get to the root of an issue.

β€œDon’t turn away.
Keep your gaze on the bandaged place.
That’s where the light enters you”


Rumi

πŸͺΆJournal prompt: one week after your journey

The following free-writing exercise will help you to move straight from your mind to your heart. Approach it as a stream of consciousness. It takes around 15 minutes.

Scan the list of prior writing prompts in your journal and choose one that stands out to you, or choose the one that scares you. Or choose the one that is easiest for you. You choose.

Put pen to paper on the page. Write the prompt down. Set a timer for 8 minutes.

Take a deep breath, and begin to write, never lifting pen from paper.
No editing. No crossing out. No looking up.

Stop writing the moment the timer has gone off.

Take a few deep breaths, and read aloud what your soul has spoken.

Repeat this exercise anytime you want in the coming weeks, each time picking a different theme from your journey.

A person writing in a notebook with a black pen, resting on a wooden table with a closed orange book nearby, in a cozy indoor space with sunlight.

The Community Support Fund

Healing belongs to everyone.

And yet, many who would benefit most from this work carry the weight of financial barriers, shaped by systems of inequity, trauma or marginalisation or simply the grinding pressures of daily life. The realities of venue costs across Europe, and the standards of care we refuse to compromise on, can make access to our retreats feel painfully out of reach. This fund exists to ease that gap.

If this work has touched you β€” or if you feel moved to help hold someone else's place in the circle β€” you are warmly welcome to contribute. Every donation goes directly towards bursaries and fully-funded spots. We approach this holistically, and offer priority to low-income immigrants and people of colour.

No amount is too small. Each contribution strengthens our community of care.

To donate, simply follow the button below, choose the β€˜β€˜Family and Friends’’ option and add "Community Support Fund" in the payment description:

COMMUNITY SUPPORT FUND

To contribute through other means, or to learn more, reach out directly: andrea@stellarfolk.org

Thank you, from the heart.

πŸͺΆJournal prompt: two weeks after your journey

DISCOVERING YOUR EMBODIED DECLARATION

An embodied declaration is a statement of who you are choosing to become, in the felt sense of your body. In generative somatics, it is understood that transformation isn’t just about new ideas in the mind, but about reshaping our habits of posture, breath, emotion, and movement, so that our whole being is aligned with our deepest commitments.

An embodied declaration is: a choice – naming how you want to show up in life; a practice – lived through body, breath, and daily action; a compass – reminding you of what matters, especially in moments of challenge.

Some examples are:

  • β€œI stand in my worth.”

  • β€œI move through the world with tenderness and strength.’’

  • β€˜β€˜I belong, exactly as I am.”

  • β€˜β€˜I open to joy without apology.’’

  • β€˜β€˜I stand rooted against oppression, unshakable in my dignity.’’

  • β€˜β€˜I am a protector of the Earth, and she moves through me.’’

These aren’t affirmations you repeat to fix or improve yourself. They are truths you inhabit through your body, over and over, until they become second nature.

Guided Practice:

Take 20–30 minutes with your journal. Give yourself space to arrive fully.

Step 1: ARRIVE IN THE BODY

  • Sit comfortably. Feel your feet on the ground.

  • Let your breath deepen. Notice the weight of your body, the shape of your spine, the rise and fall of your chest.

  • Ask yourself: β€œHow does my body feel when I’m most alive, most true, most connected?’’ Allow a posture, breath, or gesture to arise naturally. Hold it for a few moments.

Step 2: LISTEN FOR LONGING

  • From this posture, ask: β€œWhat do I most long for in how I live, love, or lead? What do I stand for?”

  • Notice where in your body this longing stirs β€” your chest, belly, throat, hands?

  • Write freely about what this longing is telling you.

Step 3: INTERRUPT THE OLD

  • Recall a moment when you fall back into patterns that no longer serve you.

  • Feel how your body holds this pattern β€” the tension, collapse, or armour.

  • From here, gently shift back into the posture from Step 1. Breathe.

  • Ask: β€œWhat new way of being would interrupt this old pattern?”

Step 4: DECLARE AND NAME

  • From your writing, distil one or two clear statements of who you are becoming.

  • Keep it short and present-tense (e.g. β€œI stand rooted in compassion.”).

  • Write it down. Say it aloud. Notice how your body responds β€” adjust the words until your body says yes.

Step 5: EMBODY YOUR DECLARATION

  • Practise standing, walking, or breathing in a way that expresses this declaration.

  • Let your body memorise it.

  • Commit to returning to this posture and declaration in daily life β€” especially when you need to remember your truth. You might hang your declaration in a place where you’re reminded of it every day.

Practices to cultivate on the long run

We would like to share with you this list of recommended practices that will truly help you keep the newly lit fire in your heart alive. Choose the ones that align most with your intention and your journey’s insights.

CONSUMPTION & HABITS

  • Consider quitting alcohol for a while. Alcohol is the biggest emotion suppresser out there and just so detrimental for your physical health. Give it a go and feel the benefits. This book might help.

  • Start paying close attention to your body when it comes to nutrition. Healthy food is like magic fuel for your sweet body. Simply cutting out sugary and processed foods and beverages will already make a big difference.

  • Limit screen-time. It can already massively help to have β€˜β€˜no phone time’’ between 10 pm and 10 am.

  • Continue journalling β€” this practice can really help unlock all kinds of internal blockages. Approach it like having an honest conversation with yourself. Even just writing your daily feelings in one sentence makes a difference. When you’re looking for answers, you can repeat the free-writing prompt from above.

  • Sleep hygiene β€” try going to bed at the same time every night and take measures to prepare yourself for sleep.

  • Explore Staying in the Medicine. Staying in the Medicine means to begin microdosing after your macrodose experience. The benefits of this include; increased neuroplasticity, prolonging heart opening feelings and staying in integrity with your journey. We have a free downloadable microdosing guide.

A wooden bowl with several lemons, including some sliced in half, on a yellow cloth and a light-colored table.

MOVE & CONNECT WITH NATURE

Take care of your body. Leave your mind, get into your body, sweat it out and release.​​

  • Daily exercise β€” aim for at least 15 minutes of high-intensity or 45 minutes of low-intensity per day. Elevating your heartbeat will help you move stagnant energy in your body and produce endorphins and dopamine.

  • Join a yoga class. Yoga and meditation are just so good for the body and the mind. If you prefer to do yoga in the comfort of your home, there are loads of great free online offerings, like Yoga with Kassandra or Yoga with Adrienne.

  • Join a dance class! Or find ecstatic dance events in your area to move your body. Highly recommended.

  • Find long-distance hikes in your area, pack a nice lunch and start exploring your natural surroundings.

  • Put your hands in the soil and plant a garden! If you don’t have a garden find a community garden, rewilding or regeneration project nearby.

A person hiking in a desert landscape with large rock formations, sparse vegetation, and bright blue sky, with red flowers in the foreground.

STAYING CLOSE TO YOUR SOUL

  • Join a local meditation circle. 100% recommend.

  • Definitely consider joining a women’s or men’s circle in your area. The power of sharing and connecting with peers through vulnerability is one of the biggest things missing in modern society.

  • Join breathwork events. A real easy way to get acquainted with breathwork is with Wim Hof’s free videos. When you’ve gotten used to the breathing technique, we can recommend this particular video.

  • Join kirtan or signing circle. Singing in a group is incredibly healing, uplifting and empowering.

  • Start volunteering at a cause close to your heart. It’s a bit of a clichΓ© but absolutely nothing makes us humans happier than to contribute and help from the goodness of our heart. Try it, it will surprise you!

  • Join an art class. Any art class. Painting, sculpting, crochet, pottery, life drawing, singing, basket weaving…

  • Try activities and hobbies you haven’t done before or loved doing as a child.

  • Commit to doing more somatic inquiry. Real, embodied introspection is where most tangible healing and change happens.

In the days, weeks, months, sometimes even years after your journey, insights will continue to emerge. Following a journey, make time every day to reflect on your experience, and cultivate practices that support a healthy integration.

Four people sitting on rocks at sunset on a mountain. One person is standing, facing the sunset, while the others sit and enjoy the view.

πŸͺΆJournal prompt: 6 weeks after your journey

Reflection offers a powerful moment to pause and witness our own growth.

Ask yourself: What has changed in my life (internally or externally) regarding to

  • my physical health?

  • my mental health?

  • my emotional wellbeing?

  • my relationship with spirituality?

  • my social life and community?

  • nature and all living beings?

  • [anything else that comes to mind]

  • Do some of the above answers align with the intentions I set at the beginning of this journey?

Now take some moments to honour yourself for where you are while looking forward to the future.

Write the following questions in your journal to answer in the coming days, one question for each day:

  • How will I celebrate myself?

  • For what am I most proud of myself?

  • What am I most looking forward to in my future?

  • Imagining my ideal future self, five years from now. What does that version of me look like? How do I feel, think, and act?

  • Looking back at my life from a future vantage point, what advice would I give to my present self?

  • How can I be in service to life?

A blue sky with white, fluffy clouds, including one cloud shaped like a heart.

Being spiritual isn’t about how psychic you are, the amount of crystals you have or how many plant medicine journeys you do. It’s about how much light of awareness you allow to shine within yourself. It’s about how kind, compassionate and authentic you are towards yourself and others.

We love you!

Lastly, from the bottom of our heart, we want to thank you for stepping into this adventure with us and for trusting us with this delicate experience.

Below, we’ve made a reading list for you in case you wish to delve into other inspirational material. On our instagram you will also find daily inspiration.

And of course, spread the mycelium word…! Most of the people that decide to work with us come through word of mouth.

We send you a warm hug and many blessings on your way,

Andrea & the Stellar Folk team β™‘

Reading list πŸ“š

In no particular order: