TransformationGuidebook

2

Welcome to Your Transformation

The Transformation retreat is an immersive offering designed to compliment your ongoing wellness practice, therapy, or health care routine.

Our goal is to create a supportive and relaxing environment for you to experience a nervous system reset and a beneficial “time out” from your ordinary state of consciousness.

Humans have used psychedelic medicines for millennia as catalysts for individual and collective healing. Our hope is to provide a nurturing retreat space for you to discover more about yourself, so that you may return to your daily life with insights that create space for new possibilities to emerge.

This Workbook provides you with prompts to prepare for your journey, and to reflect and integrate afterward.

To get the most out of your Transformation retreat, we invite you to give your full attention to the preparation and integration prompts.

“ The only way to make sense out of change is to lunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.”

- Alan Watts

3

Contents

4 What to Expect 6 Preparing for Your Journey 8 The Journey Itself • Before Your Journey • Journaling Pages for your Tour Guide • After Your Journey 14 Reflection • Prompts • Mandala • Encountering Difficult Emotions 18 Integration • Supportive Practices • Prompts • Resources & Referrals

4

What to Expect

What is Ketamine? Ketamine is a medicine which was approved by the FDA in 1970 and is considered one of the World Health Organization’s one hundred essential medicines. The safety profile of Ketamine is such that it is commonly used as an anaesthetic for children.

Currently, ketamine is one of the only legal psychedelic medicines avail- able to mental health providers. Ketamine works by balancing activity throughout the limbic system (the location in the brain that processes fear and pain), so that we can experience things that are normally challenging or overwhelming with less conditioned stress and anxiety.

It stimulates the natural process of brain plasticity, with growth of new branches and connections between brain cells. This facilitates decreased cognitive rigidity and increased flexibility in thoughts, feelings, and behav- ior. In combination with focused intentionality, and proper setting, the use of ketamine has the potential to provide profound healing insights and inter- rupt painful patterns of thought, feeling, and behavior that can hold us back from living the life we choose.

What is the experience?

Ketamine induces an expanded state of consciousness that can provide a deep and transformative experience of the self and the broader world. Many experience a unity with the essence of themselves as well as some thing larger to which they are connected. Effects can include a sense of euphoria, awe, connection, and peace. Your journey can lead to increased access to a sense of purpose, presence, and clarity, as well as elevated mood and heart-centered orientation with decreased anxiety, chronic pain, depression and egoic limitations.

5

Journey Day Logistics

• Drink plenty of water and eat a healthy breakfast. You will be provided a light snack to eat in place of lunch. Having a full meal before your jour- ney can interfere with the effectiveness of the medicine and may cause nausea. Be mindful of your fluid intake in the hour leading up to your jour- ney, as using the toilet during your session is undesirable.

• When you arrive at your treatment with your Tour Guide, you will be invited to get comfortable on the mat. Next, your provider will give you a medical check up and answer any questions you have. While your pro- vider prepares the medicine, your Tour Guide will help you to review your intentions, and guide you in a meditation as you make your transition into the medicine space.

• Your Tour Guide will sit with you after your journey as you slowly come back into your body and the room. As the medicine leaves your body, you may feel unsteadiness, brain fog and/or lightheaded. This is totally normal and it will pass. Your Tour Guide is there to help you move around the space when you are ready. You will have the option to linger in your treat- ment room, or soak, until the spa closes.

6

Prepararing for Your Journey

In preparation for your Ketamine journey, use the following prompts to reflect on where you are in your life currently, and what you are seeking to transform. There is no right or wrong way to reflect here, just be honest with yourself. 1. What has led me to embark on this journey? Why am I here?

2. What would I like to shift/change in my life? Where do I feel stuck?

7

3. What does my “highest self” need and want? (To access this place of “highest self”...lean back in your chair, feel your feet on the floor, and take a few breaths into your heart or the center of your body. Allow your intuitive wisdom to answer the question. Try not to edit what emerges. You may consider writing down your response using your non-dominant hand.)

4. What are my core intentions for this journey? (Aim for concise personal statements starting with the words, “I intend”)...

8

Before Your Journey

In the hours leading up to your Ketamine journey, take a few moments to sit quietly. Take some deep breaths and gently scan your body, without judgement. Feel free to use words, doodles, and colors to express your experience.

What sensations and feelings are present in my body right now? Where? Are there any messages or information coming through my body?

9

During Your Journey

Your Tour Guide will use this section to record the arc of your journey. Please leave it blank. (Note: It is best not to read these notes until 24-hours after your journey. This allows for you to integrate the subtle aspects of your experience, before defining it with language.)

10

11

12

13

After your Journey

In the hours following your Ketamine journey, take a few moments to gently scan your body. What do you notice? How does your body feel right now? Feel free to use words, doodles, colors to express your experience.

14

Reflection

Reflecting on your journey in writing allows you to document and remem- ber your experience, and can help you to integrate in the days, weeks and months that follow.

1. What strikes me most coming out of my experience? What is staying with me?

2. How did I feel at different points in my journey? What was it like for me to have these emotions? How is it now?

15

3. Was there any point in my journey where I felt unsettled or stuck? How did I move through it?

4. What images felt significant? How do I feel when I encounter these images? (Feel free to use this space to draw, doodle, or color your response.)

5. What messages did I receive that I would like to take with me? What new possibilities for myself and my life emerged?

16

The Mandala

Use this space to visually express your experience. You can create inside the mandala (circle), outside, or both! Feel free to use words, doodles, colors to express your experience.

17

Encountering Difficult Emotions

It’s natural for big, and sometimes hard emotions to surface during your retreat. Here is a simple exercise for when these emotions are present:

Take three breaths. Place one hand on your heart and the other on your belly. Say to yourself, internally or out loud, “It’s okay. These feelings, all and any of them, are here with me right now. You belong here. I am here with you and I am listening.” Breathe into your heart, belly, and hands. What do you notice?

“Even if we are still confused, we are certain that we are in the process of evolution. Something inside us knows it and feels it.”

- Françoise Bourzat

18

Supportive Practices for Integration

Here is a list of activities/practices that can support you immediately after your journey and in the days and weeks following your Ketamine experience. Connect with nature

Move your body gently (dance, stretch, walk)

Nourish your body with healthy foods

Write or draw in a journal

Surround yourself with loving community

Make time for yourself

Revisit the intentions you set for your journey

Get plenty of sleep

Work with a therapist or coach

Call a trusted friend

Write a list of things you’re grateful for

Take a bath or soak in healing waters

Sing — alone or to a favorite song

Meditate

Get of your phone!

Express your creativity

Try doing something familiar in a new way

19

Integrating Your Journey

In some ways your journey is just beginning — integration is the key to taking this from a unique, but singular experience, to becoming a transfor- mative and lasting piece of you.

Change can be very difficult, as the human brain unconsciously views the unfamiliar as threatening and to be avoided.

It’s important that you support yourself by being patient and gentle with your process of change, while also remaining accountable and committed to your transformation. Without integration, the journey can fade like a dream or cause discomfort, no matter how profound the experience. Take this opportunity to work with yourself and support the process in an ongoing way.

The discoveries you made can be woven into your daily life. This involves identifying the resources that emerged in your journey (images, sensations, mantras, etc.) and bringing them into your daily awareness.

Integration can last days, weeks, years or a lifetime depending on what was uncovered.

20

Integrating Your Journey Continued...

It can be helpful to ask yourself: 1. What would help me honor the insights I had on my journey?

2. What actions, small and large, does my journey inspire me to take, in the areas of:

My Relationships?

My Community?

My Work/Career?

My Self?

21

Referrals & Resources Local Coaches & Therapists Who Specialize in Psychedelic Integration:

Brock Anderson, MSW, LMSW — brock427@gmail.com

Valli Baron, Holistic Life Coach — www.breathbodywork.com

Kendra Bloom, LMFT — kendrabloomtherapy.com

Erin Doerwald, LCSW, CMT-P — hellowellnesstherapy.com

Lizzie Hart, Holistic Coach — lizziehartguide.com

Dr. Natalie Metz, ND — drnataliemetz.com

Naraya Stein, Holistic Life Coach — journeymapping.net Books:

When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chödrön

True Refuge: Finding Peace and Freedom in Your Own Awakened Heart

by Tara Brach

The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide by Michael Fadiman

Consciousness Medicine by Françoise Bourzat

The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan Watts

The Wild Edge of Sorrow by Francis Weller

The Ketamine Papers: Science, Therapy, and Transformation eds. Phil

Wolfson MD and Glenn Hartelius PhD

PiHKAL and TiHKAL by Alexander Shulgin and Ann Shulgin

Web Resources:

TED Talks by Dr. Brené Brown, Lisa Barrett Feldman, Rick Doblin, Lowan

Stewart, Philip E. Wolfson, Gabor Mate

YouTube video “Neuroplasticity” by Sentis

Psychedelic Support www.psychedelic.support

Gottman Institute www.gottman.com

Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies www.maps.org

22

Thank You

On behalf of the Ten Thousand Waves Transformation team, we offer our gratitude to you for being with us on your journey. We wish you all the blessings and courage as you continue to walk your path!

“ What if the world is holding its breath — waiting for you to take theplaceonlyyoucanfill?”

- David Whyte