Mind & Body Ketamine Retreats

Since the middle of the 20th century, researchers from institutions around the world put significant time and energy into researching the benefits of psychedelic medicines on various mental ailments. To keep their research as controlled as possible, many of these studies looked into the effects these modalities had on an individual in a private setting.

The results were profound. Study after study proved the case that for many individuals, these substances were significantly effective in providing relief for those who suffer with depression, anxiety, PTSD, and chronic pain. While not 100% effective for everyone, we’ve found that our patients at Mind & Body Wellness Center have benefited significantly from their ketamine sessions.

While individual ketamine sessions have been proven to be safe and effective, what happens when ketamine is taken in a group setting? For several years now, researchers have put their attention into answering this question. And they’re discovering what indigenous populations around the world have known for hundreds, if not thousands, of years – there’s significant power in participating in group medicine work, such as a ketamine retreat. Ketamine retreats are a great opportunity to experience this work in a safe, inclusive container that allows for a shared experience.

Participating in a ketamine retreat, where you and several others are treated together, offers many things that can empower a person to stay on the healing path. Aspects of this work that differ from an individual session include the following.

COST $2,500 – 2 DAY/3 NIGHT RETREAT

What to Expect

With a Mind & Body Wellness Center ketamine retreat, you’ll experience a weekend of deep internal work in a shared setting. We take the time to get to know you before the retreat with our specially designed protocol to make sure that your specific needs are addressed. This includes a health intake form to make sure that you’re well-suited both mentally and physically for this particular modality.

Our program starts on Friday evening in a warm, comfortable environment. We’re firm believers in maintaining the proper set and setting, so your comfort and safety is our top priority. We begin things with a delicious meal prepared by a local chef. Any and all dietary requests will be honored. We’ll make our introductions and start to settle into the work that’s ahead.

After dinner, we meet as a group and begin to drop into the intentions each participant has set for the deep work that will happen the next day. We’ll discuss what you should expect from your ketamine sessions, the integration work we’ll facilitate that will help you make sense of what you learned, and ways you can use your own innate creative abilities to deepen the work. We’ll end the evening with some light breathwork before getting settled into bed.

Sunday

On Sunday, we’ll start the last day of our retreat with some light yoga. Breakfast will be served immediately after.

We’ll gather one more time in a sharing circle and reflect on our time together. If any new insights came to you over the course of the evening, this is a great opportunity to share them. We’ll also use this time to talk about how to continue integration and incorporate practices that will help you during this critical phase.

After our sharing circle, we’ll have one-on-one integration coaching sessions available with our facilitators. We’ll help you put a plan in place and offer suggestions for practices you can incorporate into your day to help you take full advantage of this critical phase.

Post-Retreat Integration

While the ketamine sessions can be incredibly powerful, the bulk of the work comes after the retreat. The integration phase is a time of heightened neuroplasticity where you take your learnings from the retreat and synthesize them into something useful for the long term. We will equip you with practices that you can take home and try, and also offer an online group sharing circle that will meet once a week for the four weeks immediately following the retreat. This is optional, but we encourage you to participate if you can.

Preparing Your Support System

Integration can be a rocky road, so it’s important to inform the people around us about the changes they could see in us as we navigate the integration process.

Coming out of a ketamine retreat, you could experience heightened sensitivity. Anytime we experience something as profound and soul opening as medicine work, re-entry into the “real world” can be a challenge. Something may shift inside us and we might see ourselves, and the world, in a new light. This can be jarring and great care needs to be applied as we navigate the integration phase. Those around us may notice we’re more sensitive to external stimuli and how we react to these stimuli may not match up to the expectations our loved ones have of us. It’s important for them to know beforehand that this could happen and that this heightened sensitivity could last a few weeks – even for a month of two.

Typically there’s nothing to worry about. In very rare cases, people might experience what’s called a spiritual emergence.

Emma Bragdon, Ph.D, describes a spiritual emergence as a “… process of personal awakening into a level of perceiving and functioning, which is beyond normal ego functioning. At its peak, spiritual emergence is the experience of the ultimate unity of all things, a mystical experience, a merging with the Divine which transcends verbal description. Among the positive effects of this process are increased creativity, feelings of peace and an expanded sense of compassion.”

If this occurs, it’s important to have go-to resources to help you navigate it. At Mind & Body Wellness Center, we’ve teamed up with trusted professionals that we can refer you to.

There can also be an impulse to make dramatic changes in your life. As part of the integration process, we’ll help you slow these impulses down and direct your focus towards practices that will help you determine what actually needs to change. Preparing those who support us that we’re hoping to make changes after the retreat can potentially stave off any resistance that might come up if we were to suddenly spring this on them.