Why Gather Well has chosen to emphasize a group format
Gather Well will conduct its psychedelic experiential work in a group format and will teach aspiring apprentices how to guide using a group format. Those that want to learn individual/1:1 work formats will be able to take additional shorter training to learn the unique aspects of that model of care.
Community
The development of community and meaningful connections with others who share a longing for healing and growth is in itself part of the healing. Because so much of our modern ailments stem from isolation and an over-emphasis on the “self,” group work can be a potent antidote. By virtue of being together, in what can be our most vulnerable states, individuals feel less alone, get to experience what it is to be “seen,” to feel belonging. The processes around group work, what we call “preparation” and “integration” further support people in getting broader perspectives on themselves and what they are working with. They get to know what it’s like to heal together, and how togetherness is itself the medicine.
Relationships are key
Group work is relational. Because wounds and trauma occur in relationship, it makes sense that they are also healed there. While one can have a meaningful relationship with their therapist or guide, the relational work that happens in a group can be much richer, provides greater context for healing, and can be profoundly pivotal in terms of what is to experience safety in a group or community setting. It’s important that much intention goes into fostering connections, creating a safe container for the necessary vulnerability and expansion to unfold.
Confronting our edges
Healing in group formats can also be more challenging! In a shared space, more things are likely to arise and be activated. People arrive with their strategies and quirks. Working these edges together, working through them, in a conscious way, is counter to the broader cultural narrative that favors, individuality and personal comfort above all else, that encourages us to “other” or move away when someone is perceived as “not like us”. Group work, when held skillfully, can break down those barriers and has the potential to help us see our kinship and celebrate our differences.
Boundaries
Group work is also an excellent place to learn and practice healthy boundaries. The intent is not to merge with everyone in the room, or even to bond with everyone in the room. It’s to support participants’ ability to feel into the shared space, notice what is happening and be able to come into connection with themselves and with each other in a way that is aware and intentional. From that place members of a group can be supportive to each other on the journey. Can you feel compassion for someone if they are different from you? What about when they are annoying you? (It happens in every group!) What can be learned form the other? Can you feel the love you have for a fellow human even if you don’t see things the same way?
This is the work a guide will be doing within themselves and with future clients. It’s the work humanity is being called to engage. In a group setting the notion of interconnectedness is awakened, an experience participants can then return to for a felt sense of belonging to each other. There is additionally, something about the alchemy of group work that creates greater possibilities for joy and spontaneity that are not as readily available in a 1:1 context. Group work teaches us that we can both take the work seriously and ceremonially, while also welcoming levity and playfulness and the joy of connection to be in the space.
Indigenous Frame
At Gather Well we look to the Indigenous frameworks for group settings that include the use of psychedelics, as well as to the frameworks that have worked in western health models such as addiction recovery groups and group therapy. While the individualized psychotherapy model has a place, we feel it has been overemphasized in the Western frame of health and healing, sometimes exacerbating feelings of separateness and isolation to the detriment of individual and especially systemic healing.Indigenous frameworks the world over offer a perspective that emphasizes interconnectedness and interbeing, where we turn to each other and non-human beings as teachers for reminders of an innate wholeness.
At Gather Well we lean into the animistic, non-dual worldview of Indigenous frameworks. The mushrooms, for instance, are not a substance to be consumed, but living messengers of the Earth, from a vast mycelial network, with much to teach us when we meet them with humility, reverence and gratitude.
Safety & Support
Another aspect to what group work has to offer, as held by Gather Well, is that it contains built in safety measures that 1:1 work does not provide. We aren’t suggesting 1:1 work is inherently dangerous, only that in groups, there is more possibility for collective accountability. There are adequate assistants present to ensure everyone is tended to with care. We witness each other, we offer support and feedback. No one person is alone in their experience. We get an opportunity to expand beyond the power dynamic of therapist/client, no one person holds all the power.
Conclusion
Group work helps dissolve the illusion of separateness of the individual. It can awaken us to our shared humanity, illuminate the beauty in each other, support us in growing our capacity for holding the nuance of what it is to be human, to see how we all struggle and want to belong. It’s the way we healed each other, long before the individualistic, psychotherapeutic models of diagnosis and treatment took hold. In returning to this model of practice, we are returning to our nature, as interconnected beings, we are returning to the ways of our ancestors, we are returning to ourselves that long to know our place within the human and non-human families.
