Groundwork Program

What is Groundwork? 

Groundwork is the foundation of Gather Well’s Psychedelic Guide Apprenticeship Model. 

Guiding is the role of supporting someone through a meaningful transformation via their engagement with psychedelics. It is an approach of service and care, and requires considerable integrity. Guiding is complex work, and for those interested in becoming a guide, the work starts within. We believe true integrity in helping others means accepting the current state of one’s own capacities, and respecting the pace by which one becomes ready to take up the role.

Groundwork offers participants the opportunity to deeply inquire about their motivations for guiding. Over eight months, participants engage in personal development, retreat and workshop style excecises. They learn from expert group facilitators and a cohort of peers in a virtual classroom setting, and gather in person for two group sessions with psilocybin mushrooms in a ceremonial context.

For those wishing to become certified Gather Well Guides, the Groundwork program is the prerequisite for our 18-month Apprenticeship Program. Groundwork may also be taken as a stand-alone program for those who wish to deepen their awareness and embodied capacity to relate to cultural, social, and ecological dynamics in their practices.

The 6 Medicine Model + Gather Well Core Capacities 

Groundwork proposes six ways of being, or “medicines” to develop expansive thinking, feeling, sensing, relating, being and doing. These medicines represent a transformational arc that can show up at many scales and that one may engage with and learn from rather than “do”. This transformational arc of 6 “medicines” is especially applicable to the role of a guide in psychedelic-assisted care and creates fertile ground for personal transformation and collective cultural evolution. 

• Belonging
• Pause & Receptivity
• Embodied emotions
• Unknowing & the unknown
• Creation & Possibility
• Transition & Completion

Throughout Groundwork, we spend time with each Medicine, exploring our personal and collective orientations towards them, and developing new ways of relating within ourselves, in relationship, within the collective, and in relationship to the role of guiding. In each of these medicines there is a gift that the practitioner receives when they are willing and able to fully engage with them. 

Throughout Groundwork, we will engage the 6 Medicine Model through:

• Locating oneself in the here and now through one’s current experience of identity, culture and relationship to positionality within the collective.
• Exploring what a culture of care, belonging, reciprocity and interconnectedness means to us individually and together.
• Locating oneself within personal family lineage, cultural lineages and chosen lineages.
• Grappling with the formative interpersonal, cultural, historical, ancestral influences that are present in how we are showing up for life. 
• Engaging relationship to place and land as a context of belonging that extends beyond societal spheres. Exploring practices that foster connectedness to the Earth and how perspectives held by indigenous communities can teach non-indigenous people while not being appropriated.
• Engaging the role of ritual in fostering relationship to self, other, collective, spirit and place.
• Inquiring into our relationship with the mushrooms and exploring our orientation to these animate beings individually and societally.
• Practicing embodiment of our emotions with honesty and care. Respecting the wisdom of the body, senses and spirit. 
• Disrupting the dominance of logical/conceptual/mental supremacy within ourselves and within our relationships. Exploring the fears, discomforts, responsibilities and internalized patterning around embodying our emotions.
• Embracing “otherness”, disturbance, complexity, and opportunities for growth. Working with potential fears presented by difference and the unknown.
• Questioning what we think we know, with invitations to explore patterns in ways of thinking and doing; making space for possibility, creativity, liberation and connectedness within, to others, and in the collective.
• Embracing the creativity that emerges when one slows down, becomes receptive, moves with embodied emotions, and leads with curiosity in relationship to the unknown.
• Tending to endings, transitions and periods of change and integration. Reflecting on learnings, growth, and unfinished processes. Allowing for rest, gratitude, contentment, and savoring the ongoing cycles of transformation in our lives.

Groundwork prepares participants to be of service by inquiring deeply about their motivations for guiding. The program is designed to invite opportunities to explore one’s competency in Gather Well’s Core Capacities. Facilitators offer nuanced and generative evaluation in each participant’s demonstrated capacity for: 

• Self-Reflection
• Awareness and engaged relationship to identity, positional power, and social inequity
• Empathy, compassion, humility, and curiosity
• Consideration and care about one’s impact on others       
• Non-defensiveness, openness, both/and perspective
• Ability to navigate complexity and complex relational dynamics
• Ability to recognize activation (in self and others) and implement tools to help in these instances; capacity to remain embodied when others are activated
• Openness and courage in relating to what is unknown

Though each participant’s takeaways from the program will be unique, you may anticipate:

• Coming away with a deepened sense of possibility for transformation of self and culture.
• Learning in community and developing a sense of camaraderie with peers who are called to explore deeply the role of helping others in transformational states.
• A greater orientation to what capacities we believe the role of guiding asks of us and a clearer understanding of your current capacities to serve as a guide. 
• Your own personal expansion and growth through engaging in the program and participating in ceremonies with psilocybin containing mushrooms.
• Coming away with a useful framework and model for transformation  – the 6 Medicine Model – which can be applied in your life and in your practice of supporting others.  
• Clarity around whether you would like to continue on as a Gather Well Apprentice in our 18-month Apprenticeship Program. 

Our programs do not require applicants to hold specific degrees in mental health or medical professions.

Groundwork is designed for:

• Those who are in serious consideration of becoming a guide providing psychedelic-assisted services. 
• Those who are interested in the potential of psychedelic medicines to assist in systems change – particularly addressing the divides and areas of discord within our current global culture. Our programs have a particular focus on the capacities a guide needs to offer such work in their communities. 
• Practitioners, guides or those stewarding any non-ordinary or transformational states such as transpersonal therapy or ecotherapy approaches, facilitators of social change work, those facilitating rites of passage ritual or accompaniment, Chaplains or other clergy, midwives and/or doulas, death doulas or hospice workers, or facilitators of rituals of various kinds. 
• Those interested in becoming a guide through Gather Well’s Psychedelic Guide Apprenticeship Framework. The Groundwork program is a prerequisite. 
• Those who are already guiding in psychedelics or in other kinds of transformational work and who would like to develop an embodied capacity to stay present to the cultural, social, and ecological reality that we all live within and co-create.

Groundwork is divided into two, four-month segments. Cohorts meet four times per month: twice for 6-hour Saturday sessions, and twice for 3-hour weekday sessions. Each four-month segment includes an in-person weekend retreat in which participants are guided by Gather Well Lead Guides in a group ceremony, supported by a robust preparation and integration framework. 

Groundwork consists of: 

• Small Cohorts: groups of 8-15 participants, with as much geographical overlap as possible, allows for in-person engagement amongst peers. During the program, participants will engage primarily with their cohort peers and facilitators. 
• Virtual Classroom Sessions: live facilitated exercises, group discussions, interpersonal process, and ritual practices, following our 6 Medicine Model.
• Residential Retreats: in-person, long-weekend gatherings around a single group ceremony with psilocybin-containing mushrooms*, framed by group and 1-1 preparation and integration sessions. 
• Peer-to-peer Learning: participants engage in  land-based exercises and rituals with cohort peers to support the formation of meaningful connections and a sense of community. 
• Affinity Groups: participation in self-determined affinity spaces for people of similar identities across all cohorts, intended to explore program themes through the lens of identity.  
• Guest Facilitators: guest facilitators with prominent voices in the field of transformational work will join the cohorts to provide experiential guidance related to a specific phase of  the 6 Medicine Model. 
• Structured Guidance for Self-Reflection: prompts and activities, reading materials, and media to engage with themes. 
• Ethics and Support Infrastructure: Gather Well’s dedicated Care Team is available for participant support, and our Ethics Infrastructure overseen by ourEthics Committee  provides support and accountability towards all relationships (between participants, facilitators, and staff) and learning environments within Gather Well including an ethical grievance reporting system providing anonymous reporting for all members of our community. 

*Any engagement with psychedelics is conducted in a jurisdiction in which it is legal to do so and in compliance with regulatory framework in that jurisdiction.

Groundwork program facilitators encourage a learning container that stimulates a variety of intelligences, one that can attend to, and be responsive to, what arises in the group in regards to individual emotion and group dynamics.

Groundwork facilitators work in pairs and have the following foundational personal and professional qualifications:

• Capacity to skillfully move the group toward and hold difficult material and conversations.
• Excellent embodied ethics and a stance of service in taking up the role of cohort facilitator and in any healing, therapeutic, or community support work they may do outside the organization.
• Ease and familiarity drawing on somatic resources or other practices that bring mindfulness and nervous system connectedness.
• Well-versed in setting up process spaces that foster a sense of safety, informed consent, and trauma-informed practices.
• Capacity around providing direct communication and feedback in a supportive manner, offering an opportunity for learning and growth.

Residential retreats and ceremonies with psilocybin are staffed by Gather Well’s Lead Ceremonial Guides, who have experience with the facilitation of groups in a ceremonial context.

You can see more information on our program staff on our Community page.

Our tuition structure is a reparative and restorative approach in which fees are determined in proportion to each participant’s income and financial resources. Payment plan and work-trade options are available. You can read more detail on our philosophy and approach here. 

Learn more about the details of assessing tuition on the Program Details and Enrollment Page. 

Groundwork begins in 2025. 

Applications for the upcoming Groundwork Program will be available soon and accepted starting on February 3rd, 2025.

Submit your application by March 31 to be considered during PHASE ONE OF REVIEWS. 

We encourage you to apply as early as possible as applicants will be assessed for compatibility with the program and accepted on a first come, first serve basis.

The final application deadline is May 9th

The admissions process consists of: 

• A written application + initial screening
• An interview
• Attendance at an online admissions workshop, in which applicants get a sense for the style of the program and are observed in relating within a group

Gather Well staff will provide several Q & A sessions prior to and throughout the application window. More details to come. 

For more about the admissions process, please see the Program and Enrollment Details Page.