What does Healing Actually Look Like?

When you read about transformation and healing through psychedelics, what does that actually look like? We review the research detailing breakthrough therapies mdma and psilocybin resulting in the clinical undiagnosis of PTSD & depression, but what do those experiences actually feel like in real time? When someone is able to let go, reconcile, forgive and embrace a new paradigm of being, it is powerful beyond measure.

Imagine living in a cave and never having an opportunity to see the light of day. You grow accustomed to experience through touch in the cave, listening, and a tuning to surroundings with a desperately limited perception of reality. Then one day you’re provided an opportunity to exit that cave an enter the light. The story you told yourself time and time again that the darkness is the totality of my life shatters in an instant. And you are initiated into an entirely new state of perceptional awareness. It is primordial, all encompassing, rapturous and boundless. It is the promise of hope and testament to the ineffable power of the human spirit.

A woman is visited by the spirit of a young boy, who tells her he’s the soul of the baby she aborted when 17 due to a forced conception.. and he’s living a beautiful life and its time she does too. A 74 old grandmother suffering from stage 4 cancer with a crippling existential fear of death transforms into a golden eagle – she sees her ancestry stretching out at her tail, her children & grandchildren thriving under her belly and the great Milky Way opening into beauty before her. She holds my hands and says, “Ehren, I’m going to be fine. We all are. We are loved. We are eternal.” A 50 year old man suffering from alcohol addiction & depression envisions the beast of the illness in front of him, releases a primordial howl that shakes our entire house and slaps his hands declaring ENOUGH! And 9 months later hasn’t even thought of taking a sip and is depression free. An elderly Black woman kneels down rubbing her feet with visions of her great grandfather who was a slave.. She declares, “My Grandaddy walks in my feet! I walk for your freedom! I live Free for all of us!” Then drops into the most powerful African dance I’ve ever seen she didn’t even know was within her. THIS is healing. These are the real stories of the numbers on the page you read in the research. Every single statistic is a profound experience that transcends anything the data can ever hope to convey.

When you read the literature, I invite you to take a step back and envision what does this actually looks like? I hope this pause gives you a warm smile. Today I step into ceremony with a husband & wife seeking healing for the loss of several family members in tragedy. I am filled with love & purpose. As I know the healing that is possible today.