Every new technology arrives twice. First as a breakthrough. Then as the practice of how we live with it.

That second arrival is integration. It’s the least glamorous part of any transformation, and it outlives the breakthrough. What we build from a technology — the habits, the culture, the way we treat each other — is what actually remains.

About twenty minutes before we opened the room for our info session on AI, Leadership & Agency, an eight-week program for founders, leaders and practitioners who are responsible for how AI enters real work, co-facilitator was looking for music. He shared Music for Zen Meditation, a 1964 album by the jazz clarinetist Tony Scott.

As Rudy tells it, Scott had played alongside Billie Holiday and Charlie Parker and left New York worn down by the scene, by the lack of respect, by friends lost to drugs. He went to Japan, immersed himself in Zen, and sat down with two Japanese masters. An American jazz clarinet, a bamboo flute and a thirteen-string koto, improvising toward each other. East and west meeting in the middle. It’s often called the first New Age record.

What stays with me is that Scott didn’t walk away from the technology of music. He brought it into contact with Zen, a technology for working with attention, and let the two reshape each other. Rudy kept remarking on how beautifully it was recorded for its time. The newest studio tools of 1964, in service of a practice that is centuries old.

That’s the second arrival. The new tools didn’t replace the old practice, and the practice didn’t reject the tools. Each made the other more itself, and what came out was something neither could have made alone.

It’s the lens I bring to AI. We are living through the breakthrough right now. The integration has barely started. Who gets to choose what AI becomes in our lives?

To arrive, ask the body

We began the way we open every session, and I’d invite you to try it now, as you read.

Close your eyes for a moment. Notice what comes up when you hear the words artificial intelligence. Not what you think about it. What’s alive in you.

Is it excitement, curiosity, a sense of possibility? Or concern, pressure, resistance? Or something else entirely?

When I did it with the group, what came up for me was a calm excitement. That grounded readiness before something begins. Alongside it, a clear sense that staying rooted matters as much as the anticipation. Some of the conversations ahead won’t be easy. They rarely are when they touch identity, work and power. Sitting with the tension instead of rushing to resolve it is where the real breakthroughs come from.

Guest faculty and AI ethicist named her feeling with real honesty. After ten years in the field, she’s becoming more skeptical. She had hoped AI would accelerate the shift to a regenerative paradigm. Instead she sees the race between frontier labs, and a pressure to produce more that doesn’t always produce better. I truly believe that skepticism from someone who has spent a decade inside the field isn’t pessimism, it’s information.

Breaking the wheel

Then we went into breakouts with one question: where do you currently feel the greatest tension in your relationship with AI?

In my breakout room, Henri gave me an answer I didn’t expect. He felt no tension at all. He knows who he is. He knows his agency. He knows his place. His approach was pragmatic: work with what is present, rather than spiraling into where it might all lead.

When we came back together, the answers widened. One participant described living with two scales of AI at once. On a personal level, he uses it for reflection and growth rather than letting attention-harvesting algorithms use him. On a societal level, he has spent years thinking about existential risk. Both are true for him, at the same time.

Another said Henri’s steadiness had helped him set down the weight of the whole polycrisis for a moment and ask a more useful question: what is actually mine to hold?

Then Gloria brought history into the room. She’d spent the morning listening to a talk about the dawn of the industrial age and noticed how familiar it sounded. Will the machines take our jobs? How do we work alongside them? What happens to us? Different technology and at different moments in time. Eerily similar questions, history evolving yet reviewing similar patterns.

Her challenge was simple: when do we break the wheel. Who do we need to become to meet this with a desire to connect, instead of a fear of what might go wrong?

Alex named what history has already shown us. Industrialization promised leisure and delivered acceleration. The same promise is now being made about AI, and there’s little reason to expect a different outcome unless we bring a different quality of attention to it.

I heard Gloria and Henri as two halves of one answer. She asked who we need to become. He described what it feels like once you have.

This is what I mean by integration. Groundedness doesn’t mean ignoring the storm. It means knowing where you stand in it.

It’s also why the course begins with a baseline rather than a tool. Before deciding anything about AI, you need to know where you’re standing in your own relationship with it.

The brain loves a shortcut

One thing that has always fascinated me about having studied neuroscience is learning how eager the brain is to offload. It is an energy-saving organ. It hands off whatever it can to habit, to routine, to the nearest tool.

Researchers call this cognitive offloading. What’s new here in AI is the scale and the intimacy.

A well-known 2011 study found that when people expect information to be saved somewhere, they remember less of the information itself and more about where to find it. Research on habitual GPS users has linked heavy reliance to weaker spatial memory. London taxi drivers who memorize the city’s streets, on the other hand, show measurable differences in the hippocampus, the region that helps us build maps of the world.

The brain becomes what it practices.

Early research on writing with AI points in a similar direction. In a recent MIT Media Lab study, people who wrote essays with an AI assistant showed lower brain connectivity during the task and had trouble recalling their own sentences afterward. It’s a small study and not yet peer reviewed.

But the picture isn’t one-sided, and that matters. In the same MIT study, people who wrote on their own first and only then brought in AI showed higher engagement than those who started with it. A large study of high school students found that an open chatbot boosted practice scores but hurt exam results, while a version designed as a tutor, one that guided rather than answered, largely avoided that harm. And a Harvard trial found that students learned more with an AI tutor built on sound teaching principles than in an active-learning class.

The difference isn’t the tool. It’s the sequence and the design. Thinking first, then using AI, strengthens us. Handing it the thinking from the start weakens us. Neuroplasticity has always told us the same thing: what we stop using, we slowly lose the ease of.

None of this makes offloading bad. Some things should go. But every time a model thinks for you, a bit of your attention and your judgment goes with it.

The question is whether you chose to hand over your attention and judgement. That conscious choice is what agency means.

The Enactment Arc: from signal to action

Co-facilitator developed a framework he calls the Enactment Arc. It maps the path from what you notice to what you actually do. What becomes important to you, what you want, what you know, what you commit to, what you act on, and finally, what you integrate.

The first time I saw it, I recognized my own work in it, that understanding something is not the same as living it. That’s the truth integration work is built on. The arc is a map of the distance between the two.

Most of us, Alex says, live in the last few stages. We commit and act on autopilot, skipping the part where we ask whether this matters and whether we actually want it.

I recognized myself in that. When I was Chief AI Officer at a U.S. law firm, I had to decide how to introduce a new AI tool to a team that was already wary of it. The kind of decision that calls for discernment and strategic foresight about people, not a quick answer. And I went straight to AI for the pros and cons, before consulting what I already knew. Years of experience with how people respond to change. What behavioral science tells us about trust, loss and identity at work. My own read of this particular team.

When I noticed, I stepped away from the screen and paused, without judging myself for reaching. Then I asked better questions first. What outcome do I want for this team? What do I already know about how people adopt change? What does this group need before it can trust a new tool? Once I’d answered those, the model’s analysis became useful. Before that, it was answering a question I hadn’t defined.

That’s what AI does so well. It makes the knowledge step instant, so it’s easy to forget the steps before it and the knowledge you already carry, were ever there.

Then there’s the final stage, integration, which is where my work lives. What do I keep, what do I change, what do I let go of. What I love about Alex’s arc is that it doesn’t stop there.

Integration loops back and shapes what you notice next. People work the same way. What you integrate from one experience changes how you meet the next one. Skip it, and you just repeat the pattern with a faster tool.

In my work, I saw this across the whole firm. The tools were good. People hesitated anyway, and beneath the questions about accuracy was the fundamental question: if this now does what I did, who am I now?

Where attention goes

In Dharamsala, where I attended an immersion in Tibetan Buddhist philosophy, nearly every teaching came back to attention. Rest gentle, focused awareness on a thought, a feeling or a craving, and you begin to see it arise, linger and pass. You are not the thought. You are the one noticing it. Impermanence stops being a concept and becomes something you can watch happen.

The teachings on karma made this practical. Karma here isn’t fate or cosmic payback. It’s the intention behind what we do, which then shapes how we act through body, speech and mind, and what we become. Every intentional act leaves a trace that conditions the next one.

That’s a loop, just like Alex’s arc. Intention shapes action, action shapes habit, and habit shapes what we notice next. The space where intention forms is exactly the space a fast tool makes easy to pass over.

Looking back at that moment as Chief AI Officer, what I was reaching for wasn’t information. It was certainty. A sure answer about a future no one could predict. The impulse came first, and the reason came after. Once I paused, I could see the impulse for what it was and my own thought patterns that drove me to the action in the first place.

Meditators often distinguish between practice on the cushion and practice off it. Sitting is the easy part. The real work is carrying that awareness into ordinary life. And AI is ordinary life now. Every prompt is a small moment off the cushion.

So the practice is neither to resist AI nor to dissolve into it. It’s to notice. What is pulling me right now? Curiosity, or fatigue? Do I know what I want, or am I asking the model to want it for me?

Emergent by design

After the participants left, Rudy, Alex and I stayed on the call, the way hosts linger after a dinner to re-enact the night’s highlights. We were already talking about the people we’d met, the questions we want to carry into the first session, and the shared knowledge vault we will all build together as a cohort, an experiment none of us has run in a class before.

I told them it was the first conversation about AI in a long time that left me energized instead of drained.

That’s also why we design the way we do. Each session is shaped week by week, close to what the group brings into the room. When people talk honestly about very human things, something emerges that no one could have scripted in advance. We’d rather follow that than a fixed syllabus. Which means the questions in this piece are a starting point, not a curriculum.

If you tried the arrival at the start of this piece, I’d love to know what came up for you. And if you didn’t, try it now. Close your eyes, notice what comes up when you hear the word AI, and then notice what you’d do next, before you reach for anything.

Tell me in the comments. I’m genuinely curious, and what you share will become part of how this course emerges.

Who gets to choose?

P.S. If this is the kind of question you’re sitting with, it’s what we’ll explore in AI, Leadership & Agency, an eight-week live program I’m co-hosting with Rudy de Waele and Alex de Carvalho at . Tuesdays from October 27 to December 15, plus a Saturday Build Lab on November 14 where you set up your own AI tools to follow your own rules. I’ll be holding the embodied integration side, and how AI actually lands in real organizations. Details here, and if you’re not sure it’s for you, you can book a conversation with us.

PS: For your listening pleasure:

We’re living through a strange kind of contradiction. We’ve never disclosed more about our inner lives and yet have never been more starved for real intimacy. Every feeling gets a caption. Every private moment becomes public inventory: what we ate, who we lost, what we’re healing from, expressed in real time, to an audience that mostly consists of strangers. We call this vulnerability. And sometimes, it is. But I think a lot of what passes for intimacy online is actually its opposite: a performance of openness that lets us feel witnessed without ever being truly seen.

Recently I was traveling in Tokyo and found myself drawn to photographing the night scene in a lively alleyway of restaurants. I observed the way artificial light touched someone’s skin through a window. A hand reaching for a glass of wine. Two people leaning toward each other behind a steamed-up bar window, saying something I would never hear. The people didn’t know they were being photographed.

I walked around at night for hours with my camera up and telling myself I was documenting something true about being human. Small rooms lit warm against the dark street. People loosened by the hour and by the drink, by the fact that the “performing” part of the day was finally over. I liked being there. I liked believing that what I was capturing was honest, real.

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The observer effect

In physics, there’s a basic idea that you can’t observe a system without changing it. Psychology has its own version. People behave differently the instant they know they’re watched (even slightly), even by someone they’ll never meet. It’s called the observer effect, and it’s one of the oldest problems in trying to study anything human. The moment you introduce a witness you’ve introduced a variable.

Photography lives inside this problem and mostly pretends it doesn’t. We call a photo candid and that means, the person didn’t know. We treat that as more true than a portrait, as though unwitnessed behavior is inherently more real than witnessed behavior. I’m not sure that’s right. A person laughing when they think no one’s watching isn’t more themselves than a person laughing at a camera. They’re just differently themselves. Both are real and neither is the whole “truth” of who they are.

What the unwitnessed version gave me wasn’t more truth. It gave me less room to negotiate with a prewritten story. Because nobody adjusted anything for my benefit. And maybe that’s the whole appeal, honestly. Lately I’m used to everything being adjusted and edited before it reaches my social feeds that my capturing a single unguarded moment through a window starts to feel like the most authentic thing I can do as an observer. And what did I see?

Two kinds of seeing

Intimacy has an inside space and an outside space. The inside is what two or more people build together when the door is closed when neither of them is shaping their behavior for anyone else’s benefit. The outside is whatever leaks through the window to a stranger walking by, or whatever gets deliberately released outward, packaged as an instagram post, offered to thousands of people who were never chosen and never responded to any actual vulnerability.

This might be the actual problem with a lot of our digital lives. We watch a stranger’s edited grief, a couple’s staged reconciliation, a 3am voice memo turned podcast intro….and we feel moved, connected, like we know something real about them. But we only ever received the outside. Feeling something while watching isn’t the same as being let in. I think a lot of us, and I speak from experience here, have stopped being able to tell the difference.

I’m not really talking about photography anymore. This is structural. Intimacy requires vulnerability, and vulnerability is something you extend deliberately, with built trust, to a specific person, inside a specific relationship. It isn’t something a camera, feed, or stranger’s proximity can extract on its own. I can stand a foot from a window and still be nowhere near what’s actually happening in that room, because the thing that makes it intimate is precisely the part I wasn’t let into.

We’re so very close to the afterglow of someone’s real moment.

So when I photograph a stranger’s ease, I’m not capturing their intimacy. I’m capturing that glow the intimacy happens to produce when it’s “working” on us. This glow is a real thing, and it can be beautiful. But it isn’t the same thing as intimacy itself. I think confusing the two, not just in photography but in how we consume each other’s lives online, is where a lot of our loneliness comes from.

We’re more watched and more witnessed than any generation before us, and many of us have never felt more unseen.

Presence without ownership

I don’t think this makes the practice of photographing strangers wrong. I think it means being honest about what it is we’re doing:
We’re witnessing without owning the story. Practicing presence without creating the narrative around it.

The question of what I’m allowed to see and has been coming up lately since reading the news the catastrophic flash floods at the Nepal-Tibet border. Thousands of homes swept away in minutes, filmed and re-shared within hours. I truly felt the appropriate horror. I felt it for days. Then it faded a little, and not because I stopped caring. I just felt like there wasn’t anywhere for my caring to go.

Researchers call this psychic numbing: the strange mathematics of empathy that make us deeply moved by one person’s suffering yet unmoved by a hundred thousand. The biochemist Albert Szent-Györgyi wrote that one death is a tragedy, but a hundred thousand deaths become a statistic. The psychologist Paul Slovic named a related idea pseudoinefficacy, the sense that because we can’t fix the whole crisis, we conclude there’s no point engaging with any part of it. Awareness keeps expanding but our actual capacity to act doesn’t.

This is the part that gets heavier than capturing a photo of a stranger in a bar. We can basically see anything now. A flood, a war, some stranger’s worst night of their life, and we’re seeing it from bed mid-scroll, half paying attention.

But seeing something isn’t the same as actually having a relationship to it. We get the frame, not the twenty years before it. So we fill in the rest ourselves, kind of the same thing I was doing through those windows in Tokyo, except now it’s someone’s actual grief I’m filling in the blanks on.

Now as a collective I think we’re collecting frames we were never built to hold, and calling the collecting itself a kind of “care” when it’s really pulling us away from the people who are actually in the room with us.

That night in Tokyo felt like an invitation, like the city was letting me in on something. But there’s a difference between being invited to look and being invited in, and I think this difference is basically all that I’m trying to reckon with.

Watching someone’s ease from outside a window, or watching a stranger’s grief from inside an app, will never be the real thing. Intimacy still has to happen the old way.

I have been writing about my stay in Brazil with a kind of brightness lately. The obvious things. Summer, Carnaval, samba. The music that spills into the street. The heat that presses against your skin. The way joy feels less negotiated and instead critical to living.

My life here has unfolded in rhythms rather than contrasts. Periods of brightness, periods of inquiry, each informing the other. And a few weeks ago in Fernando de Noronha, a volcanic island roughly 350 kilometers off Brazil’s northeastern coast, something I had already been circling came into sharper focus.

I’ve always been drawn to islands. They are at once jagged and defined, exposed and contained. The ocean surrounds them without apology. It may embrace their contours but does not bargain with them. There is no illusion of endless expansion. You cannot pretend there is somewhere else to be.

There’s a subtle discipline in island geography. When water surrounds you, attention gathers and you become aware of where you stand.

I recognize that island structure in myself: self-contained, capable of sustaining my own seasons - creative surges, quiet retreats, emotional weather. The comfort in solitude. I long believed that strength meant resilience, and resilience meant independence.

And yet an island is never separate from the sea. Its shape is formed through contact. Tides carve its coastline daily. Wind reshapes its cliffs. Even erosion is a form of relationship. What appears solitary is in fact in constant negotiation with what surrounds it.

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I believe we are living through a pivotal moment that rewards separation. Media and narratives that fragments the world into camps and identities, feeds that algorithmically heighten outrage, fear, and urgency.

The language of boundaries has become so central that we treat them as immovable. Our culture constantly tells us to protect our energy, guard our space, curate our inputs. And while that may offer temporary personal relief, it has also hardened something in us collectively.

We become so defined by our positions, roles and affiliations that we lose the ability to truly see the person standing across from us.

How easily rigidity masquerades as strength. The more fixed we become in our identities, the less space there is for nuance and shared humanity.

In protecting ourselves, we risk narrowing our capacity to relate.

I’ve been asking myself where the line rests between protection and isolation. When self-preservation becomes the default, that distinction feels important.

The island I visited in Brazil is called Fernando de Noronha. Interestingly it carries its own layered history. João Ubaldo Ribeiro once described it as “um pedaço do Brasil que parece sonhado antes de existir”—a piece of Brazil that seems dreamt before it existed.

The description feels accurate when you arrive: water in improbable shades of blue, volcanic rock faces rising abruptly from the sea, endemic bird species circling overhead, sea turtles and rays moving beneath the surface. A fragile ecosystem sustained with deliberate care.

Yet long before it became shorthand for paradise, Noronha functioned as a penal colony and military outpost: it was a site of exile. The same natural boundaries that now embody freedom used to be tied to enforced confinement.

Paradise and separation occupy the same coordinates.

I can’t ignore the irony here.

I have been reflecting on the ways I “island” myself. The parts of me I keep sovereign. The boundaries I draw in the name of self-sufficiency. I realize there’s value in knowing one’s edges. An island thrives because it understands its limits: balance matters and protection is necessary.

But an island does not survive by sealing itself off. It survives because it remains in relationship with the tides. Its boundaries are real, but they are not walls. They are porous.

In intimate relationships, this tension becomes tangible. How do we remain defined without becoming rigid? How do we allow contact without abandoning ourselves?

The body, too, is territory. It carries memory, history, inheritance. It absorbs atmosphere. It responds to what surrounds it. To inhabit a body fully is to recognize its borders and to question them.

Brazil, in its vastness and diversity, has been an opening of inquiry for me. Moving through different regions, I’ve experienced how land shapes perception, how geography influences our orientation both physical and psychological. We are marked by where we root ourselves.

Island life sharpened my awareness. Overlooking the Atlantic, I felt less the romance of isolation and more the responsibility of exchange.

The water does not cease its movement simply because land interrupts it. It adapts, reshapes, and continues its movement around what resists it. It remains in exchange.

This is what remains with me: to be human is to stay in relationship.

Not only with others, but with one’s own interior landscape. This means noticing where we’ve hardened. To recognize where and how we’ve withdrawn.

And to ask whether the boundaries we’ve put in place still serve life.

I find myself asking this and offer these questions to others navigating these times:

Where in my life have I confused distance with strength?

Where have I protected myself so thoroughly that I limited connection?

What would it look like to stay grounded and still open?

An island’s lesson is not solitude; for me it’s being present with your edges and remaining attuned and responsive to what shapes you.

In a world that encourages us to retreat into rigid identities, this feels radical.

For the past month, my mornings begin with a long walk by the ocean in Northeast Brazil. I walk, I think, I feel, I listen. I don’t bring my phone. Sometimes I swim, sometimes I don’t. Afterward, I stop at Dico’s coconut stand for fresh coconut water and start the day. Dreamy, isn’t it. And every day during my walk I ask myself,

Am I ready for this?

Ready for what, you ask? That’s a deceptively simple question.

Everywhere I turn - news on my feed, group chats, and conversations at home, I’m being encouraged to be ready for what’s coming: economically, politically, technologically, astrologically, existentially. Yet I feel that so much of what defines this moment resists preparation altogether.

I can’t remember a time when there was so little clear sequence to follow, no precedent that feels intact, no shared instruction manual or script for living like this.

I just read a Substack article that named this tension in a way I couldn’t shake. Author Nienke Berkenbosch suggested that readiness is about being willing to be unprepared. Her writing resonated deeply. And it acknowledges for me that many of the strategies we were taught to rely on: foresight, self-optimization, playbooks, and inherited teachings no longer work the way they once did.

My time in Brazil with family has been surprisingly inward-facing, despite the summer sunshine and outward lightness of the season. A lot of my inner world has been tracing the deep and unconscious patterning I carry around control. What strikes me is how little readiness actually has to do with being in control.

Readiness, I’m noticing, isn’t built through tightening my grip on life, but through learning how to stay present when that grip loosens.

So what remains to be controlled when the future is no longer negotiable?

The word control originally referred to a simple act of verification. From the Latin contra rotulus—“against the roll” — it described the process of checking one record against another to ensure accuracy. I don’t think it was ever meant to carry the weight it now bears.

Over time, checks and balances expanded into a demand to manage outcomes, behaviors, even futures. It’s as if we’re treating our lives as ledgers to be tracked, optimized, endlessly audited — until the weight of that expectation becomes unbearable.

From a psychological perspective, our need for control is closely tied to safety. The nervous system looks for predictability as a way to regulate threat. When predictability collapses, the impulse isn’t to let go…it’s to grip harder.

Letting go of control hasn’t meant abandoning care for myself or the rhythms that support me, like my morning walk on the beach.

It’s about becoming more precise about the care I choose to give.

I’m learning to orient toward what’s happening now, rather than what I think should be happening next.

If my body needs rest, it rests.
If it needs movement, it moves.
If emotions surface, like anger, grief, regret, I don’t write stories about them in my mind and interpret them as problems to solve.

My beach walk isn’t an escape. It’s a way of practicing this relationship to the present. It’s not a grand ritual. It’s simply where my thinking settles. I’m aware as I walk of the contrast between my circumstances and those of people I love elsewhere while the broader world feels increasingly unstable. Death and unrest continues to unfold in Iran and beyond. In the United States, people are being killed in cold blood by the very systems meant to protect them. Immigration enforcement has become another site of fear, rupture, and displacement. These realities aren’t abstract; they shape the emotional and nervous-system backdrop we’re all living inside.

Readiness is not cultivated separate from the conditions we’re living in: it’s shaped by them.

The question becomes how to remain present without becoming overwhelmed, without dulling into numbness, and without retreating into shutdown.

In a conversation with a friend last week, something became clear to me: some of the most meaningful shifts I’m experiencing haven’t come from grand rituals or self-optimization practices. It certainly hasn’t come by controlled, calculated and radically protocoled.

It comes through the ordinary texture of daily life.
There’s no clear container.
No beginning or end.
No moment where integration is scheduled to occur.
Living has become the practice.

I’m reminded of my years working with people moving through transitions and altered states with psychedelics, and how structured those experiences actually are.

Even when the sensation feels expansive, the container is controlled. A choice is made.

A beginning and an end are defined. The peak arrives, and then it passes—sometimes gently, sometimes abruptly. What follows, no matter how we frame it, is entirely outside our control.

Readiness-building is like training a resilience muscle. On the surface, it sounds simple. It isn’t. Almost immediately, familiar doubts surface. Some days I don’t follow a structure. I don’t meditate. I sleep longer than planned.

And a persistent question returns:

If I let go of control, will I be ready?

That question sharpened after a conversation with one of my teachers. As we spoke about letting go of control, he said something that stayed with me: there is no such thing as waiting.

I’ve been sitting with that. Waiting can look like patience. It can also look like avoidance. Surrender can be easily confused with passivity. It’s like bypassing; it can become a way of stepping out of responsibility altogether.

So I keep returning to a set of distinctions that don’t resolve easily.

When does letting go support integration, and when does it slide into freezing or avoidance?

There’s a difference between allowing something to unfold and quietly opting out of engagement. Between letting life move you and withdrawing from it.

Perfection has always been one of my subtler forms of control. Letting go of it hasn’t lowered my standards; it’s changed my orientation.

Readiness doesn’t arrive fully formed. It responds. It adjusts. It listens.

These questions extend beyond personal experience. They touch on how we relate to authority, particularly in a moment where traditional markers (ie expertise, visibility, permission) feel increasingly unstable.

I wrote in my last article On Inhabiting Authority how authority doesn’t come from credentials or visibility. It emerges through attention and responsibility.

I’ve shared with my those I teach and work alongside that we don’t experience authority as something to claim outwardly. It’s a readiness building muscle. This is about how to notice what’s happening, to name it honestly, and to decide, without asking permission, when to act and when not to.

Writing has become one way I practice this. Clarity of my voice and perspective not to arrive at answers, but to remain in contact with what feels alive and unresolved.

This essay is part of a series I’m calling Essays from the Threshold. They’re written as a way of thinking in real time, without waiting for clarity to arrive first.

So these reflections are not attempts to resolve anything cleanly. They’re a way of staying in relationship with the moment, without shaping it to fit a more palatable narrative. It certainly isn’t here to feed an algorithm and optimize for engagement.

As we shed the year of the Snake and move toward the new spring, the year of the Fire Horse, I’m thinking less about control and more about preparing through momentum—moving with what we can’t predict rather than trying to manage it.

This paradox remains alive for me:
the more we try to secure the future,
the less we actually meet it.

Uncertainty doesn’t ask to be solved.
It asks to be met.

And perhaps the question is how we choose to meet it, here and now.

Are you ready?

I used to call myself a writer.

In the first week of 2026 I’m reflecting on identity, authority, and language. Why do I assume authorship over an idea, and what does it mean to claim that with integrity?

This reflection feels less about claiming authority, and more about questioning how I inhabit it.

In the arc of my professional life, and in a former version of myself, I used to be very vocal. It was only two to three years ago that I was giving six talks a year, appearing on one to two podcasts per month, and publishing a reel twice per week on my Instagram that was professionally filmed and edited. I was told that in order to be noticed I needed to make my voice heard as much and as consistently as possible. Yet I also struggled with this because I didn’t always have something novel or meaningfully disruptive to say. And I didn’t want to contribute to an ever increasingly crowded environment of content that was already saturated with opinion and noise.

I was burning out by fueling the wheel of social media, and I felt like if I didn’t post at least three times per week I would fall behind. And so gradually I stopped contributing in that format. And while I didn’t get to the six-figure follower count it takes to be considered an influencer, I didn’t care. I soon found that I was trusting the people with more visibility less in what they had to say, because visibility seemed increasingly disconnected from depth or lived experience. It didn’t bring me more wildly successful opportunities, it only brought me more despair that I wasn’t contributing enough.

Visibility and the illusion of authority

It seems that people develop a false sense of authority when they post more and have more people following their work. It creates the illusion that frequency and visibility equal wisdom or merit. Some of the most influential voices today offer content that feels deeply misaligned, even toxic, and yet they are rewarded by the system.

I don’t want to trade my less-than-influencer status for that kind of hollow visibility, ever.

There are writers I deeply respect who don’t plan content for months nor release their essays in perfectly timed sequences. They respond to the present moment. They write off the cuff. You can feel it in their writing. Their work feels alive, because it is in relationship with what is happening now.

Language, being, and what gets lost

As a society we reward critical thinking and cognitive mastery and we lessen the value of “critical being,” embodying an experience without putting language to it.

When we put language around experience, we lose some of the nuance of being.

This feels all the more true now as I write this in Brazil spending some months with my family. In my family, meaning is exchanged more through the felt sense. Words matter, but they matter less than physical proximity, shared presence, and experiencing life moments together.

This past year I found myself writing less. I had transitioned careers and was focused on that, and, importantly, in my off time I was out experiencing life a little bit more. I feel I’m less in control and I’m loving it. Writing for me has been a form of containment. I thought, if I could control the story I tell the outside world, then maybe that means I’m in control of my inner world. But I’ve realized that’s not how meaning-making works.

As a writer it’s a gift and a curse to give meaning and clarity to what is embodied. My teachers in the Brazilian Amazon have told me that when we give an experience a name, we sometimes lose the medicine it carried.

We don’t talk explicitly about what happens to us because we lose the spirit that came through to us in the words themselves. Instead we describe the feeling so we can retain and remember the effect that the experience had on us.

We don’t name it in order to proclaim something new or claim we know any more than anyone else. We feel, which is the most human thing we can do. We let it soak and rise in our bodies, without rushing to translate it.

One of my intentions is to embody more of my life and not try to describe my experiences to others unless I have something to say that will truly land. That will inspire you to awaken. We have so much already to consume.

What more can a writer like me do? What more can I share that hasn’t been shared?

Experience as authority

Perhaps it’s my own experience.

This is what we all have to offer, something that is unique to each of us.

I believe that experience is the highest form of applied wisdom.

Not frameworks or cognitive theories, and not simply synthesizing or repeating someone else’s ideas. We can do that in small doses to support our thinking and to anchor ideas in precedent, but we have to stop writing as if our worth depended on gaining 1,000 more LinkedIn followers a day in order to feel authorized to speak.

Our ideas are whole and worthy of being actualized whether or not we’re a thought leader or influencer.

This is what we stand to lose, especially so in the age of AI: the permission to create and ideate from lived experience.

The permission to write when it feels right, not because we’re bound by the algorithm. The permission to be worthy no matter who sees what you say and do. The permission to feel and experience, and not need to tell the world about it in words.

This tension with language is also why I co-created the Global Oracle of Words. It’s a small, living inquiry that explores how words function when they’re offered as lived commitments rather than concepts. What continues to move me about this work is how differently language behaves when it’s rooted in experience. It’s also my first attempt at bridging my spoken languages of Portuguese and English. In Portuguese, the word protagonismo reflects the choice to take authorship of one’s own life and to step into presence, responsibility, and action. When we bring our full selves, ie our dreams, skills, and contradictions into our work, we activate this deeper sense of protagonismo.

The right not to explain

I studied art history in school and earned my BA in the subject. Early on, I learned that it wasn’t about the artist explaining what the work meant to them. When an artist creates, they relinquish control over how the work is received in the public. How people feel or react is no longer their responsibility.

This understanding has followed me well beyond my University studies. Do all of our Instagram photos need a caption? Sometimes it’s the photo itself that tells enough of a story. Before social media the captions to art were secondary in any context. Artists didn’t have to explain themselves. In museums, paintings or photographs are often accompanied by only a few lines of context, if any at all.

It’s not about the words. It’s the image and how it makes you feel, the viewer. The artist’s context for a photo, drawing, or painting, and their interpretation of it, while relevant in certain art historical contexts, doesn’t really matter to the lived experience of the work itself.

We don’t need to over-explain or over-caption our art.

We only need to give permission to the viewer to trust their reaction, regardless of whether they’re an acclaimed art gallery curator or someone encountering the work for the first time, without context or credentials. Everyone has a right to have something to say. And they just may not say it through weekly Substack essays, daily Linkedin posts, or a steady stream of commentary.

The cult of efficiency and a writer’s grief

In my work I need to balance efficiency with integrity of output. AI is part of my day-to-day reality. It’s inescapable, and it also shouldn’t be avoided. As someone working directly in AI leadership and strategy, engaging with these tools is not optional; it’s part of my responsibility.

Even just two years ago when I was writing my talks, everything was done by hand. The TEDx talk I gave in Berlin in 2024 was written entirely by me, with support from a speaker coach brought in by the organizers. We spent weeks writing and reworking the text, shaping and reshaping each section.

Fast forward a very short couple years and I honestly don’t know, if I were writing my TEDx talk today, how much or how little I’d use AI to help me now. Would it be just for the transitions? Or would I be writing all of it?

I think of completing my MSc in Neuroscience back in 2019 and the hours I spent writing my dissertation. I remember the grind of writing the academic paper I co-authored and published in 2024. It took us 18 months, with hundreds of hours of writing and revision, peer review feedback responses and journal application letters.

Now how does it work? Are researchers drafting entire papers from scattered notes with the help of LLMs? Is citation still a human act, or something we now outsource entirely?

I grieve the writer in me that needed to sit down and piecemeal ideas in a cohesive and structured way without any outside assistance.

I grieve the days during the pandemic when I would wake up from a dream and write poetry in my notebook, spilling my creative fire nonstop for a year.

I grieve the writer who wrote without needing to appeal to an audience or calculate engagement, reach, or performance metrics.

How much value does my original writing have now in the age of AI?

Recently, I tested this question directly. I revisited a poem I wrote in 2020 called Dream Diver. I asked ChatGPT to evaluate the poem and reflect on how it might be revised to meet the standards of a major literary prize. The response made my heart sink.

The reasoning behind the suggested changes was thoughtful, and I recognize that I set a very high bar in invoking that kind of recognition. And yet, what came back wasn’t my poem at all. Whatever it gained in polish, it lost in truth. Does one need to write a poem anymore? I humbly accept my shortcomings as an amateur poet, though I still question my own authority and the value of producing work through the written word.

Choosing presence anyway

I have a dream of writing a book. I’ve held this desire for years. At first I thought it would grow out of the talks I was giving or the ideas I was shaping publicly. Now I’m less sure. I don’t know what form it would take, or whether it would even look like a book at all. What will I contribute, and is there room for what I want to convey? I’m a writer as much as I am in the ongoing process of integrating my whole being into my life, into what I’m living and experiencing, not just what I can articulate. I only know that whatever wants to be written can’t be rushed, optimized, or produced on demand. It needs to come slowly, imperfectly, and without guarantees.

It’s funny to me that I have so many snippets of writing in my notes app on my phone and I always say I’ll get back to them later when I have time to perfect them before I publish on Substack. A familiar pattern of insecurity disguised as discernment.

And here I am, writing most of this in my notes app on the road, editing the next day and finally publishing within 24 hours of the inception of the idea. This is a habit I want to explore and commit to more this year. With AI it’s so easy to have perfectly trimmed and curated content. Instead, I’m choosing to accept that my writing won’t be perfect, and that it doesn’t need to be. It only needs to be honest to what is present.

Perhaps that’s the throughline I’m following. And with that, when I’m not writing, my only antidote to my daily cognitive load is being fully present in the offline.

It may cost me visibility or clarity, but it feels like the only honest place to stand right now.

How do you balance your need to create with the demands of output that are so heavily biased on language? What if there were no words to explain your world right now?

What would still be true, even without explanation?

The monsoon rains fell for days in Dharamsala, shrouding the Himalayas in an impenetrable white fog. From my hotel room window, where I should have seen snow-capped peaks rising like ancient guardians, there was only blankness—a white curtain that seemed to mock the romantic visions of the Himalayas I'd…

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We’re Amánda Efthimiou and Paula Costa, two researchers and practitioners working at the intersection of language, transformation, and regenerative systems.

This piece is the result of an ongoing collaboration rooted in presence, authorship, and a shared inquiry into how words shape the way we live. It emerges from our work on the Global Oracle of Words,…

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Spring arrived this year with a sharpness I didn’t expect.

New York City, waking up from winter, felt like an organism stretching back to life. The cherry blossoms lining the brownstone streets from the West Village to Fort Greene erupted overnight. Parks were full. People were smiling. It had been a long winter. I was still wearing my pink spring coat i…

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These days, clarity doesn’t arrive for me in facts or headlines. It arrives in silence, in rest, in those moments when the world forgets how to perform and remembers how to feel. As the equinox tilts us toward a new cycle of the year — the birth of spring and the newness it brings with us in the northern hemisphere —I find myself listening more closely …

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~ This is all just a dream ~

What if your dreams are trying to tell you something—would you listen?

Every night, your dreams speak in symbols, sensations, and stories—offering insights that your waking mind often overlooks. When we learn to engage with our dreams, we gain access to an untapped well of wisdom, integration, and transformation.

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The Dreaming G…

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This letter reaches you as we enter the first new moon of the year 2025—a time for reflection, renewal, and quiet beginnings. For those who follow the Chinese zodiac, it also marks the start of the Year of the Wood Snake, a potent symbol of transformation, wisdom, and shedding old skins to reveal something new.

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I’m writing from crisp and snowy New York, …

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Welcome to Integration Insights

Dear readers,

I’m sharing with you here a teaser of my first edition of Integration Insights, my monthly newsletter exploring the art and science of integrating life’s most transformative moments. Each issue will bring you practical knowledge, inspiring stories, and valuable tools to enhance your integration journey.

This …

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This comprehensive 6-week psychedelic integration training is for professionals supporting those exploring altered states of consciousness, both substance and non-substance-induced. We incorporate knowledge from diverse realms including clinical psychology, neuroscience, mind-body therapy, shamanic culture, and ecology.

What is the Recíproco Method?

The Recíproco Method is an integrative framework that focuses on integration before, during, and after an experience. It’s informed by three pillars, which we encourage people to consider as a starting point for any integration journey. These pillars are:

Reciprocity

At the heart of our method, Reciprocity is about mutual exchange, mutual growth, and mutual transformation. It's the understanding that in every relationship -- be it with yourself, another, a substance, or nature itself -- there's a giving and a receiving, a synchronous exchange of energies and influences that leads to growth and transformation.

Responsibility

Responsibility is about holding ourselves accountable for the role we play in our own transformation. It’s recognizing that while psychedelic states may offer us profound insights and windows of opportunity, it’s up to us to integrate them so that they can ultimately lead to meaningful and sustainable change.

Alignment

Alignment is about ensuring that our actions, thoughts, and emotions are in harmony with our larger goals and values. It's about aligning our inner experiences with our outer actions, ensuring that the insights we gain are not just theoretical but are lived and embodied in our daily lives.

6-week Program to Deepen your Practice with Psychedelic Integration Training

100% Online

The course includes a mix of:

• 12 hours of Live Facilitated Sessions: Live Interactive Group sessions, 120 minutes each, will take place on Wednesdays at 3 pm EST (Eastern Standard Time).

• E-learning Material: practice videos, exercises, assignments, and a 45-page Psychedelic Integration Handbook for Practitioners.

6 Weeks

Designed to seamlessly fit into your schedule, this part-time opportunity entails a commitment of approximately 4 hours per week. Tailored for convenience, this 6-week program allows professionals to balance their professional and personal commitments and is an ideal choice for those seeking flexibility and skill development in a condensed timeframe.

2 Expert Teachers

Benefit from the knowledge and support provided by both of us, two expert teachers with +15 years of experience. Our unique approach goes beyond conventional methods by merging trauma-informed approaches with traditional applications. This ensures a comprehensive and supportive learning environment. Our goal is to give you personalized support that integrates a unique method with the latest insights in a holistic way.

• Meet Amánda Argot Efthimiou

Founder Integra, Educator, Facilitator, MSc Neuroscience & Psychology

Amánda is a psychedelic wellness educator, coach, and facilitator bridging neuroscience with sacred traditions. She founded INTEGRA to design altered-state integration programs & training for professionals. She has extensive experience through her non-profit work facilitating bio-culture preservation of indigenous medicines in the Amazon basin. She received her MSc in Neuroscience and Psychology of Mental Health where she focused on the integrative effects of plant-based medicines with traditional psychotherapy. 

• Meet Sascha Anna Vriend

Clinical, Psychologist, and Body Psychotherapist. BSC Psych, MSC Clinpsych, and LCHP (Licensed Clinical and Health Psychologist).

Sascha is a certified Clinical Psychologist also trained in Body Psychotherapy (Bioenergetics, Biosynthesis, Vegetotherapy, breathwork, expressive art therapy, and Integrative Massage), as well as altered states of consciousness. She's worked extensively supporting people with Trauma, chronic illness, and other emotionally challenging conditions. She believes in being of service within an inside-out philosophy, where transformation starts within the individual and emanates to their relationships, community, and the wider ecosystem.

What makes our Psychedelic Integration Training so Special?

We incorporate knowledge from diverse realms including clinical psychology, neuroscience, mind-body therapy, shamanic tradition & culture, and ecology.

Expand your knowledge as a Psychedelic Integration Coach

Are you an altered-state facilitator (ie breathwork facilitator, psychedelic-assisted therapist, meditation teacher, sound healer, etc), a clinician, a therapist, a mental health professional, a coach, or a business owner in the psychedelic space?

This comprehensive 6-week live course is for professionals supporting those exploring altered states of consciousness, both substance and non-substance-induced.

⚪ Build the foundations for effective, sustainable, and lasting integration of altered-states experiences

⚪ Step up in your professional integration practice & support for your clients

⚪ Look for a unique framework to help maximize integration outcomes.

⚪ Get a completion certificate: “Recíproco Integration Practitioner”.

Discover all about the course and more on the Recíproco website.

Join us on January, 24th, 2024!

Warmly,

Amánda Argot

What is embodied healing?

Embodiment as a therapeutic intervention for trauma.

In the realm of personal and professional development, self-actualization and transformation can often skew towards cognitive strategies and mental frameworks. Yet, there's a growing recognition of the role our physical bodies play in these processes. I believe that embodiment and somatics are at the heart of integrating altered-state experiences. Embodiment refers to the practice of connecting with and living through our physical sensations, movements, and overall bodily awareness. It's about recognizing the body as a vessel that not only carries our mental and emotional experiences but also actively participates in processing and expressing them.

Embodiment is also a useful technique for healing trauma: one study showed how embodiment practices, or body and movement-oriented interventions (BMOIs) were effective in reducing symptoms of post-traumatic stress-disorder (PTSD). Another recent study found that somatic experiencing, an embodied healing technique developed by Dr. Peter Levine, helped relieve symptoms of PTSD and depression. And many of us have likely heard of Dr. Bessel van der Kolk’s important book, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, which talks about the impact of trauma on our cognitive, emotional, and physical states and how embodied healing and body-based therapies with yoga, massage, dance, and others can support traumatic stress recovery.

How body awareness and somatic techniques help us integrate altered-states experiences.

Somatics, derived from the Greek word soma for the living body, encompasses a range of practices that prioritize the body's intelligence in healing and personal growth. These practices encourage a deeper attunement to our physical presence, promoting a harmonious balance between mind, body, and spirit. This somatic intelligence is part of body awareness, which is described in one study exploring the relationship between mind-body therapy and embodied healing. In this paper they state that body awareness is part of an emergent tendency towards wholeness, translated into the actions and interactions we have with others and the world around us. (It’s worth mentioning that this movement towards wholeness is a key component of the Recíproco Method for integrating altered-states experiences.)

Somatic techniques like grounding, resourcing, visualization, self-regulation, and body scans are starting points for expressing, processing, and integrating the trauma responses that may have come up during an altered-state experience. And doing so safely, with the support of a trained trauma-informed somatic therapist or body awareness facilitator, is critically important for such integration.

Our bodies are dynamic libraries of our life stories. Through somatic and embodiment techniques we can tap into this innate somatic intelligence in order make lasting changes in our lives.

How embodiment, trauma, and altered-states integration intersect: interview with body awareness expert Fern Trelfa

In this month’s Healing Beyond Medicine audio series, I interview awareness facilitator Fern Trelfa, who guides us towards a more embodied and integrated self.

How our bodies tell us the truth

Body awareness is an active process

Fern's expertise lies in merging the stories from our past with the concrete reality of our physical being. She emphasizes the need for a grounded approach to integration, where the body's wisdom is not just acknowledged but actively engaged.

Embodied healing techniques

Questions explored with Fern in the interview:

• What does integration as it relates to embodied healing mean for you?

• How do you see the role of altered states in an embodied healing journey?

• Can you recommend body awareness practices for returning to the body after altered state experiences?

• What are some potential risks or non-beneficial embodied healing practices in terms of integration?

• How does trauma interact with altered states, and what does safe embodied integration look like?

• What advice would you give to someone wanting to incorporate embodiment techniques into their integration process?

As you listen to the interview, I encourage you to reflect on your own body awareness and the embodiment tools you can use to support your healing journey. What embodied healing techniques help you anchor your insights? Join the dialogue below and share your thoughts.

Leave a comment

About Fern Trelfa

Fern has been guiding people in journeys of embodied healing and discovery for 15 years. Her work embraces nervous system intelligence, somatics and trauma integration; modern therapeautic techniques, embodied yoga and movement; whilst being rich with the beauty of ancient Eastern philosophy. At its heart, Fern's work guides people towards deeper feeling of their body, heart and words - in grit and glory. More so, she guides people in how to process and express what they feel so they can embrace profound authenticity, truth and connection.Fern has facilitated workshops & retreats internationally for over a decade and has a busy practice of private clients who work with her online and in Lisbon.

Fern's website

See you next time for another edition of the Integration Roundup for paid subscribers, with the latest developments in psychedelic integration, creative exercises to enrich your integration journey, and curated reads and listens.

Warmly,

Beyond the Trees: Unraveling Monoculture

On a recent Monday morning in Lisbon, my friend Ben and I found ourselves engrossed in a conversation about eucalyptus trees. As a four-year expat in Ben's native Portugal, I've grown familiar with these towering trees, their straight trunks, and distinct lanceolate leaves. Yet, my perception of them has been largely negative. I've heard the stories of how the Portuguese paper industry has been farming them on the land, destroying the native ecosystems and with their flammable oils contributing to devastating forest fires. They are a source of deep contention in this country and their omnipresence, while aromatic, evoked in me a sense of disdain for them especially during my forest hikes. As I get curious about how innocent are these trees in themselves as bearing the brunt of human exploitation, I’m also asking myself how this relates to my life now in how I speak and think about psychedelic substance-induced mind-altering states, which have a particularly complex and evolving connotation in the dominant culture.

Context matters

Part of my life’s path is to understand, translate, and make meaning of transformative experiences with substance-induced altered-states. This means embracing diverse perspectives, processing them without bias, and allowing them to evolve. It also means taking context into consideration in a multitude of ways.

And the story of the eucalyptus trees in Portugal is a lesson in the pitfalls of monoculture, and why diverse perspectives within a range of contexts are necessary for the bigger picture.

The eucalyptus enigma

Eucalyptus trees are beneficial in the appropriate context.

When I first moved to Portugal I shared the common sentiment of disenchantment with this species. Their exploitation seemed to be the root of the country’s ecological imbalance. Originally from Australia, it’s one of the most planted trees in the world, and are a common site in Portugal. They're a significant player in Europe's wood industry, especially in the production of pulp and paper. In Portugal alone, the annual consumption of Eucalyptus wood is a staggering 7.8 million m3 underbark. These trees are favored for their rapid growth, making them a prime choice for the paper industry. They’ve been criticized for their impact on local ecosystems, particularly due to their high water consumption, and their rapid expansion has raised environmental alarms. Issues like biodiversity loss, soil degradation, and increased vulnerability to pests and wildfires are some of the challenges associated with these plantations.

I uncovered a spectrum of scientific research and debate about the eucalyptus. There’s another side to the story. These trees can reduce waterlogging in certain areas, benefiting nearby plants. Their fallen leaves can also enhance soil acidity, promoting the growth of specific plants. In the right context they offer environmental and economic benefits, such as supporting sustainable bioenergy production and aiding in carbon sequestration.

When they’re planted as part of a variety of tree species they contribute to a biodiverse forest. When planted on a farm as a single species over a vast area, for the sole purposes of growing them to produce wood, they’re highly destructive.

When we step out of balance and take things to the extreme, this disharmony, which is inherently unnatural, literally kills.

The root of imbalance

Monoculture is pervasive. Whether we look ecologically, politically, socio-culturally, or economically, it's hard to find a monoculture that has brought about positive change. These systems inherently suppress, compress, and crush ideas, culture, and human progress.

The concept of a monoculture describes a system where one entity dominates, whether it's a species in an ecosystem, a single crop in agriculture, or a prevailing perspective in a discussion. By design, monocultures lack diversity, whether in agriculture, which make crops susceptible to threats like diseases, pests, or external disruptions or in intellectual discourse, where a singular line of thought can suppress fresh ideas and hinder progress.

Dominant political ideology and nationalism marginalizes ethnic, religious, and political minorities. The belief in the superiority of one's own nationstate at the expense of human life creates a volatile environment ripe for full-scale war. We’re experiencing this right now, with the devastating conflict in Gaza and the unbelievable loss of human life that is touching every single person on this planet at this very moment. This topic in itself, especially as it relates to context and perspective, deserves it’s own space and reflection for another moment.

Monocultures in professional settings often establish hierarchies based on arbitrary cultural values, perpetuating toxic dynamics. Those who align with the dominant "culture" are rewarded, while those who diverge in thought or style face exclusion. This not only reinforces biases but also stifles innovative thinking. Books like Rebel Ideas: The Power of Diverse Thinking underscores the value of cognitive diversity, suggesting that success in today's world is less related to individual talent and is more about diverse thinking.

Monoculturalism narrows our lens, limiting our ability to appreciate the richness of global diversity and instead breed ignorance, prejudice, and conflict. Societal monoculture that travels from the global north to the global south can erase diverse cultural expressions and histories, leaving younger generations disconnected from their heritage. The global fashion industry's promotion of a narrow, Western-centric standard of beauty can lead to widespread body image issues and feelings of cultural inferiority among those who don't fit these standards. Educational systems that prioritize the history and achievements of the dominant culture, neglecting or misrepresenting minority contributions, perpetuate ignorance and biases. Monocultural societies have fewer tools at their disposal when faced with challenges, and those that had moved away from their traditional practices suffer more. A diverse cultural memory, with a range of solutions developed over time and across different environments, offers a broader toolkit for facing new challenges. The suppression of indigenous languages is a poignant example of monoculturalism at play, often stemming from colonialism. The world's 370 million indigenous peoples are estimated to speak more than 4,000 different languages, and we’re witnessing their systematic decline in favor of dominant languages, disappearing at a rate of one language every two weeks.

Stagnation in the arts are prevalent, even for the films we see on our screens every day. In Hollywood, mid-priced movies historically played a pivotal role in driving consistent business. Now, the current landscape of the film industry has a barbell distribution, yet neither the blockbuster movies nor the smaller productions the biggest hits for the audience. Two of the summer's top-grossing films, “Barbie" and "Oppenheimer," which captured nearly 1 billion in sales each worldwide, were produced on considerably “mid-range” budgets of $145 million and $100 million, respectively.

This trend in the film industry mirrors a broader societal shift towards extremes, often sidelining moderate voices and perspectives. The rise of AI and its potential for monocultural tendencies is a heated debate, given the dominance of tech giants and inherent biases in algorithms. Such systems risk homogenizing information and experiences if they lean on limited data sets or prioritize widespread appeal.

When we apply monocultural thinking to the arena of psychedelics, we face setbacks. Our narrowed perceptions of these substances can lead to increased stigma and hinder regulatory and medical advancements. One the other side, their glorification as a one-size-fits-all solution can result in spiritual bypassing, disillusionment, and cause harm to those unprepared and ill-suited to be using them.

Solutions to monoculture

Embracing diversity in all respects is the antidote to monoculture. AI can ensure diverse representation in design, development, and decision-making processes to help create algorithms that are more equitable and less biased. Agriculture can implement polyculture farming practices can enhance soil health, reduce vulnerability to pests, and increase yield. The workplace can promote inclusive policies that value diverse thought and experiences can drive innovation and reduce biases. Educational curricula can celebrate global histories and contributions that foster mutual respect and understanding among students. The arts can actively support independent filmmakers and diverse storytelling which wan lead to richer narratives that resonate with a broader audience. Initiatives to document, teach, and promote indigenous languages, especially among younger generations, helps preserve cultural heritage.

And in the realm of psychedelics, our political, medical, and cultural infrastructure can support scientific research, while fostering an open dialogue and sharing of diverse experiences, which can help dispel myths and broaden understanding, while also ensuring that these substances are used safely and effectively.

A return to the trees

So let’s get back to the trees. The Eucalyptus trees in Portugal are still in high debate. Are they harming or helping us? In context, as a monoculture, they kill and suppress. As one of many diverse species, they support and thrive. It’s simple, isn’t it.

And it’s not just about the trees themselves; it's about their role within a broader framework. Everything has value when viewed holistically. As a monoculture, eucalyptus are a threat; integrated, they’re beneficial. It’s about understanding how they fit within a greater, more harmonious system where nature wields the ultimate power to maintain balance.

The eucalyptus trees are my reminder of the broader implications of monoculture in our interconnected world. From homogenized forests to films, and from politics to language, the dangers of our narrowing viewpoints are clear. Even the realm of psychedelic consciousness isn’t exempt from the monocultural trap, and we need to embrace diversity of perspectives to begin to understand their role in the world we live in.

In this month’s integration review I also offer a creative exercise to enrich your integration journey, as well as curated reads and listens for altered-states integration insights in the real-world.

Mindful Moments: a Creative Exercise

Venturing into altered states is only part of the story - the real work is anchoring those profound moments into our daily lives. Mindful Moments is a creative series designed to assist you in doing just that. Each month, I’ll share an exercise that acts as a bridge between the ethereal and the tangible, inviting you to translate your experiences into sketches and writings. No expertise required, just an open and curious mind.

Perspective Tunnel

Objective: To deeply explore and understand a challenging subject, confronting personal biases and uncovering layers of understanding.

Materials Needed: A blank piece of paper and a pen or pencil.

Instructions:

1. Center: In a quiet space, take a few breaths. Write a subject or topic you want to explore in the center of the paper.

2. Tunnel Down: Draw four descending layers or "tunnels" beneath the subject.

   • First Tunnel: Jot down immediate reactions or biases you associate with the topic.

   • Second Tunnel: Reflect on your emotional responses and note them down.

   • Third Tunnel: Challenge yourself to note differing perspectives and write down any immediate emotional responses.

   • Fourth Tunnel: Take a moment to meditate on everything you've noted so far. With a clear mind, dive deep into your own beliefs and values related to the subject. Are there any internal conflicts or alignments? Write down these introspective revelations and any shifts in your understanding.

3. Reflection: Review your journey through the tunnels. Each layer represents a deeper level of introspection. This visual map, which can be revisited, serves as a guide to your current and evolving perspectives.

   

Articles I’m reading

1. Why ‘comfortable’ cultures are a bad idea by

Rethink with Rachel

Why 'comfortable' cultures are a bad idea

Rethink with Rachel is a newsletter for curious minds and lifelong learners. If you value the content, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. You’ll gain access to all my articles, weekly Rethink Recommendations from me, and the interesting comments section on every post. Thanks…

Read more

3 years ago · 17 likes · 8 comments · Rachel Botsman

Podcasts I’m listening to

1. Katrina Space on “New Life from Death” with For the Wild Podcast

2. “Right Story, Wrong Story” with Tyson Yunkaporta from

   "Any culture we have in the next century isn't going to be a permanent culture."

The Storymakers Institute with Joel Carnegie

"Right Story, Wrong Story" with Tyson Yunkaporta

Listen now (55 mins) | This week - say hello to Dr Tyson Yunkaporta - an Aboriginal scholar, founder of the Indigenous Knowledge Systems Lab at Deakin University in Melbourne, author of Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World and the recently released Right Story, Wrong Story: Adventures in Indigenous Thinking…

Listen now

3 years ago · Tyson Yunkaporta and Joel Carnegie

Substack newsletters I’m reading

by

• For the curious, fascinated, excited, concerned, and hopeful about legal psychedelics in healthcare, spirituality, and society, The Trip Report is one of my favorite psychedelic newsletters and provides commentary and analysis for stakeholders in the psychedelic field of emerging psychedelic science, medicine, and policy landscape.

  (And coming soon….I’ll be interviewing Zach for an upcoming episode of the Healing Beyond Medicine audio series).

Warmly,

Mindfulness, self-compassion, and the pursuit of genuine joy have become increasingly relevant when we’re speaking of integrating altered-states of consciousness.

In this month’s episode in the Healing Beyond Medicine audio series, where I interview experts in the world of wellbeing and integration, I spoke with Marty Zalewski, author of the upcoming book Leading with Joy. We spoke about his six principles of mindfulness, the essence of integratio and self-compassion, and the transformative power of embracing joy.

As always, I value your thoughts and if you find these interviews of value to you. To my readers, this month I’m curious to hear from you on how you see the intersection of mindfulness and the integration of altered-states practices into daily life? Make sure to leave a comment below.

Leave a comment

Questions we covered in the interview:

1. What is integration to you?

2. You speak about mindfulness for leaders. Can you share more about the ideas in your book centered on leading with joy, and that weaves your six principles of mindfulness?

3. We have capital J joy and then there's the joy that comes in the everyday moments. What would be one or two simple ways for people to apply that? How can people embody practices to have this everyday joy happen in their life?

4. Where has integration actually come up for you recently?

5. What are your final words of advice and reflections on joy that you'd like to share?

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About Marty Zalewski

Marty Zalewski stands at the confluence of visionary entrepreneurship, mindfulness mastery, and transformative global leadership. With a trailblazing career spanning esteemed institutions such as Rightpoint (top-5 global consultancy in Total Experience), Lloyds Banking Group (UK’s largest banking group), and General Electric (global conglomerate), Marty’s pioneering spirit is most evident in his game-changing “Leading with Joy” philosophy. This paradigm-shifting approach intricately merges mindfulness, human design-led strategies with hybrid intelligence, culminating in innovation, societal enhancement, and environmental stewardship—cornerstones of enduring business success.

It is Marty’s heartfelt dedication to a kinder, greener world that truly sets him apart. His multi-dimensional approach draws richness from his expertise as a certified Yoga Nidrā instructor and VortexHealing® practitioner. His upcoming literary venture, “The Mindful I: Leading with Joy,” offers readers a profound insight into how personal evolution is the force for lasting fulfilment for self and the society at large.

You can learn more about Marty by going to The Mindful Eye Website and register for the Leading with Joy newsletter and book updates.

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See you next time for another edition of the Integration Roundup for paid subscribers, with the latest developments in psychedelic integration, creative exercises to enrich your integration journey, and curated reads and listens.

Warmly,

This month I unpack the latest developments in psychedelic integration from a clinical guidelines perspective, I offer a creative exercise to enrich your integration journey, and I share curated reads and listens for a broader understanding of altered-states integration.

Beyond the Guidelines: Integration Perspectives for Clinic…

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Psychedelic integration—the process of assimilating and making-sense of profound experiences—is where transformation truly takes root. It's the bridge that connects ephemeral moments of insight to tangible life changes. But who guides this process? The roles in this space are diverse: guides, therapists, coaches, facilitators, and more. Each plays a pivotal role, yet the definitions and boundaries between them remain fluid.

What does it look like to empower the psychedelic ecosystem with the tools to provide integration care, for both substance & non-substance induced altered states? Together with clinical psychologist Sascha Anna Vriend we founded The RECÍPROCO Method, which provides reciprocal, integrative, and loving integration care. By blending the wisdom of originary traditions and contemporary science, this method supports facilitators, guides, coaches and therapists with frameworks for responsible, aligned, and reciprocal transformation and professional growth.

I had the pleasure of speaking with Sascha to learn about her views on how clinical psychology & body psychotherapy play a role in the integration process, why integration training is so crucial for practitioners, and where are the current gaps in psychedelic education for the therapeutic community.

Sascha’s interview is the first of a series of conversations I’m having with psychedelic integration experts, which I’ll be publishing here for Healing Beyond Medicine paid subscribers. Hope you enjoy this inaugural conversation!

(PS: Feedback on the audio format is welcome. Feel free to leave a comment below)

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Questions we covered in the interview:

1. With your rich background in both clinical psychology and body psychotherapy, how do you see the intersection of these disciplines benefiting the integration process?

2. Why do you feel integration training crucial for practitioners supporting individuals with their experiences with altered states of consciousness?

3. Many seek integration after profound experiences. How can The RECÍPROCO Method benefit those who guide and support others through their transformative journeys?

4. With current education models leaning heavily towards psychedelic assisted therapy, what do you believe are some of the most significant gaps in integration, education and training? What do you envision for the future?

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About Sascha

Sascha Anna Vriend is a certified Clinical Psychologist also trained in Body Psychotherapy (Neo-Reichian Therapies including Bioenergetics, Biosynthesis, Vegetotherapy, expressive art therapy and Integrative Massage). Prioritizing holistic and multidisciplinary approaches to health and well-being, she has further specialised in Yoga therapy and Psychedelic Integration, both of which are interwoven into her individual and group sessions. She has worked extensively within diverse clinical and social contexts supporting people with Trauma, chronic illness, and other emotionally challenging conditions, as well as those seeking to enrich or transcend their personal journey within an integrative model where mind, body and spirituality are inextricably linked. Above all, she believes in being of service within an inside-out philosophy, where transformation that starts within the individual naturally emanates out to their relationships, their community and ultimately, the wider ecosystem.

Curious to learn more about The RECÍPROCO Method and to join an upcoming online or in-person training? Apply for our November Portugal retreat here or send us a message on our website to join the mailing list for future opportunities.

Join RECÍPROCO Psychedelic Integration

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