The Human Iceberg

So many of us are walking around feeling anxious, agitated, disconnected, overwhelmed, disappointed, hopeless, or sad—sometimes despite years of talk therapy and personal work. And so many of us are also in chronic physical pain and discomfort, despite many sessions of various kinds of body work and lots of meditation and yoga.

What’s going on behind this all this pain?

Freud noted that we’re like icebergs. Above the waterline is our conscious mind, the ego. In PSI we call this secondary consciousness, and we worship it in our culture. However, the ego, which makes up about 10% of who we are, is a monkey driven by fear. Talk therapy tends to address this part of the self. The other 90% is our unconscious, or primary consciousness. We call this our intuition or our gut. In Sanskrit the word for this part of our being is Dristi, which means inner wisdom, inner physician, or inner divine.

This part of our nervous system has a full record of everything that’s ever happened to us and, more importantly, how these events impacted us—how they affected our core beliefs and our sense of our value. These are the parts of us that psychotherapy has been trying to access for many decades but with slow and limited success.

The body is the portal between the unconscious and the conscious mind and is where we store the suppressed emotions that give rise to the symptoms of chronic pain that many of us constantly seek to alleviate. 90% of the chronic pain we suffer is suppressed emotion, things that happened to us that we struggled or still struggle to cope with. That struggle gets stored in the body. By accessing the record of all this contained in the unconscious part of our nervous system, we can release it from the body.

The PSI Solution

This is where Psychedelic Somatic Interactive Therapy (PSI) comes in. Most of us have at least some preconceptions of what the “psychedelic” part entails, but what does “somatic” mean? Essentially—of the body. PSI sees the body as the portal between the conscious and unconscious mind and as the key to accessing parts of the psyche that are hidden from us. 

I studied with the Psychedelic Somatic Institute and practice this technique, which allows us to focus on what is below the waterline by combining some truly useful interactional aspects of talk therapy with a bottom-up somatic approach and the ego-disarming capabilities of psychedelics. It’s this three-pronged approach that makes PSI so unique in the emerging field of psychedelic therapy—that and the fact that the Psychedelic Somatic Institute has focused its research on how fully legal, inexpensive, widely accessible substances like cannabis and ketamine can act as powerful psychedelic tools to help people in all walks of life and in diverse communities.

What Does a PSI Session Look Like?

The client puts on an eye-bag to help contain their experience inward. We begin with a “body scan,” where the client looks for any places of tightness, pain, or marked sensation in the body. We focus on these spots and turn to the emotional body, asking what’s stored there. The therapist supports the client in noticing and allowing these sensations and on keeping their focus on the body. We side-step stories and explanations from the ego, and we inhibit the coping mechanisms—such as deep breaths, foot tapping, or other physical tics—that we often use to distract ourselves when we face something hard or overwhelming.

 As we gain consciousness of what’s stored in the tissues of the body, we can begin the process of physically releasing what no longer serves us. This release happens at a very tangible, physical level. The autonomic nervous system knows what to do when shown this biological healing process, which is one we share with all mammals. The unconscious mind, brought to the forefront by the medicine, bears witness to and participates in this release.

 We also gain consciousness of our core beliefs, the habitual stories running through our minds on unconscious repeat that shape our experience of the world. PSI gives us the opportunity to rewrite these stories in our minds and in our bodies. This lets us become less reactive and more responsive to events in our lives.   

This somatic technique can also be done “unamplified,” or without any medicine in your system. While it’s not as much of a deep dive, such work still allows you to go below the waterline of your consciousness and can be very beneficial.

When appropriate, I bring the gentle, hands-on technique of craniosacral therapy into the session as well, a unique approach that allows my clients to anchor even more profoundly into the physical capacity for well-being awakened by PSI work.

“Life is an unfoldment, and the further we travel the more truth we can comprehend. To understand the things that are at our door is the best preparation for understanding those that lie beyond.”
— Hypatia

Benefits and Results

After doing this work, clients say they feel lighter and more present. They’re no longer dealing with persistent feelings of separation, loneliness, resentment, isolation, and depression. Many clients also report relief from chronic physical pain.

 “I’ve been let out of prison,” so many of my clients say.

This has been my own experience. I’ve done this work for the last eight years, first as a client and then through my training with the Psychedelic Somatic Institute. I’m now free from the inexplicable chronic pain and persistent feelings of heartbreak that I lived with for most of my life. Instead, I feel less afraid, more hopeful. I’ve found equanimity and a profound sense of well-being, and I’ve been able to deepen my relationships and my sense of connection to the world.

I’d like to invite you to learn more about this exciting therapeutic breakthrough, join the growing number of people finding healing and community around this work, and begin your own inward journey.

Curious to explore the theory and research behind this practice? Click here for a selected list of resources.