Most psilocybin facilitation protocols describe what happens: preparation sessions, the journey itself, integration afterward. Fewer explain why these elements matter—what each phase is actually doing, and how they work together to support lasting change.

This post is my attempt to articulate the thinking behind how I work. It's not a complete description of the protocol, which unfolds across multiple sessions and is tailored to each client. It's the conceptual scaffolding—the ideas that inform my choices as a facilitator.

The Core Model: Three Mechanisms

The Mindstream Wellness protocol is built around three interconnected mechanisms, each corresponding to a phase of the work:

Before the journey: Surfacing pre-conscious material through reflective practices, so you're not meeting it for the first time during the session.

During the journey: Facilitating surrender and openness through a supportive environment, so you can move through whatever arises rather than fighting it.

After the journey: Consolidating insights during the neuroplasticity window, so temporary shifts become lasting changes.

These aren't arbitrary phases. Each addresses something the research tells us matters for outcomes.

Surfacing What's Already Moving

The preparation period isn't primarily about logistics or setting expectations—though those matter. It's about excavation.

Most of us carry material just beneath the surface of awareness: unresolved questions, feelings we've pushed aside, patterns we half-recognize but haven't fully examined. During a psilocybin experience, this material often surfaces whether we've prepared for it or not. The question is whether we meet it as a stranger or as something we've already begun to know.

The primary tool here is stream-of-consciousness journaling—daily writing that prioritizes speed and uncensored flow over coherence. The instruction isn't to write about any particular topic, but to generate a list of things you might write about, notice which one calls to you, and then write without stopping. Pen and paper, not a keyboard—the inability to delete makes it harder to self-censor.

Over days of this practice, themes emerge. Images recur. Questions that seemed unrelated reveal connections. By the time we meet for the final preparation session, we've identified two or three core threads, and from these we craft an intention—not a goal or outcome, but an orientation, a direction you're facing.

The intention serves as an anchor during the journey. When things become intense or confusing, it's something to return to. But more importantly, the excavation process means you've already begun the work. The journey becomes a deepening of something already in motion, not a cold start.

Surrender as Skill

The research on psychedelic-assisted therapy consistently identifies one factor that predicts outcomes more than almost any other: the degree to which someone can surrender to the experience rather than resist it. People who fight what's happening—who try to control, analyze, or escape—tend to have more difficult experiences and less lasting benefit. People who let go, even when things get hard, tend to find what they came for.

This creates a challenge for facilitators. You can't make someone surrender; the very effort would be a form of control. What you can do is create conditions that support surrender, and teach skills that help people stay present rather than contracting.

During the journey, my role is non-directive presence. I don't guide the experience, interpret what's happening, or tell you what things mean. That's your work. I hold the space—I'm there, steady and available, so you don't have to manage your own safety while navigating unfamiliar territory.

The auditory environment matters here. Clients choose between binaural beats, curated music designed for psychedelic sessions, or a hybrid of both. Each serves a different function: binaural beats provide something neutral for attention to rest on, supporting a meditative quality; curated music offers emotional scaffolding, helping carry people through intensity. The choice depends on how someone processes experience, their relationship with music, and what kind of support feels right.

But the most important preparation for surrender happens before session day. The breath and body awareness practices taught during preparation aren't just relaxation techniques—they're training in staying present with intensity without fighting it. When you've practiced returning to slow, steady breathing dozens of times while sitting quietly, you have something to reach for when the experience becomes challenging.

The Neuroplasticity Window

Here's something remarkable about psilocybin: the benefits don't come only from the experience itself. The research suggests that psilocybin creates a window of increased neuroplasticity—a period of days to weeks when the brain is more capable of forming new patterns, new connections, new ways of responding.

This window is why integration matters so much. The journey creates an opening; what happens afterward determines whether that opening leads to lasting change or fades back into old habits.

I encourage clients to spend the first two to three days after their journey away from normal life—ideally somewhere quiet, in nature, with minimal obligations and distractions. This isn't about processing or analyzing what happened. It's about giving new patterns space to settle before returning to an environment full of familiar cues that trigger familiar responses.

Integration sessions during the following two weeks focus on connecting what emerged to daily life. What insights arose? How do they relate to what you came seeking? What small, concrete actions would align with what you learned? The work isn't to preserve the peak experience—that fades for everyone—but to translate its implications into changes that stick.

A Framework for Integration, Held Lightly

For integration, I draw on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), a framework developed by psychologist Steven Hayes to help people change their relationship with difficult inner experiences. The goal isn't to eliminate painful thoughts or feelings, but to change how we respond to them so they don't dictate our choices.

Several ACT concepts translate directly to post-journey work. Defusion is recognizing that a thought is just a thought—not necessarily true, not a command. Acceptance is making space for discomfort rather than fighting it. Self-as-context is the recognition that you are not your thoughts or feelings; you're the awareness in which they arise. Values are what matter to you, the compass that guides action independent of whether you feel good.

These ideas give us a shared vocabulary for working with what emerged during the journey. When someone notices themselves fusing again with old thought patterns, we can name what's happening. When someone is fighting against difficult emotions that surfaced, we can explore whether there's a way to make space for them instead.

But I hold this framework lightly, because not everyone comes seeking it.

Some clients arrive with their own meaning-making systems—spiritual traditions, philosophical commitments, personal cosmologies they want to explore or deepen through the psilocybin experience. A longtime Zen practitioner doesn't need me to introduce observing awareness. Someone with deep roots in a religious tradition has their own framework for making sense of what they encounter.

In these cases, my role shifts from framework-provider to container-holder. The client defines the frame; I support the process. Journaling and somatic practices still apply, but the framing comes from the client. Integration becomes a collaborative exploration within their tradition, not an introduction to mine.

This requires comfort with not-knowing, and trust in the client's own wisdom. But it also reflects something I believe about this work: my value is the container, not the content. The content—the meaning, the interpretation, the application—belongs to the person having the experience.

Two Kinds of Healing

Not everyone who seeks a psilocybin journey is looking for the same thing, and not everyone finds the same thing. Part of my job as a facilitator is recognizing what emerged and meeting the client there, rather than pushing toward some predetermined outcome.

I've come to think of integration success as falling into two broad categories—not hierarchical, not mutually exclusive, but genuinely different.

Functional self-integration is what many clients experience: a renewed sense of self, clearer values, greater self-compassion, a more coherent life narrative. The inner dialogue becomes healthier—less fragmented, less self-critical, more aligned with what matters. Someone who came with a hostile relationship to themselves leaves with a self that works better. This is genuine healing.

Self-transcendence is something else. Some clients touch something beyond the self-story altogether—experiences of witnessing awareness, recognition that thoughts are not self, glimpses of what contemplative traditions have long pointed toward. For these clients, the insight isn't a better narrative but a loosening of identification with any narrative.

Both outcomes are valid. A client suffering from relentless self-criticism may need, first and foremost, a self that works. For them, a coherent, compassionate self-narrative is exactly what was needed—not a consolation prize on the way to something "higher." Other clients, particularly those with contemplative backgrounds, may be drawn toward the deeper investigation that self-transcendent experiences invite.

Some clients report both—a healthier self-relationship and glimpses of what lies beyond the self. Both can be held.

The Limits of Protocol

I want to be honest about what a protocol can and cannot do.

A protocol can create favorable conditions. It can address what the research says matters—preparation, set and setting, integration support. It can provide structure that helps people feel safe enough to let go. It can offer frameworks for making sense of unusual experiences.

But a protocol cannot guarantee outcomes. Psilocybin isn't a precision instrument. Each person's journey unfolds according to their own psychology, their own history, their own readiness. Some journeys are exactly what someone hoped for; others are challenging in unexpected ways; still others are quieter than anticipated. All of these can lead to meaningful change—but the change doesn't come from the protocol. It comes from the person.

My job is to create the best possible conditions, prepare clients as thoroughly as I can, hold steady presence during the journey, and support the integration work that follows. The rest—the content, the meaning, the transformation—belongs to them.

Michael Kelly is a licensed psilocybin facilitator in Oregon and founder of Mindstream Wellness. He works within a psychological flexibility framework and maintains a longtime Zen practice with deepening interest in the Thai Forest tradition.