SWIMming Deep, FLOATing Home: Tools for Psychedelic Self‑Discovery, Clinical Practice, and Embodied Leadership

How can psychedelic therapy be both scientifically robust and deeply relational? How do we honour the body, the mind, the transpersonal, and the social-political context of each journeyer? Psychedelic experiences can plunge us into vast, beautiful, or bewildering inner territory. For both therapists and journeyers, one can feel out of their depth. Without clear frameworks for understanding what arises, we may miss opportunities for healing, or struggle to integrate the gifts and challenges of altered states.

This workshop introduces SWIM, a whole-person framework for psychedelic and altered state experiences that integrates the domains of Somatic, Wisdom, Interdependence, and Metacognition across the preparation, journey, and integration phases. SWIM has been developed through clinical practice, evidence informed approaches, and lived experience and offers therapists a practical, trauma-informed, and spiritually sensitive approach to navigating the altered state terrain.

Participants will be introduced to each of SWIM's sixteen learning lenses: from Agency and Neuroception to Multiplicity, Meaning, Connection, and Transcendence. Drawing on somatic psychology, attachment theory, systems science, contemplative traditions, and psychedelic research, the model helps clinicians and individuals attune the skills they need to safely explore altered states, and how to support post-journey integration that is ecologically and relationally embedded.

The workshop will include: An overview of the SWIM model and its application in psychedelic therapy (preparation, dosing sessions and integration); Experiential practices from each lens; A live demonstration of SWIM's preparation planning; Insights from clinical, ceremonial, and community settings.

We will explore how SWIM addresses common therapeutic challenges such as epistemic overconfidence, spiritual bypassing, somatic overwhelm, or dysregulated attachment. This session explores the importance of discernment, ethics, and interdependence in psychedelic and plant medicine work. Using case examples, we examine how ethical integrity and collective wisdom can safeguard against risks and foster safer, more resilient practices. We reflect on the unique pressures faced by professionals working within complex ecosystems of care and support, shaped by political diversity, capitalism, transpersonal experiences, and projection.

This workshop offers practical tools for therapeutic practice. By the end of the session, participants will walk away with a set of adaptable tools and a nuanced understanding of how to meet the psychedelic encounter with compassion, skill, and clarity, whether the waves are calm, turbulent, or expansive.