The Story Behind the Integration Process
It was 2014 and I was walking into my first ceremony of a Shamanic plant medicine retreat, hosted in the Sacred Valley of Peru, wondering what strange series of events had led me here.
The reality was, I just didn’t want to feel the way I was feeling any more – constantly stressed, anxious, overwhelmed and at my limit.
I’d tried meditation, therapy, supplements and vitamins, medication, exercising, eating better, but nothing was helping.
What's the point of all this?
. I spent most of my time up in my head – worrying, analysing, planning, confused – “What’s the point of all this? What’s the meaning of life? What’s my purpose here?”
My relationships were suffering, I felt lonely and disconnected, I wasn’t sleeping well at night, I struggled to get up in the mornings, my social circle was getting smaller, and each day had become a struggle for survival – just getting to the end of it in one piece.
It was horrible, and I was exhausted and disillusioned.
The Self Help Merry-go-Round
I’d qualified as a professional engineer and even though I’d built a very successful business, it was getting harder and harder to focus and stay on track. My hunger for it was gone, and I’d lost interest and motivation.
I was doing therapy once a week, and meditation every day, I was going to the gym, I had a drawer full of supplements and vitamins.
I’d learned every quick fix, clever trick and coping strategy.
And looking back at it now, I can see that I’d been doing different variations of all this stuff for years, and although I was intellectually learning more about my mind and about therapy and psychology, nothing was changing. It sometimes felt like I was making progress, but my life wasn’t actually improving.
Year after year it was still the same me, struggling with the same stuff.
Sell it all and go to South America
I even qualified with a diploma in counselling! Afterwards, I did a year’s training in hypnosis and psychotherapy and then went to study Transcendental Meditation.
I understood all this stuff, I was collecting all of this knowledge and these skills and this information, but my own personal situation wasn’t improving. The way I actually lived and felt day to day hadn’t changed. I was still just as overwhelmed, just as easily thrown off balance, and just as stressed out and at my limit as I’d always been.
So a few months later, I made the radical decision to sell everything – all of it.
I left my house, car, all the stuff I’d accumulated – all of it gone, and I went to travel through Ecuador and Peru.
As part of this trip, I wanted to spend a few days in the south of Peru, in a small town called Pisac in the Sacred Valley, surrounded by the mountains. I’d read about some of the traditional plant medicine ceremonies, and I wanted to experience one, and work with the shamans – the local indigenous healers.
Exploring Plant Medicine Ceremonies
I planned to spend a few days there, participate in a ceremony, and then continue my backpacking trip through the rest of Peru and Bolivia.
The ceremony was life changing. Years of emotions I’d repressed started coming to the surface – anger I’d never felt before, happiness, pain, excitement, loss, shame, joy – it was like my emotional center had come back online for the first time since childhood, and it was working overtime!
Don’t get me wrong, the ceremony was incredibly challenging both physically and mentally, and involved a lot of vomiting and crying, but for the first time I felt alive again.
The leader of the ceremony is known as a Shaman or curandero, and the next morning, all of the participants went back to his house. We each described our ceremony experiences, and he would then talk us through it, share his insights and reflections, and invite us to dig deeply into what was really going on, and what we really needed to focus on for our healing and growth.
This process was nothing like the years of therapy I’d experienced – this wasn’t talking through feelings and rationalising emotions. There was no intellectualizing. We were working right at the root causes here, battling our way through our subconscious wounds – shame, guilt, low self esteem, self-judgement, fear and resistance. We were getting right to the bottom of what was really causing our pain and suffering.
I realised just how powerful this inner work was, and I also realised just how much I had to learn, so I decided to spend the next 3 months in the Sacred Valley to continue this work. I then went back a year later and spent another 3 months there, and I’ve been back 5 more times in the years since.
Even though these plant medicine ceremonies are incredibly powerful, there are other ways to reach a similar state where this work can be done, that doesn’t require a trip to the mountains of Peru.
Discovering the Integration Process
What’s really important here isn’t so much the plant medicine itself, but the work we did during the ceremonies and that then continued within us afterwards. This was the start of what later became The Integration Process.
The two things that were really happening here were first, deep subconscious shifts – healing the parts of ourselves that we’ve rejected and disowned, healing the shame, guilt, embarrassment and isolation.
Second, the processing and reflection that happened afterwards where we made sense of our experience and integrated that “woah, what happened here?” feeling into meaningful insight and change.
So I came back from Peru to the UK thinking I had all the answers. I was ready to change the world with my newfound wisdom. I felt fantastic, my life had completely changed, and there was so much suffering out there – I could help so many people!
The biggest lesson yet
The universe had other plans though, and was about to humble me.
I threw myself straight back into all the old places, people, and triggers that had caused me so much difficulty and unhappiness in the past, thinking that I was now healed and that none of this could affect me.
I very quickly found myself incredibly stressed out, overwhelmed and anxious.
Although I’d gained all kinds of wisdom and insights into the reasons why we suffer and the root causes of my own pain and suffering, I didn’t have the full picture, I only had two pieces of what would ultimately become a six step framework.
The mistake I’d made was in thinking that this work, no matter how deep it was, was an intellectual process of learning and understanding. In reality, the work was happening on a deeper level – in the body and inside the bioenergy field.
I had significant unhealed past trauma that I’d conveniently bypassed on my trip, which all came right back to the surface in the form of stress, overwhelm, anxiety and physical illness as soon as I returned to my past triggers and situations.
What was this Trauma?
And when I talk about trauma, it took me a while to understand that trauma isn’t just being in a war, going through a near death experience or some other extreme event.
It’s the times growing up when your physical or emotional needs weren’t met.
It’s when you didn’t feel heard or understood.
It’s when you were bullied at school but still had to keep going.
It’s when you were shamed or embarrassed for trying to express yourself, or told you were being difficult.
It’s each time your emotions were shut down by your parents and caregivers and you were told to pull yourself together and behave.
It’s every time you were coerced into behaving in a certain way through rewards and punishment.
It’s when you were emotionally or physically overwhelmed and lacked the tools and support to process your experience.
Perhaps home life was very stressful, confusing or overwhelming and you were often left to figure things out alone.
Trauma lives in the body not the mind
Past trauma doesn’t just disappear – it isn’t something we forget or grow out of. You can’t talk or think your way out of it. It remains stored in our bodies and will show up in different ways until it’s healed.
I was diagnosed with a combination of digestive problems and immune system issues, and it took me the next 6 years searching for my own healing before I really gained the full picture.
This work that I was doing in Peru, although incredibly deep, had only got me in touch with the psychological causes of my struggles – the past trauma was quite hidden from me at that time.
I’d always spent a huge amount of time stuck up in my head, and despite all of my healing and insights, I still hadn’t really connected with my body and the huge amount of pain and trauma that it had stored throughout my life. I didn’t really even understand what that meant.
The real root cause is trauma stored in the body, and it needs to be released through working with the body and the body’s bioenergy field.
Over the following years, I trained in energy healing, somatic bodywork, integrated armour release massage and qualified as a Trauma Sensitive Heartmath Certified Practitioner.
The last pieces of the Integration Process
Through this training, working on myself, and working with others, I discovered the last four pieces that completed the Integration Process. These parts focus on building an inner sense of safety, and releasing the trauma stored in the body and bioenergy field.
This framework has transformed and healed my own life, and the lives of many others.
I have also documented many of my ceremonies in the Sacred Valley here in the San Pedro Diaries.
