OUR PRINCIPLES

In order to create the best possible environment for healing, The Ayavolve Institute has adopted the following principles to guide its approach.

1. A main thread of integration is the empowerment and education of each individual to become their own facilitator.

While we all do need others and the insights and help from others can assist us in our journey, much of our model is training and teaching you skills to process and work through what you need without relying on the expertise of others. In fact, your own innate wisdom is what we most want to cultivate through these processes.

This is not to suggest that we may not need at times to seek out a counselor, a group to support us, etc., but ultimately the Ayavolve model offers training model/s for individuals to work through to facilitate their own integration processes.

2. Each person is unique and brings different gifts and contributions to this world. The integration process should respect and enhance these gifts. Therefore, no integration journey is the same and must be customized to each person.

Within this model, we understand you are unique, which means what you need is unique to you, and the way you will process your experiences is different than that of any other person as well.

The path of healing and integration we are presenting assumes your journey is unlike anyone else’s, and while we can offer tools and pathways, you will follow the path differently than anyone else. As a result, we view your innate gifts and your authentic voice and pathway as something we hope to support and encourage through this work.

3. Generally, the first task of the integration process is to support individuals in moving through blocks and struggles.

They may be related to emotional issues, physical issues, a deeper sense of spiritual connection, traumas, personal challenges, toxic beliefs, and other forms of stuck energy and negativities that prevent you from being free. Our observation is that these issues are often challenging to work through and sometimes require quite a bit of work, post-ceremony, to move through. We feel that this level of personal healing must include an awareness and honest processing of these issues to move forward on each person’s journey. Once these issues are moved through, there can be a more direct pathway towards self-determination and self-actualization.

 4. A critical part of the integration process is cultivating a sense of relationality.

Relationality in this sense refers to the ability to connect within a relational field to others in one’s family, friendship circle, social circle, but also connect within a relational field to plant teachers, one’s self, the greater cosmos, and the larger world. It is critical that the integration process widen one’s capacity to feel and be part of a larger field of connections and to feel a part of a larger community of people. Relationality also includes the ability to offer and receive support on one’s path.

5. Integration is about awareness of our own personal worldview and moving towards an Indigenous worldview.

Or a more sustainable and creative or flexible worldview (click here to see appendix for Indigenous versus Western worldview).

6. Nothing in our integration model is intended to be dogmatic, a set of rules you must follow, something you need to believe in or not believe in.

Everything we offer is templates for you to use and customize to your personal needs, which align with your personal belief system, and you find helpful as part of your integration and healing journey. As a result, if anything we discuss does not resonate with you, don’t use it or work with it. Everything we teach (and everything offered in this workbook) is offered on behalf of supporting you on your unique journey. We recognize that your path and your healing and integration route will be unlike anyone else’s. As a result, we hope that it is customized to your needs.

7. Our work is interdisciplinary, draws from many shamanic traditions and cultures, and attempts to weave lessons from Western counseling and psychotherapy with lessons and tools from Indigenous wisdom.

We are also drawing on our own backgrounds in art therapy, group process work, movement therapies, Adult Learning Theory, and various forms of personal growth and development processes. The Ayavolve Institute for Psychedelic Integration model aims to offer ways of exploring one’s interior and exterior realities through a variety of exercises, tools, techniques, rituals, distinctions, activity, and right- and left-brained work

8. Combining the transpersonal and personal views is important to us as we support people in their healing journey.

Within the framework of integration, we see two distinct dimensions that both require integration and work both individually and in an interconnected way. These are the personal and the transpersonal views.

The personal views refers to integration on a deeply personal level of one’s personal existence, personal meaning, personal health, personal beliefs, etc.. The transpersonal views are focused on universal meaning or spiritual dimensions—which include looking at the purpose of relationship to the greater cosmos and practices to access the divine in everyday life such as prayer, meditation, creativity, and other.

We need the personal to stand together with the transpersonal—in the personal world we learn to master social skills, communication, boundaries, our inner landscape, and in the transpersonal we learn to merge with the divine. Most models of personal growth or spiritual growth focus on either the personal or the transpersonal, and yet within the integration of plant medicine work, both are important.

Indigenous Versus Western Worldview