Lineage, Spirituality, and Ethical Boundaries
Psychedelic work invites people into some of the most open, vulnerable, and impressionable states a human being can experience. In these spaces, words matter. Titles matter. And the way a practitioner understands their role matters deeply.
In recent years, as psychedelics re-enter Western culture, language from indigenous and spiritual traditions has been borrowed, blended, and sometimes blurred. While often well-intentioned, this blending can obscure something essential: Who holds knowledge, where it comes from, and how power is carried are not neutral questions in psychedelic spaces.
In many indigenous and traditional societies, the roles we now casually refer to as shaman, guru, or curandera are not titles someone simply chooses.
They emerge through lineage, community recognition, and long processes of initiation that are deeply rooted in culture, land, language, and collective memory. These roles are not symbolic identities; they are responsibilities held within a living tradition. A shaman’s work is inseparable from the cosmology of their people. A guru’s role exists within a defined lineage of transmission. A curandera’s healing is woven into the relational life of a community.
These traditions deserve respect, context, and integrity.
I was born into Western society.
I do not come from an indigenous lineage where psychedelic or plant-based work is embedded in ancestral ritual or communal roles. These traditions are not in my roots, and it would be neither honest nor respectful for me to claim them.
Spirituality as a Lived Orientation
At the same time, spirituality has always been part of how I relate to the world.
From an early age, my sense of spirituality was shaped through natural sensitivity and lived closeness to nature, rather than inherited tradition. Time spent in the countryside with my grandparents fostered an attunement to land, animals, and seasonal rhythms that continues to inform how I hold space today.
This inner spirituality has matured over the years. It informs how I listen, how I attune, and how I respect what cannot be forced. It shapes my presence, but it does not place me in authority over another’s experience.
My spirituality is not something I teach or transmit. It is something I live. Because of this, I choose my words carefully. I do not call myself a shaman. I do not position myself as a guru. I do not claim to be a healer. Not because these roles lack meaning to me, but because they deserve cultural grounding and integrity.
As interest in psychedelic work grows in Western cultures, confusion around roles grows with it. Practitioners are often elevated, subtly or overtly, into positions of spiritual authority. In vulnerable, expanded states, this can shift power away from the individual and toward the facilitator.
This is why I am clear about my role.
I am not here to heal you. I am not here to define your truth. I am not here to lead your inner world.
My role as a psychedelic practitioner is to hold safety, not power.
Psychedelic spaces are sensitive by nature. As perception opens and defenses soften, suggestibility increases. This makes ethical clarity essential. Safety is created through grounded presence, clear boundaries, emotional attunement, and humility, not through intensity or mystical authority.
There is an important difference between responsibility and authority. Authority interprets and directs. Responsibility holds the container. My responsibility is to support safety, pacing, and integration without imposing meaning or outcome.
Facilitation, at its core, is containment. It is staying present when something difficult arises, allowing emotion without rushing to fix it, and knowing when not to intervene. In a well-held space, nothing needs to be forced. Healing, if it happens, arises through safety rather than pressure.
Projection is a natural part of psychedelic work. In altered states, a practitioner may be experienced as a guide, a parent, or a source of safety. Ethical practice means recognizing this and gently returning power to the participant, again and again.
If healing happens through this work, it does not happen because of me. It happens because something within you feels safe enough to be seen and integrated. Because insight is met with care. Because the experience is woven back into daily life.
My role is not to stand in front of you, but beside you. To offer presence without dominance.
To offer structure without control. To support without ownership.
This is the way I work – rooted in respect for lineage, grounded in lived spirituality, and held within clear ethical boundaries. A way of working that honors both the depth of psychedelic states and the autonomy of the person experiencing them. Not through power, but through presence.
Holistic Wellbeings 
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