Frequently Asked Questions

Colorado's regulated system creates accountability around the entire Natural Medicine Experience, including facilitator education and qualifications, participant screening, preparation, administration, integration, ethics, professional conduct, cultural considerations, continuing education, payment, documentation, and safety.

The medicine itself is also subject to testing and regulatory requirements, providing greater certainty about what is being administered. We cannot make the experience predictable, but we can reduce uncertainty about the medicine itself, including how much is being taken.

And it provides an established framework for responding to medical emergencies. Most experiences do not involve an emergency, but if one occurs, your safety comes before protecting the secrecy of the experience.

For me, regulation is not about taking the soul out of Natural Medicine work. It is about creating a structure strong enough to hold it.

Touch can be meaningful during a Natural Medicine experience, but it can also be deeply vulnerable. For that reason, touch in this space is never assumed or improvised.

Before the experience, we will clearly explain and demonstrate how touch may be used and establish an explicit touch agreement with each participant. You will know what kinds of touch may occur, where touch may occur, and how to communicate if you want touch to stop or change. We will make sure that this agreement is understood before the experience begins.

Touch is limited to three areas: the hands, feet, and shoulders. No other areas of the body will be touched by facilitators.

Your agreement to touch is not a blanket agreement. You can change your mind at any time, and you never need to explain why.

The purpose of these boundaries is not to make the experience rigid. It is to create enough clarity and safety that you can let go into your own experience without having to wonder what might happen next.

Your experience belongs to you.

Working responsibly with powerful medicines requires more than completing an initial training.

Colorado's regulated system requires ongoing education and professional development, including ethics education and current Basic Life Support certification. Consultation and continued learning provide opportunities to learn from colleagues, experienced practitioners, emerging research, and the people we serve.

I believe that is exactly as it should be.

This is a young and rapidly evolving field. We are still learning about these medicines, their potential benefits, their risks, and the many ways people respond to them.

Everyone working in this field should keep learning. I know I will.

I have enormous respect for the mystery of Natural Medicine experiences.

People may encounter something psychological, spiritual, mystical, symbolic, relational, neurological, or something they simply don't have words for. I don't think we need to prematurely decide which explanation is the “right” one.

We can remain curious.
We can also remain rigorous.

Wonder and science can be friends.

For me, the regulated space creates room for both: the rigor of good healthcare and the mystery of experiences we do not fully understand.

The goal is not to control what happens or tell you what your experience means.

Natural Medicine experiences can involve profound vulnerability. That makes boundaries particularly important.

My approach is intentionally non-directive. I am not there to tell you what your experience means, convince you that it was spiritual or that it wasn't, or interpret every vision, emotion, or sensation for you.

Your beliefs about spirituality, religion, consciousness, healing, and non-ordinary states are your own.

I aim instead to support an unfolding, inner-directed process, one in which your own perceptions, questions, emotions, memories, insights, and meaning-making have room to emerge.

• Sometimes the most helpful thing a facilitator can do is listen.
  
• Sometimes it is to help you feel safe.
  
• Sometimes it is to remind you that you don't have to figure everything out right now.