Psilocybin is a psychedelic substance that is helping people heal from many health issues, including anxiety, depression, and PTSD. The way we help people with mental health issues, and trauma in general, is changing, and psychedelic therapy is part of that change. 

I’m proud to introduce you to Nina Badoux. She is a psychedelic practitioner and founder of Nanacatl Healing, as well as a board member of the Guild of Guides Netherlands. She’s joining us from the Netherlands. She is currently studying for her master’s degree in Psychedelics: Mind, Medicine and Culture from the University of Exeter. She has over 7 years of experience guiding private and group ceremonies using psilocybin.

You may have heard of magic mushrooms? Psilocybin is the active substance in the magic mushrooms. I’m so honored to have Nina here with us today because she has so much experience and knowledge about the use of psilocybin and how it’s being used to help so many people around the world.

Two years ago, I went to Amsterdam to sit in a psilocybin ceremony with Nina, and it was so amazing that I wanted to be able to share it here on How Humans Heal. I have also completed a year-long psychedelic assisted therapy training with the Integrative Psychiatry Institute in the United States. That means that I am one of very few medical practitioners in the U.S. who has been trained to assist patients in the use of psilocybin and other psychedelic substances. 

Right now there is an incredible amount of research happening – 3 to 4 papers being published daily – on psychedelics, which is an enormous amount. We’re in what is being referred to as the psychedelic renaissance due to the increased awareness and research on the use of psychedelics to assist with healing. 

I am an advocate for increased access to psilocybin and other psychedelic substances for healing, which is why I’m so glad to be sharing more information with you here.

Understanding Why People Seek Psilocybin

I asked Nina what she finds are the main reasons people seek her help with psilocybin. She shared that when people seek out psilocybin, it can be for so many different reasons, and there’s never a wrong reason or a right reason for that matter. People feel the calling usually, and first of all it’s very important that it is a calling that comes from the person themselves.

Their reason can be very broad. It can be that they have certain traumas they would like to work on, that they would like to process, and that they would like to let go of. When traumas is more serious, such as with PTSD, private sessions are usually advised. Some people come in just out of curiosity because they’ve heard about it, or they’ve read about it, and they feel it might assist them in a certain way, shed some light on things that they haven’t looked at in that light before.

The interesting thing is that it happens as well that people come from a place of curiosity, and in the prep call they’ll be saying “I am doing great, there is not much darkness on my horizon, all is well,” and then the session takes them very deep. Then all of a sudden, things come up from below the surface. For many people it doesn’t really matter what your first motivation is and what is going on in your life – when you feel the calling you don’t really need to know why. The medicine will bring up what is needed.

That is really one of the basic functions of what psilocybin does – it enhances what is there for you that needs to be felt and seen. We’re so used to thinking that we need to control it or we need to have a to-do list that we’re going to work through. But in working with psilocybin as a healing medicine, as well as other psychedelic medicines, what’s very often the case is more of a letting go. It’s like what can I let go of and what can I release and just allow to happen, and whatever comes up is what was meant to come up.

The Challenge of Letting Go and Managing Expectations

For many people letting go of control is the most difficult part of working with psilocybin, even though people are taken through extensive preparation and integration. In the preparation, there’s always emphasis on trying to let go of your expectations as much as possible because it will always be different from what you expect it to be, and especially if it’s going to be your first time.

We have this whole notion of what a psychedelic experience is like because of culture, and especially nowadays with all the new research coming out and the images we’ve seen from the 60s and 70s. Many people think that a psychedelic experience is always a very visual experience, but that is definitely not the case for many people. That doesn’t mean that you didn’t do something right or that the dosage wasn’t right – it’s just that it’s different for everyone.

It’s when we let go of our expectations about what the journey is supposed to be and what it’s supposed to give you that you can truly receive the medicine in the way that is going to be the most healing. This includes letting go of ideas about what healing should look like or what insights you should receive.

The preparation process is so important for helping people understand that they don’t need to control the experience. Instead, they can learn to trust the process and trust that whatever comes up is what they’re ready to work with. This can be especially challenging for people who are used to being in control or who have very analytical minds.

Part of preparation also involves understanding that challenging experiences are not necessarily bad experiences. Sometimes the most healing comes through difficult moments. Learning to stay present with discomfort rather than trying to escape is part of the work.

The Importance of Guided Experiences vs. Solo Journeys

While you can receive a lot of gifts by using psilocybin recreationally, there is a big difference when you take it with an intention and have somebody there for you throughout the process – the preparation, during the journey, and the integration. 

First of all, the setup needs to be in full trust so that you feel completely safe. What that means is that when you go into the journey and you have somebody there guiding you, sitting for you, you don’t need to think about any of the responsibilities that you would otherwise feel if you didn’t have that person there for you. It’s such a relief, and you can let yourself go a lot deeper because you know that there is somebody there taking care, guiding you where needed.

There’s this big sense of relief and surrendering that can happen when you’re not on your own. It’s definitely worth considering, especially if you’re hearing about psilocybin and thinking “maybe this is something I’m interested in trying out,” but you feel hesitant to do it on your own. Knowing that there are practitioners present who’ve been trained in the use of psilocybin can provide safety and confidence to allow you to do your healing work.

You can either do a one-on-one session with a facilitator or guide, or you can join a group ceremony. The facilitator or guide will help you prepare, and then support you during the ceremony, as well as after, which is called integration. When you have a guide or facilitator, you don’t just dive in – you have the before, the during, and the after. You can focus entirely on the inner work while someone else holds the space and ensures your safety.

Professional guides understand important things like set and setting, preparation and integration, and how to create the right conditions for healing. They know how to read the signs of someone’s experience and when to offer support, when to stay quiet, and when to provide gentle guidance.

Creating the Sacred Space and Setting

Research has shown that a white clinical setting is actually far less beneficial than the setting that feels like somebody’s living room – a homey, nice, comfy situation with nice dim lighting, warm colors, candle lights, and live music. 

This kind of setting really brings us back to ancient times, to something that we remember in our DNA of how we used to come together as people, as human beings coming together in a circle to share, to feel, to express, and to share stories. That’s how we used to come together around the fire for ages. Being in a group psilocybin ceremony is like that.

When you walk into a group psilocybin experience, you’ll be entering a beautiful space. It’s not going to be white walls and bright lights – instead, it is likely to be natural colors and you’ll be sitting on cushions on the floor in a circular pattern. Some people choose to use headphones or eye masks, and you’ll have pillows and blankets so you’re going to be comfy.

Psilocybin is served to everyone in a group ceremony at the same time. It is prepared as a tea, often in lemon juice, or what is referred to as the “lemon tek method” where you mix the psilocybin as a powder with lemon and add hot water. 

The circular arrangement is important because it creates equality and connection among all participants. No one is at the head – everyone is part of the same circle, the same journey.

The attention to these details isn’t just about comfort – it’s about creating a container that supports the vulnerability that comes with psychedelic experiences. When people are in expanded states of consciousness, they become much more sensitive to their environment, and having a space that feels welcoming and safe makes an enormous difference.

The Healing Power of Music and Vibration in Psilocybin Ceremonies

Live music is a very important part of the work that is shared. For me, live music has everything to do with the resonance as well – it’s vibration. This work is really about getting out of the head, back into the body, and working together with the medicine and the music and the space and the people that are there so we all get to tune into this frequency where you feel safe and held and can be guided by the music and the medicine together.

The body really is this resonance chamber itself. When I put a hand on my chest and I speak or I make a sound, I can feel the vibrations in my chest. That means that when live music is played, the vibrations of the strings of the guitar, of the sounds of the flute, can enter your body and help the things that are stuck inside of you vibrate loose. We all know how emotions can get stuck into the body, and music provides a way to help release these stuck energies.

Nina wasn’t a musician before starting this work but slowly became one because of the work. She learned from very talented musicians that she worked with throughout the years, sitting next to them, learning from them, listening to them, and finding her own voice through resonating and singing with these wonderful women.

The timing and selection of music during a ceremony is crucial. You may have moments where you’re thinking: “how are they playing exactly the right song at the right time?” It’s like the message of the song is exactly what you were needing, and this takes going through it enough times and learning from others – this is the song we’re going to play at this moment and this is the song we’re going to play next. The music guides and influences the medicine fully.

When people experience anxiety during their journey, just the simple tool of breathing and humming together, bringing in that vibration, and calms the vagus nerve. Very quickly, an anxiety attack can calm down using these simple but powerful techniques.

Understanding Safety, Contraindications, and Challenges

There are contraindications to the use of psychedelics and psilocybin specifically. That’s why it’s very important that you first have a very rigorous preparation process. 

As a member of the Guild of Guides in the Netherlands, there is a code of conduct, and part of that is that your clients first need to do a medical screening. In that medical screening, the contraindications are reviewed. If somebody has any of the contraindications, then at this time in their lives we cannot do this work together.

Nina shares that she only wants to do this work with someone she feels 100% sure about doing this work with them, and that goes both ways. It’s about trust and about knowing, as a psychedelic practitioner, concepts like transference and counter-transference, and having the knowledge of what it means to be in a psychedelic state and what that can also imply for how a client might start looking at you differently throughout the work.

There’s a lot of work that as a practitioner you need to be doing yourself as well, and part of that is self-care, because the work can be quite challenging and demanding. The experience can be quite long as well – on the day of the ceremony itself, you need to be focused and present for a long time. You need to be able to be with whatever arises, and sometimes that can be quite intense.

But what if the experience is challenging? Well, I hope for you that part of it will be, because that is usually where the biggest transformation occurs. When we look at our lives in general and you see what challenge has brought you, when we push ourselves, when you go to the gym you find the most benefit in the pain. We have to go a little outside of our comfort zone in order for change to occur.

Then we can come back to how beneficial it can be to do this work with a guide, with a psychedelic practitioner next to you, because they can help you move towards those places of discomfort in a safe way, so that there is no re-traumatizing occurring. You feel safe when you’re moving towards your fear even though it’s scary.

This is a journey, it’s an adventure. An adventure can be scary but it can be joyous as well. It has this sense of curiosity, like a childlike curiosity. When a child enters a space and there’s all these boxes, all these closed boxes, what does the child do? They go to the boxes and they open them without thinking if what’s going to be inside those boxes might be scary. It’s just curiosity.

The most important pillars are that you are safe and this is temporary. Those are the most important things – you are safe mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually, and this is temporary. That can be a really nice one for people to be reminded of sometimes during the work because it can help them release deeper, it can help them maybe give another yes to whatever arises.

Addressing Trauma, PTSD, and Deep Healing with Psilocybin

There’s so much research about stress and trauma and how it gets stored in our bodies. We know that the body keeps the score – that the trauma is in our cells, in our bodies. There’s so much beautiful work that can be done, including therapy and somatic therapy. All of these are amazing tools, and they can help us as humans to recover from stress and trauma. We are finding that working with psylocibin can also be so healing for people dealing with trauma and PTSD. 

When people reconnect with their true nature through psilocybin experiences, they often can process and release trauma that has been stuck for years. This medicine allows people to access and work through traumatic material while in an expanded state that often feels safer than ordinary consciousness.

A lot of times this work, especially in this time in history, is about finding or re-finding our authentic voice, remembering again who we really are. People usually know what they think, but often they don’t know what they feel. 

Over the years, Nina has seen so many clients, and a lot of times it’s the men who come to psilocybin sessions with a big longing and wish to feel like they can tap into their emotions again. They can learn what it means to act out of intuition.

There is a big part of the healing in the world that’s happening when men reconnect with their emotional lives, with their emotional being. This reconnection with feeling can be incredibly healing in our culture that often focuses too much on thinking and not enough on emotional wisdom.

The work often involves helping people remember who they really are beneath all the trauma and conditioning they’ve experienced. It’s about reconnecting with their authentic selves and learning to trust their inner guidance rather than just following what others think they should be doing.

Connection to Nature, Purpose, and Transformation

Nina shares that the biggest reason for her to do this work is the hope that people can remember again that they are nature, and that we are part of that cycle. By remembering that, people maybe take actions in their daily life that will help save this beautiful earth that we live on together. It’s not just for humans but for every living being and entity, and everything is a living being and sentient.

A lot of times the sense of disconnection, the feeling of not knowing who we are and what our purpose is, can be healed from feeling that we have a purpose and a responsibility in taking care of our home. Our home is this earth that we live on, and it is our body. Those are one in the same – we give our body back to the earth. Right now we’re feeding ourselves with what we get from the body of the earth, so that is a cycle in itself.

What do you want to give back to the earth? Are you going to give back to the earth a body that is healthy and healed? Nina feels that we have a responsibility in that regard as well, and that can be a beautiful sense of purpose that is available to all of us.

Psilocybin is not an addictive substance. You couldn’t even get addicted to it if you wanted to because you build your tolerance up too quickly, so it just wouldn’t be working anymore. If a person takes a high dose of psilocybin today, and the same dose tomorrow, the dose tomorrow wouldn’t give any of the effects that I would feel today. I think we can say that for all the psychedelic substances that we can find in the natural world – they are non-addictive.

What does that say about what the earth is providing us with naturally versus the substances that are man-made and that are very addictive? Why are we creating these things that make people dependent? Our whole society, everything is set up for us to have dopamine fixes, whether it is through our phones, which is a huge dopamine fix for everyone nowadays, or it is your coffee, or it is shopping. These are all dopamine fixes, and that is the most addictive thing.

Why is our society set up like that? Why is everything set up to distract us from what is actually our purpose, from why we are actually here together? It’s distracting us from seeing each other, from feeling that we have the time and the space in our day to be there for one another.

Through psilocybin experiences, people start to have this awareness. They start to see more clearly who they are and how addictive distractions are working and trying to pull us away from ourselves and from nature. 

We can start to make little micro decisions differently. It’s not like someone makes a drastic change after one experience – we actually advise against making drastic changes immediately after the experience because you’re still integrating. In those first two or three weeks afterwards, you really need to just land and observe and write and take some time and space.

Any lasting changes are slow changes. You can build up a relationship with these medicines, and it’s definitely about taking things slow. Some clients you’ll just see once in a lifetime – for them it will be like they’ve picked up the phone and heard the message, and they don’t need to pick up the phone again. They have heard the message, they can integrate it, and they have their focal points. Others like having their relationship with psilocybin and hearing the message from time to time, and the message develops as well.

Conclusion and Next Steps

This work with psilocybin is ultimately about remembering our connection to ourselves, to each other, to nature, and to something larger than ourselves. In a world that often feels fragmented and disconnected, this medicine offers a path back home to our true nature and our deepest purpose. It’s a reminder that healing is possible, that we are not alone, and that we are part of something magnificent and interconnected.

As we continue to research and understand these powerful medicines, it’s crucial that we approach them with respect, proper preparation, and qualified guidance. The potential for healing is immense, but so is the responsibility we have to use these tools wisely and safely. The renaissance in psychedelic research is opening doors that have been closed for too long, offering hope and healing to countless people who are ready to remember who they truly are.

Integration is the most important part of this work – taking the insights and healing from the medicine experience and finding ways to live from this wisdom in daily life. This is where the real transformation happens, as people learn to embody what they’ve learned rather than just holding it as a memory.

If you find yourself feeling called to explore psilocybin as a healing medicine, the most important step is to do thorough research and find qualified, experienced practitioners who prioritize safety. Look for practitioners who are certified in the use of psychedelics as medicine or members of professional organizations like the Guild of Guides, who require medical screening, and who provide comprehensive preparation and integration support.

Remember that you are safe, that any experience is temporary, and that the medicine will only bring up what you are ready to work with. Trust the process, trust your inner wisdom, and know that whatever arises is arising for your healing. The journey of remembering who you truly are is one of the most beautiful adventures you can take, and you don’t have to walk this path alone.

If you would like to learn more about Nina and how she can help you make sure to visit the Nanacatl Healing website here. You can also find her on Instagram @nanacatl_healing. You can also visit the Guild of Guides Netherlands website here. And you can find her music on YouTube here.

The key message I want to leave you with is that the human body can heal, and it’s possible to heal from trauma. We sometimes simply need to be able to release and let go and let our bodies and our spirit guide us to the healing that we need. 

Infections, imbalances, and symptoms are simply messages or signals showing us that trauma is affecting us on a physical level. It’s when we can heal from the trauma that these physical symptoms and health issues disappear. That is also the case with high-risk HPV and abnormal cells on the cervix, as well as many other health issues such as pain and migraines. 

There are also other psychedelic plant medicines like Ayahuasca. I am in the process of planning a retreat in the Amazon for women who are working to protect themselves from HPV. If you are interested, please reach out to my office so we can put you on the list – office@doctordoni.com.  

At the same time, I want to emphasize that you don’t necessarily have to take a psychedelic substance if you don’t want to. There are many modalities we can use to support healing from trauma. We can use breathwork, time in nature, or a detoxification program from home. 

In fact, I developed a 14-day detox based on my experience at the healing retreat center. It includes a fasting-mimicking diet plan, protein shake, supplements, and videos from me to guide you every step of the way. Find my 14-Day Detox Program here.

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I include healing from trauma in the Say Goodbye to HPV online program, and in my one-on-one work with patients, which is available to women around the world.

If you would like to learn more and understand the next steps on your healing journey, you can comment below or you can reach out to my office and we can set up a time to meet, so I can get to know you, and we can think through the different options that make sense for you. It’s all about understanding where you’re starting from, and the next best step for your case. I will then guide you step by step in the direction of healing.

Please know that if you’re struggling and hoping there’s another option for healing, there is! I’m happy to help you create a plan to transform your health and your future.

Thanks again for joining me in this conversation with Nina here at How Humans Heal. If you haven’t already, I welcome you to subscribe to my newsletter, podcast and join me for the next episode. 

I hope this gives you new hope and inspiration for your ability to heal. Don’t give up – believe me, I’ve been at the very bottom. I’ve experienced all the edges of human reality. I’ve been through pain and suffering. I understand. You’re not alone. Healing is possible. 

Disclaimer: This specific article and all other Content, Products, and Services of this Website are NOT intended as, and must not be understood or construed as, medical care or advice, naturopathic medical care or advice, the practice of medicine, or the practice of counseling care, nor can it be understood or construed as providing any form of medical diagnosis, treatment,  natural HPV cure, or prevention of any disease.