How I work with Clients
I provide individual therapy to prepare for and integrate experiences with psychedelics and entheogenic medicines. Drawing on over a decade of experience working with individuals navigating altered states of consciousness, I create customized plans for each person based on their unique needs and goals. I also facilitate group experiential healing sessions. I work with groups of no more than 6 to 8 participants at a time in an effort to create safe and intimate environments where each individual's experience is honored and respected.
Treatment Approach
I believe that each person has an intrinsic drive to heal, and to create harmony in ourselves and our surroundings. My goal as a therapist is to help you access your inner resources to fully engage with your feelings and experiences, both the positive and the challengingly uncomfortable. Together, we use therapeutic tools to cultivate a grounded and mindful state of being that allows for compassionate self-reflection and growth.
Generational trauma creates obstacles to connecting to and expressing our true selves. This disconnect can manifest as depression, anxiety, loss of sense of purpose, and lack of understanding for how to navigate our relationship to self, others, and ultimately life itself.
Through our work together, I offer a place to meaningfully explore your truth, values, and relationships. I hope to help you cultivate your own ability to connect to yourself, recognizing how challenges have impacted you and how they can help you grow.
My practice of psychotherapy and psychedelic integration has been shaped by trauma-informed, indigenous, cross-cultural, holistic, and transpersonal worldviews and approaches.
Background
Since 2018
School: Institute of Transpersonal Psychology
Graduated: 2012
Degree: MA Counseling Psychology
School: Delaware State University
Graduated: 2009
Degree: B.S. Psychology
1508151234
License or Certificate LMFT 130446
Date: 2022
License or Certificate Certification of Training in Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy, Ketamine Training Center
Date: 2021
License or Certificate CIIS Center for Psychedelic Therapies
Date: 2018
My understanding of Ayahuasca/Yaje is informed by the Tukano speaking lineages of the Secoya and Koreguaje, two tribes that share a close cultural relationship and historically existed as a single group, and now live within modern day Ecuador and Colombia. I travel multiple times each year to work with healers of these lineages. In the past, I have worked with a healer in the Cocama lineage. I also spent more than three years working closely with a healer from Puerto Rico, who carried not only the medicine of Yaje but also the cultural perspectives and cosmology of the my Taino ancestry.
Integrative Somatic Trauma Therapy, Trauma Reprocessing & Application, 2022 | 200 Hour Registered Yoga Teacher, Piedmont Yoga, 2017
- CIIS
- Other
Certification of Training in Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy, Ketamine Training Center
Yes
Payment & Insurance
$90.00 - $180.00
- PayPal
- Cash
- Check
- Venmo
Yes
Yes
- English
- Spanish
- Liberal
- Spiritual but not religious
No
Committed Relationship
This program is designed to facilitate experiential awareness of the healing processes that plant medicines are capable of producing, within a container that brings together psychotherapy and indigenous healing traditions. The program is limited to 8 participants. Over the course of six months, each will participate in weekly individual therapy, twice-monthly group talk-therapy, and group plant medicine ceremonies every other month. Throughout the program, participants will receive support, insight, and resources for their integration. Members will have the opportunity to share their healing journeys with others to strengthen the collective healing process. As a group, we will come to understand the breadth of experience that is possible within therapeutic and ceremonial plant medicine settings. We will have the opportunity to build meaningful relationships amongst each other within a safe container of vulnerability and authenticity. Upon completion of this program, participants will have first-hand knowledge of the therapeutic effects of plant medicine, based on their own unique personal experience. Individual and Group therapy will help to further what is gained through ceremony by immersing us in our process in a practical and accessible way. For more information and to sign up, visit: gerardartesona.com/experiential-healing.
Articles by Gerard Artesona:
Personal Healing with Ayahuasca Helped Me Be a Better Therapist | Chacruna.net 2019
The Island: Recovering Self, Culture and Place through Plant Medicine | Chacruna.net 2018
Pscyhedelic Integration: What, Why, and How | Mindleap, 2020
Pscychedelic Integration with a Religious Leader | Mindleap, 2021
