Exploring Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy Series, Part One: My First Client Ketamine Session

Today, I dressed in flowing silken skirts and fabrics of blue and purple, greens and yellows.  In my hands as I walked into the office, I carried the antique wooden Bible box handed down in my family over generations.  It held no Bible.  It never had in my lifetime, because my spirituality is my own to choose.  Instead, it contained items that spoke to me; five ceramic seashells, decorative tea light holders.  

Only one would feature a tea light- the shell that signified Fire.  The shell that signified Earth would sit opposite to fire, filled with natural sea salt.  The large ceramic sea urchin that I used to represent Air held a tightly-wrapped bundle of dried white sage for incense.  Opposite that, sat a ceramic clam with an open mouth holding Water.  And in the center, appropriately for the fifth element of Spirit, was a five-pointed ceramic starfish.  

I had pondered the night before about what I had that should go into that fifth shell… the answer did not come until I invited my client to sit with me.  Of course.  To represent Spirit, I had my client place her medicine- a small tab of sublingual ketamine.

We were about to begin the journey… but what a journey to get to this place!  For my client, it had been a lifetime of ongoing pain and struggle originating in childhood, an all too common sad story.  I had walked a different path in my childhood, and yet I could relate to my client.  We had experienced much of the same pain.  I was younger, and honestly, only a little bit ahead of my client her healing journey… but those extra couple years had been a solid study in healing my own wounds.  I would now use what I learned to help a new person, and I saw it as a sacred duty and true blessing.

Next Up: My Own Journey Here