Psychedelic Retreat informed by Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, with one-to-one follow up integration
£2,300.00
- Early application rate: £2,150.** Apply and pay your deposit by 30 November 2026 to save £150.
- The price includes four 90-minute one-to-one integration sessions to continue, deepen and consolidate your progress.
Location:
Calella, near Barcelona, Spain
2027 Dates:
- 3-7th March
Contribution:
- £2300 (accommodation and meals included, excluding cost of truffles provided by a third party)
- Contact us for concessionary fees
Facilitators:
- Henry Whitfield MSc
- Robert Krause DNP
- Margo Fisher PhD
- Kate Hawke
Evidence base:
For a peer-reviewed analysis of 3 years of data applying this programme followed by one-to-one psychotherapy see: Trajectories of Psychedelic-assisted change (Whitfield et al., 2026)
We also share this for the extra detail on how this retreat is structured, and how participants prepare.
A sea view from our retreat centre
Designed to fulfil personal experience criteria for psychedelic therapists, this retreat offers a deeply supported, ACT-informed psychedelic experience, backed by its own peer-reviewed research into the cumulative effects of this retreat followed by precise psychotherapy processes. An opportunity for experientially learning how deep psychedelic-assisted change unfolds when aligned with intensive psychotherapy change processes.
What makes this retreat different
Rather than offering a powerful experience only including group integration meetings our double-ceremony retreat is followed by structured 1:1 integration sessions for deeper psychotherapeutic change designed to ground and amplify what emerged over the two ceremonies—so new awareness can be expanded, deepened, and consolidated thoroughly. Our research into this retreat programme (Trajectories in Psychedelic-assisted change, Journal of Psychedelic Studies (Whitfield et at., 2026)) showed that the acute retreat effects increased further still during integration (in all measures) and were sustained at long term follow up (also in all measures), when coupled with the precise psychotherapy offering this programme includes. Some researchers describe such a combined approach as a coming ‘phase 2’ in the psychedelic research renaissance: what happens when the insight and intensity of a psychedelic experience transfer into known processes of lasting change such as imaginal exposure?
This integrated Psychedelic retreat includes:
- Four extended 90-minutes one-to-one follow-up integration sessions (psychotherapy, including trauma-focused work)
- Group processes for deeper relational work and communitas
- The ACT reverse compass for confronting barriers of mind
- Full catering and accommodation in a Catalonian retreat centre overlooking the sea
This programme is also appropriate for mental health professionals interested in becoming psychedelic-assisted therapists, psychedelic therapists interested in an ACT-informed psychedelic experience and those wishing to better support people in integrating psychedelic experience.
The Programme:
Preparation usually begins four weeks before you arrive with many preparation suggestions and an online icebreaking Zoom call. In preparation you may consider your personal challenges in terms of ‘willingness’ (how open are you to certain discomforts?), ‘experiential avoidance’ (what are the obvious or subtle ways you avoid those inner discomforts?), your motivations (what impulses behind your inner and outer behaviours are keeping you from what you truly want). Simple metaphors such as the ‘reverse compass’ may guide us on our way: where is your mind telling you not to go?
Day 1: Arrival (at 6pm in Calella) with further preparation: building communitas in the group and a flexible sense of self.
All are welcome to use the sauna.
Day 2: Self-as-observer meditation, breath and bodywork – you are not your programming. Afternoon ceremony – with Psilocybin Truffles, you embark on your psychedelic journey with the support of sober mental health professionals.
Day 3: What is still coming up? Being in your direct experiencing. ACT-informed authentic relating exercises to go deeper into our personality structures, function awareness of why we do what we do, the motivations and effects of our thinking. Address shame and bond in our common humanity. A spectrum of selves exercise to integrate your parts and foster a transcendent self.
Day 4: Increasing willingness and noticing the barriers of mind. Let different parts of you speak. Breathwork. Second Ceremony – an opportunity to go deeper.
Day 5: Further integration – Is any of your inner or outer behaviour changing? What new paths do you feel invited to follow? Is a new view emerging of the kind of life you want to live? Balancing the head with the heart: Awareness practices coupled with behaviour change. Leaving 6pm after a full day of group integration practices.
Each day will include movement and other experiential practices to help us get into our direct experiencing. Through sharing circles we grow together.
Integration therapy: Then each participant is then offered four 90min integration sessions via zoom, including the opportunity to do trauma-focussed exposure work, for addressing what may be deeply ingrained patterns. The length beyond the 50min hour brings deeper work within reach, as done in many trauma-focussed approaches. These sessions further support the unfolding of awareness that opened during the retreat and help translate this awareness into multiple domains of your life for a new alignment. It may also be a critical learning period to take advantage of. Our current integration model brings together evolutionary science, ACT and ‘parts work’ in psychedelic context as described in the peer-reviewed Spectrum of Selves model, integrating behaviour change to find a new balance between self-care, relationships, community and environment.
As well as offering these latter perspectives, the ACT model also invites its own integration with other models and traditions, into a behaviourally aware eclecticism. Some of these modalities of integration include breathwork, art therapy, shame work and Internal Family Systems.
This retreat has been developed through multiple iterations since 2019 and is informed by quantitative and qualitative datasets.
Led by clinicians and researchers in a legal setting with extensive ACT experience and psychedelic-research experience.
Minimum facilitator ratio: at least one to every 3.25 participants. check-ins before, between, and after ceremonies. Small group design for safety and depth
Spaces are highly limited to a maximum of 14.
How to book
1. Apply using the form below. It is free and commits you to nothing.
How to book
- Apply using the form below. It is free and commits you to nothing.
- We review your application and confirm your place. We normally respond within 5 working days.
- Once confirmed, secure your place with a £1,000 deposit.
- Pay the remaining balance by 31 January 2027.
- Your £1,000 deposit is refundable until 31 January 2027, and transferable to a future retreat thereafter. Places are limited to 14 and offered by application.
3. Once confirmed, secure your place with a £1,000 deposit.
4. Pay the remaining balance by 31 January 2027.
Your £1,000 deposit is refundable until 31 January 2027, and transferable to a future retreat thereafter. Places are limited to 14 and offered by application.
Testimonials
About our facilitators
Henry J. Whitfield PhD Candidate
Henry Whitfield is an Association of Contextual Behavioural Science (ACBS) Peer-reviewed Acceptance and Commitment Therapy trainer, an Accredited Advanced TIR (PTSD therapy) Trainer and Cognitive Behavioural Psychotherapist (MSc – CBT) He is now in the final stages of a PhD in psychedelic-assisted Acceptance and Commitment therapy, looking at interactions between psilocybin experiences and therapeutic processes during and after psilocybin. His research was among the first to capture cumulative effects of therapy and psilocybin.
Kate Hawke
Kate Hawke has worked with expanded states of consciousness for fifty-five years, and has helped other people work with them for thirty-five. Her own path began with self-hypnosis and spontaneous out-of-body experiences, then psychedelics starting in 1971. She and Rick Doblin became friends when they were both twenty, and she has been a MAPS member since the 1980s.
In the 1990s Kate became the first Certified Trauma Specialist in the Southwest, long before “trauma-informed” was common language. Beyond her academic training in cognitive therapy, she has focused on the conditions that get to the root of trauma and allow it to release, while harvesting the lessons we have earned. Her psychedelic education includes all of the MAPS conferences since 2011, the MDMA facilitator retreat. and Colorado Natural Medicine Facilitator requirements.
Over the years, Kate has trained thousands of clinicians, provided psychedelic support services at Burning Man and other festivals since 2003, and worked with ketamine-assisted psychotherapy since 2019. She also supported her mother through six years of dementia and accompanied her father through a peaceful death in his nineties. End of Life Care is her main focus while working on eight New Mexico Medical Psilocybin regulatory development committees. She is now completing research on death, dying, and expanded states, built on interviews with forty of the field’s pioneers.
Kate and Henry met through our shared interest in combining effective therapeutic methodologies with psychedelics for transformation that lasts. What she brings to a retreat is a unique contribution to preparation, steadiness in ceremony no matter what comes up and support for integration that turns a remarkable week into a changed life.
Dr Robert Krause DNP APRN-BC
Robert Krause is a Psychiatric APRN who spent twenty years as on faculty in Psychiatry at Yale University, in the Schools of Nursing and Medicine. He is Director of the Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy [Program] at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), and is currently visiting faculty at The Graduate Institute, where he teaches a course in Mind-Body Medicine.
He has lectured in philosophy at Quinnipiac University and at Western Connecticut State University. Robert has certifications in Global Mental Health: Trauma and Recovery from Harvard University, in Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapies and Research from the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) and in Sex therapy also from the CIIS. He was a faculty advisor to the Yale Psychedelic Research Group and is currently the lead therapist and co-author of the treatment manual for the Psilocybin – Induced Neuroplasticity in the Treatment of Major Depressive Disorder at the Yale School of Medicine. He is also a co-author of the recently published ‘Psilocybin-assisted therapy of major depressive disorder using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy as a therapeutic frame’ Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science 15 (2020): 12-19.
Robert’s daily practices include yoga, meditation and tantra. He completed yoga instructor training with Aum Pradesh Guar in Goa, India and was certified in tantra instruction through the Urban Tantra Professional Training Program. He has been practicing zazen meditation for 30 years.
Currently Robert maintains a private integrative psychotherapy practice in New Haven, Connecticut.
Margo Fisher PhD
Margo has a depth of experience as a psychedelic guide. A particular area of expertise is early childhood trauma, holding a safe space as clients connect with their young selves. She has guided on psilocybin clinical trials at the Centre for Psychedelic Research at Imperial College, currently guiding on a trial relating to addiction. She is also a psychotherapeutic counsellor, adept at helping clients integrate their psychedelic experiences. It brings her joy to facilitate individual and group spaces that offer the opportunity to heal, integrate and expand. Margo has built a friendship with unknowing, embodiment, vulnerability, wholeness and reverence over time; these have helped her to be and stay present.
Previously a qualitative researcher focused on human rights in the global South, she now uses her research skills to capture the lived experiences of those participating in psychedelic clinical trials. Margo lives on a farm with her partner in south west England, is a mother of an adult daughter and is gently becoming an elder.