Psychedelic Retreat informed by Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, with one-to-one follow up integration

£2,300.00

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*Add to basket option is for payment only after application is approved”

 

Location:

Calella, near Barcelona, Spain

2026 Dates:

  • 15-19th June

Contribution:

  • £2300 (accommodation and meals included, excluding cost of psilocybin truffles
  • Contact us for concessionary fees

 

Facilitators:

  • Henry Whitfield MSc,
  • Robert Krause,
  • Karlie Shelley
  • Margo Fisher PhD

 

     A sea view from our retreat centre

This retreat is designed for mental health professionals who want a deeply supported, ACT-informed psychedelic experience, backed with real-world data. A process for experientially understanding how deep psychedelic-assisted change unfolds when aligned with intensive psychotherapy change processes. 

What makes this retreat different

Rather than offering a “powerful experience + good luck after,” our multi-ceremony retreat is followed by structured 1:1 integration sessions for deeper psychotherapeutic change designed to ground and amplify what began in ceremony—so new perspectives translate into lasting behaviour change. Our research into this retreat programme (submitted) showed that the acute retreat effects increased further still (in all measures) and were sustained at long term follow up, 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?

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 4pm 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.

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 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: one to every 3.25 participants minimum. check-ins before, between, and after ceremonies. Small group design for safety and depth

Spaces are highly limited to a maximum of 14.

 

 
Click here to apply

Testimonials

I particularly liked: The skill and heart of the facilitating Team, including how we were cared for and encouraged to keep going IN rather than being unnecessarily rescued, the inspired music, live and recorded, the beautiful house with its dedicated medicine space, the delicious nourishing food, the walks in the woods, all of the integration activities especially dealing with Shame, the ongoing connections. It all works together in synergy. After 49 years of experience with psychedelics, including Ayahuasca in the jungle and decades with mushrooms, this retreat stands out as a true transformation. More than having taken a flashy trip out and back, I feel like I’ve simply come home. I remember Who I Am and what’s going on here, the inner game Love is playing behind what often looks like Insanity. Having the integration support and ongoing group connection is essential. This team has masterfully orchestrated a container.

Kate Hawke, MA, Director of the Trauma Transformation Network and Native American Trauma Project, International Energy Psychology Conference Founder. MAPS member since 1986

The retreat enabled me to face my deepest pain and to integrate it into my life and to transcend it, with the support and love of others. I feel a renewed sense of vitality with my life and doubts about my self-worth have left me.

J. S., Counselling Psychologist DPsych.

I feel this retreat helped me in a very deep way. It felt like a very profound healing. It gave me a clear sense of how these medicines can be used therapeutically. It helped me come into a different relationship with pain. This was a profoundly transformative experience. The balance of preparation, ceremony, and integration was wonderful. The facilitators attended with such care and skill that I felt completely safe and was able to trust the plant medicine to go deep into the experience. Thank you for this opportunity. I now have a real appreciation for this important work. So much gratitude!

Jim Clark, Cognitive Behavioural Psychotherapist (BABCP) and a UK Network Listed Mindfulness Teacher.

This retreat gave me a new self. I feel I can take up space in the world, I feel I have a voice and a purpose. I had no idea how much my barriers and insecurities were inhibiting my life. I can see what my life would be like with more awareness to when these barriers and insecurities are showing up and the steps to move forward with actions that truly matter to me. I could not imagine a better group of knowledgeable and skilled facilitators for this retreat. I felt safe and cared for the entire time, allowing myself to fully let go. The variety of modalities incorporated were each beneficial and together created a healing experience. The group aspect added a deeper level of connection, learning, and insight. If this is the direction psychedelic-assisted therapy is headed, I am excited and hopeful to see the future unfold.

Stephanie Dreis M.S. LPCC (Licensed Professional Clinical Counsellor)

This retreat was a most important and meaningful experience in my life! It introduced me to the transformational experience of taking psilocybin, which I will be forever grateful for. It was a thoughtfully planned retreat, full of many rich experiences: walks in nature, great music, powerful group exercises, integration sessions, plenty individual attention. But, perhaps as important as the powerful consciousness expanding medicine, was the team of guides/leaders which was put together. The guides were continually supportive, unbelievably kind and loving, knowledgeable, open, available, and I cannot imagine having gone through the experience of taking psilocybin for the first time without them. They were present in all the activities, they were invaluable to the integration process and they became true mentors to the participants. The group size was perfect: 14 participants. Live music was a beautiful and inspirational part of the retreat. I would love to be able to do the retreat again.

Elisabeth Fonseca, PhD (NYU) Clinical Psychologist

About our facilitators

Henry J. Whitfield PhD Candidate

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.

 
For over seven years Henry ran and supervised brief therapy for PTSD projects for Victim Support and Mind in London gun crime hot spots, using CBT and TIR. Henry has also trained over 1500 psychological therapists since 2003, supervising mental health professionals the NHS for ACT and Trauma work, as well as having his own private practice. He is also a passionate integral thinker, publishing journal articles and book chapters on the integration of therapeutic models including, REBT-mindfulness, ACT-TIR-CBT, Person-centred-TIR. His psychedelic plant medicine path has changed how he does psychotherapy especially with self-concept issues. He has written, co-written and edited training manuals for ACT, TIR and FAP. He is also author of a new model of psychological flexibility A Spectrum of Selves, tailored to a psychedelic therapy context published 2021 in Frontiers in Psychiatry.
Dr Robert Krause

Dr Robert Krause

Robert Krause, DNP APRN-BC is a doctor of nursing practice and is a clinical specialist in psychiatric and mental health nursing. He is currently Visiting Faculty at The Graduate Institute where he is teaching a course in Mind-Body Medicine. For twenty years Robert was a Lecturer in Psychiatry at Yale University in the schools of Nursing and 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 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.