PSIP
Psychedelic Somatic Interactional Psychotherapy
Psychedelic Somatic Interactional Psychotherapy (PSIP)
Is an innovative and effective therapy model that integrates somatic, psychobiological, and relational principles to address trauma, dissociation, and psychological distress. It focuses on trauma resolution through the activation of the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) and accessing primary consciousness (PC) facilitated by psychedelic medicine.
Unlike traditional non-directive psychedelic-assisted therapy models, PSIP actively engages clients during psychedelic experiences, emphasizing the therapist's attuned responsiveness to the client’s emotional and body-based processing. This holistic approach provides a powerful therapeutic intervention for healing both PTSD and early attachment wounds.
Model has been developed by experts in the field: Eric Wolterstorff, PhD and Saj Razvi, LPC based on the work of Peter Levine, PhD, and further refined at Psychedelic Somatic Institute.
https://www.psychedelicsomatic.org/
Healing Through Somatic and ANS-Level Processing
Psychedelic Somatic Interactional Psychotherapy (PSIP) offers a transformative, body-centered approach to healing trauma by working directly with the autonomic nervous system (ANS). PSIP creates space for clients to access primary consciousness—non-verbal, embodied states where deeply stored trauma and emotional imprints reside.
By bypassing traditional cognitive or verbal approaches, clients connect with implicit memories held in the body. The ANS’s innate healing capacities are activated to process and release traumatic energy, resolving patterns of dysregulation and restoring balance. Through this process, PSIP enables the completion of unresolved survival responses and supports the body’s natural return to equilibrium.
With a focus on embodied experiences, clients are guided to cultivate awareness of physical sensations, emotions, and movements, unlocking the body’s profound potential for healing and transformation.
Note to clients
In contrast to modalities where the focus is on the medicine “doing the work,” this approach emphasizes the collaboration between therapist and client as the heart of the healing process. The medicine plays a vital role in supporting and enhancing the process, but it is the dynamic engagement between therapist and client that drives transformation.
Therapist-Client Collaboration: Your therapist actively engages with you, working together to explore and process the emotions, sensations, and insights that arise. The relationship is central to the healing process, fostering trust, safety, and deep connection.
Being Mirrored in the Process: As you navigate your journey, your therapist reflects your experiences with empathy and presence, helping you feel seen, understood, and validated. This mirroring deepens self-awareness and promotes healing by allowing you to connect with parts of yourself that may have felt hidden or unacknowledged.
Medicine as a Catalyst: Rather than being the sole agent of change, the medicine supports the work by creating a state that allows for deeper access to emotions, memories, and patterns. This state enhances the collaborative process, but the true transformation happens through your active participation and the therapist’s guidance.
Real-Time Support and Attunement: Your therapist remains present and attuned to your emotional and physical states throughout the session, offering compassionate guidance and helping you process difficult or profound experiences as they arise.
Healing in Relationship: As challenges or relational wounds emerge, they are addressed within the therapeutic relationship. This creates opportunities to develop new patterns of trust, connection, and emotional regulation.
Saj Razvi, Psychedelic Somatic Institute:
“Our goal in developing the PSIP modality is to pair psychedelic medicines and the non-rational, non-linear, frequently non-verbal and certainly non-ordinary dream state they induce with a relational, experiential, psychobiological model of psychotherapy designed to target and amplify the healing aspects of psychedelic consciousness. Imagine having a lucid dream, one that is pretty thorough and involves all of who you are. A dream that is going far deeper into your subconscious mind than any dream you’ve ever had. Arising are the images, sensations, hidden memories, impulses, and core beliefs you didn’t know you held. You find detailed memories from your childhood that you don't even remember having forgotten. You experience a clear felt sense, intuition, and other forms of knowing. Imagine you have a guide there, your therapist, who you can invite into this lucid dream, into your subconscious mind, to look at these formative experiences with you. This guide can help you navigate this space. They can help if you get stuck. They can support you if something terrifying emerges. This person is trained to work in this space; they have even visited this space themselves as part of their own training and personal work. They understand human development and the profound needs that might arise here. Imagine this person has done their own work and is securely attached. They can offer a calm, loving, corrective presence that doesn’t get reactive or cold when you become upset, hopeless, or terrified. They can make physical contact or even hold you if the situation calls for it. They remain calm and in relationship with you even when your mind sees them as a perpetrator or abandoning parent. They can be generous enough to allow you these perceptions without any need to talk you out of it. This is the promise of psychedelic therapy: you can enter into the depths of your programing so the hidden, dissociated, formative material living there can be felt, expressed, and processed through your body and the relationship with a skilled ally.” Saj Razvi, Psychedelic Somatic Institute
The Relationship Between Trauma and the Body
Traumatic experiences - whether they are individual or collective, single-event or developmental, chronic or complex - leave imprints on the nervous system. These imprints are not just cognitive or emotional but are biochemically coded into the body’s memory systems, including procedural memory and implicit, non-verbal memory. The body’s natural capacity to process and resolve trauma can become blocked, leading to patterns of dysregulation, dissociation, and emotional distress.
Trauma disrupts the autonomic nervous system, the body’s primary regulator of safety, stress, and survival. The defense cascade - freeze, fight, flight, collapse - is a key mechanism in trauma that can leave individuals stuck in states of hyperarousal or shutdown. Traumatic memories are stored in sensory, somatic, and implicit forms, often bypassing cognitive processing. This explains why trauma can feel “alive” in the body long after the event has passed. These disruptions manifest as chronic tension, emotional overwhelm, dissociative states, and relational challenges, reflecting the body’s unprocessed survival responses. The ideal PSIP explorer embraces the spirit of adventure, welcoming deep dives into the darkest recesses of the mind, regardless of what they may unearth. Most clients and therapists who resonate with PSIP possess a counter-phobic impulse, a fearless drive to explore the shadowy areas of the human psyche.
Additional Important Information
- One of the distinctive features of PSIP is its emphasis on addressing dissociation, a critical element often encountered in trauma recovery yet omitted in many healing modalities.
- In the PSIP framework, cannabis is recognized as a powerful tool for processing trauma, particularly dissociation and depersonalization, commonly associated with complex and relational traumatic events.
Core Principles of PSIP
PSIP is rooted in the autonomic nervous system (ANS) and focuses on bodily sensations, emotions, imagery, and autonomic nervous reactivity. It operates within the realm of implicit non-verbal memory, and clients voluntarily limit calming and coping impulses to allow involuntary autonomic reactions to surface and be released and complete.
The Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) in Focus:
Biological Mechanisms of Primary Consciousness: PSIP acknowledges the ANS's role in primary consciousness and its ability to process stress, anxiety, depression, dissociation, PTSD symptoms, and traumatic relationships. The therapy aims to guide individuals back to a homeostatic state by addressing dissociation, held charges, and suppressed or repressed memories within the ANS.
The ANS Map: The ANS operates in five states, ranging from calmness (State 0) to heightened arousal (State 1), flight or fight response (State 2), freeze response (State 3), and dissociation (State 4). PSIP seeks to help individuals navigate these states and return to a balanced, homeostatic state.
Modes of Consciousness:
Human consciousness operates in two modes - primary consciousness (PC) and secondary consciousness (SC). Primary Consciousness (PC) forms the primal, shared foundation of body sensations, emotions, imagery, and non-verbal memory. In contrast, Secondary Consciousness (SC) emerges in our everyday adult experiences, driven by the default mode network (DMN). An overactive DMN, while crucial for everyday functioning, can lead to a loss of intimacy with ourselves.
PSIP recognizes the importance of both, valuing the primitive, shared aspects of PC rooted in body sensations and non-verbal memory and the more organized, rational SC generated by the default mode network (DMN). Psychedelics temporarily disrupt the DMN and SC, allowing the body to process what is underneath. PSIP targets core programmings held in the nervous system and body, facilitating the release of trauma responses that are "stuck" through autonomic nervous system-based interventions.
Biological Mechanisms of Primary Consciousness:
The PSIP model highlights the innate ability of the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) within primary consciousness to process stress, anxiety, depression, dissociation, PTSD symptoms, and traumatic relationships. These mechanisms, often suppressed by an overactive DMN, provide a natural and effective means of trauma processing.
PSIP and Trauma:
PSIP acknowledges the profound impact of trauma on the body, mind, and relationships. Traumatic experiences are understood not only in cognitive and emotional realms but are deeply encoded in the nervous system and the entire body. Through a process known as Selective Inhibition, clients voluntarily set aside calming impulses - learned to manage the symptoms - allowing the natural flow of autonomic reactions to ease unresolved tension.
This model places a strong emphasis on working with the body and the autonomic nervous system (ANS) to promote healing and well-being. PSIP utilizes legally available medicines such as ketamine and cannabis or can be practiced without medicines.
The Role Of Body In Psychedelic Psychotherapy
This video provides a valuable explanation of how the body and the autonomic nervous system can give rise to various mental health symptoms. It also highlights how this embodied approach can be utilized in a psychedelic therapy session to enhance natural healing responses. While the video is originally part of a training program for mental health professionals, it is equally beneficial for clients to view before starting their own psychedelic treatment. Watching this single video will significantly improve your understanding of the PSIP model and what to expect during a session.
The ideal PSIP explorer embraces the spirit of adventure, welcoming deep dives into the darkest recesses of the mind, regardless of what they may unearth. Most clients and therapists who resonate with PSIP possess a counter-phobic impulse, a fearless drive to heal the shadowy areas of the human experience.