The Psychedelic Practitioner (TPP): How do you define integration and why is it important?
Ros Watts: Integration has gotten bigger and bigger for me over time. It started off as the phase after a psychedelic session where you sit with the mishmash of different ideas and emotions. You work to weave these into a narrative that helps you understand what your experience means, what the lessons are, and what key actions can be carried into your life moving forwards.
The whole idea of the ‘brain reset’ naturally bringing in change happens really quite rarely for a few very lucky people. Most of the time psychedelics just open the door to a window of opportunity—a period of increased flexibility and connection. But that feeling of connection to yourself, to others, and to the world, really only gets weaved into one’s life when you take active daily steps to bring in that connectedness. So for me, integration started off being about specific actions.
I now see integration as a much broader thing. Life at the moment is pretty psychedelic in itself—we’re all integrating all the time. You can’t really be human in 2026 and not be exposed to frightening, overwhelming material unless you’re really separating yourself from it.
Through all of this, people really need connectedness. We live in such a disconnected culture, most of us are not trained in this. So now, I think of integration as helping people train their connectedness skills so that they can bring in key learnings and be present in their lives.
“We live in such a disconnected culture, most of us are not trained in [connectedness]. So now, I think of integration as helping people train their connectedness skills so that they can bring in key learnings and be present in their lives.”
TPP: When working in psychedelic clinical trials, what were the main limitations you observed in the integration protocols?
Watts: By their very nature, clinical trials aren’t really set up for ongoing integration. In a clinical trial, things have to come to an end, which means there isn’t that sense of being able to settle into a community such that you can put your roots down and connect with other people.
From my perspective, so much of integration is about connecting with other people. A big reason many people come to psychedelics in the first place is because we live in such a disconnected and fragmented culture. We’re so often left on our own with things. However, when people feel connected to themselves, community, and nature, they very often feel better.
“By their very nature, clinical trials aren’t really set up for ongoing integration. In a clinical trial, things have to come to an end, which means there isn’t that sense of being able to settle into a community such that you can put your roots down and connect with other people.”
But it’s difficult to enable this in a clinical trial. You can give people the first seeds they can use to build these connections, but often these seeds freeze and can’t grow because you’re giving people seeds to plant in cracked concrete and it’s constant rain and no sun. You’re giving people seeds to plant, but a week later they’re back in their homes, often quite isolated from community, caring support, and nature, watching TV and all the other forms of numbing technology and distraction that our culture gives us to feel better.
However, I do think that when it comes to psychedelic dosing sessions, the structure of the clinical trial model is there for a reason. Many people in the West feel they need 1:1 care and the security of the medical system; it’s what they’ve grown up with and it’s what they feel safe with. So the clinical model is doing what it’s doing really well, which is safety.
But when it comes to integration, save for the more complex cases, this model of individualistic care feels wrong. Integration is when people can move into community, to sitting in a circle, and to doing things in nature. People at this stage need to enter something that is longer term and peer supported. This is also much cheaper and more sustainable than having a single therapist for each patient.
TPP: The ACE model was developed by Ros Watts during the Imperial Psilodep clinical trials. It stands for Accept, Connect, Embody: accepting whatever arises in the experience, connecting with the insights that emerge, and embodying the lessons they’ve learned. The structured therapeutic framework—inspired by psychological flexibility processes core to Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)—invites people to move toward the places they’d usually avoid, the “spiky oysters at the bottom of the seabed”. It may feel uncomfortable or slimy at first, but staying with it reveals the pearl inside: the learning held within the suffering.
TPP: What gap did your ACER programme emerge to fill and how does it build on your ACE model?
Watts: When the Imperial depression trial finished, it was covid so we couldn’t do any more in-person sessions. But all these people I had been sitting with were starting to have these big openings, so it really felt like this was the beginning rather than the end for me. I knew I wanted to work with people on a longer-term basis, and covid gave me an excuse to set up something for people who were completely isolated.
It all started with a zoom sharing circle where anyone from the trial could come and sit and share. Many of these people were connecting with others for the first time who had long histories of depression and who had taken psilocybin.
Around the same time, I had also been writing a 12-month integration model, where every month you work with a different tree. I saw the success of the sharing circles as an opportunity to offer this model to 20 of the trial participants. This formed the beginning of what is now ACER, and some of those trial participants are still with us 6 years later, now working as our facilitators.
So the ACE model—Accept, Connect, Embody—is joined by an additional ‘R’ in ACER. This is for ‘Restore’, and denotes the restoring of our disconnected society to the rhythms and patterns of nature: slow, cyclical, balanced, and interconnected.
“So the ACE model—Accept, Connect, Embody—is joined by an additional ‘R’ in ACER. This is for ‘Restore’, and denotes the restoring of our disconnected society to the rhythms and patterns of nature: slow, cyclical, balanced, and interconnected.”
TPP: Why do you think nature is such a stabilising force for integration, especially after challenging experiences or when navigating anxiety?
Watts: I think there’s two important points: the interconnection of tree roots, and the metaphors of nature. One time when I was particularly burnt out and disconnected, I remember being on a zoom call and just shutting the laptop halfway through. I walked out into the garden, and literally fell into this tree. I was just sobbing and holding onto this tree. It was a really powerful experience; it almost felt like a psychedelic experience.
I had this incredible feeling of these trees being connected, and this network of roots holding me up. It felt so safe and supported, so much older and more robust than our modern systems. Our culture is very individualistic, but in a forest, the organising system is mutual thriving—the trees support each other underground, and one will give more to the other one that needs it. There is no such thing as a lone tree. I think the interconnectedness of trees is incredibly powerful for humans to learn about.
Secondly is the metaphors. If you’re doing integration in a group, using the metaphors of nature can give people a shared language for their experiences. Someone might say ‘I had a proper lightning strike yesterday’, and the rest of the group will know something bad happened. Another might say ‘I’m in the summer at the moment’, meaning everything’s growing and thriving. There are many metaphors that help people share where they’re at, without needing to go into the details—it gives people a powerful way of talking about their experiences in a way that is not re-traumatising or triggering.
“If you’re doing integration in a group, using the metaphors of nature can give people a shared language for their experiences. [They] help people share where they’re at, without needing to go into the details—it gives people a powerful way of talking about their experiences in a way that is not re-traumatising or triggering.”
Another powerful metaphor from nature I love to use is the idea of cyclical growth. It’s helpful to explain to people when they’re struggling that although they will go through winters where they lose their leaves and will be standing there bare, and raw, this is not for nothing. These fallen leaves will be the compost from which new things grow. Nature gives us these tangible concepts for working with these ideas of regeneration, hope, and approaching moments of pain in a way that is real and people can feel in their bodies.
TPP: People in our society are incredibly busy—working multiple jobs, raising kids—, how can these individuals with limited time or resources effectively engage with integration frameworks?
Watts: I fully resonate with this concern. There were times when I was a single mum, living on a houseboat, with so many different pressures and stresses. Brushing my teeth was about the most self-care I was giving myself, so I know how frustrating it is when people give you all of these things to do that take so much time you just don’t have.
I’m working on an idea at the moment for exactly this. It’s like a mindset shift that you can do in any situation, whatever the context of your life is; it’s a practice called ‘standing in the circle’. I think of the circle as a metaphor for everything—it represents interconnectedness, balance and connection. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a circular culture, we live in a pyramid culture. Resources move up and pressure moves down.
When we are watching TV or scrolling on our phones, we are engaging with that pyramid structure. By doing these things, you are becoming more disconnected. So for people who are overwhelmed and stuck in that hamster wheel of numbing and distracting, they can engage with this practice. The first level is as simple as noticing when you’re doing this and essentially interrupting the process; putting the phone down; stopping the TV program; even just spending one minute connecting with your breath, coming back to yourself, noticing how we move into numbing and disconnection, and just slowly starting to shift it.
Even if you don’t have very long, I’m working on five minute practices that cumulatively build up towards standing in the circle. It’s about integrity, truth and feeling your feelings. It’s about starting to change your thoughts, and moving towards ‘I’m not going to give my attention to that thing. I’m going to bring it to the circle world, which is me in my circle, with the people that I love’.
TPP: How do you envision ACER scaling?
Watts: Holding the sessions online definitely helps for a lot of people. I was initially concerned about doing this, because then we’re just on our screens again. But I have been absolutely amazed by the level of connection that you can feel with people on screen. We’ve got people from all over the world, and the friendships are so real and so deep.
Also, when people have been through the 12 trees, they can train with us to become sharing facilitators. They don’t need to be therapists, they just need to be able to hold space which is also going to make the model easier to scale.
But I’m also of the opinion that we need to spend more time in-person with our local communities. They have become so fractured and starved. So something I’m really passionate about at the moment is setting up local groups. We’re going to start training people when they’ve been through ACER to set these up and lead them in their communities. Each person will run their own circle however they want, and they’ll also adapt it to the needs of their own landscape—bringing their own way of doing it, based on the people they’ll be working with.
“We need to spend more time in-person with our local communities…So something I’m really passionate about… is setting up local groups. We’re going to start training people when they’ve been through ACER to set these up and lead them in their communities. Each person will run their own circle however they want, and they’ll also adapt it to the needs of their own landscape.”
These groups don’t necessarily even have to be for post-psychedelics, I can’t really think of anyone who wouldn’t benefit from the themes; they are so universal to human experience. And so people will have a choice of doing ACER online or in a local community group.
Another strategy for scaling is called ‘the hologram’, developed by Cassie Thornton. It’s a structure of four people that essentially meet together to support one another. The hologram is the person in the middle and they’re the recipient of care. They surround themselves with three people that become their triangle: one person will listen to their emotional and psychological needs, the other person to their social qualms, and the other to their physical needs. So alongside the ACER 12-tree process, people can also access this very focused support.
TPP: What guidance would you offer to practitioners supporting integration work?
Watts: The reality is, when you’re working as a therapist or facilitator, especially if you’re doing psychedelic work, it is difficult to feel connected. We’re under a lot of pressure and working really hard. What we found from pretty much all the therapists who join ACER is that they come in wanting to learn for their clients, but then realise just how much they needed it for themselves.
So my advice would be to find your own integration space and your own network of care. Find a space for connecting to yourself, to others, to nature. Do that for yourself. We always think we don’t have time, we don’t deserve it, or that we’re working solely for our clients, but just allow yourself the gift of doing that—your integration work will be so much better for it.
The other thing I would recommend is going out in nature but, instead of going alone, organise a nature walk with a group of clients. You don’t need to talk about anything in particular. Just have it as time together to observe and talk about the plants and the things that you’re seeing. By walking outside and seeing the landscape as a mirror, you can start to explore parts of yourself through the nature around you.
“My advice [to practitioners] would be to find your own integration space and your own network of care. Find a space for connecting to yourself, to others, to nature. Do that for yourself. We always think we don’t have time [or] we don’t deserve it…but just allow yourself [this] gift—your integration work will be so much better for it.”