Certification
Continuum
A twelve-week certification in psychedelic preparation and integration, delivered one to one.
Most people who take psychedelics seriously are prepared by one person, journey with a second, and integrate with nobody at all.
They read something online, book a retreat, spend a weekend with strangers who are competent and kind and whom they will never see again, and then go home. Two weeks later the afterglow fades. A month later the insight has become an anecdote. Six months later they are considering another retreat, because the first one did not hold.
The experience was never the problem. What was missing was the preparation that would have made it land, and the integration that would have made it last. That work is unglamorous, it takes months rather than days, and almost nobody is trained to do it well.
This certification trains you to do it well.
What you will be able to do
By the end, you can prepare a client thoughtfully and ethically for a psychedelic experience. You can hold the integration that follows, so that the experience becomes lasting change rather than a fading memory. You can screen for risk and contraindication, and recognise when to refer out. And you understand your own scope, including the legal and professional framework you practise within, well enough to work safely inside it.
What this does not certify you to do is guide the dosing session itself. That is a different skill with a different legal position, and it is deliberately outside this training. Preparation and integration you can practise lawfully almost anywhere. Session holding you cannot.
Who this is for
Coaches, therapists, psychologists, breathwork and bodywork facilitators, and others already doing helping work who want to accompany people through the whole arc of an experience rather than a part of it.
- You have your own meaningful experience with psychedelics. You cannot hold someone through territory you have never crossed.
- You have some background in helping work, so we are not starting from nothing.
Those two things are the only requirements. You do not need to be a licensed therapist. In my experience the practitioner who came to this through their own experience often needs this training more than the clinician does, and brings more to it.
How it works
The teaching is self-paced. Recorded modules and written material for each of the twelve weeks, worked through in your own time.
Everything live is one to one. Six sessions with me across the twelve weeks, sixty to seventy-five minutes each, placed where they matter most. There are no group calls and no cohorts.
A practicum runs from week three. You accompany one real person through preparation and into integration, and bring that work into your sessions with me. This is the spine of the training.
We begin when you are ready. No start dates. I work with a small number of practitioners at a time, in Dutch, German, or English.
Twelve weeks is a guide, not a deadline. If your practicum client moves slowly, you may take sixteen. That is expected and it is not a failure.
Shaped around your background
Every student meets the full arc below. What changes is the depth and emphasis, decided in our first session. A registered psychologist already holds much of the clinical material and needs far more time on the professional and legal question, where their real exposure lies. A coach usually holds behaviour change and embodiment better than anyone and needs screening, contraindication, and referral. A breathwork facilitator brings somatic fluency and the strongest instinct for presence, and needs the conceptual scaffolding and a careful hand through the shadow material. Nobody running a cohort can do this.
The twelve weeks
Part One · Foundations
Week 1Orientation and the continuous-care model
The philosophy of care held in one pair of hands, and why fragmented care fails people. The practitioner's stance, holding rather than fixing. A map of the field and where preparation and integration sit within it. The boundary between accompanying someone and guiding their session.
Individual session 1: orientation and tailoringWeek 2Psychedelics, the evidence, and the terrain
Pharmacology and phenomenology at a practitioner-useful level, centred on psilocybin and truffles, with working awareness of what else clients bring: MDMA, ayahuasca, LSD, ketamine. The plasticity window, described without hype. The honest state of the evidence and its limits. Set and setting as a working frame. The myths that need gentle correction.
Part Two · Preparation
Week 3Screening, contraindications, and fit
Psychological contraindications: psychosis, bipolar disorder, active suicidality, fragile personality structures. Physical and medication interactions: SSRIs, lithium, cardiovascular conditions, MAOIs, and the point at which you route to a doctor rather than advise. The structure of the intake conversation. Documentation from day one. How to decline or refer with care.
Your practicum begins here.
Week 4Building the container
The working alliance in this specific context. Intention versus expectation, and how to hold the hope of being fixed without feeding it. Client psychoeducation: the shape of a journey, surrender, difficult passages. Practical preparation, logistics, mindset, support system. Consent and autonomy as living things. Cultural and spiritual sensitivity.
Week 5The hard parts, and the handover
Preparing a client for challenging experiences before they happen. Self-regulation and grounding tools to teach them. The phrase trust, let go, be open, and precisely where it stops being useful. And the handover, since you will often not be the person in the room: communication with the facilitator, continuity of care, safety planning.
Individual session 2: the preparation, reviewed in detailPart Three · Integration
Week 6What integration actually is
Integration as meaning-making, embodiment, and behaviour change together, not merely talking about it. The plasticity window and why timing matters. The first conversation afterwards, holding space rather than interpreting. The discipline of not making meaning on the client's behalf. Letting the experience be exactly what it was.
Week 7Difficult and destabilising experiences
Fear, grief, and the wake of ego dissolution. Spiritual emergency versus emergence. What to do when integration surfaces trauma. Recognising destabilisation and derealisation, and when to refer urgently. The boundary where integration support ends and clinical or psychiatric help begins. Your own regulation while holding intensity.
Individual session 3: the first integration workWeek 8From insight to lasting change
Why insight fades, and how to counter it. Embodiment practices, behavioural anchoring, values and habit work. The coaching skill set applied directly. The afterglow and its passing. The return of old patterns. The long arc of integration, measured in months rather than days.
Week 9Special situations and the shadow side
Spiritual bypassing and inflation. Dependency on the substance, or on you. Confabulation and false memory. Relationship and family fallout from insight. Clients wanting to go again too soon. Counter-transference and the guru dynamic, which forms without anyone intending it.
Individual session 4: complications and the shadow sidePart Four · Ethics, Scope, and Law
Week 10Ethics and professional boundaries
Scope of practice: what a preparation and integration practitioner is, and is not. The coach and clinician line. Power and vulnerability. Boundaries, dual relationships, touch, and sexuality, addressing this field's abuse problem squarely rather than politely. Confidentiality and its limits. Consent as ongoing. Practitioner self-care. Supervision as an ethical requirement rather than an optional extra.
Week 11The legal and regulatory landscape
The legal status across the Netherlands, Germany, and your client's home country. The truffle position and its real limits. The 2026 Amsterdam disciplinary ruling and what it means for anyone on a professional register. Documentation as protection. Liability and insurance. The rule against unverified therapeutic claims. Never working with minors. How to coordinate with medical professionals.
Individual session 5: your own legal positionPart Five · Certification
Week 12Consolidation and assessment
Bringing your practicum case together, from preparation through integration. A reflective write-up. The assessment itself. Building an ethical practice of your own. What comes next.
Individual session 6: certificationThe practicum
From week three you accompany one real person: someone genuinely preparing for a lawful psychedelic experience, whom you support through preparation, and whose integration you hold afterwards. You bring that work into your sessions with me. It is what turns this from a course into a certification.
In most cases there is someone already planning a retreat or session who welcomes free preparation and integration support, since almost nobody receives it. I am also building relationships with retreat operators and others in my network, so that students can be introduced to participants who want this support. And where no live full-arc client materialises inside your window, an integration-only case with someone who has had a recent experience is accepted.
Start looking in week one. It is real work, and it is yours to do.
What earns the certificate
- Completion of the self-paced core
- A worked practicum case, carried from preparation into integration
- A reflective write-up of that case
- A case presentation and viva in the final individual session
The certificate is issued by my practice. It is not a state licence, because no state licence exists for this work in the Netherlands, Germany, or anywhere in Europe. Anyone who tells you their certificate is officially recognised is describing something that does not yet exist.
What this certificate represents is that someone with twenty-five years in this field has watched you work with a real client, from preparation through integration, and judged you competent. That is the honest claim, and at present it is the only one available to anyone.
If you are on a professional healthcare register, read this. The legality of truffles in the Netherlands does not give you a free hand. A disciplinary board assesses your professional conduct, not the legal status of the substance, and in May 2026 a Dutch clinical psychologist was conditionally suspended over exactly this, even though the client was satisfied and no harm was demonstrated. The board also held that offering the work in the role of a coach does not change your position if you are registered. This is covered in week eleven, because you need to understand it before you practise rather than after, and we discuss your specific position in the discovery call.
Investment
This covers the self-paced curriculum, six individual sessions with me, the practicum, and certification.
Free, and this is not an application. A few questions when you book, so that I arrive knowing something about you, and then a conversation in which we both decide whether this is right. Please only book if you meet the two requirements above.
Questions
Does this qualify me to guide psychedelic sessions?
No, and that is deliberate. This certifies you in preparation and integration, the work before and after. Guiding the session itself is a different skill with a different legal position. For graduates who go on to practise where that is lawful, it can be taken up later within an ongoing mentoring relationship, not as a certification, because competence in holding a session cannot be assessed by conversation and no honest person will tell you otherwise.
I am a registered psychologist or therapist. Does that change things for me?
Yes, and this is the question the field answers badly. Being on a register means a disciplinary board judges your conduct regardless of whether the substance was legal, and describing yourself as a coach while you do it does not protect you. This is not a reason to avoid the work. It is a reason to understand exactly where the lines are, which is what week eleven is for. If you are registered, we discuss your position in the discovery call before anything else.
What if I cannot find a practice client?
Start looking in week one. In most cases there is someone already planning a lawful experience who welcomes free preparation and integration support, since almost nobody receives it. I am also building relationships with retreat operators and others in my network, so that students can be introduced to participants who want this support. If no live client materialises inside your window, an integration-only case with someone who has had a recent experience is accepted. It is real work, and it is yours to do.
How much time will this take, and what if I fall behind?
Roughly four to six hours a week: the self-paced material, your six sessions with me, and the practicum, which is the largest piece. The core content stays available to you. If life intervenes, you carry your practicum forward and certify when it is done, at no extra cost. Tell me early rather than disappearing.
How is the fee paid, and what if I withdraw?
The fee is normally settled in full before we begin. If paying at once is difficult, say so and we will arrange three monthly instalments, at no additional cost. I would rather have that conversation than have you decide against this quietly.
If you withdraw before the second individual session you receive a partial refund. After that the fee is not refundable, because by then a good deal of the individual work has been delivered. The exact terms are in the enrolment agreement, and I would far rather you asked before enrolling than after.
Which language will we work in?
Dutch, German, or English, whichever you work in most naturally. The sessions are individual, so this costs nothing to arrange. Written material may reach you in English first while the other versions are being finished, and I will tell you honestly what exists in your language before you enrol.
Uncertain whether this is right for you? That is what the conversation is for. Book a discovery call, or simply write to me.