Preparing for a Psilocybin Ceremony

How to enter ceremony with clarity, intention, and respect

Why Preparation Matters

A psilocybin ceremony is not a recreational escape—it’s a return to what’s most real. For centuries, sacred mushrooms have been used to unlock healing, insight, and spiritual remembrance. When held with care, they can dissolve fear, loosen old patterns, and bring us into contact with the truth of who we are. But the quality of the journey is profoundly shaped by how we prepare.

Preparation is the ceremony before the ceremony. It tells the medicine—and your deeper self—that you’re ready. It’s how we make space for what wants to unfold.

1. Clarify Your Intention

Ask yourself: Why am I here? What am I truly seeking?

Your intention doesn’t need to be grand or poetic. It just needs to be honest. Whether it’s grief, clarity, healing, or reconnection, name it. Let it be your compass.

Ultimately, the medicine may not give you what you want—but it will give you what you need.

2. Tend to Your Body

In the days leading up to the ceremony, support your vessel:

• Eat light, nourishing food (vegetables, grains, fruits)

• Hydrate well

• Reduce or eliminate alcohol, caffeine, and cannabis

• Prioritize rest and natural rhythms

You don’t need a strict detox. Just enough to feel clear, grounded, and open.

3. Quiet the Mind, Open the Heart

The mind can be noisy. Preparation is your chance to soften that noise and listen inward.

Try:

• Meditation to steady awareness

• Journaling to surface what’s stirring

• Breathwork or yoga to reconnect with the body

• Moments of silence in nature or at home

These aren’t requirements. They’re invitations to deepen the conversation with yourself—before the medicine begins speaking.

4. Consider Set & Setting

Psychedelics amplify what’s already present. That’s why the context matters.

• Set is your mindset: your emotional state, expectations, and willingness to surrender.

• Setting is your environment: the space, people, energy, and soundscape around you.

Create comfort. Choose soft clothes, a safe place, and music that moves you. Be with people you trust—or ideally, a trained facilitator. Turn off your phone. Make space for reverence.

The more intentional your space, the deeper the work can go.

5. Let Go of Control

There’s a moment in nearly every ceremony where the mind wants to hold on—grasping for beauty, pushing away discomfort, clinging to the ego’s familiar shape.

But healing begins where resistance ends.

If fear arises, breathe. Let it come. Let it go.
If joy comes, receive it fully—but don’t try to chase it.
If everything dissolves, trust that something wiser is at the helm.

This work asks for courage—but it gives grace.

6. Show Reverence

This is sacred work.
Psilocybin mushrooms aren’t a productivity hack or a weekend thrill. They are alive. They are medicine. They are ancient teachers.

Treat the journey with respect. Create ritual. Offer prayer. Light a candle. Say thank you.

When we bow inwardly to the process, it bows back.

Final Thoughts

A well-prepared ceremony isn’t just safer—it’s more transformative.

It becomes a threshold between one life and the next. And how you cross that threshold matters.

This isn’t about escaping reality—it’s about meeting it with new eyes.
And at its best, remembering what you’ve always known.

If you feel called to walk this path, I’m here to walk with you

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Written by Río
Guide, Teacher, Founder of Brooklyn Psychedelic
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